Library Work with Children Part 7

Fifth, the libraries are neglected. In no school did I find a well-appointed one, and where there were bookcases they were tucked aside in corner or entry, thick with dust, unused.

The state statistics as to the growth of this movement ignore absolutely the facts I have mentioned. Therefore, I claim that in no true sense are these statistics representative. The movement, however, has interest. It is alive. It is sweeping through the state. It spends thousands of dollars a year. It concerns itself wholly with children. These are its characteristics. There can be no two opinions as to its lack of balance, for the adult is not even considered. There can be no two opinions as to its intellectual and educational values. Buying only "juvenile literature" they are of the smallest. There can be no two opinions as to its morality: the people are taxed, yet only a fraction of the people, only those who have children below the seventh and above the first grades, receive a return.

How far North Carolina was seeking guidance of the North, how far the North was also over-emphasizing, if it was, the children's side in library work, I next wished to determine.

This brought me back to Boston, and to my second and final year of service on the Examining Committee. The chairmanship of the sub-committee on branches gave me opportunity for studying library work as it touched the child and the school in cities.

This I supplemented by a less intensive study of library conditions in towns, in Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, seeking to make my knowledge comprehensive.

The first impression I received was that of the many interpretations put upon library work. These were almost as numerous as were the librarians and custodians. Viewing the work as a whole such divergence in practice seemed an error. There is power in unity; results worth while follow. There is loss in the frittering away of time caused by casual experiment; moreover, it bears heavily on the child. To this you may be inclined to answer that social and moral conditions vary so in each city and town that the individual condition must be faced individually.

Granted, but not to the extent you might wish. To ill.u.s.trate: there is wisdom in allowing a certain station of the Boston system complete liberty of action. But the situation at this station is unique. It could not be duplicated even in Boston. The work is in the hands of a skilled leader, and it forms part of a large private work, financed by a philanthropist noted for leadership in wise experimentation. The library shows breadth in accepting the situation. But it is not wisdom to allow the introduction of the story hour, or, as is the case in a neighboring town, the throwing wide open of the children's room to tots so tiny that picture blocks have to be furnished them to play with--before the educational authorities have p.r.o.nounced such work necessary and just.

I next noticed and with some alarm the feminization of the library corps. And I confess that I see no remedy. The schools are facing the same difficulty, but eventually it will be solved for them in the raising of certain salaries to a man's standard.

This is not likely to happen in library work. Consequently we have this feminization to reckon with, and to me it is an active factor in the diversity of library practice to which I have referred, for women far more than men are p.r.o.ne to indulge individual fads.

A third impression was the lack of fitness of some library workers for their posts. This is particularly unfortunate when it occurs in a children's room. Unless the person in charge possess the requisite qualifications, better far close the room. The fault lies perhaps with the colleges offering library courses. It may well be that the training in these should be more specialized than it is. Take the case of a student intending to pursue a given line of work--say children's departments. Something definite should be offered her, something corresponding in worth to the graduate courses in practice and observation offered students of education in departments of education at universities. This is a practical suggestion; it only requires on the part of colleges and libraries similar agreements to those already existing between universities and schools. A second phase of this question is that of libraries whose employees are not drawn from library schools or colleges, but who reach the several posts by a system of promotion based on efficiency and faithful service. Is there any reason why employees of such a system, specializing in children's work should not serve an apprenticeship in the children's department at central and be required to return to it again and again for further instruction?

As far as I know the heads of these children's departments have no duties of this kind. But would not the value of a library corps be increased tenfold if they had? They seize eagerly the opportunity to go out and instruct the teacher, to go out and instruct the parent. They have cla.s.ses for the schools in the use of the library. But they neglect utterly the training of the library employee who is to serve as a.s.sistant first, as chief later, in the children's room at branch or station. Yet the knowledge acquired by only one day of observation under skillful guidance in the children's department at central would prove invaluable to these women. Broaden the training given employees, and centralize experimentation.

I found no TRUE affiliation with the schools. There was none in North Carolina; there is none here. In countless ways the library and the school are overlapping. Why there should not be a clearer vision as to what is library work and what is school work is incomprehensible to an outsider.

I grew to have a horror of children's rooms--as distinct from children's departments. Intellectually, physically, morally, I believe them harmful. Neither can I see their necessity.

As regards cla.s.sification of books, I received the impression that the broad division into "adult" and "juvenile" is too dogmatic, too arbitrary. Whatever other forms or divisions are necessary, this particular one should be abolished. It lowers the intellectual standing of the library with the community.

The splendid character of library work in tenement districts stood out strongly. It is vigorous, alive, with an ever-broadening opportunity.

More vivid, however, than any other impression, stronger still, was that of the time and thought and care bestowed on the Child.

Everywhere, in city, town and suburban library, the effort to reach the Child is apparent. Special attendants are in readiness to meet him the instant he comes into reading room and station after school hours. Thoughtful women are a.s.signed to overlook and guide his reference work. Entertainment is offered him in the form of blocks to play with, sc.r.a.p-books to look at, story hours to attend. Books specially selected with regard to his supposedly individual needs are placed on the shelves. Picture bulletins are made for his use in the schools. Where he is not segregated he is allowed to monopolize tables and chairs. I find no corresponding effort made to reach the adult, to reach the young mechanic, to draw to the library the parent. I at times wonder whether librarians and custodians are even aware that exaggerated leaning toward one phase of library work must throw out of the true the work as a whole.

Nothing has astonished me more than this new development in library practice--the placing of the child in importance before the adult. The old belief that the library is primarily for adults and only incidentally for children still holds good at the central buildings of large city public library systems. In these we find the children's department only one of many departments--the child always subordinate, the adult dominant--the result of a well balanced, admirable whole, each unit in its proper place, all forces pulling together. I fail to see why the same relative balance should not be maintained throughout the entire system, from branch to station, not always in kind and measure, but approximately.

A second thought to which I cannot adjust myself--is that of the parent as a factor in school and library work. The parent believes in the public school, and he pays heavily in taxes for the education of his children by means of it. The parent believes in the establishment of public libraries and he pays heavily in taxes for their equipment. Both sums raised are sufficiently generous to enable school and library to furnish trained, capable, efficient teachers and librarians. Such being the case does not the parent show intelligence in turning over to the public care the direction of his children's education and reading? Is he not justified in so doing? Why then should he be held ignorant or selfish? Eliminate the parent as a factor in library practice. Give the children quality in books. Strike off 50 per cent., if you only will, of the t.i.tles to be found on the shelves of children's rooms. Subst.i.tute "adult" books, and you will not need to appeal to the parent to guide the child's choice.

That there is similarity of practice in library work, in North Carolina and here, you can hardly deny. Point by point, in so far as the work relates to the child, the problems are mutual. Their solution lies in the getting together of school and library authorities, and the setting aside of the modern thought that library work is primarily educative and primarily for the child.

Let the schools educate the children; and, if you can, let the adult once more dominate in library practice. You will then have a well-balanced whole, free from over-emphasis on the child's side.

LIBRARY WORK WITH CHILDREN

A conception of the meaning and the possibilities of children's work interpreted by means of present day social and industrial conditions is given by Henry E. Legler, librarian of the Chicago Public Library, in a paper on "Library work with children," read at the Pasadena Conference of the A L. A. in 1911. Henry Eduard Legler was born in Palermo, Italy, June 22, 1861. He was educated in Switzerland and the United States. In 1889 he was a member of the Wisconsin a.s.sembly; from 1890 to 1894 secretary of the Milwaukee School Board; from 1904 to 1909 secretary of the Wisconsin Library Commission, and since 1909 has been librarian of the Chicago Public Library. In 1912-1913 Mr. Legler was President of the A. L. A.

Not long since a man of genius took a lump of formless clay, and beneath the cunning of his hand there grew a great symbol of life. He called it Earthbound. An old man is bowed beneath the sorrow of the world. Under the weight of burdens that seemingly they cannot escape, a younger man and his faithful mate stagger with bent forms. Between them is a little child. Instead of a body supple and straight and instinct with freedom and vigor, the child's body yields to the weight of heredity and environment, whose crushing influence press the shoulders down.

In this striking group the artist pictures for us the world-old story of conditions which meet the young lives of one generation, and are transmitted to the next. It is a picture that was true a thousand years ago; it is a picture that is faithful of conditions today. Perhaps its modern guise might be more aptly and perhaps no less strikingly shown, as it recently appeared in the form of a cartoon ill.u.s.trating Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse:

The Cry of the Children

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And THAT cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing towards the west-- But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in long ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost; But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do. Pluck your handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty, Laugh aloud to feel your fingers let them through!

Only in recent years has there grown into fulness a conception of what the duty of society is towards the child. For near two thousand years it was a world of grown-ups for grown-ups.

Children there have been--many millions of them--but they were merely incidental to the scheme of things. Society regarded them not as an a.s.set, except perhaps for purposes of selfish exploitation. If literature reflects contemporary life with fidelity, we may well marvel that for so many hundreds of years the boys and girls of their generation were so little regarded that they are rarely mentioned in song or story. When they are, we are afforded glimpses of a curious att.i.tude of aloofness or of harshness. Nowhere do we meet the artlessness of childhood. In a footnote here, in a marginal gloss there, such references as appear point to torture and cruelty, to distress and tears. In the early legends of the Christians, in the pagan ballads of the olden time, what there is of child life but ill.u.s.trates the brutal selfishness of the elders.

Certainly, no people understood as well as did the Jews that the child is the prophecy of the future, and that a nation is kept alive not by memory but by hope. Childhood to them was "the sign of fulfillment of glorious promises; the burden of psalm and prophecy was of a golden age to come, not of one that was in the dim past." So in the greatest of all books we come frequently upon phrases displaying this att.i.tude:

"There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof."

"They shall remember me in far countries; and they shall live with their children."

And most significant of all: "Suffer the little children to come unto me."

In the centuries intervening, up to a hundred years ago, the men of pen and the men of brush give us a few touches now and then suggestive of childhood. However, they are observers rather than interpreters of childhood and its meaning. In the works of the great master painters, the dominant note is that of maternity, or the motive is devotional purely. Milton's great ode on the Nativity bears no message other than this. In the graphic tale that Chaucer tells about Hugh of Lincoln, race hatred is the underlying sentiment, and the innocence of the unfortunate widow's son appears merely to heighten the evil of his captors and not as typical of boyhood.

Of the goodly company known collectively as the Elizabethan writers, silence as to the element of childhood is profound. In all the comedies and the tragedies of the greatest dramatist of all, children play but minor parts. In none of them save in King John, where historic necessity precludes the absence of the princes in the Tower, they might be wholly omitted without impairment of the structure. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Anne Page's son is briefly introduced, and is there made the vehicle for conversation which in this age might be regarded as gross suggestiveness.

True, that is a rarely tender pa.s.sage in the Winter's Tale wherein Hermione speaks with her beloved boy, and the pathos of Arthur's plea as he asks Hubert to spare his eyes is of course a masterpiece of literature; these, however, the sum total of the great dramatist's significant references to childhood.

In the great works on canvas, save where the Christ-child is depicted, may be noted that same absence of the spirit of childhood. Wealthy and royal patrons, indeed, encouraged great artists to add favorite sons and daughters to the array of portraits in their family galleries. In time, the artists gave to the progeny of the n.o.bility and the aristocracy generally, such creations as to them seemed appropriate to their years. These poses are but the caricature of childhood. Morland, Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds and other artists of their day represented the children of their wealthy patrons in att.i.tudes which savor somewhat of burlesque, though it may have been intended quite seriously to hedge them about with spontaneity.

It has been said that "a child's life finds its chief expression in play, and that in play its social instincts are developed." If this be true, we find in some contemporary canvases of this English school a curious reproduction of the favorite pastimes of children. One is called "bird-nesting," the t.i.tle descriptive of the favorite diversion thus depicted. Another bears the legend "Snow-balling," and with no apparent disapproval save on the part of the little victims, shows a group of larger children ruthlessly snow-balling some smaller ones who have sought shelter in the portico of a church. Some distance down the street the form of an aged woman suggests another victim of youthful playfulness.

A century and a half ago there was born, frail at first but with constant growth, a perception that the great moving forces of life contain elements. .h.i.therto disregarded. Rousseau sounded his thesis, Pestalozzi began to teach, and but a little later on, Froebel expounded his tenets. We need not be concerned as to the controversial disputation of rival schools of pedagogues whose claims for one ignore the merits of the other. A new thought came into being, and both Pestalozzi and Froebel contributed to its diffusion--whether in the form of Pestalozzi's ideal, "I must do good to the child," or Froebel's, "I must do good through the child," or perhaps a measurable merging of the two.

Responsive to the note of life and thought around them, the great authors of prose and verse began to inject the new expression of feeling into what they wrote. Perhaps best reflected, as indeed it proved most potent in molding public opinion, this thought entered into the novels of Charles d.i.c.kens. These, in the development of child life as a social force, not only recorded history; they made history, and the virile pencils of Leech and Phiz and Cruikshank aided what became a movement.

For the first time in literature, with sympathetic insight, there was laid bare the misery of childhood among the lowly and unfortunate, and the pathos of unhappy childhood was pictured with all its tragic consequences to society as a whole. In the story of Poor Joe, the street-crossing sweeper, who was always told to move on, we read the stories of thousands of the boys of to-day. His brief tenantry of Tom-all-Alones shows us the prototype of many thousands of living places in the slums of our own time. Conditions which environ growing boys and girls --not only thousands of men, but many millions--in the congested cities of the Anglo-Saxon world, are well suggested by the names which have been given in derision, or brutally descriptive as the case may be, to such centers of human hiving as the Houses of Blazes and Chicken-foot Alley, in Providence; h.e.l.l's Kitchen in New York; the Bad Lands in Milwaukee; Tin Can Alley, Bubbly Creek and Whiskey Row back of the stockyards in Chicago. In these regions and in others like them darkness and filth hold forth together where the macaroni are drying; broken pipes discharge sewage in the bas.e.m.e.nt living quarters where the bananas are ripening; darkness and filth dwell together in the tenement cellars where the garment-worker sews the b.u.t.tons on for the sweat-shop taskmaster; goats live amiably with human kids in the cob-webbed bas.e.m.e.nts where little hands are twisting stems for flowers; in the unlovely stable lofts where dwell a dozen persons in a place never intended for one; in windowless attics of tall tenements where frail lives grow frailer day by day.

Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one-- Little children who have never learned to play; Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache today, Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twilight slips in, gray.

High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat; They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one.

Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They have never seen a rosebush nor a dewdrop in the sun. They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta,

Of a Black Hand and a Face behind a grating; They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating, Never of a wild rose thicket, nor the singing of a cricket; But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams, And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams

Lisabetta, Marianna, Fiametta, Teresina, They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one; Let them have a long, long playtime, Lord of Toil, when toil is done; Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun.

Reverting to Poor Tom, well may the words of d.i.c.kens in Bleak House serve as a text for to-day: "There is not an atom of Tom's shrine, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, nor an obscurity or degradation about him, nor an ignorance, nor a wickedness, nor a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution, through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and the highest of the high."