574 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The best proof that the idea is bearing 

 fruit is that teachers are asking for defi- 

 nite instruction on the subject, and a 

 course has been provided for them. The 

 study should be so informal as not to 

 admit of systematic examination. 



Chenrstry Teaching in Grammar 

 and High Schools. At the fourth 

 meeting of the New England Associa- 

 tion of Chemistry Teachers, held in Bos- 

 ton in January, 1899, preliminary re- 

 ports were made on grammar-school and 

 high-school courses in chemistry. The 

 grammar-school course was defined as 

 intended to give its pupils first-hand 

 knowledge of the more obvious and im- 

 portant facts and principles of chemical 

 changes, with emphasis placed on those 

 facts which are illustrative of the 

 changes that are going on all about the 

 pupil in the home and in outdoor Na- 

 ture. While the point of view should be 

 that of Nature study rather than of sci- 

 ence, the selection of material and meth- 

 od of study should be such as to make 

 the course of greatest value to those 

 who are to pursue the subject in higher 



institutions. For high-school study the 

 report insists that, before everything 

 else, the course be intelligible to the 

 pupil. Whatever experiment or work is 

 undertaken, it must be such that the 

 pupil shall be able to understand its aim 

 and the steps in its pursuit, and it must 

 not be too intricate in demonstration or 

 abstruse in application. It should re- 

 quire at least five hours a week, and, if 

 possible, too, of these periods consecu- 

 tive, and should come as late in the cur- 

 riculum as possible, following physics. 

 The general work may be divided into 

 the heads of historical, informational 

 (qualitative and quantitative), and the- 

 oretical, the second division having ordi- 

 narily the larger part of the time. The 

 belief is expressed that only part of the 

 demonstration work should be done by 

 the teacher in the class, but most of it 

 should be performed, as far as practi- 

 cable, by each pupil in the laboratory. 

 Lastly, the report recommends that the 

 humanistic side of the science be made 

 as prominent as possible. Whenever 

 facts in chemistry can be related to hu- 

 man life or activity this should be done. 



MINOR PARAGRAPHS. 



IN a recent report on the educational 

 work of the Passaic (New Jersey) public 

 schools, Superintendent F. E. Spaulding 

 points out one of the worst faults of our 

 present public-school system. " The true 

 function of education is to foster and di- 

 rect the growth of children, not to teach 

 so many pages, rules, facts, or precepts of 

 this subject or of that. And the one ade- 

 quate rule of practice is constantly to 

 meet the growing needs of this and that 

 individual child, not to teach this class 

 of children as a class. From this propo- 

 sition there follows the corollary, which 

 is amply substantiated in practice, that 

 the time, order, method, and extent of 

 presenting any subject can be rightly de- 

 termined only by the interest and capaci- 

 ty of the child for whose benefit it is to 

 be presented, not by the logic and prac- 

 tical importance of the subject itself." 



DR. SIR JAMES GRANT, of Ottawa, 

 has been led, by his studies of the alimen- 

 tary canal in its function of discharging 

 the secretions of the various glands, to a 

 high appreciation of the importance of 

 its operation in connection with the elab- 



orate and complex, nervous system asso- 

 ciated with it. It is reasonable, he be- 

 lieves, to suppose that the activity of 

 these nerves is injuriously affected by 

 noxious influences long before any evi- 

 dence of organic disease appears, and 

 that, hence, want of care in the digestive 

 process can not and does not fail " to 

 bring about results of a most telling 

 chraacter in the very process of sanguini- 

 fication." Believing that irregularities 

 of the digestive process in the alimentary 

 canal are more frequent than is generally 

 supposed, he holds that " the internal 

 sewage of the system " can not be too 

 critically examined with a view of pre- 

 venting the ill effect of toxic accumula- 

 tions upon the nerve centers. " That 

 the recently discovered neurones," he 

 adds, " play an important part in the 

 vitalizing of nerve energy is a reasonable 

 deduction. A path is now open in which 

 life, under ordinary circumstances, may 

 be prolonged, provided no organic disease 

 is present." 



THE courses in biology in the Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania have been arranged 



