of measuring teaching efficiency and of measuring the efficiency of training institutions. This volume recounts the thoroughgoing efforts to do both of these things in connection with the survey of normal schools in the state of Wisconsin. It presents a long list of the aspects of teacher-training institutions into which inquiry needs to be made by way of determining their efficiency; and it presents detailed information and advice as to the best methods to be employed in the study of these many aspects. Few volumes on surveys present so many ideas in so brief a space. Those concerned in the labors of teacher training will find the volume highly suggestive. An excellent book is unfortunately marred by the malicious tone employed throughout in the references to all other professional surveys and surveyors. Openly and by implication the authors foster the idea that their methods embody the last touches of perfection and that methods of all others are but the futilities of incompetents. Such insistent claims to a monopoly of wisdom rather repel the judicious who honestly wish to profit from the unusual number of excellent suggestions contained within the volume. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO J. FRANKLIN BOBBITT The Report of the Richmond, Indiana, Survey of Vocational Education. By ROBERT J. LEONARD, director, professor of vocational education, Indiana University. Educational Bulletin of Indiana State Board of Education No. 18, Indiana Survey Series No. 3. December, 1916. Pp. xv+599. Self-Surveys of Colleges and Universities. By WILLIAM H. ALLEN, PH.D., director of the Institute for Public Service, New York City. Yonkers, N.Y.: Educational Survey Series. World Book Co., 1917. Pp. xv+394. $3.00. The report of the Richmond, Indiana, Survey is the third of a series of vocational educational surveys made in Indiana since the passage of the Indiana Vocational Survey law in 1913. They were made for the special purpose of adapting the newly established vocational educational system to the existing industrial life of the state. Other studies of a similar character are in progress. Richmond is a city of 25,000 inhabitants. It has for a long time been a center of the manufacture of agricultural implements. Something over 20 per cent of the population are employed in this manufacture. The survey gives a detailed description of the principal industries and of the conditions of labor. As a report it is of the established conventional type: ponderous, superficial, and uninteresting. One of the demands that we are now beginning to make, even of governmental reports, is that they should be concise, they should make use of graphic materials for illustration, and above all they should be readable. In the foreword to Self-Surveys of Colleges and Universities, William' H. Allen defines his purpose in this book "to make it easier for American democracy to understand and to shape for democracy's ends the higher education upon which it spends a half billion dollars yearly." This paragraph is characteristic of the book, that is to say, it states an idea and then hammers it home with a striking fact. Although under the guise of a scheme for investigating colleges and universities, the author has written a brilliant and suggestive essay on college administration. The book itself is an admirable illustration of the way in which facts, ordinarily dry and unpalatable, may be made suggestive and interesting. One of the most interesting chapters is that in which he discusses the nature and possibilities of the catalogue and the official report, which, he says, should itself be a self-survey. This book is not, however, merely a discussion of university and college administration. It is a book for the closet, for quiet meditation. Any person who will consistently go through, in reference to his particular work, with the sort of self-examination which is here prescribed will certainly be greatly improved intellectually and morally. As might be expected, self-surveys, whether of colleges or universities, are not valuable as a means of making scientific discoveries. They are valuable only as a means of testing efficiency and improving standards already accepted. Although this book is primarily for the administrator, it will at the same time be interesting and stimulating to the student. ROBERT E. PARK UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO The Exceptional Child. By MAXIMILIAN P. E. GROSZMANN, PH.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917. $2.50. This book is an attempt to summarize, in a comprehensive way, our present-day knowledge concerning the "exceptional" child, a term which, as the author explains in the Introduction, he applies "to all types of deviation from the average." Because of the effort to discuss in one volume a variety of subjects-ranging from the failure of our publicschool system to meet the needs of the "atypical" child to the causes of prostitution—the book is necessarily diffuse and general. It is valuable, however, to the layman interested in the subject of educational psychology, on account of its popular mode of presentation, its exhaustive bibliography, the "Medical Symposium" to which some eminent authorities have contributed, and the section on "The Problem of Clinical Research and Diagnosis." This last section discusses the different scientific tests that have been developed for the determination of exceptional development in children, and contains many useful suggestions as to the proper training of the child who does not conform to "average" standards. When the author leaves the field of educational psychology and ventures to touch upon social and economic subjects, he frequently fails to discriminate between scientific fact and his own personal opinion and prejudice; indeed, he even misuses scientific terms in his discussion of environmental influences that surround the child and tend to make it "exceptional." For example he confuses heredity and environment in this flagrant fashion: "No eugenic childbirth is possible where there is not a healthy, happy home life" (p. 415); or "Many fathers whose nervous system has become depleted in the mad rush for gain have left a pernicious inheritance of defectiveness" (p. 419). Sometimes, too, the author abandons entirely the terminology of the scientist to assume the weighty responsibility of a pedantic moralist: "A child who lies is not necessarily wicked on that account" (p. 207); or: "An effeminate man is an abomination and a mannish woman is an insult to womanhood" (p. 84). On the whole, however, the book is well worth reading and owning, as it contains many suggestive paragraphs and much information that could not be obtained elsewhere without considerable search. STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION HELEN GLENN TYSON Vocational Education. Compiled by EMILY ROBINSON. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1917. Pp. 303. $1.25. This volume is intended to be a sourcebook of material bearing on the subject of vocational education. According to the author's statement it is intended for the use of "teachers of vocational education, and students who are training to be public-school teachers, as well as people who have only a general intelligent interest in education." Its selected articles are arranged under these divisions: phases of vocational education for youth, industrial education, commercial education, agricultural education, household arts, and vocational guidance. The authors, whose writings are used, are usually representative. Extended bibliographies of additional material in print bearing on the particular divisions just enumerated are presented. Unfortunately there is no index. The purpose of the work is worthy, much valuable material has been brought together, and no doubt many teachers and others will be distinctly helped by it to a better understanding of vocational education. JOHN M. GILLETTE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA City and County Administration in Springfield, Illinois. By D. O. DECKER and SHELBY M. HARRISON. New York City: Russell Sage Foundation, October, 1917. Social Surveys of Three Rural Townships in Iowa. By Paul S. PEIRCE, PH.D. Studies in the Social Sciences, First Series, No. 12, December, 1917. University of Iowa Monographs. Methods of Investigation in Social and Health Problems. By DONALD B. ARMSTRONG, FRANZ SCHNEIDER, JR., and LOUIS I. DUBLIN. Reprinted from American Journal of Public Health, Vol. VII, No. 1, January, 1917, and Relative Values in Public Health Work. By FRANZ SCHNEIDER, JR. Reprinted from American Journal of Public Health, Vol. VI, No. 9, September, 1916. New York City: Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation. Chicago Social Service Directory. BY VALERIA D. MCDERMOTT and ANNIE ELIZABETH TROTTER. Chicago: City of Chicago Department of Public Welfare, 1918. The Springfield, Illinois, Social Survey is technically the most interesting and the most thoroughly executed survey which the Russell Sage Foundation has yet made. The survey was actually made in the spring and summer of 1914 with some additional investigations made the following year. The completed survey will comprise ten small volumes. Most of these studies were given publicity in the newspapers and at public exhibits at the time they were made. The more formal and permanent reports of the survey made under Shelby Harrison have been completed more leisurely, and the completed reports are now being gathered together and will be given to the public eventually in three large volumes. This study of the city and county administration of Springfield includes a chapter on the "Community Service through the Municipality," that is to say, the fire department, city law department, streets and public improvements, etc.; analyzes the current income of the city, handling of special funds, and certain phases of the Sangamon County government. Particularly interesting and important are the recommendations with reference to publicity of the city government accounts and reports, particularly as a means of equalizing, in practice, the taxation on land values. The whole report is interesting and valuable and an important contribution to our knowledge of city administration. The two pamphlets issued by the Russell Sage Foundation, one on Methods of Investigation in Social and Health Problems, and the other on Relative Values in Public Health Work, present, in a lively and interesting way, some of the pitfalls of social investigation, particularly when made by inexperienced investigators. The Russell Sage Foundation is a clearing house for actual experiments in social investigation and, on the basis of its materials, is standardizing schedules and improving methods. As in the long run the progress of social science depends upon investigation, and as this cannot be made in the laboratory but only in the field, the work of such an institution as the Russell Sage Foundation is invaluable. These pamphlets are excellent examples of this peculiar sort of social service. Interest in the problems of rural life is still multiplying the number of surveys or investigations of rural conditions. The report recently issued by the University of Iowa of studies of three townships in that state is one of the most interesting and thoroughgoing of these recent studies. These investigations are of a strictly academic character, that is, they were not made for the purpose of improving local conditions in the regions studied, but were for the purpose of getting a general conception of conditions throughout the state by a method of sampling certain areas. For this reason the names of the townships investigated are not given, but the general locality is indicated and the townships actually investigated are designated by letters. The studies of the population since 1870 show a gradual and continuous decline in the rural population outside the towns of 2,500 or more. In fact it was found that in one of these townships the population was only 57 per cent of what |