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JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL MATHEMATICS.

By Walter W. Hart.

D. C. Heath & Co.

This book is the minimum course mentioned above in the review of Wells and Hart's Modern High School Algebra, and its material is taken almost entirely from the latter.-Review by Robert R. Goff.

We acknowledge the receipt of the following excellent books, for elaborate reviews of which we are finding it impossible to spare space in EDUCATION:

IN THE NORTH WOODS OF MAINE. The Story of a Winter in the Wilderness, Fifty Years Ago. By E. E. Thomas. Illustrations by H. B. Dummer. World Book Company.

REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS. For the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1923. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. SHEET METAL WORK. M. S. Trew and V. A. Bird. Drawings by Robert H. Barnes. The Manual Arts Press. Price 85 cents.

THE LIVING GOD. By "What Matters Who Wrote It!" G. P. Putnam's Sons. A book of 86 pages. 1st Division, "Life"; 2nd, “Man";

3rd, "God."

HOW ARE WE CLOTHED. A Geographical Reader. By James Franklin Chamberlain, Ed.B., S.B. This book belongs to Macmillan's Home and World Series.

A DROP OF WATER. By Margaret Horner Clyde. The Chemical Publishing Company, Easton, Pa.

TEENIE WEENIE LAND. By William Donahey and Effie E. Baker. Illustrated by William Donahey. The Beckley-Cardy Company.

CHEERFUL CHILDREN. By Edmund Vance Cooke. Illustrated by Mae Herrick Scannell. The Beckley-Cardy Company.

SUMMER CAMPS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. By Henry Wellington Wack, F.R.G.S., Associate Director, Camp Department, The Red Book Magazine, 33 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.

GETTING INTO YOUR LIFE WORK. A Guide to the Choice and Pursuit of a Vocation. By Herald M. Doxsee, Teacher of Social Sciences in J. Sterling Morton High School, Chicago. The Abingdon Press, New York and Cincinnati. An excellent little book for any young man or woman, on a subject which is of vast importance. The volume is written in a sympathetic way, by a teacher of wide experience in advising young people about life's multitudinous problems.

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DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE, ART, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE OF EDUCATION

FRANK HERBERT PALMER, A. M., EDITOR

CONTENTS

PAGE

Case Study of Ethical Standards for Public Schools. Walter Scott McNutt. 393

The Textbook in Geography. Frederick K. Branom.

406

Vermont (Poem). Minnie Hays.

418

Program for Junior High School Industrial Arts. Leon L. Winslow.

419

The Wintergreen (Poem). Edith M. Shank.

424

Motivated English-A Class Paper. Bernice Hartley.

425

School Publications. Joseph Albrecht Thalheimer.

429

A Survey of the Reading Interests of the Pupils of the Madison,
Wisconsin, High School. Frances Mary Hughes.

437

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Published by THE PALMER COMPANY, 120 Boylston Street

LONDON B. C.: WM. DAWSON & SONS, Ltd., CANNON HOUSE, BREAMS BUILDINGS

Price 40 Cents

$4.00 a Year

Based on the best educational philosophy of the day, they are "Practical and Positively Helpful" AN EXPERIMENT WITH A PROJECT CURRICULUM

By ELLSWORTH COLLINGS

Professor of Education, the University of Oklahoma
Introduction by WILLIAM H. KILPATRICK

Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
A report of an experiment conducted
for the purpose of determining the relative
effectiveness of a thoroughgoing project
curriculum and the older type of instruction.

The results of the experiment are as
follows: (1) the school as a school was
a distinct success; (2) the success was
just the kind called for by the theory;
(3) more of the conventional subject mat-
ter was mastered than in other schools;
(4) a striking object lesson was given to
the school world in new school aims, school
procedure, and measures of success.

THE CHILD'S MIND AND
THE COMMON BRANCHES

By DANIEL WOLFORD LARUE, Ph. D.

This book is an applied psychology, containing the best of modern thought and theory, reduced to minimum essentials and translated into very simple language. Part One gives an insight into what happens to the child's mind and personality during the learning process. Part Two shows specifically how this knowledge when once gained may be applied to the teaching of each of the common branches of elementary school work.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK
ATLANTA

BOSTON
DALLAS

CHICAGO

SAN FRANCISCO

Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature

VOL. XLIV.

of Education

MARCH, 1924

Case Study of Ethical Standards for
Public Schools

No. 7

WALTER SCOTT MCNUTT, PH.D., FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE
FOR WOMEN, TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA.

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Introduction.

OBSERVE a certain tendency at present to maintain that ethical ideas are foreign to the minds of young children, and that there is something unnatural and perverse in any attempt to introduce ethical standards in the public schools. To discuss this adequately would require a thorough investigation of child study. And as I

have no special knowledge in that department that would entitle me to deal with it as those who are more gifted the opponents of the movement-I can only say that my recollections from childhood and my experience as a teacher with children in the public schools for eight years, and the study of psychology that I have made, bear out no such opinion as the opponents of ethical instruction hold.

My impression is that children naturally acquire at a pretty early stage a strong tendency to pronounce ethical judgments, which they are even apt to utter with a vigor and decisiveness that they are often hardly able to maintain in their later years. A child may be able to see and understand the hatefulness of a mean action and the nobility of a heroic one without having any definite theory as to the ultimate significance

of good and evil. A very small boy is generally quite capable of appreciating such a message as that of President Wilson: "Every man is expected to do his duty in making the world safe for democracy"; and I am quite certain that it is not true to say the term "duty" has no meaning for the boy. My experience as a teacher has also led me to hold that a very young girl is quite capable of feeling scorn for meanness and deceit; and I believe she recognizes, with more or less clearness, that these are vices.

All of this seems so obvious to me that I do not care to discuss it further. I prefer to assume that ethical ideas are neither unnatural nor improper in the youth of our nation. It may be true that the ideas they are capable of grasping are limited, crude, vague and often one-sided; but this only makes it more imperative that it shall be one of the primary aims of a sound educational system to strengthen, clarify and develop them.

How Imparted.

After granting this, there still remains the question as to how the ethical instruction can best be conveyed. Shall the teaching be direct and systematic, or shall it be imparted in some more unobtrusive fashion? This question is the important thing to be settled, and it is here that we have divergent opinions. Some hold that ethical instruction cannot be properly given except as a part of religious instruction. Others think that it can best be treated as an incidental adjunct to the teaching of history, literature, arithmetic, civics, vocations, and the general discipline of the school.

Nature of the Paper.

It is the object of this paper to give a few comments upon each of these views, and to offer what I consider to be a workable outline for the teacher who wishes to introduce thisthe most important and far-reaching of all subjects—in the public schools.

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