Education or ?????

I just discovered your website. Thanks for taking a stand against the way in which our country is being directed. I, too, share those concerns.

Having graduated from high school in 1957, I was fortunate to have an education based on solid, fundamental values, taught by instructors who knew their subject matter and taught morals, ethics, and Christian values in the process.

My four years in college were also taught by professors who knew their subject matter and who had strong values. The same is true for five years of night school towards an MS degree, and the five years of graduate school (two years of which were postdoctoral research).

During my years in graduate school, teaching chemistry, I complained about the way high school seniors were being taught. I spent much of my chemistry lectures teaching algebra.

After postdoctoral work I returned to industrial chemistry where I had been gainfully employed while attending night school. I then left my chosen profession and entered the engineering consulting business for seventeen years, eleven of which were in Saudi Arabia. Upon returning the States with the idea of retiring, I felt that would be a waste of time at the age of 55, so I began teaching algebra at a local high school in a rural part of Texas.

That entry, in 1994, back into the high school scene was a shock. I instruct the way my teachers, instructors, and professors delivered their lectures. I am dismayed at the apparent inability of teachers. Apparent inability in the sense of not being teachers but "facilitators". How are they going to learn if they are not taught? This concept of being a facilitator to a "cooperative group" leaves the students in the dark. Many of them come to me for instruction in what they do not understand elsewhere. After a few minutes, they understand the fundamentals and are off and running, being able to analyze the problems. Paraphrasing the Bible: "Where there is no teaching, the students perish".

This whole business of education which has been evolving since the early 1960's is terrible. I fight it tooth and nail, in faculty meetings, "teacher in-service sessions", and to a core of students who are very conservative and have a good Christian background. In this community, the work ethic still prevails since most of the people are ranchers and farmers. I think one of the reasons why I contend against the system is that we are sending our young people into a world ill-equipped to compete, either in college or in the workplace. I weave a lot of business world experiences I have gone through into my lectures in hopes of instilling a sense of urgency into obtaining a quality education. My students know that I do not have posters on my walls because I want them watching the blackboard. They know I do not use cassette tapes playing "algebra songs", nor overhead projectors, nor television shows, nor video tapes, nor computers, nor calculators (except in limited cases where the computations are quite difficult). I intend for them to learn the basics and learn to use the power of their own reasoning to work through problems, whether they be algebra or life.

Am I right? Yes!!

Regards

G Gerald Nika, PhD, Physical Chemistry

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