William Chinn Interview, Part 2 of 3

Roberts: Continuing tape number 1.

Chinn: To continue, I was at Cambridge now, and the general closed the door and I had shaved and met him at breakfast. The topic of the day was a very exciting topic, and everybody was talking about the angle of the blast. Because the question of course is what angle did the blast happen. As the conversations developed it was about the A-bomb on the blast.

Of course now we know that the angle was zero. Because after all, everything on the path, from the ground on was contaminated with the atom blast. So you can see there was one day I was with the Pearl Harbor bombing, and here another one of these things when you can memorize exactly what it was. It was August 6, 1943, and that was, that dates it to after the first Nagasaki blast.

Roberts: That was 1945.

Chinn: That was '45 that that happened, yeah. I'm sorry. I move a few things. I'm glad you got me straightened up. Because that next year I went home by then. Of course after I got back, then we had enough points to get out of the army.

But it was not until the middle of 1946 that I got out of the army and went back to my graduate studies. And of course, at that time I was hoping that I would be able to re-take that test I had missed, but by that time they had changed the courses so that that particular test, that subject on real variables was no longer given.

So I had to bone up instead, and do it the hard way. Which eventually gave me a C, which is something that you are not supposed to have in graduate studies. But then that was the only C, and so fortunately I got out of that.

Roberts: I'd like to go back a little bit to your UCLA experience. Now didn't you mention earlier to me that you had actually taken a course with BIERKNESS(?)?

Chinn: Oh yes. BIERKNESS was the son of the BIERKNESS, the original BIERKNESS. And he disappeared right after the Germans got into Norway. The conjecture was that they wanted him to do certain things and he refused to do it.

And in those days you just get rid of the people you find as excess, no matter how they are. But his theory, of course, was a beautiful theory of the air masses. The first people to announce things like that.

The air mass theory applies itself to the theory of the sea currents, except that with the sea currents the measuring is positive going down. So you flip a few signs on your theories and it fits the same way.

Roberts: It was the son.

Chinn: It was the son who was the leader of the UCLA bunch. Because in certain places certain theories were being pronounced. This was at UCLA. The one at Pasadena was the one that dealt mostly with the idea of probabilities in forecasts.

It turned out of course that it was all right when the originator of that theory was doing for the farmers. Because the harm of wrong forecasts is not that bad, but eventually it is the air mass theory that did take over.

Roberts: Do you happen to remember the names of those two professors?

Chinn: I was hoping that I would by now, but as I said, I will find it, it is in my files.

Roberts: So in 1946 you went back to school at Berkeley.

Chinn: Right. I finished up, but at the same time, what I had to do, I had to look for living.

Roberts: Okay. So did you get a graduate degree, then, from Berkeley?

Chinn: Oh yes. I got the graduate degree, I was doing it by going to school, because I took a job as a teacher. I just took the teacher's examination. So I took a job there, and my first job was a junior high school.

Then my next job was a replacement for someone in high school who was taking a sabbatical for her first child, something like that. For one year I took her position, and the next year I was rotated elsewhere again.

Eventually, while I was doing that I was taking classes at the UC a few at a time, until the summer, and of course during the summer time I could go full time then. So eventually I did get my master's and then I continued on and finished with my PhD.

Roberts: Do you remember when you got your master's, and when you got your PhD?

Chinn: My master's was only about a year after my return, so about 1947, and then PhD was about 3 more years. So by that time I was entrance a city college already. The thing is, it is easy to move from one branch to another in the same school system. Because then you have already spent the time with the thing and your longevity is added as you go along.

Roberts: Now who was your doctoral advisor?

Chinn: It was Professor Foster, he's an algebraist, and another one, what's his name? I can see him, but the name I have just completely forgotten. It will come back to me one of these days.

Roberts: What was your dissertation topic?

Chinn: I was interested in topology. That was the beginnings of the topologies and so on. I did have a book on that, let me take a look.

Roberts: I did want to ask you about any other, were there any particular teachers at Berkeley that influenced you, that you considered especially notable as teachers?

Chinn: At that time, topology was not that gung-ho yet, had not come into the picture. Phases of it come through by RIMAND in the late 1800s. But all those were still on the idea of the KÜNISBERG tracing the bridges. From there the things start to take over. But the first real course that I had was from STEINROD in the '50s.

Roberts: Where was that?

Chinn: That was in Berkeley, because every now and then he escapes from his place so he does not have to monitor too many PhD students. That was his story. I can understand. You get to deep into their own studies. In '55 or '56 I think, I got a course from him, but the full thing was not based on topology that I got PhD on.

Actually it was from Foster's algebra, because I know him more. Because he was the one on campus that can supervise you mathematically.

Roberts: So your dissertation was more topology, there was some algebra?

Chinn: Yes, some algebra. More or less algebraic face of topology.

Roberts: Are there any other professors at Berkeley that you remember particularly as notable as teachers?

Chinn: Oh yes. Let's see. There was a statistician, a very beautiful statistician. What was his name? I will have to try to get you his name, I know where I can find. He was a great one.

Unfortunately he has a habit of walking back and forth in front of the room, and always on one end or the other was an ashtray, and would flick his ashes from one to the other, and I think he just died from the smoke. He was probably such fiend for.

Roberts: When did he die?

Chinn: It was after I got my degree, but he was a very good statistician. Before, I did not care for statistics, because they were never given that interesting way of looking at statistics. He really had me going.

Roberts: This wasn't NEHMEN?

Chinn: Yes, NEHMEN. Very good. You have a way of pinpointing the right people.

Roberts: Any other names that you.

Chinn: No, those are the ones that I'm fond of.

Roberts: You were teaching in the public schools all this time.

Chinn: Yes, and when I got my degree I switched over to City College. That's why I was in City.

Roberts: So what sorts of things did you teach when you were teaching secondary school?

Chinn: Anything. Algebra, mainly algebra.

Roberts: And then you moved to City College. What sort of things...

Chinn: Same things. Because City College unfortunately is filled with people who are gung-ho on the labor movement, and I am not fond of that movement. I was told that I don't have to belong to the union.

If I wish I could join the Federation of Teachers or something like that. But I stayed with them, the California Teachers Association. But because of that I was not looked upon very friendly with the mathematics department because they are very gung-ho with the labor movement. So I was more or less held in disrespect.

Roberts: Now how old an institution is the City College of San Francisco?

Chinn: It started out in the '50s, and that is what is wrong with the City College. The teaching was done according to more or less what they remembered about calculus and so on. They were not really catching up with the new ideas of mathematics.

Especially if you are known not to favor labor, and I can't like this favor of labor because as a child I was already influenced by the fact that laborer has never been friendly to the Orientals.

In fact, that was when Dennis Kearney preached his thing about keeping the Orientals out of the United States. And he was always known as being on the street corners making those talks and so forth. Although his days were before mine, the influence was still there when I was growing up.

Roberts: How long were you associated with City College of San Francisco?

Chinn: Oh, for about half of my career was in City College, and half of my career was in the schools.

Roberts: At any point during your education did you ever encounter any variant of what is often called discovery learning or inquiry-based learning? I was mentioning earlier to you, R. L. Moore who was at the University of Texas who used this method.

Chinn: Yes, that's what we hear a lot. And also SMSG, we try to use some of these ideas too.

Roberts: Now did you yourself ever have a course like that?

Chinn: No. The story was as the project coordinator of SMSG I was exposed to a lot of these ideas. One thing we find was that the teachers were very helpful to us because we watched their reactions.

Usually Ed Begle would host meetings, more or less around Chicago, because it is more or less centrally located, even though he started out in the East, around New York and so forth and so on, but his influence was toward, he moved to Stanford in '59, about '58, '59.

By that time they were still talking about using verbalization for analyzing problem-solving and so forth. As I mentioned to you before, in our longitudinal studies we do find that the students gain a lot in oral expressions. Mainly because they were practicing the same kinds of things in different fields.

Roberts: So this idea of verbalization was very important to SMSG.

Chinn: Helpful, yes. Because we would ask them to try and reason out things.

Roberts: And you see some relationship between this and perhaps some of R. L. Moore's influence here?

Chinn: Yes, and as project coordinator I have to do quite a bit of traveling. They may be up from say the first grade or kindergarten grades and so forth, and then I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of teaching that was going on.

For example there were some schools around Virginia, and I guess, around the Appalachians, where I would have to go. There were some schools there who wanted to get into our project, and we admitted them into the studies at the same time.

And when I go there to visit, I usually for each of these schools I usually take the first two days sitting in class. Sitting in the back of the class first, so the kids will get familiar with me. Then the third day I would talk to them and play with them and so forth.

That way I can illustrate to the teachers what we try to do so that they can try to imitate our ideas. Every now and then we do collect the teachers together in, mostly in Chicago because it's centrally located, and they get very excited when they do that, because before you can see them blossoming up from the beginning they are very reticent at first.

They would not engage too much in talking, and after a few days of getting together, then they verbalize things and talk about their schools and their things and so forth. Once they get to talking about it, then they see what they are trying to do. You can see the effectiveness of the students, too, the way that they react to the teachers.

Roberts: Another person that was very much involved with education reform in the 1950's was Max BEBERMAN. Did you know him at all?

Chinn: I don't know him, but I have heard of him, and we followed his programs. In fact, his programs were started a little bit before ours. Both of us seem to have the same ideas, and we do different things at different ways, but centrally they are all very close to each other.

Roberts: Do you recall what motivated you to become interested in education reform in the first place?

Chinn: Well, what happened was this. Of course when I was teaching, you are a beginning teacher and you don't get very much teaching before you're teaching. But one of my friends who taught high school at that time, a friend by the name of Lawrence HOCKINSEN, I don't know if you have heard of him or not.

He got his degree under Begle. He was hired when the project was moved to Stanford to help out with the writing by correcting, by providing answers to problems and so forth. At the same time he wanted to get a degree under Begle and therefore he said he did not have time to do that anymore, do I have time to come and fill his space.

And so I went in and did the same thing, providing answers for the work and so forth. Eventually I was moved to producing problems instead. After a while I was moved as a coordinator of the business where we tried to coordinate the grades, different grades as they jibed into each other and so forth.

And that was where my experience of going around to see the different classrooms started. And then we would talk with the teacher. Once you begin talking to a teacher, and they understand that you are talking to them as an equal, then they are not so much afraid of you anymore.

When that happens then you know that they will give you some ideas and you can exchange ideas and then the whole thing jives together a little bit better.

Roberts: Now you had the advantage of having all this experience teaching, in the secondary schools. Some critics have complained that the "new math" was characterized by university professors sort of lording it over the secondary school teachers and forcing them to put in more abstraction, than they really wanted.

Chinn: I don't think they feel that way.

Roberts: You don't feel that way.

Chinn: No, maybe I was too far gone, seeing it from the other angle already by that time. And I was excited about watching the progress.

Roberts: So from your point of view, I gather that the relationship between university mathematicians like Begle and so on, and secondary school teachers was a congenial relationship.

Chinn: Yes, and we all taught in par with each other, anyway. No one looks down on anybody else. And we contribute our own ideas, and they do the same.

Roberts: Did Sputnik affect you at all?

Chinn: I don't think so, no. Sputnik was a little bit ahead of the 50s. They were more closely around the ____

Roberts: Well, the first Sputnik satellite was launched by the Russians in October of 1957.

Chinn: That was close by.

Roberts: SMSG was founded in early '58.

Chinn: Before then. Because they were back in Yale for a few years before they moved here. And they moved here in '58 and '59.

Roberts: Mmm. I guess I understood it that they moved in '60 or '61.

Chinn: I seem to remember that I was doing those problems down at Stanford, well, I can't be quite sure about that.

Roberts: I guess my main question is do you think that the Sputnik satellite for instance affected your thinking about the urgency about educational reform? Do you recall feeling that way at all?

Chinn: We were already thinking about how to put our ideas across. Probably everything was all merged together as a mish-mash. So you can't distinguish.

Roberts: Did you participate in any of the SMSG Summer writing groups?

Chinn: I did too. After a while, of course I did a lot of the writing before I became project coordinator. But afterwards then you do your own thing you can do both project coordinating and writing at the same time.

Roberts: Well what's your assessment of the effectiveness of the summer writing groups? Is that a good way to produce what you need?

Chinn: It did work, yeah. Not only that, we were doing it in different grade levels, so it didn't stop us from trying to do the same kinds of things even in kindergarten or first or second grade.

In fact, we were introducing the kids to the idea of geometry by throwing things on the floor and say inside the circle, outside the circle, and on the circle. And then we used tin cans, and the kids were groping their hands over the can, and they know that it is rounded, but at the same time it can be flat, something can be round and flat at the same time.

Or if they just move their hands around the outside, then it is an entirely different experience. But those are kindergarten and first grade activities.

Roberts: Now Mrs. Begle gave me a copy of a booklet about program learning that you were one of the authors. Do you remember that?

Chinn: Step by step, that's what you mean by program learning. So one inch at a time, very painfully. But it's not bad, you learn the idea. We did it in algebra and so on. In those days that was the reason for bringing in a lot of psychologists.

Roberts: Right, B. F. Skinner and such. So what is your assessment? Is program learning worthwhile?

Chinn: It's a technique we learned, and we take it as it is. It is some direction and we found we could adapt ourselves to the adaption without any trouble.

Roberts: How did this book come about, First Concepts of Topology?

Chinn: As I said, the first time I saw STENMONT was around the '50s, '55 or something like that. I took a class from him, and then

Roberts: Which was an advanced topology course?

Chinn: No, it was just an introduction. Because at that time topology was not that well known. A lot of the topologies we were exposed to were things like...