Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/573

 REVIEWS 559

third of a book of this nature to the one problem of municipal own- ership is disproportionate to the relative importance of the subject.

Arnold B, Hall

Northwestern University

A History of Education before the Middle Ages. By Frank PiERREPONT Graves^ Ph.D., Professor of the History and Philosophy of Education in the Ohio State University. New York: Macmillan, 1909. Pp. xiv+304. $1.10 net.

This History of Education before the Middle Ages is written with a sociological background and merits, therefore, the notice of the sociologist. Professor Graves construes the history of educa- tion in terms of social habit and adaptation. He finds that primi- tively educational ideas and processes were selected directly from those social habits which a group wished to emphasize. This tended to make fixed and rigid the forms of the social life. As social life grew more complex, however, social habits and tra- ditions came into conflict and broke down, emancipating the indi- vidual. Thus arose individualism in education, which made social progress possible, since "the individual is always the progressive factor in social evolution." Moreover, since under such education individuals become more and more differentiated, "there is greater conflict of habits within the group and more rapid progress is possible."

At every step, therefore. Dr. Graves seeks to correlate the his- tory of education with general social history. He begins his sur- vey with the educational processes in vogue among savage peoples ; then he takes up the educational systems of barbarism and early civilization, such as those of Egypt, Babylonia, China, India, and Persia. All of these he finds to be non-progressive systems of edu- cation. Not until the later history of the Hebrews and the Greeks and the Romans do we find the beginnings of individualism in edu- cation. Unfortunately, Professor Graves's interesting volume stops with the opening of the Middle Ages, and he does not tell us when education for social progress begins, or whether it has even yet beg^n.

Charles A. Ellwood

The University of Missouri