Letters

Measuring academic success

I applaud and commend Richard N. Zare for his guest editorial "Test Takers or Scientists?" (C&EN, Jan. 31, page 3). Zare has hit the nail right on the head.

The problem he articulated extends to undergraduate chemical education. The trend is to demand that students do more and more simulations and take more and more tests. In teaching and in research, many colleges buy expensive turnkey instruments on service contracts with "no user-serviceable parts" signs all over the access panels. If beginning undergraduate teaching laboratories are retained at all, the new paradigm is to buy them as unit items or prepackaged laboratory experiment modules.

Many students don't know how to do anything that involves real equipment, real chemicals, and real glassware. They don't know how to repair, modify, or adapt equipment to perform "outside of the box" experiments. Instruments are black boxes to them. They can't machine parts on the lathe or mill. They even struggle with pliers and screwdrivers. They don't know how to blow glass or even bend a piece of glass tubing. They can't saw, cut, solder, weld, or braze. They don't know how to make and purify chemicals from scratch. They can't do a chemical analysis; they have to send it out. They can't creatively modify experimental procedures or substitute apparatus or chemicals. They have no idea that an old analog instrument can be interfaced to a new computer to make something much better than what is available commercially, and at only a fraction of the cost.

In a doubly cruel twist, legitimate concerns about liability and safety get mistranslated into ridiculous restrictions that induce mind-numbing boredom while making the lab more dangerous and more litigation-prone because nobody understands what's going on. In short, they've been cheated out of the joy of chemistry and put at risk, and they don't know it.

These students can pass test after test with flying colors, and they can carry out the most amazing computer simulations. But the fact remains that they've been systematically deprived of the deep satisfaction and the wonderful learning experiences associated with creatively adapting and stretching limited resources to meet real hands-on educational and research challenges in chemistry.

It doesn't have to be this way, however. At Concordia University, as one modest example of many that could be cited, we proudly and most deliberately forgo the newest stuff, and we avoid expensive service contracts we can't afford in order to recondition, repair, and modify old instruments for our undergraduate teaching laboratories and for undergraduate research. We substitute chemicals and we write many of our own teaching lab experiments. We pick up and recondition older used scientific equipment that we find on eBay or in surplus giveaways. We want our students to deeply understand what they are doing and to have creative, hands-on experience with real chemistry before they graduate.

In a curious way, our small classes, limited resources, and modest budgets are a great blessing. They demand us to be resourceful and to involve our students directly in a hands-on partnership in building and maintaining our educational and research capabilities. And this makes all the difference.

John W. Kenney III
Irvine, Calif.

I disagree with several of Zare's statements. The first is the title. Scientists are often also good test takers, so the two are not mutually exclusive. Zare commented that by the end of high school, "students lose much creativity, especially the ability to experiment." At high school graduation, students are usually only beginning a career in science and are not already proficient. Most laboratory skills are learned in college, graduate school, and throughout one's life--not just in high school.

Creativity is something that is difficult to teach. It is either an inherent talent that unfolds or it is "caught" by observing others or being led to the excitement of discovery by professors or peers. Zare has seen "too many students who have superb book learning yet are disasters in the lab." These students should be taught lab skills, and if they are unable to learn, then they belong in some other place than the laboratory.

It is ironic that many students obtain the spark of creativity by carrying out undergraduate research in non-Ph.D. granting universities, where teaching is done by professors and not by foreign graduate students who have difficulty with the English language, as often occurs in first-rank universities. Perhaps more of the country's limited resources for research should be devoted to undergraduate research programs, where lab skills are learned and creativity is fostered. For more than 20 years I taught at non-Ph.D.-granting (in chemistry) Eastern Michigan University, from which many chemistry students have graduated and subsequently obtained Ph.D.s from top-ranked universities.

Giles F. Carter
Clemson, S.C.

I read Zare's guest editorial with keen and concerned interest. His words of warning to education policymakers and to the educators of our future chemists and other scientists should be considered with the weight they deserve. As a chemist with 15 years' post-Ph.D. experience, 10 of which have been split between the R&D labs of DuPont and General Electric, I have had ample firsthand contact with employees who had "superb book learning" (and highly developed political savvy) but were "disasters in the lab."

The overuse of test scores to rank prospective scientists should not be surprising in a nation where seemingly only the very highest scores on SATs and other such presumed indicators of ability will reduce the unethical financial burden with which the vast majority of U.S. undergraduates are faced. Unfortunately, not only does such a system lend itself to corruption but, as Zare states, creativity is lost when students spend far too much time and energy on stressful preparation for standardized tests.

Albert Einstein more than anyone showed us that creativity, or imagination, is far more important than knowledge if one is to significantly advance human understanding through discovery. A casual read of the biographies of Nobel Laureates in physics or chemistry will reveal that Einstein was not alone in his penchant for independent thinking versus the monotonous memorization of others' achievements.

Any good prospective scientist, of course, first needs to learn a vast array of background material before being equipped to make significant original contributions, but the main goal of this learning should never be the attainment of top test scores, but rather the obtainment of enough understanding of fundamental concepts to foster creative discoveries.

I fear that a minority of professional scientists are predominantly motivated by creativity today; most seem to be driven more by profiteering, whether directly or indirectly. The runaway infiltration of academic institutions by big business is a large part of the reason why standardized testing has taken on such a hyperprominent role in the ranking of our science students. Misleading statistics drive the world of economics, and sadly, they now appear to dictate the future of science in this country. It is up to policymakers to consider and act upon what to me seems an obvious irony: that the current trend of putting a hard number on every science student who leaves our high schools and undergraduate programs, at the expense of other relatively qualitative but often more critical factors, will only harm us economically in the increasingly competitive global market of the future. Significant changes should be initiated now.

Walter V. Cicha
Schenectady, N.Y.

Zare brings up some interesting points on standardized testing. Zare writes of the merits of standardized testing but indicates that "students become ever better test takers" and that "students lose much creativity" as a result of the "overhyping" of standardized tests.

In my experience, creativity is mostly an innate characteristic present within gifted students and cannot be removed by standardized testing. The few existing brilliant individuals are born with their special gifts, and a good teacher will make those individuals aware of these gifts and encourage their beneficial use. I don't believe that brilliant scientists can be created from a general population not possessing special gifts simply by minimizing the emphasis on standardized tests. Indeed, the great majority lacking creativity in an area such as science must first get a thorough understanding of orthodox scientific principles that are emphasized on things like properly designed standardized exams. Only when mastery of the basic concepts has been accomplished does a nongifted student have the potential to go on and become a brilliant scientist. Basically, you can't develop the talent to think "out of the box" if you don't understand what the box is in the first place.

Robert DeLevie wrote a letter to C&EN titled "Grade inflation and scientific literacy" (C&EN, Dec. 13, 2004, page 3). I agree that the issues of grade inflation and scientific literacy are real, as pointed out in his letter. Students will indeed shun courses in the more challenging science areas, as they always have.

I don't believe we can encourage students to take on science and technology simply by devaluation of grades to match what has occurred in other disciplines. We should not have to get into a dishonorable bidding war for students who don't have the interest in or dedication for science. A better approach might be to include basic science literacy courses as part of the required core curriculum at all colleges instead of making them electives.

Victor L. Garza
San Antonio