PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN OUR COMMON SCHOOLS.

[Footnote: Read before the State Normal Institute at Winona, Minnesota,
April 28, 1881, by Clarence M. Boutelle, Professor of Mathematics and
Physical Science in the State Normal School.]


Very little, perhaps, which is new can be said regarding the teaching
of physical science by the experimental method. Special schools for
scientific education, with large and costly laboratories, are by no
means few nor poorly attended; scientific books and periodicals are
widely read; scientific lectures are popular. But, while in many schools
of advanced grade, science is taught in a scientific way, in many others
the work is confined to the mere study of books, and in only a few of
our common district schools is it taught at all.

I shall advocate, and I believe with good reason, the use of apparatus
and experiments to supplement the knowledge gained from books in schools
where books are used, the giving of lessons to younger children who do
not use books, and the giving of these lessons to some extent in all
our schools. And the facts which I have gathered together regarding the
teaching of science will be used with all these ends in view.

Physics--using the term in its broadest sense--has been defined as the
science which has for its object the study of the material world, the
phenomena which it presents to us, the laws which govern (or account
for) these phenomena, and the applications which can be made of either
classes of related phenomena, or of laws, to the wants of man. Thus
broadly defined, physics would be one of two great subjects covering the