110 JOURNAL

OP C ~ M I C EDUCATION
AL FSBRUARY,
1925

TEACHING ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

EDWARD HART, LAFAmTTE COLLEGE, EASTON, PA.
It is true, is it not, that the teacher who is unable to put himself in the
position of the pupil is unfit to teach ? If this be true, and I think it is, I
shudder to think how many teachers of other things beside chemistry
are unfit. It follows from a very superficial consideration of teaching,
I think, that the view point of the beginner is all important.
Dr. James W. Moore once said to me: "When I studied chemistry the
professor began somewhat as follows: 'We will begin by studying oxygen.
This is a colorless, tasteless gas (and I did not know what a gas was).
This gas is prepared by heating a mixture of potassium chlorate and
manganese dioxide (and I had never heard of either) in a tubulated retort
(and what is that?), collecting the gas in a bell jar (and what is that?)
in a pneumatic trough (another unknown) over water. The retort is
heated with a Bunsen burner as you see ( I saw but did not understand)
supported on a tripod (Ha! I had studied Greek-that meant three feet).'
Do you," he asked, "teach chemistry like that?" and I found, to my
dismay, that I did teach it very much like that. Fortunately this hap-
pened very early in my career as a teacher.
In the early days of organic chemistry teaching we proceeded by a
method equally questionable. I was for a long time unable to see why
students hated organic and seemed unable to assimilate it. After years
of growing dissatisfaction with the result I concluded to undertake what
I should have done long before, look a t the matter through the eye of the
student.
We began then with CHa spread out on the blackboard, like a flounder,
with only two dimensions, length and breadth. Out of this we built up
CaHe. Both of these concepts were an insoluble puzzle to the student.
He lost interest a t once and the game was lost.
I figured that I must give the boy something to do first, and arouse
his curiosity. The destructive distillation of wood was something most
boys had heard about. I told them more about it and we distilled wood
in a simple cast-iron apparatus and collected all the products, gaseous and
liquid and also examined the charcoal. We analyzed the gas in a simple
f o m of Hempel apparatus and fractionally distilled the liquid after having
first neutralized the acid with chalk or lime. The acetate of lime was then
examined and, with some more acetate taken from a barrel, converted
into acetic acid. Some acetate was heated and acetone prepared; from
this we made chloroform and iodoform. The methyl alcohol was sepa-
rated and methyl iodide prepared. This usually ended the half year's
work, of two periods a week. By this time the boys were very much
interested and extremely curious, for we had carefully avoided all explana-
tions. All inquiries were answered by the statement that full explana-
VOL. 2, No. 2 Y DEPICTEDIN ART
C ~ M I S T RAS 111

tions would be given next term. Next term we trotted out the flounder
with. an entirely different result: the boys were eager to learn. The
whole subject was pronounced hard but very interesting. Try this
plan and see whether you like it. But map out the course carefully
beforehand, see that the apparatus is simple and will work and let each
student make his own apparatus, so far as is possible. And try out
everything yourself first. If it fails in your hands be sure it will do so in his.