arise in immediate social relationships (e.g. How can I get on with other people of both sexes?"); in wider social relationships (e.g. I want to pull my weight in the school"); in economic relationships (e.g. "What sort of a job ought I to aim at getting?"); and, related to all these, in personal living. Scrutiny of case-history material revealed that it was in these areas that adolescents met their most worrying problems and that social forms required their most profound reconstruction. The Commission decided that educational experiences in the secondary school must be relevant to the needs of young people growing up in the contemporary social and cultural scene. In order that these needs might be met adequately, the student must be helped to reconstruct and to reorganize his own inner life so as to cope more effectively with his surroundings. These needs are not merely personal; they are not concerned only with inner integration, they are also socially determined they arise because individuals grow in and adjust themselves to a particular social order. Meet them in one way, put forward certain goals of action, and you will help to produce Nazis ; meet them in another way and you will help to produce budding Communists. Make people realize, by the way you meet their needs, that all men are ends-in-themselves and worthy of respect as individuals; make them feel that problems can and should be solved by the free play of intelligence and not by brute force; develop in them a feeling of responsibility for the promotion of common concerns, and you will be fostering in them a love of the democratic way of life. The purpose of General Education is to meet the needs of individuals in the basic aspects of living in such a way as to promote the fullest possible realization of personal potentialities and the most effective participation in a democratic society." The Curriculum Committees adopted this point of view in their work. Discarding the formal and traditional approach (such as is adopted in the Spens Report, for instance) they examined anew the subject areas with which they were concerned, and suggested ways in which material drawn from them could be used to meet the needs of adolescents. Other workers, like those of the Tyler group, suggested ways of evaluating the effects produced in the pupils. Stated thus baldly and briefly these ideas may appear less pregnant and less original than they are. After all, many other educators have said some things that are rather like these. Their recommendations, however, have been, as a rule, vague and general-little more than hopes backed by personal opinions. The recommendations of the Commission, on the other hand, are precise and to the point. They are the summary of, and are backed by, masses of objective and verified knowledge, and their application to practice is illustrated by detailed suggestions. Reorganizing Secondary Education1 is concerned not only with the general approach but also with details. It is divided into three parts: Theoretical Foundation' (66 pp.), Meeting the Needs of Adolescents in a Democracy (270 pp.), and Organization and Administration (120 pp.). The third part gives some indication of the important work done in providing guidance for pupils troubled by personal difficulties and problems, and also gives an account of the new methods of evaluating the students' progress by observing and interpreting their general behaviour. It is an ungrateful and difficult task to attempt, within the limits of a short review, to summarize the contents of a long and closely-reasoned book, packed with original ideas. It can be recommended most strongly it will not disappoint. The point of view it expresses is very relevant to our own needs, and may guide us in that reorganization of secondary education which we all hope will not be too long delayed. Our own adolescents are not so very different from those in the States, and we, too, want to extend and to fortify the democratic way of life. The General Education movement is rapidly having its effect. As an example, we have Dr. Emmett Brown's description of the new science course at the well-known Lincoln School of Teachers College, New York. This excellent book, which will chiefly interest teachers of science, gives an account of the difference which the new approach makes in the content of the course, in the method of teaching, in the testing of the effects produced in the pupils, and so on. Here is real General Science' science used for the general education of non-specialists. Mr. Gove Hambidge's book is very different it is both easy and popular. It is written in the form of letters from a father to his son who is about to enter college. It is based on the results of a large-scale inquiry made in Pennsylvania by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Fifty thousand individual students were examined and, as a result, interesting conclusions were arrived at regarding the shortcomings of schools and colleges. Mr. Hambidge is chiefly interested in the attempt to do away with mass educational methods and to focus attention on individuals. It is this which makes his book interesting it represents a healthy reaction against the chief danger to which American education is exposed-overreliance on mechanism, organization, and administration. : To appreciate fully the meaning and value of what is being done in the States, one needs knowledge of the historical and social determinants which have made American education what it is. Dr. Monroe's Founding of the American Public School System is most helpful in this connexion. He describes in an illuminating way how the schools of America have helped to maintain democratic institutions, and to forge a united nation out of the descendants of immigrants drawn from all kinds of cultural, social, and linguistic groups. It is an exciting story, and one which strengthens faith in the potentialities of the school as an instrument for furthering social progress. He divides his account into two main parts. First, the Colonial Period, during which Dutch, English, and Scottish influences were assimilated and education was universalized. One sees, from his description, why the influences which found clear expression in the writings of Bacon, Comenius, and Milton were able to make their effect felt more strongly overseas than in England. One sees, too, how much was lost to us when the literary-classical strand in our educational tradition became dominant over here, choking out the other. Much may have been gained, but it was gained at great cost. It became difficult to set up a really national and democratic system of which the people would be proud and in which they would take a vital interest. In the second, and longer, part of his book, Dr. Monroe considers the growth and development of American education from the Revolution to the Civil War-the epoch when it was nationalized, democratized, and made free. He shows how each change, each advance, was made in response to the challenge of pressing problems; that is, he gives an illuminating social interpretation of events which to a superficial observer appear unconnected and haphazard. The book is noteworthy not only because of its scholarly treatment, but also for other attractive features. It contains a large number of informative and well-reproduced illustrations. In addition, the original source-material on which Dr. Monroe relied has been collected into a second volume. This was too bulky to print, so it was photographed and printed on 35 mm. safety base. Many American libraries nowadays are equipped with cheap reading machines which project clear, bright, easily read pictures of such films. Unfortunately, most British libraries are not. So Vol. II will be less useful over here, a loss which, happily, will be felt only by specialists. The war has made all of us realize that the best, perhaps the only, guarantee of future social progress and of the maintenance of democracy lies in full co-operation with the U.S.A. This co-operation will have to extend into the cultural as well as into the economic and military fields. British educators will not be able to get help from American experience and research, nor will they be able to make their influence felt over there, unless they understand what Americans are trying to do. The books here collected give some of the outlines of the picture. 1 Reorganizing Secondary Education. Prepared by V. T. THAYER, CAROLINE B. ZACHRY; and RUTH KOTINSKY, for the Commission on Secondary School Curriculum. (15s. net. Appleton-Century Co.) 2 The Development of a Course in the Physical Sciences for the Senior High School of the Lincoln School of Teachers College. By Dr. H. E. BROWN. (Lincoln School Research Studies.) ($2.25. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.) 3 New Aims in Education. By G. HAMBIDGE. (IIS. McGrawHill Publishing Co.) 4 Founding of the American Public School System : a History of Education in the United States from the Early Settlements to the Close of the Civil War Period. By Prof. P. MONROE. Vol. 1. (15s. net. New York: Macmillan.) EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN MANY LANDS OR more than twenty years the psychology of child FOR more twentlogical rather than individualistic in its point of view. The child has been considered as one of a family constellation, as a potential citizen showing dominance or submissiveness in a nursery group, as a member of a class in a school, as a social agent acted upon by a variety of community influences. And for more than fifteen years the emphasis in such investigations has been upon long-term studies as much as upon the measurement of performance at specific stages. This Viennese volume1 is an interesting addition to the files of such long-term sociological studies of development. It gives a careful record of the behaviour of children toward different people while engaged in various activities and in different situations over periods varying from three months to half a year. Its data were obtained by speciallytrained observers whose method was to attach themselves to certain families twice weekly at various times of day and afterwards to report the activities they had observed. Their records were not dependent on mechanical aids such as photography or phonography, but consisted of written descriptions of all recollected contacts made by the children, their parents, nurses, and friends. This material was analysed according to a previously-determined classification indicating themes, means used, psychological situations (social intercourse, play activities, biological situations, school work, domestic activities, situations in the outside world), purposes and attitudes (social, pedagogical, organizational, charitable, economic). Detailed countings were also undertaken of the types of reaction observable in parent-child relations (positive, negative, zero or avoidance) and the tendencies distinguishable in contacts between brothers and sisters (co-operation, opposition, simultaneous, contributive, successive, with or without practical purpose and self-assertion). The book is copiously illustrated with charts and diagrams for each of these schema for each of the fourteen children described, and it leaves a clear impression of home life which may be compared with that of the best American or English reports on child behaviour. Much emphasis is laid by Dr. Buhler upon the purely methodological significance of the report as well as upon the novelty and prospective usefulness of its scheme of quantitative recording. She makes no secret of the limited size of the population studied, its narrow age-range, and its specialized type of environment, and she endeavours to attribute no importance to her results apart from the cases from which they were obtained. It may be remarked however, that a somewhat deceptive impression of validity and stability is given by her free use of statistical terms such as average and correlation. The total population consisted of groups of eight, nine, or twelve cases, and such phraseology is apt to lead a casual reader to make generalizations based upon insufficient data. The book is a stimulating example of painstaking inquiry, but only when such studies have been multiplied a hundredfold will it be possible to attain reasonable certainty that specific behaviour manifestations are above or below the average to be expected at a given stage in a given environment. French work with abnormal children is associated in England chiefly with the names of Seguin and Binet. This book is a useful reminder of the extensive investigations which have been conducted in France since Binet's day, and of the fruitfulness of continued collaboration between clinicians and teachers. Its interest is principally for clinical workers; but it is of indirect importance for teachers in that it deals with the emotional instability which is a frequent accompaniment of those cases of perplexing failure which cannot be attributed to mere intellectual weakness. It makes no profession of prescribing a cure. It is not a record of the treatment of unstable children, but a careful presentation of their detailed test results, observations on their motor skill and emotional maturity, and reports on their personal and family history. The population chosen for survey was one of over 1,000 cases of unstable children and adolescents referred to a psychiatric clinic. The patients were sufficiently normal to remain in their homes and in the ordinary background of school and business life; but they showed marked restlessness, lack of normal perseverance and attentiveness, and, at a later stage, inability to remain in one occupation. From the ranks of such children are recruited the dunces, the truants, the tramps, and some of the delinquents. Illustrative case studies are recorded for eighty-seven individuals, and a careful analysis is then given of the test performance and family history of larger groups, with comparisons with normal developmental stages wherever available evidence renders that possible. Intellectual or motor retardation is reported as less marked than emotional backwardness; and retardation is less characteristic than a lack of harmonious development. The unstable child retains certain babyish attitudes and responses; but his whole mental profile is not that of a baby. His typical curve is a zigzag with weakness in attentiveness and imagination, quite good powers of simple observation and memory, and more or less deficiency in reasoning ability. His interests are childish and at the level of immediate and passing pleasures. His development is irregular, and his power of adaptation to ordinary social demands is low. The volume as a whole is a scholarly and detailed recording of this irregularity and disharmony. It should prove a useful addition to the clinical material which is being accumulated in many countries through the controlled observation made possible by careful testing at child guidance clinics. Testing Interest in objective measurement has been a living issue in the schools since the opening years of this century, when the tests devised and standardized by Binet and Simon began to be employed as a means of discriminating between normal and subnormal pupils. These tests originated in France, but their usefulness was such that translations into other languages were not long delayed. Dr. Kamat's work3 gives a detailed account of what is probably their most recent metamorphosis-into the two Indian languages of Kannada and Marathi. The book is interesting to experts as a description of test material suitable for Indian children; but it is also worth reading for its own sake as a simple introduction to the meaning and history of individual measurement. The English version is not intended to be used with children whose mother tongue is Indian; but its publication permits comparison between it and other revisions, and the author deserves congratulation upon the detail with which he has recorded the nature and distribution of.results from the population of 1,074 Dharwar children upon whose testing the restandardization is based. An appendix gives photographs and brief case studies of eleven mentally deficient pupils from a Bombay school. It is to be regretted that representation was not also given of the pictorial Binet material after its adaptation to Indian form. Group testing on comparable lines by standardized tests of intelligence or achievement is a more recent development dating from about 1920 after the release of American psychologists from the large-scale testing of army recruits. Its usefulness to administrators and organizers is gradually being realized, and a generation of teachers is arising who are aware of the value of objective information on the performance of their pupils. This American book on educational measurements in the elementary school is written for such teachers. It is a most lucid and scholarly description of the origins and the present position of standardized testing in reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, art, music, and science, as well as in what is commonly called intelligence. Chapters are devoted to each of the main topics; examples of test material are given; ample bibliographies are appended; and the interest of the reader is stimulated by new-type tests or questionnaires on the contents of each section. Suggestions are offered for the construction of objective tests, and a clear account is given of the uses that may be made of survey tests in each subject as well as of the more detailed tests to which the description "diagnostic" may properly be applied. The material described is almost exclusively American, but the method of its description is excellent, and the book may be commended as a most useful discussion of the contribution made by the test movement to successful evaluation in the elementary school. The Nature of Learning Another of the basic problems of educational psychology is dealt with in this volume" which is German in its origins but American in its final form. The psychology of gestalt or pattern or structure lays emphasis on the learning which proceeds by understanding or organizing of the whole as opposed to that which may be described as mere summation or aggregation of associated parts. The book is a careful account of experimental work devised and executed in support of the findings of Wertheimer and his school of gestalt psychologists. Experiments were conducted on the learning of complicated card-tricks, the construction of geometrical figures, the memorizing of words and numbers, and the recollection of a theory as to business cycles of prosperity and depression. From the material so obtained, evidence is offered as to the most effective methods of memorizing, the transfer of training, the nature of forgetting and retention, the effect of repetition and of grouping or arranging. For the most part its interest is for professional psychologists; but certain educational implications are of value for teachers, and the findings as a whole are more closely akin to what teachers discover in the complicated learning situations of the class-room than are the somewhat over-simplified explanations which stress memorizing as the typical learning activity rather than understanding or the establishment of relations. Curriculum Reform Experimentation within the class-room is perhaps the acid test of the vitality of educational psychology. Such experimentation in three Pennsylvanian secondary schools is the subject of this report." The form it takes has to be judged against the background of the American school system of credits for short courses in a variety of discrete subjects. To many English teachers it will seem not unusual for a single teacher to have charge of a class for three consecutive years; nor will it seem revolutionary for an attempt to be made to secure continuity of effort and a sense of personal responsibility on the part of the pupils. In the American schools in question it involved a complete departure from ordinary school organization. For the experimental groups continuity of teacher and of courses was arranged. For control groups the usual procedure of short courses, many teachers, and much testing on segments of subject-matter was continued. The progress of 135 pupils was carefully recorded by objective examinations, and their development was followed from high school to college. Detailed studies of thirteen cases and averages and standard deviations for experimental and control groups indicate superiority for the group experiencing responsibility in learning and continuity of teacher. As a by-product, as might be expected, there is a record of increased interest and growth in professional liveliness on the part of the staff. Much co-operative effort by large groups of teachers is behind the extensive investigations reported in this most recent publication of the Scottish Council for Research in Education. The volume contains a series of findings upon the placement of topics in arithmetic; the vocabulary of arithmetic; types of errors in the basic number-facts, errors in fractions, the zero in elementary arithmetic, and the relative merits of methods of teaching subtraction. Each report is given in a most detailed and scholarly fashion with full acknowledgment of indebtedness to various American and British sources; but special interest attaches to the first chapter and the last. They will serve as a model for the many investigations which are yet to be undertaken before projected attempts at curriculum reform can be based on a sure foundation of observed evidence. Curriculum reform to be effective requires more behind it than mere theorizing. It is easy to proclaim that a The December Number of THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION will include: ARE SECONDARY SCHOOLS A FAILURE ? By Ellis W. Heaton, formerly Headmaster of Tynemouth WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NATIONAL By John Graves, M.A. IN THE CLASS-ROOM. VII: THE YOUNG ADOLESCENT By Vernon Mallinson. PRIMARY AND POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION By Thiselton Mark, D.Lit., M.A., formerly Master of Method in the University of Manchester Day Training College and University Lecturer in Education. THE HEURISTIC METHOD By C. J. Woollen. RESEARCH AND SCHOOL WORK. VI: HAND- By Dr. C. M. Fleming, University of London Institute of SOME CHRISTMAS BOOKS By S. B. Lucas. THE FUTURE IN EDUCATION By Professor F. A. Cavenagh, King's College, London. favourite topic is essential; but before a fancy can carry conviction it is desirable to prove that pupils will not be injured by any proposed postponements, curtailments, or omissions. The hope of securing more time earlier for social activities inspired American studies on age-placement, and the same motivation can be detected here. All who are interested in possibilities of curriculum reform will find stimulating material and competent statistical analysis in these chapters on the placement of long and short division and the relative merits of different ways of teaching subtraction. Less interest attaches to the chapters on the zero in elementary arithmetic and on the types of errors discernible in pupils' responses to the basic number-facts. The former is based upon material obtained at a stage before real familiarity with multiplication and division had been reached. The latter is reminiscent of early analyses of spelling errors with its conclusions based upon the external observation of answers, and its classification into perseverations, doublings, sequences, inversions, and reversals. Teachers are more concerned to know the relationship between what a pupil said and what he wrote than to tabulate the number patterns he produced. It is, however, characteristic of the book as a whole that even in connexion with such comparatively useless analysis an attempt is made to draw inferences for teaching practice. These scholars are obviously also teachers. The chapter on the vocabulary of arithmetic is important because of its emphasis on the need for care in the use of technical terms, and it is interesting to English readers in its omission of words implying spatial knowledge which would probably have been included in a comparable test south of the border. It is to be regretted that all the chapters did not follow the example of this one in reprinting in full the test used. It may also be remarked that it, like certain of the other investigations, seems unnecessarily dependent upon tests originally devised in other countries for different purposes. 4 Educational Measurements in the Elementary School. By Dr. M. E. BROOM. (205. McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.) 5 Organizing and Memorizing: Studies in the Psychology of Learning and Teaching. By G. KATONA. (23S. 6d. net. New York Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press.) • An Experiment in Responsible Learning: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation on Projects in Evaluation of Secondary School Progress, 1929-1938. By W. S. LEARNED and L. R. HAWKINS. (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning.) Studies in Arithmetic. Vol. 2. (Publications of the Scottish Council for Research in Education, 18.) (5s. net. University of London Press.) Classics Achilles and the Great Quarrel at Troy By Dr. W. H. D. ROUSE. (6S. Murray.) " There has never yet been a satisfactory translation of Homer. All our versions vary from the pseudo-archaic "And the great-hearted Odysseus bethought himself in his own mind and Butler's And, of course, when you come to a meeting of the Town Council you need a clean shirt ". The mere anatomy of the Homeric Greek language and that of modern English are so different that the task of the translator is almost impossible. Dr. Rouse's book is rather a retelling of the story than a translation. The style still varies between the two extremes. For example, “Leave his horses and walk? Not he! But he was doomed never to drive them back again ". What Dr. Rouse has tried to do, and successfully, is to produce a version of the Iliad through which the man without Greek can enjoy the story of the Trojan War and of the anger of Achilles; and here indeed, for such a reader, the old Heroes come climbing down out of the Wooden Horse, as shown in the frontispiece by Will Owen. The illustrations, as might be expected, are admirable, though both Zeus and Nestor would probably have something to say about their portraits, the former with thunderbolts. Education Little Ann and What to Do with Her " By F. L. COMBS. (3s. Whitcombe & Tombs.) Little Ann, with her starveling mind and anxious diligence", seemed to her headmaster to be " a third-rate commodity . . mentally insignificant ". Yet, when she rushed out into the street, eager to exhibit her good work stamp", and was run over by a car, her futile life and beautiful death presented him with an enigma which he could not solve". This common little thing" was a whole universe to two people, and their love for her brought out in them" the only thing in this rather futile world that can be held to be enduringly beautiful". That was in 1940. The author, dipping into the future—1970-sees Little Ann at the age of three entering one of the new Home-andNeighbourhood Schools. Here, in spite of her mental insignificance, it is discovered that her love of home and her genius for order point to a career for her "in that multifarious and most ambitious calling housewifery ". The book is a protest against the exaggerated importance which we are apt to attach to the development of the intellect as compared with the development of the imagination and of the emotions. Education is not mere instruction. "It is taking personality-flesh, blood, and spirit—and so guarding and guiding it that it becomes something finer, stronger, and healthier than life, a rather casual business, would give it a chance to be." Education on an International Scale: a History of the By G. W. GRAY. ($2.00. New York: Harcourt, In 1923 an International Education Board was founded by John D. Rockefeller, jun., “for the promotion of education throughout the world". The Board was estab lished as a post-war measure, its purpose being to mitigate the impoverishment of educational and other intellectual resources consequent upon the world war. It continued to function until 1938. The story is now published, and it shows a fine record. Fifty-seven universities and research centres were provided with new buildings, equipment, or endowment, and 603 picked individuals were given oppor tunity of studying under world authorities in their chosen fields. Through grants for these purposes thirty-nine countries, representing Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas, were aided. And the end of it all? The final pages of the story were written in the last weeks of 1940, with half the world at war. Many of the countries in which the International Education Board found its best opportunities have become dictatorships, or have been forced into the "protective custody" of alien dictators. Of the institutions aided, some are cut off from the international community of thought, their staffs disrupted, their men deflected to war work or scattered afar as refugees. Science," whose Magna Carta is freedom of thought, of inquiry, and of communication ", is in eclipse. But, adds the writer of this history, eclipse is not obliteration. The night may seem murky, beyond hope, but “no star is ever lost ". That is the note upon which this welltold story ends. Prehistory History By Prof. A. V. de PradennE. Authorized Translation by E. F. Row. (6s. net. Harrap.) This is a fascinating and authoritative introduction to Prehistory. It is divided into three parts. The first deals with the scope and method of the science of prehistory, defending the science against its critics, and explaining the nature of the data, miscalled documents', upon what it bases its generalizations. The second part describes in outline the assured results of research into the prehistory of Western Europe. The third part tentatively applies the European findings to the elucidation of the less fullyexplored regions of Africa, Asia, America, and Oceania. An admirable volume, well illustrated. New Zealand from Tasman to Massey By N. E. COAD. (6s. 6d. Wellington, N.Z.: H. H. Tombs; London: The British Authors' Press.) New Zealand this year is celebrating the centenary of its incorporation into the British Empire. Not only in the Dominion itself, but also in Britain and in every part of the Empire, keen interest is shown in the history of its marvellous development within the space of one hundred years. There are many, therefore, who will be glad to possess Miss Coad's excellent text-book that is already recognized as a standard authority in New Zealand itself. It is full of interesting information. Under Four Tudors: being the Story of Matthew Parker, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury By EDITH W. PERRY. (12s. 6d. net. Allen & Unwin.) This charming book has been a labour of love spread over nearly ten years. Its authoress, an American lady, has ransacked the libraries both of her own country and of Great Britain to gain information concerning the great Elizabethan archbishop and his noble wife, Margaret Harlestone. She has also consulted a vast array of secondary authorities in order to correct her judgment of the men and events of the controversial age in which Parker lived. The result is a volume of first-rate interest and importance. Parker more than any one else determined the character of the Anglican Church as the via media between Catholicism and Protestantism. Mrs. Perry vividly describes the conflicts that he waged with extremists on both sides in order to preserve the balanced mean of the desirability and possibility of what he was convinced. Excellent, too, is her summary of the evidence for the regularity of his consecration as bishop, on which the validity of Anglican orders depends. Mrs. Perry's book, however, is much more than an ecclesiastical biography. It is a summary, from a particular point of view, of a crowded and critical halfcentury of English history. The Illusion of National Character By HAMILTON FYFE. (8s. 6d. net. Watts.) This book can be heartily recommended to all who are prone to take their national greatness for granted. It is a satire and something more. Its purpose is not in the least to defend the nimbus of ideas called up when we use the words National Character; for there are plenty of books, Mr. especially at the present time, to do this for us. Hamilton Fyfe rather debunks the assumptions and uncriticized dogmatisms that we are all guilty of perpetuating. His method is to take us through the major nations of the world and unmask their conceits with a genial brutality; our own not excluded. In his own words, "What this proves for my present purpose is that nations ready to turn distrust into confidence, respect into suspicion, at the bidding of their rulers, cannot be said to have characters; and that, since all nations are so pliable, the idea of national character is an absurdity ". One need not take this categorical theorem too seriously. There is nothing, indeed, in the whole book, that invalidates the traditional conception of nationality that has come down to us through the Christian centuries-that cultural emphasis that explained the organic division intonations * in the universities and the orders. But, for an age that has too long neglected to overhaul and restate its inherited assumptions in these matters, the book was needed. Spanish Tudor: the Life of Bloody Mary By H. F. M. PRESCOTT. (18s. net. Constable.) Mary Tudor was not an attractive character, and her short reign was not a period in English history upon which any one can look back with satisfaction. Hence few writers have been drawn to make her a subject of study, and such biographies of her as have been composed-e.g. by Miss Strickland, Mr. R. P. B. Davey, Mr. J. M. Stone, and Miss Beatrice White-are either apologetic or polemical in tone. Mr. Prescott, therefore, as a scientific historian, has had an almost virgin field for his investigations, and he has produced a monograph of outstanding excellence. He has made an exhaustive study of the English Chronicles and State Papers, and he has consulted most of the chief secondary sources. The omission of Froude from his list of authorities is probably intentional, for Froude was highly prejudiced against Mary: the only excuse that he can find for her is that she was insane! Nevertheless, his references to his sources of information are extremely valuable, and no student should fail to avail himself of them. It cannot be said that Mr. Prescott's well-documented narrative is light reading, for no one could make the story of Mary and her times anything but gloomy and depressing. It is a story of bigotry and failure. But such as it is, Mr. Prescott has told it with striking completeness and impartiality. His book will long remain the standard authority. Sir Richard Livingstone said... in a recent broadcast, that a community's efficiency will depend on the technical and vocational training of its members-their skill in their various trades, crafts and professions; and its cohesion and stability will depend largely on their social and political education. But the quality of its civilisation depends on its standards, its sense of values, its idea of what is first-rate and what is not. Sir Richard not only crystallised in words what many teachers feel; he also indicated a possible line of educational development. That talk was one of the many practical broadcasts printed in The Listener so that it could be read at leisure and kept for convenient reference. The Listener 3d EVERY THURSDAY THE EARS OF THE BUSY TEACHER |