It is scarcely necessary to make the statement that the standards of preparation and the facilities for meeting these standards have been enormously improved within the past few years. Evidence of this is found in the changes recently made in the curricula of and the requirements for graduation from the California State Teachers Colleges. Neither is it necessary to say that improvement must continue. Such problems are evolutionary. Notwithstanding that requirements for teachers certificates have been raised the country over, the universities are not generally making very rapid strides in affording opportunities for better preparation in subject-matter and special methods. In corroboration, witness the recent criticisms of the departmental courses in special methods now given in universities generally (Swift, 1918; Taylor, 1918). The length of time or the number of units of work required for certification may be increased but that does not insure a finer _quality_ of preparation. In attempting to explain the slow pace of improvement in the quality of preparation for the teaching of science, one becomes involved in a cycle. Science had its development in the college and university whence it diffused slowly into the secondary schools, and finally slightly into the elementary grades. The differences between the aims of college science and secondary school science were and still are not taken sufficiently into account. As an inevitable result there are to be found in the curricula of high schools too many science courses that are mere dilutions of the college type, with no modification of purpose, and just enough change in method and subject matter to bring them partially within the power of understanding of the less mature mind. This situation in turn reflected upon the higher institutions of learning in such a way that it seemed that they were giving adequate training of the correct type. And such would have been the case had the college course in the particular science been planned for the express purpose of being diluted to suit secondary school needs. But it will be generally conceded that such courses never have existed.