Problems of Instruction in the Secondary School 1 6 1 



being in the course at all. Of course this is rather opposed 

 to the so-called " cultural " and " disciplinary " views of edu- 

 cation, views that the scientists seem strongly opposed to allow- 

 ing the classicists to entertain all to themselves. 



It is a fact of great significance that a number of high schools 

 that have come directly under personal notice in this study 

 have thrown out the subject of botany altogether (so far as 

 one could tell by their statements) and have substituted agri- 

 culture, on the ground that neither the students nor patrons 

 saw any sense in teaching botany but did recognize the value 

 of scientific agriculture, especially when they saw results. They 

 discarded a book using the name botany only to substitute for 

 it an " agriculture " that treated of the structure of the flower, 

 the method of pollination, the effect of cross-pollination of dif- 

 ferent strains of corn, wath plans for field work to be done 

 by the pupils at home on " corn breeding." There can be no 

 doubt that this spreading tendency noticeable in small high schools 

 is a protest against the formalism into which botany, in com- 

 pany with physics, has fallen. The botanists have only them- 

 selves to blame for the widespread substitution of a body of 

 knowledge, poorly digested as yet, for a wholesome and scholarly 

 kind of science work, because the influence of these leaders (as 

 they should be) has been so largely for the " pure science," 

 botany and so little for the kind that touches the life of the 

 pupil and the interests of the community. 



The exponents of the " new physics," the " new botany," etc., 

 maintain that these subjects should come closer to the outside 

 interests of the pupils and patrons of the school, and that con- 

 sequently the sciences now in the curriculum can and should 

 be so taught as to satisfy all demands for agricultural instruc- 

 tion that may legitimately be made upon the average public high 

 school. But most of the good teachers of science are in the 

 city schools. They find that it keeps them rather busy to bring 

 the steel industry, baking powder manufacturing, and landscaoe 

 gardening into their schools. The less efficient science teachers 

 are in the one-, two-, and three-teacher high schools, and their 

 texts say nothing about hydraulic rams, application of force to 

 different parts of a plow beam clevis, the composition of fer- 



