Presidential Address 136th ACS National Meeting Atlantic City, N . J.
Utilization of U u r N a t i o n a l Resources DR. J O H N C. BAILAR, JR. President, A m e r i c a n Society
Chemical
JTOH Tin·: past three decades, our na tion and many other countries of the world have been involv-xl in a tremen dous struggle to preserve the demo cratic way of lite for ourselves and pos terity. U p to 1945, this struggle was with the Axis Powers, culminating in World W a r II; more recently, striving {or the security of our freedom has de veloped into a cold war with the coun tries behind the Iron and Bamboo Cur tains. This cold war is no less real nor grim than the active combat of World War II, nor does it entail less strain on our national resources. If we are to maintain our present economic, politi cal, and social way of life, we must utilize our resources—all of them—far more efficiently than we have i\\ the past. Our country has been amply blessed with physical resources—minerals from which we can extract almost every ele ment; tremendous supplies of coal, pe troleum, and natural gas; fertile soil; •
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and industrial uses as well as for power. We have ruthlessly squandered some of these natural resources, particularly the forests and the soil. Only in com paratively recent years have serious and successful attempts been made to regenerate them. T h e discovery and development of nuclear energy has banished the fear that we shall deplete our sources of power, a n d the time may well come when our carbonaceous fuels will be utilized almost entirely as raw materi als for t h e synthesis of organic com pounds. Used in this way, these re sources should last almost indefinitely 7 . Similarly, the supplies of many inor 116
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ganic minerals and elements are inex haustible. There is n o danger that we shall ever consume all of our silica, sodium chloride, or o>jygen. However, the depletion of sonic of our inorganic mineral resources presents a serious problem, for when the elements which are extracted from t h e m are used, they are so widely dissipated that they are lost to us forever. T h e vanadium that is obtained from a single body of ore may well b e distributed through the axles of a million automobiles, and when these are discarded, the vanadium can never b e collected again. What will happen when our known deposits of iron, copper, and sulfur are ex hausted? There seems to be no easy answer to this question, and unless new ore bodies are discovered, w e shall have to depend upon other nations for our supplies of these materials, use sub stitutes, or develop efficient methods of extracting inorganic elements from pro gressively poorer deposits.
1959
H u m a n Resources My chief concern, however, is not with these physical resources, impor tant as they are, b u t rather with our human resources, which are of even greater importance and which we have sometimes wasted thoughtlessly. Among these resources are intellectual ability, initiative, imagination, and ac cumulated knowledge. As the store of human knowledge grows, and with it our power over n a t u r e , these h u m a n re sources become ever more important. Unless we see to it that each person in our country utilizes his innate, latent resources to the best of his ability, we
shall surely lose our place of leader ship in world society. The founding fathers of our country did not c o m e to America primarily in search of material wealth, but because they sought greater freedom to de\ elop their intellectual and spiritual re sources. They h a d scarcely landed on this continent before they established schools a n d churches, and the Ameri can system of universal education has developed from their belief that every person should be helped and en couraged to develop his abilities to the fullest extent. T h e early Ameri can schools were devoted almost en tirely to teaching the intellectual disci plines. T h e pupils were expected to learn, and did learn, the skills of homemaking, farming, and mechanics out side of school hours. As our present social system has evolved, and primary and secondary education have become almost univer sal, our school system has undergone vast changes. The public schools have added to their offerings in the intellec tual subjects a great variety of courses designed to prepare the students for specific trades, as well as courses in such subjects as homemaking, family living, a n d driver training. For some students, a high school education now consists of little more than learning how to drive a nail, how to drive a car and how to drive a bargain. F e w of us w o u l d question that a knowledge of carpentry or of cookery is valuable, but school courses in these subjects should not b e allowed to dis place those which are designed to traiin the intellect. T h e increasing complexi ties of our civilization d e m a n d that
itizens in a democracy h a v e a k n o w l edge ol thc^ basic sciences, as well as of listory, economics, and foreign affairs, nstruction in these subjects should b e ;tarted in the early grades and coninued throughout t h e students' formal îducation. Since our m o d e r n p a t t e r n )f living d e p e n d s so m u c h on technol>gy, an appreciation of science is paricularly important.
n t e l l e c t u a l Disciplines T h e decreasing e m p h a s i s on t h e inelleetual disciplines in t h e school curi c u l u m has been accompanied b y a growing a c c e p t a n c e of the erroneous lypothesis that only a small percentage )f our y o u n g people are capable of earning science, mathematics, and oreign languages, and that the rest can x> taught only subjects of less challeng ing intellectual content. Should we assume t h a t our children ire less able than those in E u r o p e ? If nily a small p e r c e n t a g e of our young people a r e capable of intellectual pur;uits, can we continue to believe in and practice universal suffrage? If the ;reat majority are i n c a p a b l e of mental liscipline, dare w e entrust them with :elf-government? If our high schools lave failed to give t h e pupils an inelleetual training, must we assume that h e failure is due to the low mentality )f the pupils? By no means. W e can assume, iqually well, that it is t h e school rather :han the pupil that has failed. There ire main· able, well p r e p a r e d , a n d de moted teachers in t h e p u b l i c school syse m . Unfortunately, t h e r e are also a p e a t many who have no real love ol cholarship and who possess only a uperficial knowledge of the subjects vhich they are assigned to teach. The iepartments of education in t h e \ a i i )us states have set up m i n i m u m standirds for preparation in subject matter, )ut in numerous cases, the requiren e n t s a r e so low that t h e y are almost neaningless. In m a n y states, for cximple, it is quite possible for a person vho has had only one year of college memistry or physics to teach those subects in high school, a n d many hunIreds of American high schools employ eaehers with only that amount of traili n g . In some cases, even this training vas obtained m a n y years ago, a n d of course does not include the m o r e rerent developments in t h e subjects. If the student in such a school finds h e science class uninspiring a n d unin
teresting, shall we conclude that h e is too dull to appreciate the subject or to understand it? Certainly not. The fault is more apt to be on the other side of t h e teachers' desk or in t h e of fice of t h e board of Education. Most high school chemistry teachers have had more than a year of chemical training, of course, b u t only a minority have completed a full college major in chemistry. By contrast, in Switzer land, t h e great majority of science teaehers in t h e * nutteischule," which corresponds t o our high school, have doctor's degrees in science. T h e mere possession of a P h . D . degree does not guarantee that a man is a good teacher, but it does ensure that h e has the first requisite—an adequate knowledge of the subject. If, in addition, he has a love of learning and an interest in young people 1 , he will surely instill in his students some of his enthusiasm for scholarship a n d for science. Aids f o r Science Teachers D u r i n g recent years, th«»re has been a growing awareness of the need to give the science teachers in the high schools additional training and other profes sional assistance. T h e American C h e m ical Society, both nationally and at the local level, is taking an active part in trying t o fill this need. For example, during the past two years, a commit tee of the Society has served in an ad visory capacity in planning a complete high school chemistry course on film, and more recently, another committee has been working on the "Continental Classroom" television course that is to be offered d u r i n g this coming fall and winter. Several of the local sections of the Society are active in chemical ed ucation in the high schools of their communities, serving as advisors, fur nishing laboratory equipment, arrang ing plant tours, finding employment for teachers during the summer vaca tions, and teaching extracurricular classes. These activities are most com mendable, a n d w e urge that every lo cal section adopt these or other plans which will raise the level of the chemi cal training in the high schools of their localities. The science teachers' institutes, which are sponsored by the National Science Foundation, are also worthy of note, for through them it is possible for a large number of teachers to devote their summers to modernizing their sci entific training and bringing it up to date.
Financial Problems All such efforts will h e l p to i jnprcj>\e the situation, but we mutst not assu 3iie that they do all that is ne^-essar^·. TThe need cannot really be ntiet UEitil ~l:he American public full)· iniclerstar ldstuint persons of the requisite ability can be attracted into high school teaching o n l y if they are accorded thc^ sain^i social and financial rewards as doctors, l a w yers, and other professional mer ι. T^his may mean tripling the salary bi_idge^ in our high schools, but if w e belaeve the fundamental postulate ot deinocrac_w— that every person must be hefdpecL to develop himself fully—we cannot af ford to entrust the intellectual cJeveMopment of our children to in. en ^md women w h o are less al>le thimn tl nose who guard their health o r thc-ir p r o p erty. T h e potential product ivene^s of its yom>g people constitutes one- of the greatest resources that a n y na tion can possess, but it is an asset that mus "it be nurtured carefully, and o n e w Inch the United States is not utilising as» full y as it should. It is most disturbing tk at a large proportion of the stude-nts ^who establish superior records in A m e r i c a n high schools do not choose ί ο gΛ o - i
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