enter Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus, or Cleveland; then consult the local United States Geologic Survey topographic sheets to see why the differences. Compare the physical map of England or of Europe with a map showing distribution of peoples; then with these two and temperature and rainfall maps see how many peculiarities in the distribution of the people can be explained. Wind, temperature, and rainfall maps for January and for July will reveal to the inquiring student the main features of the two rainy and two dry seasons of certain parts of the tropics. The monthly rainfall maps of the Upper Nile valley will reveal the secrets of the Nile flood. Leete's map exercises in geography are very helpful along this line of geographic study.

For textbooks, probably the best all-round book for this high-school course is Mill's International Geography published by Appleton. It must be accompanied, however, with atlases and maps, and for best results certain parts in the treatment of several of the countries should be omitted. Appleton's series of Regional Geographies in twelve volumes, one for each of the larger regions, like North America, Central Europe, Britain and the British Seas, India, the Nearer East, and others makes a splendid series to accompany the course. Stanford's Compendium, new edition, is good for reference work. Brigham and Semple have two admirable books on the geographic conditions affecting American history which might be helpful.

A specific study of the United States for one year, and of Europe for a second year, or a general study of a number of world-problems for a year, would be intensely interesting and of inestimable value to the pupil. Let me urge that he who would introduce regional geography into the secondary school must reckon on a laboratory (map room) and a laboratory period in his program; and he may also count on being, to some extent, a missionary in most communities. But in spite of indifference, inertia, open opposition, the critics, crowded program, and all, I believe it will pay to put into some of our high schools a year in regional geography as a trial. Start slowly, give it a fair chance with other subjects, never call it a fad, and its practical and cultural values may prove it a member of our secondary schools well worth retaining.

Some points in this paper mark ideal conditions not to be attained in a day. Work toward them; an approximation to the ideal is better than no step toward it. If not a whole year for geography, then a half-year. If not both parts-physical and regional—then one part.

DISCUSSION

JAMES F. CHAMBERLAIN, State Normal School, Los Angeles.-Geography has long occupied a prominent place in the curriculum of the elementary school, but not until comparatively recently did it receive serious consideration as a part of the work of the secondary school. It is interesting to note in this connection that the introduction of geography into the high school was not the result of the natural expansion of the work done in lower grades, but rather was due to the influence of the college and the university. When these

institutions began to develop the subject of physical geography or physiography, the high schools, as a natural consequence, soon offered courses along the same line. Hence it is that general or regional geography receives practically no attention in the secondary school. That the study of physical geography requires observation, mental picturing, cleas thinking, close reasoning, accurate expression; that it deals with things and conditionr which vitally influence our daily lives, must be admitted by all. Physical geography lays the foundation for the study of various other sciences as well as for general geography, history, economics, and commerce. That this subject should be one of the corner-stones of the curriculum of the secondary school there is no doubt.

Every periodical devoted to the interests of geography-teaching and every discussion of geography as taught in secondary schools reveal the fact that there is little agreement as to what constitutes a high-school course in this subject. That there should be some slight difference of opinion is fortunate, but where the disagreement is so marked it is evidence that earnest individual consideration, conference, and revision are necessary.

The function of geography in the secondary school, like that of all other subjects, is to prepare the student for the duties and opportunities of daily life, not to prepare him for college. The great body of high-school graduates enter at once upon some business or professional career. These young people need a knowledge of geography which our present course does not give them. Every high-school graduate should know more of the lands and peoples of the earth than he is able to grasp in the elementary school. This knowledge is needed in every occupation, in reading, and in conversation.

Again, as has been pointed out by Professor Hubbard, a large number of high-school graduates enter upon the profession of teaching. Their knowledge of that phase of geography which receives chief emphasis in the elementary school is very meager. Until this condition is remedied, we shall continue to have unsatisfactory teaching of geography in the grades.

The revision of the course in geography for secondary schools is, therefore, a matter of great importance. I favor the addition of a year's work devoted to general geography. This second course should give a grasp of topography, climate, natural resources, industries, transportation, commercial centers, and the many important influences of physical environment upon life.

If but one year can be devoted to geography in the secondary school, than one-half year should be given to physical geography, and the remaining time to general geography. In this case we may profitably omit some of the detailed study of land forms. In the course in general geography there should be, in addition to the study of the best books, the study of models, maps, diagrams, and pictures. The addition of such a course in geography would vastly enrich the curriculum of the secondary school. It would give to graduates of the high school a much better equipment for the various occupations than is now possessed by them, and it would materially raise the standards of teaching in the elementary school.

THE FUNCTION OF THE LECTURE DEMONSTRATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOL PHYSICS

ROBERT A. MILLIKAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

I have chosen to change the title of my address as announced in the program from the Function of the "Demonstration Lecture," to the Function of the "Lecture Demonstration" in Secondary School Physics. The reason for this change will be apparent as I proceed. When your president asked me to present my views before this body upon this topic I confess that I did

not at once see how it could be made of any especial interest, since there seemed to me to be so little opportunity for difference of opinion in regard to it. And I am not certain now that I have anything to say which will not seem to you to be altogether commonplace. I have no radical innovations to propose, and if, as might be inferred from a glance at the history of pedagogical conferences in physics, the especial function of gatherings of this sort is to bring out violent differences of opinion, and under no circumstances to foster an insipid and effeminating spirit of harmony, my address may perhaps fail of accomplishing the desired end. Nevertheless it often happens that where there is no wide difference of opinion as to what is ideally best our practice falls far short of our ideals, and if my observation of current practice, particularly in some of the smaller schools, is correct, there is at least need of emphasizing the importance of the part which the classroom demonstration should play in secondary school physics. I respond therefore heartily to the president's request to assign what seems to me to be the proper place to this element of instruction in beginning physics.

Within the past twenty years the center of gravity of instruction in all branches of study has been steadily moving away from the lecture table, and in my judgment the movement may with profit go much farther in many subjects than it has already gone. As a general proposition, I feel ready to assert that in all branches of instruction the formal lecture is a most inefficient means either of imparting knowledge or of training the powers of the student. It furnishes capital training to the teacher, but little or none to the pupil, and as a means of imparting knowledge someone has compared it to the operation of attempting to fill a score or more of narrow-necked bottles by setting them up in a row at a distance of a rod or more and then throwing bucketfuls of water at them in the hope that a few drops from each bucketful may by some lucky chance find their way into the neck of one or another of the bottles. To carry on the figure, contrast the effectiveness of this operation with that of taking each individual bottle by its individual neck and holding it for a few minutes under the waterspout. Even in advanced work the lecture system commonly degenerates at one extreme into time-wasting dictation, and at the other extreme into such a rapid presentation of an involved subject that the student loses his bearings completely and spends his time in feverishly writing down a mass of unintelligible notes-mere aural impressions-which he hopes by dint of hours of laborious reconstruction to piece together afterward into a more or less intelligible whole. Between these two extremes there is but little ground for a thoroly satisfactory lecture system of instruction to rest upon. It must of course be tolerated in some advanced courses in which the material of the course cannot be made available to the students in other forms, but in this age of many books and cheap and rapid printing this is seldom the case. It is not too much to say that the lecture system as it exists in the German university is, like the German duel, a survival of the barbaric age, when printing was unknown, and when, on

account of the laboriousness of writing, the oral method of imparting knowledge was the only feasible one.

The growing lack of confidence in the lecture system in our American universities is nowhere better shown than in the change which has taken place in the past fifteen years in nearly all our prominent law schools in the method. of teaching law. The lecture system has been almost entirely replaced by the so-called case-system, which is nothing but the laboratory method of the physical sciences carried over into a non-scientific subject. The practical case, that is, an actual experiment in law, is put before the students. They are asked to study it and draw their conclusions from it, and then, when the class meets, these conclusions are analyzed and criticized by the class and the teacher.

Whether or not the lecture system is destined to vanish largely from all branches of instruction, elementary or advanced, as it seems to me desirable that it should do, it is certainly true that in secondary schools it has already vanished, having been replaced by some form of the textbook method. Let us then analyze the textbook method as it exists today in order to see what relation the lecture demonstration in physics should bear to it. Altho, as indicated above, I am a most thoro believer in the textbook method when rightly used, I have no hesitation in asserting that there is no more potent cause of failure in the teaching of physics in secondary schools than the improper and slavish use of the textbook. In the study of language or history the foundation facts of the course must, in the nature of the case, be taken by the student upon authority. The material with which the subject. deals is not available to him at first hand. Arbitrary facts and arbitrary rules in great number must be learned. The type of training which is furnished by the study of these subjects is largely one of the memory. This cannot be said of mathematics, and yet even here the material of the subject can be just as well presented to the student by the textbook as by the word of mouth of the teacher. As a matter of fact, in general, the presentation of the subject found in the textbook is likely to be more logically arranged and in all respects more intelligible than that given by the teacher. Even in some sciences, notably in physiography as it is commonly taught, much of the material of the subject is not available to the student at first hand, and in this case it is just as well, or perhaps even better, for him to get his first impressions of a particular topic from the textbook as from the teacher. It is evident, therefore, that in practically all the subjects taught in the high school, excepting botany, physics, and chemistry, the student is, and must be, diligently and thoroly trained in learning his lessons from the textbook. A given number of pages is assigned each day in advance and the pupil studies over these pages in order that he may be able the next day to reproduce, either directly from memory or by a judicious combination of memory and understanding, what he has learned from his text.

Now it is this sort of textbook habit to which the pupil is so diligently

and so necessarily trained in almost all of his other high-school work, which constitutes the most serious hindrance to his progress in grasping the method and the spirit of physics; and the first task which lies before the teacher in starting a class in the study of physics is that of breaking the pupil of his formerly acquired textbook habit. The aim of the physics course is not to acquaint him with any set of arbitrary rules, nor to fill his memory with somebody's else formulations of so-called physical laws, tho this may not be altogether bad if done in moderation. It is rather to teach him to observe and to interpret for himself the physical world in which he lives. Hearsay or textbook knowledge of the facts of science is a woefully feeble and inadequate substitute for the knowledge which comes from seeing and handling these facts themselves.

The first duty then of the teacher of physics, both in order of time and in order of importance, is to place the phenomena of physics directly before the pupil by well-chosen classroom and laboratory demonstrations.

But in making this assertion, I wish to disclaim all sympathy with the idea that the physics class should be a place of amusement or of mere entertainment. The most fundamental aim of all education is to develop in the pupil the habit of industry and application, the desire and the ability to stick to a problem until it is mastered; and any tendency in education which weakens or obscures this aim is to just that extent vicious. Note, however, that the awakening of the desire is a prerequisite to the acquiring of the ability. In other words, the pupil must be interested in his task, if the task is to be of any great value to him.

Where our physics courses fail in giving the student a thoro grasp of the fundamental principles of physics, they fail, in general, for one or the other of two reasons. At the one extreme, instead of insisting that our pupils master the fundamental principles underlying particular physical appliances, we make our study of these appliances a mere playing with toys. We have our pupils play with the steam engine, with the gas engine, with the wireless telegraph, in much the same way in which the child plays with his toys. We teach them what valves must be turned to make their new toys go, and we give them the pleasure of seeing them go, but we leave them with about as much notion of the fundamental physical principles underlying the toy as the five-year-old child has after he has learned what valves to turn and where to put the alcohol lamp in order to make his toy engine run. In this type of instruction I see little to commend. It seems to me to be physics instruction turned exactly up-side-down. It tends to make chauffeurs of our students and nothing more. It doesn't train them to think, or give them the scientific outlook upon the world. The proper order seems to me to be first to present by a simple experiment the naked principle, then to drill the pupil in its more obvious and direct applications, and finally to study complicated mechanisms in the light of this and other principles similarly acquired.

At the other extreme, our physics courses fail to develop a grasp of funda