PREFACE 



Science instruction in the first year of the high school has 

 presented one of the most serious problems in secondary- 

 school work. First-year pupils usually do not possess a large 

 fund of information about the common phenomena of nature, 

 or they may not attempt a scientific interpretation of these 

 phenomena. This lack hi abundant, concrete, and rationalized 

 experience has made it extremely difficult to secure the desired 

 results from the first science course through presentation of 

 any one of the differentiated sciences. Experiments have been 

 under way in different parts of the United States for several 

 years with the purpose of securing an organization of science 

 materials and a method of presentation which shall prove 

 more educative. It has been the object of these experiments 

 to develop a more usable .fund of knowledge about common 

 things and a more scientific attitude in interpreting common 

 problems, and to discover and to utilize interest and ability 

 in such ways that more effective and more profitable work 

 may thereafter be done in the differentiated sciences. These 

 experiments have shown uniformity in their attempt to use 

 the point of view of the relatively uninformed pupil, and 

 while they have followed several lines of effort, in the main 

 they have come to use a similar body of knowledge. 



The course presented in this book is the result of six years 

 of experiment with a number of pupils, averaging about one 

 hundred per year. During this time several persons have as- 

 sisted in teaching the course and have made contributions to it. 

 Teachers of subjects other than science, and particularly the 

 administrative officers who are studying the efficiency of the 

 whole high-school curriculum, have been constant observers and 



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