College and Research Libraries of St. John's College which is based upon some hundred odd "great" books. He persists in treating the books as ends in themselves- "old material," "the past for the sake of the past"-rather than as means as claimed by their users, and he disregards the examina- tion of the books in discussions which are · quite likely to begin with a relevant question based on last night's newspaper. The great books program may be a mistaken 'ffieans to the end in mind; it may be a means not suited to college students. But the repeated charge that it is a burying in the past reveals only a historical knowledge of the books and only a superficial knowledge of the program, and ad- vances the discussion not one whit. The opposition to new currents in Educa- tion for Modern Man does not mean that the book defends the status quo. Mr. Hook's scorn of present education is exceeded only by his scorn of those who are trying to do something about it. He calls for a return to the tenets of prog.ressive theory, which he claims have seldom been widely and wisely applied. Those who associate progressive education with complete freedom in education will be surprised at many elements in this application of the Dewey position. The content of education should be " ... selected materials from the fields of mathe- matics and the natural sciences, social studies, including history, language and literature, philosophy and logic, art an~ music." It should be taught by a controlled critical or scientific method. It should be aimed simul- taneously at vocational and liberal education. The aim is set, the content prescribed, the method rigorous. Freedom of choice and adjustment to individual differences are to occur only within this framework. Mr. Hook in this volume has really adopted a middle ground, and from this stems whatever con- tribution he lias made. Education for Modern M a·n is by turn eloquent and turgid, balanced and intolerant, satisfying and aggravating. It has within it a positive program of modern education. I suspect that it will go down more as a tirade against one school of thought than as a con- tribution to the other.-Lowell Martin. Responsibilities in Higher Educatio~ Proceedings, 1945: Emergent Responsibilities in Higher Education. Institute for Adminis- strative Officers of Higher Institutions. Compiled and edited by John Dale Russell with the assistance of Donald M. Mac- kenzie. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1946. 142p. The twenty-third Institute for Administra- tive Officers of Higher Institutions continues the series of contemporary inquiries into the status of undergraduate instruction begun in 1923. Many of the earlier volumes were devoted to particular academic issues, such 'as the training of college teach.ers or tests and measurements, and. drew their value from the wealth of expert knowledge brought to bear on a specific problem. The present vol- ume follows a pattern begun in 1937 with Current Issues in Higher Education and con- tinued with such titles as New Frontiers in Collegiate Instruction and Higher Education in the Postwar Period. These are admirable subjects all, and quite proper material for an institute, but the very broad scope of the subject inevitably brings with it a thinness of treatment which makes Emergent Responsi- bilities in · Higher Education a .high-sounding title which its eleven papers can hardly be ex- pected to approach. One quickly discovers that the "emergent responsibilities" have been present all of the time, that they are indeed the same ones meant or implied by "Current Issues" and "New Frontiers." The institute appears to have become a tradition; it must be held each year; and a program must be put together. Headlines of the commercial and educational press are scanned, a list of "emergent respon- sibilities" is made, and individuals are drafted to prepare the necessary papers to be given at the institute. So far, so good. All of this is right and proper. Administrators ought to meet once a year to thrash out the new and puzzling ramifications of their old problems. But before publication of that thrashing about is authorized, it should be fairly certain that all of the commotion has produced something more than a classroom presentation of seminar assignments. If the individual papers are good they can find adequate space in the 92 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES regular periodical press, and wider distribu- tion and much better bibliographic access as well. But they should not be published as a group unless they consti~ute a tightly orga- nized contribution to a specific subject of importance which has not been otherwise treated so well. Some of the individual papers in this sym- posia are important . and deserve both better company and better format. One of these is Newton Edwards' 1'Historic Relationships of Colleges and Universities to the Communities and Societies in Which They Have Flour- ished," a cogent and significant statement of the responsibilities of higher educ~tion in all times. Another is J. D. Williams' "Adult Educa- tion Activities in the Liberal Arts College." When the administration and faculty of Mar- shall College became conscious of the basic problem of misunderstanding between labor, management, and the public, it was proposed -to hold a· meeting with representation from the college faculty, labor, and management. Labor was enthusiastic; management was not and proposed that two separate meetings be held, one attended by management and the college officials, the other attended by labor and the college officials. · The results were more than gratifying: "The respect exhibited by the faculty m~mbers for these men when they left was good to see, and the increased respect felt by these guests for the 'long-haired .professors' was just as satisfying." A "Historical Survey of Faculty Participa- tion in University Government in the United States" by George G. Bogert is followed by an ·apparently impromptu debate between Ernest C. Colwell, president of the University of- Chicago, and Ralph E. Himstead, general secretary of the American Association of U ni- versity Professors, on the general topic of faculty participation. The two men are really not so very far apart in their views but are so much on the defensive of their ex officio positions that they offer little that is new or enlightening, to the historical survey pre- viously presented by Profes or Bogert. In addition to these matters, three papers are devoted to the general subject of counsel- ing, particularly of veterans and war workers, two to the improvement of senior college curricula, and one to university extension. All of these, and those discussed above, are the concern of higher education, may indeed be responsibilities of higher education , but to give these, and these only, the title of Emer- gen t Responsibilities in -Higher Education , is to overburden seriously the semantics of the English language and to just as seriously underrate the importance of higher education jn America.-LeRoy C. Merritt. Research in the South Research and Regional Welfare,· Papers Pre- sented at a Conference on Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill May 9-IO-II, 1945. Edited by Robert E. Coker, with a foreword by Louis R. Wilson. ( U niversi,ty of North Carolina Sesquicentennial Publications, Louis R. Wilson, Director) Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1946. xvi, 229P· In celebration of its one hundred and fif- tieth· anniversary, the University of North Carolina embarked upon a series of publica- tions relating to most phases of the univer- sity's work. These seventeen volumes, pub- lished or projected, give greatest emphasis to the various aspects of research activities by the university. Research and Regional Welfare is a collec- tion of papers presented at a conference on JANUARY, 1947 research held at the University of North Carolina in May 1945. The conference pro- gram was arranged and the volume of papers edited by Robert E. Coker, Kenan Professor ·of Zoology at the University of North Caro- lina. Coming as it did , just after V-E day, the conference record bears many evidences of the tensions and emphasis of a war period. The range of subjects discussed was wide, from nutrition to literature, from fish culture to marketing. In general, the topics dis- cussed were suggestive of fields in which r~search would promote the welfare of the Southern regions as defined by Odum. There was no attempt to outline all needed research but rather to call attention to the possible values of research to the South. The im- plications for resources for research in the South, however, are evident. 93