This volume contains twenty-six papers upon educational topics, selected from the much larger collection of Commissioner Draper's essays and addresses. Eight of these deal with the general topics of organization and administration; five with the elementary and secondary schools; six with the college and the university (the American university, the trend in American education, state universities, the university presidency, limits of academic freedom, co-education); and the remaining seven with special aspects and problems (education for efficiency, the farm and the school, physical training and athletics, public morals and public schools, the spirit of the teacher, the teacher and the position, the schools and international peace). "No other American," writes President Butler, "has been successively charged with the administration of a state system of public instruction, with the oversight of the schools of a city of considerable size, with the direction of one of the tax-supported state universities of the country, and finally with the supervision and control of the educational activities of an entire commonwealth. As a result, Mr. Draper has been forced, in the daily performance of the duties of his several offices, to approach the educational problem from many different points of view and to see it under almost all of its limitations and difficulties." Mr. Draper has, indeed, enjoyed an unrivalled experience; and he has turned this experience to account in a direct and forcible way; his writing is clear, explicit and concise. Unfortunately, the many different points of view that he has taken do not, in the judgment of the reviewer, include that of the true educator. Mr. Draper's standard is consistently that of the man of affairs; an educational system is, for him, a plant, with a foreman and a staff of employees; and the end and aim of education is efficiency. By many his book will be hailed as the very gospel of a new educational dispensation; but some will regret that a man who fills and has filled such responsible offices should be so narrowly commercial in his outlook. Francis Jones.
This essay has been written with a twofold object: first, to sum up and organize recent discussions of the disciplinary value of studies, in order to show how far students of education have advanced in their thought upon the subject; secondly and more importantly, to modify the doctrine of formal discipline and upon such modification to establish a standard of educational values. The writer accordingly presents, in the first part of the book, a long series of carefully chosen extracts from educational authorities; the utility of this portion of his work would have been increased by the addition of ah index. On the main issue, Professor Heck concludes as follows: "A general benefit can be derived from specific training in so far as the person trained has consciously wrought out, in connection with the specific training, a general concept of method, based upon the specific methods used in that training."
Otto Perler.
This book has been issued as an aid to the religious education of
