BOOK NOTES AND REVIEWS 93

here, and the author cautions that some of the results are “not strong and not always
stable” (p. 266), the conceptual approach of structuring the environment to facilitate
the exploitation of children’s own preferences and “natural ways” of learning is
fundamental and a major strength of this report.
EXPLOITATION
OF CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS
LANDES,RUTH. Culture in American Education. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1965, 330 p., $7.95.
Although superficially quite removed from Torrance’s area of concern, Landes’
anthropological effort to exploit appreciation and understanding of cultural back-
grounds and folkways of minority ethnic groups in public school education explores
a closely related theme. This work was done during 1959 to 1961 a t Claremont
Graduate School, California, where Dr. Landes conducted an anthropology and
education program for training teachers and some social workers. The experimental
program trained public school educators to understand and employ cultural traits of
minorities, especially Negroes and Mexican-Americans, in California, in many phases
of school work. It trained school personnel to perceive how traditional customs
channel human energies and thus provide a source of motivation when properly ap-
proached. Comparative studies of families in different cultures and in American
minority subcultures, traditional attitudes toward schooling, health, and other prob-
lems, made work with these groups, as well as the dominant ethnic groups in the
communities, richer and more meaningful. Implicit in this approach is an emphasis
on mental gifts and social heritages of human groups rather than on their physical
appearances and test ratings.
ON PERSONALITY
CATTELL
CATTELL,RAYMOND B. The ScientiJic Analysis of Personality. Baltimore, Md. :
Penguin Books, Inc., 1965, 399 p., $1.65 (paper).
This new Pelican Original is a major statement of his position by one of the
leading scientific contributors to the theory and measurement of Personality in the
field of psychology. It is up-to-date and comprehensive and contains a glossary of
terms that is valuable in view of Cattell’s predilection for generating trait names
when he finds no suitable words in conventional language. As a summary of his
current thinking and digest of ideas and results reported in vastly greater detail and
complexity among many books and articles, this is an extremely valuable buy.
S. B. S.
INTHENEXTISSUE.
Thinking and cognitive processes.

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