68 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIBNCH 
the other sciences, if any one has more universal application to 
human welfare than the other sciences, that science is univers- 
ally acknowledged to be physics. A fair knowledge of the 
fundamental facts of physics is important to the farmer, to the 
industrial trade worker, and to the housewife in the modern 
home but is no less important as part of the equipment of the 
citizen for national, state and municipal government is nowa- 
days largely a matter of applied science. I conceive it to be a 
part of the work of every high school to give something like an 
adequate training, not only in physics, but also in all the 
fundamental sciences to all the pupils in that high school. 
Somehow, in some manner, we must so modify our science 
instruction so that it will appeal to school authorities as being 
of vital importance; science must be made to appeal to the 
pupils much more strongly than it appeals to them today. Only 
in this way can we hope to check the declining percentage en- 
rollment in the sciences in our public high schools. 
Science in the high school is today in a precarious condition. 
The seriousness of the situation is not easily overstated. This 
Academy of Science can certainly, it seems to me, do no better 
work in behalf of science than to study the high school situa- 
tion. We should realize that the public high school is the chief 
medium for the dissemination of the fruits of scientific re- 
search and the chief source of future research workers. And 
above all this Academy should take a stand squarely upon the 
proposition that the first duty of the public high school is to 
train up our boys and girls into highly intelligent, public 
spirited citizens, with lofty social ideals and clear-cut social 
consciences that they may form the bulwark of democracy. — 
Only secondarily shall our public high school be devoted to the 
task of producing skilled artesans. 
