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AFTER ALL THE YEARS I HAVE spent teaching, I had to go to the other side of the globe to have an epiphany about chemical education. This year, I traveled to China to speak at the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry 17th International Conference on Chemical Education. There, I was struck by a presentation given by Peter Atkins of the University of Oxford. Atkins argued that all chemistry could be reduced to nine topics, including four types of chemical reactions. I was surprised to find that with each successive speaker, I was able to apply Atkins' principles to areas as diverse as nanochemistry and chemical biology. In this interdisciplinary age of science, why are chemistry students still struggling with pedantic divisions like organic or physical chemistry? It seems to me that chemical education is less descriptive today than it was when I was an undergraduate student at Brooklyn College and a graduate student ...