A First Reader for New American Citizens. Conversational and Reading Lessons by Frances Sankstone Mintz. Author of "The New American Citizen," and "A Practical Speller for Evening Schools." The Macmillan Co. 50 cents. The purpose of this book is to teach foreigners how to understand, speak and read the English language in as short a time as possible. It is intended to be used as a preparatory text to the author's "The New American Citizen." The method employed is the one certain one to produce results, the object is pointed out and the child is told its name, this is written on the blackboard and learned. Conversational English makes up the first part of the book; the pupils are taught how to ask and answer simple questions that are used at school, home, and work. For the purpose designed the book could not well be made more satisfactory; it meets every condition and need of the school and pupil. The Redway School History. Outlining the making of the American na tion by Jacques Wardlaw Redway, F. R. G. S. With maps and illustrations. Silver, Burdett & Co. $1.00. This is Dr. Redway's The Making of the American Nation under a new and improved title. By bringing it down to date the author has made a school textbook in history that will stand well to the fore with other texts on this subject. We reviewed Dr. Redway's book when it first appeared in 1895, pointing out some of its dominating and special features; these are marked characteristics of a work that will stand well to the fore with other texts in history for elementary schools. The book is strikingly rich in supplementary aids to the study of history, its many maps, footnotes, summaries, topical analyses, portraits, facsimiles of autograph letters, etc., will bring satisfaction and joy to teacher and pupil alike. Recent Editions of Books on English: THE DEERSLAYER. By James Fenimore Cooper. Arranged and edited by M. F. Lansing. Ginn and Company. 65 cents. The New Hudson Shakespeare-A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Introduction and Notes by Henry Norman Hudson, LL.D. Edited and revised by Ebenezer Charlton Black, LL.D. (Glasgow), with the co-operation of Moses Grant Daniell, A. M. (Harvard) School Edition. Ginn and Company. 50 cents. STANDARD ENGLISH CLASSICS. Ginn and Company: ESSAYS ON CLIVE AND HASTINGS. Macaulay. Edited, with Introduction and Notes by Charles Robert Gaston, Ph. D. 35 cents. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Shakespeare. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Rev. Henry N. Hudson, LL. D. 35 cents. ROSALYNDE, OR, EUPHUES' GOLDEN LEGACY. By Thomas Lodge. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Edward Chauncey Baldwin, Ph. D. 35 cts. THE OREGON TRAIL OF FRANCIS PARKMAN. Edited by William Ellery Leonard, Ph. D. 45 cents. MERRILL'S ENGLISH TEXTS: THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. By Daniel Defoe. Part I. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Ernest C. Noyes, A. M. 50 cents. TWELFTH NIGHT. Shakespeare. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Brainerd Kellogg, LL.D. 25 cents. JULIUS CAESAR. Shakespeare. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Brainerd Kellogg, LL. D. 25 cents. Edward Everett Hale. Edited, with In THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. troduction and Notes, by William Aspenwall Bradley, A. M. 25 cents. AN ESSAY ON BURNS. By Thomas Carlyle. With Select Poems by Burns. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Julian W. Abernethy, Ph.D. 25 cents. MACMILLAN'S POCKET ENGLISH AND AMERICAN CLASSICS: Edited, with In THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. Edward Everett Hale. troduction and Notes, by Samuel Marion Tucker, Ph. D. 25 cents. CROWELL'S THE FIRST FOLIO SHAKESPEARE: RICHARD THE SECOND. Edited, with Notes, Introduction, Glossary, etc., by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke. And by the same editors the following: RICHARD THE THIRD, KING JOHN. THE LADY OF THE LAKE. By Sir Walter Scott. Edited by Florus A. Barbour. Illustrated. Rand, McNally & Co. A fine, large print, open-page edition, with excellent notes. BEOWULF-THE ANGLO-SAXON EPIC. Translated and Adapted for School Use by John Harrington Cox, A. M. Gives the essence of this ancient classic in a form adapted to the elementary school pupil. The illustrations are meritorious. Little, Brown & Co. 50 cents. Periodical Notes. CORNELIA A. P. COMER, in the Monthly Atlantic, in an article called "A Letter to the Rising Generation," says: "The rising generation cannot spell, because it learned to read by the word-method; it is hampered in the use of dictionaries, because it never learned the alphabet; its English is slipshod and commonplace, because it does not know the sources and resources of its own language. Power over words cannot be had without some knowledge of the classics or much knowledge of the English Bible-but both are now quite out of fashion." The following interesting things, among others, are to be found in The North American Review for February. A valuable critic of Mony penny's "The Life of Benjamin Disraeli," is written by Price Collier. An interesting resumé of a phase of literature will be found in Brander Matthews's "An Economic Interpretation of Literary History." A Spanish Professor writes convincingly of the present conflict between Church and State in Spain." The well known essayist, Louise Collier Willcox, treats with sympathy certain aspects of "Tolstoi's Religion." The centenary of the poet who was the inspiration of "In Memoriam," furnishes the occasion for a charming essay on " Arthur Henry Hallam," by Francis B. Thwing. The timely topic of church unity is set forth in a strong paper by the Rev. Newman Smyth, under the title, "Wanted: Church Statesmanship.' "How Mark Twain was Made," giving many interesting and unpublished incidents in connection with the early career of the inimitable Clemens, is described in The National Magazine for February. The "fun" in Lippincott's is not all there is in it, but if you like to laugh read Lippincott's. In a valuable article in the Review of Reviews for February, Mr. Ferdinand Cowles Ingle. hart shows that forty-five millions of people in the United States live in territory where the sale of liquor has been forbidden by law. Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature VOL. XXXI. of Education APRIL, 1911 A Secondary School Curriculum No. 8 B. F. HARDING, MILTON ACADEMY, MASSACHUSETTS. •÷HE late Mark Twain has perhaps expressed the mental attitude of many cultivated people towards T all classical literature most comprehensively and briefly, in his definition of a "Classic" as "a book people praise and don't read." But Mark Twain, as far as we know, never refused to recognize the great educational value of the ancient classics, nor does any scholar of literature now living. For this value has been expressed in a service extending nearly up to the dawn of the twentieth century and has furnished the most profitable means of cultivation, in one form or another, for the large majority of students. And even today there are many who would follow the traditions of the past in spite of the greater variety of intellectual pursuits that the rapid growth of our civilization has developed during the past quarter of a century. They still hark back to Greek and Latin in the school curriculum "as a means for training in accuracy," as if, in fact, these languages monopolize the whole field for training in accurate scholarship. In view, however, of the prevailing tendency to abandon these studies not only after entrance to college, but also at school as soon as the requirements for admission to college have been satisfied in "the preliminary" examination, these conservatives would thus complacently reduce the study of the ancient classics practically to an elementary course at school in etymology and syntax. To them let Horace speak: "Tu, nisi ventis debes ludibrium, cave." (C. I. XIV, 15, 16.) Let us rather aim at greater accuracy in the study of English, French, and German, and avoid the stigma of forcing the ancient classics to bear the burden of all linguistic training. It is true that in special cases where a boy shows evidence of a distinctly literary taste, or comes of a family distinguished for literary or professional excellence, this traditional course may be advisable from the start in his career at school; but in most cases, such insistence on the study of Greek and Latin is fatal to an abiding interest in the ancient classics, as experience constantly proves. The advocates of the old system fail to see that now, from an educational point of view, the ancient classics belong to the specialist, just as much as old English or Gothic. They disregard the claims of other pressing topics of the day, science, government, modern languages, &c, &c, the supporters of which assert that cultivation for the mass of students is attainable through other than exclusively classical means. Nor should they be surprised, for this indifference on the part of students has been gradually developed by the conditions attaching to the college entrance requirements in Greek and Latin, and correspondingly by the methods of teaching that have been forced upon teachers in preparatory schools in their endeavor to cover the work prescribed to them by the colleges. In short we seem to be in a period of great transition, and somewhere between these two claimants for superiority, the classical and the non-classical, lies the most desirable method. But let us take a glance at some phases of the present situation and first at the school in its relation to the college. The colleges are eager to gain students, the schools are reluctant to part with them. It should be the aim of the school to give its pupils the best all around preparation for life, collegiate or non-collegiate, bearing in mind the fact that the preparatory school graduate of today is as old as was the college graduate of 1800.* The school should check undue haste on the part of the pupil to enter college by providing him on the one hand in his last two years at school with sufficient college preparatory work to secure contentment with his intellectual advancement, and on the other, *See Education, January, 1911, p. 292. sufficient freedom to allow him to take part in the athletic, literary and social interests that represent his school. A scheme of study that offers more required and less elective work, proportionately, than is the case today, in these last years at school, and along the lines suggested above, will more nearly approach the ideal we are striving to attain for this part of the curriculum. In view of the demandt made today on preparatory school graduates, those colleges which now admit, "on certificate," the pupils of well-ordered secondary schools, should be regarded as leaders in the recognition of the prerogatives that properly belong to such a school, and should be hailed as uplifting in the best way the standards of scholastic attainment. This does not involve by any means, a lowering on the part of the college of its own standards also. The burden of responsibility is put where it should be, viz., on the schools. Their graduates will ably represent them in college or elsewhere, if they have been properly and broadly trained at school. Such schools welcome this increased responsibility. They will scrutinize their own curricula more carefully with improved chances of increasing the quality of intellectual work accomplished, and of developing graduates of an earnest type, young men determined to get all the good that they can out of college, or out of life, as the case may be. This system too, would avoid the customary expenditure of time, money and brain tissue at a period of the academic year, most ill-suited for extraordinary endeavor, and would, in the end, advance the interests of each and all concerned, individual, school and college. "Weep not that the world changes-did it keep (Bryant). Secondly, many parents today are either wilfully or unintentionally ignorant of the progress of their own children at school. Social and philanthropic demands leave little time for them to devote to their own flesh and blood. This is unavoidable, too, I admit, in many cases, and yet the fact remains true. But this deficiency must be met and the modern and model school should gladly assume this increased responsibility also, not only for the intellectual, but also for the moral and physical well being of † See Education, April, 1910. |