letters Open Letter to a Burned-Out Teacher [1994, 71,7391 First, my condolences! I have been where you are, or near enough as makes no difference; I know and hear your pain. Second, pay no mind to those who either celebrate your agony or "there-but-for-the-grace-of-god" you. Their attitudes are very much part of their problems. Third, know that a s angry and depressed as you are, there are ways out of your private jungle. If you wish to salvage yourself, your career, your experience, and expertise and turn them to the uses you originally envisioned when you took u p teaching, t h a t i s yet possible. If, of course, you do not wish such, you are as lost as youimagine your students are, and perhaps early retirement is the best for all concerned. Assuming this latter is not the case, assuming that your mutterings are a cry for help, not a professional suicide note, I would urge you to listen to, and think about, some of the experiences of those of u s who have been through what you are experiencing and have emerged on the other side. 1. Perhaps your anger, depression, dissatisfaction result not from the faults yon find with your students, per se, but from the exhaustion of your trying too hard, ineffectually. I t is hard not to blame the students, but you cannot control who they are. You can exert some control over who you are, if you choose to. I have found that some of the changes advocated i n this Journal, and on the education networks, such a s CHEMED-L and PHYS-L, have made startling differences i n my effectivenessin a very short length of time. For me, the real barrier to be overcome was getting me to try some of them. 2. The students have changed. Your descriptions, sans the attributions, are reasonably accurate. But this i s not a new event, historically. At Berkeley i n 1960-61, I listened to W. F. Giauque chastise a graduate thermodynamics class after a particularly disappointing exam result: "Well, it took B's or better to get you into this place; I suppose I'll have to give you B's to get you out of here .. whether you have earned them or not!" I t was his last run or so a t teaching, himself; I remember most about him how sad and embitered he sounded. Mv t the students having " ~ . o i n is: - changed, - does i t add better to vour clii~ctivc~less to rail against those chmgus, or deal with differences? As a good srientisr, you urc sure to come u p with the correct answer. My guess is that there are two basic problems here: 1. you would prefer to continue to do your teaching as you always have, as you imagined you would when you took up University teaching 30 years ago; and 2. that is not a practical or viable alternative given the present student cohort.
Who is more likely to, or capable of, change? Surprisingly, us old dogs with a little wit and circumspection retain the capacity to learn a new trick or two ...not because we want to, but because that i s what is required to get the job done. You have a body of experience and expertise i t would be shame for the youngergeneration, students, and faculty, not to be able to benefit from, simply because yon are disappointed your experience has nodturned out the way you fantasized i t might when you were choosing your profession. Life has a way of surprising everyone. Use that creative imagination and energy, which you devoted to assem-
1098
Journal of Chemical Education
bling your mntterings, to sorting out among the armatorium of educational techniques those you are willing to try in the battle against the evils of ignorance and intellectual lethargy you so vigorously document. You would he surprised how simple some are to adopt; how downright pleasurable the results can be. Take heart! Your career need not be dismantled quite just yet. But you do have some serious tinkering to do to keep i t functioning. Best wishes to you, your charges, a n d colleagues. Frankly you need each other. J. N. Cooper
Buckneli University Lewisburg, PA 17837 The Hydride Ion and Its Loosely Bound Outer Electron To the Editor: This letter refers to the article on atomic two-electron systems by M. J. ten Hoor [1991,69, 1971. Towards the end of the paper, the author suggests that the physical picture of the hydride ion as "an almost unscreened hydrogen atom with a very loosely bound extra electron" is a n "incorrect conclusion". In pointing out this "incorrct conclusion", the author cites our note on the helium sequence [1987,64, 1281 a s a n example and a reference. We would like to make some comments concerning this ~ o i n t . ~ i ; s t of all, we wish to reiterate that the foregoing conclusion was drawn bv S. Chandrasekhar IAstro~hvs.J. 1944, 100, 1761, which we have pointed out in ok"note. Chandrasekhar's work on H- is also quoted by H. A. Bethe and E. E. Salpeter i n their book Quantum Mechanics of One- a n d %o-Electron Atoms [Academic: New York, 1957: p 1561. Reading the relevant in the book indicates that the authors are i n ameement with Chandrasekhar. In any event, we are not the originator of the conclusion. Second, we wish to add that we also agree with Chandrasekhar's conclusion. The statement quoted above does not imply that one electron is a t all times farther away from the nucleus than the other. Rather, it means that a t one instant, electron 1is the outer electron; a t another instant, i t becomes the inner one. When ionization takes place, i t is the outer electron that is ionized. Since this outer electron is loosely bound, the ionization potential is very low. Such a ~ i c t u r is e consistent with the idea that the two electrons in H-are equivalent to and indistinguishable from each other. Thev make the same contribution to the total enerw -" of the sys&, a s pointed out by ten Hoor in his paper. Wai-Kee Li The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong A Reversible Blue-and-Gold Reaction To the Editor:
A very interesting catalytic reaction has been published recently by M. C. Shermann and D. Well ( I ) . Although my kinetic and potentiometric investigations cannot shed light on the authors'questious, a number of interesting results have been obtained. The reaction between potassium sodium tartrate and hydrogen peroxide catalyzed by copper sulfate can be studied a t 30 "C, too, by increasing the copper tartrate concentration. The color of the precipitate depends on the [tar-
