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As part of the celebration of the
Journal 's 75th year, we are scanning each
Journal issue from 25, 50, and 74 years ago. Many of the ideas and practices described are so
similar to present-day "innovations" that George Santayana's
adage (1) "Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it" comes to mind. But perhaps "condemned"
is too strong - sometimes it may be valuable to repeat
something that was done long ago. One example comes from
the earliest days of the Division of Chemical Education and
of the Journal.
As Neil Gordon described it two decades later
(2),
The second meeting of the Division [of Chemical
Education] was at Pittsburgh; at this meeting we had
Dr. Holmes present a paper giving the topics which he
covered in his college course. Following this, Dr.
Mattern of Washington, D. C., read a second paper, in which
he gave the content of his high-school course in
chemistry. The result was that each of them covered practically
the same ground. This led to a heated discussion which
resulted in the formation of a national committee on
the correlation of high-school and college chemistry.
The committee was formed in 1922. It consisted of
three high-school teachers, three college teachers, and three
chemists associated with industry. The draft outlines it
prepared were circulated throughout the country, comments and
criticisms were collected, and a final report was presented at
an ACS national meeting. At that same meeting Gordon
recommended formation of this Journal, and its May 1924
issue (3) gives outlines for both a high-school and a
college course.
An important characteristic of the high-school
outline was that each teacher was allowed time to introduce his
or her own topics and ideas, tailoring them to local
circumstances. Thus in a school whose students came mainly
from an agricultural environment, there would be time to
introduce agricultural chemistry, which would be likely to
interest those students and be of practical use to them. There
was a set of core topics that was considered of sufficient
general importance to be included in every high-school course.
Teachers of a college course could assume that students had
mastered that material and plan their courses accordingly.
About a year ago I alluded to the similarity of
today's high-school and college courses. I recommended more
interaction among high-school and college teachers as a
means of deciding what content is appropriate for each course
(4). The ground rules of the 1924 curriculum discussions
provide excellent guidance for such an endeavor. Both
high-school and college teachers participated in revising both
curricula. Both courses were designed with flexibility so that
they could be adjusted to fit the needs and interests of
students and of teachers. And all teachers supported and
maintained the division of content between the two courses - at least for a while.
This month's column "The More Things Change..."
is a good starting point for those who would explore the
issues of content and coordination of high-school and
college courses. Another useful source of information is the
curriculum adopted at Brown University in the 1950s, which
began with organic chemistry. The Brown curriculum is
described in a first-year college textbook by Leallyn Clapp
(5). In his foreword to the student, Clapp lists these topics that
a student should already know: metric system; chemical
equations and their use in weight and volume problems; types
of reactions; simple inorganic nomenclature; the periodic
system; chemical symbols; gas laws; elementary chemistry of
O, N, Cl, H, S, H2O, Na, K, Ca, and Al; Dalton's atomic
theory; Le Châtelier's principle; calculation of percentage
composition from a formula. Clapp also listed 32 terms that he
would use without definition. Students who could not handle
terms and topics with facility were encouraged to review them,
but they were not repeated in the college course.
Curriculum reform at the college level is in full
swing, and a variety of approaches are being suggested, tried out,
and adopted. It seems an opportune time to repeat the study
carried out in the early 20s and to make recommendations
for the high-school and first-year college courses of the next
century. Perhaps the Division of Chemical Education could
again provide leadership in such an undertaking. An extremely
productive collaboration might well ensue among
high-school teachers, college teachers, and chemists in industry.
Literature Cited
1. Santayana, G. The Life of Reason, "Reason in Common Sense," Charles Scribner's Sons: New York, 1905; Chapter 12.
2. Gordon, N. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1943, 20, 369-372, 405.
3. Gordon, N. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 87-99.
4. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 253.
5. Clapp, L. B. Chemistry of the Covalent Bond; Freeman: San Francisco, 1957.
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