Priorities in the high school curriculum (the author replies)

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PrlorHles In the Hlgh School Curriculum To the Editoc

To the Editor

The article by John Liebermann, Jr. [1985,62,321] raises some issues I'd like to see addressed in this Journal. If high school students take three years of chemistry with the last course being essentially a double course, what other courses are they taking? How can a high school student, even a very brieht one. receive an excellent eeneral education or even a broad science education and take three years of chemistry? Whendo thestudents in Liebermann's third-vear chemistn course take calculus; solid courses in ~nglish-andmer rick literature, not to mention grammar and composition; music. art, drama; US. history. world history, economics, political science, psychology; enough semeetws of the same non-English language to develop both reading and speaking competence; computer programming; physics, biology, geology, and astronomy? Surely we can teach a lot of chemical facts and concepts t o bright, highly motivated students (15to 20of 24OO), but does this serve their best educational interests? What ever happened to the ideal of a liberal education for all college-bound students, or the ideal of a general education for all high school eraduates? A rerated issue is that of college level chemistry courses taught a t the hieh school level, including advanced placement courses as well as ~iebermann'sth&d-year chemistry course. Is it really the high school teacher's job to relieve the college teacher of the responsibility for teaching freshman (and now sophomore) chemistry? Or should high school chemistry (and all high school science) be something different? The resources involved in the course Liebermann describes also bother me. As a chemist, I know the costs of the instruments he describes. Since he makes no comments about coordinating with an area university, I assume that his school has purchased IR, HPLC, NMR, and mass spectrometers. Given the incredible amount of money required to run a good lab-oriented science program for 2400 lower level students (freshmen, sophomores, general education students who will not volunteer for advanced science courses and for whom the required high school science course is the last formal science education), I must assume one of the following: (1) his school's financial situation is quite unusual, or (2) lab science for lower level students is sacrificed to support the few who are obviously heading off for science1 engineering majors. I don't intend this as an attack on Liebermann or his school's priorities. I would like to see him and others address these issues because I think manv of us. perhaps a maioritv, . .. tend to do the same thing-throw most of dur resources, both financial and human, to the self-selected science majors whiledoinga less thanadequatejvb withall those peoplethe surveys indicate arescientifically illiterate, all those people, including many future politicians, who will eventuafiy support or fail to support funding. In the best of all possible worlds, we will be able to fund excellent science education a t all levels. If Liebermann has discovered how to do that, I want to hear more about that than about teaching sophomore organic to high school students.

Mr. Lamb has pointed out some issues raised by my article. He doesn't think it is possible for students taking three vears of chemistrv to have time to receive an excellent eeneral education or even a broad science education. He concerned with the old problem of teachine colleee level courses at the high school level. He also seemsio feelthat too much time and too manv resources have been allocated for a small number of students a t the expense, perhaps, of the majority of students taking science at our school. Each of these concerns will be addressed in turn. The first concern can he partially lessened when you consider that the course descrihed is not reallv a double course. Studentsvoluntarily give up part of their l k c h periodonlab davs to have a little more time for some meanineful laboratory kxperience. They would not be enrolled in another course during this block of time. They would probably be going off campus to a fast food establishment with some of their less conscientious friends. As far as receiving a general education, a survey of the courses previously taken and being taken by these students reveals that most of them will leave high school with just that. Most of them are doubling up or have doubled up on their science courses so that they will have taken a little of everything. (At our school, we also offer three levels of bioloev through Advanced Placement. three levels of phvsics &ough Advanced ~lacement-dalculus Based, ~ % o n o mv, and Oceauoaraphv.) - . . . All of this vear's students will have finished at least four years of onelanguage and a few are taking more than one (including Russian). Several are involved in band and orchestra, dhile others are involved in the various Drama Department Productions. One young lady has already been picked as a sure bet for the 1988 US. Olympic swim team. So you see that what you have here is a erouu of students with a hieh interest in chemistrv that make the most of a s c h o o l d a g ~ h amount e of time wasted in a typical school day is truly incredible, but our third-year chemistry course illustrates that our better students (and even some aveiage students) will make the best use of their time when given an alternative. Another point needs to be made: Most students pick one particular area where they spend a disproportionate-amount of their time. For some, it is drama, and for others it is computers. I have provided, with my chemistry program, yet another identity for a . group - of students, another place to "hangout". Our third-year course is not an attempt to teach sophomore oreauic. but an attemnt to orenare notential oreanic studentsbett'er. I t is even more of an attempt to make p; for the lack of adequate laboratory time during the Advanced Placement Class. At our school we have only one 50-min period a day for A.P. Chemistry. While our third-year course does not completely remedy this situation, it does provide the students who are most likely to go on in chemistry with more basic skills than the average high school student. Ironically, we were trying to address one of Mr. Lamb's most important concerns when we acquired most of our major instrumentation (IR, NMR, AA, mass spectroscopy). In an attempt to offer chemistry at all levels and in the name of Vocational Education, we attempted to implement the American Chemical Societv's two-vear Chemical Technology Program. This is a program designed primarily to train chemical technicians at junior colleges. Our school system

Wllllam G. Lamb Oregon Ep scopa Scnool 6300 SW hicol Rd.

Ponland.OR 97223

382

Journal of Chemical Education

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was in the process of redesigning its vocational education offerings, and we were trying to provide another alternative to those students not wishing to spend four years in college, but who had some interest in science. Unfortunately, we had difficulty getting the students the program was aimed a t interested and those that started did not finish. The orogram was abandoned after a four-year attempt. I t did, however. leave us with most of the instrumentation described in the article. The cost of the instrumentation is not nearlv as great as one would imagine judging by what is available &day. At the time we were acauiring instrumentation, Varian was manufacturing a s t u d k g r i d e NMR and mass spectrometer of which we ohtained demonstrator models a t greatly reduced cost. We also obtained some demos of other major instrumentation when possible. Most of the s~ecializedand extra elassware needed to run such a program was ohtained free-of-cost from local govemment laboratories. Contact oersons a t these facilities would alert us when something was being discarded that they thought we could use, and I would pick it up. Many of the chemicals needed have also been obtained in this fashion. In order to answer Mr. Lamb comoletelv, I must also mention something about my own backgn&d and priorities. 1 have a research doctorate in chemistry, and, therefore, my interest in providing more laboratory experience for my students is perhaps greater than that of a teacher without my research experience. I, like my students, believe in getting the most out of every school day. Therefore, I have voluntarily given up my lunch period and in most years my planning period to teach this third-year course. By doing this I was oersonallv addressing Mr. Lamb's concern about putting tob much $me and energy into the better science students. This schedule allows me to teach all three levels of chemistry (general, advanred plncement, and introductory oraanic). I must add that this hascreated a kind uf personal "f&m system" as many of these students stay with me for three years. The ultimate student-teacher experience for me, however, is when one of my students and I collaborate on a research project. Government laboratories and even some private concerns often provide assistance on these projects. I hope Mr. Lamb can appreciate an unusual situation and realize that I did not mean to holdup my third-year course as something that everyone should try to model.

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John Llebermann Thomas Jetterson Hlgh Schw lor Scenca and Technology 6560 Braddock Ra Alexandria. VA 22312

Orlgln of the Term "Quantum"

To the Editor:

In his article, "Old Wine in New Bottles: Quantum Theory in Historital Persoective" ( J . Chem. Educ. 1984, 61. 1078) Henry A. Bent trices the term "quantum" back to the ancient Indo-European word stem "kwo." This derivation prompts me to bring to your readers' attention a seemingly paradoxical situation involving the use of the term. was used hy Max Inasmuch as the word Planck to denote a uery small quantity of radiant energy (Verhandlungen der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft 1900,2,237; Ann. Physik 1901,4,553,564), I have long been ouzzled as to how the term came to be used in common parlance to denote a uery large quantity (as in "quantum lea^" or "ouantum . iumo"). . Since dictionaries give both antithetical definitions, I appealed to Michael ~ i r t n e rEditor , and Publisher of the Des Moines Register and Tribune and Editor of the syndicated feature, "A Word about Words."

Gartner was stumped, and in his column of Novemher 19, 1984, he replied: The short answer is: I don't know. The longer answer is: When quantum leap first left science and entered the language of the lavman, it meant a "sudden and dramatic change." To the nons e k i s t , a sudden and dramatic change must be a big changeonly scientists understand that drama can come in small packages-and that, in all likelihood, is how a quantum leap came to mean a big leap. Unsatisfied with this answer, I pursued the matter further and learned from the ultimate authority in such matters, the "Oxford English Dictionary" (1910, Vol. 7, p 2 0 , that the word "quantum" has been used in English since the early seventeenth century (1619) to denote "a sum or amount." The earliest example given in the OED is by Thomas Purchas: "To set the true quantum, the true poize and price vpon himselfe" ("Microcosmos," XXXII, 302). Planck apparently used this term merely to indicate an amount, which, in his theory, just happens to be very small, hut which, in nonscientific English, can he either large or small. George B. Kauffman California State University, Fresno Fresno. CA 93740

To the Editw:

Historians of scienre have discuised at some length the question: Who introdured the word "ouantum" into auanturn physics and precisely what concept did i t stand for? Kuhn, in aself-styled "historiographic heresy" (Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912, Oxford University: Oxford, 1978), argues that although Planck referred repeatedly to the quantum of electricity (the charge e) and to the quantum of matter (the atom), the idea of restricting resonators' energies in solids to a discrete set of values did not occur to him until Einstein and others forced it upon him during 1906 and the years following. Wellknown is Planck's initial, strenuous rejection of Einstein's quantization of radiation. (The word "photon" for radiation's "energy quantum" was coined by a chemist, G. N. Lewis, but for a different concept from that for which it is now used.) Kuhn credits Einstein for the first published statement of energy atomization, in 1906. Planck, in his derivation of his black-body radiation law in 1900, followed a procedure introduced bv Boltzmann in statistical mechanics. Planck merely divibed the total energy of his oscillators into an inteeral number of eaual finite elements. "If auantization is the subdivision of total energy into finite parts," writes Kuhn, "then Boltzmann is its author." The first person to use the phrase "quantum mechanics" was Born, in 1924. Althoueh a ouantum of enerev -.mav.seem verv small to us. it may seem very large for a molecule, and its genetic consequences may he significant to humans. Typically the OED does not trace uses of the word "quantum" to modern times. Its last reference is dated 1879. Therein lies a characteristic manifestation of C. P. Snow's "two cultures". Language from its inception bas beenatool for dealing with aauantum mechanical world. Chemistry and are its newest suburbs. About a century or so ago, however, humanists stopped following the evolution of that feature of our culture that most makes us human. From the perspective of history, humanists are language's antiquarians, scientists its latter-day humanists. Henry A. Bent North Carolina State University Raleigh. NC 27695

Volume 64

Number 4

Aprll 1987-

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