No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en,
and unless a book is interesting, it would better never have been conceived. On the positive side the aim should be wholesomeness, vitality, inspiration, humanness, and, most of all, an appeal to the imagination. A child needs not so much books of knowledge of the “how” type, which satisfy craving for facts, as those that set forth the wonders of the world so suggestively as to stimulate his search for the “why.” Those of two generations ago who were steeped in copy-book morality know what an effort it was to displace it with the natural religion of human sympathy. And it is because, in the reading and training of boys, there is danger of neglecting the robust—what we may call the wholesomely perilous—that it is important that every such committee as we have suggested should have the counsel of men. When its list shall have been made, the committee should be subjected to cross-examination, in order that the principles of selection should become fixed not only in the minds of its members, but in those of the entire club. Whatever the result might be upon children, it would be salutary upon parents, arousing them to the importance, and to the qualities, of mental pure food. It is not to be expected that the committee’s recommendations would be impeccable or that they would always be followed. Indeed, the same experiment might be tried with more advantage in a circle of a dozen families of friends related by a similarity of tastes and standards.
Even more in need of supervision is the periodical pabulum. There are two or three American magazines for children the tone and traditions of which are so firmly established and so well known as to place them beyond the need of censorship. Their editors are alive to the exclusion of the objectionable, but are chiefly occupied with the search for valuable and delightful articles. The editorship of a child’s magazine, by reason of its many limitations, is one of the most difficult tasks in the educational world. The bearing of every article, poem, and picture has to be considered in its formative influence upon character. The editor has to think for the child, the parent, and the teacher, and at the same time he must never lose sight of the noble function of delight, which it is his privilege to exercise. We know of one such, to whom, through his rare sympathy with children, these responsibilities have become insight. Joyous himself, he knows how to communicate joy to a world of children.
When it comes to the juvenile page of the newspaper, the need of censorship is acute. Some of the daily journals, which are properly proud of their own ethical standards and of the influence of their editorial columns, have no moral compunction in leaving to a syndicate the preparation of the children’s page or the colored supplements. Otherwise careful and conscientious parents will turn over to their children, without examination, sheets of vulgar, grotesque, badly drawn, and badly colored pictures on unworthy themes, the chief influence of which is to glorify sheer mischief and bad manners. Many protests have been made against these by public associations and in some quarters there has been improvement, but the censorship of thoughtful and mature minds would still find much to condemn.
In what is selected for the children let us make a plea for the best poetry. A world is all before us where to choose, and if the interpretation of masterpieces of verse be not pedagogic, but sympathetic, the resources of pleasure thus available are rich and enduring. The parsing and analysis of Pope’s “Essay on Man” may so spoil one’s taste for that writer as to obscure the sublimity of his “Universal Prayer.” America more than any other country cultivates, and needs to cultivate, the love of poetry. Here we are confronted with materialism as a daily spectacle.
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
We need every stimulus to the imagination, every spur to spirituality, every rhythm of harmony. We need not only music itself but the music that is in poetry. The arts are, so to speak, fighting for their lives, and a brave fight it is. We need them to uplift and crown and glorify democracy, and we shall produce greater poetry as there is a deeper love and appreciation of the great poetry that exists. It is, therefore, no small service to the future of America to instil in our young people a respect and love for poetry. We find these suggestive lines in the autobiography of Charles Darwin:
If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.