Chemical Education Today

JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 3 March 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education 279

Editorial

Let’s Go for It!

The Autumn 2000 issue of the Phi Beta Kappa KeyReporter had been sitting around for a while, and a few weeksago I actually took time to glance at it. An article titled“Resolved: That Phi Beta Kappa Is Gloriously Useless” caughtmy eye. I am sure that its author, Leroy S. Rouner, Professorof Philosophy at Boston University, intended the title to bean irresistible lure, and I certainly was reeled in. Rouner arguesthat Americans embody a synergistic combination of practi-cality and idealism. When this synergism works well, practi-cality enables achievement of idealistic goals. But pragma-tism also leads to the view that ideas are valuable only whenthey help achieve practical goals. Corollary to that is a strongsuspicion of, for example, pure research—a pursuit that isnot motivated by an effort to achieve a practical goal.

A pragmatic philosophy is also suspicious of broad edu-cation and argues for specialized training instead. It leads stu-dents (or parents) to ask why a course or major that does notsupport a practical goal should be taken at all. What good isit, if it doesn’t satisfy an immediate need? Rouner argues thatusefulness is a poor criterion for selecting a course, a major,or a career. One reason is that it is difficult, if not impos-sible, to tell what will be useful. When I was an undergradu-ate, my first-year math course was an overview of mathemat-ics, not just calculus. I learned things of no immediate prac-tical value to my undergraduate major, such as set theory, sta-tistics, Boolean algebra, numerical methods, and number sys-tems with bases different from 10. Nevertheless they werefascinating. It was half a decade later, when my interest turnedto computers, that I discovered that many of these mathemati-cal ideas were useful as well as interesting. Another reason isthat education needs to prepare students to continually re-new and reinvent themselves—for self-motivated lifelonglearning. That is much less likely to happen if actions arebased solely on pragmatic criteria.

Uselessness becomes glorious when it frees us from thebonds of practicality, enabling decisions based on what welove to do, not what seems most likely to make us successful.Rouner argues that a liberal education is about “discoveringnot just something that you are good at, but something thatyou care about, something you can give yourself to, some-thing you can lose yourself in, something you love.” He sup-ports this contention with several pragmatic arguments. Lov-ing your vocation insures that you will work to your highestpotential—out of love, not duty. What you love to do is muchmore obvious than what you ought to do; even if you thinkyou know what will ensure success, you may be wrong, butyou know what you love. Constant intellectual renewal is as-sured if it involves a subject you love—it becomes part ofwho you are, not an externally motivated chore. Satisfactionand happiness are very difficult to measure in economic terms,but they have great value nonetheless.

These truths should be kept in mind when we advisestudents or colleagues. Should we suggest that they avoidseemingly unproductive pathways? If they would really loveto go in a certain direction, that is probably the best thingfor them to do. This applies directly to chemical education.Students are sometimes steered away from chemical educa-tion careers on grounds that they may not be able to find a“good” job. Colleagues are advised to get tenure first, andthen pursue chemical education. This may be good advicefor some, but not for those who really love helping studentsto learn. A good job for them is one in which they can pur-sue their dreams, not the one we would choose or that wouldnet them the most financial benefit. Ernest Rutherford’s state-ment sums up nicely how important to progress are peoplewhose ideas differ from the norm. Many dedicated and hard-working people in two-year colleges, four-year colleges, anduniversities who have chosen chemical education as theirvocation and are pursuing it avidly have seen beyond the con-ventional wisdom and consequently are generating progress.

Of course there are our own dreams to pursue. Let’s notshy away from what we love because it is not the current fash-ion or appears not to be the most productive or practicalcourse to follow. Instead, we can work hard to make our owndreams come true, and to support others whose goals are simi-lar. Respect for new ideas is hard to obtain unless the peoplewho espouse those ideas show by high-quality work, dedica-tion—and yes, love—that their ideas have real merit and im-portance.

Respect for any kind of vocation must always be earnedand is usually proportional to how hard people work at it,the quality of the results, and how much dedication peoplebring to it. Chemical education is no exception. Living upto the responsibilities of our vocation is a tough, but doablejob.

Let’s go for it!

Every good laboratory consists of first-rate

men working in great harmony to insure the

progress of science; but down at the end of the

hall is an unsociable, wrong-headed fellow

working on unprofitable lines, and in his

hands lies the hope of discovery.

Ernest Rutherford