The proper teaching of science is probably the greatest problem before American secondary education. Yet the schools must not only teach more physics and chemistry, but should also face the issue of the isolation of science--make science and scientists seem relevant to the citizen, and indeed make citizenship seem relevant to the scientist and bring him into the community.

It is too easy to think only of the first problem, and resolve to build more laboratories and pay teachers higher salaries (though action lags far behind resolve). But a more imaginative approach will be required for the second problem.

One might argue that the question of the isolation of science is too much for secondary education, and that only the college can handle it. Not many colleges are interested or capable, of course, but even those that try do not succeed very well. They have to contend with two sorts of prejudices built up in high schools--the idea that math and science are either much too difficult or much too boring for the ordinary, healthy student, or the other snobbery that regards any history course at all as an imposition on the time of the budding engineer. The best General Education program imaginable could not overcome these handicaps.

But perhaps they may be overcome in a small private school in New York City. Walden was one of the schools which nearly a half-century ago pioneered John Dewey's ideas of progressive education, a movement which has swept through practically all American high schools. The general success of their earlier ventures left the question of the future purpose of these schools.

Some became increasingly college directed; they were little more than informal prep schools. Others specialized in problem children, usually of rich parents. But neither of these functions has the urgency of which the schools had been born, though they were still important.

At Walden, a radically new curriculum has been developed, a plan so exciting within the school that there is again the idea of doing something revolutionary in education.

Eighth grade students learn enough chemistry to determine simple compounds of some twenty-odd elements, enough astronomy to calculate roughly the winter solstice with hand-made tools or to ask why the orbit of the moon is not a true ellipse, and enough geometry and trigonometry to construct very accurate maps on conic and other projections.

Ninth Grade

Ninth grade students go into more complicated chemical compounds, working on into basic geology and biochemistry, ideas of biological evolution, and of physical and cultural anthropology.

None of this material is presented in the "science is good for us" style of the typical ninth grade general science course, quite possibly the worst offering of American high schools. Instead the Walden students really participate in their education, as they seek to understand how the earth was formed and how life developed on it.

Astronomy receives the most attention in the eighth grade. Basic scientific concepts of space and time are presented, and the student's idea of time as something on a wristwatch is shaken when the teacher forces him to examine what he actually means by a "year." He begins to think how the ancients measured, with only rough instruments, the recurrence of the solstice, and how they had to repeat this many times to average and fix the duration of the year. By December the students are able to measure the solstice within a few days, and they understand their instruments well enough to know why they cannot figure it exactly.

Phases of the Moon

Meanwhile, they are also studying the phases of the moon, learning how it travels about the earth and why its orbit takes an elliptical shape. This leads to a study of Kepler's Law and its application to the orbits of artificial satellites. From here on it is only a few steps to the concepts of gravity, mass, and specific gravity.

From maps of the sky, with sky coordinates, the students proceed as the ancients did to mapping the earth, and they learn how a spherical surface is translated onto a flat piece of oak tag. Large wall maps are one tangible result of this project, maps accurate to a degree that would please even Frederick Merk.

By this time the Walden students have grasped much of what is involved in the shape of the earth, and in the late winter they begin learning about what it is composed of. Ideas about the different states of matter are presented, and they begin to examine about twenty key elements. The concept of atomic structures is introduced, and these elements, their properties, and the ways they combine are considered. When a few more are added, the beginnings of the periodic table may be understood. Then another twenty-odd elements are studied because of their importance to man, elements like gold or uranium, chromium or arsenic.