VALUES IN LIBRARY WORK WITH CHILDREN—II
To elucidate principles of value, I shall use, by way of illustration, the experience and structure of a certain children's department where the problem of children's reading and the means of bringing books to them has been more intensively studied in the last nine years than was possible there before that time. At the time we took our last survey of the department it was found that probably about six out of ten of the children of the city read library books in their homes during the calendar year, and that each child had read about twenty books on the average. Four of the six procured library books from a library center; two of the six procured them from collections, either in their schoolrooms or in homes in their neighborhood. In all, fifty-four thousand children read a million books, which reached them through forty-three librarians assigned for special work with these children, through three hundred teachers and about one hundred volunteers. Now, we know that six out of ten children is not an ideal proportion and that fifty-four thousand may endanger the quality of book influence for each child, but both of these statements indicate conditions to be adjusted so that the experience of each reading child may contribute to the whole and experience with numbers may benefit the individual. To accomplish this end, work with the children was given departmental organization. My concern in this paper is with departmental organization as it benefits the reading child, and with the principles and policies which have been developed through departmental unity.
We think ordinarily that one who loves books has three general hallmarks—his reading is fairly continuous, there is permanency of book interest, and this interest maintained on a plane of merit. These three results always justify the reader and those who have influenced him, and if the consequent book interests of the library child were entirely such, they would prove to all laymen, without argument, that the principles are basic. But in the child's contact with the library there are many evidences of modifications of normal book interests; for, instead of continuity of reading, the children's rooms are overcrowded in winter and have comparatively small book use in summer; instead of permanency of book interests extending over the difficult intermediate period, we know that large numbers of those children who leave school before they reach high school have little or no library contact during their first working years and we sometimes feel that the interesting experiences with reading working children, which librarians are prone to emphasize, give us an impression of a larger number than careful investigation would show. As for quality of reading of the individual working child we cannot maintain that it is always on a high plane.
All these conditions we know to be largely the result of environmental influences. Deprived for twelve hours a day, twelve months in a year, of opportunity for normal youthful activities, the child's entire physical and mental schedule is thrown out of balance and his tendency is to turn to reading, a recreation possible at any time, only when there is no opportunity to follow other avenues of interest. The strain upon the ear and eye, and back and brain, is even greater in the shop than in the school, and in the consequent intense physical fatigue the tendency is toward recreations in which the book may have no place. The power of the nickel library over the child can be broken by the presence of the public library, but no intermediate gets away from the suggestion, by voice and print, of the modern novel, with its present-day social interests. Consequently the whole judgment of the results of library work with children can not rest upon these general tests of normal book interests. Rather such variations from the normal are themselves conditions which influence the structure of the work and especially the principles of book presentation. If children are living in an environment which is not the best one for them, all the forces with which they come in contact should tend to correct the abnormal and give them the things their moral nature craves—freer and fuller thoughts, better and freer living, truth of expression, beauty of feeling. We must recognize that books also must be a force in reconstructing or normalizing the influences of their environment. Children with social needs must have books with social values to meet those needs—right social contacts, true social perspective, traditions of family and race, loveliness of nature, companionship of living things, right group association and group interests.
But while the pedagogical and moral values of books, that is the benefits of right reading for children of normal life, were fully analyzed, the children's department of which I speak had almost no written principle to aid in the enormous task of determining the influence of books on children with social needs. Appreciations of the social relationships and the interdependence of characters in books which have proven themselves moving forces in the lives of children, gained through the testimony of men and women who know their indebtedness to them—such books as "Little women," "Tom Brown," "Heidi," "Otto of the silver hand"—gave a fundamental principle upon which to work. Books should construct a larger social ideal for the reader instead of confirming his present one. Then arose this question: Should we have books with weak social values in the library as a concession to certain children, or by having them do we harm most those very children to whom we have conceded them? The gradual solution of this problem seems to me to be one of the greatest services which a library can render its children. So long as this question is in process of solution we may accept the following as a tentative reply: No books weak in social ideals should be furnished, provided we do not lose reading children by their elimination. If such books are the best a child will read and we take them away, causing loss of library reading interest, we permit him to sink further into his environment. With the last principle as a basis, the evaluation of books was accomplished in the evolution of the department. The cumulative experience of librarians working with children showed that many books which lead only to others of their kind were weak in social viewpoint, and that such books were the ones read largely by those children most occasional and spasmodic in their reading. Here was a determining point in the establishment of standards of reading, for it brought us face to face with the question, Shall we consider this situation our fault since we supply such books to children who need something better vastly more than do others, or shall we merely justify our selection by maintaining that those children will under no circumstances read a higher grade of books? However, it was proven at the same time that other books were read also by children with social limitations, which, although apparently no better on first evaluation, lead to a better type of reading and this gave us a fresh impulse to consider the evaluation of books as a constantly moving process, and prompted the policy of the removal of those types of books which were least influential in developing a good reading taste. This was done, however, with the definite intention that an increasingly better standard of reading must mean that no reading children be sacrificed, an end only possible by a fuller knowledge of the value of the individual book to the individual child.
Now let us see what changes have been evolved in the book collections in the department under consideration in the past seven or eight years.
In the first study of the collection and before any final study of books from the social viewpoint had been reached, the proportion of books of the doubtful class to those which were standard was considered, and it was seen that this proportion should be decreased in order that a child's chances for eventually reading the best might be improved. It was obvious that the reading of the young children should be most carefully safeguarded, and this was the first point of attack. As a result, these two types of books were eliminated:
1. All series for young children, such as the Dotty Dimples and the Little Colonels.
2. Books for young children dealing with animal life which have neither humane nor scientific value, such as the Pierson and Wesselhoeft.
At about the same time stories of child life for young children were restricted to those which were most natural and possible, and stories read by older girls in which adults were made the beneficiaries of a surprisingly wise child hero, such as the Plympton books, were eliminated.
The successful elimination of these books, together with the study of the children's reading as a whole, suggested within the next two or three years that other books could be eliminated or restricted without shock to the readers. On the pedagogical basis, certain types of books for young children were judged; on the social basis, certain types of books for older children, with results as follows:
1. The elimination of word books for little children, and the basing of their reading upon their inherent love for folk lore and verse.
2. The elimination of interpreted folk lore, such as many of the modern kindergarten versions.
3. The elimination of the modern fairy tale, except as it has vitality and individual charm, as have those of George MacDonald.
4. The elimination of travel trivial in treatment and in series form, such as the Little Cousins.
5. The restriction of an old and recognized series to its original number of titles, such as the Pepper series. The disapproval of all new books obviously the first in a series.
6. Lessening the number of titles by authors who are unduly popular, such as restricting the use of Tomlinson to one series only.
7. The elimination of those stories in which the child character is not within a normal sphere; for instance, the child novel, such as Mrs. Jamison's stories.
8. The restriction of the story of the successful poor boy to those within the range of possibility, as are the Otis books, largely.
Without analyzing the weaknesses of all these types, I wish to say a word about the series form for story and classed books. The series must be judged not only by content, but it must be recognized that by the admission of such a form of literature the tendency of the child toward independence of book judgment and book selection is lessened and the way paved for the weakest form of adult literature.
The last policies regarding book selection developed on the same principles within the past three years have been these:
1. The elimination of periodical literature for young children, such as the Children's Magazine and Little Folks, since their reading can be varied more wholesomely without it.
2. The elimination, or use in small numbers, of a type of history and biography which lacks scholarly, or even serious treatment, such as the Pratt histories.
3. Lessening the number of titles of miscellaneous collections of folk lore in which there are objectionable individual tales; as, for instance, buying only the Blue, Red, Green and Yellow fairy books.
4. Recognizing "blind alleys" in children's fiction, such as the boarding school story and the covert love story, and buying no new titles of those types.
Reports of reading sequences from each children's room have furnished the basis for further study of children's reading for the past seven months. These have been discussed and compared by the workers, and are now in shape for a working outline of reading sequences to be made and reported back to each room, to be used, amplified and reported on again in the spring.
While those books which are no longer used may have been at one time necessary to hold a child from reading something poorer, we did not lose children through raising the standard, and the duplication of doubtful books in the children's room is less heavy now than it was a few years ago. Also there are more than twice as many children who are reading, and almost three times as many books being read as there were nine years ago, while the number of children of the city has increased but 72 per cent. Furthermore, the proportion of children of environmental limitations has by no means diminished, and the foreign population is much the same—more than 75 per cent. Of course, the elimination of some books was accomplished because there were better books on these subjects, but the general result was largely brought about because in the establishment of these higher standards we did not exceed the standards of those who were working with the children. The standards which they brought to the work, and which they deduced themselves from their experience, were strengthened through Round Table discussion, where each worker measured her results by those of the others and thereby recognized the need of constant, but careful experimentation. A children's department can not reach standards of reading which in the judgment of the librarians working with the children are beyond the possibility of attainment, for with them rests entirely the delicate task of the adjustment of the book to the child. A staff of children's librarians of good academic education, the best library training, a true vision of the social principles, a broad knowledge of children's literature, is the greatest asset for any library maintaining children's work.
But it is true inversely that in raising the standards of the children the standards of the workers were raised. By this, I mean that there were methods of book presentation in use whereby the worker saw farther and deeper into the mentality of the child and understood his social instincts better. This has been evidenced in the larger duplication of the better books. The methods are those which recognize group interest and group association as a social need of childhood. Through unifying and intensifying the thoughts and sympathies of the children by giving them, when in association with their own playmates, a common experience of living in great and universal thought in the story hour, the mediocre was bridged and both the child and the worker reached a higher plane of experience. By giving children a chance for group expression of something which has fundamental group interest, not only the children recognized that books may be cornerstones for social intercourse and that there is connection between social conduct as expressed in books and social obligation, but, what is also vastly important, the worker learned that when children are at the age of group activity and expression they can often be more permanently influenced through their group relations than as individuals.
Through the recognition of the principle that there are standards of book use with individual children and other standards of book appeal for groups of children, it was shown that the organization of the work as a whole must be such that all avenues of presentation of literature could be fully developed. It was seen that far less than with the individual child could we afford to give a group of children a false experience or impotent interest, and that material for group presentation, methods of group presentation and the social elements which are evinced in groups of children should receive an amount of attention and study which would lead to the surest and soundest results. This could be fully accomplished only by recognizing such methods as distinct functions of the department, to be maintained on sound pedagogical and social bases. In other words, that there should not only be divisions of work with children according to problems of book distribution, such as by schools and home libraries, but there must be of necessity divisions by problems of reading. Whereas, in a smaller department all divisions would center in the head, the volume of work in the library above alluded to rendered necessary the appointment of an instructor in storytelling and a supervisor of reading clubs, which has resulted in a higher specialization and a greater impetus for these phases of work than one person could have accomplished. Here we have an instance of the benefit that a large volume of work may confer upon the individual child.
With the attainment of better reading results and higher standards for the workers, it was obvious that the reading experiences of the children and the standards of the workers must be conserved, that the organization should protect the children, as far as possible, from the shock of change of workers in individual centers. Within the past two years considerable study has been given to this, and yearly written reports on the reading of children in each children's room are made, in which variations of the children's reading in that library from accepted standards, with individual instances, are usually discussed. However, the children's librarian is entirely free to report the subject from whatever angle it has impressed her most. Also a written report is made of the story hour, the program, general and special reading results, and intensity of group interest in certain types of stories. This report is supplementary to a weekly report in a prescribed form of the stories told, sources used and results. All programs used with clubs are reported and a semi-annual report made of the club work as a whole. A yearly tabulation is made of registration from public and parochial schools, giving registration in all libraries, class rooms and home libraries. By discussion and reports back to individual centers, these become bases for a wider vision of work and a wiser direction of energy with less experimentation.
The connection between work with children and the problem of the reading of intermediates, referred to in the beginning, should not be dismissed in a paragraph. However, it is only possible to give a short statement of it. Recognizing that the reading of adult books should begin in the children's room, a serious study of adult books possible for children's reading was made by the children's librarians for two summers, the reports discussed and books added to the department as the result. A second report of adult titles which children and intermediates might and do read was called for recently and from that a tentative list has been furnished both adult and children's workers for further study. The increasing number of workers in the children's department who have had general training, and in the adult work who have had special training for work with children will make such reports of much value. It may be interesting to know that fifteen of the children's librarians have had general training and six adult workers in important positions have had special training for children's work. Four years ago there were only three in children's work who had had general training and none in adult work with the special training. In order to follow the standards of children's work, there is one principle which is obvious, namely, a book disapproved as below grade for juvenile should not be accepted for general intermediate work. This is especially true of books of adventure which a boy of any age between 12 and 18 would read. It has been possible to raise the standard of books for adults in the school libraries above that of the larger libraries. This will furnish eventually another angle for the study of the problem of intermediate reading.
In conclusion, the chief influences in the establishment of right reading for children are an intensive study of the reading of children in relation to its social, moral and pedagogical worth to them, the right basis of education and training for such study on the part of the workers, the direction of such study in a way that brings about a higher and more practical standard on the part of the worker, and the conservation of her experience. These are the great services which the library should render children, and they can be most fully accomplished through departmental organization.
These papers were followed by a discussion, led by Miss Stearns and Mr. Rush, in which advice was given to those selecting children's books to eliminate, in buying new books, those which would be eliminated later, and the suggestion was made that children's librarians should enter the field of writing children's books. Dr. Bostwick of St. Louis then gave a report on