NOVEMBEE. 1, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



589 



Chart I. gives graphieally the history of the 

 decline in scientific studies as compared with 

 humanistic, from 1900 to 1906. It was acci- 

 dentally omitted from its proper place as 

 illustrating- a previous article.^ Besides show- 



ing this decline in a striking way, the dotted 

 curves show also the facts about the proportion 

 of secondary students to population, and the 

 proportion of graduates and college prepara- 

 tory students to the whole mass of students. 

 The points marked I., II., etc., at the left, 



^Science, 35, p. 94, 1912: "Is Science Eeally 

 Unpopular in High Schools?" 



indicate the approximate proportions of sec- 

 ondary students in the first, second, etc., years 

 of the course. The decline of science indi- 

 cated up to 1906 is continued in 1910, though 

 not plotted. 



Chart II. is for the most part self explana- 

 tory. It shows again the facts about popula- 

 tion, graduates and college preparatory stu- 

 dents, and adds data about some other inter- 

 esting relations. The highest curve of all 

 shows the extent to which public high schools 

 are monopolizing the work of secondary edu- 

 cation. The curve for per cent, of population 

 in the common schools shows that, contrary 

 to the tendency in secondary education, this 

 ratio tends to diminish, though not varying 

 much from 20 per cent. But the group of 

 curves relating to urban high schools and 

 urban population develops a fact of consid- 

 erable interest. The two dotted curves are 

 taken from census data; the heavy curve be- 

 tween them is partly interpolated. They give 

 the proportion of urban to total population. 

 The curve above them shows what proportion 

 of the high-school population attends school 

 in places of 8,000 or more. This latter pro- 

 portion has increased irregularly from about 

 44 per cent, in 1897 to a little over 47 per 

 cent, in 1910. This is clearly seen to be less 

 than the rate of increase of iirban population, 

 so that in some fifteen years the cities of 8,000 

 or over will have only their share of the high- 

 school population — ^the country high schools 

 are catching up to the city. Of course the 

 drift toward industrial education will cer- 

 tainly largely modify our classifications in 

 the next decade ; but in what way can not now 

 be concluded. 



Chart III. shows to what extent we may 

 find local influences hidden under general 

 averages. The data are taken from the re- 

 port for 1910. The black dots are points 

 representing conditions in the old slave states ; 

 the crosses stand for the New England states 

 — no longer Yanhee states. The dotted lines 

 represent averages for the United States. The 

 plotted points group themselves so as to show, 

 as no table could, that where the number of 

 secondary students per thousand of population 



