Why Students Hate Chemistry
The producer of two leading TV series for children opened his talk at the recent ACS Conference on Chemistry for the General Student [See C&E News, Oct. 23,1978, p. 191 with the statement, "As a student, I hated chemistry."He went on to me11 out reasons. such as the teacher's authoritarian and intr'overted st& and his reducing all chemistryto a series of formulas and equations written on the blackboard as illegibly as they were incomprehensible. "The teacher," he said, "apoeared to dislike chemistry as much as he disliked the students." Another speaker at the conference cited national statistics on students electing science courses: after the ninth grade, virtually all women and members of most other minority proups actively avoid courses in science. A number of teachers present reminded us-as if any chemistry teacher needed reminding-that sizeable segments of those who enroll in beginning chemistry courses d o i o with some trepidation, looking upon them more as burdens to be endured than as exneriences to be valued. Refore attempting to look for causes of this rather widesnread disaffection. and lest we lose . oeri~ective on the entire . matter, i t is a fact that today, no less than in the past, beginnina chemistry courses are given very high marks by substantial portibns of students, and beginning chemistry teachers are placed among the most influential and respected by impressive numbers of graduates representing all areas of activity and all shades of success in our society. Although this is comforting, it does little to mitigate our troubles. Perhaps we can begin to understand student disaffection with science in general and with chemistry in particular if we examine briefly the questions: What motivates students to want to learn? What are the barriers to their wanting to learn chemistry? What intellectual talents enable students to learn advanced level concepts? What are the barriers that prevent students for learningchemistry? Although definitive answers to questions such as these are at present beyond the knowledie and understanding of even the most advanced thinkers in educational psychology. it is possible to gain some insight into the areas addressed bv them. ISee. for examnle: W. .I. McKeachie, "Teaching ~ i ~A i~uidebook : for the ~eginning College Teacher, 7th Ed." D. C. Heath Co., 1978, particularly Chapters 23 and 24.1 As all instructors know, students will learn what they want to learn, and if they really wanted to learn chemistry we couldn't keeo them out of our classes and laboratories. If students felt;forexample, that learning chemistry would g k e them enouch additional understanding of and control uver forces thataffect their lives, if the) beiieved it would make their livt!smoreexciting and fulfilling, ifthey thought it would, without fail., develon their talents and ab~lities.orif thev were reasonably certain it w&d result in not only good grades hut a feeling of accomplishment, they would learn it--and most would enjoy doing so. Unfortunatelv, for large numbers of voune ~eoole.the rewards in learniii it are perceived as simply & worth the effort. For manv. chemistrv is seen as a difficult, remote subiect, one that reqiires speciai intellectual talents to learn and-one that neither they nor the vast maiority of the public needs to comprehend in drder to live a happy &d prod&ve life. They often are reinforced in this belief by guidance counselors and teachers in nonscience disciplines. Even many of those plan~
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ning careers in professions requiring chemistry doubt that the effort they exert to learn it will pay off. Why is learning chemistry~viewedso negatively? The processes humans use in learning, memory, problem solving and decision making are subjects of study in cognitive psychology. Many cognitians now think of memory as consisting of a t least two types of storage-as image store that enables learners to recognize a face or familiar piece of music, and a semantic store that enables us to reconstruct the meaning of something we have read or heard. Semantic learnina is something like the building up of files, maps or networis. As we learn, we add more details to the maps and more connections between points on the map. We may even construct alternative maps that are more compact andweful for certain purposes, such as obtaining a general overview of an area of learning. In this context, learning and memory are influenced by what ~reviouslvhas been stored in the mind. In effect. we store memories in termsof their potential uses, LC., in terms of the m~.anine:thev have in lieht of uhat wealreadv know. What we store isnot what we hear, read or observe aca particular moment, but rather what these stimuli say to us in light of ores,iousexperience. Information is processed and meanings arc stored without consriuusly thinking ahout thr operations until something does not fit with previous experience. Students in chemistry classes differ not only in how they fit what is taueht into their existine structures. hut also in how readily they ievelop new structures. The task of the teacher differs, of course, depending upon which kind of learning is involved. In beginning chemistry classes, major fractions of students enter with little or no previous experience in dealing with scientific concepts. As a result, courses and materials that assume the existence of mental structures for handlina- these concepts may never reach such students. That traditional introductory science courses may not be reaching even those students h k i n g n:quisice mental structures for handling scientific conrepti can be inferred from a recent studv In.I{enner and Grant 17'he Science Teacher. 45. [7] 30 (1978)]..~hisstudy was d e ~ i ' ~ n etod determine if i l t h and 12th grade students who take physics and those who do not are both intellectually capable of understanding physics as presented in high school physics textbooks. These workers found that, "since all the major concepts found in the physics texts examined are formal i ~ nthe Piagetian sensel. understanding them presents some pruhlem;o the entit; physics population lin\,ol\,cd in the stud\]-which exhibits formal thought 74.1 percent of the time. And lorstudentz whodo nut elect M, take physics--the 'potential physics'mmp, which uses t the time-the concents are formal thoueht 42.7 ~ e r c e uof largely incomprehensible." If this is the situation in physics, can that in chemistry be much different? If the preceding analyses are correct, students contemplating enrolling in beginning chemistry courses may he discouraged from doing so for valid motivational and cognitive reasons. And many students who do enroll mav find that thev must make hercujean efforts, largely on thei; own, to creatk new mental structures t o deal with concepts before thev can benefit fully from the instruction being offered. Is this the way we want i t to he? WTL ~
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Volume 56, Number 1, January 1979 1 1
