Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/407

Rh different matters, three distinctly unrelated lines of investigation, requiring independent methods of preparation and each demanding as much knowledge as does the whole work of a professor holding a chair of languages. But, aside from this class-room labor, the teacher of science in the average institution must prepare demonstrative lectures, must keep apparatus in proper condition, must procure and care for museum material, must spend time with classes in field demonstration, while, in addition, he has the never-ending grind required to keep him in touch with the growth of knowledge respecting subjects embraced in his department. These are burdens from which professors in the older courses are happily free.

It is true that the science teacher in most of our colleges has only himself to blame for the severity of his burden. Determination to give to his students what he believes due to them has led him to make exertions which were not required but which, once begun, came to be regarded as part of his duties. Had he not manufactured apparatus and begged money with which to procure more, he would have had little for which to care; had he not expended ingenuity in preparing elaborate experiments with limited advantages, he would have had no occasion for greater expenditure; had he not expended his money and his vacations in procuring museum material and his energy in pestering acquaintances for generous donations of such material, he would have little labor in connection with a museum; had he not insisted upon the introduction of laboratory teaching no one else would have insisted upon it. But having a clear conception of duty, he has sacrificed himself deliberately. The great expansion of the scientific departments of American colleges is due to the exertions of the teachers of science; and they in many instances have received neither gratitude nor any other acknowledgment.

And yet not without reward, for the influence of the science teacher has gone out far beyond the college limits. The great discoveries, up to within a few years, were made by college professors, and these, applied by inventors, have changed the face of the civilized globe, while those to whom the world is indebted for its comforts are unknown even by name. Their work has spread intelligence and revolutionized educational methods. Children in the upper classes of grammar schools know more respecting the earth and the relations of nations than did the college graduate of forty years ago. The high school teaching of science is far in advance of ordinary college teaching as it was twenty-five years ago, and in some respects fully equal if not superior to that in a large proportion of American colleges to-day. One is guilty of no exaggeration in saying that high school graduates know as much of chemistry, physics, biology and geology, when they enter the freshman class, as is offered in many colleges, for in those schools the subjects are not taught