The progressive primary teacher

General methods for the primary grades. Some five or six books dealing with the present-day curriculum and methods in the kindergarten-primary field have appeared during the last three years. The Progressive Primary Teacher is one of the latest additions to this list. The authors feel that it is not possible to adapt some of the newer primary programs in their entirety to public-school situations; hence their purpose is "to present the best of progressive technique in first-grade teaching without going to impracticable extremes." The material of the book is organized in three divisions. Part I, approximately forty-five pages, deals with the primary classroom, equipment, and supplies. A modern classroom with its several "work centers"--construction center, play center, book table, block center, etc. is described and justified in terms of the need of children for varied activity.^

The topics discussed in Part II, covering approximately one hundred pages, are the kindergarten-primary child, testing and classification, management and discipline, and the personality and preparation of the teacher. The chief contribution of this part and of the book itself is found in the chapter on testing and classification. Here is presented an elaborate series of tests for measuring experience and vocabulary. These tests are intended "as a program for a systematic inventory of the child's vocabulary and his stock of ideas." If such a program could be administered, the results should prove invaluable as an aid in determining curriculum content for the primary-school years. The second half of the book, Part III, is entitled "The Curriculum and Methods of Work." The first chapter in this section deals with psychology as a basis of method, types of learning, and general methods in primary work.^

It includes a timely warning against the tendency of "activity programs" to make all learning, especially reading and number, incidental to the child's "purposeful activity or project." The other chapters in Part ill discuss special methods of teaching reading, number, and language and treat briefly and writing, drawing, music, handwork, etc. There are no chapters devoted to such important phases of the primary curriculum as health and social studies. The book contains much practical material in the form of games and other teaching devices, which should prove helpful to the young teacher although she should be warned against the uncritical acceptance of all the concrete suggestions given--for example, the inartistic handling of the story Little Black Sambo (p. 193). On the whole, however, the book is a valuable addition to the literature of the field.