One trouble has been that these scientific scales have been too widely scattered in various pamphlets for the average public school teacher to gather them together, and often too complicated with statistical methods and data for such a teacher to use with satisfaction. This book goes after both phases of this trouble. It gathers together such scales as those of Ayres, Ballou, Courtis, Hillegas, Starch, Thorndike, and others, for the measurement of results in arithmetic, handwriting, reading, spelling, composition, and drawing. It presents these simply and clearly for the elementary teacher, and gives directions for their application. The exercises at the end of each chapter are very suggestive, and the appendix gives a list of sources from which may be obtained the scales in full, also any standard blanks needed for making tests with these scales.

This small manual should be in the hands of every elementary teacher and of every supervisor of elementary schools. The use of these scales will bring satisfaction and improvement to most teachers trying them out, and also these scales will furnish new and definite stimuli to pupils to improvement.

The above review calls for like mention of another new and similar book, Educational tests and measurements, by Monroe, DeVoss, and Kelly, published by Houghton Mifflin Company. This latter book is larger, fuller, and includes measures for some high school subjects, also chapters on Statistical Methods, The Meaning of Scores, Tests and Examinations, and Tests and Supervision. This book is also simple and clear, the two books being excellent companions beginning, we hope, a new era for judging school work more scientifically.

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

T. J. WOOFTER

We are not greatly imprest with Teachers' problems and how to solve them, by Dr. Kenneth S. Guthrie. The method of the book is not satisfactory, since it is too fragmentary and too cursory to be of great value, either in the schoolroom or out

side. (Grantwood, N. J. Comparative Literature Press. 1917. 170 p. $1.10.)

A most excellent piece of work which deserves recognition from specialists in the history of European law is Roman law in the modern world, by Charles P. Sherman of Yale University. The three volumes are most valuable for serious students of legal history. (Boston. The Boston Book Company. 1917. 3 vols. 413, 497, 315 p.)

A short history of science, by Professors Sedgwick and Tyler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a good book, but it ought to have been more attractively written in view of the distinction of its authors. For this reason it will not be found very easy to read, while most excellent for reference. Unusual and very striking material will be found in the appendices, including the oath of Hippocrates, Harvey's dedication of his work on the motion of the heart and circulation of the blood, and the record of Galileo's appearance before the Inquisition. (New York. The Macmillan Company. 1917. 474 p. $2.50.)

Mr. Alfred M. Hitchcock of the Hartford public high school is the author of A new composition and rhetoric which is practical and useful. The use of illustrations is novel in a book of this type and they are well done. (New York. Henry Holt & Company. 1917. 576 p. $1.25.)

We have commented before on the increasing number of Latin books that are appearing and we are very glad to call particular attention to an especially excellent one. This is A beginning Latin book, by Albert S. Perkins of the Dorchester (Mass.) high school. Mr. Perkins has made an interesting experiment in what he calls vocational Latin. This book will illustrate in general how it has been done. His method of building up a vocabulary is admirable and his use of the direct method of language teaching very sugtive. (Boston. Benjamin H. Sanborn & Company. 1918.

432 p. $1.20.)

NOTES AND NEWS

Lord Haldane continues his great public service of arousing and instructing British opinion on the larger aspects of national education. A few weeks ago he

Lord Haldane

on Education

addrest a public gathering in Glasgow and dealt effectively with those questions to which the people of Great Britain are now addressing themselves with a view to increased national effectiveness.

Lord Haldane declared that the whole future of the British nation rested on its educational system. According as the British succeeded in raising the level of public education and public intelligence, so they would gain in relative strength in comparison with other nations.

It was mind that governed the mass, and intelligence, training, and knowledge alone enabled us to occupy a foremost place. The great Scottish Education Bill had been adapted to a people who had reached a further stage in progress than in England. The English Bill was admirable. That dealt with fundamental matters, but in Scotland they wanted to carry things farther. England had splendid public schools, which in some respects were amongst the most valuable institutions in the country. These provided only for a privileged few, and, while splendid in providing leaders of men, the influence of such schools had not yet reached directly the great mass of the population. The Scottish Bill proposed a further long step in bringing elementary and secondary education into an organic connection, and by enlarging the educational authority they in Scotland felt they had outgrown small school boards.

There remained the question whether the new authority should be an ad hoc authority or burgh and county councils with a statutory committee and experts. That latter system had worked remarkably well in England, and had

certain advantages. It was possible the latter authority would take more liberal views as regard taxes, etc., but there was the more important point as to entrusting education to burgh and county councils. There lay a still deeper principle. We were only just learning what devolution meant. They were learning that Parliament was congested, and beginning to see that town and country councils were yet in their infancy. These had got to be recognized as the real instrument thru which the people might work out their own salvation; but if the people were to take a proper interest in these bodies, as in Parliamentary elections, they would have to give these bodies new and larger functions. After the war one of the first things to be done would be to put the machinery of executive government into order. He looked forward to the process of devolution being applied to a number of things which were centralized at present, including education. Were that done, their local parliament would be a very interesting body. They would have an interest not only in education but in the composition of such local parliaments. If they went to London, Leeds, or Manchester, or to the great counties of England, they would find education worked at a level which could never be reached in the old days when the School Board, however excellent, was looked at with jealousy and suspicion by the rival rating authority. Now he looked forward to the time when Scotland would be fitted out with a new suit of clothes of larger dimensions, able to contain the growing form of the stunted educational organization of the nation, and enable them to expand the garments and renew them from time to time without being always under the necessity of putting on patches.

The great advance in the national interest in education was highly needed. Our institutions contrasted very badly with the institutions on the Continent, excluding our elementary education. Scotland was ahead of England in secondary education, but Scotland was still behind the Continent. The war, however, had caused an immense awakening. For many years he had dreaded the menace of Ger

many in the matter of her superior system of education more than he had dreaded the menace of war. Our people now are thoroly alive to the absolute necessity of a better training for the future generation if we are to continue to hold our own in the race in which nobody stood still. It was not enough to get first place, they must always keep it. That meant not that our old things were bad, but that they were out of date now, and we had to proceed to new things which would keep us abreast of the movement of the times.

How was that to be done? The first step, he was convinced, was that they must regard education from the elementary school up to and including the university as one whole, as one phase of the national organization. The second was, we must take care that opportunities were afforded, not merely to the fortunate members of a class, but that opportunities were open to every class of the community without distinction. A great step forward in both the English and Scottish Bills was the development of the continuation system with its compulsory education up to eighteen years. In some form or another this was the first step in the introduction of the thin end of the wedge, which he hoped would lead to more being introduced into the gap. The third point was that teachers must be a more important set of people. In future they must have greater social status, and to that end they must receive more cash. Teachers must be free from the taint of materialism, and their ideals must be such as would appeal to and convince the nation. There ought to be no reason why a man who started life as an elementary teacher should not end as a university professor. He, however, wished to see teachers ready to take their place wherever public necessity called for them most, as the great missionaries had done. They had come to a point when democracy took a new view of education. Education was the very foundation of democracy. It was the only way to get rid of social inequalities. If they carried the education of democracy far enough they would have solved nearly all their problems.