The Psychology of Education. By David Kennedy-Fraser, M.A., B.Sc. New York:  Boni and Liveright, 1924. Pp.  232.

This little book purports to be an introduction to the subject of educational psychology, and it covers a great deal of ground in a very sketchy fashion. The author defines education as “the modification of our reactions to stimuli in the light of previous experience,” and it is with “certain general laws according to which this modification or learning can best be achieved” that he concerns himself. The book does not confine itself, however, to a study of the learning process, but deals first with the nature of our innate capacities and tendencies, devoting the major part of the first section to a discussion of the measurement of intelligence. Here the author follows Terman uncritically, though he adduces a number of illustrations from his own experience. In the very brief discussion of instincts most stress is placed upon imitation as the greatest instinctive factor in the learning process. The two aspects of the learning process, the perceptual aspect and the motor aspect, are considered next and form the bulk of the remainder of the book. Here we have much the same type of material and manner of treatment that used to be found in the “School Managements” and “Theory and Practice Books” of twenty years ago. The author has, however, brought his material up to date, and draws upon Stern, Meumann, Thorndyke, MacDougall, Dewey, and numerous lesser lights for the psychological principles which he endeavors to interpret in terms of educational practice. His discussion is enlivened by a great number of illustrative instances, admonitions, citations of experimental procedures, and didactic applications of the principles under consideration. The concluding section contains a chapter on the thought process, where he rather prefers Dewey to Herbart, one on a psychological basis for school discipline, which summarizes MacDougall's theory of the four levels of moral control, and one on adolescence, which again discusses the distribution of intelligence, and takes a glance at