we must confess that the school system which forces these children to do the same amount of work in the same length of time is radically wrong.

If the Chinese and the Japanese can progress at a markedly faster rate than the white, or the Hawaiian, then it is not fair to put them all in the same room and grade, some restrained, some lagging.

Pushing the assertion of racial mental difference to its logical conclusion we arrive at the segregation of each race in its own school, moving at its own racial rate of progress. The conditions become those now actually in practise in certain portions of the South, where the negro goes to one school,

and the white to another.

An interesting problem, suggested by the above considerations, is this-At what age, in an individual, do the characteristic mental traits of that individual's race first appear? The answer becomes a determinant of considerable importance in education.

The general super-education of children is notorious-we have been training juvenile minds in adult terms—an unwise hothouse system that is slowly being replaced by the motoractivity education. The boy of twelve represents the man of a thousand years ago, and his training should be correspondingly primitive and physical. Too commonly he is trained as if he were in full possession of the contemporaneous racemind, into which heritage he does not really come until the middle period of his adolescence.

The consensus of opinion is that racial mental differences do not appear as distinctive until adolescence, and are thus, from the viewpoint of the elementary school, negligible.

The race factor in elementary education, therefore, becomes a matter of minor importance, and the school in which varied races progress with general uniformity thru the grades -variations being individual and not racial—amply justifies itself. Indeed, its pupils, from their very diversity, learn unconsciously a broad humanitarianism, surmounting race prejudice, and making for ideal citizenship.

HONOLULU, T. H.

VAUGHAN MCCAUGHEY

IX

REVIEWS

Arithmetical abilities and some factors determining them-CLIFF WINFIELD STONE, Ph.D., Columbia University Contributions to Education: Teachers College Series, No. 19, 1908, 101 p. $1.00.

It seems to the writer that this is a study of the type that is so much needed in the field of education at the present time. A current writer has very forcefully put it in this way,-" It is quite significant that those who are engaged in training the young, whether they be teachers or parents, seem to be much more interested in concrete data pertaining to child life than in logical analysis of ends, values, and processes in education." One does not care to listen to a theoretical point of view as such; but when an investigator states that he has actually tested under standard conditions many hundreds of children with reference to a certain trait or ability, and that he has reached certain definite conclusions, we are all ready to listen to him. Professor Stone's contribution is such a piece of work, and as such it commends itself to city superintendents and arithmetic teachers especially, but is also suggestive to all investigators in other fields, who are desirous of gaining statistical information of value.

He states in the beginning that "the central purpose of this study is to make one more contribution to exact knowledge of the relation between distinctive educational procedures and the resulting products." His problem is to discover arithmetical abilities of 6A pupils, and to see what relation this ability has to the educational procedure and method in the particular school tested. For his data he investigated 26 school systems, and not less than 100 children in each system. The number of cases is thus large enough, and they are sufficiently well distributed over the country in different systems, to insure validity as to conclusions. The tests were

all personally conducted by the author, and great care was used to have conditions uniform.

Two types of tests were made, one upon the fundamental rules, and another upon reasoning ability. The tests seem to be perfectly fair, and were arranged to suit the average ability of students in the 6A grade of the systems tested.

Professor Stone finds that in the 26 systems there is a great variability among the systems themselves as to requirements, methods, point of view in training, etc., and likewise that there is great variability among the pupils, both as to the amount accomplished, and the accuracy of their work. He finds that in different systems there are different requirements as to time spent in the study of arithmetic, and at present there seems to be no standard upon which different systems are working. He also finds that there appears to be no correlation between the amount of time spent upon the subject and the efficiency of the pupils to perform the tests herein stated. Length of time devoted to the study does not appear to be a guarantee of ability. In this connection he offers some very practical suggestions to superintendents (see p. 69) for deciding how much time should be devoted to the subject of arithmetic.

The author reaches the conclusion that some of the courses of study are functioning in an excellent manner in producing students who are efficient in the fundamentals, and who have also developed reasoning ability. He gives brief extracts from the courses of extreme degree of excellence, and suggests that a study should be made reproducing large numbers of courses of study in American schools, having their relative excellences indicated. Such means of standardizing courses of study and systems of education are much needed at the present time.

This excellent study of Professor Stone provides the educational world with the means of beginning to standardize its products, and to see the relation of the products to the course of study and the method of instruction. The foundations of arithmetic should be made the common possession of all children before they reach the compulsory education

limit. Any one can learn how far his pupils have progressed in this respect by measuring their abilities according to Professor Stone's tests. These tests are given in the book and can be reprinted on individual slips for use, or they may be secured from Professor Stone at a nominal cost. The method of the study is given fully in Part I, with the exception of the scoring of the fundamentals; and Part II gives data by which a city superintendent may compare the abilities of his pupils with those of 26 representative systems.

It seems to the writer that this little work should appeal especially to the superintendent who is wide awake to the standardization of his grade work in any field. The method employed may not be confined to arithmetic in the 6A grade, but to any grade in any subject. If many such studies were prosecuted in American schools, it would not be long till we would reach something definite in the teaching process, and the products of education could be accurately told from the educational procedure and the method employed. It is to be hoped that many such studies may soon appear, bearing the same stamp of scientific treatment for other fields, which Professor Stone has so carefully worked out for arithmetic. ELMER E. JONES

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

Social education-By COLIN ALEXANDER SCOTT. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1908. xi+300 p. $1.25.

This book is written from the point of view that the schools should train the young for useful living in a social democracy. But according to Dr. Scott they do not. On the contrary, as at present organized, they are weak, he says, "in trying to prepare future members of the social order in the medium in which the conditions of the social spirit are eminently lacking." As a remedy for this weakness, the author proposes to add to the present curriculum subject-matter selected by the pupils and work carried on by them in groups which they themselves organize. To make this plan effective, the teacher must study the social action of class aims and ideals, and also the leadership and organization involved in the

activities of the pupils. Dr. Scott sets forth the following advantages of this self-organized group work: It develops resourcefulness, initiative and true leadership, all of which are social powers of a high order; it stimulates democratic responsibility to one's own ideals and to those of others on the same social level; it makes an organic connection with the life interests and activities of the pupils; and it brings about a self-organized contact between the individual member of the class and his fellows. In illustrating his theory of the school as a social organism, the author explains in interesting detail the working of the school at Abbotsholm, England, the George Junior Republic, and the Dewey School.

In all this discussion of the school as a social institution, Dr. Scott shows himself to be a master of his subject. His account of the school as a place where social forces are ever active is based on wide observation of various kinds of schools from the kindergarten to the college. As a result of such observation, Dr. Scott attempts to show how his theory may be applied to such culture themes as arithmetic, science, reading, language, literature, fine art, manual training, and industrial education. In so doing, he offers invaluable suggestions as to ways and means of socializing the pupils and of preparing them for intelligent and useful coöperation with their fellows in adult community life.

The experiences which he recounts will to many seem fragmentary and insufficient; but they can not fail to prove stimulating and helpful to all thoughtful teachers. As Dr. Scott wisely remarks, "It is a point of view or method of thinking rather than a completed system of thought" which he presents. The school is not an aggregation of individual units where every pupil lives in isolation from his fellows; but it is, or should be made, a coherent social body, representing definite social forces and working under fixt social laws.

Altho the plan which the author proposes may seem to many impractical, yet it can not fail to help the teacher to work out the educational problem with reference to the pupil's point of view rather than to the subject-matter organized for