PAPERS OX HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE 417 



HOW CAN WE HUMANIZE HIGH SCHOOL 

 CHEMISTRY I 



Albax Fiedler, East High School, Aurora 

 Professor Louis Sherman Davis says, "Interest in a 

 science is proportional to the immediate bearing which 

 its subject matter has upon the life of the student. Hence 

 the matter and process with which chemistry deals 

 should touch the life of the student as closely as pos- 

 sible." It would seem necessary, then, that the subject 

 be kept in close contact with everyday life and that the 

 work be made as practical as possible. With the great 

 number of practical applications today, the danger is 

 apt to be too great a digression into highly attractive 

 subject matter which will interfere with the systematic 

 teaching of the principles involved. The object of this 

 paper is to summarize briefly a few devices which have 

 been used successfully by the writer to teach the prin- 

 ciple and fact with reference to their application. 



Smith 1 says, "When a generalization has been stated 

 it will find immediate application." He gives us several 

 examples of application. The law of conservation of 

 matter is illustrated by the raising of the same crop on 

 the same piece of land year after year. In the absence 

 of the law of definite proportion we could not. regulate 

 the heating of our houses because the rate of combustion 

 would not depend upon the supply of oxygen. Similar 

 illustrations of almost all the generalizations of chem- 

 istry may be found. 



Visits to factories and industrial plants often furnish 

 an opportunity to point out to the pupil an application 

 of a principle or fact noted in the class room. By means 

 of these visits he should be made to realize that chemical 

 knowledge is practical and to see that there is a definite 

 relation between the test tubes of the laboratory and the 

 vats of the factory. To be really profitable, such ex- 

 cursions must be made with a definite plan covering the 

 things to be seen. Many questions will be suggested by 

 what has been seen. So the first recitation after an ex- 

 cursion should be devoted to answering these and to as- 

 signing further study based on these observations. The 



1 Smith & Hall. pp. 129, 130. 



