THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY
Miss Hall said in part:
To those of us who are interested in the problem of guiding the reading of boys and girls one of the most important recent developments of the modern library movement is the new life which is coming into the high school libraries throughout the country.
The high school library, although an old institution, is just beginning to "find itself" in the library world of today. It not only has a right to exist but has possibilities for doing important work in the future which will fully justify its existence. It must serve not only as a great laboratory for the work of all departments in the high school but as an important experiment station for all our work with young people of high school age and aid us in the public library's solution of the problem of helping the thousands of boys and girls who leave grammar school and the children's room and go out into the adult room of the large public library with no one to guide them in their explorations among the books, and no one to take the friendly personal interest in them that the teacher and librarian of the children's room always felt. Through the high school library and the public libraries' young people's department of which we dream, we must undertake to "follow up" the work begun in the children's room and build upon the foundations which librarian and teacher have already laid.
What are some of the revelations which have been made to those of us who reluctantly undertook this work some eight or ten years ago? In the first place we are, as our high school debaters would say "firmly convinced" of the need of a large carefully selected collection of books within the high school building where they may be had at a moment's notice for reference and reading. We are convinced that we were wrong when in our first enthusiasm over the public library we decreed that the high school library should be limited to books of reference and "required" reading, and that all books to be read for the pure joy of reading should be given over to the public library.
For four reasons I would plead today for a large, well equipped library in every city high school, a library managed according to modern library methods and in charge of a trained and experienced librarian who shall be the equal of the high school teachers in broad education and thorough professional training. This librarian must be able to win the confidence and friendship of pupils and teachers and to enter sympathetically into the life of the school. This library may be under the control of the Board of Education or a joint undertaking of Board of Education and public library as in Cleveland, Newark, Passaic, Madison, Wis., and Portland, Oregon.
My first reason for this new high school library is found in the aims and ideals of the modern high school. It is no longer content to serve merely as a preparatory school for college. It realizes that for the great majority of pupils it must be a preparation for life. As these four years end their formal school education it must make the most of the time. These four wonderful years of high school age are the time when ideals are being formed, when boys and girls are hero worshippers, and the personal contact with teacher and librarian or the reading of good biography may do marvelous things in moulding character and setting up standards. In aiming for social efficiency the modern high school endeavors to prepare for intelligent citizenship, for interest in and service for the various movements for social betterment.
My second reason for this larger and more efficient library in the high school is the need created by modern methods of teaching. The text book today is only a guide,—with its footnotes and bibliographies it is a vade mecum to the interested student to the best books in school and public library on the subject covered. The efficient teacher today uses books, magazines, daily paper, pictures and lantern slides to supplement the text book. Many of these must be at hand in the school building and so classified and cataloged that they are available at short notice. Unexpected questions arise in class discussions and must be settled before the close of the recitation period by a student being delegated to "look it up" in the school library and report to the class while interest is keen. This could not be done in a library even five minutes' walk from the school. There are odd minutes at the close of a recitation when a book from the school library can be borrowed and enough read to make the student eager to finish it. Pictures are wanted to illustrate some topic and are loaned from one class-room to another for every forty minutes of a school day when the teacher finds they help to awaken interest. The whole method of the recitation has changed. "It becomes," says one, "the social clearing house where experiences and ideas are exchanged and new lines of thought and inquiry are set up." One of the most interesting things in the school library work is the use of books and magazines for the three minute talks pupils have to give in English, French, German and Latin as cultivation in the art of oral expression. They may chose anything that interests them or would interest the class,—some interesting bit of news in the morning's paper, some anecdote about a famous person, an account in the Survey of the Camp-fire girls, etc.
The search for material for these three minute talks makes the school library a busy place at times. Students vie with one another to bring to class the most interesting contribution from history, biography, literature, current events, etc. So interested are the students in this kind of library work that some of them began making a rough index of material in newspapers, magazines and books that would be good for such talks. The use of the library depends not so much upon the subject as upon the teacher,—a teacher of mathematics who is a constant reader will get the students to make a better use of the library than the English teacher who prides herself that she has taught Shakespeare's "As you like it" so thoroughly "inch by inch" that her pupils cannot possibly fail in the final examination. The biology teacher whose one cry a few years ago was the need of cultivating the powers of observation now acknowledges that the books in the school library or public library are needed to make the laboratory and field work of greatest value. Even the instructors in the gymnasium feel that books may help. Interesting books such as Mrs. Richards' "Art of living," Dr. Gulick's "Mind and work," Woods Hutchinson's practical talks on the subject of health, etc., are placed on reserve shelves or tables and read by pupils not as "required" reading but because they find them interesting. Students interested in problems in chemistry or in the work of physics come up to the school library for a free study period to look over the books on the library shelves and to read them on the suggestion of the teacher. School library reading is coming more and more to be the result of suggestion rather than compulsion.
History teachers add to the interest of the recitation by suggesting collateral reading which will appeal to the students,—biography, historical fiction, orations, poetry, and drama are all called into play, attention is called to articles in current periodicals and a wise use of the daily paper is made in order to interest students in history in the making. The history teacher posts on the bulletin board interesting subjects for "special topics," brief oral reports to the class on interesting material outside the text book and students eagerly volunteer to look them up in the library and report to the class. "How did the Romans tell the time of day?" "Describe the daily life of a monk," "Methods of travel in the middle ages," etc. Debates also are an important feature of the history recitation: "Which contributed most to civilization, the Greeks or the Romans?"