Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/299

Rh suggestions on the teaching of mathematics and the sciences. The conferences consisted each of ten members, selected on account of their scholarship and experience, and discussed the questions submitted to them with much thoroughness. The conference on mathematics recommends that the course in arithmetic be at once abridged by omitting the subjects which perplex and exhaust the pupil without contributing valuably to his mental discipline, and enriched by a greater number of exercises in simple calculation and in the solution of concrete problems; that instruction in concrete geometry, with numerous exercises, be given in connection with drawing; and that in demonstrative geometry, as well as in all mathematical teaching, great stress be laid on accuracy of statement and elegance of form, as well as on clear and rigorous reasoning. In physics, chemistry, and astronomy the conference urges that the study of simple natural phenomena be introduced into elementary schools, and that at least one period a day from the first year of the primary school should be given to such study; emphasizes the necessity of a large proportion of laboratory work in the study of physics and chemistry, and advocates the keeping of laboratory note-books by the pupils, and the use of such note-books as part of the test for admission to college. More work, it is held, is required of the teacher to give good instruction in the sciences than to give good instruction in mathematics or the languages. The conference on natural history advises that the study of botany and zoology be introduced into the primary school course, and be pursued steadily, with not less than two periods a week, throughout the whole course below the high school. In the early lessons no text-book should be used, but the study should be constantly associated with the study of literature, language, and drawing. Physiology should be postponed till the later years of the high school, and in the high school some branch of natural history proper should be pursued every day throughout at least one year. The value of laboratory work and of the cultivation of exact, elegant expression in description is again insisted upon. The most novel suggestions are given in connection with the teaching of geography, of which the conference takes a far more comprehensive view than the usual one, and which it evidently regards as including the whole physical environment of man, and as requiring a knowledge of many of the elementary facts of the other subjects. Meteorology may be taught as an observational study in the earliest years of the grammar school.

Hereditary Crime.—An interesting investigation is reported by Prof. Pellmann, of Bonn University (Germany). He has made a special study of hereditary drunkenness, which, in the case of a certain Frau Ada Jurke, he followed through several generations. She was born in 1740, and was a drunkard, tramp, and thief for the last forty years of her life, which ended in 1800. Her descendants numbered 834, of whom 709 have been traced in local records from youth to death. Of the 709, 106 were born out of wedlock. There were 142 beggars and 64 more who lived upon charity. Of the women, 181 led disreputable lives. There were in this family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were sentenced for murder. Prof. Pellmann says that in seventy-five years this one family rolled up a bill in the almshouses, trial courts, prisons, and correctional institutions of $1,-250,000. With such a record before it, the state seems justified in adopting measures for preventing the breeding of such characters.

The Newspaper and Periodical Industry.—A recent article in the Hartford Times gives some interesting semi-statistical figures regarding the newspaper industry in the United States. It estimates that there are about 2,100 daily and over 1,100 weekly newspapers and periodicals published in the United States, besides the hundreds of monthly magazines, reviews, and trade journals. "It is probably a low estimate to say that there are 100,000 men and women occupied in their production. Adding to these figures the people employed in the various printing establishments and publishing houses, we should have a total of about 250,000, and including those dependent on them, probably more than a million of the population who are thus supported. Nearly every newspaper has one or more presses, costing thousands of dollars each; $50,000,000 would not begin to pay for the printing presses now