SCIENCES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL i6i 



year, variations from wliich showed a tendency to carry it over to the 

 last year. 



No recommendation of the committee has been more generally 

 observed in practise than the one placing botany and zoology in the 

 second year. However, these two subjects, at first closely associated, 

 show an unmistakable drift from their moorings, botany moving down- 

 ward toward the first year, as shown in Miss Weckel's investigations, 

 and zoology moving toward the third year or being eliminated. Botany 

 is subjected to two opposing influences, which will probably divide it 

 into two distinct portions.. The introduction of agriculture below the 

 high school is already resulting in the injection of much elementary 

 botany into the elementary grades, while the leading botanists insist 

 on giving high school botany a character that would move it in the 

 other direction. The migration of zoology to the third and fourth 

 years, to be followed by physiology, as located by the Committee of Ten, 

 would make possible an evolutionary treatment of the combined subject 

 that is much to be desired. 



The recommendation of the committee regarding physics and chem- 

 istry has not been respected. It will be recalled that the conference to 

 whom the committee assigned those subjects recommended a placement 

 identical with the one now prevailing; but owing to their division of 

 physical geography into an elementary and an advanced portion, the 

 committee reversed that order so that physics might precede and pre- 

 pare for the advanced work in physical geography. The reason for this 

 reversal not proving well founded, the recommendation of the confer- 

 ence should prevail. This would agree with the present evident tend- 

 ency to relieve the physics diflBculty by putting its elementary phases 

 into a first-year science course and leaving the more technical and 

 quantitative treatment for the last year of the course. 



The proverbial inertia of school curricula makes unsafe any laissez 

 faire method of establishing the sequence of high school sciences. But 

 it must not be thought that the present sequence is to any considerable 

 extent the result of neglect. What then are the influences that have 

 established this order of treatment? 



Doubtless authoritative recommendation of competent committees 

 have been a strong influence. Also, the accrediting system of the col- 

 leges and universities, by requiring a certain character of work offered 

 in admission, have indirectly determined its location in the course. 

 And an increasing complexity and supposed dependence of subjects has 

 been a component of the final result. The tendency to place general 

 and prescribed courses before special and elective courses has been a 

 strong influence. Other temporary causes are the supply and demand 

 of scholarship in high school teachers and their preparation for the 



