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The author says in his foreword that he has tried to avoid the error of presenting teachers and students with only an encyclopedic summary of known data. He divides his textbook into fifteen chapters, chiefly in order to have a convenient number of teaching units.
In chapters VII to XV he has been successful. These chapters deal with intelligence testing, individual differences in talent, and the problems arising therefrom. The psychology of the learning process as such follows: the questions of its economy and efficiency and the factors which influence it physically and mentally. The last of these chapters which is devoted to socialization and guidance, contains several excellent quotations; one wishes that the chapter might have been developed to greater length. These nine chapters present in a clear, well-ordered form what a student should know about the material. For teachers of psychology each of these chapters is followed by a section composed of questions and problems. These are divided into groups such as 'discussion', 'new type', and 'multiple choice'. There is also included a list of selected references at the end of each chapter.
Every textbook undergoes necessarily a process of compression which is, so to speak, its constitutional weakness. As mentioned above, the author was fully conscious of this danger; but the first six chapters, nevertheless, show the results of this weakness. They present an abundance of material which would certainly confuse students, and at the same time are an oversimplification, the dangers of which are well known to science and education. These chapters deal with heredity and environment, growth and development,