356 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 949 



This method of teaching was dominant 

 in physics courses from about 1890 to 1905. 

 During this period physics justly became 

 one of the most unpopular subjects in the 

 high-school curriculum. Since 1905 its in- 

 fluence has rapidly declined for two rea- 

 sons : namely, first, it overreached itself by 

 so increasing the number of topics included 

 in the course that it became impossible for 

 the pupils to make even a faint pretense of 

 memorizing them all ; and second, the phys- 

 ics teachers themselves came to realize its 

 inadequacy and arose in revolt and over- 

 threw it. 



The chief reasons for its inadequacy were 

 these: (1) It gave no unity to the course, 

 since it failed to group the topics about the 

 great principles of physics but contented 

 itself with the superficial classification of 

 subjects under the heads mechanics, heat, 

 and so on. On this account, it gave little 

 chance for the repetition which is so neces- 

 sary for the successful mastery of a subject. 

 It also furnished little perspective among 

 the large range of topics treated. Artesian 

 wells seemed to the learner as important as 

 the principle of action and reaction. (2) 

 It took slight account of the daily lives of 

 the pupils. Physics was a "disciplinary" 

 subject, forsooth, like mathematics and 

 Latin, and the more distasteful it was to 

 the pupils the greater the benefit derived 

 , from it. (3) It conceived the mission of 

 physics to be didactic — to teach the pupils 

 the last word on each topic — rather than to 

 help them to solve problems of their own 

 making. Principles and facts were merely 

 stated, explained, illustrated with strange 

 experiments, and applied to iitterly ab- 

 stract problems like finding the number of 

 dynes that would give a mass of ten grams 

 an acceleration of ten centimeters per sec- 

 ond. On this account it failed to appeal to 

 the pupils, so that they were not motivated 

 to act on their own initiatives. 



Fortunately for the children, this en- 

 cyclopedic philosophy has been, as stated, 

 rapidly declining in influence since about 

 1905. There are at present two other phi- 

 losophies, very different from each other, 

 which are striving to replace it. The phys- 

 ics teacher must choose between these two, 

 since he can not adopt both. The first of 

 these is not so very different from the older 

 one. Its motto may be expressed in the 

 words: "The first course should give the 

 pupils a general survey of the whole field 

 of physics." In accordance with this 

 motto, it advocates including in the first 

 course something of everything, thereby 

 retaining the old fallacy of too many topics. 

 It, however, seeks to unify the topics by 

 stringing them on the large theories and 

 hypotheses of physics. Thus, the pressure 

 of gases, evaporation, expansion by heat 

 and electrolysis are not isolated phenom- 

 ena, but are nothing but the results which 

 the normal actions of molecules and atoms 

 would, of course, produce. The phenomena 

 of light do not consist of the familiar facts 

 of vision, but are evidently and simply the 

 effects which any one would expect electro- 

 magnetic undulations in an imponderable 

 luminiferous ether to produce. The pupils 

 need not learn clearly and definitely what 

 light actually does in their daily lives, but 

 rather must master the mechanisms which 

 genial physicists have constructed to aid 

 them in picturing how these effects might 

 be brought about. 



In this method the daily lives of the 

 pupils plays a relatively subordinate part. 

 Familiar experiences are introduced after 

 the clever mechanisms of the wily physi- 

 cists have been duly set forth. For ex- 

 ample, all matter consists of molecules in 

 motion. When a dish of water stands on 

 the table, the molecules of water under the 

 surface are more crowded together than 

 those above the surface. At the surface 



