Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School Part 5

VALUE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY

1. =The Library of the Past.= Until quite recent times the Sunday-school library was understood to be a collection of books, mainly of an entertaining character, kept in the school, distributed at its sessions, and read by the scholars, for enjoyment rather than for instruction.

Such a library was regarded as an essential of the Sunday school.

However small or however poor the school, it must have a library. Books were scarce, and desirable books were high in price. There were no free public libraries, and few circulating libraries. The library was regarded as the princ.i.p.al attraction of the school, and it drew the scholars. Many children attended two Sunday schools in order to obtain each week two library books. The books were read by all the family; and in many homes the Sunday-school library furnished most of the reading matter. The literature may not have been of the highest grade, but, with all its defects, the Sunday-school library of the past was a useful and valuable inst.i.tution.

2. =Its Decline in the Present.= In recent times, and especially in well-settled and cultured communities, the Sunday-school library has lost much of its importance. Very many schools have closed their libraries; and in the schools continuing their use only a small proportion of the scholars obtain books. Inquiry has shown that in cities and suburban towns a school of two hundred members will include not more than thirty who make use of the library. When the library is closed scarcely any complaints from the scholars are heard; nor is the closing of the library followed by a loss of scholars. Publishing houses which formerly issued fifty new books each year, especially for Sunday-school libraries, have entirely abandoned this branch of business. It cannot be maintained that the Sunday-school library for the entertainment of the scholars now holds a prominent place, or is a factor of success, in the best American Sunday schools.

3. =Causes of Decline.= It is not difficult to find reasons for this present lack of interest in the Sunday-school library. Books are now far more abundant than they were formerly. They are sold cheaply, and are to be found in almost every home. The periodical literature in circulation to-day is apparently a hundredfold greater than it was two generations ago. Every city and almost every town has its public library. Many schools are furnished with free libraries. Readers can scarcely find time for the books and magazines that are open to them. Moreover, the Sunday school now stands in such recognized honor and power that it no longer needs the old-time library as a bait for scholars. The library for mere recreation does not readily fit into the general scheme of education in the modern Sunday school. Then, too, the educational work of the school demands such an outfit of books and periodicals, renewed each year, that the additional expense of the library is a heavy burden.

Sharp criticism is pa.s.sed upon the quality of the books in most Sunday-school libraries, as being almost wholly stories, and stories of a cheap and commonplace character, many of them absolutely injurious.

The conducting of the library is often found to interfere with the order and work of the school. These are among the causes which have led to disuse of the library in many Sunday schools.

4. =The Uses of a Good Library.= Notwithstanding the objections to the Sunday-school library, its neglect by many scholars, and its abolition in many schools, the fact remains that the majority of Sunday schools still retain the library, and claim that it is needed. There are even places where the Sunday-school library holds its own const.i.tuency in compet.i.tion with the town library; and in small villages the Sunday school supplies most of the books in circulation. The princ.i.p.al claims made in behalf of such a library are the following:

(1) _Family Needs._ Every family needs good reading matter. The books that interest the young generally interest the old also. People who would be at a loss to select a book from the shelves of a public library will read the book brought to them from the Sunday-school library. The reading of the library-book fills leisure time on Sunday afternoons and on long winter evenings.

(2) _Moral Influence._ While most Sunday-school books as literature are open to criticism, yet in the realm of ethics they generally present high ideals. The characters depicted in them may not be symmetrical, but on the whole they are earnest and upright. Youth admires heroism; and the personalities portrayed in popular Sunday-school books are generally heroic, even though they may be unduly emotional. The boys who are picked up by the police in railroad centers, armed for fighting Indians or robbing trains, generally carry an a.s.sortment of cheap novels, but they are not from Sunday-school libraries. If the criterion be ethics and not literature, most Sunday-school books will stand the test.

(3) _Aid to the School._ As has been already suggested, the original aim of the library was to attract scholars to the school. In many places this influence is no longer needed; but there still remain communities where scholars are obtained and families are interested by means of the library. And it is an open question whether if the library had advanced step by step with the other departments of the school, if the same attention had been given to the supply and management of the library as has been given to the educational work, if the right books had been kept upon its shelves, and advanced methods had been sought in their distribution, the library of the Sunday school might not still be a vigorous and successful inst.i.tution.

5. =Principles of Selection.= If the governing board of the school decides that a library for general reading by the scholars is desirable, the question at once arises as to what principles shall determine the selection of books. A few of these principles may be stated:

(1) _Variety._ The library should represent more than one department of literature. So general is the taste for stories that the tendency will be inevitable to overload the library with works of fiction. Therefore special care should be given to include in it the lives of great and good men--heroes, statesmen, explorers, leaders of the church, and missionaries. All of these present life on its romantic side, and may be found written in an entertaining manner. Upon the shelves should also be placed history and science--not in many-volumed treatises for scholars, but in popular books for young people. In fact, there are few departments of a good public library which may not properly be included in the library of the Sunday school, especially in places where the school is expected to supply the reading matter for the community.

(2) _Popularity._ Merely to place books on the shelves of a Sunday-school library will not insure the reading of them. This library aims to be emphatically a circulating library. Its books are not for show, but for use; and their place to be seen is not on the shelves of the library-room, but in the homes of the scholars and teachers. It is absolutely essential that no book be placed in the library unless it is sufficiently interesting to be taken out and read, for an unread book is worse than useless in the Sunday-school library. Although its principles be as sound as the Ten Commandments, if it be dull it must be condemned.

Students may be willing to plod through an uninteresting book because it is profitable, but ordinary readers, especially youthful readers, will turn from it. Books should not be purchased because they are good, or because they are cheap; nor, on the other hand, should they be chosen only because they are popular; yet an interesting, popular quality should be an absolute requirement in every book placed upon the library shelves.

(3) _Literary Quality._ Books are influential teachers, and a style like that of Hawthorne or Eliot will unconsciously mold the language of those who read it. On the other hand, the habitual readers of the slang in the comic paragraph of the newspaper will talk in a careless and inelegant manner. Of course, all books should be excluded from the library which deal in low, profane, or immoral language, without regarding the specious plea that such describe life as it is. We do not need to learn the language of the slums to know life; and, as one writer has said, we do not want a realism that can be touched only with a pair of tongs. The best pirate story in the English language is one that is without an oath from cover to cover,[10] and we would not exclude it from the Sunday-school library. Let us seek for writers whose expression is direct, smooth, and cultured. The Sunday school in its literature as well as its teaching should lead upward toward refinement of taste.

(4) _Moral Teaching._ The ethical standard of every book in the Sunday-school library should be of the highest. Not that every paragraph should end with the application like the _Haec fabula docet_ of aesop's fables, or that the characters in a story should be of a "goody-goody"

kind, or that none but good people should appear upon the page. There must be some shadows in the perspective that the light may stand in contrast. But in no case should wrong, or sin, or the doubtful moralities of modern society be made attractive. Moral problem stories, in which the boundary lines of right and wrong conduct are crossed and re-crossed until right seems wrong, and wrong seems right, should have no place. "Should love stories be admitted?" Not if the element of love enters as the dominant thought of the book. A story should not be forbidden because there is a pair of lovers in it; but it should not be accepted if the book shows no higher motive than to set forth their pa.s.sion. Books should be sought that will inculcate a n.o.ble manliness for young men and a n.o.ble womanliness for young women, and there are such books in numbers sufficient to fill the library shelves.

(5) _Christian Spirit._ It is not required that every book should set forth and ill.u.s.trate a spiritual experience. It may be religious without preaching religion. But the morals it inculcates should be founded upon the gospels and inspired by faith. It should be reverent in its treatment of the Bible, of the church, and of the ministry. A book or a story designed to weaken belief in the Scriptures as records of the divine will, or holding the church up to scorn, or showing a minister as its villain, should be kept out of the Sunday-school library. Criticism or discussion of the Bible, of the church, and of the ministry has its place, but its place is not in the Sunday school. The Sunday school is distinctively a religious and a Christian inst.i.tution, and the atmosphere of the Christian religion should pervade its library.

6. =The Coming Sunday-School Library.= Another library of a higher type than that designed for the reading and recreation of the scholars is now arising to notice in many advanced Sunday schools, and is destined to become the Sunday-school library of the future, either supplementing the library of the past or taking its place. It is the library which is to the Sunday school what the college library is to the college, a workshop equipped with tools for the use of the teacher and the scholar. It will be at once a reference library, containing the best Bible dictionaries, cyclopedias, expository works, and gospel harmonies, open at certain times for the use of students; and also a lending library of books upon the Bible, upon the Sunday school, upon teaching, upon religion, upon character, and upon the varied forms of social service which are now calling for workers, and will call yet more imperatively in the coming years. The books for this library must be chosen with wisdom; for they should represent the results of the best scholarship, yet be expressed in language that the nonprofessional reader can understand; and many of them must be for the scholars, who are of all ages and all degrees of intelligence. Those of the Primary Department should be able to find in such a library the stories of the Bible told in such a fascinating manner that a child too young to read them may listen to them with interest, and picture-books ill.u.s.trating the events, the people, the dress, and the landscape of the Bible. It should be planned to meet the needs of every grade in the Sunday school, and to aid every teacher and every scholar; and when established it should be made effective in the educational work of the school. Just as in the secular school and the college students are sent to the library with directions as to the books they will need, so in the Sunday school teachers will be able to counsel their scholars and to give them week-day work, so that the teaching will be more than the talk of the teacher; it will embrace the results of searching on the part of the scholar. Under the system of uniform lessons the use of such a library was well-nigh impracticable, because every cla.s.s would need the same books at one time. But the uniform lessons are being rapidly displaced by the graded system, giving to each grade its own series of lessons; and this method, requiring different books for each age in the school, will open the way for reference work and study in the library. The time is at hand when such a working library will become a necessity in every well-organized school.

7. =The Public Library and the Sunday School.= It would seem that wherever the public library is free, available, and well conducted some arrangement might be effected whereby the Sunday-school libraries could be united with the public library. This would lessen expense and difficulty in management, would avoid the unnecessary reduplication of copies of the same books, and would give to the scholars at once a wider selection and the advantage of the open shelf. In more than one town this has been accomplished. The Sunday schools have transferred all their libraries to the public library, to its enlargement, and with no loss of members to the schools. Some Sunday schools in cities have been recognized as branch stations of the public library, giving them the benefit of frequent changes in the equipment of books, which at regular intervals are selected from the store of the public library by the library committee of the school. The working library for teachers and scholars, proposed in the last paragraph, in many places might be established in the public library, wherever the schools in the community will unite to show that it is needed, to name the books required, and to make it practically useful.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island.

XII

THE MANAGEMENT OF THE LIBRARY

1. =Library Committee.= For the selection of books, whether in the reading library for scholars or the working library for teachers and scholars, a wise, intelligent, and careful committee should be chosen, and should be maintained in permanent service. The pastor and the superintendent should be ex-officio members of this committee, but it should also include some other persons sufficiently acquainted with books to pa.s.s upon their merits, and willing to give time, inquiry, and thought to the library. There may be schools fortunate in possessing librarians who devote themselves to the selection of books, as well as to the care of them; and in such schools the library committees will find their labors lessened. No book should be admitted to the library without examination and approval by the committee.

(1) _Purchase of Books._ The simplest method for finding books is far from being the best method. It is to have a quant.i.ty of books--a hundred or more at one time--sent by booksellers on approval. This method involves hasty examination, and generally results in obtaining many useless, worthless books intermixed with a few good ones. The better plan is for the committee, first of all, to be supplied with catalogues from reputable publishers of books for children and young people, and also books on religious and biblical education; next to read carefully the reviews of books in these departments as given in the best literary and religious periodicals; then, to send only for such books as they judge will be desirable, receiving them on approval. Every book should not only be looked at, but read; and if at all doubtful read by more than one member of the committee. In some Sunday schools there is placed at the door a library box, in which may be deposited the names of books desired by members of the school. Lists of approved books are published by various houses and societies; and the catalogues of a few good Sunday-school libraries will aid committees. The library committee must scrutinize closely all donations of books offered to the library, and resolutely decline every book that is unsuitable, even at the risk of offending the donor. The Sunday-school library room must not be turned into a mausoleum for dead volumes. The committee must also beware of bargains offered by some booksellers who would unload upon Sunday schools their left-over and unsalable stock. That which costs little is generally worth less. The Sunday school must obtain only books that will be read and are worth reading.

(2) _Frequent Additions._ The usual method is to use the old library until its best books are either worn out or lost, and then to make a strenuous effort at raising money for the purchase of an entirely new collection. But the better plan is to add a few carefully selected books each month to the library. To examine at one time two hundred volumes is an impossibility, and in so large a purchase many undesirable books are sure to be included. It is not difficult to select after careful examination ten books each month, and thereby keep the library always at a high grade of excellence. With each purchase a slip describing the new books might be printed, and distributed to the school, thus keeping the library constantly before its patrons.

2. =The Librarian.= There is a close a.n.a.logy between the work of the librarian in the public library and that in the Sunday school. For the public library everywhere a specialist is sought, one who knows books, can select them wisely, and can aid seekers after literature in their reading. The Sunday school needs just such a librarian, and all the more because the scholars cannot select from the open shelf, but must guess at the quality of a book from its t.i.tle in the catalogue. It has been noticed that wherever a Sunday-school library is successful in holding the interest of the scholars there is found with it a librarian adapted to his work and devoting himself to it. We notice the characteristics of a good librarian in the Sunday school:

(1) _A Bookman._ He is a lover of books, acquainted with them, and interested in good literature. His work is more than to distribute books: he should aid, sometimes supervise, their collection.

(2) _A Business Man._ He is practical, orderly, and systematic in his ways of working; with a plan for his task, and fidelity in accomplishing it.

(3) _Gentle in Manner._ Opportunities will be frequent for the librarian to clash with the scholars on the one hand, or with the superintendent upon the other. With one he may appear arbitrary, with the other disorderly, his work sometimes breaking into the program of exercises.

He should be pleasant toward all, uniform in his dealings, and attentive to the general order of the school.

3. =His a.s.sistants.= In most schools one a.s.sistant, in large schools several a.s.sistants, will be required by the librarian. He should nominate them, subject to the approval of the governing board of the school; and should require of them regular and prompt attendance, and attention to their work in the library. It is very desirable that the business should be so arranged as to allow the librarians to take part in the opening devotional service with the school, and not to be at work arranging books while others are at prayer.

4. =The Management of the Library.= This involves four processes: the collection, the a.s.signment, the distribution, and the return of the books.

(1) _The Collection._ The books can easily be collected without interfering with the order of the school, if the library window is near the entrance to the building, and the scholars as they enter leave their books at the library. This is the method employed in most schools.

(2) _The a.s.signment._ How to enable each scholar to choose his book introduces one of the three problems in library management. The plan generally followed is to supply each scholar with a card bearing a number which represents the scholar. He selects from the catalogue a large a.s.sortment of books, and writes their numbers upon his card: the librarian a.s.signs the scholar any one of the books selected, crosses it from his list, and upon another list marks the number of the book opposite the number of the scholar. The weakness of the plan is in the fact that the scholar has no means of learning from the catalogue what books are desirable; and a book desired by one may be entirely undesirable to another. Theoretically the scholar has the whole catalogue from which to choose; practically he has no choice, except the suggestion in the t.i.tles of the books. The open-shelf plan cannot be established in the Sunday school, for the room is usually too small, the time of the session is too brief, and the work of the school too important to allow interruption.

In some graded Sunday schools another plan is pursued, taking from the scholar all choice, but a.s.signing to each grade books of certain numbers, all printed upon the card of the scholar, any one of which books he may receive at any time during his stay in the grade, but each of which will fall to his lot but once. This plan demands a library of books carefully selected, and as carefully fitted to each grade in the school. But this method is apt to be unsatisfactory to the scholars, who have their own preferences among the books. The difficulties in a.s.signing books, and disappointments of scholars in failing to obtain the books desired, is a frequent cause for the disuse of the library; and this problem has not as yet been fully solved.

(3) _The Distribution._ This takes place at the close of the school, and brings in the second problem of library management. The books may be brought to the cla.s.ses by the librarians, and distributed by the teachers; each scholar's book being indicated by his card placed within it. This method often causes confusion; scholars being dissatisfied with their books and leaving their cla.s.ses press around the library.

Sometimes they exchange books with each other. This is a simple plan as far as the two scholars exchanging are concerned, but sure to make trouble in the record of the librarian. Or each cla.s.s may be dismissed in turn, and obtain its books at the library window while pa.s.sing out.

But this plan causes a congestion of scholars at the library, and also requires much time. To manage the distribution of books demands a strong will, coupled with a gentle manner in maintaining the library rules.

(4) _The Return._ The theory of the Sunday-school library is that each scholar will bring his book back after a week or two weeks. But boys and girls--sometimes older scholars also--are apt to be careless. Books are exchanged between scholars, are loaned from one home to another, are forgotten, and are lost. And the books lost most readily are frequently those that are most sought for by the scholars. How to induce scholars invariably to return their books const.i.tutes the third problem of library management. In many schools the percentage of lost books is exceedingly large. The librarian should do his utmost to reduce the loss to a minimum. To this end a few suggestions may be given:

(a) Record of Scholars. Every scholar's name and address, with his library number, should be kept on record in the library; and every effort should be made to make the record conform to all changes in residence.

(b) Record Sheet. The library should contain a record sheet, showing the number of every book issued, and the number of the scholar receiving it; to be canceled when the book is returned. This will show who is responsible for every book out of its place from the library.

(c) Fines. A fine should be a.s.sessed upon the scholar for every book kept over time; and notice sent to the scholar at his home when a fine has become due.

(d) Rewards. Scholars should be paid a reward, perhaps of ten cents for each book, if they can succeed in tracing and finding any book which has been out of the library two months or more. These plans, or others, may lessen, but no plan will entirely remove, the evil of books lost to the library through neglect or a worse crime.

XIII

THE TEACHER'S QUALIFICATIONS AND NEED OF TRAINING

While the superintendent in the school is the moving and guiding intelligence, the pulse of the machine, the teacher in the cla.s.s is the worker at the anvil, or the loom, or the lathe, for whom all the plans are made, and upon whom all the success depends. In the warfare for souls he is on the picket line and at close range, fighting face to face and hand to hand. The sphere of his effort is small, that group gathered around him for an hour on Sunday, but in that little field his is the work that counts for the final victory. His task requires peculiar adaptedness, supplemented by special training.