182 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
best he can. If the speaker has seemed to any to be spending 
too much time in criticizing the existing order, let such take 
note that the criticism is not intended to be carping, but has a 
constructive reason for its justification. For the imaginary, 
yet real, picture drawn in earlier paragraphs of this paper has 
its background in statistics. From an article by Professor 
Carl Hartman in School Science and Mathematics for the cur- 
rent month (February, 1917) it appears that 13 per cent of 
the teachers of Texas teach one or two subjects; 22 per cent 
teach all the science offered; 20 per cent teach all the science 
and all the mathematics, and 50 per cent teach all the science 
and at least one other subject. 
These figures are not peculiar to Texas; they only corrob- 
orate results obtained two years ago for Illinois. Moreover, 
they show conclusively that there are practically no science 
specialists in the high schools. If we wish to seek an improve- 
ment in the quality of the teaching done, we must go back of 
the teacher to the public that takes advantage of his inexperi- 
ience to pay him a small salary, and above all we must go back 
to the college or university that prepares the teacher for his 
profession. In this connection Dr. Hartman observes that 
“the universities and colleges are, in the main, failing to take 
advantage of their opportunity of training teachers for these 
schools, for the reason that they tend to train specialists 
rather than high school teachers of science.” 
This last observation brings us directly to the subject of the 
paper. What can the college contribute to science teaching in 
the high school? It can, in the first place, recognize the prob- 
lem. Here, in an organization devoted to all science, we can 
See it more clearly, perhaps, than in the college faculties from 
which we come. The self-evident remedy, if experience and 
reason teach us anything, is that the college and the under- 
graduate departments of the university must adapt a part of 
their instruction in science to the training of their graduates 
tu be teachers of science rather than teachers of a science. 
But how can this be done? One way that suggests itself is 
that the college can expect those of its students who have any 
idea of teaching to take elementary courses in several sciences 
rather than to specialize in one. This will break the hearts of 
some instructors in advanced courses, but these may have to 
stand aside. 
