1 Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society, General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), 158. It was Conant who directed the writing of this report, and so it is not surprising that the view of scientific method expressed therein is consistent with his later writing. Conant, James B. Science and Common Sense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), 42–62; see also, idem, On Understanding Science: An Historical Approach (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), 4–5. Bush, Vannevar “What Every Layman Should Know,” review of Science and Common Sense, Saturday Review, 17 February 1951, 14–15; Clark, Joseph T. review of Science and Common Sense, America, 21 July 1951, 402.Google Scholar

2 On the recurring use of the multi-step scientific method by teachers, see Palmquist, Bruce C. and Finley, Fred N. “Preservice Teachers’ Views of the Nature of Science during a Postbaccalaureate Science Teaching Program,“ Journal of Research in Science Teaching 34 (August 1997): 595–615; and Lederman, Norman G. “Students’ and Teachers’ Conceptions about the Nature of Science: A Review of the Research,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 29 (April 1992): 336–359.Google Scholar

3 Typical treatments of curriculum differentiation during this period can be found in Angus, David L. and Mirel, Jeffrey E. The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999); and Ravitch, Diane Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reform (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), chapters 2 and 3. The most notable work examining changes within school subject areas has focused on the humanities; see, for example, Fitzgerald, Frances America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little Brown, 1979). In the sciences, Pauly, Philip J. has described the origins of school biology in Biologists and the Promise of American Life: From Meriwether Lewis to Alfred Kinsey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 171–193; see also Rudolph, John L. Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) for an examination of the changing nature of biology and physics during the Cold War.Google Scholar

4 Kaiser, David A. “Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists after World War II,“ Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (September 2002): 131–159. See also, Kaiser, David A. ed., Pedagogy and the Practice of Science: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005). A similar argument concerning the importance of institutional and educational structures in shaping disciplinary research is made in Kohler, Robert E. “The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base,” in The Scientific Enterprise in America: Readings from Isis, ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Rosenberg, Charles E. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 98–122.Google Scholar

5 The lack of change noted here refers only to the epistemological practices and norms of science. There is no question that the theoretical knowledge over this time span changed radically, especially in physics. Significant changes in the way scientists went about their work did not occur until World War II. Discussions of the many new theoretical developments in physics can be found in Kragh, Helge Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Tobey, Ronald C. The American Ideology of National Science, 1919–1930 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 96–132; and Kevles, Daniel J. The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 155–169. The transformation in the organization and methods of research that occurred during and after World War II are treated in Galison, Peter and Hevly, Bruce, eds., Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). On the importance of science as a model for knowledge generation in other fields, see Roberts, Jon H. and Turner, James, The Sacred and the Secular University (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 41, 43–60. It should be noted that statements regarding what actually went on in classrooms are always problematic. My claims in this essay are based on popular textbooks of the time as well as what teachers and reformers stated directly about the issues in question. This evidence is admittedly drawn from a national (urban Northeast/Midwest) discourse and may gloss over differences that existed at the regional level or among different gender or ethnic groups.Google Scholar

6 On the history of methodological writing in science, see Laudan, Laurens “Theories of Scientific Method from Plato to Mach,“ History of Science 7 (1968): 1–38. The widespread acceptance of the Baconian view of scientific method is described, among other places, in Burnham, John C. How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 162–163; Hull, David L. “Charles Darwin and Nineteenth-Century Philosophies of Science,” in Foundations of Scientific Method: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Giere, Ronald N. and Westfall, Richard S. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 115–117; and Yeo, Richard R. “Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Science in Britain, 1830–1917,” in The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method: Historical Studies, ed. Schuster, John A. and Yeo, Richard R. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1986), 263.Google Scholar

7 Yeo, “Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Science,“ 262. For an excellent example of how the rhetoric of scientific method was used to secure institutional space in Britain, see Gieryn, Thomas F. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 37–64. On the differences between scientists’ discussions among their peers and the public, see Yeo, “Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Science,” 275. For some of the disagreements within the scientific community, see Laudan. “Theories of Scientific Method,” 31–32; and Morrell, Jack and Thackray, Arnold, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1981), 269–271.Google Scholar

8 Newcomb, Simon “What is a Liberal Education?“ Science, n. s., 3 (1884): 435–436. For a detailed look at Newcomb's views on and public advocacy of scientific method, see Moyer, Albert E. A Scientist's Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), xi, 66–97. The American reception of the British scientists is treated in Kevles, The Physicists, 14–17. A nice survey of the popularization of science in America during the nineteenth century can be found in Burnham, How Superstition Won and Science Lost, 127–169. The spread of scientific methods and a more general scientific culture in American universities is described by Roberts in Roberts and Turner, Sacred and the Secular University, 61–71.Google Scholar

9 Newcomb's remarks were part of a debate with Eliot, Charles W. see Eliot, “What is a Liberal Education?” in Charles W. Eliot: The Man and His Beliefs, ed. Allan Neilson, William vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1926), 38–70 [originally published in The Century in 1884]; and Newcomb, Simon “President Eliot on a Liberal Education,” Science, n. s., 3 (1884): 704–705. Though science courses were routinely offered in many high schools, mastery of the classic languages was often all that was required of the small numbers of students who planned to matriculate at a college or university. Science thus occupied a lower status in the schools during the first part of the nineteenth century; Krug, Edward A. The Shaping of the American High School, 1880–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 6–7. The lower status of science, at least in terms of its college preparatory function, can be seen in the differential course-taking patterns between girls and boys in the early academies, see Tolley, Kim “Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen: A Comparative Analysis of Scientific Subjects in the Curricula of Boys’ and Girls’ Secondary Schools in the United States, 1794–1850,” History of Education Quarterly 36 (Summer 1996): 129–153.Google Scholar

10 Maclaurin, Richard C. “Science and Education,“ School Review 18 (May 1910): 319. On the fate of the classics in the school curriculum, see Winterer, Caroline The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), especially chapter 4.Google Scholar

11 Whitman, Frank P. “The Beginnings of Laboratory Teaching in America,“ Science, n. s., 8 (1898): 202. Typical teaching practices in the sciences during the nineteenth century are described in Reese, William J. The Origins of the American High School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 139–140; Joncich, Geraldine “Scientists and the Schools of the Nineteenth Century: The Case of American Physicists,” American Quarterly 18 (Winter 1966): 667–685; see also, Harris, William Torrey How to Teach Natural Science in Public Schools (Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen, 1895). The use of objects as the starting point of instruction was common in the elementary grades in the Oswego movement and among Herbartian educators, see Dunkel, Harold B. Herbart and Herbartianism: An Educational Ghost Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 243–244.Google Scholar

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13 Kohler, “Ph.D. Machine,“ 108; Bruce, Robert V. The Launching of American Science, 1846–1876 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 334–338; Hannaway, Owen “The German Model of Chemical Education in America: Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins (1876–1913),” Ambix 23 (November 1976): 145–164. See Veysey, Lawrence R. The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 125–133, for a more general discussion of the German influence.Google Scholar

14 Griffin, LaRoy F. “The Laboratory in the School,“ School and College 1 (October 1892): 477.Google Scholar

15 National Education Association, Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies (New York: American Book Company, 1894), 27. For favorable comments on this trend at the turn of the century, see Maclaurin, “Science and Education,“ 322; Jordan, David Starr “The High School Course,“ Popular Science Monthly 73 (July 1908): 28–31; Newell, Lyman C. “Professor Remsen on the Teaching of Science,” School Science 2 (May 1902): 129–132; and Remsen, Ira “The Problems of Science Teaching,” School Science and Mathematics [hereafter SSM] 9 (March 1909): 281.Google Scholar

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17 On Eliot's early contributions to laboratory teaching, see James, Henry Charles W. Eliot: President of Harvard University, 1869–1909 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930), 161–165. On Eliot and his involvement in physics education reform, see Melia, Elizabeth Ann “Science, Values, and Education: the Search for Cultural Unity at Harvard Under Charles W. Eliot A. Lawrence Lowell and James B. Conant” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1995), chapters three and four. The influence of college admission requirements on high school course offerings is noted in Krug, Shaping of the American High School, 7.Google Scholar

18 University, Harvard Descriptive List of Elementary Physical Experiments Intended for Use in Preparing Students for Harvard College (Cambridge: The University, 1889). The first version was less descriptive, Harvard College, Provisional List of Experiments in Elementary Physics for Admission to College in 1887 (Cambridge: Harvard College, 1886); Hall to Webster, David 9 September 1937, box 104, Records of the Harvard University Dept. of Physics, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, MA. The most accessible version of these experiments can be found in Hall, Edwin H. and Bergen, Joseph Y. A Textbook of Physics, Largely Experimental, Including the Harvard College “Descriptive List of Elementary Exercises in Physics” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1899). For a first-hand account of the origin of this requirement, see Hall, Edwin H. “Physics Teaching at Harvard Fifty Years Ago,” American Physics Teacher 6 (February 1938): 17–18. The history of this is also recounted by Moyer, Albert E. “Edwin Hall and the Emergence of the Laboratory in Teaching Physics,” Physics Teacher 14 (February 1976): 96–103.Google Scholar

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27 Dewing, Arthur S. “Science Teaching in Schools [Part III.],“ SSM 8 (December 1908): 741–742. A nearly identical statement was made a few years later by Meyers in “Laboratory Method in the Secondary School,” 729–730.Google Scholar

28 DeGarmo, Charles “Scientific Basis of High-School Methods,“ School Review 16 (September 1908): 463. Laboratory methods were advocated for non-science subjects as well, see, for example, Betz, W. “The Laboratory Method of Teaching Mathematics,” Proceedings of the New York State Science Teachers Association (1904): 118–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 The well-known Illinois ecologist Forbes, Stephen A. for example, argued that science teaching might be improved considerably “by correlating our different science departments with each other and with the department of logic, with respect to scientific method;” Forbes, Stephen A. “The Scientific Method in High School and College,“ School Science 3 (April 1903): 61. This followed a pattern that went back as far as the 1870s when Simon Newcomb claimed that what the country needed was “the instruction of our…public in such a discipline as that of Mill's logic;” Newcomb, “Abstract Science in America, 1776–1876,” North American Review 122 (January 1876): 122. The perceived value of laboratory work during this period is described in Hollinger, David A. “Inquiry and Uplift: Late Nineteenth-Century American Academics and the Moral Efficacy of Scientific Practice,” in The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory, ed. Haskell, Thomas L. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 143. For a specific example of this, see Norton, William Harmon “The Teaching of Science,” School Science 2 (October 1902): 196–197.Google Scholar

30 Krug suggests a number of reasons for the surge in enrollments from economic conditions to technological development; Shaping of the American High School, 170–171. Enrollment data from U.S. Bureau of Education, Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), 566; U.S. Bureau of Education, Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year Ended June 30, 1916 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1917), 449. On early high schools in the United States, see Reese, Origins of the American High School. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Enrollment data from Reports of the Commissioner of Education. United States population data from the U.S. Census Records. The report on the “High School Movement” was written by Elmer Ellsworth Brown U.S. Bureau of Education, Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1903, 563–583. Krug, Shaping of the American High School, 170.Google Scholar

32 Ten percent was the figure for academies. The percentage logically would be lower if one included high schools, which typically prepared even fewer students for college; Krug, Shaping of the American High School, 7. On the longstanding practical orientation of high schools, see Reese, Origins of the American High School, 260.Google Scholar

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39 Hall, G. Stanley Adolescence, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1904), II:154; and “Brief General History of CASMT,” SSM 13 (April 1913): 348–349. The importance of psychology as the underlying framework of the new movement is evident in the frequency with which material in that field was pointed to by reformers. Mann wrote that the science teacher “should assiduously study such works,” citing Hall's Adolescence, in particular, as worthy of careful examination; Mann, C. R. “On Science Teaching (V)” SSM 6 (March 1906): 195–196.Google Scholar

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71 See Jordan, John M. Machine-Age Ideology: Social Engineering and American Liberalism, 1911–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 1–10, 33–66; Wiebe, Robert H. The Search for Order, 1871–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 164–195; Hollinger, David A. “The Problem of Pragmatism in American History,” in In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 23–43; and Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 90–126, among others.Google Scholar

72 Bode, Boyd H. review of How We Think, School Review 18 (November 1910): 642; Fitzpatrick, review of How We Think, 97; Eastman, Max review of How We Think, Journal of Philosophy 8 (April 1911): 244; Ruediger, W. C. review of How We Think, Education 30 (June 1910): 704.Google Scholar

73 Mann, C. R. The Teaching of Science for Purposes of General Education (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 131–136. Mann's reliance on Dewey is also evident in his article “Physics in the College Course,” Educational Review 39 (May 1910): 473–477.Google Scholar

74 On the expansion of normal schools in the United States, see Herbst, Jurgen And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 140–160; and Ogren, Christine The American State Normal School: “An Instrument of Great Good,” New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. Textbooks that emphasized the more formal views of method included: Bigelow, Lloyd and Teaching of Biology in the Secondary School, 9–10, 299–309; Hall, Smith and Teaching of Chemistry and Physics in the Secondary School, 146–153 (there is particular emphasis here on Pearson's Grammar of Science), 274–278; Bergen, Hall and Textbook of Physics, 202–203; and Linebarger, C. E. Text-Book of Physics (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1910), 5–6. Those that highlighted the Deweyan characterization of method included: Mann, C. R. The Teaching of Physics, 131–144; Woodhull, John F. The Teaching of Science (New York: Macmillan, 1918), 228–230; Twiss, George R. A Textbook in the Principles of Science Teaching (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 6; Downing, Elliot R. Teaching Science in the Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925), 53–63; Hunter, George W. Science Teaching at Junior and Senior High School Levels (New York: American Book Company, 1934), 213; Frank, J. O. How to Teach General Science (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co., 1926), 32–35. Later teacher education textbooks similarly emphasized this representation of science, see for example, Heiss, Elwood D. Obourn, Ellsworth S. and Hoffman, Charles W. Modern Science Teaching (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 79–97. This view of method was also a prominent feature of the National Society for the Study of Education's Forty-Sixth Yearbook, Science Education in American Schools, ed. Henry, Nelson B. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 144–147. Student textbooks, when they explicitly discussed method, used the Deweyan representation as well, see Watkins, Ralph K. and Bedell, Ralph C. General Science for Today (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 607–610; and Hunter, George W. Problems in Biology (New York: American Book Company, 1939), 13.Google Scholar

75 Woodhull, John F. “Science Teaching by Projects,“ SSM 15 (March 1915): 232. Woodhull followed this up with “Projects in Science,” Teachers College Record 17 (January 1916): 31–35. The method's origin can be traced to project work in the field of agriculture, see Randall, J. A. “Project Teaching,” National Education Association Journal of Proceedings and Addresses (1915): 1009–1012; and Heald, F. E. “‘The Project’ in Agricultural Education,” General Science Quarterly 1 (March 1917): 166–169. An excellent account of project teaching can be found in Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, 130–150.Google Scholar

76 Moore, J. C. “Projects,“ General Science Quarterly 1 (November 1916): 15.Google Scholar

77 Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, 135; Kilpatrick, William H. “The Project Method,“ Teachers College Record 19 (September 1918): 319–335. Quotation from Kilpatrick, William H. “Dewey's Influence on Education,” in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Arthur Schilpp, Paul (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1939), 469. For an analysis of the project method in the larger context of Kilpatrick's work, see Beineke, John A. And There Were Giants in the Land: The Life of William Heard Kilpatrick (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 99–116.Google Scholar

78 The scientific/project method was advocated by Kilpatrick and his disciples as a way to reorganize the school curriculum entirely. An important vehicle for the dissemination of this idea was the Journal of Educational Method established in 1921; Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, 139–140. The Deweyan scientific method also became a central framework for the conduct of educational research during the first half of the century, see, for example, Kelley, Truman Lee Scientific Method: Its Function in Research and in Education (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1929), 26–28.Google Scholar

79 Meister, Morris “The Method of the Scientists,“ SSM 18 (November 1918): 745. Woodhull wrote: “The great masters of science, Galileo, Faraday, Pasteur, Darwin, etc., illustrated in all their lives and work the project method;” Woodhull, Teaching of Science, 233. See also Bowden, Garfield A. “The Project Method in General Science,” SSM 22 (May 1922): 439–446; and Ruch, G. M. “The General Science of the Future,” SSM 20 (May 1920): 431. The adoption of this version of the scientific method played a significant role in the emergence of general science as a new school subject during this era. On this point, see Rudolph, John L. “Turning Science to Account: Chicago and the General Science Movement in Secondary Education, 1905–1920,” Isis 96 (September 2005).Google Scholar

80 Hunter, George W. “The Relation of General Science to Biological Science in the Secondary School,“ General Science Quarterly 4 (January 1920): 382. The shift in the public view toward science as preeminently “process” is described by Wiebe in The Search for Order, 147.Google Scholar

81 Mann, Charles Riborg “Project Teaching,“ General Science Quarterly 1 (November 1916): 14. The scarcity and low quality of teachers in science was also commented on by Judd, Charles H. in “Meaning of Science in Secondary Schools,” 90–92, as well as by Bagley, W. C. “The Test of Efficiency in Teaching Physics,” SSM 12 (May 1912): 403.Google Scholar

82 Judd, “Meaning of Science in Secondary Schools,“ 89. On the liberating view of Dewey's method, see Mann, C. R. “What Is Industrial Science?“ Science, n. s., 39 (1914): 518–519; and Meister, “Method of the Scientists,” 739–745.Google Scholar

83 Downing, Elliot R. “The Scientific Method and the Problems of Science Teaching,“ School and Society 10 (May 1919): 571; Bagley, “Test of Efficiency in Teaching Physics,” 402; Ruch, “General Science of the Future,” 431. Examples of the various lists of projects that were published can be found in Sharpe, R. W. “The Project as a Teaching Method,” SSM 20 (January 1920): 20–26; and Trafton, G. H. “Project Teaching in General Science,” SSM 21 (April 1921): 315–322.Google Scholar

84 Scott, Frank W. to Dewey, 8 October 1928, (document 05910), Dewey Correspondence.Google Scholar

85 Dewey, John How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1933), 115–116.Google Scholar

86 Dewey to Ratner, Joseph 2 August 1932, (document 06960), Dewey Correspondence.Google Scholar

87 National Society for the Study of Education, Science Education in American Schools, 20, 29, 144–147. Articles in the professional literature include, among others: Bingham, N. Eldred “A Direct Approach to the Teaching of Scientific Method” Science Education 33 (April 1949): 241–249; Keeslar, Oreon “The Elements of Scientific Method,” Science Education 29 (December 1945): 273–278; and Lewis, Ralph W. “How to Write Laboratory Studies Which Will Teach the Scientific Method,” Science Education 31 (February 1947): 14–17.Google Scholar

88 Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom; on the scientists’ reaction to the Deweyan conception of method, see pp. 120–122. For the close connection between the wartime work of scientists and education reform, see idem, “From World War to Woods Hole: The Use of Wartime Research Models for Curriculum Reform,” Teachers College Record 104 (March 2002): 212–241.Google Scholar

89 Conant to Dewey, 27 February 1951, box 411, President's Records: Conant, James B. Harvard Archives, Pusey Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Dewey was on an extended trip to the Southwest at the time and acknowledged Conant's letter months later. I have not been able to locate any records that indicate Dewey's thoughts on the chapter.Google Scholar

90 Kent, William P. to Conant, 15 June 1952, box 18, Conant Papers.Google Scholar