Problems of Instruction in tlie Secondary School 171 



the work, and to see that it is real, all these are in a degree 

 dependent on the teacher rather than on the subject, and are 

 difficulties which the same teachers would find with almost any 

 science study. 



The Equipment Problem 



The complaint of insufficient apparatus has less grounds to 

 rest on than would a similar complaint urged for almost any 

 other science, for in no other study than agriculture do home- 

 found appliances come so nearly equalling bought apparatus in 

 serviceableness. Tin cans, perforated and unperforated, paint 

 pails, soup plates, alcohol lamps made of ketchup bottles or 

 even shoe-blacking boxes, are very serviceable. In fact tin cans 

 do better for some experiments than crockery. Lamp chimneys 

 cost little, family scales and spring balances are inexpensive, 

 but chemical thermometers cost more than the ordinary types. 

 With the exception of a Babcock milk tester, four or five dollars 

 should provide all the apparatus needed in a small high school, 

 in addition to what can be made, to perform most of the ex- 

 periments which the younger high-school pupils can understand. 

 Much of this apparatus should be in the equipment for physics 

 or chemistry if the school offers to teach those subjects at all.'' 

 In the schools visited there was too much evidence of money 

 invested in showy but almost useless airpumps and static elec- 

 trical machines while the school suffered from a dearth of simple 

 material or of duplicates of common apparatus necessary to 

 carry on individual laboratory work. The frictional electric 

 machine does not illustrate anything of sufficient commercial 

 importance to justify its cost. 



One can well sympathize, however, with those teachers who 

 feel the lack of room, who lack window sills to set plants in, 

 and plain tables on which to spread out corn ears and simple 

 seed testers, or who cannot find a convenient comer in which 

 to keep the soil used for experiments. 



' Attention is called in the bibliography to a number of reports and 

 bulletins containing lists of apparatus suitable for agricultural courses 

 in high schools of various standards. 



