Welsh Journals

"The Case for Co-education." By Cecil Grant and Norman Hodgson. Grant Richards. This is a book to leave about in reading rooms and waiting rooms, to leave in your friends bedrooms-anywhere in fact where the thin-skinned can pick it up surreptiously. without fear of being dubbed immediately a crank educationalist. When he has once read it, the thin-skinned can talk about it freely, for it is an admirably sane, balanced and convincing plea. But the introduction should be ignored. There you will learn that hitherto there have been many definitions of education in the future there will be but one To assist and not to thwart the natural development of the physical, mental and moral faculties, and of a will controlling them into conformity with God's will." And you will get an impression that this education of the future with this new knowledge is really going to be a plain-sailing, straight-forward affair, as long as you fix your eyes on nature. Now there is more than a certain amount of tosh about this Nature Worship. It is nonsense. Where is the natural man ? How can we imitate him when we cannot find him Another point. Man, for the educationalist, is not a little higher than the animals, but a little lower than the Angels he must not look to the bee-hive but to heaven. The bee is a very inter- esting little insect, but of no use whatever in solving man's educational problem. For the problem will remain. The fact that we know the child is endowed with original goodness, as well as original sin, only makes the educator's work of dis- crimination more delicate and more arduous. But the intro- duction is not the book. Later we find Dr. Grant thwarting Nature to the extent of using Corporal Punishment. The work begins with criticisms of the public school system collected from public school masters, and public school men. He confronts them with their acknowledged moral defect, and with the statement often made by them that to deprive boys of their sisters' influence is injurious. And from his own fifteen years experience as a headmaster, he claims for coeducation (with judicious supervision) that it enormously reduces the moral risk. It should be added in this connection that he believes in, and treats exclusively of the coeducation boarding school. The Secondary School creates its own risks of train journeys and evening walks. It is impossible to reproduce the short but able historical sketch of education suffice it to say that he emphasises the fact that the public school system, as we know it, is not an immemoral tradition, but dates from the forties that in mediaeval times boys and girls of the upper classes were educated together in private houses that Rome in her best period looked to the home as the great educator and lastly that the monastic element in the English Public School can be traced to the fact that the only Schools were originally intended for a celibate priesthood. Two chapters are devoted to discussing the alleged reaction against coeducation in America. We find that this reaction has been vaguely alleged since 1901, but that the reports of actual schools show much the same proportion in favour as formerly. That so great a man as Stanley Hall should condemn the system is an important fact, and is treated at some length. But on ex- amination, it proves in the main to be chiefly a criticism, on physical grounds, of the Higher Education for Women. But as a fact the statistics show that the influence of boys tends to minimise the risk of nervous breakdowns among girls. Then Dr. Grant turns to what coeducation actually does for boys and girls. The ultra-feminist desire for women to challenge men in every department of life has no place here. Boys and girls can do a great deal together; for some things they must separate. Football, even at a coeducation School can be confined to the boys I But coeducationalists of experience do claim this that the constant intercourse in and out of school accentuates the sex differences that are fundamental, and vitally important to the race, and tends to eliminate the sex defects. Boys learn to prize their manliness all the more for associating with girls girls realise the value of gentleness. And the roughness and inconsiderateness of the one. and the sentimentalism of the other are for the most part thrown on the ash heap together. A Primer of English Citizenship, for use in Schools. By Frederick Swan. B.A.. B.Sc. Longmans Green & Co. Pp 268. 1/6. This book should he useful to Schoolinasters and others desiring to educate children to a knowledge of their country, its government and administration. its responsibilities, and its needs The subjects are excellently various and include Parliament," with short interpretations of Parliamentary terms and the methods of procedure," Local Government," Rates and taxes." the Law Courts. the Navy and Army, and a short account of Educational History and in the last five chapters an account of the Social reforms of recent years and of the problems awaiting solution is given. The book is clearly and fairly written, and the child who has mastered it should be considerably nearer to being educated, in the highest meaning of that much abused word. The Idea of the Industrial School." By George Kerschensteiner. Macmillan & Co. pp. 110. 2/- net. The story of the work or industrial school has. for some years. on its practical side, been associated with Dr Kerschensteiner, This book is a translation of one of his many papers on the subject. Part of a larger movement towards the internal reform of primary education, the industrial school as organised by Dr. Kerschensteiner in Munich is a remarkable if only partial solution of the problem. The duties of the elementary school he claims to be (1) Preparation of the indivi- dual for his future vocation in the community. (2) I he making ethical of this vocation. (3) To make the individual able to join in the common work of raising the ethical standard of the community of which he is a member. It is in this demand that the school shall be the place for the future vocation of the pupil that Kerschensteiner is most at variance with the other exponents of the Arbeit Schule. It is here, too. that his system is most strongly criticised. The book should, however, be read in conjunction with Kerschensteiner more complete work Die Grundfragen der Schulorganisation." Industrial Unrest and the Living Wage." Lectures given at the Inter-Denominational Summer School 1913. Intro- duction by Rev. Wm. Temple. M.A.. Pp. 182. No index. P. S. King & Son. 2/- net. The central point of these lectures is the proposal to establish a national minimum wage The subject was apparently well chosen and attracted lecturers of undoubted authority in the religious and economic world it would, however, be untrue to say that the result is entirely satisfatory. Individually, some of the chapters are valuable. Mr. Mallon gives the best account yet published of the working of the Trade Boards Act and the Rev. J. M. Lloyd Thomas lecture on the Supremacy of the Spiritual should be preached from every pulpit in Wales. Pro- fessor Hobhouse is clear upon one issue the minimum wage must be a family wage and the family wage must be provided by the pay of the husband and father. If this conclusion be admitted, it will have far-reaching effects on theories of women's employment now widely prevalent. At present a family wage tends to break up into wages for individuals. Perhaps the most interesting lecture is the Challenge of the Rev. Philip H. Wicksteed there is some humour in carefully