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coming to the editor's table publicity material from the National Committee on mathematical requirements, under the patronage of the Mathematical Association of AmeriREFORM IN The committee MATHEMATICS was organized organized in 1916 to study and assist in the reform in the teaching of mathematics. It has a distinguished 'membership, a half dozen representing the colleges, and seven representing secondary schools. Cooperating with this central body are local committees. nearly half the states and in a score of larger or smaller cities. Local and National meetings have been held for the purpose of discussing proposals and criticisms. Sub-committees are at work upon separate phases of the problem, and the United States Bureau of Education will publish the final summaries in the form of leaflets or bulletins. Societies and individuals desiring to be placed on the mailing list are asked to

in

tative element finds a place in fields of knowledge once thought to have qualitative characteristics only. The school uses of arithmetic, algebra and geometry are questioned and restated. Readers of this Journal are chiefly interested, perhaps, in these aspects of the subject. In the current number will be found two articles by the California teachers, of such importance as to challenge the attention of teachers. But this move

ment derives its main importance from the fact that most subjects of the Junior and senior high schools are being brought to the test of critical investigation; and not so much the content of the subject as the method of its presentation. University and high school teachers alike are (slowly?) coming to see that teaching is an art that has its own canons which, for any effective results, must be observed. The effort of the mathematical teachers is an encouraging indication of sanity. R. G. B.

many parents, State Departments of Education, magazines and magazine writers, story tellers and story writers and above all the newspapers. Book publishers and book dealers also aided the movement, and their interest was not altogether commercial. They consciously or unconsciously held a double purpose in this "drive": (1) To emphasize the great importance of the subject; and, (2) to draw attention to worth while books, and to make their choice easy. It really is not difficult in recent times and especially in these opening years of the twentieth century to find good books for children; books of good quality, not necessarily books written to inculcate moral lessons; but inviting wholesome reading, leading to right habits, discriminating taste and improving, widening interest. No, it is not difficult to find acceptable books; nor is it easy to get the right kind of books and enough of them into the hands of the children who most need them.

Boards of Education,

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N California few influences have been

more potent in accomplishing this second purpose than the collection of supplementary stories, descriptive, historical, travel and adventure books in the schools, and the public city, and especially County libraries, reaching all ages and all sorts of people. "Teachers," says Deputy Superintendent A. J. Cloud of San Francisco, "are vitally interested in any movement that will tend to increase the enthusiasm of children for good books, and thus to introduce them to their literary inheritance." With this epigram on "good books" as his text, Mr. Arthur Brisbane (asked for eight hundred words) contends that somewhere along in the life and the early life one must have read Shakespeare and the Bible, or be ignorant of the English language; at least one book each on astronomy, ge

ology, evolution and philosophy, else he will be ignorant of man's place in nature and how he came to it; a few of the great poets, the great biographies (and he names 32); some of the great works of fiction, etc. Mr. Brisbane ends by saying, "Here are 800 words-only three are necessary: Read Good Books." This editorial notice takes its cue from an event last November, but it concerns an ideal and a practice that have more than a "once-a-year" meaning. Like the thrift purpose it must be made a habit, not a passing enthusiasm. The homes, some homes, do help on the movement. The schools can perhaps do most. Libraries, through their children's departments have already done more than even teachers generally, and parents and the public comprehend. It makes relatively less difference how many years of schooling. the youth have had, or how many courses they have taken; but it does make much difference whether they have acquired a habit of book-using, and book-interpret

ing, and book loving. To have come into

that inheritance is wealth indeed.