Reports of the Conventions of the Religious Education Association. (8vo, 422 to 649 pages each, free to members of the association as published. Religious Education Association, Chicago.) Contain many valuable papers by prominent specialists. Principles of Religious Education, by ten writers of national prominence. (12mo, 292 pages, $1.50. Longmans, Green & Co., N. Y.) Lectures delivered under the auspices of the Sunday School Commission of the Diocese of New York. ON CHILD STUDY Fundamentals of Child Study, by Edwin A. Kirkpatrick. (12mo, 384 pages, $1.25. Macmillan Co., N. Y.) Written with the needs of secular teachers in mind, but very valuable to the thoughtful Sundayschool teacher. Emphasizes pedagogical applications rather than details of investigations. The Child, by Amy Tanner. (12m0, 430 pages, $1.50. Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago.) A good summary of most of the published investigations. Less of pedagogical suggestion than in the book mentioned above, but very valuable for its concrete presentation of the facts. The Pedagogical Bible School, by Samuel B. Haslett. (Large 12m0, 383 pages, $1.25. Fleming H. Revell Co., N. Y.) Pages 87-202 describe the various stages of development; pages 305-340 outline a graded Sunday-school curriculum based on the characteristics and needs of the various stages. The intervening pages are given chiefly to the discussion of methods of teaching. Many valuable papers are found in the two volumes of Studies in Education, edited by Earl Barnes and published by the editor at Philadelphia, and in the thirteen volumes of The Pedagogical Seminary, edited by G. Stanley Hall and published at Worcester, Mass. ON GENERAL METHOD The Method of the Recitation, by Charles A. and Frank M. McMurray. (12m0, 339 pages, $0.90. The Macmillan Co., N. Y.) The Essentials of Method, by Charles De Garmo. (12m0, 133 pages, $0.65. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston.) These two volumes are the standard text-books on the theory of apperception and the formal steps in teaching of the Herbartian school. How to Plan a Lesson, by Marianna C. Brown. (12mo, 93 pages, $0.75. Fleming H. Revell Co., N. Y.) Three of the four chapters apply the principles of general method to the teaching of Sunday-school lessons. Picture Work, by Walter L. Hervey. (16mo, 91 pages, paper, $0.30. Chautauqua-Century Press, Meadville, Pa.) The best handbook of illustrative teaching. ON PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION Talks to Teachers, by William James. (12mo, 301 pages, $1.50. Henry Holt & Co., N. Y.) Popular and very suggestive. Psychological Principles of Education, by Herman H. Horne. (12mo, 435 pages, $1.75. The Macmillan Co., N. Y.) One of the very best recent books. 175 pages on moral and religious education. The Educative Process, by William C. Bagley. (12mo, 357 pages, $1.50. The Macmillan Co., N. Y.) More emphasis upon teaching than upon education in the larger sense. A valuable book. The Pedagogical Bible School, by Samuel B. Hazlett. (12mo, 383 pages, $1.25. Fleming H. Revell Co., N. Y.) Presents the foundation principles of the graded school, from the child-study standpoint. Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School, by Ernest D. Burton and Shailer Matthews. (12mo, 207 pages, $1.00. University of Chicago Press). Outlines the plans of a graded school in which systematic Bible-study is the determining factor. How to Conduct a Sunday School, by Marion Lawrence. (Large 12mo, 1279 pages, $1.25. Fleming H. Revell Co., N. Y.) The title indicates the scope of the work. The latest and best book on Sundayschool management. This list has been kept as small as possible. It might be extended to many times its length. Where choice was possible, the more recent or less familiar books have been included. The courses of study mentioned in the first list provide a uniform course of study for all members of the teacher-training class. The graded Sunday school demands specialization of its teachers, and to provide for this in their training, the writer, while superintendent of the New York State Sunday School Association, devised a plan which has been successfully used by many classes organized under the auspices of that body. It provides that while all members of the teacher-training class follow the same general course of study, each supplements this by study or careful reading of one or more volumes designed to give aid in meeting the special problems of some particular department of the school. Having selected her prospective field of labor, the candidate for the teacher's office thus seeks to make herself a specialist in the teaching of those particular grades. The books forming such a reading course may be purchased by the school, and may form a permanent library for the use of teachers. This plan of making the special training for work with a particular grade of pupils supplementary to the general course makes it possible to use the latest and most stimulating books for this purpose, even though they cover but a small part of the whole field of teacher-training. Among those which may be used in this way are such as the following: FOR KINDERGARTEN AND PRIMARY GRADES A Study of Child Nature, by Elizabeth Harrison. The Point of Contact, by Patterson Du Bois. Picture Work, by Walter L. Hervey. FOR JUNIOR GRADES After the Primary, What? by A. H. McKinney. FOR INTERMEDIATE GRADES The Boy Problem, by William B. Forbush. FOR SENIOR GRADES The Psychology of Religion, by Edwin D. Starbuck. The Spiritual Life, by George A. Coe. The Religion of a Mature Mind, by George A. Coe. Adult Bible Classes, by Irving E. Wood and Newton M. Hall. In planning for any such reading course it is of course of great importance that the books be carefully selected in view of the class which is to use them. The above list contains some that are so popular as to be suitable for any class, while others would be of value only with more mature and thoughtful students. Such plans as have been outlined above are sufficiently practical, sufficiently thorough, and sufficiently adaptable to merit consideration in every Sunday school. The fact that the Pennsylvania State Sunday School Association has during the past year enrolled some 5000 students in classes of much the same type is evidence of the results that can be accomplished when genuine effort is put forth. MODERN INTERPRETATION OF OLD IDEALS OF MORAL EDUCATION CHARLES DE GARMO, PH. D. PROFESSOR CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, NEW YORK All wholesome ideals for the moral training of children must have a twofold root. One of these roots is the moral nature of the child; the other is his moral need. His moral nature is an inheritance from the past, hence changes but slowly. The primary thing here is that this nature should be adequately understood. Modern investigations in genetic psychology are giving us new insight, and teaching us that the impulses and motives of the adult are not always a safe guide to those of children. Our motto here should be back to nature that is, to child nature, the dominating moral instincts and impulses that ages of primitive human experience have implanted in them. We do this successfully with respect to our bodies; why not, also, in matters of the mind? When our nervous systems are racked to the verge of prostration by the distracting noises and excitements of the city, we flee to forest, field, or ocean, for healing; when too long exposure to vitiated and superheated air brings on incipient consumption, we no longer seek vain relief in nostrums, but sleep and live out of doors, when the balsam of uncontaminated air soothes and restores our lost vigor, and drives out the germs of disease; when our digestive systems revolt at the bare starch the modern miller furnishes us for our bread-starch from which all cellulose has been extracted, we are now learning not to dose our systems with the dyspeptic remedies of the drug store, but to eat those primitive forms of cereals from which the cellulose has not been extracted. In the same way, when Judge Lindsay attempted to cure the moral prostration of the youth of Denver, he studied the primitive sense of justice, the moral impulses and instincts of these social waifs of an adult civilization, and met with immediate and hearty response, so that the diseased minds, under the healing influences of understanding, sympathy, firmness, and primitive justice, were gradually restored to moral health. What has proved true in the field of civic relations will prove equally true in every field of childish moral life. The first ideal, then, is that the teacher should strive to pierce the world of adult conventions and seek out the very heart of the child. The standard moral imperatives in accordance with which the race has been trained have not changed, because they are the expression of what ages of experience have shown to be the moral nature of man. A second reason why they have not changed is that they, like all general imperatives, are largely formal rules, in accordance with which men regulate their changing experience. In Kantian terms, they are regulative, not constitutive principles. These principles, or moral axioms, may with Wundt be conveniently classified into three groups, namely, those that pertain to the self, to the society in which we live, and to that wider humanity of which we form a part. There is a personal or subjective and an impersonal or objective phase to each of the groups. These imperatives may be briefly summarized as follows: 1. Principles relating to self (1) So act as to preserve thy self-respect. (2) Fulfil all thy duties to others. 2. Principles relating to society (1) Respect thy neighbor as thyself. (2) Serve the community in which thou livest. 3. Principles relating to humanity ideal. (1) Feel thyself to be an instrument in the service of the moral (2) Sacrifice thyself for the end thou hast recognized to be thine ideal task. Out of these unchanging imperatives there grow all minor rules and maxims of life; from them we can deduce the relative validity of each, and explain all duties, ends, and motives. Here we can find the true meaning of the precept of Polonius: "To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." for the self of every man is a social one, getting its significance from its relation to others. To be true to self, then, is to be true to the social self that society has created. Even the lower aspects of moral life are therefore dependent on the higher. But our real problem begins only when we attempt to supply the content of our ideals of moral training by the needs of the child. It is in this domain that the application of primitive ideals is likely to fail, for it is here that we perceive that a new content must fill the old forms every time social conditions essentially change. That they have changed radically since our current ideals were formulated is evident upon inspection. I invite your attention, therefore, briefly to some of the more |