TWENTY-NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 45 
among teachers, but for some reason that wave has not struck Kansas very hard. 
The executive committee of our State Teachers’ Association have been asked 
again and again to give place on the program for papers and discussions on 
science. Last year there were two short papers on the program, the only ones 
which I call to mind in the last 10 years. I believe that this Academy can exert 
an influence in the direction of bringing about more interest in regard to science 
in the public schools, and we cannot do a more valuable thing to the state, as 
well as to the Academy, in perpetuating it in future years. I would recommend 
that an effort be made to secure a science section in connection with the State 
Teachers’ Association. There is such a section now in the National Association. 
One reason for the lethargy in science in our schools is that there is no require- 
ment made in sciences for admission into our colleges and universities. Colleges 
and universities object to recognizing work in science because inferior work is 
done in the lower schools. Yes, that is true, and will continue to be true so long 
as nothing is required of them. There are many high schools now in this state 
which have extensive courses in languages and mathematics and a mere smatter- 
ing of science. You ask the superintendent why this is so, and he will tell you 
he is preparing pupils for the University. Should the universities and colleges 
require a knowledge of elementary science for admission into their classes, it 
would at once set a standard of proficiency and give an authoritative call 
which would be a wonderful stimulus toward putting science into the pri- 
mary and secondary schools. If it be required of teachers to doa certain kind of 
work in a certain degree of proficiency, these requirements would soon be met. 
It is also claimed by college men that the lower schools cannot do the work 
right, if the teachers had the knowledge, from lack of proper apparatus. I 
maintain that a certain requirement from our universities would bring the 
apparatus needed to do the work. It is my judgment that the work in science 
would soon be done as well in all of the lower schools as in any other subject. 
According to our present system, the very best 15 or 20 years of the student’s 
life is robbed of the subject which is of the most worth in giving him a founda- 
tion for most efficient work, and the result is that most of the young men and 
women who enter our normal schools and colleges neither know how nor care to 
observe. They want to see nature through books. And much of the time allot- 
ted to science in our higher institutions must be taken up in teaching the pupils 
how to observe and making them acquainted with the common things about 
them; while, if this elementary work had been done in the lower schools, the 
time in the university could be used to give a deeper insight into nature and na- 
ture’s laws, in carrying on lines of original investigations such as every student 
should do before he goes out from these institutions. 
Indeed, in many of the higher institutions the course and methods of work 
would suppose a previous training in observation and an acquaintance with much 
of nature and her phenomena. The students go out of these institutions into our 
lower schools, and attempt to teach nature, a thing which they do not know out- 
side of the laboratories. Whoever has not collected insects and plants knows not 
the halo of interest that old lanes and hedgerows can assume. Whena teacher is 
on fire with a subject, he can fire the pupils with interest. And soa teacher that 
knows not nature in the fields is not fitted to teach elementary science in our 
public schools. 
