. Science . high-school curricula to have their enrolment re-ported. Yet the table gives the impressionthat the decline in physics, chemistry, etcetera, is due to the shift of students to thesenewer subjects. I have examined with interest later reportsof the Commissioner of Education to see ifthey confirm or contradict the conclusion towhich Mr. Fisher comes, namely, that the sci-ences are declining in popularity with high-school students and that the humanities areconstantly increasing their percentage of en-rolment, but with the report of 1910 the com-missioner ceased to print a statement of
. Science . high-school curricula to have their enrolment re-ported. Yet the table gives the impressionthat the decline in physics, chemistry, etcetera, is due to the shift of students to thesenewer subjects. I have examined with interest later reportsof the Commissioner of Education to see ifthey confirm or contradict the conclusion towhich Mr. Fisher comes, namely, that the sci-ences are declining in popularity with high-school students and that the humanities areconstantly increasing their percentage of en-rolment, but with the report of 1910 the com-missioner ceased to print a statement of theenrolment in the various subjects, evidentlyappreciating the fact that such data, in theform in which they had been given, are moreor less inconsequential. There is continued,however, the report of those graduates of pub-lic and private high schools who are preparingfor college and who elect either the classicalor the scientific course. These data are shownin Fig. 2. The first part of the chart gives the. Fig. 2. Diagram shows percentage of high-school students going to college who select classical and scientific courses. 1 cm. = per cent. data for five-year periods; the latter part foryearly periods. Both the dotted line repre-senting the percentage of classic students and 234 SCIENCE [N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1050 the solid line showing those in science are de-clining, indicating that the percentage ofhigh-school students who go on to college isconstantly diminishing, but, in so far as thegraph throws light on our problem, it indi-cates that classical studies, among high-schoolgraduates intending to go on to college, havebeen growing in disfavor more rapidly thanthe scientific. The apparent increase, the country over, inthe enrolment in Latin, and the decrease inphysics, chemistry, physiology, et cetera, maybe due to such changes in restricted regionswhich are not standing in a position of edu-cational leadership. Such, I think, is the ease,and hence I do not believe that
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