Among the unfinished business of elementary science is the need to make certain that the contributions of science to the development of democratic living are fully utilized in the education of children, beginning at the earliest level.

The author reassess science’s place in the emerging curriculum—he considers anew what purposes it should serve; what contribution it should make to the growth of boys and girls in the elementary school; and what competency teachers must have in order to use it.

It has been indicated that science has tremendous potentialities for the improvement of social conditions. To secure these potentialities the people must be educated to utilize the full resources of science.

Science teaching is an integral part of a comprehensive program of helping children achieve orientation and anchorage in the world. The aims of elementary education are in effect the aims of society itself; a major concern of the elementary school is education for desirable social behavior.1 In this monograph, science teaching is examined for its actual and potential contributions to childhood education.

It is in man's own story, his relation to his natural environment, that we find the underlying causes of his present plight. The elementary and secondary schools must provide youth with an understanding of that story in order to create a broader, saner, and calmer view of the large problems that youth will face as adults.

The content and method as they are being evolved in the scienre of the elementary school may he utilized to develop a larger perspective of human affairs. Elementary science can develop an ability to visualize the progress of man and his society against the background of the modern concept of time, the infiniteness of space, and the interaction of universal forces; it can also teach him to think objectively concerning many natural and social phenomena. This content and method may be used in promoting healthy social attitudes, including international understanding.

As a result of this period of curriculum reconstruction there has been a definite tendency to evaluate elementary science in terms of its social significance. The content of elementary science, then, is not to be considered an end in itself but a necessary means to social objectives.

Science is interwoven into the fabric of life. Its concepts, therefore, to be made meaningful to the child must be interwoven with the very fabric of educational experiences that he is having in and out of school.

In the past there has been a tendency to restrict the curriculum to the so-called 'fundamentals,' or '3 R's.' At present there is a definite trend in industrial nations toward the inelusion of liberal training in the program of studies for the elementary school. This is illustrated in courses of study of recent issue in the United States and in the new combine schools of Russia, the modern Volksschule of Germany, and the Decroly type of school in Belgium. The present movement is towards including science as a part of this liberal training in universal education.

The outline of science for the grades of the elementary school that is presented in this chapter is extracted from a number of recent syllabi of science and serves to illustrate the program that has been presented in Chapter X.

FOR several years the administration of the Horace Mann School, Teachers College, Columbia University, has felt a growing need for a curriculum study of elementary science with a view toward an organization of that subject on a functional basis. The task of making such studies as seemed necessary was assigned to the author.1

T IS not difficult to find some of the causes which have hindered the introduction of science into the elementary schools of this country. It has been difficult to define the specific goals in terms definite enough to offer guidance to curriculum makers. Science covers a large field, and its significance and meaning to man have been growing rapidly.