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?"
In English there has been a great revolution recently. Aside from the
interesting work in oral expression already mentioned teachers are
beginning to realize that training in the power of expression and the
cultivation of taste and appreciation must come from extensive reading
of good books, rather than intensive reading of a few. Supplementary
reading is no longer an "assignment" of a standard work of literature
to be taken as a dose of medicine by the pupil with the comforting
assurance of the teacher that it "will do him good." With the best
English teachers supplementary reading is really an introduction to the
best books in school library and public library, books to be read not
for marks but for pleasure with the hope that it may mean a permanent
interest in good reading, a wise use of the public library and the
building up of home libraries. The supplementary reading list of today
is a list of many different kinds of interesting books, old and new,
which ought to appeal to the average high school boy or girl. There is
ample opportunity for each to find something which he will really like
and he may take his choice.
The skillful English teacher no longer spoils this reading by requiring
an examination as to plot, character development, climax, etc. Instead
of this dreaded written report which was warranted to dull the interest
in the most exciting novel as it haunted the reader all the way through
the book the recitation is occasionally given up to an informal talk
about the books the pupils have read and enjoyed--very much such a book
symposium as we librarians delight in. The enthusiasm of a pupil in his
report on a book will create an immediate demand for it. "I want that
book you talked about in class, it must be a dandy one," the librarian
hears one student say to another as they browse at noon among the books
of fiction. In the more intensive study of the masterpieces of English
literature the best English teachers make the study one of training in
appreciation and not an "exercise in mental gymnastics" or a process of
vivisection. They realize with Burroughs that "if you tear a thing all
into bits you haven't the thing itself any more." They have the pupils
read other works for comparison,--the Alcestis and Medea and compare
them with some of Shakespeare's plays they have been studying. If
reading Lycidas, then Theocritus, Shelley's Adonais, Arnold's Thyrsis
are read and discussed. In studying Burke, orations by Lord Chatham
and Mansfield are read and compared. Students find in this comparative
work a great delight and in this work as well as in the debates which
English teachers encourage some of them surprise us with their powers
of discrimination and their deep thinking. All of this calls for the
use of many kinds of books in school and public library.
My third plea for a school library is in the needs of individual
students for a guidance in their reading which can be better given by
the librarian in the school library than in the busy public library.
The school librarian has the teacher always close at hand and can know
the problems of these teachers in their work with pupils. Through
attendance at the teachers' meeting she can keep in close touch with
the school's methods of work and its ideals. She can unify the library
work which the school is urging upon the pupils as twenty branch
librarians working with groups of these same students cannot do. She
comes to know each of these hundreds or thousands of pupils better even
than some of the teachers in these large schools who have them in their
classes for only six months or a year while she has them in the library
every day for four years and comes in close personal touch with them.
She knows them through their parents, their teachers, and their friends
and can sometimes find the point of contact which certain teachers have
failed to find. We must make the school library do for the pupils what
the little home library used to do for many of us. In these days of
apartment houses and tenements, when families move about so constantly
there is little chance for the home library.
My fourth plea for a library within the high school building is that
it is absolutely necessary as a connecting link between the high
school and public library in our large cities. Wonderful things may
be accomplished by the high school librarian, who believes the most
important work of the school library is preparation for the best use
of the public library and who encourages the use of the public library
through all the four years. She can be an excellent "go between" not
only for pupils who do not use the public library, but between public
library and principals and teachers who have no idea what it can do
for them. She can enlighten them on the functions of this institution
of the people,--show them how much more it is than what they suppose
it to be, "a collection of fiction for those too poor to buy their own
books." She can enlighten teachers as to the necessity for giving the
reference librarian due notice when material is to be needed by classes
on a special topic, and the need for ascertaining whether there really
is any available material before requiring reports from students on
impossible subjects. She can bring about a personal acquaintance of
high school teachers and librarians in public libraries and invite the
library workers in public libraries to conferences with teachers in the
school library.
She can take a census of each entering class at high school and find
how many are not using the public library and why. Such a census shows
usually 30% who have no library cards. Some have their cards taken from
them by parents when they enter high school lest they read so many
books it interferes with their studies. This is a frequent occurrence.
In other cases a heavy fine has made a drain upon the purse of some
poor mother and she has vowed that not one of her children should have
a card in the public library. Many of this 30% have never cared enough
for books to have a card in the public library. The librarian who finds
these conditions early in the term explains to parents by personal
notes and interviews that library cards in the public library will be
an absolute necessity for high school work. Students who have never had
cards are urged to apply for them at once and they are sent to just the
right person in the public library who will take an interest in them,
often a personal note of introduction being given to the pupil to make
that first visit to the public library easy and pleasant.
In addition to the possibilities in high school library work already
mentioned the librarian has opportunities for doing many things not
possible or not done so easily in the public library.
1. Creating the right attitude towards the library reading called for
by the modern high school.
The old time school library was not a pleasant place. She can introduce
public library methods,--an attractive room, plants, pictures, bulletin
board, etc. Let them feel an atmosphere of friendliness from the start
and bring in the spirit of joy rather than stern duty by making the
first visit a delight. An informal "library reception" to each entering
class or to groups of 40 or more as they enter the school until all
have had this meeting with the librarian, makes a good start. Here the
students are shown the beautiful illustrated books, pictures, etc.,
and librarian and pupils talk over the books they have read and liked.
Teacher and librarian call attention to books they may like to read
during free study periods and pupils are made to feel that the library
reading is one of the pleasures of high school life.