II. HOW THE LIBRARY IS MEETING THE CHANGING CONDITIONS OF CHILD LIFE
Every month, if the mails are regular, we receive assurance that the public library is an integral part of public education, and the complacence with which we accept this assurance gives ample opportunity to our critics for those slings and arrows with which they are so ready. Ideas and ideals of education are rapidly changing and it behooves the librarian, and more particularly the children's librarian, to see that she keeps pace with the forward movement and that the ridicule of her censors is really undeserved.
The old idea of education was to abolish illiteracy, "to develop the ability, improve the habits, form the character of the individual, so that he might prosper in his life's activities and conform to certain social standards of conduct."
The new idea of education is that of social service, to train children to be not mere recipients, but distributors, not merely to increase their ability to care for themselves, but also their ability to care for others and for the state.
This perhaps sounds a note of the millennium, but we have been told to hitch our wagon to a star and although the star proves a restive steed and often lands us in the ditch, we travel further while the connection holds than we should in a long, continuous journey harnessed to a dependable but slow-going snail.
It may seem a far cry from these comments on education to the topic of my paper: How the library meets the changing conditions of child-life, but in reality it is only a step, for just as in philanthropy the emphasis is placed more and more upon prevention rather than remedy, so in education the task is coming to be the training of the good citizen rather than the correction of the bad citizen. And if the library is, as we are anxious to claim, an integral part of public education, it must have a share, however small, in the preventive policy of modern educators, which will in time effect a change in present social evils. Unless the library, as it meets these constantly changing conditions, can do something to improve them and to make the improvement stable, it has small claim to be included in the educational scheme of things.
In the conditions of child life which Miss Smith has outlined, the breaking up of the home is the most serious handicap which the children have to face. It is on this account that all social agencies working with children endeavor, so far as each is able, to supply an "illusory home" and to give, each in its own capacity, the training in various lines which ought in a normal home to come under the direction of the mother and father.
There is a spreading belief in the value of reading but there is a woeful lack of knowledge as to what should be read, and the children's library therefore fills a double rôle; it provides books which it would be impossible for many of the children to get otherwise, and it selects these books with thoughtful care of the special place each one has to fill, so that it becomes a counselor, not only to the children but to those parents who are anxious to assume their just responsibility in the guidance of their children's reading, and yet feel their inability to breast unaided the yearly torrent of children's books. The stimulation of this feeling of responsibility on the part of parents is one of the most effective means at the library's disposal of striking a blow at the root of the whole matter, for it is on the indifference of the parents that the blame for many juvenile transgressions should rest, which is now piled high upon the shoulders of the children.
In this connection mention should be made of the home library, the most social of all the library's activities. This small case of books, located in a home in the poorer quarters of a city and placed in charge of a paid or volunteer library assistant has been proved to be a potent force in the life of the neighborhood, for the "friendly visitor," if she be of the proper stuff, is not merely a circulator of books, she is an all-round good neighbor to whom come both children and mothers for help in their big and little problems, so that the results have proved to be "better family standards, greater individual intelligence, and more satisfactory neighborhood conditions."
But even granting that the mothers and fathers show a deep concern in what their children read, the connection between books and children is often left of necessity to the children's librarian who is selected with special reference to her adaptability to this particular kind of work. Now, no matter how strong a personality this young woman may possess, no matter how high her literary standards, nor how far-reaching her moral influence, it is obviously impossible for her to come in contact with more than a few of the children in her community. And in order to provide that intimacy with books from which we wish no child to be debarred, she must depend not alone upon her children's room, beautiful and homelike though that may be, but she must place her resources at the disposal of other educational agencies, all of which are working toward a common end. Of these the most powerful is the school, and through the lessons in the use of the public library, through the collections of books placed in the schoolrooms, and most of all through the influence of the teacher, the public library will touch the lives of thousands of children who might otherwise be in ignorance of its resources, and who through this contact will receive a vivid impression of their share as citizens in a great public institution. In this correlation of school and library care must be taken to place an equal emphasis upon the library as a place for recreation as well as a place for study.
Contrary to the teachings of our Puritan forefathers, we are growing more keenly alive to the imperative need of healthful recreation as a means of combating existing social conditions, and our great cities and our little villages are gradually making provision for the gratification of the desire of the people to play. Nowhere does the library find an alliance more satisfactory than with these play-centers, for it is in the union of the physical and mental development that education comes to its fullest fruition and the striving to instill "imagination in recreation" can find no better field than in these places where not only muscles but minds may be exercised.
These are the well-worn channels through which the children's library pours its stream of books into a thirsty land, channels into which run the tributary streams of deposit stations, churches, settlements, telegraph offices, newsboys' homes, and all the rest which it would only weary you to repeat.
We are constantly engaged in deepening and broadening these channels because we believe in the power of books to develop character and to broaden the vision of that "inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." Now the book that does this most effectively is the book behind which lies some personality. We all know the popularity of "the book Teacher says is good." But the problem of the children's librarian is not limited as is the teacher's to two or three dozen children. She must lay her plans to reach hundreds of children and she can do this only by dealing with the children in groups: in other words, in clubs, reading circles, and story-tellings.
The natural group of child life is the boys' gang or the girls' clique which offer unlimited opportunities for good or ill. The tendency of a neglected group is to develop strongly a regard for the interests of the individual group and make it antagonistic, if not actually dangerous, to the larger group of society.
The possibility of touching children's interests, enlarging their horizon, and influencing their ideals through these groups has been utilized in the club work of many libraries. Although all library clubs lead eventually to books, the way may be a circuitous one and baseball, basketry, and dramatics may be met on the way. But aside from the book interest, without which no library club can be considered legitimate, there is the opportunity of guiding the activities of the group by means of debate work or similar interests so that their attention may be directed outside of their immediate environment and made to include the greater possibilities of the larger social group.
Very often in girls' clubs the charitable impulse is strong and may be so led as to instill a very thoughtful sympathy for others.
It is for the things we know best that we have the most sympathy and the truest devotion, and we may expect real patriotism and an active civic conscience only when we have taught the children to know thoroughly their country and the city in which they live. This is some of the most valuable work that is being done by libraries, and it may be well passed on, as has been done in Newark, to become a part of the school curriculum. Indifference to the fatherland is not the best foundation on which to build the superstructure of American patriotism, and the confused and homesick foreigner welcomes with gratitude the books in his own tongue provided by the library, the opportunity to use the library's auditorium for the meetings of his clubs with unpronounceable names, the respect with which his especial predilections and prejudices are considered by the library in his immediate neighborhood, the display of his national flag and the special stories told the children on the fete day of his country. A people without traditions is not a people, and if we expect these strangers to respect our institutions, we must show them an equal courtesy.
This regard shown by the library and other institutions for the national characteristics of the parents reacts upon the children and they grow to understand that though their elders may have been outstripped in the effort to become Americanized they have behind them an historical background which is respected by the very Americans whose customs the children ape so carefully.
The reading circle and the story hour are similar in their purpose for they are both intended to call the attention of the children to special books and to open up the delights of a new world to imaginations often starved in squalor and poverty. Both the reading aloud and the storytelling have their rightful place in the home and are merely grafted on the library in its attempt to supply its share of the "illusory home" for which we are striving.
If the Sunday story-tellings and clubs meet the neighborhood needs more efficiently as Miss Smith has suggested, the library schedule should be so arranged as to accommodate them.
The time of childhood is a time of unbounded curiosities. Everything is new and wonderful and open to investigation, and that library may count itself blessed of the gods which can command the co-operation of a good museum. Given an exhibit case containing a few interesting specimens, a placard bearing a brief description of the specimens, and the titles of a few books on the subject obtainable at the library, and we can all of us picture a rosy dream of budding scientists, nature-lovers, and historians.
This child-like interest is the secret of the popularity of the moving-picture show. Here we see unfolded the processes of nature, the opening of a flower, the life of a bee, we ride in a runaway train and in an aeroplane, and we see enacted the daily human drama of love and hate. Here is an opportunity which many libraries have grasped, and slides are furnished the picture theaters announcing the location of the library and bearing some such legend as this: "Your Free Public Library has arranged with this management to select interesting books and magazine articles upon the historical, literary, and industrial subjects treated in these pictures. It is a bright idea to see something good and then learn more about it." Mr. Percy Mackaye in his recent book on the Civic Theater, comments on this as follows: "A brighter idea—may we not add?—if the founders of the library had recognized the dynamic appeal of a moving-picture house, and endowed it to the higher uses of civic art! Truly, a spectacle, humorous but pathetic: Philanthropy in raiment of marble, humbly beseeching patronage from the tattered Muse of the people!"
So far as the writer knows, but one library has as yet made moving pictures a permanent addition to its activities, although a small town in Washington State has intimated that it would do so, provided the Carnegie Trust Fund would give it money. It is a sign of the times, and one of which note must be taken, for it gives the library a chance to deepen the benefit of such good pictures as there are and to raise the standard of the others.
Unfortunately the interest of many boys and girls is forced prematurely to the subject of how they may aid in the family support. They leave school untrained and unfitted for the life they have to live, and go into shops, factories, department stores, and other service. Whether they leave because of economic pressure or because of a lack of interest in their school work the fact remains that 32 per cent of the children entering school drop out before they reach the sixth grade, and only 8 per cent finish the fourth year of high school. Manual training and vocational guidance are taking a hand in the matter and the part of the library is evident, not only in its supply of books on these topics but in the personal interest of the library assistants and in their suggestions and advice to the young folks who are struggling to find themselves. This is of course but a drop in the bucket but it is an effort in the right direction.
So many of these young people leaving school prematurely are shut up at the crucial age of adolescence in huge factories and stores, creeping home at night too tired to move unnecessarily, or letting the individuality which has been so sternly repressed all day burst forth in excesses and indiscretions. Only a few will come to the library, so to make sure the library must go to them.
One of the most notable examples of this kind of work is in the main plant of Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago. The company furnishes room, heat, light, and librarian's salary and the public library provides the books. This type of library may combine the intimate personal relationships of the small branch, the club, the story hour, and the vocational bureau. It may, as the Sears, Roebuck library has done, publish lists of books covering certain grades of a school course in grammar, rhetoric, history of literature, and study of the classics, and through the personal influence of the librarian it may make these courses really used, for always in work of this kind it is the personal equation that counts.
Some commercial houses have independent libraries of their own, sometimes in connection with their service department, as does the Joseph & Feiss Co. of Cleveland, in which case the direction of the library comes under the charge of a person whose duty it is to use every means to deepen, strengthen, and broaden the capacity of every employe so that he may remain an individual and not become a machine. This is an age of industrialism which has early placed upon the boys and girls the responsibilities of life, and the love of books is one of the most important of the influences which will keep the pendulum from swinging too far upon the side of materialism and purely commercial ambition.
These are some of the ways in which the library is trying to meet the changing conditions of child life in the city through the children's rooms, the homes, the schools, the playgrounds, the factories, and other institutions which have to do with the employment, amusement, or education of children.
From many of these problems the life of the country child is mercifully free, but in place of them there is the isolation of farm life and the idleness on the part of the children so often found in country villages. As more than half of our population is in the country, it is but logical that libraries should long ago have made some attempt to reach a class of readers who, as Mr. Dewey says, "have a larger margin of leisure, fewer distractions, and fewer opportunities to get the best reading. They read more slowly and carefully and get more good from books than their high-pressure city cousins whose crowded lives leave little time for intellectual digestion."
Long before the formation of the Country Life Commission, librarians were sending traveling libraries to farm-houses and rural communities, and library commissions are now scattering broadcast the opportunities for reading which will do so much to "effectualize rural society." When we think of books and the country, we think also of Hagerstown and the book wagon, an institution which in its influence on country life may well be added to the famous trilogy of "rural free delivery, rural telephones, and Butterick patterns." Greater attention is being paid in these days to conditions of country life, both on farms and in villages, and the work of the country librarian is as broad and as interesting as that of her city co-worker.
But whether the work is done in the city or the country, in a crowded tenement district or on a thousand-acre ranch, it has as its foundation the same underlying principle: that of co-operation with all other available agencies to the end that the boys and girls may have a fuller opportunity to become good citizens. We cannot be progressive if we are not plastic, and in the adaptation of our work to the changing conditions of child life lies the secret of the value of the children's library.
The PRESIDENT: We give a sigh of satisfaction and one of regret: satisfaction over the pleasure we have had in listening to these fine, moving chapters; regret that they have been so brief. We are reconciled only by the fact that there are two fine companion volumes still to come. Mr. WILLIS H. KERR, of the Kansas State Normal School, will give us the first one, the subject being: