THE PLACEMENT OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY IN HIGH SCHOOLS ELTON T. REEVES
..
.
.
Kellogg High School, Kellogg,Idaho HUNTER1in his book, "Science Teaching," notes the fact that more than half the'schools offering physics and chemistry give them in the preferential order of chemistry followed by physics. That is, the majority of schools offer chemistry as a junior subject and physics as a senior elective. This would seem to the writer to be wrong on a t least three major counts. First and foremost, physics is easier than chemistry. The content of the material presented is in itself of a lower grade of difficulty than that contained in chemistry. The reactions to be observed in a physical world are less complex in nature than those occurring in a chemical world. The science of physics is more mathematical (at least in its presentation in high schools) than is chemistry. If physics is offeredto juniors, the students are one year nearer to their mathematics, which should result in pedagogical economy. Second, the laboratory work in physics is much easier Hu~m~,''Science Teaching,"American Book Co., New York City. 1934, pp. 48-9.
than that in its young offspring. The technics to be learned are simpler, and form good background material for the more difficult laboratory situations arising in chemistry. Generally speaking, i t is harder for the student to learn the proper use of pipet, buret, the analytical balance, and all the other tools of chemical experimentation than it is for him to become adept in the use of meter sticks, inclined planes, and the rough balances of the physics laboratory. . Third, the implications and applications of chemistry are broader and deeper in the students' lives than are those of physics. However true i t may be that one lives in accordance with fundamental physical laws, the fact remains that to the student, chemistry's contributions to his life are more spectacular. At approximately the period that most pupils spend in their senior year of high school there is a startlingly rapid maturation of the power of logical thought. The more complex chemical laws are more readily understood than they would have been the year before. It has been the writer's experience repeatedly that juniors and seniors fare about alike in physics, but that juniors are always handicapped i n chemislry.
