Published by Section of Chemical Education of The American Chemical Society Easton, Pa. Application made for entry at the Post-Office, Easton, Pa., as Second-class matter Vol. 1 JANUARY, 1924 No. 1 EDITORS' OUTLOOK The outlook for a National Journal of Chemical Education is largely determined by the circumstances which have given it birth, and by the manner in which it is expected to function. This Journal has been an outgrowth of the Section of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society. This Section, which was organized two years ago last fall at the New York Meeting of the Society, was the first definite step taken to form a National organization of chemistry teachers. The members of the Section now number 1000 and there are indications of a rapid increase. During the growth of the Section there has been an increasing number of important papers given at the semi-annual meetings. The Editors of our regular journals have been most considerate toward the publication of these papers, but the very nature of these Journals together with their crowded conditions has permitted the publication of only a limited number. Similar conditions have been met when the papers have been presented to other journals such as the Science, School Science and Mathematics, etc. This accumulation of papers, in the face of these limited publishing facilities, made the demand for a medium devoted exclusively to Chemical Education so insistant that the Journal has been started. However, it was not started until it had been learned by a letter ballot that a majority of the members of the Section favored such a project, and until all actions taken by the Section were approved by the Executive Committee of the Council of the Society. Its financial responsibility has been assured for the first year by, the prompt and cooperative action of the members of the Section; This unity of action is the greatest surety of its continued success. There are many functions for a Journal of Chemical Education, but perhaps the following four are the most important: 1. To act as a medium for bringing before chemistry teachers the timely papers given before the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society and other valuable papers of like nature and thereby conserve any worthwhile work done in Chemical Education. 2. To encourage community of effort in any instituted reforms, furnishing a medium through which significant reports, studies, and experiments will be given wide circulation. 3. To encourage sufficient research among the teachers so that the proper investigational atmosphere may prevail in our class rooms. 4. To keep the teacher and student in closer touch with current opportunity furnished by the American Chemical Society and other scientific organizations and institutions. In keeping with the above named functions, careful plans have been worked out to take care of papers offered for publication, in as prompt a manner as possible. Any author who wishes to have his paper published will send it to the nearest contributing editor whom he feels best qualified to judge it. The contributing editor will read the paper, approve or disapprove it and then forward it to the proper departmental editor. The departmental editor will review the paper, put his approval or non-approval on it and forward it to the editor-in-chief. If the paper has been approved by both the contributing editor and the departmental editor the editor-in-chief will notify the author that his paper has been accepted for publication. If both have voted against it, the editor-in-chief will give notification of its non-acceptance. If only one of the first two editors have approved it the editor-inchief must pass upon it before its acceptance or rejection. It is hoped that the chemistry teachers may glean from the above that this Journal is their property, and hence criticisms, both pro and con, are earnestly requested by editors in order that each succeeding issue may contain many improvements. N. E. G. EDWIN E. SLOSSON, DIRECTor of Science Service, WasHINTON, D. C. New ideas explode like T N T and shatter the confining walls. Science has produced so many new ideas in recent years that they have burst through the walls of school room and laboratory and escaped into the open. No professor can now maintain a monopoly of his own profession. He will often meet with men who know as much as he does about his science and yet have no title in front of their names nor degrees trailing after them. Day by day in every way it is getting harder and harder for the teacher to keep ahead of his students. More and more the students are learning science out of school. I fancy it would have taken many years for the new theories of electricity to have been incorporated into the common mind if the radio had not come along to help out the teacher. But now we have kids talking about electron streams and metric wave lengths as they skate along the streets. And they know what they are talking about as they can demonstrate by making radio receivers that work. I fancy more physics has been taught to the present generation by the automobile than by the professors. The automobile is autocratic in its methods. It has the habit of stopping suddenly in the middle of the highway or on a railroad crossing and giving the chauffeur a quiz on the chemistry of combustion or the laws of mechanics. And the chauffeur is not allowed to pass until he has given a practical demonstration of his knowledge. Seventy per cent of book learning will not suffice. This spread of science to the outside world is scary to the teacher who is secretly unsure of his own knowledge and therefore prefers to cling closely to his textbook. But the competent and confident teacher will welcome the new opportunities it offers for extending his influence outside his class. room and awakening more interest within. We are yearly losing many of our young people, and among them some of the most active and intelligent, because they fail to see the connection between school work and life work and so drop out at various stages to take up what they consider more practical affairs. Later in life they may repent of leaving and wish they had stayed longer in school but they cannot retrace their steps and take the other turn. Teachers in literature, history, geography, and political science have recently been able to counteract this tendency by bringing newspapers and periodicals into the class room and so showing that what they were teaching was not something dead and gone, but a vital part of the stream of thought and action in the world today. There is an abundance of material in the popular press that can be so employed to revivify and bring up to date the textbook teaching in these subjects. But the science teacher has not been so well supplied with such aids, for the newspapers and popular periodicals do not give as much attention |