THE SCHOOL REVIEW A JOURNAL OF SECONDARY EDUCATION Edited by THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY VOLUME XIX JANUARY-DECEMBER, 1911 The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Published January, February, March, April, May, June, September 166671 Composed and Printed By Principal of the Washington Irving High School, New York City I, too, in my day have read many books on education. They seem to me to have a good deal of what might appear to be pure science. Their formulae are calculated for a vacuum. They disregard the element of friction. This following trial will not content the educational expert. It would not have been thrust upon you but for the fact that on the editorial staff of this Review is one of my boys of twenty years ago, who asked for "something." I bought a letter file in 1887. The habit has endured. I have just gone through a large pile of letters sent twenty-three years ago by fathers and mothers regarding their children then atending our Chicago high school. I seem to have been walking through a cemetery. Willie, Ollie, Danny, and all the affectionately labeled personalities are dead, some without successors. But many of them are transformed into men and women averaging forty years of age; some, constructors of huge buildings; some, shrewd and shifty accumulators of dollars; some, honest, steady, reliable citizens; some, dignified mothers of beautiful children; some, soilers of other homes than their own. Some few are making in life the sort of records which they made in school, but so many are at such a wide variance from what we rated them day by day as to incline me to abstain from |