IS 



ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



a realization of the limitations that are necessarily inherent in 

 the teaching of special sciences to young people. Experi- 

 ence is teaching us that the study of scientific agriculture and 

 household economics cannot be made particularly stimulating 

 or permanently helpful unless there is a basis of the physical 

 sciences, taught as such, and not as mere illustrations of some 

 special science. This means, of course, that the many children 

 who leave school early in the course cannot get technical agri- 

 culture and domestic science. But this cannot be helped. The 

 problem is the old one of the development of courses. We 

 want all children to have American history, but in the nature 

 of things little history can be given, even in a simple way, un- 

 til the child is ready for it. How little that is, all of us are 

 too painfully aware. We want all college students to have 

 some philosophy, but we cannot give it with any effect be- 

 fore history, science and mathematics have had an opportunity 

 to do their enlarging work. So it is with agriculture and 

 domestic science, subjects which, more than other studies, 

 bring about the application of science to daily life. Each gen- 

 eration gives into the hand of the young agriculturist the use 

 and the care of his soil. The schools cannot help him much 

 if they do not let him see the science upon which permanent 

 agriculture rests, but teach him only the jargon of a trade. 

 Likewise with domestic science. We cannot impart a much 

 higher conception of housekeeping and homemaking if we 

 do not give the deeper, fundamental view that comes from a 

 speaking acquaintance, at least, with chemistry and physics, 

 and I may add, with biology. 



This brings us to a consideration of the position of physics 

 and chemistry in the high school course. As you know, these 

 sciences are usually taught in the last two years. As a result, 

 the agriculture and domestic science courses that come in the 

 earlier years do not have any foundational work in the phys- 

 ical science. Evidently, then, the school must either put chem- 

 istry and physics into the first years of the high school, or it 

 must offer, in these first years, an elementary physical science 

 that shall serve as a basis for agriculture and domestic science, 

 and for biology as well. This report of mine may be more of 

 a prophecy than a chronicle, and a statement of what should 

 be rather than of what is, but it seems to me that the condi- 

 tions of modern life will compel us to put two kinds of phys- 

 ico-chemical science into the high school. One of these will 

 be a course that comes early, is elementary, dispenses with 

 theory and equation, and aims to open the student's eyes, to 

 give him a vocabulary, and to set him into connection with 



