62 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
significance of scientific research is not revealed to and appre- 
ciated by the rising generation there will certainly be fewer 
research workers in the next generation. Also, if the masses 
come to regard science instruction in our public schools as of 
little importance, much of the service which research in science 
might render humanity will be lost. It is my purpose to point 
out the fact that at the present moment there is great danger 
that such an attitude towards science may become prevalent 
not only among the masses but even that the authorities in 
charge of our public schools may also assume that attitude. 
This Academy of Science cannot afford to be indifferent regard- 
ing the position in which science finds itself today in our public 
schools. The attitude of the nation towards science in the 
years to come will largely be determined by the attitude of our 
public schools towards science tomorrow. 
THE DECLINE OF PHYSICS IN OUR PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS 
During the past twenty years there has been a constant 
decline in the percentage of students in our public high schools 
who enroll in physics classes. In the United States as a whole, 
according to the reports of the Commissioner of Education, 
the percentages of high school students who enrolled in physics 
has declined from 19.04 per cent. in 1900 to 14.23 per cent. in 
1915, a decline in fifteen years of 25 per cent. In Illinois, dur- 
ing the same fifteen years, the percentage enrollment has 
declined form 17.40 per cent. to 12.73 per cent., a decline of 
nearly 27 per cent. While this decline in percentage enroll- 
ment has been vastly less marked in physics than it has been in 
some of the other high school science subjects it has been suf- 
ficiently great to cause us to pause and seriously reflect upon 
its cause and its significance. It should be noted that this 
decline in the percentage of high school students who enroll in 
physics has taken place during a period when the control of 
our physical environment was rapidly increasing as a factor in 
our national development. That the decline in percentage 
enrollment other high-school science subjects is still greater is 
no consolation to the physicist, but rather an added source of 
alarm. That the decline in percentage enrollment in physics 
was only between 3 per cent. and 4 per cent, during the five 
years from 1910 to 1915 affords some consolation. One can not 
