56 SCHOOL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

ONE INFLUENCE OF OUT-OF-SCHOOL ACTIVITIES IN DE-TERMINING THE HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS

CURRICULUM.

BY M. E. HERRIOTT,Associate, Bureau of Educational Research, University of Illinois,

Urbana, III.Those of us who arc in,the field of education, both as prac-

tical and as theoretical school men and women, are constantlygiving tlic major portion of our attention to one particular phaseor another of our work. As tlie psychologist would put it, someone aspect occupies tlie focus of attention and the other phasesare peripheral. As we think back only a few years, we see moti-vation, problem-project, and testing each taking the foregroundin turn. And I believe that I see the method or technique aspectof teaching looming before us as the centre of attention only afew years hence. But just now, we are in the throes, as it were,of curriculum construction and course of study writing.

It was ten years ago tliat Parker stated the four fundamentalprinciples which have been quite generally accepted as the guid-ing principles in the selecting and arrangement of subject matter.We are all familiar witli them so tliat a mere mention of eachwill suffice. First, subject matter should be selected by thecriterion of social need. Second, it should be selected on thebasis of relative values. Third, subject matter should be organ-ized in large units treated intensively. And fourth, it should beorganized in terms of the learner.

In what I am about to present to you, I am applying, chiefly,the principle of social need to the high-school physics curriculum,insofar as the data collected will permit.The space allowed me docs not permit of my going into great

detail as to the source and validity of the original data. I canonly ask that you accept them as valid for the purposes of thispaper, although I shall briefly sketch what was done.My purpose at the time of the study was to find out the extent

to which the principles and elements of high school physics enterinto the everyday lives of ordinary people. So I presented a listof 576 activities to a group of over one hundred individuals,including boys and girls of high school age and men and womenfrom 37 occupations. All of these 576 activities involved ratherdefinitely ascertainable principles and elements of physics.They included things which people generally do for themselves,

0UT-OF-SCHOOL ACTI VI TIES

such as "Replace burned-out fuses"; things which they oftenhave others do for them, as "Take pictures with a camera ofspecial lens"; and things about which people think, as "Wonderwhat makes one ’hear tlie ocean’ in a sea shell." Each personindicated the extent to which these activities entered into hislife during the past year.

It is on the basis of these data that I arrived at the conclu-sions which I shall present.

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Now, let us study the first graph. Here we find the answersof only the boys and girls pictured. The boys^ interests areindicated by the solid line, the girls’ by the broken line. Theextent to which the activities involving principles from each ofthe large topics of physics entered into their lives is indicatedin per cents. In the graph, columns numbered with Romannumeral I record the extent to which each topic, such as mag-netism and electricity, is involved in the activities which peoplegenerally do for themselves; the columns numbered with Roman

58 SCHOOL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

numeral II record the extent to which each topic is involved inthe activities which people often have others do for them; andthe columns numbered with Roman numeral III record theextent to which each topic is involved in the things about whichpeople think or wonder.

It should be especially noted that, with the exceptions of soundand light, the boys are always much more affected by physicsthan are the girls. Note the large per cents in the case of think-ing activities, which, by the way, included much the longest list,being made up of 249 out of the 576 activities, or nearly half ofthe entire list. This thought or natural curiosity phase is onethat is given all too little attention in our high school physicscourses.

Let us note the order of interest in this respect for boys. It is:Invisible Radiations, Mechanics, Magnetism and Electricity,Heat, Sound, Light. For girls it is: Light, Sound, InvisibleRadiations, Heat, Mechanics, Magnetism and Electricity.Almost the reverse of the order for boys.Now we shall turn to the second graph. Here we have the

average of the three types of activities expressed in per centsagain. The solid line is for boys, the broken line for girls, thedotted line for men and boys combined, and the dot-dash linefor women and girls combined.Note here particularly the dip in the topic of Invisible Radia-

tions caused both by men and women, due no doubt, to the new-ness of radio, radium, and the like, and to the intense interest ofboys and girls in them but lack of interest on the part of olderpeople who have not yet been reached, despite the enormousamount of publicity which has been given such subjects.Now I have had to lead you very hurriedly through all of this,

and I know that you have not traced every bit of evidence whichhas led me to the final conclusions, but I think that you havebeen given enough to see that there is some little foundationfor the conclusions which I am about to present. You have seenthat there are great variations in the extent to which the varioustopics of physics enter into the activities of people, that thereare wide differences in the interests of boys and of girls, and thatthe extent to which people think about things that involveprinciples and elements of physics is very noticeable.On the basis of the evidence presented, which is the most

pertinent and significant, and on the basis of some other con-siderations which I have not the time to give you now, I would

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suggest the following order of large topics in a high school physicscourse:

BOYS. GIRLS.Magnetism and ElectricitySoundInvisible RadiationsLightMechanicsHeatHeatMechanicsLightMagnetism and ElectricitySoundInvisible Radiations

60 SCHOOL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

These are not to be taken as final conclusions, but this studydoes present some very definite data which do point in thisdirection.. Further, it presents at least one aspect of curriculumconstruction in physics which is worthy of a great deal of studyby the physics teacher.You will find a slightly different account of this same phase

of the physics curriculum in SCHOOL SCIENCE AND MATHE-MATICS for June, 1924. The conclusions there also vary a littlebut I believe that the conclusions given here are more nearlyvalid, inasmuch as the matter lias been given more study sincethe writing of that article.

I might add that Chester J. Peters, Supervisor of ScienceTeaching in the University High School of the University ofMissouri, is using the results of this investigation as a basis forfurther study in the actual teaching of physics. I hope to secsome real results published in a year or two as a result of his work,results which will give material assistance to teachers of highschool physics, both in the way of a curriculum and in the tech-nique of teaching.

WHAT SHOULD SCIENCE TEACHING ACCOMPLISH?BY HENRY.HARAP,

Cleveland School of Education, Cleveland, Ohio.

For practical purposes, science is concerned with commonphenomena which are not self-evident. The field of science,therefore, is very broad. An ingenious teacher need not belimited by the conventional material included in a science courseor text-book. It is important that he should choose intelligentlysuch material which the pupil does not already know, which isinteresting, and which the pupil is most likely to use in hispresent or later life. Science should help the pupil to understandsuch phenomena as he is most likely to need to understand in hispresent and later life.The attempt to discover what phenomena the pupil is most

likely to need to understand is fraught with many difficulties.There are several kinds of needs which science may meet andone’s course of study will be greatly colored by that type ofneed which one regards as most important. First, there is theened to interpret science as it occurs in the normal reading ma-terials of the average person, such as newspapers, magazines,