202 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



of the nineteenth century. He says : " Each of the three terms of a 

 year was devoted to a language. In the first year Latin and Greek 

 and Sanscrit were covered; in the next, French, German, and Italian; 

 while the last year was given to review and Hebrew and Spanish as 

 optional studies."" Yet good authorities state that this impossible 

 description very accurately represents the present conditions of sci- 

 ence teaching.* 



An examination of a large number of high school courses will dis- 

 close the fact that there is a close approach to uniformity in the 

 policy of placing chemistry and physics in the last two years. This 

 has been done largely in deference to university requirements and to 

 the economic advantage of deferring expensive laboratory equipment 

 to the years when classes are certain to be comparatively small. 

 There is nothing inherent in the subjects themselves, when freed 

 from collegiate impedimenta, that requires this postponement. 



Examination of the earlier years of the usual high school course 

 shows that the first-year work in science has come to be fairly well 

 standardized, as either physiology, physical geogi-aphy, botany, 

 zoology, biolog}^, or some combination of two or more of these. Lat- 

 terly domestic science has begun to appear in the first year, and in 

 still fewer instances "general science" and agriculture. Zoology ap- 

 pears almost invariably after botany when the latter is taught in the 

 first year, or along with that subject in the second year. In 43 

 Illinois schools recently noted, domestic science or domestic economy 

 appears somewhat more frequently in the second year than in the 

 first, and agriculture is usually continued from the first, or else 

 appears for the first time in the third year. In only one of these 

 schools does physics appear in the second year; and in one other 

 case elementary chemistry stands in this year combined with domes- 

 tic science.'' Geology appears only four times in the list, once in 

 the third year and thrice in the fourth. Astronomy appears seven 

 times, once in the third year and six times in the fourth (in one case 

 combined with geology). Chemistry stands eighteen times in the 

 third year, and physics twenty times. In the fourth year chem- 

 istry appears twenty-three times, and physics eighteen times, with 

 an additional alternative between chemistry and physics in one 

 school. 



A rapid survey thus shows a more stable placement of chemistry 

 and phj'sics in the last two years than of any other science subject in 

 the first two. In a general way the first-year science work in the 

 high school is less fixed than that of the second. The appearance of 

 general science, biology, domestic science, and agriculture in the first 



« Science, January 28, 1910, p. 124. 



* School Science and Mathematics, May, 1910, p. 377. 



c Ibid., p. 375. 



