Contrast,as to cost and results,the usual story-telling to children with instruction in the same and allied arts to teachers.The assistant entertains once or twice each week a group of forty or fifty children.The children--accustomed to schoolroom routine,hypnotized somewhat by the mob-spirit,and a little by the place and occasion,ready to imitate on every opportunity --listen with fair attention.They are perhaps pleased with the subject matter of the tale,possibly by its wording,and very probably by the voice and presence of the narrator.They hear an old story,one of the many that help to form the social cement of the nation in which they live.This is of some slight value,though the story is only one of scores which they hear or read in their early years at school.The story has no special dramatic power in its sequence.As a story it is of value almost solely because it is old.It has no special value in its phrasing.It may have been put into artistic form by some man of letters;but the children get it,not in that form,but as retold by an inspired library assistant who has made no mark in the world of letters by her manner of expression.The story has no moral save as it is dragged in by main strength;usually,in fact,and especially in the case of myths,the moral tone needs apologies much more than it needs praise.
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 30minutes 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 40children--and there it ends.If,on the other hand,it instructs 40teachers,those 40carry the instruction to 40class 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 1,600or 2,000children.There seems no question here as to which of these two forms of educational activity is for librarians better worth while.
