SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS.* IF the character of a people can
be read anywhere, it can be read in its universities and schools ; he that would know America should learn to know the American student first. If he is not available in his own person, his acquaintance may be made in the books which he writes about himself, for he is naif, and there is much of interest to be read between his printed lines. But before an Englishman embarks on any recent volume from the United States he will do well to remember that many Americans now write not in English as we know it, but in a language of their own, and he should have some preliminary acquaintance with that tongue, lest he look in it for qualities that only an old world loves. For if one does not expect quietness of tone or dignity of manner, if one is prepared for shapeless sentences that suggest un- completed thought, if one does not resent any imperfection or inelegance short of a sheer grammatical mistake, one can read the American type of English with pleasure, and admire its vigorous shirt-sleeve qualities, and the determination of those who use it to get to the next page in no time and to the publishers shortly afterwards. It is quite possible to "read oneself into" the new dialect, and then enjoy at ease the subject-matter of the books written in it, though it is well, perhaps, to read them as fast, proportionately, as they were composed. But whatever one thinks of modern American style, it is a great privilege to see something of modern American life and thought as reflected in the working
$ (1) The American College. By Charles Franklin Thwing, LL.D., President of Western Beverve University and Adelbert College. New York : The Platt and Peck Co. [V net.]—(2) Public Education in Germany and the United States. By L. R. Klemm. Ph.D. London: George G. Harrap and Co. [5a. net.] —(3) What Children Study and Why. By Charles B. Gilbert, formerly Super- intendent of Schools in the United States. Same publishers. Pa. ad. net.1— (4) The Training of the Girl. By William A. McKeever, Professor of Child Welfare in the University of Kansas. London : Macmillan and Co. [6s. 6d. net.] —(5) Your Child To-day and To-morrow. By Sidonie Mataner Greenberg. London: J B. Lippincott Co. [5s. net.]
of modern education, and there are now many books which make this privilege easily accessible to all.
Dr. Thwing, of Western Reserve University, has written a book on The American College,' in which he deals with the " purpose " of College education and the " force " behind it, with the material on which it works, and the conditions which guide its working. The purpose is a noble one, according to Dr. Thwing. It is to leaven with scholarship the unlovely lumps in the prosperous modern State, "for scholarship is the living expression, in the midst of democratic materialism, of the worth of ideas." The force is human energy organized for the conversion of money into brains and character, and the material is, of course, the student himself. He, one gathers, is a self-reliant person who was disciplined in early days by corporal punishment (preceded and followed by a. short prayer), but who now wishes to manage his own government by the approved methods of ballot and "boss"; he is capable, if need be, of working his passage through College by earning wages as a lamplighter or a waiter, and be is equally capable of unwise extravagance and luxurious- ness ; he is amenable to personal influence, but not amenable enough to get very much of it; he is often industrious, but he seldom has intellectual interests, and the midnight philo- sopher of Oxford and Cambridge undergraduate symposia is a stranger to him; he is an attractive fellow in many ways, but to our minds he is a little hard and a little over-confident, and, intellectually considered, his learning is superficial and his culture graceless. When be grows up be will certainly give money to his old College, and probably insist on the perpetuation of his name within it, for "no material invest- ment is as safe as that of money given to a well-founded and well-managed College." Such a College " offers an opportunity for earthly immortality," and this is apparently one of its most important functions. The preoccupation of American educationists with the dollar is rather puzzling to our minds— seven pages of this book are devoted to discussing the form of gifts and their investment. It is true that American Colleges often receive gigantic sums from private donors, and may reasonably be interested in the attraction and disposal of the money, but it is strange to see this interest placed as high as it is by Dr. Thwing in the scale of values.
The problems that face the American College are chiefly the problems inherent in its task. The material world is kind to it. But it is otherwise with the American school. Some of the difficulties that beset primary education in the United States can be gathered from a volume of collected educational papers on Public Education in Germany and the United States' just published by Dr. L. R. Klemm. The book has some interest- ing chapters on German continuation schools, on the difference between the French and the German boy, and on similar subjects ; but it is of America that we wish to learn from American writers, and there is a good deal that can be learnt from Dr. Klemm. The enormous influx of immigrants of all ages and all races in itself sufficiently complicates the school problem in America, but the mobility of the existing popula- tion is a factor no less disturbing. It is a restless continent, and its inhabitants are always on the move across it. Schools sometimes lose and replace from elsewhere a third of their pupils in half a year, and it is recorded that one pupil changed hands twenty-three times in eight years. Such a continual flux is not to be wondered at in a population which devoured forty thousand square miles of newly opened land in seven days, and which has evolved for itself a system of com- munication and transport without parallel in the world ; but the disorganization that it must cause in the primary schools can hardly be realized by the European. Truly the American school-teacher has much to contend with. Other troubles which she has to face—it is almost always " she "—are more comprehensible to our minds. The decentralization of all school government and the rigidly democratic nature of all administrative boards result in an infinitude of complexities and delays whenever action is required or reform attempted. School attendance is " good" if there are leas than thirty per cent. of absentees. Teachers are early discouraged, and so many give the work up young that there is "a grievous lack of pedagogical experience" throughout the country. Such is the sad case of the primary schools. In the secondary Dr. Klemm finds co-education the chief trouble. The result of that system is that "before we know how it is done all schools are turned into girls' schools,". and that in the larger world we see "the decadence of logical thought, the weakening of masculine initiative, and the prevalence of hysteria in the treatment of public questions." Co-education (for any save quite young children) Dr. Klemm regards as "bad for the schools and dangerous to the nation as a whole." This is interesting, for it is to the example of America that our English co-educationists always appeal; but it should never be forgotten that in the beginning the mingling of the sexes in schools was forced on America by circum- stances, and must not be regarded as the deliberate policy of an intelligent people untrammelled by tradition and capable of choice. Dr. Klemm's book is a conglomerate of essays and lectures old and new, and its quality is naturally rather uneven; but to an English reader at least parte of it are exceedingly interesting, and no one who cares to know about a wonderful people and a wonderful laboratory of social experiment should fail to look it through.
Two other recent American books will be of interest to students of their special subjects. Elementary-school curricula are discussed in What Children Study and Why' by Mr. 0. B. Gilbert, whose observations, though seldom profound, are shrewd and often of some practical value ; and The Training of the Girl' is the subject and title of a volume by Professor William A. McKeever, which under the four headings of " Industrial," " Social," " Vocational," and "Service Training" attempts to sketch "a whole life plan of girl-training." The humanity and good sense of the author are attractive, and English readers will be grateful to him for introducing them to the "Camp Fire" organi- zation, an admirable and delightful domestic counterpart of our Boy Scouts which unites girls in a kind of Guild of service and self-training. The book is for parents rather than for teachers, and, indeed, a large class of educational books in these days deals directly with the nursery and appeals directly to the mother. Such, for example, is a new book called Your Child To-day and To-morrow,' by Mrs. Gruenberg, which contains some good things and a few new things about young children, and which assures us at least that the American child is indeed a child, and not as the caricaturists have represented him. The writer discusses " Punishment " and " How Children Reason"— the first rather superficially and the second well—and many kindred subjects, and she has a sensible chapter upon sex education for which many English parents will be grateful.
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