Students can be classified as problem oriented or answer oriented. The answer-oriented student ... does little or no reflective thinking. ...To simply work a problem for a student may not be educational at all. The student should be taught the process used in the solution. ...My experience indicates that an answer-oriented attitude can be changed. ...But one can't do much teaching of problem-solving techniques and at the same time get on with the day's lecture. ...Problem-solving technique is a tool of learning. ...To teach it well should be about the most rewarding academic activity. ...A year of stressing methods of problem solving would alter the orientation and motivation of many students we now call poor.

[Hint: the next article after this one described a slide-rule technique for converting percent transmittance to absorbance.]

As it happens, all of the statements were part of a provocative opinion piece by Hubert L. Youmans (1) that appeared more than 25 years ago. As the Journal begins its 75th year of publication, it is appropriate to consider how much wisdom and experience have been concentrated into its pages in the past, and how useful that information can be for us today. Therefore, as a special feature in each issue of this 75th year, we are including a column titled "The More Things Change"... that will provide gems from the corresponding issues of 25, 50, and 75 years ago. It turns out that many of the issues we debate today have been debated before - sometimes long before, and often with greater wisdom than we may bring to them now! It behooves us to devote some of our time to looking back at what our predecessors in chemical education were thinking and doing. "The More Things Change" ...is designed to encourage us to do so.

Despite Youmans's provocative plea for change more than a quarter century ago, an orientation toward answers and away from the process of solving real problems is still characteristic of most introductory college chemistry courses. It may well extend through the undergraduate and even the graduate curriculum. Over the past 20 years, introductory textbooks have incorporated many features that once were the purview of separate problem books for the less well prepared student: example exercises whose worked-out solutions leave nothing to the imagination; an almost infinite number of chapter-end "problems", many of which are carbon copies of each other or of examples worked out earlier; and an attitude of "Let's get you through this morass of gibberish." rather than "Let's see what new habits of the mind you can develop by applying reason to these difficult problems." And despite more recent pleas (2), textbook adopters continue to demand, and textbook authors and publishers continue to supply, features and content that may not accord with what has been established experimentally regarding how students learn.

Why is this? This issue is a real problemone that we cannot answer without thinking. Indeed the problem has not been solved despite a good deal of thinking. Part of the reason for our lack of success is that it is much easier for all parties concerned to maintain the status quo. To truly understand requires far more time and effort from a student than does merely getting through with a good grade. And if the course is moving along rapidly, trying to understand may not be the best recipe for success. Students have developed strategies that work for them, and most of us have not developed ways of assessing progress that would show students that their strategies have not resulted in true understanding. Indeed the current system considers real problems on examinations to be trick questions and unfair, because a student who has put in the requisite study time might not catch on to the solution within the time allotted. It is a lot easier and much less time consuming for us as faculty to continue along the way we are going than it would be if we were to try to find new approaches that would facilitate true learning. And most of us just don't have the time.

I suggest that during this 75th year of the Journal, each of us resolve to choose one long-term problem of the sort I have just described and spend some time each week or each month thinking about how that problem could be addressed more effectively. These pages are open to those who would like to share their efforts.

Literature Cited

1. Youmans, H. L. Changing Answer-Oriented Students to Problem-Oriented Thinkers. J. Chem. Educ. 1971, 48, 387­8.

2. Gillespie, R. J. Reforming the General Chemistry Textbook. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 484­5.