SCIENCE 



NEW YORK, JULY 1, 1893. 



NATUEAL SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL COURSE. 



BY R. ELLSWORTH CALL. 



There is needed no argument to demonstrate the necessity 

 of traioiug- in science. It will be assumed that such training 

 is recognized as essential, and that its attainment can in no 

 manner now be dropped from the curricula of the high 

 schools. It is proposed, therefore, to briefly discuss the theme 

 under (1) Comparative Educational Value, (2) Practical 

 Character of the Information Gained, (3) The Tendencies 

 of the Culture of the Day, and (4) Relations to University 

 Requirements. 



Comparative Educational Value. 



It appears to be a difficult matter to discuss this feature of 

 the proposed theme without the bias that comes either from 

 one's own training or one's taste. Something must be con- 

 ceded from either standpoint; but concession is difficult and 

 especially so when demanded on the basis of culture value. 

 Rather, then, than on individual opinion must estimation 

 of comparative value be based on culture results. But what 

 constitutes culture ? Is it ability to master in ordinary array 

 numerous facts, devise and defend delightful theories, dis- 

 play extended and intimate acquaintance with art, history, 

 or song ? Is it held to consist in deep research into lifeless 

 tongues, effete philosophies, degenerate religions ? Shall it 

 rest in useful citizenship, productive thought, inventive 

 genius, polished rhetoric, political leadership ? These one 

 and all enter into the various conceptions of culture, and 

 these all demand a hearing. Shall they be heard ? And 

 how ? 



I take it that the prime factor in any educational system 

 lies in its power to discipline. The numerous facts which 

 the young person gains during the brief period of four years 

 in the best high schools represent but a very small portion 

 of the sum that marks human attainment. Not the facts, 

 nor their class alone, give the chief feature that is valuable 

 in school life. The collation of facts from observation, their 

 orderly and systematic arrangement, their intelligent dis- 

 cussion, their applicability to the circumstances of the indi- 

 vidual by way of amelioration, their power to draw out and 

 direct the best side of the mind, this is discipline. But is not 

 this also applied science ? Of such discipline the self is the 

 end. It is not culture for a vocation, for professional train- 

 ing, nor is it culture for an end. It is discipline as a 

 means. 



It will be conceded, I presume, that all kinds of culture 

 have not an equally important bearing on every line of ac- 

 tivity in life; there is, or should be. occasion for discrimina- 

 tion and choice. Culture, or, if one please, discipline, ought 

 to conform to this natural principle of selection. As a mat- 

 ter of fact and of experience it is found that a student usually 

 accomplishes but little till a definite and settled purpose 

 presides over his movements, or over his intellectual tenden- 

 cies. The energies of youth are limited, naturally. To save 

 from waste time, which has to a young man quite as much 



value 'as effort, practical definiteness should be given to 

 scholastic education. To tbis end, I believe, that selection 

 of those practical or professional activities, which alone have 

 been deemed most effective in conserving, importing, and 

 transmitting the civilization of any age, should be singled 

 out for school work. In this elective sense, and in this sense 

 alone, every age has taught what it knew and taught all it 

 knew. In former days the physical sciences were not taught 

 because they were not known; they are taught now because 

 they are known. A proper interpretation of the historic 

 facts, therefore, assigns to the physical sciences, in their phe- 

 nomenal and empirical aspects, a place in the foreground. 



As a means of purely mental training I am disposed to 

 accord the first place to physical science. There is involved 

 more than a suggestion of mathematics, more than mere 

 ability to frame correct sentences, more than memoriter ex- 

 ercises respecting isolated facts. Physical science means, if 

 it mean aught, extended application of mathematical data 

 and methods, statement of facts in other than sentential re- 

 lations, the discovery — whether for the first time it matters 

 not — of underlying laws. This is culture of the very broad- 

 est nature; this means ability to generalize; this constitutes 

 the first stage in a successful intellectual career. I do not 

 believe that one who is abundantly able to develop Sturm's 

 Theorem, trace all the wanderings of the heroes of the 

 Odyssey or the ^neid, outline the journeys of Paul in Asia 

 Minor, or discover meanings in the " Taming of the Shrew," 

 of which its great^uthor never dreamed, can compete in in- 

 tellectual vigor with the lad able to determine the constitu- 

 tion of a compound substance, decide correctly the affinities 

 of a noxious, stranger plant, or to read facts older than the 

 pyramid of Cheops in a scratched pebble found at the school- 

 house door. The one reads fictions long bereft of true edu- 

 cational value; the other deals with the facts of our daily 

 lives. The one lives and thinks with an ancient, stranger 

 people; the other breathes an atmosphere of intellectual ac- 

 tivity and intellectual endeavor. The one deals with sym- 

 bols — with words as various in significance as are different 

 the minds that use them; the other with laws, unchanging, 

 necessary, logical. The one taught by novelists, dramatists, 

 and poets whose function it is to creato imaginary worlds, 

 dwells in an ideal world constructed to suit himself; the 

 other lives in the midst of things of practical accomplish- 

 ment. It seems to me, therefore, that this difference in the 

 mental aptitudes of students trained side by side, one trained 

 in science, tlie other in a literature in which even the mas- 

 terpieces of scientific writing find no place, will stand equally 

 well for the probable values of their influence in after years 

 in determining the current of events. 



I would have, then, a still more extended pursuit of physi- 

 cal science in the high school. By this it is not meant that 

 the additional work be in the line of new subjects, but that 

 the time now devoted to belles lettres and ancient languages 

 be curtailed; that the time thus gained be given, not to new 

 subjects, but to the more extended prosecution of tlie few. 

 The point sought to be enforced is that two or three subjects 

 in science, involving observation, technic, and reflection, as ■ 

 botany or physics, zoology or chemistry, be prosecuted for 



