Science

Starting with orgo without fundamentally changing how orgo is taught too is a terrible idea

On my first day of orgo 1 in undergrad my professor said "Everyone raise your hand. Put your hand down if you're not a chemistry major." all but 10-15 people put their hands down "Now put your hand down if you don't plan to go to grad school specifically for organic chemistry" all but 2 people put their hands down "If you are not one of those two people who still have their hands up, you will never use a single thing you use in this class."

And he was 100% right and yet still made that class harder than it needed to be. This is deliberate of course, organic chemistry isn't used as an academic class where skills and knowledge are taught, but a barrier to prevent too many people from going to med school.

was it who had a guest describing how the AMA artificially keeps the number of doctors in America low (by high cost/competitive medical schools) in order to keep doctor wages extremely high? The quote that stuck with me, paraphrased, was "we could have as many doctors as we do teachers, if we wanted to"

Lol, "Chemistry classes scare kids away! Let start with organic chemistry instead!"

I like o-chem, as a chemistry nerd, and I do not think that's the place to start, by any stretch.

'oooh, salts are boring', okay, combine some sodium and chlorine in front of some children then, coward. I bet they'll love it.

Gen chem at uni in the US tends to be used as a formulaic weed-out course. They barely even care who teaches it. It's supposed to be difficult and is more about reading the book than learning anything in class or lab, though you are forced to attend both in order to do well. The courses are usually curved to ensure that it's virtually impossible for everyone to pass, or even a majority of people to get more than a 3.0 (on a 4-point scale).

I think gen chem is actually intentionally made difficult to understand from the course itself. I did well in it because I'm good at learning from books but it's a bullshit class.

From Jeff Schmidt - Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look At Salaried Professionals And The Soul Battering System That Shapes Their Lives

Chapter 12: NEUTRAL VOICES

[Description of a 3-card-monte scam]

For the operator of the game, getting the mark to go peacefully is a necessity, not an option, and so cooling out is not something that happens “after” the game. Cooling out is an integral part of the game.

The U.S. socioeconomic system, like the hustler, makes false promises, the principal one being that social mobility is available to all who work hard. By its very nature, a hierarchical system cannot possibly keep such a promise. The number of positions at successively higher levels decreases very quickly and is always less than the number of hardworking people who want the positions. This structure sets many ambitious workers on a collision course with the reality of limited opportunity. When they are finally hit with the tragic disappointment, they may become angry or resentful, and so the hierarchical system must engage in widespread cooling out. It does this not only to protect its agents who stand at the gate and do the dirty work of exclusion, but also to make sure that those who have been disappointed do not become opponents of the hierarchical system itself and enemies of its power elite. It is vital to the system that the losers serve the hierarchy respectfully, and not sabotage it, when they find themselves with jobs that have lower social status than the society of “unlimited opportunity” had led them to expect. Cooling out is therefore an integral part of the socioeconomic system.

As the avenues for getting ahead in this country have narrowed, the route of formal education has become dominant, so that today the pursuit of opportunity in the United States is to a large extent institutionalized in the colleges. As a result, the colleges have become one of the pyramidal system’s main tools for cooling out people’s “unrealistic” career ambitions. They do it on a massive scale, yet by necessity conceal the fact that that is what they are doing.

[Pre-College description (SAT, etc)]

[Context:] Each year, only about 5% of those enrolled in two-year colleges transfer to bachelors granting institutions, an astoundingly small fraction.

Clark analyzed the process by which junior colleges change transfer students into terminal students. He considers as an example a student who wants to be an engineer but who is destined not to be one. What might be the sequence of experiences that cools him out? At many junior colleges these experiences start even before classes do, in the form of testing and counseling. Thus, after an enrollment examination in English and mathematics, our would-be engineer may find himself in remedial classes, which delay his eventual transfer to a four-year college and, more importantly, shake his self-image as a future engineer. At a required advising session, a counselor looks over his “counseling folder,” which contains transcripts from other schools, test scores, recommendations from teachers and so on. Although his file is thin, the counselor observes that high school grades and test scores such as these usually suggest a less ambitious program —’’but of course you are free to go ahead and try the pre-engineering program if you want—just remember that we have a lot of really good vocational programs here, too.”

The student will face this folder again and again as the months go by and as grades and “need for improvement” notices from instructors accumulate. The file of impersonal, objective-looking data shadows him and, when it grows sufficiently strong, will stalk him. The counselors, skilled in handling the “overambitious” student, use the growing file to justify becoming more persistent with their advice. Advice given at previous counseling sessions is in the student’s folder and is now cited impersonally as part of the accumulating “evidence.” The counselors edge the student toward a vocational program, but they never countermand his choices, for the whole point of the protracted exercise is to avoid a personal, hard “No,” and to have the student make the “correct” choice on his own.

Finally, the student is put on academic probation for receiving below average grades and must now submit to more than the usual amount of counseling. Students are allowed to stay on probation for a number of semesters or indefinitelv, depending on the school, so probation does not force many students out of junior college. Rather, it is designed to get the student to think about himself and admit to his thinking the possibility of reclassifying himself as a terminal student. Reclassification would allow him to receive the college’s two-year degree, Associate in Arts, by putting him in classes in which he would get grades high enough to bring his average up to the required level.

He relents, at last, and reclassifies himself, marking a big change in his life. The college expedites changes of this sort by making them appear as small as possible: Our student will be an “engineering aide” instead of an “engineer.” There is a world of difference, of course, but on the surface things appear pretty much the same: He continues as a student (at least for the time being) and tells family and friends that he has decided to “start out” as an engineering aide.

[Pivot to University education.]

Many students who do get bachelor’s degrees want to work toward a professional credential, such as a law degree, medical degree or PhD. As we have seen, the criteria that determine who is permitted to do this include attitude, and in particular favor individuals who have the kind of uncritical attitude, or narrow focus, that makes them easy to direct. But it is not enough for the qualification system to give the best positions to those who will do the best job from the point of view of employers. It must also cool out the high educational and career expectations of those who are excluded, including those who would do the best job from other points of view, such as that of clients and the public. Professional qualifying examinations help to do both: Not only do they help identify those who would serve employers best, but they also help cool out the “failures.”

The [standardized pre-professional qualifying] test’s nonpartisan look transforms it from a tool of the institution into an independent third party, allowing the institution to maintain a purely positive image: The institution is set up to produce successes: it is the test that forces denial. (“Modern personnel record-keeping, in general, has the function of documenting [for] denial,” notes Clark. 1 ") When faculty members judge a student negatively and crush the student’s hopes of becoming a professional in the field, they use the test to distance themselves emotionally from what they are doing and to avoid feeling personally responsible for their decision. Yes, the faculty members write the test, administer it, score it and report the results, but in doing each of these things, they see themselves as clerical workers, not as judges. It is the nonpartisan third party that judges the student. Faculty members are generally sympathetic, but detached, as the neutral third party snuffs out the student’s aspirations in a clean, mechanical, businesslike way.

Qualification systems almost always allow for repeated attempts at success — and repeated occasion for failure. The student has the right to retake the qualifying examination even when the faculty doesn’t encourage the student to do so. This right to try again is always presented in terms of the opportunity it provides, not in terms of its main purpose, which is to let down the hopes of the unwanted slowly, rather than in one abrupt, alienating, and potentially explosive step. When students are failed for the first time, they begin to admit thoughts of revising their goals. By the time the exam comes around again, they are more prepared to accept its judgment of their ability to learn the tricks of the trade. The faculty is more persuasive this time, now that it is backed up by another piece of “objective evidence.” The facts get increasingly hard for the student to explain away.

“Maybe the faculty is right and I’m just making excuses.”

Sorry to make such a long post lol. I tried to summarize where I can.

I went to college twice, once for a liberal arts degree, then I went back a few laters to study chemistry. I did it specifically to get work and I don't have any interest in the subject. It was very tedious and no one seemed to want to be there, including the professors.

Is this a failing on my part or the way education was presented to me? I think about that a lot and I'm not sure.

It's so cathartic to see someone actually give a shit about how students process information.

all this stuff about working memory and anchoring to the familiar is great

The discussion of how American attitudes towards the material affect student outcomes is fascinating. There’s also a stark class element to this where schools, just like most places which employ large numbers of people, have implicit class-based filters in their hiring processes. With schools in particular, there’s an additional force of some teachers desiring to teach in schools they graduated from. So the class character of instruction is reified over time.

Lower income school districts have a tendency to focus on rote memorization and obedience. Higher income districts have more focus on interpersonal and free form problem solving. Things where individual initiative is key. Then there are lots of middle income schools where the expectation is essentially that people get a Bachelor’s and work as a low-to-mid level employee in more “specialized” (class-speak for “respectable”) fields.

YES YES YES YES YES this really supports the idea I've had that the only people who filter through high school chemistry (enjoy it and learn something) are those who already have exposure. The material is too much for someone who doesn't have exposure. The only people that end up suceding are the kids that watched NOVA and various other science programs as a kid and don't have to learn everything right then.

another of his articles; Why is science difficult to learn? Things are seldom what they seem : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2729.1991.tb00230.x

This is kinda similar in explanation to my understanding of the polytechnic education. Where instead of learning things in a vacuum you learn things as they apply to things you may do. So for instance to learn about volume, perhaps you build a box out of wood. It's tangible and it teaches you multiple skills at the same time and relates them to each other. Volume is easy to understand when you cut wood and use nails to create a box from it and then fill that box. It is harder to understand when you are shown an equation without context. Plus now you have also learned how to cut wood and build a box.

I think this sort of more hands on relational approach to education makes more sense. Relate new concepts to concepts you already understand and then build on them. It is only when you get very deep into math and science that things become truly theoretical and by then if you have the base concepts built up they should be easier to conceptualize.

Can confirm that my intro chemistry course was far more difficult than geology, physics, biology, etc. It felt intentionally difficult.

100% agree. My gen chem prof was a fascist

Everyone here is focused on the specific recommendation of organic as the starting point, but I think the broader point is more important: gen chem is nothing at all like any classes later on in the subject, and that is a problem. Personally I think a simplified form of basic organic chem as a starting point is a pretty good idea, but whether or not you agree on that specific point, I hope we can generally agree that gen chem is a horrible way to introduce students to the subject, and is pushing away a ton of people who might have an aptitude for it.

Chemistry was one of my favorite classes/subjects, in both high school and college.

There's the complaint of "oooooo math is so boring because there's nothing to apply it to!" Well chemistry gives you a very good application.

"We need to anchor around what people are already familiar with" is an insult to people's intelligence and curiosity. Sure, the school environment doesn't really promote it, but there are plenty of people who take a clear interest in objective systems of composition. Not to mention how if scientists had insisted on originally learning chemistry with organic chemistry as a starting point, we never would have gotten anywhere because the results would be too complicated and muddled to make any rigorous conclusions. Sure, the classes don't focus as much as they should on the etiology of chemistry and how we got to the concepts of valence and AMU, but you can't build a foundation when you don't understand what's beneath it. You have to grow your understanding from the bottom up rather than the top down, otherwise you are inviting superstition into your understanding. Dalton and Priestley and all those other fops started out from the elemental level, and there's a good reason for that.

You want something more captivating? Here you fucking go:

2 Na(s) + 2 H~2~O(l) -> 2 NaOH(aq) + H~2~(g)

If I wasn't already thoroughly interested at age 12, that shit sealed the deal.

It has been my sad experience to have graduate students who confessed their inability to do mole calculations. The very word “mole” left them uncomfortable.

Skill issue, I had no problem with that stuff in high school. It's literally a fixed coefficient, maybe the least conceptually scary thing out there.

"chemistry needs to be a glorified home-economics class" get outta here

NYC math teacher

physics teacher i think. another banger bmf

Spoiler Alert: Walter White wrote this post.

Years in the education system showed me that North America is a lot more medieval than we realize. There's not a single excuse or explanation for a society to have teaching skills this pathetic and still call itself functional.

I've met people with literal 18th-century superstitions polluting their brains. Ones who can list a million word-sounds picked up from a lecture without ever grasping the basic concept of cause and effect. Look at how theatrically people play with their philosophies and politics, purely based on the theme or stylized vocabulary it suits. Look at everyone who's come to see 'nihilism' as a viable feature of their ideology because they've long given up on measuring progress by productivity. Look at the brains of the entire British nation. Hell, look at the ratio of poor-schooling-to-lifelong-derangement and how it lines up with the number of separate Trotskyist parties in your country. Life in the consumerist West runs on storybook logic because we're all effectively dumb as rocks. And now we know exactly whose fault it is.

Why would you start with o-chem? Almost everyone I know hates it and is failing it (you need to remember a lot of rules and 20 exceptions that each rule has). I got lucky because I had a very good teacher.

Starting chemistry education with O-chem is a very bad idea. O-chem is almost universaly loathed among students as a "weed-out" class (in the US at least). You would need to revamp how O-chem is taught before bringing it to a high school level.

Amber.