To prepare for this half hour of the relatively trivial
instruction of a few children in the higher life, the library
must secure a room and pay for its care, a room which if it be
obtained and used at all could be used for more profitable
purposes; and the performer must study her art and must, if she
is not a conceited duffer, prepare herself for her part for the
day at a very considerable cost of time and energy.
Now, if the teachers do not know the value of story-telling at
proper times and to children of proper years; if they do not
realize the strength of the influence for good that lies in the
speaking voice--though that this influence is relatively
over-rated in these days I am at a proper time prepared to
show--if they do not know about the interest children take in
legends, myths and fairy tales, and their value in strengthening
the social bond, then let the library assistants who do know
about such things hasten to tell them. I am assuming for purposes
of argument that the teachers do not know, and that library
assistants can tell them. I shall not attempt to say how the
library people will approach the teacher with their information
without offending them, except to remark that tactful lines of
approach can be found; and to remark, further, that by setting up
a story-hour in her library a librarian does not very tactfully
convey to the teachers the intimation that they either do not
know their work or willfully neglect it.
With this same labor of preparation, in the room used to talk 30
minutes to a handful of children, the librarian could far better
address a group of teachers on the use of books in libraries and
schoolrooms. Librarians have long contended that teachers are
deficient in bookishness; and it is quite possible that they are.
Their preparation in normal schools compels them to give more
attention to method than to subject matter. They have lacked
incentive and opportunity to become familiar with books, outside
of the prescribed text-books and supplementary readers. They do
not know the literature of and for childhood, and not having
learned to use books in general for delight and utility
themselves they cannot impart the art to their pupils. As I have
said, librarians contend that this is true, yet many of them with
opportunities to instruct teachers in these matters lying unused
before them, neglect them and coolly step in to usurp one of the
school's functions and rebuke the teacher's shortcomings.
This is not all. A library gives of its time, money and energy to
instruct 40 children--and there it ends. If, on the other hand,
it instructs 40 teachers, those 40 carry the instruction to 40
class rooms and impart knowledge of the library, of the use of
books, of the literature for children and--if need be--of the art
of story-telling, to 1,600 or 2,000 children. There seems no
question here as to which of these two forms of educational
activity is for librarians better worth while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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