790 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 779 



made its debut among the subjects re- 

 quired for admission to college. 



We can get a very good idea of what 

 was taught under the name of physics by 

 examining some of the books used for 

 texts like Comstock's or Wells's "Natural 

 Philosophy," or Eolfe and Gillett's 

 "Handbook of Natural Philosophy." 

 This latter work was the one specified for 

 use in preparing for the entrance examina- 

 tion at Harvard, so we will use it for pur- 

 poses of comparison. 



The Rolfe and Gillett contains two hun- 

 dred and thirty pages, exclusive of the 

 appendix which was not required. The 

 modern texts, Millikan and Gale, Adams, 

 Mann and Twiss, contain, respectively, 482, 

 478 and 456 pages; on the average, an in- 

 crease of over 100 per cent. In like man- 

 ner the number of numbered paragraphs 

 in the required portion of the Rolfe and 

 Gillett is 351; that in the modern texts 

 just mentioned is 614, 560 and 416, re- 

 spectively, an average increase of about 

 50 per cent. It thus appears that the 

 amount of subject matter that has been 

 crowded into the course has been very ma- 

 terially increased. It is a noteworthy fact, 

 however, that this increase consists in the 

 addition of new topics rather than in the 

 change of old ones for new, i. e., the old 

 course given in 1876 contained only the 

 necessary elements of any course, because 

 modern developments have failed to dis- 

 place them. 



The first great change that has taken 

 place since physics became a college en- 

 trance subject has been this great increase 

 in number of topics considered necessary 

 for the course. The present course is ac- 

 knowledged on all sides to be badly over- 

 crowded. Can any teacher make twenty 

 or more pupils master or even learn thor- 

 oughly and clearly understand 614 num- 

 bered paragraphs, each containing, by 



reason of being numbered, a new idea or 

 principle, in 180 forty-minute periods? 

 This means just eleven minutes and 43.6 

 seconds to a paragraph— and this interval 

 must include all the discussion, problems, 

 experimental demonstrations, quizzes and 

 laboratory work. Is it a wonder that 

 teachers who attempt this do not succeed? 

 And this without reference to the content 

 of the paragraphs. Under .such conditions 

 it is far less remarkable that 70 per cent, 

 of the applicants fail on the written exami- 

 nation of the College Entrance Board than 

 it is that 30 per cent. pass. 



Are the college entrance requirements 

 responsible for this overcrowding of the 

 time allotted to the course ? This is a lead- 

 ing question and it may be answered by 

 either yes or no, according to the interpre- 

 tation put on it. If you treat it as a legal 

 question, as a question of whether "it is 

 so stated in the deed" or not, the answer 

 will be an unequivocal no. The early 

 Harvard requirements and the definition 

 framed by the National Educational As- 

 sociation and that is.sued by the College 

 Examination Board have never contained 

 any syllabus of topics required. Hence 

 this superabundance of topics is not 

 written in the deed and the college re- 

 quirements are not to blame. There is one 

 exception to this statement and that is 

 New Tork University, which has issued a 

 syllabus of required topics. This syllabus 

 is a model of logical arrangement, but is 

 at least twice as long as any syllabus for a 

 one-year course in physics should be. 



Well, then, if the college requirements 

 are "not guilty" in the documentary sense, 

 what has been the source of the conges- 

 tion? It is, of course, impossible to lay 

 aU the blame on any one thing, because the 

 conditions under which this overcrowding 

 has developed have been so complex. All 

 will agree, however, that the first cause is 



