Zack,

 

I have several comments and questions.

 

First, I thought I could help shed some light on why schools are doing away with standardized testing. Regarding the ACT, there’s mixed evidence at best that the ACT is a predictor of success in college. There is, however, very strong evidence (cited in the second link above) that a student’s high school and the classes they take are strongly linked to their success on the ACT, and further strong evidence that familial wealth is a strong determining factor in what sort of education one receives. For the GRE, there has been strong evidence for decades that it predicts little to nothing about graduate school success, but is a barrier to some. For years there has been much discussion about dropping it, including in the chemistry community and in no less reputable a journal than Science. I don’t have any full evidence of this, but I suspect that the logic behind many of these tests is rooted in the same thinking as IQ tests, which were developed as part of the eugenics movement and have been thoroughly debunked.

 

Regarding your perception of young people’s work ethics, this is a notorious discussion. It is certainly not a new one. This article references Seneca complaining about the slothfulness of his day’s youth in the first century AD. I suspect that if each generation really was more slothful than the last, we would have gone extinct of hunger some time ago, and most likely would not be conversing via email. There is, of course, the question of what “hard work” looks like from generation to generation. As technology evolves, the way work is done changes drastically. Is a farmer driving a combine harvester lazier than his forebearers harvesting with a scythe? Similarly, is a student searching for information on the internet lazier than students of the past searching for information in a library? This is, of course, entirely subjective, but I would argue they are not lazier, and would be foolish to not make use of the resources available to them. With that subjectivity acknowledged, there are certainly those who argue that today’s students in fact work harder, take more rigorous classes, and operate in a very different educational environment. The latter is particularly illustrated by your comment about Vietnam being an alternative; I would say thank goodness that has changed, if we’re concerned about people being in higher education for the right reasons then certainly we can agree that “fear of death, disfigurement, and traumatization in a brutal war” should not be one’s primary motivation for being in college, and I’m glad that I didn’t have to make such a choice. There’s also evidence of young people being on the receiving end of age-related discrimination in the workplace. I certainly found counter-arguments to this as well, and would of course be very interested in any data you’re drawing from. As a side note, it’s worth remembering that the theory and practice of education is itself a huge and constantly evolving field, one that I don’t have the credentials to truly dive into.

 

Lastly, I’m frankly confused by your concerns about DEI and “wokeness.” Could you clarify what you mean by those, and what they have to do with the topic at hand? As the years have gone on since the term was coined, I’ve become increasingly at a loss to understand what people mean when they refer to “wokeness,” it’s come to refer to such a breadth of topics. Now to be very clear, I am not saying that the following examples are what you were referring to; as I’ve said, I really don’t know what you mean. But these are some examples of things I’ve heard people associate with wokeness. For example, this week, Stanford finally acknowledged historic discrimination against Jewish people. Is this retrospection wokeness? Was ending the discriminatory policy wokeness? Is Nature discussing their part in the history of the field of eugenics wokeness? Is accounting for well-documented disparities in the experiences of minoritized people wokeness? I’m always particularly confused by those arguments, given how well-documented it is than inclusivity actually leads to better outcomes. I’m also always confused by those who say that the effects of discrimination are exaggerated, when in fact there’s ample evidence of the effects, down to the biochemical level. I’ve also heard some say such discussions are an excess of wokeness because scientists are objective, when in fact there is evidence of discrimination in science.

 

I have a meeting coming up soon so I’m afraid I’ll have to end my remarks here. Anyway, I look forward to hearing your elaborations on these topics and the evidence you provide.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jack Reidy (he/him)

Research Safety Specialist, Assistant Chemical Hygiene Officer

Environmental Health & Safety

Stanford University

484 Oak Road, Stanford, CA, 94305

Tel: (650) 497-7614

 

I acknowledge that the land on which I live and work is the ancestral and unceded land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. As an uninvited guest on these lands, I am a beneficiary of the ongoing displacement of the Ohlone people. I pay my respects to the Native peoples, past and present.

 

 

 

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU> On Behalf Of mansdorfz**At_Symbol_Here**BELLSOUTH.NET
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2022 11:27 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Maitland Jones story

 

Time to chime in.

 

As an undergraduate, I had that “look to your left and right” course in chemistry (those folks will be gone by mid-terms) and an added incentive that losing your student deferment meant going to Vietnam.  Personally, my impression is that the academic standards in general have been lowered a great deal over the years.  Many schools no longer require the ACT or SAT and many graduate schools no longer require the GRE (a requirement for me to graduate as an undergraduate).  There is such an emphasis on DEI and Wokeness these days that we have lost sight of the purpose of “higher education”.  Like most of you, I had classmates that seemed to have an easy time of it while I had to work at it (and work to have money to go to school), but with this struggle came a sense of pride.  I really wonder where all of this is going to …..

 

              “Higher education should be based on quality, not quantity; receive merit-based funding; and be free of unnecessary bureaucracy. Not the least of the benefits of educational reform is to foster the pride of achievement at national and international levels”.-Ahmed Zewail

 

Zack

S.Z. Mansdorf, PhD, CIH, CSP, QEP

Consultant in EHS and Sustainability

7184 Via Palomar

Boca Raton, FL  33433

561-212-7288

 

 

 

From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU> On Behalf Of Dr Bob
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2022 1:28 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Maitland Jones story

 

 

 

Hi Rob!

 

Reminds me of a biological “continuous process” where each stage imposes impossible objectives on its predecessor. We need some thinking NOW that transends stages!

 

Dr. Bob Haugen

Director of Product and Technology Development

Flow Sciences, Inc.

 

910 332 4878

 

www.flowsciences.com
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From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU> On Behalf Of Info
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2022 1:12 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Maitland Jones story

 

New report today from the folks who bring you the ACT exam. Damn depressing. https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2022/2022-National-ACT-Profile-Report.pdf   More data etc. here https://www.act.org/content/act/en/research/services-and-resources/data-and-visualization/grad-class-database-2022.html  A few pertinent highlights to this thread:

 

22% of student met all four of the College Readiness Benchmark Scores. Average ACT scores now lowest since 1991.

 

Table 1.6 - Achievement in STEM: only 16% meet the STEM benchmark.  Table 3.6 - College readiness: only 20.8% met math and English in the best prepared students, 22.2% for reading and and 21.7% for science. That’s of the *best prepared* students.

 

Table 1.7 - Proficiency in Understanding Complex Texts: 57% below proficient, only 19% above proficient. [Please read Chapter 7 on Electrophilic substitution before coming to class….]

 

When I was still teaching, we found the single best predictor of success in Gen Chem was the ACT math score. That’s because the intro courses (for right or wrong) are traditionally filled with mostly P-Chem concepts such as gas laws, equilibria etc. that feature easily-tested math problems. So today’s report is sad news.

 

Anecdotally, the rate of flagrant cheating is higher than ever ( IMHO, Chegg is a pox upon society).  On top of that, we can watch who logs in to do homework, how much time they spend on it, and if they download the extras that we provide…and THAT data is utterly depressing.  And that effort shown has gotten worse over the years. The good students, the motivated ones, and the ones that try hard still exist, of course.

 

In my mind, the single biggest problem is that colleges are admitting too many students who are simply not ready for the rigor or demands of college.  If students need remedial courses, that work needs to done before they enroll. Presumably, many campuses drop a lot of time and effort into remedial courses when they could much better spend that effort providing smaller classes, recitation sections, peer learning and other proven means to improve the success of the students that have been properly prepared for college.  I could soapbox all day about the special athlete-only tutoring center, athlete-only computer lab, etc afforded our NCAA “student athletes” (and multimillion dollar salary for our coaching staffs) while our students who had to work to pay their way through school couldn’t even get recitation sections in genchem (and before someone says sports bring in money that’s true for only a handful of schools and a loser for all the rest).

 

I could go on all week about the benefits of trades and trade school as well as for deconstructing the whole traditional liberal arts model (not that it shouldn’t exist - there’s much to be said for it, and folks should be free to pursue it) to allow for slim technical degrees at significantly lower cost and duration (as well as higher student satisfaction and better outcome).

 

Rob Toreki

 

Safety Emporium - Laboratory and Safety Supplies 
https://www.SafetyEmporium.com
esales**At_Symbol_Here**safetyemporium.com  or toll-free: (866) 326-5412
Fax: (856) 553-6154, PO Box 1003, Blackwood, NJ 08012

 

 

On Oct 13, 2022, at 5:18 AM, Ralph Stuart <ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org> wrote:

 

Since when do students have the right to say a prof or course is toooo hard.  I think it may be the caliber of student today.  

I live and work with today’s undergraduates every day and the educational disruption they have faced over the last three years is mind-boggling to observe. As a result, mental health issues are rising throughout the student body, but particularly students whose high school preparation was also impacted by Covid. I can’t imagine trying to absorb all of the material I was exposed to as an undergraduate engineering student today.

I stopped taking Chemistry Department classes after Gen Chem, so I can’t comment on teaching methods most appropriate to organic or higher level courses, but I suspect that what worked to help students learn in 2019 is very different that what works in 2022. I think that the was part of the point of the article that Neal pointed to.

- Ralph

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org

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