Abstract
“THE Teaching of Chemistry” was the subject chosen by Prof. Arthur Smithells, director of the Salters' Institute of Industrial Chemistry, for his Harrison Memorial Lecture to the Pharmaceutical Society on November 12. The chief difficulty of the university professor of chemistry lies in dealing with a subject in which the advance has been of unparalleled rapidity and, most recently, in changes on the theoretical side which have not only led to the acquisition of tracts of new knowledge, but also have affected science at its very base. Prof. Smithells believes that these advances have placed a great burden on the student, and especially on his memory. The reduction and emendation of the curriculum would result in a gain far exceeding in importance any possible loss in its range. Passing to the teaching of chemistry to those whose dominant interest is its application to some particular calling, reference was made to students of medicine as an example. Prof. Smithells himself had placed such students in a course apart, where he had striven, without any intellectual sacrifice, to invest the teaching throughout with facts and illustrations connected with the medical calling. The teaching of chemistry in schools, after a period of rapid growth, became a mere small-scale replica in contents and form of the early chemical course of a university. This teaching led to the revolt, headed by Prof. H. E. Armstrong, who from then to the present day has stood as the great campaigner against all that has seemed unsound in chemical education, wherever it has appeared, but, above all, in its earlier stages. The influence exerted inevitably by the university teacher has been far beyond what is warranted. Relief of the crowded curriculum has been sought by relegating to the schools so much higher work in science that there is a real danger existing of just that kind of over-balance of one kind of subject, as was the case with classics when science first sought admission to the curriculum.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chemistry in the Universities and Schools. Nature 136, 788 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136788b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136788b0