Figure 1.-- This picture shows five high school students during the 1930s displaying their individual science projects undertaken as part of their high school science clubs. The idea was to encourage boys and girls to come up with some scientific project in chemistry, physics, biology, or electronics from which they would learn. At the time this was an after school extra-curicular activity, nit a program promoted in the school's actual scienvce classes. Wecare not sure just what the various gadgets displayed are. Perhaps our scientifically literate readers can help identify what they are. The boy on the extreme left seems to have an anvil in front of him for some purpose, and the boy on the extreme right seems to have chemical tubes attached to a board of some sort, or is this an electronic device? Click on the omage for a fuller discussion.

Science is not the most popular subbject for most American school children. It is, however, among the most important subjects. An important part of the school science program is today the science fair. As far as we know, the school science fair is an American innovation. The science fair is today a well estblished tradition at American secondary and many primary schools as well as schools in many other countries. The modern science fair has it roots in the science clubs which began to appear in high schools in the late 19th century. Some of these clubs began to organize comoetitions in the early-20th century. But this was strictly a school activity and no overall natioinal or even state coordination. The first major step toward establishing a formak national orogram began afyer World War I. The first important step in this direction didn't actually concern the schools. E.W. Scripps founded Science Services (SS) as a nonprofit organization (1921). The purpose was to make the science which was revolutionizing America more understandable to the lay public. He wanted to make sceience more understandable to the general public. Scripps is an interesting figure and played an important role in both American journalism and science. Scripps founded the United Press, Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, and the Institute of Biological Research at La Jolla. Science Service founded to disseminate science news. At the time the popular press covered science developments to some extent, but few reporters had even a basic understanding of sceince and often sensatiinalized reports on scientific developments. it. At the time, accurate science reporting occurred in scholarly journals which the public did not read or, given the way they were written, understand. Scripps set out to offer a news service to explain scientific ideas in an accurate, but inderstanable way. The Science Service sent representative to a meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Toronto. Watson Davis became the editor of SS publication, the Science News Bulletin, todays Science News-Letter. And 'Radio News of the Week' was first broacast (1926). Watson tirelessly worked to expand public understanding of science. And part of this effort was to improve science instruction in the schools. He was especially interested in school science clubs which were well estanlished in high schools. SS in cooperation with the American Institute of the city of New York founded a national organization to support school science--the Science Clubs of America (1941). At the time there were about 800 sdciernce clubs in America. Junior academies of science, museums and local science clubs joined the national organization. The results were dramatic, over 600,000 young scientists were organized into 25,000 science clubs. One early projerct was the Science Talent Search (STS) (1942). It was the first and still the miost highly regarded scholastic science contest. It was for high school seniors. It was supported by both the SS and the Westinghouse Corporation. Thevgoal was to encourage talented science students to pursue a career in science or engineering. This was the beginning of the American school science fair tradition.

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Created: 8:24 PM 1/20/2011
Last updated: 8:24 PM 1/20/2011