34 QUERN'S QUARTERLY. 



broader part of the commission's work presents a much less man- 

 ageable subject, in tlie discussiun of the si)ecific aim or aims in the 

 teaching of pliysics, and in the determination of the direction in 

 which this is to advance. As a first step, it was decided to invite 

 discussion, not from teachers at large, as had been done with such 

 small progress in the case of the earlier circulars, but to request 

 some well-known educators and prominent physicists to contribute 

 to a symposium on the subject. 



These letters are recently to hand. There is in them far more 

 unity of opinion than in the replies to the circulars, a fact arising 

 probably from the selection of the writers. The greatest prominence 

 is given to the unwarrantable degree in which college entrance re- 

 quirements seem to dominate the entire field of secondary school 

 physics.^ This trouble comes down from a time when those looking 

 forward to a university course constituted the majority of the high 

 school pupils, a condition that does not obtain to-day, for in the 

 meantime we have witnessed a complete change in the whole purpose 

 of secondary schools. Formerly they were chiefly preparatory to 

 farther study, but the wonderful growth of their popularity has 

 transformed them into finishing schools for the public. The spec- 

 tacle presented by the preparation of the comparatively few for col- 

 lege, actually preventing the development of one portion of the cur- 

 riculum along lines better suited to the large majority, is of itself 

 surprising, and when one adds to this the admission that a freer 

 treatment of the subject would benefit, not the majority only, but 

 the few as well, the situation needs explanation. 



About fifteen years ago Professors Hall and Bergen proposed 

 the new well-known " Harvard Experiments.'' These were a set of 

 laboratory exercises designed for the use of pupils preparing for 

 college, and so well suited were they to the needs of that time that 

 they displaced the then-existing courses in most of the important 

 schools. They became so firmly established in the educational sys- 

 tem of the country as to give direction to the class work as well as 

 to that of the laboratory. To-day, owing to the new point of view 

 that has developed in the schools, this type of course is no longer 

 suitable, but the hold it has taken is so widespread that it needs the 

 influence of a national commission to displace it. President Butler 

 of Columbia University, in the first paragraph of his comment, lays 

 down the principle that " College admission tests in physics should 



^Note that this has reference to the high schools of the United States. 

 The present dominating influence in the Ontario schools is the " Teachers' 

 examination." 



