Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/749

Rh the children, we shall come to it, although it means better teachers, smaller classes, more attention to individuals, and the consequent greater expenditure of public funds.

"The Tree-Dwellers" will be of interest to social workers outside of the school as well as within. To understand its larger significance, it should be read in connection with The Place of Industries in Elementary Education by the same author. There has perhaps been no single work published which has endeavored more earnestly than this latter to indicate the meaning of manual training, the field excursion, modeling, drawing, dramatic representation, and other activities which in so many schools have been plastered on the old course of study. Of greater importance than the material chosen by Dr. Dopp is the unity which she sees in the essentials of the so-called old and new education.

"The Tree-Dwellers" is her first attempt to illustrate her theory by material organized into lessons for use with children. This volume is to be followed by "The Early Cave—Men the Age of Combat," "The Later Cave—Men the Age of the Chase," "The Tent-Dwellers—the Early Fishing Men," and others dealing with the early development of pastoral and agricultural life, the age of metals, travel, trade, and transportation. Naturally these works will not satisfy even all who welcomed the theoretical statement, but the details of adverse criticism must not be allowed to obscure the importance of this effort, and its promise of successful issue as indicated in the initial volume of the series. It is most promising to have a person of unusually successful teaching experience combine with this thorough university training and devote herself to a pioneer task.

To those who would allow children only the classic products of race-development, and who hesitate to share with them in that which means most to them—the processes—this book is far afield. Dr. Dopp sees that adolescence is but an unusually high wave in the individual life, that there are other transitions of only slightly less significance. The one which this book is to meet is the period between six and eight, so often misunderstood because of its remoteness from present adult life. This remoteness, however, means a difference in degree only, and the primary teacher who meets in children needs much like those which send the older student to the library, museum, laboratory, and field will welcome these suggestions of help in the quest. Whether, participating in these processes, the boy or girl can profitably come into relations with such frank statements and pictures of the cruel and ugly as are found in "The Age of Fear," is a question which should