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guessing or reading; require him to group these activities under headings which he may work out for himself. He will usually arrive at three or four, such as getting a living, recreation, political. It may be wise to ask him to grade these activities as helpful, harmful, strengthening, or weakening, in order to accustom him to the idea that sociology must treat of good, bad, and indifferent objects. Problem IV: To determine what the preponderant social interests and activities are as judged by the amount of time men devote to them. Let the student try a time budget" for a fortnight. For this purpose Giddings suggests a large sheet of paper ruled for a wide left-hand margin and 32 narrow columns: the first 24 columns for hours of the day, the 25th for the word "daily," and the last seven for the seven days of the week. In the margin the student writes the names of every activity of whatever description during the waking hours. This will furnish excellent training in exact habits of observation and recording, and inductive generalization. When the summary is made at the end of the fortnight, the student will have worked for himself the habitual "planes of interest " along which social activities lie.

At this point he ought to have convinced himself that the subject matter of sociology is concrete reality, not moonshine. Moreover, he should be able to lay down certain fundamental marks of a social group, such as a common impulse to get together, common sentiments, ideas, and beliefs, reciprocal service. From the discovery of habitual planes of interest (self-maintenance, self-perpetua

tion, self-assertion, self-subordination, etc.) it is a simple step to show diagrammatically how each interest impels an activity, which tends to precipitate itself into a social habit or institution.

The way is now clear for the two next steps, the concepts of causation and development. Here again why not follow the egocentric plan of starting with what the student knows? Ask him to write a brief but careful autobiography answering the questions - How have I come to be what I am? What influences personal or otherwise have played upon me? 1 The student is almost certain to lay hold of the principle of determining or controlling forces, and of evolution or change; he may even be able to analyze rather clearly the different types of control which have coöperated in his development.

From this start it is easy to develop the genetic concept of social life. The individual grows from simple to complex. Why not the race? Here introduce a comparison between the social group known to the student, a retarded group (such as MacClintock's or Vincent's study of the Kentucky Mountaineers 2) or a frontier community, and a contemporary primitive tribe (say, the Hupa or Seri Indians, Negritos, Bontoc Igorot, Bangala, Kafirs, Yakuts, Eskimo, or Andaman Islanders). Require a detailed comparison arranged in parallel columns on such points as size, variety of occupation, food supply, security of life, institutions, family life, language, religion, superstitions, and opportunities for culture.

These two points of departure - the student's interest in his own personality and the community influences that have molded it, and the comparative study of a primitive group

should harmonize the two chief rival views of teaching sociologists; namely, those who urge the approach to sociology through anthropology and those who find the best avenue through the concrete knowledge of the socius.

1 In order to secure frank statements, both these autobiographies and the time budgets may be handed in anonymously.

2 American Journal of Sociology, 4:1-20; 7:1-28, 171-187.

To make sociology

real make

it ego

centric

Moreover, it lays a foundation for a discussion of the antiquity of man, his kinship with other living things, and his evolution; that is, the biological presupposition of human society. Here let me testify to the great help which Osborn's photographs 1 of reconstructions of the Pithecanthropos, Piltdown, Neanderthal, and Crô-Magnon types have rendered in clearing away prejudices and in vivifying the remote past. Religious apprehensions in particular may be allayed also by referring students to articles on race, man, evolution, anthropology, etc., in such compilations as the Catholic Encyclopedia and Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. The opening chapters in Marett's little book on Anthropology are so sanely and admirably written that they also clear away many prejudices and fears.

With such a concrete body of facts contrasting primitive with modern civilized social life the student will naturally inquire, How did these changes come about? At this point should come normally the answer in terms of what practically all sociologists agree upon; namely, the three great sets of determining forces or phenomena, the three "controls": (1) the physical environment (climate, topography, natural resources, etc.); (2) man's own nature (psychophysical factors, the factors in biological evolution, the rôle of instinct, race, and possibly the concrete problems of immigration and eugenics); (3) social heredity (folkways, customs, institutions, the arts of life, the methods of getting a living, significance of tools, distribution of wealth, standards of living, etc.). A blackboard diagram will show how these various factors converge upon any given individual.2

The amplification of these three points will ordinarily make up the body of an introductory course so far as class work goes. Ethnography should furnish rich illustrative material. But to make class discussions really productive the student's knowledge of his own community must be 1 In his Men of the Old Stone Age.

2 See such a diagram in Todd, Theories of Social Progress, page 240.

drawn upon. And the best way of getting this correlation is through community surveys. The student should be required as parallel laboratory work to prepare a series of chapters on his ward or part of his ward or village, covering the three sets of determining factors. The instructor may furnish an outline of the topics to be investigated, or he may pass around copies of such brief survey outlines as Aronovici's Knowing One's Own Community or Miss Byington's What Social Workers Should Know about Their Own Communities; he may also refer them to any one of the rapidly growing number of good urban and rural surveys as models. But he should not give too much information as to where materials for student reports may be obtained. The disciplinary value of having to hunt out facts and uncover sources is second only to the value of accurate observation and effective presentation. If the aim of a sociology course is social efficiency, experience shows no better way of getting a vivid, sober, first-hand knowledge of community conditions. And there is likewise no surer way of compelling students to substitute facts for vapid wordiness and snap judgments.

Toward the end of the course many of us have found it profitable to introduce a brief discussion of what may be called the highest term of the series; namely, the evolution of two or three typical institutions, say law and government, education, religion, and the family. These topics will serve to clinch the earlier discussions and to crystallize a few ideas on social control and perhaps even social

progress.

Normally such a course will close with a fuller definition of the meaning of sociology, its content, its value in the study of other sciences, and, if time permits, a brief historical sketch of the development of sociology as a separate science.

I have no certified advice to offer on the question of textbooks. But the almost universal cry of sociology teachers is that so far no really satisfactory text has been produced. Some men still use Spencer, some write their own books,

The use of a

text for study

The social museum

Field work: values and limitations

some try to adapt to their particular needs such texts as are issued from time to time, some use none at all but depend upon a more or less well-correlated syllabus or set of readings. There is undoubtedly a profitable demand for a good elementary source book comparable to Thomas's Source Book on Social Origins or Marshall, Wright, and Field's Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics. Nearly any text will need freshening up by collateral reading from such periodicals as The Survey or The New Republic. In order to secure effective and correlated outside reading, many teachers have found it helpful to require the students to devote the first five or ten minutes of a class meeting once a week or even daily to a written summary of their readings and of class discussions. Such a device keeps readings fresh and enables the teacher to emphasize the points of contact between readings and class work.

Every university should develop some sort of a social museum, to cover primitive types of men, the evolution of tools, arts of life, manners and customs, and contemporary social conditions. These can be displayed in the form of plaster casts, ethnographic specimens, photographs, lantern slides, models of housing, statistical charts, printed monographs, etc. The massing of a series of these illustrations sometimes produces a profound effect. For example, the corridor leading to the sociology rooms at the University of Minnesota has been lined with large photographs of tenement conditions, child labor, immigrant types, etc. The student's interest and curiosity have been heightened immensely. Once a semester, during the discussion of the economic factor in social life, we stage what is facetiously called "a display of society's dirty linen." The classroom is decorated with a set of charts showing the distribution of wealth, wages, cost of living, growth of labor unions and other organizations of economic protest. The mass effect is a cumulative challenge.

Finally, a word about "field work as a teaching device. Field work usually means some sort of social service