WHY ARE STUDENTS NOT MORE INTERESTED IN CHEMISTRY? DE WITT T.KEACH,Y A ~ EUNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN.CONNECTICUT
A great deal is being said and written a t the present time about making the subject of chemistry more interesting to the students in our preparatory schools and colleges. All of this apparently springs from an almost universal belief that there is something very wrong with the methods of teaching now in use. It cannot be denied that many students go through a course in chemistry without developing the slightest interest in the subject, and this in spite of the fact that the procedure in most courses has been developed with great care and that it is usually in the hands of good teachers. It would seem that there are some things which goodcourses and good teachers are incapable of accomplishing. A consideration of some of the schemes which have beeu, and are being, suggested is enlightening. A plan often proposed to make the subject more interesting is to stress the applications of chemistry. To some extent probably all courses given in our schools today do go into the modern uses of the substances which the student is taking up. When the purely chemical matters about hydrogen, for example, have beeu disposed of, i t seems very desirable to mention the uses of the element in inflating balloons, in connection with the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe and in the hardening of fats. But as a means of increasing interest in chemistry, it will be found that while some students become enthusiastic, a very considerable number are positively bored by the additional material. This has been the experience of the writer during ten years of teaching chemistry to college freshmen. In connection with laboratory work it is suggested quite often that the experiments be so designed that the student will prepare substances which have practical application, that is, such things as ink, a dyestuff, etc. The claim is made that such a procedure secures the immediate interest of the student. Aside from the difficulty of developing a logical course using such methods, are we justified in the expectations? Those who are already strongly inclined toward chemistry will be delighted; the remainder for the most part will do the work with the same indifference that they would show toward any laboratory exercise. Some teachers are much interested in the pleasing and, a t first sight, promising idea of developing interest by utilizing the facts of the history of chemistry more thoroughly than is usually the practice. These people would give information regarding the great discoveries, show pictures of the great discoverers, etc. To some students this material provides fascination not to be resisted; the balance, if they have the opportunity, proceed to decorate the faces of the great chemists with whiskers, mustachios, or a pipe. And these latter are no more interested in chemistry than before. Still another plan, very modern, is to use moving pictures and moving
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diagrams in connection with the class work in chemistry. It is certainly to be hoped that this will be done increasingly; it will prove to be a boon in making some intricate subjects much more clear. But will i t secure the interest of any larger proportion of the students than any of the other suggestions mentioned? Think of the opportunities of going to sleep while the pictures are being shown. Will the boy who is longing for the next period with the history teacher be greatly interested in chemistry by such a process? Now it is not the purpose of this article to cast ridicule on these suggestions. Anything which secures the interest of one student is desirable and justified. But why is i t that we are unable to secure the interest of all the class, not to the extent that they will all wish to become chemists, but that they will not be forever strangers to this most basic of the sciences? Before an attempt to answer this question is made, there is one other plan to be noticed. A suggestion which is unfortunately being offered with more and more frequency is that we have a course which shall be a general introduction to science. In such a course i t is intended merely to give general information without endeavoring to be specific in any sense. Such a course would not be one in which the student could be taught such items as equations, problems, etc., thoroughly; i t would just scratch the surface or, in short, become a course of popular lectures in chemistry and physics. With the passing of all thoroughness would come the loss of all disciplinary value as applied to chemistry. . The course would be popular because it is a rather rare student who is not attracted by a course in which he can attain a high grade without doing any work. But would such a course accomplish any valuable purpose? Would the interest in chemistry secured in this manner be of any use to the student? Where then is the real difficulty in trying to interest more students in chemistry? The writer believes that the trouble is deep-rooted; that i t goes back to the methods used in our primary and secondary schools. The great outstanding change in our schools in the past twenty years has been a change in the method of approach to knowledge. It used to be expected that the student would accomplish a good deal for himself; now everything possible is done to get him through a given course with the least effort on his own part. It is impossible to refrain from indignation when this is thoroughly considered. An excellent teacher, head of the department of mathematics in the high school of one of our large cities, recently gave the writer the following information: An advanced lesson used to be announced to the students by saying, for example, that the next lesson would be pages 76 to 80, problems 1 to 10, inclusive, and it was then left to the student to dig his way through that lesson for himself. Today no teacher in his depart-
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ment would be permitted to give out a lesson that way; instead the teacher must go over the advance lesson explaining every difficult point and doing several problems of the type to be studied. This is hut one example of many that could he given of the change in the method of approach. Another fault of our present-day schools is that the memory is trained to the exclusion of all else. It is perfectly apparent that the effect of this is not good. If a student is given in his first year in college a lesson in chemistry which offers considerable difficulty, be will generally read it through several times and report a t the next recitation expecting the instructor to explain all the difficult points. After the instructor has patiently explained everything several times, he is treated a t the next recitation to a more or less accurate repetition of something he gave in his explanations, but is conscious all the time that the student does not know what he is talking about. There is absolutely no attempt made to develop the reasoning powers, and as a result the student avoids anything which even suggests thought, as he would avoid Bubonic plague. What instructor does not have such experiences as this? He has carefully taught the principle that a basic oxide if caused to react with an acid will produce a salt and water, and he constantly gets equations like the following from his students: 2NaCI
+ HlSOl + Mn01-
+ CI2 + HzO + MnO
NaaS04
The writer recently told one of his classes that they had acquired nothing in their preparatory school training in chemistry but the ability to memorize, and a t the end of the hour about 50 per cent of the class (including some of the very best students) informed him that that was the only thing anyone had made an effort to teach them. Here is an example of the teaching of arithmetic in the fifth grade of one of our cities. The problem is to divide 7.6532 by ,076. According to the method in vogue i t is done as follows: 1W.7 . 0 7 6 / r E
I n other words the scholars are taught to put the figures in a certain position as regards each other so that it will not be necessary to reason out as to where the decimal point should he placed. The greatest lack in our schools, however, is that there is no teaching of the joy of accomplishment. The writer can remember how he was taught to take delight in seeing a problem through to the end, and ever since, when he has succeeded in handling something difficult, i t has given him some of the greatest pleasure of his life. What joy has life to offer which is finer, or purer, than the joy of having done something worthwhile? And
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it can be taught. It has been taught many times in the past. I t can be taught to the growing child, slowly t o be sure, but certainly, until everything taken up is taken up with the determination to make i t yield that joy. No scheme which we can put into effect in our teaching in chemistry, or any other subject for that matter, will secure general interest on the part of the students except in so far as we are successful in teaching the joy of accomplishment. This is very difficult if it is postponed until the student enters college. Our young people should be taught to reason, they should be taught to work and, above all, they should be taught the joy of doing worthwhile things with all their strength.
