1 THE EVOLVING NATURE OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION: Current and Future Potential

In the early years of the new millennium, it might be useful to pause and look back to the 20th century (and earlier) to see what we have learned about chemical education. I take this as the focus for my remarks at the Singapore International Symposium on Chemical Education. The last millennium and the centuries before it have produced a number of useful lessons for us to consider here. If we are attentive, we may have the keys for improving chemical education in the 21st century. A number of the lessons are derived from empirical observations and, at least, one comes from outside of chemistry. Perhaps the key lesson we—teaching chemists—have learned from the 20th century is that • Chemistry has become the central science (As an aside, the idea of “chemistry, the central science ” was first made popular by Ted Brown who used it as the title of a general chemistry text [1] in 1977). Looking back, it’s obvious why chemistry has evolved into the central science. Because it’s principal focus is on understanding molecules and molecules make up the entire physical world, a basic understanding of chemistry has become important for progress in a number of, what could be called, the associate