inditithuality and the Moral Aim in American Education. By B.
Thiselton Mark: (Longmans and Co'. 6s.)—This is the Gilchrist Report for the present year, and embodies the results of Mr. Mark's inquiries among American schools and teachers. The report, says the author, "refers almost entirely to public education." The part- of this great subject now uppermost in men's minds is the constitution of the governing power. "Popular control" is the favourite watchword just now. But it was just in this respect that the American system least satisfied the observer. The schools of a city are under the control of a city superintendent, who, says Mr. Mark, "is really the key to the whole situation." He goes on :—"And, con- sidering that he is so, he often works in an American city under vexations from which, in all conscience, he ought to be free. He is anything but a permanent official. A change in the political complexion of the Board of Education may seal his fate. To meet with really excellent men, educationists to the core, who had the never-absent consciousness of their need for a majority on the Board of Education to secure their re-election year by year, was one of the most disturbing features of the writer's inquiry. The wonder is that American cities are so well served, and that men of such earnestness and ability are tempted into what strikes a stranger as so precarious a service. That the thing works out in practice better than it looks in theory must he taken for granted." Happily we are free from this particular danger. But one result of popular control here is the continual intrusion of non-educational influences. Where School Boards exist, the determining factor in their constitution is commonly the Church v. Dissent question. We have touched on one only of the many questions here discussed. For the rest, we can but giro the heartiest commendation of the book to our readers. I very different aspect of the subject is to be found in Com- mercial Education at Home and Abroad, by Frederick Hooper and James Graham (Macmillan and Co., 6s.) Of course, the permanent and universal difficulty is when to begin to specialise.. We should be inclined to lay down the principle that in all secondary education—the primary being, for the present purpose, set aside—a good literary training should be the groundwork. Whether Latin should be a part of this may be left an open question. Specialisation supposed—and it must take place sooner or later—Messrs. Hooper and Graham have collected a great mass of information on the subject of what is given and what is wanted in the matter of commercial teaching. There could hardly be a more complete guide to the snbject.
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