July 29, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



139 



side at the beginning, things must go 

 badly, and though he may in time, by 

 reason of native force and toughness of 

 constitution, become a good teacher, he 

 must suffer, and his pupils must suffer, 

 during his novitiate. 



On a- somewhat different footing are the 

 suggestions made by Professor Mann, of 

 Chicago (note 43), and Professor Wood- 

 hull, of Teachers College (note 62), who 

 advise studying "the needs and mental 

 habits of high-school pupils," or taking 

 "courses in education," rather than get- 

 ting more knowledge of the theory or the 

 practise of physics. This raises a familiar 

 question, which it would be useless to dis- 

 cuss here. There is but little in the re- 

 plies received from others, whether in 

 school or college, to indicate opinions sim- 

 ilar to those here expressed by Professor 

 Mann and Professor Woodhull. I sup- 

 pose, however, that among school superin- 

 tendents and principals they would find 

 a good deal of support. It seems likely 

 that, in the long run, this question will be 

 practically settled by finding whether 

 those who profess physics or those who 

 profess the child mind produce the best 

 books or devise the best courses for school 

 use. Meanwhile it is not quite safe for 

 either party to despise altogether the rep- 

 resentations and arguments of the other. 



Proposition 2. — This proposition, with 

 its call for an elementary knowledge of 

 the calculus as well as some acquaintance 

 with chemistry, is very generally ap- 

 proved in the replies, whether from 

 school or from college. Note 14, from a 

 school teacher, rules out the calculus; note 

 30 (college) makes the requirement de- 

 pend "entirely on grade of school"; note 

 43 (college) prefers to the calculus "the 

 ways of children's minds"; note 56 (col- 

 lege) refers to it, not very confidently, as 

 "an ideal to hope for in this state [New 



York]." Only two. Professors Mann and 

 Woodhull, are flatly opposed to the whole 

 proposition. 



Proposition 3. — Nobody rejects (3), a 

 fact that makes me a little uneasy about 

 it. Indeed, one or two replies intimate 

 that (3) doesn't amount to much. To me 

 it means a good deal. I am convinced that 

 American schools, while in advance of 

 German schools in laboratory equipment 

 and methods, are very much behind Ger- 

 man schools in the lecture-room treatment 

 of physics, in which most of the qualita- 

 tive aspects and the applications of the 

 science are best shown. Moreover, I be- 

 lieve that we shall not see this very im- 

 portant side of our teaching properly de- 

 veloped so long as the manual labor 

 required in the handling and care of 

 apparatus must be done wholly or mainly 

 by the teacher, heavily burdened, as he 

 usually is, with other work. 



Very much of the criticism now directed 

 against the kind of physics teaching that 

 college influence has fostered in schools 

 would disappear, if school teachers found 

 time and strength really to follow the 

 suggestions given them from college as to 

 the lecture-room treatment of the subject. 



Proposition 4. — This calls for and de- 

 scribes a "man of all work" fit to give the 

 kind of assistance needed to afford the 

 "relief from unnecessary manual labor" 

 asked for in (3). This proposition, in its 

 general aspect, is naturally a welcome one 

 to all teachers; but some think that the 

 individual pictured in (5) is too good to 

 be true. Some school teachers (notes 6, 7, 

 10) suggest, as an attainable reality more 

 or less remotely resembling this ideal, "a 

 well paid boy of school, " "an advanced or 

 post-graduate pupil," "a senior boy in the 

 high school who has been through the 

 courses in elementary physics and chem- 

 istry" and who "can be hired here for ten 



