To a Pessimist. (Poem). Stokely S. Fisher.. The Boy, His Gang, and School. Kathleen O'Brien. A Few Contrasts Between the School and the Job. A. W. Forbes. FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS Baker & Thorndike: Teaching Equipment Pre-Primer Chart Pre-Primer Sentence Cards Primer Seat Work Phrase Cards Word Cards La Rue: The F-U-N Book Ross: Reading to Find Out FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS Chaucer: Canterbury Tales, selections from the Modern Reader's Chaucer, Edited by C. W. Ziegler. Ford & Ammerman: Plane and Solid Geometries Hayes & Moon: Modern History Leiper: A New English Grammar Swenson: High School Mathematics Wilkinson: Contemporary Poetry. Modern Readers' FOR TEACHERS Brim: Rural Education Forbes: Good Citizenship Through Story-Telling Lippitt: A Manual of Corrective Gymnastics McMurry: How to Organize the Curriculum McMurry, Eggers, & McMurry: Teaching of Indus trial Arts in Elementary Schools Thorndike: The Psychology of Algebra Write for Information THE MACMILLAN COMPANY New York Boston Chicago Dallas Atlanta San Francisco EDUCATION Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature of Education VOL. XLIV. SEPTEMBER, 1923 No. I Recent Tendencies in the Teaching of the Social Sciences in the Secondary Schools SAMUEL M. LEVIN, HEAD OF SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT, COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF DETROIT, DETROIT, MICH. N O phenomenon in American education is more profoundly interesting to teachers of social studies than the startling growth in the numbers attending public secondary schools. A 1920 bulletin of the Bureau of Education offers the following figures for the public high schools of the United States.1 These figures indicate that, though population from 1890 to 1918 increased 68%, the number of public high schools increased 452%, and the percentage of attendance to total population 387%. It is not within the scope of this inquiry to consider the 1 Bulletin 1920, No. 10, Bureau of Education, pp. 11-12. causes of this movement, bound up as it is with a multiplicity of educational, economic, social, and technological facts.2 But to one who is dealing with the social sciences-the place they shall hold in our secondary school system (inclusive of the junior and senior high schools)—the matter is of profound import. It not only implies the need for a re-examination of past methods, materials, standards, and objectives; it implies, further, a responsibility on the part of educators for clear thinking, for constructive, statesman-like planning along new lines, to the end that this branch of work-conceded to be the most important in the secondary schools-should be equal to the tremendous burden placed upon it. This fact becomes even more certain, once we begin to realize that the welfare of American society calls, not for a retardation of this influx in the future, but its steady and consistent promotion. Thus the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, appointed by the National Educational Association, in its well known report of 1918, entitled "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," laid down the principle "that education should be so reorganized that every normal boy and girl will be encouraged to remain in school to the age of eighteen, on full time if possible, otherwise on part time." And the Commission actually recommended "the enactment of legislation whereby all young persons up to the age of eighteen, whether employed or not, shall be required to attend the secondary schools not less than eight hours each week that the schools are in session."4 Everyone agrees that our great venture in secondary education is not worth the cost unless it achieve the fundamental aim of training the attending army of boys and girls to become 2 See Cardinal Principles of Secondary Educaton, Bulletin 1918, No. 35, pp. 7-9. 3 Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, p. 30. 4 Ibid, p. 31. See also Aims in American Education, by Charles E. Hughes, in Journal of the N. E. A., Sept. 1922, p. 257. Mr. Hughes has this to say: "What is most important, however, in view of our social and civic needs, is that the door of hope should be kept open by maintaining the opportunities |