Review of Social life and personality

Abstract

Reviews the book, Social life and personality by E. S. Bogardus and R. H. Lewis (1938). While this is a book written for high school students, it has many suggestions in it which might well be taken by college instructors. I believe that in technique of teaching, the colleges today lag considerably behind the secondary schools. The use of questions, study outlines, activities, etc., in this book might well be imitated by more "psychological" volumes. The term "personality" in the title is somewhat misleading. The book is concerned in the main with social conditions in modern American life--family, play, education, industry, national relations, religion and art. The connection between these large-scale social situations and the personality of individual workers, while very real to a psychologist, is not necessarily clear to high school students. I do not believe that the authors have done an adequate job of showing the student the relationship between the individual and his group. On the other hand, one must grant that the book is very stimulating and well-written. The treatment of specific topics which often suffer in public school texts is fair and reasonably clear. It is concluded that if more high school students worked with texts like this, college instructors would complain less about the inadequacy of their students' preparation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)