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SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 65 
place “trade mathematics, trade science, and trade drawing 
from the standpoint of methods of teaching and teachable con- 
tent of the trades”. 
In this statement we have a view of the outlook for high- 
school science under the provisions of the Smith-Hughes Act. 
This law as I understand it has the approval of Governor 
Lowden and of the Department of Public Instruction. Three 
weeks ago today the Schoolmasters’ Club of Illinois was in ses- 
sion at Decatur. As is well known that organization is repre- 
sentative of the school administrative forces of the state. The 
topic under discussion at both sessions was the Smith-Hughes 
Act. Its provisions were explained by those who will have its 
administration in charge. Not a single superintendent present 
raised his voice to ask whether it is to be the chief function of 
the public school to give technical training to boys in agricul- 
ture and the industrial trades and to girls in domestic economy. 
On the contrary, to all appearances, it was a scramble on the 
part of superintendents to learn the exact conditions with 
which their schools must comply in order that they may share 
in the distribution of federal funds. 
I have long felt that the physics taught in our public high 
schools has not been well adapted to the needs of the masses. I 
have long felt that the decline in the percentage of students 
enrolled in physics was largely due to that fact. From long 
experience with students coming from our public high schools I 
speak with positive certainty when I say that physics as 
usually taught in the high school is both distasteful and unin- 
teresting to a majority of high-school students, especially the 
girls. It does not appeal to them as worth the effort required 
to secure the passing grade. It has been, to a large extent, a 
misfit in the curriculum if it is the purpose of the public school 
to develop the boy or girl by natural and psychological instrue- 
tion into men and women who shall appreciate science and 
shall be able to apply its principles to their own environment. 
JT have long felt that not only physics but all high-school science 
needs reorganization. If high-school science is to be saved, in 
my judgment it must be reorganized and adapted more closely 
to the immediate appreciation and the ultimate needs of the 
masses. But it also seems to me that the present tendencies 
