i6o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



year, 1.5 if offered in the second, 2.5 in the third and 3.5 in the fourth 

 year. For each subject, the value was taken as determined by the 

 printed course, and the sum of the twenty-one values divided by twenty- 

 one to find the average. Thus should each offer a particular science in 

 the first year, the average would be a value of .5; but should any offer 

 it at a later date the effect would be to raise that value an amount 

 agreeable to the year in which found, subject to the reduction due to 

 averaging. The averages thus obtained for the six sciences susceptible 

 to this treatment were as follows: 



Physical geography 75 Zoology 1 .85 



Physiology 94 Chemistry 2.95 



Botany 1.45 Physics 3.00 



The order given in the table is the prevailing order in these schools, 

 the chief value of the table being to show the relative, rather than the 

 actual positions. For it is apparent that the natural tendency to vary 

 is restricted within the limits and 4, the beginning and close of the 

 high school course, with the result that reducing a science from the 

 high school into the grades inequitably destroys its influence on the 

 average, and that intermediate values may result from averaging 

 extremes as well as means, while all averages tend unduly toward the 

 middle value. 



The figures should also be interpreted in the light of a statute 

 requiring physiology to be taught in the first year of the high school, 

 and another which requires geography and physiology of all candidates 

 for teachers' certificates, all the remaining sciences but chemistry being 

 required for the first grade certificate. 



In an investigation of 48 high schools " principally in the Middle 

 West," Miss Ada L. WeckeP obtained data which give almost the 

 same sequence, though not the same values for these subjects, the only 

 difference being that physiology, probably because it is not so firmly 

 bound in place by statute in other states as in Illinois, has migrated to 

 a position between botany and zoology. Mr. E. E. Ramsey^ in a sim- 

 ilar investigation of the high schools of Indiana and other states of the 

 Middle West gets corroborative results. 



The recommendation of the Committee of Ten concerning geog- 

 raphy was that the more elementary portions constitute the " physical 

 geography " of the first year, while the more technical portions be 

 carried over to the last of the course. Though no school was found to 

 divide the subject for an elementary and an advanced treatment they 

 generally agree with the recommendation by placing it in the first 



' School Science, May, 1911. 



* School Science, December, 1911. 



