our special purpose, shall we reach the natural use of handwork in the school. It is not here a matter of training in any special process; it is a question of using the resources of handwork in the service of the school. Reference has thus far been made solely to the relation of handwork to the nature of the child, but there is another side that the school has to consider, viz., its relation to social life. On the side of the pupil, handwork is a medium of expression in terms of form, color, and material; in its relation to social life it is essentially a means of interpreting art and industry. It is the active agent by which the pupil is brought into contact with typical phenomena of these great fields of human activity. The full interpretation of these factors of social life by the school is a task, indeed, that cannot be borne solely by handwork. That, I take it, is to be fully comprehended only thru the gradual readjustment of the curriculum, as a whole, in response to the needs of modern life. The main burden of this task, however, must fall upon actual work with the hands, and this fact should naturally have a bearing upon the selection and organization of material.

In the lower grades, or for that matter in any place in the school, the differentiation of either art or industry cannot be carried very far. Only the fundamental activities that concern the very structure of social life can be studied, and these only in their elements. The essential problem in this direction, I conceive, is to trace the evolution of food, clothing, and shelter from their simplest beginnings to some understanding of their meaning in relation to the civilization of today.

This meaning of handwork is by no means opposed to its use as an expression medium; for it is precisely along these channels of social activity, these large interests of the actual world, that the deep instincts of the child issue, and in which he finds his natural desire for power and capacity. These two relations of handwork are, indeed, but two phases of the same problem. One of them sheds light upon the method of instruction; the other points to the general character of subject-matter.

The problems of practicability and expense are, of course, vastly important ones in regard to this work. All of the above kinds of work entail practical difficulties of one kind or another in the handling of material and in the operation in the regular class-room. And yet the difficulties involved are only material ones- the child stands ready and eager to seize upon these activities and reap incalculable benefit from them when the way is opened. Can we conceive that the way will not be opened and that the practical resourcefulness of the American teacher, when she is convinced of the necessity of these agencies, will not find ways and means to master this problem and bring to bear all these natural resources upon the life of the schoolroom?

The real problem, indeed, at the bottom of this whole question is presented by the grade teacher, for all considerations, economic and

pedagogic, emphasize the necessity that whatever of handwork is done in the primary school must be done by the regular teacher. Even if it were economically possible to consider any other arrangement, it would be pedagogically out of the question. Only the regular teacher can bring the handwork into harmonious relations to the school life and use it as a true medium of expression of the other school work. Herein are at once both the difficulty and the hope of the situation. Difficulty because the grade teacher has commonly had no special training in handwork, and, even when convinced of its value, is apt to regard the whole proposition with diffidence and even dismay. This feeling, I firmly believe, is really a lack of confidence rather than any lack of capacity to deal with the simple processes that are needed. It is because such work has not been a natural element in the experience of teachers, and not because of any inherent difficulty in its requirements. The diffidence at undertaking work of this character will, I feel sure, largely disappear when we do away with our set courses that appear so formidable and seem to need so much of technical training, and take up the work in the spirit of natural use; when we substitute for the idea of teaching handwork the idea of teaching thru handwork. When handwork is taken up in this spirit, it ceases to be a thing apart. It is no longer simply so much more work added to an already crowded curriculum, but a helpmeet and assistance in dealing with the constant problems of the school.

On the other hand, it will be only when the work is approached in this spirit, and the regular teacher comes to use handwork expression in the same way that she now uses speech and writing, that handwork will reach its full possibilities in the primary school, or, for that matter, in any other stage of school work. For the primary school is in a sense the strategic center of the whole manual-training movement. When this work is assimilated in the primary school and there brought into organic relations with the school life, it will not be long before its proper function will be understood by all teachers, and the day will have passed by when manual training is thought of as a little work with tools in a room apart from and divorced from all the other interests of the school.

When this time comes and manual training shall be reaching out to serve all the natural and varied interests of school life, then, and then only, will handwork come into its full educational inheritance, and then, and then only, will it find its full possibilities as one of the most powerful, because one of the most natural, expressions of child life. I believe that this time will come. It will come, of course, but gradually and perhaps slowly; but, as it comes, we shall find ourselves, I believe, coming into a new era for manual training; an era when this work will be brought out from its isolation and made an organic instrument of all school work, understood and respected by all teachers as an essential element in the education of children.

THE SCHOOL AND THE LIBRARY — THE VALUE OF LITERATURE IN EARLY EDUCATION

FREDERICK M. CRUNDEN, LIBRARIAN, PUBLIC LIBRARY, ST. LOUIS, MO.

I have some hesitancy in presenting to a gathering made up of progressive educators a thesis on the value of literature in education and the benefits to be derived from the co-operation of school and library. I feel that I may be regarded by some with the amused compassion that an East Indian or Chinese audience would bestow on a speaker who should come forward with an elaborate argument to prove the value of rice as an article of diet. It was not so, however, twenty-five years ago, when I began to talk on the subject. Most teachers then regarded story-booksany books but text-books- as a distraction—a hindrance to class progress and an interference with school discipline. I fear there are some who still hold the same view; but the number, I am glad to believe, is not large, and is rapidly diminishing. I know how hard pressed teachers are to keep their classes up with the schedule; and if they decline the co-operation of the library, it is because they look upon this as another weight added to their overburdened shoulders. But this is like the mechanic who works away with blunt tools because he hasn't time to sharpen them.

At the present day, to say that the library can be made helpful to the school is to state what seems to us an axiom. But" axiomatic" is, after all, a relative term. What is axiomatic to one person may not be to another of different experience. I remember that it once took me several weeks to impart to a student in geometry a comprehension of and a realizing belief in the axiom, "Two things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other." Now, my experience as pupil and teacher long ago made the value - the necessity-of literature in early education a selfevident proposition. Long before I read the statement in Sully's Psychology, I knew "that the habitual narration of stories, description of places, and so on, is an essential ingredient in the rudimentary stages of education. The child that has been well drilled at home in following stories will, other things being equal, be the better learner at school. The early nurture of the imagination by means of good, wholesome food has much to do with determining the degree of imaginative power, and, through this, of the range of intellectual activity ultimately reached."

In his last novel, That Fortune, Charles Dudley Warner criticises an exclusively text-book training in a dialogue between two young men in college. One had come up thru all the regular grades and had entered college from a first-class fitting school; the other, thruout an unsystematic course of instruction, had enjoyed the run of a good library. The variety and extent of the latter's information is a subject of constant admiration to his better-schooled classmate, who closes the particular conversation

referred to by exclaiming in a tone of vexation: "Well, I might have known something too, if I had not been kept at school all my life."

Yes, we have changed, not all that, but much of it. For a new agency has, within a very few years, extended its influence all over the land. The agency I refer to is the co-operation of the public school and the public library. I believe that a majority of teachers now realize what forty years ago was understood only by the most advanced — that the free and joyous activity of the child which is called forth by literature lightens the task of the teacher and is of incalculable benefit to the pupil. To such a teacher of forty years ago I owe the honor of standing before this distinguished audience. To such a teacher of more than three hundred years ago Queen Elizabeth owed her scholarship and her love of learning. Roger Ascham agreed with his friend Wotton that "school should be a place of play and pleasure, and not of fear and bondage." I know such schools today. Their pupils do not make any less creditable showing in schedule work because they enjoy their hours in school-because they at times go, by the teacher's invitation, to visit fairy land, and are allowed to wander at will in the flowery fields of literature.

It is early in the evening, and I don't see anybody sleeping; but I am going to adopt the plan of the preacher who, along about "ninthly," perceived a number of his congregation quietly slumbering in their pews. Choosing a passage from Scripture containing a repetition of the word "fire," he shouted out that word so loudly that all the sleepers awoke, and one or two started for the door. I am going to shock some of you by a strong statement relating to the power of literature to expand the mind and to develop mental muscle. I took it from the lips of a prominent educator a teacher whom many of you know personally, and probably nearly all know by reputation. Speaking of the relative value of literature and arithmetic, that bête noir of the American school (in wrestling with which, you remember, President Eliot says we waste so much time), my friend gave his views in about the following words: He said he would take a boy of fourteen, of average intellect, whose mind had been developed from earliest childhood by reading the best books, but who had never opened an arithmetic or had an hour's set instruction — who, in short, knew nothing of numbers except what he would inevitably pick up — he “would take such a boy and would guarantee to teach him in six weeks all the arithmetic he need ever know, and as much as he would learn in six years of school instruction."

If you think this too strong, remember that the words are not those of a librarian, but of a teacher. If you all admit that it is largely true, it would seem unnecessary to say more. But there is no blinking the fact that there still are teachers who stick to the "three R's" and the schedule with the same unswerving loyalty that the Honorable Bardwell Slote showed for "the old flag and an appropriation." To these, and to others

who are half-persuaded, I direct my argument, hoping that, thru publication, my remarks may reach a larger audience and one more in need of enlightenment than are teachers who show by their attendance at this convention that they are among the progressive forces of education.

As "an ounce of Vinland is better than a pound of cosmography," let me tell, briefly, what has been done in St. Louis in this line of work, premising, first, that we have had a free library only the last seven years, and that we have been greatly hampered by lack of funds, so that our plans were hardly in fair operation till this last season.

We have now two hundred and sixty-nine sets of books for circulation in the schools. Each set consists of thirty copies of a book carefully chosen for a certain grade. It is better to send thirty copies of the same book than thirty different books, for two reasons: first, because it enables the teacher to have class exercises; second, because the interest of each pupil is greatly intensified when all his classmates are reading the same book. It gives them all a common subject of conversation, an edifying topic to supplant the vulgarities of boys and the inanities of girls. And this is one of the incidental benefits of literature in the school, which is of no small importance.

more.

These sets of thirty are sent to schools on request of their respective principals, to be kept two weeks, with privilege of renewal for two weeks At first we sent the boxes on a regular round thru the schools, but changed the plan when we found that in some schools the books were never unpacked. The books may be used in any way the teacher prefers either in school or at home. We began with the youngest children, supplying to the first grade Caldecott Picture Books, illustrated Mother Goose rhymes, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Bean Stalk, etc. These were followed by Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories, Hiawatha Primer, McMurry's Classic Stories, and similar books, going gradually upward thru these stages: first, nursery rhyme and picture-book (which could be, and by at least one principal were, used in the kindergarten); second, the fairy tale; third, the myth; fourth, the medieval legend; and so on to biography, history, and drama, culminating in Shakespeare's plays for the eighth grade, with striking biographical and historical episodes and nature studies and stories inserted all along the line where they were likely to be understood and enjoyed. I wish to emphasize "enjoyed." That should be kept in view as the immediate object of this reading. Let it be ignored, and the ultimate end is made more difficult, if not impossible, of attainment. There was a very natural preference on the part of many of our teachers for "collateral" reading, that is, reading that has a direct bearing on school studies. There was a disproportionate call for such books as Coe's Modern Europe and Carpenter's Asia. To meet this call fully would, I fear, cut out many books of sheer delight-such books as will inculcate a love of the best reading and lead to the gathering of vastly