THE USE OF The Slide Rule, by F. A. Halsey, editor of American Machinist, is a significant primer for those who desire to know how to make use of the slide rule in their computations. The author sets forth the rules for using the rule, and gives methods for working it that are lucid and practical. It is a handy pocket book, and will, questionless, find ready acceptance among numerists. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. Price, 50 cents.

William T. Peck, of the Classical High School, Providence, has edited, with notes and introduction, the first and second books of Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, adding Ovid's Autobiography, consisting of some fifteen hundred lines. The notes are abundant and critical; the introduction is comprehensive and informing. A special vocabulary enriches the book. Boston: Ginn & Co.

PLANE TRIGONOMETRY, by Daniel A. Murray, Ph.D., is designed for use in colleges and secondary schools, and is a strong work. It possesses many striking and novel features, and these are cast on quite unconventional lines. It is a text-book that will merit examination by all teachers of trigonometry. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

SONGS OF ALL LANDS, by W. S. B. Mathews, editor of the Magazine, MUSIC, is a collection of patriotic and national songs of many countries, together with choice folk songs from a variety of sources, and part-songs for three and four voices. It is the most extensive collection yet made of our own patriotic airs and typical folk songs, together with the national songs of all the leading countries. To make the collection comprehensive, the author has included some of the popular and typical melodies from Bohemian, Russian, Norwegian, and Danish sources. The book is designed for the use of schools and social gatherings, and contains many English part-songs and glees. New York: American Book Company.

KLEIDER MACHEN LEUTE, by Gottfried Keller, has been edited with notes and vocabulary by M. B. Lambert, and added to Heath's Modern Language Series. This is one of Keller's most delightful stories, and its publication as a text-book is to be commended. It may be used in the latter part of the first year in the study of German. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.

To Appleton's Twentieth Century Text-book Series has been added SILAS MARNER, by George Eliot, edited with an introduction and notes by Richard Jones and J. Rose Colby. The introduction is a discriminating critique on the ethics, science and art of fiction, and merits careful reading and study. For students in secondary schools this edition of SILAS MARNER will prove of direct value in preparation for preliminaries or finals. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

A FIRST MANUAL OF COMPOSITION, by Edwin Herbert Lewis, Ph.D., is a work designed for use in the highest grammar grade and the lower high-school grades. It is a novel work, in that the author attempts to connect grammatical with rhetorical study in the eighth and ninth grades, to present sentence analysis as a means of naming and revising what the pupil himself has written, and to arouse a desire of reasoning soundly about matters interesting to the reasoner. Dr. Lewis has worked out a new process in teaching composition, and his method has very much to commend it to teachers. It certainly is out of the beaten track, and the path it blazes is wide and straight to the objective point. New York: Macmillan Company.

TWELVE ENGLISH POETS, by Blanche Wilder Bellamy, contains sketches of the lives and selections from the works of the twelve representative English poets from Chaucer to Tennyson; the list including Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith, Burns, Scott, Byron and Wordsworth. The purpose of the sketches "is to show to young readers what has been the direct line of descent of English poetry, and to provide them with a brief introduction to the work of these great masters, in the hope that such an early introduction may lead to a life-long intimacy with them." Boston: Ginn & Co.

Parts 3 and 4 of the University of California Studies consist of NOTES ON the DevelopMENT OF A CHILD, by Milicent Washburn Shinn, Ph.D. Volume I. of this series is entirely devoted to Miss Shinn's observations on the development of a child, and makes most instructive and informing reading for parents and teachers, and for classes in child study. Berkeley, Cal.: Published by the University.

ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS, by Charles H. Chase, is an exposition of the fundamental principles of the science of political economy; and is a work well adapted for general reading, as well as for a school and college textbook, so the author intimates. Mr. Chase has gone deeply into his subject and his philosophy is founded on substantial bases; indeed, he is a thorough logician, and proves his way by careful steps; it remains only for the reader to accept the premises to be convinced and converted to the author's position. There is a spirit of fairness and candor marking the book that will make for it many readers. which the attitude of the writer on some of the topics would repel. It will fully pay the general reader to take up and read the book. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. Price, $1.25.

THE MAKING OF Iowa, by Henry Sabin, LL.D., ex-State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and his son Edwin L. Sabin, is a book of absorbing interest. It amply fulfills its title. Iowa is a great State; the finest agricultural State in the Union; out of debt; with a brawny, temperate, moral, well-educated people. Her early history is full of romance and adventure. Dr. Sabin tells of the coming of the first white men, Marquette and Joliet, in 1673, to the beautiful land which lies between the Mississippi and the Missouri. He tells of the Indian tribes, the Sacs, Foxes, Iowas, Sioux, etc.—and of their many bloody battles; of the incoming of white traders and settlers, and the gradual emergence of a Territory and a State. What he says about early forts, Indian chiefs, settlers' labors and trials, teachers and preachers, slavery and John Brown, and her eighty thousand soldiers in the Civil War, is all as interesting as a novel and true to fact. It is a book which all should read. Chicago: A. Flanagan, Publisher. Price, $1.00.

PERIODICALS.

The Teachers' College Record is the title of a journal devoted to the practical problems of elementary and secondary education and the professional training of teachers. It is published by the Columbia University Press, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York.Appleton's Popular Science Monthly for May contains a fine article from the pen of Frank H. Bigelow, of Washington, D.C., on The Coming Total Eclipse of the Sun. The School Music Monthly, published at Quincy, Ill., enters a new field, and will meet with a cordial reception from teachers of music in our public schools. Scribner's Magazine for May has a timely article on Some Picturesque Sides of The Exposition. Mr. Ernest Seton-Thompson has a paper in The Century Magazine on the National Zoo at Washington. The illustrations are by the author.-School Reform is trench. antly discussed by Hugo Münsterberg in the May Atlantic Monthly.-McClure's Magazine for the current month is an exceedingly interesting number. The cost and earnings of the biggest steamship afloat are shown by Earl Mayo, while General Lawton's life and work in the Philippines, by Dean C. Worcester, are described in a way to fascinate the reader.

DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND

LITERATURE OF EDUCATION.

VOL. XX.

JUNE, 1900.

No. 10.

THE PROBLEMS WHICH CONFRONT OUR COLLEGES AT THE OPENING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.*

E

PRESIDENT WM. J. TUCKER, LL.D.,

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, HANOVER, N. H.

DUCATIONAL progress within the past decade has been more clearly defined in the sphere of the secondary and of the graduate schools than in the sphere of the college. I do not know that the advance has been more real in one part of the educational field than in another, but for various reasons most of the unsettled questions fall within the range of undergraduate work. Shall the college course be four years or three; shall the studies in the course be partly or altogether elective; shall the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Letters, or Science cover a given quantity of work of a given grade, or shall it cover in part certain prescribed subjects? These are examples of the formal questions-" problems" I suppose they may be called-which still await a clear and consenting answer. And intimately connected with these are questions pertaining to the degree of personal freedom or of personal responsibility which is to be allowed to the college. student or expected of him.

It is evident that a question may have a somewhat different meaning in the independent college from that which it has in the under-graduate part of a university. In the latter case, the fourth year, for example, may be assigned almost indiscriminately to

*Copyright, 1900, by Kasson & Palmer.

the under-graduate or to some graduate department. To the independent college any serious abridgment of its absolute time means a distinct loss of power. In all probability, however, this particular question will be settled by students themselves according to their individual needs or plans. Some will shorten or crowd their academic course in the assumed interest of their professional courses; others will take the full time now assigned to under-graduate work for reasons of health, or for wider study, or for the continuance of college fellowships. It must be remembered that the number of students to whom the Bachelor's degree in Arts, Letters, or Science is to be a finality is very greatly increasing.

In determining the requisites for the Bachelor's degree the tendency is strongly toward insistence upon the amount and quality of study rather than upon the subject-matter. Greek still holds its place in many colleges as a requisite for the B.A. degree because it has no satisfactory competitor. Apart from those who believe in the indispensableness of Greek culture, there are more who have not as yet found its equivalent in the modern languages, in history, or in the sciences. The "problem" here really lies in the secondary schools rather than in the colleges, and is concerned largely with the order and method of instruction. Physics rests so far upon mathematics that it is impossible to get any full disciplinary value out of physics as taught in advance of the required mathematics. History is still forcing its way into the secondary schools, with no sure consensus of opinion or action in regard to method on the part of secondary school-teachers. No modern language, representing an equal discipline with Greek, has yet made a place for itself beside Greek in the preparatory schools. When the necessary advances in the newer preparatory subjects have once been made, Greek will yield its supremacy. Doubtless it will before that time. The colleges will accept wider terms of admission, knowing that some of them are lower, and endeavor to make up the deficiency through advanced work in those subjects which are stronger in their later than in their elementary discipline.

The constant question before the colleges is how to secure the greatest degree of mental and moral maturity. The delivery of immature minds into graduate or professional work is a reflection

upon the methods of administration or instruction in a college, provided the age of the student is such as to allow maturity. The average age of college students at entrance is about eighteen years. Probably this average is brought up by at least a year through the delays on the part of so many students due to ill health, or to the necessity of work in the preparatory stages. A bright boy trained by a private tutor on picked subjects within the range of college examinations can easily be fitted at the age of sixteen or even fifteen, but I doubt the advantage of so early preparation. I believe that the years which belong to the college under the ordinary rate of intellectual and moral development are from seventeen to twenty-one. But granting this period, how shall we make sure of growth? Time is no cure for immaturity. The best answer to this question which has yet been given lies in the system of elective study. A considerable amount of unawakened, uninterested mind in our colleges has been recovered by this system. It represents the final intellectual appeal to the indifferent student. It gives responsibility and stimulus to the diligent student. There is no longer any question, I think, about its moral effect, or its effect as an aid toward maturity. The unsolved part of the "problem" connected with the use of the system is seen in the difficulty of ensuring order and consistency in college studies. The unaided, or even much aided choice of the individual student cannot be trusted to produce the best curriculum. Something broader and more definite is needed than a curriculum constructed under semi-professional advice, or evolved out of the limitations and contradictions of an ordinary time table.

One of the most subtle dangers entering into all institutions of learning is the spirit of calculation which is taking possession of students. It shows itself at first in the secondary schools in figuring of candidates for college upon the exact amount of work necessary to pass examinations for admission to college. It shows itself later in college and university in the equally close figuring which is made in regard to the courses necessary to a given degree. The danger is more serious than that which comes from undue diversion toward athletics or any other secondary interest, because it deadens the enthusiasm for scholarship and neutralizes the best teaching.