Education

SOCIAL STUDIES 495 is well illustrated and has good maps. Like his volume on World War I it is especially valuable for its large collection of documentary appendices. D. J. Goodspeed's Ludendorff: Genius of World War I (Macmillan, pp. xiv, 335, $5.95) marks another venture by this facile writer into military history outside the Canadian field. Those who read and enjoyed The Conspirator will not be surprised by the ease with which Major Goodspeed handles the complexities of the problems of the German high command and gives his characters life. They will also find Once more that he can analyze the psychological as well as the military elements in his story. But they will be disappointed that this book produces no new interpretations, no new material from previously unused sources, and no battle narratives that add significantly to our understanding or provide better outlines for the military soldier-student. This book is, in fact, a brilliant popularization based on published primary sources. Its appearance shows that Canada is moving into a more sophisticated age in its consumption of non-fiction. But nO doubt the publishers hope to exploit the British and American markets. EDUCATION Edward F. Sheffield There are several points of view from which one can generalize about the 1966 crop of books and near-books in the field of education. In quantitative terms, those deemed appropriate for mention in this review number fifty-one. Most of them are relatively short works; altogether they occupy only twenty-four inches of shelf space. Eight of the fifty-one are concerned with education on a world-wide basis, twentyseven are Canada-wide in their scope, thirteen deal with regional or provincial themes and three dwell on aspects of single institutions. Thirtyfive are on topics related primarily to post-secondary education, four on education at other levels, and twelve On education generally. The lead article in the January, 1967, issue of Press Notes from the University of Toronto Press, "The Collection and the Book" by Francess G. Halpenny, the Managing Editor, is a comment on the increasing number of books published which are collections of essays, lectures, papers and the like, rather than the product of one person's work and thought. This is a dominant characteristic of the publications On our list. If one includes the three periodicals, no fewer than twenty-one of 496 LETTERS IN CANADA the nfty-one are joint efforts: six collections of essays or lectures, six reports of conference proceedings, one compilation of government documents and eight reports of commissions of inquiry. The publications chosen for mention have been grouped in ten categories -not systematically, but conveniently. First there are a dozen which deal with the history of education, including several bibliographical aids. One doesn't expect to enjoy browsing through a textbook for teachers. So Professor Margaret Gillett's A History of Education: Thought and Practice (McGraw-Hili, pp. x, 443, $8.50) is a pleasant surprise. Not only does it cover the conventional phases of the history of education in the Western World but there are also excursions into other worlds, both ancient and modem. The theme throughout is expressed in the nrst sentence of the nrst chapter: "The history of education is essentially the history of mankind" (p. 3). Unusual and welcome features are chapters On education in Canada, one on education in developing countries (three examples: Ethiopia, Brazil, and Mainland China), and another on "international education"-UNESCO, foreign aid, and the like. The book provides what One would wish for a Canadian teacherperspective in both time and space on the field in which he will be working. On the topic "Canadian educational thought," Professor Gillett observes: "It has been said that philosophy of education exists in Canada but that there is no Canadian philosophy of education" (p. 405). Then she notes the work of some Canadian students of philosophy (James Beaven, George Sidney Brett, and Rupert Clendon Lodge) and draws attention to "three of the most signincant contributions to contemporary educational thought" (p. 406) by Marshall McLuhan of the University of Toronto, John Macdonald of the University of Alberta (now of Sir George Williams University), and Bernard Lonergan, S.J...