It seems to me that what we call the education of our schools is a very imperfect instrument for the work it is supposed to do. What do we say first to that fifty per cent of the population who drop out of grammar schools with only the most elementary and inadequate knowledge of the three R's? What has the school given them with which to fight the battles of democracy? It is not only the spur of necessity which drives youth to labor so early. That is undoubtedly one cause. There are also the profound weariness and distaste which come of forever seeking from the text-book page, from the teacher's voice, and from the gradgrind drill for something to awaken the mind where the mind has no interest. Germany has been the first to see this failure of the common school to equip the majority; the killing effect of one sort of training for every type of mind. Witness the system of continuation schools for those who find themselves after beginning the bread and butter work of life. Witness the compulsion of the employer to devote part of the apprentice time to special instruction in the chosen craft. Even the unused moments of garrison life in the army are not wasted. Everywhere the progress of Germany is prolonging the school day in the discovery of aptitude, and in the cultivation of it after it has been discovered. In our English-speaking world we are trying to find the same thing in our trade schools, in our manual training, in our vocational education, in the many things which we perhaps hastily call fads in education. They all indicate a reaching after something which is not now attained; a search for an awakening influence on minds that are now dormant; for something to light the inward eye. In all there is the implication of a need which has not been met. These things are the evidence that the diet of public education is not varied enough to nourish all the children of the commonwealth, to awaken the dormant power for SOME THING that lies somewhere in most of humanity.
"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed."
Public education has given long and careful thought to those who remain in school. It is just becoming conscious of the great majority who do not remain—the great majority whom necessity, choice, or lack of adaptation of the school to the child drive yearly into the rough school of life. At present the best that schools do for these is to provide each child with the means of self education—the ability to read. But we are to remember that this is only one of the instruments of education; it is not education itself. It is no discovery, and it needs little observation to point out, that with this instrument of reading, the newspaper, the magazine and the book are the potent educators of our day. They are, or should be, the bulwark of democracy. I am not concerned to discuss this further than to show that what we have vaguely depended solely upon our schools to do, is not done by them, and never has been done by them. For the great mass, our schools give each child the one open sesame—reading. There they leave him to open what doors he can and will.
Before I suffer as a heretic, let me quote a really thoughtful man, Thomas Carlyle, called by a breezy miss in our last civil service examination "the great English apostle of hope." You remember that, in speaking of the origin of universities, Carlyle in his Heroes said, "If we think of it, all that a university or final highest school can do for us is still but what the first school began doing—teach us to read. The place where we are to get knowledge is the books themselves. It depends on what we read after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection of books." Possibly there is a little something "proverbial" about this, and perhaps it should be mixed with a trifle of Mark Hopkins on the end of a log. But a collection of books, be it large or small, is a library. That definition still holds, though we may have to include "skittles and beer" after awhile. It is quite clear that this aspect of a library as a distinct and active factor in education has only of late impressed itself upon the public mind. It marks the library as a vitalized public utility, from which we are to expect more than has yet been received. Even the best of schools has its limitations because of the inflexibility of its courses of study, and it may fail, often does fail, to touch with any spark of living fire. But the library may provide something for every type of mind. The library cannot create mind or the will and disposition to use it, any more than the school can. But where the desire to feed any mental craving exists, it would be a very poor library indeed that cannot satisfy it in some degree. This power of the right book to supplement the school, or even to take the place of it, is not yet comprehended in any fullness in our public education. But it is just in this power of the book that a library has one of its best reasons for being, and it is for this reason that, when the library comes into its own, it will be a most important factor in education. Let us see to it that one door is kept open for those who discover themselves after school days are gone. There are thousands who fail to grasp their opportunities in the way and at the time that schools prescribe that they should. Some of these find themselves by living, by working, by accident it may be, or by any of the infinite ways in which humanity adjusts itself to its surroundings. For them the library is a path into fields of learning, into avenues of power that make all things possible. Here is the college of our self-educated man. There is no mystery about it. It is the natural result of following the inward light. We know that the better part of education is what we give ourselves.
One should not use a single instance to prove a principle. It is not merely bad logic; it is not logic. Yet the fact that everyone who deals either with people or with books knows many such cases shows that the experience is universal. One day not long ago, as I sat alone in the office, a lad came in. "Mister, do you buy the books here?" I admitted complicity. "Will you buy one that I want?" I asked what it was. "Chickens." To cut the story short, I asked him to sit down and we talked about chickens, for I am something of a farmer. I found that he had read everything in the library on poultry and was hungry for more. He knew the hen intimately. He had mastered the genealogy, the sociology, the psychology, and the "Why" of hens. Furthermore, while he was doing time in school, he was also carrying on a successful chicken business on a city lot, from which business he had wrung two thousand hard dollars, which he had safely in the bank. He had already marked down a little farm near the city which would be his as soon as he had "completed his education" in the grammar school, and then he would make the feathers fly. I am glad to say he got his book, and I added another lesson to the many my boys have taught me.
What is our concern with this lad? He is a type of what I have in mind. I do not value him for his ability to make money. Men make money who aren't worth a cent. I measure him by his value as a producer, by his value to humanity as an example, and by his value to a library as a walking delegate for free and unrestricted choice in books. He is an educated man, joyfully occupied in something which engages every faculty of his mind, which he loves, understands, and has mastered for himself. Your country and mine will be the better the more they can grow of that sort of man. He has made good; he has arrived. And to arrive somewhere, under your own steam, is a great thing in life. You might not get the answer you were looking for, but you could not get a foolish answer, if you asked him of Chanticleer.
Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat for a moment. Schools must be systematized. They must follow a course of study. Unhappily, what is called economy dictates that the young must be herded together in droves, graded by their ability to do one or two things into groups of presumptively equal power, equal ability to comprehend and to labor, and of similar tastes. It is the best that modern education has been able to do in the schools. Yet every one of these presumptions of equality is false. In spite of the Declaration of Independence, no two people on earth are equal except in their right to live, move and have their being. But on this educational bed of Procrustes each soul of our Anglo-Saxon race lays him down to pleasant dreams. Alas for him whose mental legs are too long, or too short, to fit the couch! Dreams? For some they are nightmares! Just because of this narrowness of public education, because of its inability to touch all types of mind, we have that endless procession, out and ever out, from our schools.
It is not my wish to take a hopeless view of education. There is no reason for taking such a view. I wish merely to emphasize a fact which has always been true, but a fact of which we are just becoming conscious. The problem of education in the days that are coming is to adjust our machinery so that these lost products shall be lessened. In this readjustment the library will have its place as a recognized and systematic factor in "the greatest business of the state."
The open door through the library and the book has a pleasant sound. Yet probably the most surprising fact in actual experience is the helplessness of even intelligent people in using books. The address of Prof. Chamberlain, delivered before this association a year ago, did not overstate the case of the schools. But schools are beginning to meet the issue, and in time they will remedy the conditions for those who are fortunate enough to remain in schools. But always for us will remain that contingent who drop out of school, in days before the school can reach them with this gospel of the book. The school has lost them, and, if ever they find the open door through the book, it will be by chance, or because the library itself opens the door. It rests with us to proclaim our mission to them. Of course every good library has always taught those insistent ones who knocked at its doors. But the library has been a passive agent of this education, not an active one. A public library, in my judgment, should be equipped with the necessary apparatus to conduct this work systematically, to propagate its own use, to spread the gospel of the open door among the people whom it serves. If this seems a violent innovation, I beg you to consider it from the schoolmaster's point of view, as well as from the librarian's. Here is a great body of people in every community whom other agencies have taught to read, who depend upon reading to return service to the state and to promote their own welfare. On the other side, the library, with the admitted duty of furthering education through the book. Does it not rest with the library to teach persistently, systematically, and by every practicable means, how and where to find what to read? The means of doing this is another matter, but for the expediency of it, and the need of it, examine in any considerable community, the roster of the great correspondence schools, and reflect how many people are groping their way out of darkness toward the light. What people pay for, as they do for this instruction, they want; and what these learners get for their money, they should have for nothing in any public library. When we teach how and where to find what to read, the open door through the library and the book will have some meaning for every man, woman and child who can simply read. All the artificial barriers that stand between the reader and his book will go; the barrier in the book itself will largely be removed, and the library will reach through intelligent choice many of those who are counted down and out by the schools: the thoughtful man who has come to realize the possibilities of his work: the one who has waited long to find his aptitude; the timid; the hesitant; the shy and distrustful; the misunderstood; those who see the "dawn of a tomorrow." The procession is endless, and each has his human need, which runs the gamut from utility to the highest joys of life. We talk so much about the struggle for existence that we forget that the best thing in life is just to live. Not all reading is for material profit; some of it is for happiness, and that happiness is purest and most complete which we find for ourselves. It is the discovery of one's own light that brings the abiding joy. What man or woman cannot look back to the inspiration of some finding of his own for which he owes no one but his Creator? These are the finest moments of life.