72 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



other science seeking space in the already overcrowded 

 curriculum. Being thus capable of so many different 

 interpretations, it has been an ideal topic for argument, 

 for difference of opinion, and warfare between the friends 

 of science education, and so another civil war has been in 

 progress for the past five or six years. 



Along with general science came the Project Method, 

 and this to most of us was at least a vague and indefinite 

 stranger, and possible enemy in the camp. We made 

 urgent demands for his credentials but nothing in the 

 form of a satisfactory definition, or even a good illustra- 

 tion was forthcoming, and so we were against him. 



I believe that nearly all of the partizans on both sides in 

 these internal wars among science teachers are earnestly 

 and honestly seeking to help the cause of science educa- 

 tion, and I believe that the wars themselves usually arise 

 out of the shortcomings of science teachings, but it is 

 usually the case that the reforms needed are at first felt, 

 rather than seen clearly, and so it seems almost necessary 

 that the issues be threshed out by a period of dis- 

 cussion and experiment. But the most unfortunate thing 

 about such a method of progress, is the tendency of the 

 partizans to criticize so unmercifully and often so un- 

 justly, the things that are being done in the line of science 

 education. The most severe and unjust criticism that I 

 have ever heard of botany, for example, as a high school 

 subject, has not come, as one might expect, from some 

 teacher of the humanities, but rather from some science 

 teacher, usually a physicist, or a geologist, who has 

 espoused the cause of general science. Such a person 

 usually takes up the botany of twenty or forty years ago, 

 when he was in college, and shows what a miserable thing 

 it is as a preparation for life in these modern times, and 

 then tries to show by contrast what a superior thing this 

 brand new modern general science is. If we were never 

 heard by anyone but ourselves, this would not be so serious, 

 but unfortunately, we have been influencing a lot of inno- 

 cent bystanders. The non-scientific administrator, who is 

 perplexed by the numerous sciences from which he must 

 choose his science curriculum, and who gets such conflict- 

 ing advice from science educators, finds plenty of argu- 

 ment to support him in giving science little space, in the 



