The first year of science
The chief interest in Secondary School science, which for a long time was concentrated upon the later years of the course, has recently been shifted to the work of the first year. The leading reason for this is the conviction, which is rapidly becoming general, that the first science of the High School should be fundamental to the entire field of science and should not be any one of the special sciences.
It is hard to see how Physiography, Physiology, and Biology, the usual subjects of the early High School years, can be taught satisfactorily unless the pupil has previously acquired the elementary physical and chemical conceptions which underlie Physiography, Physiology, and Biology.
Proof that this need is felt is the fact that many teachers of first-year science, no matter what their subjects may be called, find themselves obliged, even now, to give a large part of their class time to the presentation of fundamental physical and chemical ideas. The problem involved in the proper preparation of pupils for the study of Physiography and the biological sciences cannot be solved by the transfer of Physics and Chemistry, as formal subjects, to the first year of the High School curriculum. The cause lies both in the difficulty of the subjects themselves and also in the high development which these sciences have reached in Secondary Schools. Physics and Chemistry are now taught in Secondary Schools.
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