THE LIBRARY'S EDUCATIONAL MISSION
To the great mass of boys and girls the school can barely give the tools with which to get an education before they are forced to begin their life work as breadwinners. Few are optimistic enough to hope that we can change this condition very rapidly. The great problem of the day is, therefore, to carry on the education after the elementary steps have been taken in the free public schools. There are numerous agencies at work in this direction—reading rooms, reference and lending libraries, museums, summer, vacation and night schools, correspondence and other forms of extension teaching; but by far the greatest agent is good reading. An educational system which contents itself with teaching to read and then fails to see that the best reading is provided, when undesirable reading is so cheap and plentiful as to be a constant menace to the public good, is as inconsistent and absurd as to teach our children the expert use of the knife, fork and spoon, and then provide them with no food. The most important movement before the professional educators to-day, is the broadening going on so rapidly in their duties to their profession and to the public. Too many have thought of their work as limited to schools for the young during a short period of tuition. The true conception is that we should be responsible for higher as well as elementary education, for adults as well as for children, for educational work in the homes as well as in the schoolhouses, and during life as well as for a limited course. In a nutshell, the motto of the extended work should be "higher education for adults, at home, during life."
MELVIL DEWEY.