Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/167

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SCIENCES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL
163

adjustment of the microscope, do not belong below the second year of the high school. And correlated with the botany may appropriately be placed budding, grafting, spraying and pruning in a more rational form and demanding a higher grade of skill. School gardening, exercising, as the work does, the larger body muscles, is appropriate to the primary grades. Nature study may be defined as the most appropriate muscle culture known to the schools in that it automatically adjusts itself to the stage of development of the pupil. Until some one defines more definitely than has yet been done the character of animal husbandry best suited to the schools that subject may go anywhere in the course. When the need and the opportunity for the drawing of correct animal conformation are appreciated, it will be given an advanced position. Exercises in advanced physics demand delicate adjustments appropriate to the last year of the high school course, which position also agrees with the mathematical requirements of the subject. Accurate use of dissecting instruments, the fine balance, fragile glassware and c.p. reagents, and the making of a pure culture and keeping it pure, demand muscular skill not to be found below the third year of the high school course.

Influenced by this factor, the high school sciences will find their places, and the sequence of the different phases of agriculture that are naturally correlated with them will, by the same process, have their positions determined.