It’s always interesting to know what your students are actually thinking. I have to admit, though, that sometimes I would really rather not know. Take this example, buried in the comments from a set of student surveys from a past semester:
[Rick] needs to come down to our level.
You might expect to hear comments like this from students in, say, sophomore level chemical engineering thermodynamics. Heck, I still have nightmares about that course. The comment above, though, was left for me by one of my introductory chemistry students. Introductory chemistry is the lowest-level chemistry course we offer – roughly on par with a high school course. It’s the lowest-level science course with a lab that we teach.
How low a level are we talking here? Here’s one of the questions from this course’s first test.
Determine the length of the line based on the ruler drawn below.
![[image of a ruler and a line]](http://whenchemistsattack.com/blogfiles/readaruler.png)
(Why ask about a ruler in an intro chemistry class? We discuss reading of measuring devices like rulers, graduated cylinders, and balances early on in the course – otherwise the students couldn’t really do much in the course’s lab. The ruler itself is mostly meant to connect a familiar measurement – what adult has never used a ruler? – to more unfamiliar devices like graduated cylinders and balances.)
I’m at a loss. Education isn’t like the limbo. It’s not about how low you can go. And, with this particular course, it’s not as if I can “come down” any more. At some point, the student has got to climb.
