SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS.* Iv made most of us angry in
our youth to be told that the Latin for " school " was also the Latin for " play," and the facetious attempts of masters to derive " school " itself from the Greek for " leisure " seemed to us in the worst possible taste. Since then, however, Froebol and Mine. Montessori have taught us wisdom, and we can read without surprise in a sound and serious work that " play is the essential part of education." The work in question (Play in Education,' by Joseph Lee) is entirely devoted to this "essential part," and it is a profoundly inter- esting study of the subject. Play, Mr. Lee says, builds the child. It also builds the kitten. In both cases its function is to induce growth by the repetition of willed actions, to form the habits and provide the " reflexes " which are needed for the work of the completed animal. It can only, of course, develop the young creature along the lines laid down by its individual nature and its inherited potentialities, and so, in Mr. Lee's picturesque language, " the growth of every child is the story of the Sleeping Beauty, in which play takes the part of the Prince." It is to let play have its perfect work that the cat is born a kitten and the man a baby—" children do not play because they are young ; they are young in order that they may play." But the play-education of cat and man is not the same, for whereas " the cat is the animated conjuga- tion of a single verb= I grab, thou grabbest, oh that I might have grabbed'—man represents a less limited vocabulary." Human play is therefore very complex—and to produce the perfect social being the school is required as well. Mr. Lee finds seven chief play-instincts which he names " creation, rhythm, hunting, fighting, nurture, curiosity, team play." Impersonation, self-adornment, and some others are men- tioned also. Mr. Lee describes all these instincts working out their own development through the various stages of youth and adolescence- " the baby age," " the dramatic age," " the Big Injun age," " the ago of loyalty," " the apprentice age." Some of his analyses are very illuminating, though to English readers the boys' amusements quoted are occasionally as strange as some of the author's Transatlantic expres- sions. The book is quite the best popular exposition in existence of this side of educational theory; it contains a good deal that is new and much that is retold in a new and refreshing way. No one interested in adolescence should fail to read it.
Those who are interested in America as well should read another of the New York Macmillan books which forms a pendant to Play in Education and is called The Practical Conduct of Play.1 Hero are to be found accounts of the growing play-movement in America, and practical precepts for those engaged in helping it to grow yet more. The book has little theoretical value, but it will tell you about some very wonderful games—" Slap Jack," " Duck on a Rock," " Three Deep," " Captain Ball," and others strangely named.
But the strangeness of things American seems a small matter if one travels on beyond the Occident to Oriental Japan. Hero one learns of education that one may know the people whom it shapes, for the actual teaching is too remote from ours to be studied for the guidance it might give. Pre-Meiji Education in Japans is a history of Japanese education by an English Professor in a Japanese University. To read it is, for the ordinary man, to become acquainted with the personality of a nation that was almost a stranger before. One learns how Confucianism, imported from China a millennium and a half ago by student-adventurers who roved for knowledge then as now, was made her own by a country which never imports without assimilating, and gave form to that wonderful Japanese nationalism which is almost the nationalism of the beehive ; how non-religious ethical teaching by men who taught for love kept high the spiritual level of the " guardian " class till commercialism and paid teachers brought it low ; how the purely literary learning of old Japan, which regarded arithmetio as a degrading pursuit, and ignorance of the value of the different coins as the mark of a gentleman, made exacti- tude go unappreciated and at last become impossible, so that a beggar to win pity may still tell you that he is dead ; how a far-seeing Govern- ment has known how to use education to anticipate and prepare for change ; how, in short, the Japanese character appears at every point as the cause and the effect of Japanese educational ends and means. The book assumes perhaps more knowledge of Japanese history than the ordinary man can supply, but the picture it gives of a great and (to us) strange people is clear and of the deepest interest.
The old education of Japan tried by direct teaching to give mon particular principles and a particular attitude towards, the world. We try to do this, too, but besides principles we have an immense amount of information to impart to children during their school years, and our principles are neither so simple nor so fixed as the Samurai rule of life. So our task is more difficult, and we have really never attempted it without the help of religion. But even in religion wo cannot use our forefathers' experience as can the teachers of unchanging Eastern ethics, and all non-essentials must be restated very frequently as thought moves on. Hence the need for a book like Mysteries of Life," recently written by a science master from the religious point of view, and designed to give boys a philosophy of life which shall be based on the general
• (1) Play in Education. By Joseph Lee. London : Macmillan and Co. 16s. 6d. net.)---(2) The Practical Conduct of Play. By Henry S. Curtis. Same publishers and price.—(2) Pre-Meiji Education in Japan. By Frank Manson Lombard. Tokyo: Kyo Bun Xwan. (15s. net.)—(4) Mysteries of Life. By Stanley be Brath. London : Allen and Unwin. Its. Gd. net.)—(6) School Homilies. By Arthur Sidgwick. With an Introduction by the Hey. J. IL Wilson, D.D., Canon al Worcester. S vols. London : Sidzwick and Jackson. &I. net each vol.)
conclusions of science and on such essential doctrines of Christianity as the reality of spirit and the sovereign worth of love. The authcr claims to deal first of all with four great " mysteries "—the mystery of the body and those of nature, sex, and pain—and though the treatment is not particularly original, and to maturer readers the thinking will seem a little loose, the book is one which would certainly enlarge the view and quicken the thought of any young reader who took it up voluntarily. A question that teachers will raise about it is whether readers young enough for the book are capable of receiving general ideas at all, and of retaining, when offered it, a skeleton philosophic scheme into which later learning can be fitted. The results of experiment with the book will be interesting.
Of a very different class, though concerned too with a boy's philosophy of life, are the two volumes of School Homilieas lately published for Mr. Arthur Sidgwick. Mr. Sidgwick has adorned both Universities with his scholarship, and he was a master at his old school, Rugby, for some fifteen years. In his School Homilies appear the deep humanity and high moral purpose of the finest type of schoolmaster, and the restraint and clarity of his literary style are worthy of his scholarship. The " homilies " were short addresses given to a Rugby House at Sunday evening prayers, and they deal with such subjects as " Imagina- tion," " Reverence," " Harsh Judgments," " Faith." They are short, deeply thoughtful, deeply reserved, singularly perfect in form. Tile more modern typo of schoolmaster would give to his own boys something less dignified, and (as he might put it) less aloof and vague ; but thesti essays are nearly half-a-century old, and the Public School boy was 0, more grown-up fellow then than he is now. In any case, there is no schoolmaster worthy of tho name who would not wish to read Mr. Sidgwick's volumes for himself, and who would not admire the fine mind and noble spirit that inform every page of them. We do not speak now as our forefathers spoke, but some of us suspect that it is only because we cannot.
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