SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 809 



seventy per cent, of the candidates fail to 

 answer four correctly. Perhaps some of 

 the colleges that examine entering students 

 in physics can furnish more encouraging 

 figures on this matter. So Section L is 

 prone to conclude that the method pre- 

 scribed by the colleges is failing to meet 

 the expectations of the colleges as mani- 

 fested in their examinations. Either the 

 method or the examinations or both must 

 be a misfit. 



Even Section B is now half persuaded 

 that this is so. But the blame is laid on 

 the poor teacher who has been working his 

 best to do faithfully what he was told to 

 do and not on the college-born and bred 

 specifications of the course nor on the ex- 

 aminations. As a cure it is urged that we 

 need better prepared teachers, better labo- 

 ratory facilities, better apparatus, and an 

 attendant who is mechanically inclined, so 

 that the teacher may have more leisure. 

 We are told that physics teachers should 

 have taken an M.A. in physics, should 

 know some calculus and some chemistrj^: 

 but not a word is said about knowing boys, 

 understanding schools and having some 

 idea of what a problem in education looks 

 like and of how to go about to solve it — 

 in a word, about having better teachers. 



Section L agrees to the desirability of 

 all the good things suggested by its col- 

 leagues B. But it is very certain that the 

 trouble does not lie so much with the 

 teacher and his apparatus as it does with 

 the sort of a thing he is told to do, and the 

 way in which the specifications were made 

 and are administered. This conclusion is 

 based on the fact that the course has been 

 designed after a study of logical order, 

 scientific rigor and the possible needs of 

 physicists, and not after a scientific study 

 of high school pupils and their needs and 

 mental possibilities. No such study of 

 pupils has, so far as I know, been made in 



America, excepting by President G. Stan- 

 ley Hall; and, although everybody knows 

 what his conclusions are, they have not yet 

 received the attention that is due them. 

 In a few cases President Hall's suggestions 

 have been put into practise wiVa. great suc- 

 cess, but the colleges have refused to give 

 entrance credit for this most creditable 

 work, thereby discouraging all but the 

 bravest teachers from trying it. 



Under the conditions that exist in the 

 country to-day, the suggestion that better 

 apparatus and teachers who know more 

 physics are needed does not begin to solve 

 the problem. The statistics of the bureau 

 of education show that there are in the 

 country in towns having more than 8,000 

 inhabitants but 800 high schools. These 

 schools average 17 teachers each, and have 

 365,000 pupils. In the smaller towns there 

 are 8,160 high schools having an average 

 of 2.7 teachers each and 405,000 pupils in 

 all. Therefore 53 per cent, of the pupils 

 attend small high schools which have less 

 than 6 teachers each. In such schools the 

 man who teaches physics must also teach 

 two or three other subjects. Therefore he 

 must be a teacher rather than a physicist. 

 Not more than one in ten of those who 

 teach physics can be expected to have an 

 extended knowledge of the subject. 



In 1908 there were 29,000 high school 

 graduates who were prepared for college. 

 The number of those who study physics 

 each year in the high schools is about 130,- 

 000. Not all who were prepared for col- 

 lege had studied physics. It is safe to saj' 

 that not more than one in every five of 

 those who studied physics used it for col- 

 lege entrance. Therefore the problem is 

 not how shall we produce conditions in 

 which the present quasi-rigorological phys- 

 ics shall be taught everywhere bj' special- 

 ists, in preparation for a profession that 

 almost none follow; but rather how, under 



