proper provision be made to meet the needs of pupils of not less than fourteen years of age who are not intending to take College courses but who are intending to follow agricultural occupations. Vocational education in Agriculture is, taking the country as a whole, very much in de mand; this volume is well fitted to aid teachers in meeting that demand. II. HOW TO DEBATE. By Robert W. Babcock, LL.B., and John H. Powell, Jr., A.B., Instructors in Purdue University. J. B. Lippincott Co. The science and art of debating are carefully studied and set forth in this volume and made of practical value to the student. He is aided in the gathering of material, in the analysis of the question, in the preparation of a brief, in marshaling the evidence, in pointing out the fallacies of his opponent, in refuting the claims of the other side, etc. A very thorough study of the subject which should not be overlooked by those who are interested in this important part of the equipment of a modern scholarly man or woman. III. CHEMISTRY, APPLIED TO THE HOME AND COMMUNITY. By Pauline G. Beery, A.M. J. B. Lippincott Co. A practical and comprehensive text on such subjects as the chemistry of fuels, water, waste, cleaning and polishing agents, stain removal, textiles, toilet preparations, foods, cooking processes, drugs, etc. The treatment is at once thorough, scientific and practical. A good text for schools and a handy book to have at hand in every home. The following books, published by D. C. Heath and Company, have been examined with interest and are commended to our readers as worthwhile text books: I. LABORATORY CHEMISTRY FOR GIRLS. By Agnes French Jaques, Head of the Science Department, Vocational High School, Minneapolis. The volume is a direct outgrowth of experience in teaching the subject in the above school to pupils who were in training for work as junior nurses, practical nurses, home economics students, salesmanship students, hospital nurses, etc. Practically every woman is sooner or later called upon to assume responsibility in relation to duties that are here discriminatingly considered. A book of wide range and practical suggestiveness. II. JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL MATHEMATICS. By Walter W. Hart, A.B., Assistant Professor of Mathematics in the University of Wisconsin. Book Three. This Book will be carefully reviewed in a later number, by our Mathematical Editor, Professor Robert R. Goff, Director of Mathematics, New Britain, Conn., who will also review the same publishers' “Modern High School Algebra," by Webster Wells, S.B., and Walter W. Hart, A.B. DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE OF EDUCATION FRANK HERBERT PALMER, A. M., EDITOR CONTENTS PAGE The Humanities versus the Utilities. Florence May Bennett. 325 Some of My Worst Teaching Mistakes. By a School Principal. A Rainy-Day Thought (Poem). Evelyn Thomas. 363 Perfume Vases (Poem). Helen Cary Chadwick. 384 Published by THE PALMER COMPANY, 120 Boylston Street LONDON E. C.: WM. DAWSON & SONS, Ltd., CANNON HOUSE, BREAMS BUILDINGS Price 40 Cents $4.00 a Year Collings: An Experiment with a Project Curriculum $2.40 The report of an experiment in rural school curriculum making which embodies an endeavor to interpret and state the basic ideas implied in the concept of project method as formulated by Professor William H. Kilpatrick, and to use them in the enterprise of rural education. Hollingworth: Special Talents and Defects $1.60 Experimental studies have impressed the principle that individuals differ in their inheritance of special capacities. Dr. Hollingworth shows, in relation to the school, the advance that has been made in the detection of special talents and defects. She discusses the bases for differences in ability among individuals, and presents in details what is known today regarding special talents and defects as these are revealed in connection with the subjects commonly taught in schools. Moore: Minimum Course of Study $1.88 This book embodies the recommendations of co-operative committees from nine cities in Southern California, appointed to study each subject in the elementary course. They considered such questions as: What is this subject for? What is its aims or purpose? What are its essentials? Its minimal essentials? McMurry: How to Organize the Curriculum $2.00 Out of the confusing wealth of subject matter taught in the schools of today, the author seeks to show how to select the best and most essential influences and to combine them into a simple program which will permit the continuous educative growth of children through the school period. Charters: Curriculum Construction $2.00 An interpetation of the important changes which have taken place in the curriculum during the last ten years. The author considers the subject taught in our schools from the functional point of view, revealing that usefulness should be accepted as the aim rather than comprehensive knowledge. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature The Humanities Versus the Utilities FLORENCE MARY BENNETT, WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON. T No. 6 HE comfort of a text is undeniable. A subject may prove disconcertingly hampering to a writer, who finds himself rigidly and inexorably bound by its barriers, whereas a text is but a friendly guide-post which points the way to a desired goal attainable by pleasant journeying, whether on the straight road or by delightful vagaries therefrom. Indeed, however plainly one may have spelled out the name on the sign-board, doing so scarcely compels one to follow the highway further than a few steps. And there is comfort in unbounded moorland spaces and in natural coppices and green woods, as every pedestrian knows. At times a dictionary definition will serve for a text almost as well as a verse from the Bible. A simple blossom of thought may be culled from the rather formidable nosegay offered, just as a single phrase, deliciously defiant of context, has often given the preacher suggestion for a master homily. Was not the chief relish to the old-fashioned sermon-so far as the congregation was concerned-the halfmaliciously curious thought: What will he make out of his text? Reading the dictionary is perhaps not universally considered either an elegant or an intellectual pursuit. The myth is current that a certain famous college for women, Minerva's veriest haunt, banishes dictionaries of the English language from the reading-room of its handsome library, the assumption being that the correct scholastic maiden will consult such a tome, as the Cranford rulers sucked their oranges, in privacy. Nevertheless, it is open to argument whether a bout of dictionary reading is not stimulating. It may be conjectured that after a season of feverish dryness the intellectual glands may, by the incitement of a series of rapidly impinging disparate ideas, be induced to secrete in comfortable abundance their precious fluid. The sceptic has opportunity to convince himself that one does not progress far at a sitting with a lexicographer before he is enmeshed in astonishments and fancies as he dizzily perceives the devious entertainment of words. Suppose, casting about among matters much battered by present-day discussion, one were to choose for meditation "The Humanities." Rephrasing, with transfer from the Latin to the Saxon mould, would give "The Mankindlinesses," but this scarcely makes a break from the classical tradition implied in the more familiar learned word, for, rather impishly, the suggestion that comes is of Terence's well-worn nihil alienum :-"Man am I: of that which touches man, nothing do I consider foreign to myself." The Latin is more compact and more concrete than the English. Now the humanum, that which touches man, the human-the mannish, if one will conceive the Saxon adjective to be broadly generic!-Terence was not confusing with humanitas. And yet indubitably he, as well as a later humorist of different speech, George Meredith, must have held that a person in a high state of humanitas is not for that reason estranged from the humanum. Here is the lie given to certain theories of art which exclude all developments of humanitas from their purview. Odd that the Latin word humanitas swings us into the field of the abstractly intellectual, while the English derivative from a Greek synonym, anthropology, keeps us concerned quite practically with the corporeal human, even with his skeleton and its sepulchre, his pots and his pans and his weapons! And yet, after all, the great merit, the enduring |