for them and at the same time allow them to remain in the home, sharers in its influences and benefits. In the day schools, as in the case of deaf children, they may mingle to a certain extent on the streets and at their play, with normal children, with whom they thus remain in touch and sympathy. They may, by degrees, enter the classes with children who see, and while always at some disadvantage, may, in most cases, maintain with credit their positions in the class. Blind children seem to appeal more readily to the kindliness and understanding of their normal fellows, and to find it less difficult to meet and mingle with them; so the problem of the blind is in some respects more simple than of the deaf.

For most classes of children of deficient mentality, the public school offers no suitable place. A considerable majority of them belong to those classes for whom perpetual care, or at least lifelong guidance, is essential.

There is, however, a section of them, made up of two classes, for whom the public school can be of real benefit. One of these classes is made up of children whose minds are normal but who for various reasons-infantile illness or injury, neglect, unwholesome surroundings, bad food-are backward, undeveloped. These children, put in separate classes, in charge of skilled and sympathetic teachers, and taught by methods tending to awaken and stimulate their dormant powers, will in most cases, assume a normal condition and a normal capacity, and be fitted for transfer to regular classes.

The second class is composed of children not feeble-minded, not lacking in what might be called good sense and the power of self-direction, but with some of the intellectual facets clouded or lacking so that they cannot quite see, or understand, or do things, as normal children do. Kept in the regular classes these boys and girls fall behind, become discouraged, often troublesome and perverse. Segregated from the mass, into classes not too large, with teachers sympathetic and skilful, the whole attitude of the child will frequently change. In a schoolroom, where he may have facilities and freedom the regular classroom cannot give, the boy becomes an interested and successful worker; and, more important, an attitude of good will toward the school and toward the classmates and teacher is likely to be re-established. This attitude toward the school is likely to go with the boy and become his attitude toward the society of which he later becomes a part. Lacking this opportunity and this teaching fitted to their needs, such children have too often gone out from the school too early, unfitted for the work of life, unhappy, discouraged, antagonistic, desperate. We should save these children from themselves; we should save the state from the harm they may do, if their hearts are wrong.

I have touched only a few classes of atypical children for whom the public schools may profitably care. These have been taken by way of illustration, to point the moral and adorn the tale. But I have been asked by those who are doing this special work and who have a vision of its possibilities, to bring to you, the members of the National Educational Association, a message. And if I understand the message it is this:

The public schools should stand anxious to increase the scope of their usefulness, and become so far as they may, to all the children of the state, the door of opportunity, as they now are to all the normal children of the state. That we should so order our system of public education that we may care not only for the normal, but for the great majority of those who depart from the normal type, either through lack of some bodily power or sense, such as sight or hearing, or through some intellectual lack, where that lack is not such as to render them incapable of leading self-directed lives. That our search in this direction should not ease until we have brought within the magic circle of our people's schools all the classes of defective or atypical children, except those unfitted by their misfortune to lead self-controlled, self-directed and selfsupporting lives; and have made it possible, in these schools, for them to receive the special care and special educational facilities which they require, while at the same time remaining in their homes, in the care of father and mother in the companionship of brothers and sisters, approaching more and more nearly, as their educational years pass by, to the normal type of the society in which they must take their places, tending less and less to become members of a class apart, unseeking and unsought by their normal fellow men.

THE SCHOOL AND THE LIBRARY

J. W. OLSEN, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, ST. PAUL,

MINN.

To be a true teacher, he who would instruct must have the power of seeing education in all its varied, finished entirety. The part must never appear to him greater than the whole. He must ever have before him a definite ideal of the manhood and womanhood into which he would have boyhood and girlhood develop, and must levy upon every means of help within the range of his personal experience, supplemented by the best from universal pedagogics. His endeavor must be to train girls and boys to bear "without abuse" the names of gentlemen and gentlewomen, to wear the names men and women worthily as befits the sons and daughters of God. He must recognize the value of that education which is the outgrowth of communion with natureappreciation of the charms of sea and sky and land; of that which comes from sympathy with one's fellow-men, from keen competition with active rivals; of that which comes from actual contact with things in workshop or laboratory, from plowing straight furrows-from the solving of life's problems not found in books. Since there is a whole realm of nature and beauty and art around us, he must spur to individual observation, to individual reasoning, to individual reflection. And out of the fulness of his own mental life, the duty is peculiarly his, not to pour book knowledge, as into a sieve or a tank, but to create by well-timed relation, to foster by wise suggestion, the love for the best in literature, the ability to seek and find the best. "Observation and meditation are more valuable than mere absorption," yet Carlyle is right (when

fully understood) in saying, “The true university of these days is a collection of books. All education is to teach how to read." A chest of tools and its bestowal upon a man who has neither knowledge of their use nor interest in their possibilities will not make a carpenter.

Some thirty years ago a poor, fatherless boy of fourteen, come upon by a townsman reading a novel of the yellow-back, yellow-page variety, was told rather brusquely that he was putting his time and brains to poor uses, and was asked why he did not read the good books of the circulating library of the place. On his reluctant admission that he could not afford to pay the annual fee of three dollars, his interlocutor offered to pay it for him on condition that the boy's first reading should be four books that he would name. The lad happily agreed, and tho he never afterwards was able to attend school, he is today a useful, educated man, conversant with the best in English literature, a ready writer, an eloquent public speaker of national reputation; and his success in life he attributes to this timely interest in his boyhood life, by which his attention was directed toward and his admission secured in Carlyle's "university." And if this one man's future could be so molded by the chance kindness of a friendly layman, what may not be accomplished by the concentrated, well-directed effort of those whose chosen profession is the education of the race?

Time was when the public school was concerned chiefly with the mechanics of reading; today the teacher may pass from the irksomeness of the how to the enjoyment of the what. The work of the school should project itself into that of the library. Hitherto school and public library have each, with show of justice, taxed the other with indifference and coldness. Since, however, the necessity for combination of forces in the interests of the child has made itself more and more apparent, the need of mutual understanding becomes daily more obvious. In working for the welfare of the children, all personal considerations and prejudices must be lost. The librarian must strive to put herself in the place of the teacher, to familiarize herself with her aids and purposes, that the library may intensify, expand, and strengthen the influence of the school. The teacher must, without trace of narrowness or professional jealousy, introduce her children to the library, and exert herself to see that the acquaintance be satisfying and permanent. We need teachers who are book-lovers, and librarians who are child-lovers. We cannot expect teachers to be technically expert librarians but, besides a good general knowledge of books, they should have some general knowledge of library methods-sufficient, at least, to make the catalog less an unknown quantity to both themselves and the children. And connected with every public library should be a wellpaid librarian who understands child nature and its needs. In rural communities, where conditions are so different from those in cities, it is especially necessary that the teacher, who is also the librarian, should know how and when to order books, as well as what books to order. Recognizing the need of some technical knowledge in this regard on the part of our teachers, some

normal schools already are giving general library courses; and the time has come for making this a feature of the pedagogical work in our teachers' training-schools and institutes, that teachers may thoroly acquaint themselves with the library laws of their state, may know how to select a well-balanced library for school and village, how to catalog it, and how to keep a simple system of records. A brief public document course should also be given them, that they may know how to get, at slight or no cost, the valuable material which the state and federal governments have for distribution with a view to promoting better methods in agriculture, forestry, and horticulture. A general knowledge of the subject in its various phases should be made one of the requirements for the receiving of a teacher's certificate.

Out of the opulence of thought made visible, audible, tangible, the difficulty is to make the best possible selection. Whether the average reader recognizes his responsibility in this is a question for the individual. That the school should see and should live up to its opportunities of implanting, fostering, pruning, and training is vitally incumbent upon it. And in no less measure does the duty of supporting and co-operating with the school, by aiding to a judicious, helpful choice, devolve upon the library. It is in this way that not only will the mass as a whole be elevated through selfendeavor, but individual character will be developed to its highest, individual talent. Even genius will receive its meed of encouragement. Mediocrity cannot be forced into genius by increasing the rigor of its surrounding conditions, neither will genius under happier auspices deteriorate into mediocrity. School and library, in their oneness of interest, must ever have in view the greatest good of the many-and what is that, after all, but the greatest good of the individual as well?

On that eventful day when the average, normal boy, the child of the common people makes his first journey toward the schoolhouse, he closes forever behind him the doors of his babyhood and, willingly or unwillingly, trustfully or suspiciously, enters a charmed square whose sides-the home, the school, the library, the state-will ever be about him, expanding with his growth, or contracting to a prison-house if he, too, narrows. His acquaintance with literature so far has been confined to the classics of the nursery; his intimates outside of his home and of his back-yard associates have been the gullible gentleman who hobnobbed with the pieman, the distressed damsel who had lost her flock, that terrible prototype of Henry VIII whose mildest weakness was dyeing his beard, and that no less terrible personage who had such a penchant for Englishmen for tea.

Now comes on his little stage the kindergartner who, after a prolog he dimly comprehends, raises the curtain on sweet, pastoral scenes where every prospect pleases and vileness is unknown. For gore he has roses; for Bluebeard's scimiter the pretty new moon. And, if all tales he hears be true, no longer need he dread "the dark stair where a bear is so liable to follow one,' for the bear is one of the finest of his new friends, overflowing with sociability

and good nature. It is some time before the child can recover from the shock and adapt himself to fit into the social conditions of this miniature Utopia. And the real psychological moment for getting hold of him, for putting into his breast the love of things fine in child lore, is just when his resilience has responded to nature's touch. The novelty of the change has not passed, and all his little powers of receptivity are on the qui vive. He has not yet learned to read for himself, but oh, how willing he is to be read to, and how willing are his mates to listen with him. The better the story, the better the attention. Children are good natural judges; it is only when driven to it by lack of entertaining substitutes that they take to trash. And surely with today's everincreasing store of true, wholesome child literature, there should be no lack of substitutes.

How far the school library itself should be prepared to meet every phase of growing childhood and youth is one of the problems of education. It would seem, however, that the interests of the primary department and lower grades, should be well covered by the bookshelves intended for their use, and that for the upper grades and the high school the library should consist mainly of standard authors, reference books (especially geographical, historical, and biographical), books representative of the best in modern fiction, and such works as may be called for by the pupils' general or special studies in classroom, laboratory, or workshop. Such a library would be sufficiently catholic to permit of individual choice, as well as a general help, and at the same time would be so restricted as to force the eager inquirer out to the public library in his thirst for more. The square is complete, tho not yet is the child conscious that it is. He has at times felt two of the sides of his enclosure, and has vaguely thought himself walking in a lane between the home and the school; the library is a palace of enchantment, thru the open windows of which he gazes upon landscapes of delight that stretch far out to the bounds of heaven; the state is an impersonal "proposition" he has heard discussed in patriotic orations or has encountered in his studies.

And yet it is to the state that both school and library are looking, must continue to look, for support and encouragement by enactment and appropriation. The parent too infrequently realizes his duty with regard to fitting for and working with the school and the library in the interest of his family; all three-parent, school, and library-are the servants of the state.

Hitherto one of these servants has had but little recognition from her master, who has been content to look on and see-or to turn his back and disregard the tips she has been receiving from those on whom she has happened to make a favorable impression. Now, the tip system is bad and cannot but ultimately produce bad results. We value most what costs us the dearest. Our states, many of them, have made the most liberal provision for public schools, but have quite evaded, or have been blind to the fact that the public library is a part of public education, dovetailing with public schooling. That Mr. Carnegie has been widely and impartially generous in his assistance and