How to Educate Human Beings by Edward A. Fitzpatrick

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS fl88 in particular because she intercedes and obtains for each all the graces he receives. Again, this mediation must be understood in the sense of subordi- . nation to Christ. While her mediation is not necessary, since Christ's is superabundant and needs no complement, nevertheless, it has been willed by God because of our weakness and because God wished to honor her by allowing her the exercise of causality in the order of sanctification and salvation. She mediates between Christ and men, presenting to Him their prayers and obtaining from Him the benefits they need. Her mediation, which she exercised even while on earth, continues in heaven. She knows our needs, both spiritual and temporal, and through her prayers she asks that her merits, her satisfactions and her Son's, be applied to us at the appropriate moment. · Since Father Garrigou-Lagrange's aim is to arouse his readers to devotion to the Blessed Mother, he gives short meditations on the principal events in Mary's life, and explains briefly Mary's Rosary. Throughout this second part, which shows Mary's ooncern for our salvation and which should excite in our hearts love and reverence for her, he liberally sprinkles excerpts from spiritual authorities, particularly St. Grignon de Montfort. Father Garrigou-Lagrange is motivated by love of Mary and of souls. He sings her praises extraordinarily well, and his song cannot help hut arouse in the hearts of his audien~e a lasting affection for Mary, his Mother and ours. To the errata the following may .also be added: the citation on page 48, which reads Ia Hae, q. 24, art. 3, ad 2, should read Ia llae, q. 113, art. 9, ad 2. Dominican House of Phuosophy, Somf!ll"set, Ohio. JAMES R. MALONEY, 0. P. How to Educate Human Beings. By EnwARD A. FITZPATRICK. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1950. Pp. 174, with index. $2.75. We have been learning of late how true is the observation made by a nineteenth century wit that education is the most boring of subjects, one which has no beginning, middle, nor end. Since the war it has become a popular topic of public discussion but to the layman it is still too often veiled in obscurities. The fault here is largely that of the educators themselves , who, as a vested interest, sometimes feel they must throw their profe~sional weight around by speaking in high-imunding and esoteric terms. Talk of motivation, correlation, and norms, topped off by a few statistical tables or graphs, is apt to have a soporific effect on the most eager listener. The author of How to Educate Human Beings is not guilty of this familiar fault of the pedagogues. Although he has been a public school· teacher, dean of a graduate school, and is now president of Mount Mary 284 BOOK REVIEWS College in Milwaukee, he is refreshingly free of the jargon of the specialist. He writes of education not as a mechanical or institutional problem but as a human problem. He leaves the undoubtedly important subjects of better physical plants and equipment and higher teachers' salaries to others; he is concerned here with human values and the attempt to .define a philosophy of education and life which should underlie all teaching activity. The assumption behind this book being that man's distinctive quality is his humanity, its purpose is to present a program of liberal education that will nourish this essential humanity rather than simply train man to be a competent mechanism. The vital contribution of Dr. Fitzpatrick's book is this emphasis on man, man as individual, his insistence that educational machinery and organization shall always be used " as a means, not an end, in the service of the humane education of individual human beings." He sees that if we over-emphasize " society " and the social we are apt to lose the individual in the process and end with a sort of totalitarian education. He would probably agree with the remark of the late Albert Jay Nock that "the only thing the psychicallyhuman being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit." That is the task of lib.era! education...