Recent tendencies in high school chemistry

✍ Scribed by Robert H. Bradbury

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1915
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 733 KB
• Volume: 180
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/s0016-0032(15)90059-5

✦ Synopsis

I.

LET me first refer, very briefly, to propositions which affect the position of chemistry in the course and the amount of time devoted to it. On account of the great industrial importance of the science and of the high probability of its being of value to the student after his school days are over there has been a widespread demand that chemistry be started earlier in the course,-e.g., in the second year,--and that two years of it be given. Since chemistry is, at present, usually given only in the fourth year, it follows that approximately two-thirds of the one million highschool students of the country leave with no knowledge of chemistry whatever. This seems an unfortunate method of handling a science which is perhaps the most immediately useful subject of the whole curriculum.

Further, we need continuation courses in the science, because they will improve the character of the work. As Dewey has pointed out, in a memorable essay, 1 the excellent results undoubtedly obtained by the study of Latin in high schools are probably due less to the subject matter of the instruction than to its method. Latin runs through the whole four years. The first-year student knows--or can be effectively convinced--that if he neglects his Latin he will be all at sea in it during his second year. The secondyear student has the salutary pleasure of using his first-year Latin 2 as an instrument of further achievement. The same statements hold good, with cumulative force, for the third and fourth years.

Let us follow Dewey a little further in setting up an imaginary linguistic curriculum which shall parallel, as closely as possible, our present arrangements for the sciences. It would run somewhat as follows :