and relearning
We go back to some old textbooks.
Our tutor is now rereading his old Physical Chemistry textbook, with some perhaps surprising results. It began with a conviction that he really should read books that he’s had lying around for years, and never gotten to. So a couple of weeks ago he picked up the first volume of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics and read it cover to cover. We’ve mentioned that series before, and we’re convinced that no one actually reads them. They are too difficult to teach from (though the books began as undergraduate courses at Caltech), and most Physics teachers dip into them here and there for an insight or an apt explanation. Well, this volume includes several topics that our tutor studied in his P-Chem course, but in a different way than he remembered; so he went back to his old textbook. So far (he’s not finished yet) he identifies a few main results.
First, he’s found insights he missed the first time around. They were there, even emphasized, but under time pressure and working to complete problem sets he just didn’t make the connection. That raises the question of whether the strict curriculum of an undergraduate Chemistry major is actually detrimental to learning. We don’t claim to have an answer to the question (or is it a problem?). Certainly allowing more time would help, but the time may not be available, and it might not help many students.
Second, he has refreshed his memory on many topics he did understand, but never worked with later. He sort of remembered what a eutectic mixture was, but the details had faded. He found it quite enjoyable to revisit concepts and techniques he had mastered, then dropped. That suggests another question: would he enjoy going back and reviewing his whole undergraduate program? Would you? We have discussed the fact that we all learn in school lots of things that we almost immediately forget; this would make it all seem less futile.
Third, he has found some topics that will help with tutoring High School-level Chemistry. That science, perhaps more than others, starts with simple ideas that are progressively modified and made more complex as the student goes to higher levels. None of his students needs to understand Chemistry at the advanced undergraduate level (well, not yet); but knowing what the next step is will help him explaining things at a lower level.
Finally, the book is old, and in several places the science has moved on. There are experimental techniques that are routine now but not even imagined then, along with their results. Especially the power to perform massive calculations has burgeoned. One passage seems almost pathetic as it describes several approximate approaches, none of them really satisfactory; it would be a routine computation now. This suggests our tutor should buy a current textbook, but he’s not quite ready to take that step.
Would you reread one of your old textbooks?
