OF ALL human interests that pertain to intellectual improvement—social evolution, scientific achievement, educational progress, governmental advance, or humanitarian endeavor, none has seemed too unimportant for consideration by library workers. Librarians have sought to identify their work with them all, to achieve contact with every individual, with groups of individuals and with communities as a whole. If intelligent method has sometimes seemed lacking, the enthusiasm and the self-denial of the missionary have been given in unstinted measure. To the home and to the mart, to the school and to the playground, to the workshop and to the laboratory, they have brought—whether asked or unsought—the best at their command.

Not out of abundance has the library attempted so much in such diverse places. Its meager resources have been spread over such vast fields that in spots the substance has seemed tenuous and transparent. Most insufficient, and perhaps least successful thus far, but suggesting the most important function of library activity and presaging its most significant development, is that branch of service associated with grammar and secondary schools. Here lies the most fertile field for strong, vigorous, fruitful energizing of such forces as the library possesses.

Curiously enough, a perception of values which inhere in the associated and co-ordinated efforts of school and library has not, as yet, dawned upon school men to any appreciable degree. Here and there, indeed, a vibrant voice has demanded the joining of effort for practical ends, but the teaching folk as a whole remain impervious to possibilities even when sensible of the need. Nearly four centuries ago, Martin Luther noted the possibilities of the library as an educational adjunct and necessity, and urged the founding of public libraries for the preservation and encouragement of learning.[4]

"No cost nor pains," he urged in the concluding pages of his letter to the mayors of Germany, "should be spared to procure good libraries in suitable buildings, especially in the large cities which are able to afford it."

From his day to ours there appears in printed works on education—whether general or dealing with specialized phases—no recurrent note amplifying this suggestion, except a few casual fugitive references in less than a dozen recent publications, and two treatises that recognize the importance of the subject with some fulness of treatment. Perhaps this sweeping characterization of stolid school-room self-sufficiency should be modified by crediting to Horace Mann a vision that scarcely survived his passing. A historian of educational influences informs us that in Mr. Mann's work for teachers two aspects are apparent—one dealing with preparation, the other with method. Through his labors normal schools became a component part of our school system, and institutes were started for the special training of teachers. Furthermore, he made apparent the value of libraries as school adjuncts, and brought about their establishment. And similarly in backwoods Wisconsin, three-quarters of a century ago, Lyman Draper sought to interest the teaching forces there. His report printed in the 50's—now rare and difficult to procure—is a grouping of opinions, prophetic but yet unrealized, expressed by eminent men of the day as foreshadowing a relationship of school and library.

A careful examination of fifty average books on education issued since 1870 yields but scant encouragement to those who seek association of school and library. Six of the fifty writers give at least passing consideration to the subject. Two cyclopedias of education recognize the importance of the subject.[5]

Forty-two books issued between the years mentioned, and about equally divided between the decades represented are wholly barren of such mention. On the other hand, two are notable for vital grasp and broad treatment—G. Stanley Hall's chapters in the second volume of his "Educational Problems," and Hugo MÜsterberg's chapter in "The Americans."

Significant of present-day conditions is the testimony of a teacher, who, addressing a library gathering, said:[6]

"In days gone by we carried on the school without libraries—we could do this as well as not because education meant learning by rote; text-book learning alone.

"This is, to my mind, the most important thing I have to say to you—we do not yet know you and our need for you.

"In our school lives as children, in our normal training and later in our actual teaching we have not had you, and we do not yet realize your resources.

"To get this matter before you definitely, pardon my using my own case as illustration.

"From beginning to end of my common school education—from the first grade through eighth—I never saw a school or a public library. We had none, though I lived in a good-sized city in the Middle West. I learned what the text-book told me; no supplementary reading (or rarely), no pictures, no objects. My training in reading and literature consisted in learning to keep my toes on a crack and my voice from falling on a question mark!

"In high school I had very little but the regular text. Again memory work was the test. I remember well a boy who was my ideal. He learned his geography word for word and so recited it. If he sneezed or a door slammed and his flow of words (I use words advisedly) was interrupted, he had to begin again. He was the show pupil in our class.

"In college our instructors in science performed all the experiments for us while we looked on. When we went to the library we spoke to the librarian through a wire netting, and in our company manners asked for a book.

"In the normal school which I attended there was a so-called children's library, but the books were all text-books, and we were not taught how to help the children to use them. We had literature, but it was all about Hamlet's being or not being mad; none of it was taught in a way to make it a tool for the elementary teacher.

"After all this I began teaching, with no knowledge of the resources of a library as an aid to either teacher or child, and I felt no need for such aid. What is true of me is true of thousands of other teachers.

"You must make us feel our need for you. You must, if you please, intrude yourselves upon our notice. Generations of teachers who have worshipped at the shrine of the text-book can in no other way be reached.

"The ideals of education today are broader, our needs are greater, and you have the material to help us to realize our needs."

In the relatively few instances where co-operation between school and library administration has led to installation of modern library equipment in elementary schools, the difficulties have been experienced which are usual when afterthought supplies what forethought neglects to include. Quarters are ordinarily unsuitable and insufficient. Adequate provision should be made when school buildings are planned, for library quarters that are ample as to size and strategic as to location, instead of depending for space upon a room or enlarged closet not otherwise utilized, for library placement. Perhaps it is too optimistic to hope for a change soon in the inconceivably stupid architecture and design of school buildings, despite a few recent striking examples to the contrary.

As now financed, no public library system can undertake to administer a branch library in every grade school building within its jurisdiction. For school service on such a liberal scale there would be required in the city of New York at least $4,300,000 for equipment and at least $537,000 annually for current maintenance; in Chicago, $2,350,000 for initial equipment and $294,000 annually for maintenance; in other cities, correspondingly large expenditures. However, in most of the major cities of the United States, it is entirely feasible to make a reasonable beginning by introducing some features of the work not now attempted, or tried in such meagre fashion as to be useless and disheartening. As there are in many places traveling school libraries, so there may well be added traveling school librarians. It is imperative that for this service there must be sought a type of teacher-librarian capable by reason of natural ability and education to command the confidence of the teaching corps as a counselor, and of the student body as a friendly element in the school, disassociated from the thought of book use based on compulsion. A teacher-librarian so qualified could exert an important influence in shaping the future of the children.

In his inimitable, whimsical fashion, Bernard Shaw brings out with sympathy and humor something of this spirit of compulsion which schools typify:

"There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor (who, of course, would not be warders and governors if they could write readable books), and are therefore beaten or otherwise tormented if you cannot remember their utterly unmemorable contents. In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and are therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains; and they protect you against violence and outrage from your fellow prisoners. In a school you have none of these advantages. With the world's book-shelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books—the very manna sent down from heaven to feed your souls—you are forced to read a hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot write; a book from which no human being can learn anything; a book which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest of your life. It is a ghastly business, quite beyond words, this schooling."

The late Professor Norton is credited[7] with the statement that a taste for literature is a result of cultivation more often than a gift of nature, and that the years of the elementary school seem to be the time in which the taste takes deepest root. Dr. Scott Nearing[8] points out that the old education presupposed an average child and then prepared a course of study which would fit his needs. The new education, he contends, recognizes the absurdity of averaging unlike quantities, and accepts the ultimate truth that each child is an individual, differing in needs, capacity, outlook, energy, and enthusiasm from every other child. An arithmetic average can be struck, but when it is applied to children it is a hypothetical and not a real quantity. There is not, and never will be, an average child; hence, a school system planned to meet the needs of the average child fits the needs of no child at all.

Rightly directed, library influences in elementary schools would modify the machine-like formula giving to all children alike at the same time the same mental food to eat and the same moral garb to wear. As Dr. Bird T. Baldwin notes in his ingenious statement of the five ages of childhood, school children are inevitably different; even when children are born on the same day, the chances that they will grow physically, mentally and morally at exactly the same rate, and will make exactly the same progress in school, are remote indeed.

A teacher-librarian having special aptitude for the post could render service of inestimable value to teachers as well as to their pupils, in becoming the active medium between public school and public library. By securing the right books from the library for home reading, by providing picture material and reference sources for class room use, by conducting story hours and reading clubs, by giving instruction in the use of the library and the keys that open books, by giving stimulus to the ambitions and capacities of individual pupils, by intimate co-operation with the work of vocational guidance, the librarian would prove her worth. Nor would the least useful function of the school libraries be that of an evening study place for those tens of thousands of children whose home conditions absolutely preclude thought of, or opportunity for, study out of school hours.

It may be contended that these services are provided by branch libraries and their juvenile departments. What are the facts? Early in the present month twenty million boys and girls went more or less willingly to school. Our consolidated library statistics show that considerably less than one million of them use our public libraries. Despite our imposing figures of circulation, we reach but 5 per cent of the juvenile population.

If there are urgent reasons for increased library effort in connection with grade schools, these apply with multiplied force as to high schools. Here, indeed, the deterrent factor of enormous and prohibitive cost would not obtain, because they are fewer in number; and in proportion to total cost of maintenance, the added percentage of cost would be comparatively small. There are in the United States 8,300 high schools with a four-year course, and 3,250 carrying a three-year course. In every one of the 11,500 high schools there should be a well-equipped and well-administered library. Preferably, those that are located in cities where there are strong public libraries should be conducted as branches of the local public library. Such management would assure better administration. School management would imperil in many instances the selection of librarians fitted for the task. Too often, as experience has demonstrated, the governing body would assign to the post derelict teachers unfitted by reason of age or physical handicap, and unfortunate deficiencies in other respects. On the other hand, public library authorities must recognize more tangibly than they do now that high school librarians must possess not only library training in the machinery of routine performance, but also university education, teaching experience, and qualifications of personality and temperament that will place them on a level with other members of the faculty.

In the high schools we find the sifted grain of the elementary schools. It is there that the potential qualities of originality and genius which will later make their impress upon the course of industry and government must be quickened and given direction. More and more it is coming to be realized that to grasp without failure the complexities of modern life native intelligence no longer suffices.

Intelligence must be sharpened by education and given power by experience. The self-made man who achieved success untaught, unlettered, and unaided save by his own efforts of hand and brain, has become a legendary hero. Appreciation of changed conditions may be found in the records of increased attendance in the high schools. That increase has been at a greater rate than that of the population. In 1890 there were but 59 pupils for every ten thousand inhabitants; in 1895 there were 79; in 1900 there were 95; in 1910 there were 100; and now the number is considerably in excess, statistics for 1914 showing 117. Thus, in twenty-five years, the percentage of high school attendance has nearly doubled.

Again we find the school people without perception of the great value which a properly conducted library would bring to a high school. In his recently published book, "The New Education," Dr. Scott Nearing describes an up-to-date high school:

"The modern high school," he says, "is housed in a building which contains, in addition to the regular classrooms, gymnasiums, a swimming tank, physics and chemical laboratories; cooking, sewing, and millinery rooms; woodworking, forge, and machine shops; drawing rooms; a music room; a room devoted to arts and crafts; and an assembly room. This arrangement of rooms presupposes Mr. Gilbert's plan of making the high school, like the community, an aggregation of every sort of people, doing every sort of work."

When some of the foremost leaders in education leave out of a list of desiderata for the high school what the universities have come to regard as the very heart of the institution—the library—is there marvel that the love of literature is being strangled in the schools? Required reading of classics, and the use of literary masterpieces for classroom dissection has taken away the pure joy of reading and made the study of literature a mere literary autopsy. Here is the testimony of a teacher who places herself on the witness stand:[9]

"Sometimes the high school course works as a sort of vaccination to prevent their taking literature seriously.

"Most teachers of English have had at times the experience holding open a volume of Shakespeare with one hand, while with the other they waved some sort of scholastic rod over the head of a rebellious young modern. Though 'classics' are probably swallowed with less forcible feeding than grammar, spelling, and rhetoric, yet even those dilutable bits of literature that have been considered food for the gods of culture are gulped down wry-facedly by some barbarians. By judicious skimming and cramming they may perforce capture the irreducible minimum of scanty and fugitive facts about the masterpieces prescribed for their edification; but at the first safe moment they joyously forget them, and betake themselves to the cheaper theaters, the thrilling dailies, and the popular novelists.

"The truth is that literature teachers are devoted champions of a lost cause. Some of the dead authors appear to be so irrevocably dead that no amount of artificial respiration can put any breath of life into their works so far as the ordinary high school student is concerned.

"It would be enticingly easy to win over students to a course in journalism, modern magazines, and contemporary novels and dramas.

"We cannot expect to overcome all the narrowing and even vulgarizing influences that surround many of our young people; but at least we should improve their judgment enough to make them reject the cheapest, shallowest, and most distorted contemporary writings."

One chapter of Ernest Poole's story of "The Harbor" tells of his school experience. A passage from it is worth quoting:

"What a desert of knowledge it was back there. Our placid tolerance of the profs included the books they gave us. The history prof gave us ten books of collateral reading. Each book, if we could pledge our honor as gentlemen that we had read it, counted us five in examination. On the night before the examination I happened to enter the room of one of our football giants, and found him surrounded by five freshmen, all of whom were reading aloud. One was reading a book on Russia, another the life of Frederick the Great, a third was patiently droning forth Napoleon's war on Europe, while over on the window-seat the other two were racing through volumes one and two of Carlyle's French Revolution. The room was a perfect babel of sound. But the big man sat and smoked his pipe, his honor safe and the morrow secure. In later years, whatever might happen across the sea would find this fellow fully prepared, a wise, intelligent judge of the world, with a college education."

Into the atmosphere of the school must be introduced some element that will bring to the growing boys and girls a love of reading and a genuine desire for absorbing those vital forces of life which literature images. If we believe that the ultimate aim of education is that of the ultimate aim of life, there must be that attention to the individual need which in the end makes for the uplifting of all. To that end the means must be wrought. If the school must deal perforce with groups rather than with units, the methods of the library adapt themselves to the converse plan of individual treatment. If the school narrows the pathway by compulsion, the library gives the joy of freedom unrestricted. Therein lies its potency, and therein does it make appeal not to the few elect, but to the many. And herein lies its greater service.

Wherefore this emphasis upon the school side of library work? Not, of course, at the expense of the service which is furnished to young and old in relief from the drab dullness of life, but parallel with it, must the library labor. For here lies its mission of permanent influences, and at no time has there been greater need.

Suddenly, the seemingly well-fortified pillars of civilization have crumbled. Confused, dismayed, disheartened, society witnesses rapid disintegration of foundations which centuries of patient endeavor have constructed. Science, thought to be the instrument of man's weal, has become the subtle and baleful agent of destruction. The racial hyphen, long looked upon as the symbol of cohesion, has become the sign of separation. The Christian nations of the earth are at each other's throats with a ferocity and malignity unparalleled. Under a flag which shelters ninety millions of individuals whose forebears peopled every land upon the habitable globe, and who seek to merge the best of their racial qualities in a common life that shall typify a new standard of civilization, must be wrought that miracle of human evolution which shall establish concord and good will between members of alien races dwelling together. To effect this it must be demonstrated that "assimilation is a matter of understanding and ideas, and not merely of manners and customs." And so, despite the gloomy murk that now envelops the world, we must realize the need of beginning the reconstruction of our demolished ideals.

This is the day of readjustments. We must begin again, but we must begin at the point of beginning, with the plastic mind of youth. Happily, if not now, generations hence, the world may realize the poet's prophecy, and the hope it holds: