trate fully from available sources and she will be accepted. Her assistants should be as carefully chosen as any workers within the library and this is possible since the school libraries need not be open more than two afternoons a week. SELF-HELP The work of teaching the children to use the library should be shared between the librarian and the teacher. In giving this instruction both should remember that there must be a real feeling for books before any interest in the library as a source of books or the catalog as a means to books can be aroused. That such teaching is desirable is wholly accepted in theory but methods are still in the experimental stage. We began with courses in bibliography in the college and have gone on to the source of student life; to the child, and the teacher behind the child. We have come trailing some glory and some dust of preconceived notions. We ask the child to look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary and unknown subjects in an encyclopedia and expect him to show all the keen delight of a bibliophile. If the point of contact be the use of reference books, let a familiar subject be assigned and let the book tell some things already known. Some definite instruction in the use of a few standard reference books should be given to children, beginning with the fourth grade. In order that it may begin at a point of interest, it should be given to individuals or classes rather than groups and may well be related to schoolwork. The person giving this instruction should follow it with the children until they see some finished product, whether it be to the recitation room to hear "more than the history book tells about the battle of Bull Run" or to the back yard to see a pigeon house. One visit will fairly overwhelm her with confidences as to the result of other researches. "I found out one thing that wasn't in the poem at all. I found what they did with Paul Revere's horse," said a boy with shining eyes. Such is the spirit of live questioning. Books are dead things to the child who is laboriously copying paragraphs on the early life of Henry W. Longfellow, the middle life of Henry W. Longfellow, and the later life of Henry W. Longfellow. The course in the Cleveland Normal School is planned to help the students to help themselves and, to be consistent, we have no librarian. The students charge and discharge their own books and put them on the shelves. They do the mechanical preparation of new books, write book cards and shelf-list cards, and take an inventory once a year. The cards are not always in best form, but they are clear and the record is accurate. The instruction in library use is given as early as possible and except for a little help now and then each student is her own reference librarian. We do not have all the problems that face the state normal school, as our student body numbers about two hundred and is regular in attendance, but I believe the working principle can be the same under all conditions. Instruction lessens the need of immediate service on the part of the librarian and leads to more independent research on the part of the student. The routine does not run so smoothly when your inspiration is weeks back and rooms away, but in time there comes a consciousness of strength into the student's manner among the books which is worth more than exact detail. I bring this into this discussion to persuade the school librarians to allow the students to do some part of the work even tho it seems at first to be a sacrifice. DISCUSSION THE LIBRARY AND THE SCHOOL HOMER H. SEERLEY, CEDAR FALLS, IOWA The problem stated.-Public education is best administered when the public library and the public school are a unit in advancing the common interests of the pupils that are being trained for citizenship and serviceableness. Education is not a panacea for all the ills of humanity. Literature, science and mathematics cannot substitute for moral training or for spiritual attitude in a life. Education can be a preparation for larger usefulness, it ought to be a development of ways and means to definite ends, it should be a saving of time in promotion in place and power. It should increase opportunity, develop possibility, enlarge capability and add adjustability to character. The library and the school are edu cational instrumentalities but they are both means to ends, and should never be regarded as ends in themselves. They are not organized, equipped and maintained as exhibits of civilization because they are actual factors in creating and improving civilization and they are promising elements in organized society for the granting of opportunity and of privileges to the ambitious, the energetic and the self-sacrificing. The need of unity.-There is more or less a lack of coöperation in these great educational forces that is very apparent in large numbers of communities. There is a lack of a thoro appreciation of the standpoint that the school must have on the part of the library and there is an equivalent lack on the part of the school for the undertakings of the library. Both are handicapped by the limitations placed upon them by law, by financial support, by service thus able to be given, and by the low standards of their patrons. Both are doing all they can in their way to solve the same problems and each regards the other as lacking in coöperation and sympathy. Both have placed upon them more work than they can do, both are given more opportunities than they can fully accept, and both are unsatisfactory to promoters because of their not reaching the exalted expectation of the public. There is marked need, therefore, for a better understanding in every community where they both exist because their mission is in reality the same and their object is similar if not identical. Harmony, coöperation, a genuine getting-together, conferring frequently regarding the problems to be jointly solved are absolute essentials if the results so urgently necessary are to be secured. The largeness of the work.-The requirements proposed always exceed the possibilities of accomplishment. The library has its natural limitations that are produced by the largeness of the population, by the fewness of the volumes possessed by it to meet the needs of this population, by the petty new supply of books that is possible from year to year as compared to the actual need that exists, and by the lack of acquaintance of the librarians with the personal educational needs of the patrons who come for help and opportunity. The school has its limitations in the barrenness of the exactions of the course of study and in the lack of time to get even all this accomplished in the days assigned, in the frequent ignorance of the teachers as regards suitable and desirable children's literature, and the actual impossibility for them to get such knowledge, because of the restrictions that a public-school salary places upon the opportunities and possibilities of these teachers. The course of study at the best does not consist of more than the mere rudi ments of an elementary education; of more than the opening of the way for the aftergaining of a knowledge of literature, science, and art; of more than the opening of the eyes of the mind so that pupils can see, of the ears so that they can hear, in order that thereby a life of study, investigation, and thoughtfulness may become a possibility. The teacher and the librarian, their spirit as personalities, their warnings as persons of experience, their suggestions as persons of culture and of larger opportunities, their helpfulness as men and women of power, and their sympathy as humane and as encouraging social factors, are of more importance than either buildings or books. Their living, breathing, thinking, acting service can be and should be an inspiration that persists when the environment is broken and when the life they have touched represents this influence in society. The method of operation.-There is certainly no one method that deserves endorsement as the best method of accomplishing this unity. The pupils of every school need to have access to the library under a sympathetic, benevolent supervision, and this should be friendly and personal rather than authoritative and official. The books the pupils read should have been factors in the experience and acquaintance of both librarian and teacher, and the information, style, and teaching there obtainable should be in such complete possession of these instructors that a conference relative to the thoughts and notions there learned should be a highly esteemed privilege. The discussion of the subjectmatter of these books is an important matter and the benefits that will come from such reviews and reconsiderations are far beyond any education that can be obtained from random and unrelated reading. The library should then have a department in every school and the teacher and the librarian should be coöperating instructors in bringing pupils and books together as a part of a planned educational effort. The union of this work under the library management and supervision is a very important arrangement, and the librarian should give the teachers instruction, help, and encouragement continually and systematically. The main question is not one of numbers of books so much as quality of books; the work is not so much voluminous reading as it is thoughtful, painstaking reading; the object is not so much information as judgment and taste; the result to be sought is not so much a finished product and completed scholarship as it is hunger for more reading and more study and an interest in the problems and lessons of civilization that will persist during life. There is really too much so-called reading that is a result of a desire to produce emotional effect and too little real reading that is truly identified with remembering what is read and with appreciation for the knowledge thus obtained. There is too much actual eagerness for the story with its various plots and complications and excitements, and too little eagerness for the development of taste, the perfection of style, and the adoption of the nobleness of the conceptions of life there portrayed and developed. It seems that the same book read and digested by a whole school at the same time could be more valuable as an educational agent than forty different books read by forty different pupils without this opportunity to discuss and compare opinions and impressions. This reading and digesting should be managed with common-sense and discrimination, the analytic method of explaining everything should be repudiated and the using of the knowledge, the literature, and the sentiments expressed for the growth of discrimination and the development of character and of ideals should be accomplished. Reading should not degenerate into study, as it has a place, and a good place at that, in the life of a child that study cannot fill. It should be free and spontaneous and enjoyable as an exercise and yet it should have a residue that is of value in schoolwork and personal development. Talking about the reading cultivates discrimination, corrects errors of impressions and compels further investigation of the facts and standards presented, since there will always be results in the comparison which will show that different interpretations were obtained from the same source and that there is a probability that neither may be exactly correct. The expansion of the service.-The most important fact in this connection is the absolute need for the expansion of the service of both the library and the school. Neither is able to reach the standard of value that its possibilities offer. Neither is permitted to fill completely its mission to society because its privileges as now conferred are for the few and for the prepared. Equality of opportunity is not a fact when the multitude of the people or pupils are considered. There is no such a thing as equality of opportunity when human privileges are considered. What is opportunity to the scholar is not opportunity to the ignorant man. What is opportunity to the student is not opportunity to the indifferent person. What is help to the intelligent and the inquiring is not help to the foolish or the careless. But while this is to be acknowledged yet it is a fact that civilization's instrumentalities as represented by the school and the library are conducted on the theory of minima rather than a theory of maxima, on what is the least thing we can do to inherit eternal life rather than what great things we can do to make eternal life full and complete in all respects, not only hereafter but here. Talk is cheap, doing is expensive. Theory is simple, practice is complicated. Promise is easy, performance is hard. These very conditions are necessary realizations, because without that state of the public mind, progress, improvement, and development are incapable of being accomplished. DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION SECRETARY'S MINUTES OFFICERS President-E. R. JOHNSTONE, superintendent, State School for Feeble-Minded, Vineland, N. J. FIRST SESSION.-WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 1, 1908 The meeting of the Department of Special Education was called to order at 9:30 A. M., in the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. The subject under consideration was "The Special Child." The president, E. R. Johnstone, superintendent of the School for the Feeble-Minded, Vineland, N. J., made the opening address. Earl Barnes, lecturer for the American Society for Extension of University Teaching, Philadelphia, Pa., then addressed the Department upon the subject, “The Public School and the Special Child." Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, Ill., spoke on the subject, "The Home and the Special Child." The topics were discussed by Alexander Johnson, secretary of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mary T. McCowen, Deaf-Oral Department, Chicago Normal School, Chicago, Ill.; H. H. Goddard, Vineland, N. J., and M. P. E. Groszmann, Plainfield, N. J. The chairman then announced the following committees: ON NOMINATIONS Alice F. Morrison, Vineland, N. J., Chairman F. L. Morse, Chicago, Ill. Gertrude Van Adestine, Detroit, Mich. ON RESOLUTIONS Mary R. Campbell, Chicago, Ill., Chairman. Mary T. McCowen, Chicago, Ill. M. P. E. Groszmann, Plainfield, N. J. An adjournment was then taken until 9:30 Thursday morning. SECOND SESSION.-THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 2 The meeting was called to order by the president at 9:30 A. M. The subject for discussion was "The Problems of the Special Classes." Elizabeth E. Farrell, inspector of Ungraded Classes, Public Schools, New York City, led the discussion. Almeda Adams, Cleveland, Ohio, spoke on "The Education of the Blind Child with the Seeing Child in the Public Schools." Isabelle Thompson Smart, medical examiner, Department of Mentally Defective Children, New York City, then continued the discussion opened by Miss Farrell. This discussion was continued further by Gertrude Van Adestine, principal of the School for the Deaf, Detroit, Mich., Walter S. Cornell, medical inspector, Department of Health, Philadelphia, Pa.; H. H. Goddard, Vineland, N. J., Adelaid Rudolph, librarian for the Department of the Blind, Cleveland, Ohio, and Marian Campbell, agent for the Society for Promoting the Interests of the Blind in Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio. Miss Mary R. Campbell then offered a statement regarding the committee appointed at the Asbury Park meeting in 1895 of which she was chairman. This statement explained the work of the committee and the reason why the proposed commission had not been |