976 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 808 



than really exists. Moreover, a technical 

 process of to-day is a very complicated 

 thing. It is improved every year and we 

 find to our discomfiture, on visiting the 

 factory, that the process we have so care- 

 fully learned from the text-book differs in 

 a hundred details from that actually em- 

 ployed. 



The chemical interpretation of the ordi- 

 nary phenomena of the household is a very 

 interesting matter. Unfortunately many 

 of these interpretations are very complex, 

 others are unknown. Some are simple 

 enough to be comprehended by a beginner, 

 and certain food tests and the like can be 

 taught so that the pupil can go through 

 them in a more or less mechanical fashion. 

 But surely these do not constitute a suitable 

 vehicle for the transmission of that highly 

 organized mass of knowledge and way of 

 thinking which we know as chemistry. The 

 intellectual and material advance that our 

 science has brought to the world has not 

 come from the knowledge of isolated test- 

 tube reactions, but from the brilliant im- 

 aginings of the authors of its great hypoth- 

 eses, from the realizations of its tremendous 

 generalizations, from the perceptions of 

 most deeply hidden relationships among 

 the things that we call matter. If this 

 that we teach our pupils is to bear the name 

 of chemistry, it must give them at least a 

 glimpse of these deeper things. Technolog- 

 ical chemistry and household chemistry 

 have a very proper place in the high-school 

 course, but they should not be over empha- 

 sized. They afford the illustrative material 

 which the good teacher will constantly use 

 to give interest to his work by showing what 

 good the science has brought to mankind. 

 But a course composed almost wholly of 

 such material, as has been proposed, would 

 not be chemistry, and it would probably 

 not be science. There would be an absence 

 of principles, of relationships. A pupil 

 might indeed learn that there exists a 



simple process for the manufacture of soda, 

 but he would not share in any degree the 

 kind of thinking that has made this and a 

 thousand other processes possible. I hold 

 that it is our chief duty to give him this 

 kind of knowledge. 



Coming then to the internal considera- 

 tions which shall help shape our new course 

 of study, we must inquire what high school 

 chemistry should seek to accomplish for the 

 pupil. One way of answering this ques- 

 tion is by asking ourselves what it has done 

 for us as individuals. We know that it 

 has made us broader men and freer human 

 beings, and it is fitting that we should seek 

 to have our pupils attain in some degree 

 this high end. Again, it is certain that one 

 who has been through a good course in 

 chemistry, who has learned the principles 

 of chemical action, and comprehended the 

 great laws that the science has revealed, 

 looks upon the world about him in an alto- 

 gether new way, so much so that with the 

 increase in the general knowledge of sci- 

 ence there is being produced a new type 

 of world mind. Our pupils must be taught 

 so that they shall share in this new world 

 mind. 



THE LABORATORY ASPECT OF THE COURSE 



The course will continue to be based on 

 experiment, the amount of laboratory work 

 being limited only by the physical possi- 

 bilities of the situation. The experiment 

 will pi-ecede the class discussion in order 

 that the pupil may conceive the thing's that 

 he is talking about as realities. Chemical 

 thinking can not go far without these defi- 

 nite conceptions. It requires images of 

 real things, and it is this point of view that 

 should determine the character of our 

 laboratory work. There seems to be con- 

 siderable difference of opinion, if not con- 

 fusion, on this point. 



There is the point of view which assumes 

 that it is the purpose of the experiment to 



