June 24, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



979 



It is more important he should know that 

 the process is only commercially profitable 

 because the ammonia is recovered, thus get- 

 ting hold of the principle of the utilization 

 of by-products, than that he should know 

 the factory terms for the machinery and 

 operations. A good course in manufac- 

 turing equipment, in which different types 

 of furnaces, towers and the like were 

 grouped and compared might be of great 

 practical and educational importance. But 

 isolated bits of such information have no 

 such value. 



Our high-school chemistry might well 

 include a treatment of more organic com- 

 pounds than it has in the past. This 

 knowledge can readily be acquired by ref- 

 erence to inorganic types. So many of the 

 simpler derivatives of the hydrocarbons 

 are things of every-day life that in order 

 to include them we can afford to sacrifice 

 some of the things of the traditional ele- 

 mentary course. The pupil needs, more- 

 over, some intimation of the character and 

 extent of the organic branch of the science. 



In conclusion, the speaker feels that the 

 best hope for the improvement of high 

 school chemistry lies in discussions of the 

 kind we are engaged in this morning. The 

 experimental end of our work has been so 

 new and interesting that much of our time 

 has been spent on these matters. But the 

 time is at hand when a reconsideration of 

 the course as a whole in its general rela- 

 tions would be of benefit to the teaching of 

 the elementary science. 



Jesse E. Whitsit 

 De Witt Clinton High School, 

 New Yoek City 



"CHEMISTRY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS^ 



It is not necessary in a gathering such 

 as this to recount the stages in the history 



' Presented at the second decennial celebration 

 of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., September 

 16, 1909. 



of chemistry teaching in secondary schools 

 —how, from the purely descriptive nat- 

 ural philosophy of the early college we 

 finally essayed the teaching of chemistry 

 and physics as sciences; how the miscel- 

 laneous encyclopedic instruction has been 

 replaced by courses, designed, in these 

 latter days, to develop power for the pupil 

 rather than to impart knowledge. 



The changes in content and method of 

 formal secondary-school instruction have 

 been brought about by the colleges; by 

 advice, by supplying the teachers and 

 most drastically, by the requirements for 

 admission. While the bulk of the class 

 might pass from the school and not be 

 heard from again, the failure of a pupil 

 to pass the college examination is quickly 

 brought home to the teacher, so that the 

 entrance examinations have become the 

 standard of the school. 



During the last fifteen years four sylla- 

 buses have been published which have de- 

 cidedly affected the teaching of chemistry 

 in schools ; in 1894 that of the Committee 

 of Ten, descriptive and general; in 1898 

 a Harvard syllabus, largely quantitative 

 and scientific in method; in 1900, the 

 syllabus of the College Entrance Exami- 

 nation Board, a plan for a course I hesi- 

 tate to classify; in 1905, the last revision 

 of the syllabus of the New York Depart- 

 ment of Education, a historico-systematic 

 course. 



There is almost nothing in common to 

 these four courses, and although the Col- 

 lege Entrance Examination Board main- 

 tains and strengthens its hold upon the 

 schools it has never, fortunately for the 

 pupils, conducted its chemistry examina- 

 tion in accordance with its syllabus. 



If we examine the texts to find what is 

 being taught in high schools we find the 

 chemistry text-books to be descriptive or 

 theoretical; very few have successfully 



