BLACKIE= TWO CENTURIES OF CHANGE Book II Now Ready A History of Great Britain and the British Empire since 1688. By E. J. HUTCHINS, B.Litt., M.A. (Oxon), Headmaster, Varndean School for Boys, Brighton, and L. W. STEPHENS, M.A. (Oxon), Assistant Master, Tonbridge School. Book 1, 1688-1830. With 30 maps. 5s. Book 11, 1815-1919. With 31 maps. 5s. Suitable for School Certificate forms. The books cover modern British History-Political, Imperial, Social and Economic -with reference to Europe where necessary. The Journal of Education says of Book I—" It is a workmanlike and attractive text-book." THE MAGIC OF LITERATURE Compiled by ROBERT H. COWLEY, B.A. Fully Illustrated. In three books. 3s. each. The three books of the Magic of Literature series are intended for pupils aged 11-14. Each book contains as wide a selection as possible of passages of first-class merit and unmistakable appeal. To help the pupils to gain full understanding and enjoyment out of what they read and to use its inspiration in the improvement of their own command of English, the books are provided with stimulating study sections after each lesson. CONTES FACILES POUR LES ENFANTS A new series of simple French Readers. Every chapter has its own vocabulary and questionnaire. Sentences and paragraphs are short, and the present tense is used almost exclusively. Illustrated. 7d. each. LA RONCELLE. By J. Jack, Dipl. Sorbonne, French Mistress, St. Bride's School, Helensburgh. ENCORE LA RONCELLE. By J. Jack. LE PETIT BONHOMME. Edited by J. Jack. LE JOURNAL DE JEANNOT LAPIN. By G. Morisset, L.-es-L. (Paris), Ph.D. (London), Senior Modern Languages Mistress, Haberdashers' Aske's Acton School for Girls. LES AVENTURES DE TRISTAN TIAULT A reader both interesting and easy, specially prepared for second-year pupils according to Van der Beke's Word Frequency Lists, by F. F. BROTHERTON, B.A., Senior Modern Language Master, Burnage High School, Manchester. With Vocabulary. Is. 5d. LATIN UNSEENS FOR SCHOOL CERTIFICATE With Hints on the doing of Unseens. By C. H. St. L. RUSSELL, late Senior Assistant Master, Clifton College. 2s. 10d. This book of Latin Unseens consists of 120 pieces of the same standard of difficulty and of the same length as the pieces usually set for the School Certificate. Some of the pieces are taken from Certificate Papers. GENERAL SCIENCE By L. J. M. COLEBY, M.A. (Cantab), Ph.D., M.Sc. (London), Senior Science Master, County School for Boys, Gillingham, Kent. Part I, with 4 half-tone illustrations and 178 diagrams. 3s. 6d. Part II in active preparation. This, the first of two books, covers the first two years' work of a School Certificate Course in General Science. The fundamental elementary principles of the various Sciences are adequately treated. A BIOLOGY COURSE FOR SCHOOLS By R. H. DYBALL, M.A., City of London School. With 210 drawings and photographs. 4s. 6d. In two parts, 2s. 6d. each. This new Biology provides a course of study suitable for candidates taking Biology as an independent subject in any of the various School Certificate Examinations. The Junior volume is intended to be used in the first two years, and can also be used as a general preliminary survey of plant and animal life, suitable for younger pupils. While we are always pleased to send copies of any of our books for examination, we will, adopted. 66 CHANDOS PLACE, LONDON, W.C. 2 THE COUNTY BADGE OR THE FOURFOLD ACHIEVEMENT By J. M. HOGAN, Secretary of the County Badge Experimental Committee THE It consists of four test-groups, though it should be stressed that the emphasis is on the training, or patient effort to achieve, rather than on the test itself. The groups are (i) Physical, (ii) the Expedition, (iii) the Project, and (iv) the Service conditions. This Dual athletic standards have proved their value in many schools as a complement to games and physical training. They can be an aid to both. Before any boy or girl attempts to train he is subjected to medical examination. determines his fitness to undertake all-round physical effort, and may also suggest training conditions or remedial exercises necessary to ensure success. All details are entered in a Record Book which becomes his personal property and in which his progress is noted. Then he begins to work toward the Standards in all these sections. (i) Swimming and life-saving. (ii) Jumping (either long jump, high jump, or pole vault). (iii) Throwing (choice of javelin, discus, weight or cricket ball). (iv) Running (either sprint or middle distance). (v) Stamina (either 2-mile run or 5-mile walk). There are modifications of the physical tests for girls. Three age groups are catered for, Junior (12-14), Intermediate (14-16) and Senior (16+). Within each age group there are two standards. The Standard Badge conditions, it has been demonstrated, can be fulfilled by all who are not seriously defective, but not without effort and training. A medical certificate will excuse an attempt in certain sections. The Silver Badge can be won only by those with inherent physical gifts and is designed to stimulate them to a sense of real achievement. The Expedition Training covers a wide field of activities. Map and compass work, camping, cooking, first-aid, observation, field-sketching and note-taking could all be included in the training. The final test should occupy at least twenty-four hours and should be undertaken either SERV individually or in pairs. It may be a hiking, cycling, The Project should demand proficiency, patience, and It is the combination of these four sections that is novel and important. Many organizations offer badges to boys and girls which encourage them to follow their natural tastes and so develop their strength. The combination does more than that. It demands that weakness must be conquered, and each conquest enables the child to defeat its own defeatism. True self-confidence is the result when objective difficulties have been met and overcome. The value lies not in the winning of the badge but in the prolonged effort to achieve. Habits of health and hygiene, patience and determination are built up and maintained. This is more important than the improvement in resilience, decision, endurance and spring that the athletic training is designed to promote. While in an article of this length it is impossible to give details of each section, of methods of training, or of the standards themselves, a full statement of the whole scheme is now in print. This will be forwarded to any one applying to the Secretary, County Badge Experimental Committee, Balliol College, Oxford. SERVICE THROUGH THE BLUE TRIANGLE ERVICE for youth and service by youth are two expressions of one idea, the importance of which is shown by the many schemes, official and unofficial, which are being advocated and tested. There is a growing feeling that book' education alone does not produce a happy or fully-developed individual and that the education of the future must fit people to use leisure in doing things rather than in having them done for them. The Board of Education have recently issued a Circular (1543) suggesting a number of practical ways in which young people can give service to their town and country, and at the same time make life more interesting for themselves. These ideas are primarily for young people between the ages of 14 and 20 as are those of the various other service schemes. The Y.W.C.A., working upon the suggestions of this Circular, has evolved ways of carrying out and supplementing them so that they can be adapted for individuals or groups of any age. The result is a scheme entitled Service through the Blue Triangle ", in which all their members, young seniors, senior married, and mixed groups can participate. Service has always been an integral part of the Y.W.C.A. activities and though many of the suggestions in this scheme are connected with the war effort, they are all of a nature The first part covers a range of practical activities. It borrows freely from the Board of Education Circular (1543) and adds some points for which the Y.W.C.A. has a special concern. After the advice "Find out first from the local authorities with what jobs they most want help", a list of suggestions is given on whom to help and how to help them. For example-for the Services and the Home Guard : washing, darning, and mending, or adopting a unit; for the Civil Defence Services: cleaning brasses for fire brigade; for Hospitals and Red Cross : making jig-saw puzzles; for Food Production: collecting acorns and beechnuts for pigs and poultry; for International Friendship: inviting people from other countries to your club, to your home, and making them really welcome. (Continued on page 386) Strike the modern note in educational books! NEW TITLES IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH SERIES The Mirror of History An Approach to Scott Edited by D. L. MACNAUGHTON and H. L. JONES Scott is not sufficiently known to modern readers and this little book has been designed to show how interesting and exciting his novels can be and how they throw light on different aspects of British and European history. English and History classes from the age of 14 upwards will find this book invaluable. The Story of Odysseus Translated by W. H. D. ROUSE Dr. Rouse is, of course, the recognized authority on Homer, and when Headmaster of the Perse School, Cambridge, he brought a new breath of life to the teaching of the classics. The Olive Garden J. H. MACLEHOSE This tale of Salamis and Marathon has a theme particularly appropriate at the present time when Greece is once more struggling against the invader, yet convinced that again she will triumph as she did over the Persians. Kinglake's Eothen Edited by J. W. OLIVER, D.Litt. One of the greatest travel books in the language is a welcome addition to the Teaching of English Series. It has been specially edited for examination purposes, and Dr. Oliver also supplies the historical background. Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, Beirut -all these places have a particular interest at the present time. Othello Edited by NORA RATCLIFF, M.A. For school purposes it is essential that Othello should be carefully and wisely edited and Mrs. Ratcliff has done her work quite admirably. Nelson are very glad to be able to add the great tragedy to this series. (All Senior Books, Is. 6d. each.) JUNIOR BOOKS, Is. 4d. SENIOR BOOKS, Is. 6d. Write for detailed prospectus. NELSON Parkside Works, Edinburgh, 9 Real Life Stories HARRY CASEY This is not only a new book but an entirely new type of Reader for Senior Central and Junior Technical Schools. It has been planned to suit the modern background, for it presents interesting story-like matter about MAN'S WORK. Children of to-day, especially in industrial areas and with the nation at war, quickly come up against the hard facts of life, and the less imaginative among them like to read about their own kind of environment. In extracts from numerous authors—a large number of them modern, but the key piece in each section by Defoe-characters and processes are set before us, covering every kind of activity. The passages from Robinson Crusoe show industry in its simplest form; the modern passages show it in its most advanced. To the question "How has man attempted to supply his needs" the answer is given in terms of literature that deals with the very stuff of life-daily bread, clothes, shelter, work, housing, recreation. There is a 40-page section on "Things to Do," with copious exercises. 264 pages. 3s. The second part sets out suggestions for study and action along the lines of Christian citizenship and international friendship, and endeavours to stimulate independent thinking. The question "What can we do in our jobs, in our clubs, in our towns, to build this better Britain?" is followed by suggestions such as "Use the wireless and the newspapers in order to learn more, as well as for amusement", and "Get to know about local government and how it works". Discussions and debates are advocated on subjects such as 'What are we fighting for?" or "The removal of unemployment after the war Part three contains practical details for working out the scheme, which includes the award of the Y.W.C.A. Service Badge a silver metal badge with a red 'S' in a blue triangle-when service under parts one and two has been undertaken. The badge is given after a probationary period of three months and it can be withdrawn by the local Service Badge Committee if the work is not carried through. The service may be undertaken either individually or as part of a group or team and, in order to facilitate co-operation with other existing schemes, membership of a local or county Youth Service Squad or Corps will count as equivalent service under Part One. It is suggested that the scheme should be organized in small groups under a leader and that these groups should use their own initiative in working out plans. Wherever possible the scheme should be a joint one for girls and boys. CORRESPONDENCE THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH SIR,-In your July number, a correspondent laments that to-day he can find no writers of the calibre of Carlyle and Ruskin, Macaulay, Matthew Arnold, and Browning-men who inspired him in his youth, forty years ago. They had all ceased writing twelve years before, Macaulay forty-two years before, so that they were hardly contemporary to Mr. Kennard Davis, who happily is still schoolmastering to-day. He asks where are their successors; writers who can convince the young that literature deals with life, who can solve some of our problems and give to the young an ampler vision of the world. He concludes that there are none such living to-day. So desperate is he that he is forced to the conclusion that Cicero, Virgil, and Tacitus, and still more Aeschylus and Plato are far more alive than any of our modern writers. Now I am convinced that both his theses are wrong; that the problems of to-day cannot really be solved by appeals to the classics, though they have, of course, a message for our time; and that there are many first-rate writers still alive or only recently dead, who can speak to youth with no uncertain sound. What surprises me is the fact that chief guests on speech days, in taking refuge from the present, so often commend the classics to their audiences of parents and boys and girls, but hardly ever suggest that the Bible answers most if not all of our personal and world problems, and that the Authorized Version is probably the finest piece of literature in the world. As your correspondent asks for a restatement of the fundamental truths on which our civilization is based, it is all the more surprising that he omits all reference to the Bible. It has often been suggested that for the average man the real heritage of classical literature' could equally well be obtained in translations; and, if opponents of this notion say that there are few really first-class translations extant, it is a terrible reproach on classical students who have been translating from Greek and Latin for about four hundred years. Why must one read the Georgics in the original in order to lead the simple life? Would not a year's subscription to Robertson Scott's Countryman do as well? But my real contention with your correspondent is concerned with his suggestion that there are no writers to-day who can speak to youth. If you take Frank Swinnerton's The Georgian Literary Scene, published in Everyman's Library, and pick, almost at random, books and authors mentioned there, a philosophy of life will soon be forthcoming. Let a youngster read a book or two by Wells and Shaw, Belloc and Barrie, Bennett and Galsworthy, BrettYoung and Walpole as a start and discover their message. Take Tono-Bungay and Joan and Peter, You Never Can Tell and Major Barbara, The Path to Rome and Dear Brutus, The Old Wives' Tale and The Forsyte Saga, The Portrait of Claire and the Herries Chronicles; and see whether some pattern of life, some solution of some of our problems does not emerge. True, the answer to youth's queries to-day may not be quite the same as we got forty years ago, but who could expect it? After all, forty years back takes us perilously near the revolutionary Eighteen-nineties, so admirably depicted in Holbrook Jackson's 'Penguin' cf that name. In my list, I have quite omitted Joseph Conrad, George Moore, Alice Meynell, T. E. Lawrence, and John Buchan, all of whom make a big appeal to many only just out of their teens. What about the nest of singing-birds tended by Sir Edward Marsh in Georgian Poetry; what about Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay, Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster, C. E. Montague? Have they no plan of life or inspiration? What of Thomas Hardy, Robert Bridges, John Masefield, W. H. Davies? Surely this casual list of writers suggests that young folk have a wonderful choice of literary guides of yesterday and to-day who can give them an ampler vision of the world. It is a curious commentary on this discussion that a question set in the recent Joint Board examination emphasizes the notion that imaginative literature may well be used for the purpose of social criticism and social reform. Your correspondent may still suggest that too many of the writers mentioned above are novelists; but I would say that much of our inspiration to-day comes from novel writers. If historians are needed, H. A. L. Fisher, G. M. Trevelyan, and Ramsay Muir can hold their own in any company; while the Prime Minister's life of his great ancestor, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, is as inspiring a piece of historical writing as one could find in any age. SIR, A direct answer to Mr. Kennard Davis is possible if not entirely satisfactory. There is no lack of successors to the Victorian moralists on whom he was nourished; not only Shaw and Wells-neither by any means so outmoded as current literary cant would suggest-but such critics and interpreters of our present way of life as Julian Huxley, Lewis Mumford, J. B. S. Haldane, J. M. Keynes, H. N. Brailsford, G. S. Crowther—to name only established reputations; these, I have found, interest sixth-formers of all types and lead them on to stiffer work. Further, in such a series as the Pelicans' we can continually test new theories and approaches-C. H. Waddington's, for example, in The Scientific Attitude. If it is objected that these writers are not stylists, that they lack the literary graces of a Macaulay or Ruskin, I (Continued on page 388) LONGMANS OF PATERNOSTER ROW BRITISH AND FOREIGN HISTORY Book II. NEW EUROPE AND THE NEW WORLD (16th to 18th Centuries) 38. 6d. Book III. THE MODERN WORLD (Since the 18th Century). Probable price 38. 6d. By E. H. DANCE, M.A. A new series for pupils aged 11 or 12 to 14 or 15. The main theme is general World History, but attention is concentrated on European affairs regarded as a whole. Social History has been given full prominence throughout. As regards methods of presentation, this series follows the same lines as the author's WORLD BEFORE BRITAIN and BRITAIN IN WORLD HISTORY, which have proved so popular. Each chapter is the right length for one lesson, and vividness is added by interesting Source Readings. The Maps have been specially drawn, and the Illustrations specially chosen, for their value as teaching material. AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ENGLISH HIGHWAY By A. R. MOON, M.A. and G. H. McKAY, B.A. This book contains passages of prose and verse rather easier than those in “ An English Highway, Stage I," selected to enlarge the pupils' literary experience. Probable price 28. SELECTIONS FROM LAMB AND HAZLITT Edited by R. W. JEPSON, M.A. This new volume in The Heritage of Literature Series contains a number of essays by the two famous essayists, all of which are likely to be of interest to boys and girls of School Certificate standard. 2s. 6d. VIER ABENTEUERGESCHICHTEN Edited by L. J. RUSSON, M.A. Three short stories and an episode from modern authors. The stories are interesting, and at the same time are of some literary merit. A Fifth Form should read them with ease and enjoyment. There are helpful notes, a selection of common idioms, and a full vocabulary. 28. 3d. FIRST YEAR LATIN READER By C. O. HEALEY, M.A. An easy reader based on the principle that composition is a putting together of familiar words and phrases. There is a basic vocabulary of 500 words and the book can be covered in a year or a little 2s. 6d. more. Edited by J. M. HARRISON, M.A. This is the final section of the course. It covers the syllabuses in HOW THE BODY WORKS By L. S. MICHAELIS, M.D. In the most charming way Dr. Michaelis answers the child's questions about the working of the body. His explanations are illustrated by clever and amusing diagrams, making each turn of page into an adventure. There are two editions of the book, the Alternative Edition containing a chapter on "How parents get children and how children are born." Standard Edition, limp cloth, Is. 10d. FIRST AID THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS By L. S. MICHAELIS, M.D. With 79 Photographs by VERA ELKAN of children engaged in simple First LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., LTD., 43 ALBERT DRIVE, LONDON, S.W. 19 |