Januaet 8, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



45 



Starr Jordan, president of Stanford Uni- 

 versity. It was recommended that the 

 following meeting be held in Minneapolis. 

 All the affiliated societies will probably 

 wish to go to Boston, and the meeting is 

 likely to surpass in importance even the 

 present meeting. In the following year 

 the special societies whose membership is 

 chiefly on the Atlantic seaboard will have 

 an opportunity to meet separately. In 

 order that the societies may have infor- 

 mation in planning joint or separate meet- 

 ings, the general committee voted that it 

 looked with favor on convocation week 

 meetings in "Washington, Cleveland and 

 Toronto, following those in Boston and 

 Minneapolis. The council of the British 

 Association has invited members of the 

 association to attend the "Winnipeg meet- 

 ing next August, the officers as honorary 

 members. In the following summer a 

 meeting will probably be held in Honolulu. 



SCIENCE TEACBIN& AS A CAREER'- 

 It is scarcely a serious exaggeration to 

 say that the first thought regarding a 

 teacher which comes to the minds of many 

 estimable people is that of a person who, 

 by virtue of a greater or less assumption of 

 knowledge, is able to occupy a position in 

 which he has frequent long vacations, and 

 in the interim draws a comfortable salary 

 for comparatively short working hours. 

 Such, at least, is the conclusion which may 

 apparently be drawn from the frequency 

 with which these topics are introduced into 

 conversations incident especially to the 



'Address delivered by the retiring chairman of 

 Section C of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, at Baltimore, December, 

 1908. 



making of new acquaintances. But these 

 same persons would many times experience 

 a tinge of regret if their sons should choose 

 to adopt this career, and that not because 

 they definitely believe it to be an un- 

 worthy or inadequate career, but because 

 they understand very little about it. It 

 is, however, not only true that this sup- 

 posedly comfortable profession is not over- 

 crowded, but there is evidence that there is 

 a positive dearth of able young men who 

 have both the aptitude and disposition to 

 become teachers. It seems to me, there- 

 fore, fitting that we who are interested in 

 the advancement of science should spend a 

 few minutes in the consideration of the 

 conditions which confront a young man 

 who is disposed to become a teacher of 

 science, since the maintenance of a corps 

 of competent teachers is of no less interest 

 to us all, practitioners as well as peda- 

 gogues, than are the subjects which they 

 should teach, some of which have been ably 

 discussed in recent addresses. 



It is the more appropriate that this ques- 

 tion should be considered at this time, since 

 certain presumably authoritative data re- 

 garding the compensation of teachers have 

 recently become available, and because the 

 establishment of a section on Chemical 

 Education on the part of the American 

 Chemical Society, the first session of which 

 follows this address, indicates an awaken- 

 ing interest in all that pertains to the edu- 

 cation of the chemist and chemical engi- 

 neer, among which the question of the best 

 means to maintain our supply of capable 

 teachers must assume an important place. 



"What I shall say will apply doubtless 

 most closely to teachers of chemical science 

 in institutions of college grade, because 

 the conditions under which they labor are 

 most familiar to me ; but much that may be 

 said of these teachers is true of those in 

 other sciences which stand in a relation to 

 the arts similar to that of chemistry. A 



