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JOURNAL on CABMICAL EDUCATION
Nov~nassn,1927
THE NEW-TYPE METHODS OF TESTING-A CRITICISM W. F. Horn, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL rn TEACHERS COLLEGE, PERU,NEBRASKA
There are many indictments against the so-called new-type methods of testing in chemistry. These methods are not scientific. Science is organized knowledge, not a collection of facts and words. During the past century and a half scientists have been patiently and laboriously discovering facts and piecing them into generalizations, hypotheses, theories, principles and laws, and from them forming a great highway of science through the fields of nature, upon which the student could "run and not weary, walk and not faint." The new-type testers dig up the blocks of this paved highway and hide a bugbear of true and false statements behind each one. That may be an amusing pastime to the tester, but it cannot be dignified by calling it science. True-and-false questions constitute a prize exhibit of fallacious psychology. A beginner should never have a false statement put before him, especially by the teacher. The mature and trained student with a solid foundation upon which to stand and a background of chemical knowledge may safely encounter a few such questions and be able to separate "the sheep from the goats." Science is constantly classifying chaotic facts into an orderly system, but the new-type tester, reversing the process, breaks up these orderly systems into a chaos of facts and words. A thousand facts cannot make or begin to make a chemist, but a score or two of coordinating principles, illustrated by problems and processes founded upon these principles, will make a start a t producing an amateur scientist. A hundred or several hundred questions answered by a word or a mark are far too many for a rational test, but ten or twenty hypotheses and problems illustrating chemical principles are not. The new-type tester does all the connected thinking and coordinating, leaving the student only snap judgments and word answers. A true test is not a Cook's Tour nor a "follow-your-leader" game of frenzied progress through the fields of science. Science requires unhumed thinking and reasoned judgment. The method of grading or ranking is faulty pedagogy, based upon a hastily formulated "law of averages." Is it not thinkable, at least, that all of the guesses may be right or all wrong, instead of a fifty-fiftychance of being right or wrong? There is no "average" student. A man or a child is not a machine, but a bundle of tremendous possibilities to be developed. Each student is entitled to a judgment based upon his own attainments, not upon a hypothetical average. I know quite well a family of five children, all of them alive and well, the youngest of whom is sixty-three years old. By the average expectation of life, two or three of them, at least, ought to be dead long before this. When the
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new-typers come into their own, undoubtedly aU men and women will be buried according to schedule! The tragedy of the new-type tests is that they set the standards of teaching-" 'tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true!" My experience with the new-type teachers is that they "get nothing across." The head of the department of chemistry in a great university, in discussing the attainments of high-school students in chemistry, remarked to me, "Isn't it awful? I would rather catch them wild!" Another teacher of teachers, and an author of methods of teaching chemistry, declares he would rather his pupils came into his classes entirely innocent of aU chemical knowledge than with the average high-school equipment, because in that case they would not have to unlearn so much. High schools suffer more than the colleges and universities from the new-type teachers. Every callowthe callower the worse they are afflicted-new psychologist and prospective teacher comes out with a conviction that his first duty is to psychoanalyze his pupils. May heaven pity their defenseless children! Only God can psychoanalyze a human being. The functions of a teacher are not psychoanalysis or untangling complexes, but to he the guide, sympathizer, and, if possible, the inspirer of his pupils. All great teachers have been inspirational. Is chemistry too difficult for high-school students? I am convinced it is not. Chemistry, when rightly taught, is far easier than many other highschool subjects. I had occasion to speak before a body of chemistry teachers recently, and I startled the high-school teachers by saying, "The average high-school teacher aims at nothing, and hits it!" I see no reason as yet for modifying that statement. I have had occasion to compare and contrast the new type with the "old," in recent years. A contributing high school employed new-type teachers for two years. The classes averaged about thirty each year. Out of these two years but one student took advanced chemistry, and this one had to have the A, B, C's of chemistry drilled into him throughout his later course. In the two following years the "old-type" teachers were employed, with approximately the same number of chemistry students. Of these, however, from a half to three-fourths presented themselves for advanced chemistry, and these proved "up on their toes and ready to go" ahead without drilling on the elementary fundamentals. A superintendent in a small town, who is also a teacher of chemistry, said he recently tried the new-type test in his classes with disastrous results. The poorest student in his class, who knew practically nothing of chemistry, secured the highest grade. Apparently a scientist, amateur or expert, is not a good guesser. The new-type tests were prepared by psychologists and for psychologists with scant knowledge of the science and less knowledge of the problems of teaching the science and still less of vital experience of asso-
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ciation with chemical students in the class-room and laboratory. J. McKeen Cattell, virtual dean of American psychologists, author of many scientific books and editor of various scientific magazines, in his presidential address to the A. A. A. S. a t its annual session at Kansas City, said in a jovial way, "It has been generally known for many years that psychologists had lost their souls, but now it is feared that they are losing their minds!" He must have been referring to the new-type psychologists, and, if so, it is more of a grim fact than a laughable jest. I have been rallied for the ancient flavor of my psychology for quoting with approval Isaiah XXVII, 9-10: "Whom shall he teach knowledge. . . . . .for precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little!" I t is as anaent as the decalog. What a pity that the great prophets and teachers of Israel did not have the advantages of the new-type psychology! Think how the Sermon on the Mount might have been improved! Agassiz, Horace Mann, and our own beloved Bessey did very well in their times, but we must admit they were pre-Freudians. How very sad that they had not the benefits of the newtype tests so that they might psychoanalyze their pupils! The new testers assume that all the great psychologists substantiate their contentions. Actually the psychologists are fully as united as the forces of China-no more and no less. I have been challenged to give an example of what I shall call a "Rational Test," and defend it openly and show that it lacks the defects of the new-type tests, so here it is.
A Rational or Old-Type Chemistry Test
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1. Define: chemistry, energy, force, element, mixture. solution, radical, anhydride, allotropy, isomers, isotopes, acid-salt. (Answer any ten.) 2-3. Find the weight of the salt formed and the volume of the gas collected by the action of HCI on 4 grams of NaHCOa, laboratory temperature being 17' Centigrade and the pressure heing 29 inches. (N. T. P. being 273' Abs. and pressure being 30 inches.) 4. What volume of air will he necessary for the complete combustion of 10 liters of gasoline gas, C,Hla, ignoring temperature and pressure? 5. Tabulate the phosphorus series of acids and their calcium salt% giving the prefixes and suffixes of each acid and salt. 6. Outline the modern conception of the states of matter and the forces involved.
............................................................................. 7. Complete the following equations: NHINO~heated = ; CSH,OOS (cellulose) burned = ;HNOa - Ha0 = ; FeCls & F ~ ( C N ) O= 8. Tell how t o form H r ; On;N1; and Cog,writing the formative equation for each. 9. Reduce -15" Centigrade to Absolute and Fahrenheit; 77" Fahrenheit t o Centigrade and Absolute; 233' Absolute t o Centigrade and Fahrenheit. 10. Name, tell if acid, base or salt and give valence of each element and radical: HISO,; AgN08; NHIOH; KCrO,; KCnO,; N a 8 ; Feels; AI(C2H~01)8; Ba(OH)*: BaS20s. 11. Tell the common way t o form acids, bases and salts, and write formative equations for H S , (NH&3, and Ca3(P04)2.
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12. How much lye (impure NaOH) will it take to react fully with 10 lb. of stearin CnHa(CIsHsrO& in making of soap. If but one hour can be taken for the test, answer five out of 1 t o 6. If an examination of two hours' duration answer ten out of 1 to 12, five in each division. There is not a catch or an inconsequential question in the above list, and every one requires a knowledge of some principle of chemistry. There is not a pin-point where you can press in a guess, and there is not an "essay" required in the list. I stand or fall on a comparison of these questions with the new-type test.
