Dear Class (or in this case Readers),

Please read the review of Uncle Tungsten in this issue of the Journal (p 312). Your assignment for spring break is to discover the wonderful life and times of Oliver Sacks in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (1). I know that you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Uncle Tungsten is well written, entertaining, and delightful. As I read the pages of intriguing descriptions of many wondrous chemical reactions, I was impressed with the truly open inquiry methods of learning that Oliver was allowed (encouraged) to engage in when he was a boy. He was surrounded by a house full of well-educated adults and older siblings, who advised him on the marvels of chemistry and drove his passion for chemistry. Yet it was this same inquisitiveness that was stifled at school and got him caned on more than one occasion. Of his boarding school experience during WW II he writes, "I felt trapped at Braefield, without hope, without recourse forever" (1, p 22). Sacks's memories about his school life were, at best, reserved. In another reference to his schooling he records (1, pp 313-314),

School, mercifully, had been largely indifferent to what I was doing--I did my schoolwork, and was otherwise left to my own devices. At school I had left the undemanding classics "side," and moved to the pressured science side instead. I had been spoiled, in a sense, by my two uncles, and the freedom and spontaneity of my apprenticeship. Now at school, I was forced to sit in classes, to take notes and exams, to use textbooks that were flat, impersonal, deadly. What had been fun, delight, when I did it in my own way became an aversion, an ordeal, when I had to do it to order. What had been a holy subject for me, full of poetry, was being rendered prosaic, profane.

Now, put yourself in his parents' shoes. If your 10-year-old son or daughter were continuously investigating the reactive patterns of explosive and malodorous chemicals, would you simply install a fume hood in the laboratory in your house? I think, the answer to this would be (for the majority), No!

What are the advantages and disadvantages of open-inquiry, guided-inquiry, cookbook, and skill-building chemistry? I would attest that Sacks was educated by the truest of open-inquiry methods available. However, in many instances these methods are impractical when one is attempting to teach many students at a time. What is the best way to integrate guided inquiry into our curriculum? And, on the other side, what necessary skills may be omitted when using methods of inquiry? I'm not sure I have the answers to these questions, but I would love to see more inquiry-based activities submitted to JCE. Anyone game?

Literature Cited

1. Sacks, Oliver. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood; Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2001.