possession a tool of great power. The use of this tool makes him educated. No school can afford to send boys and girls into the world without this equip

ment.

The need of books as direct aids in the work of the school increases as the pupil passes from grade to grade and becomes greatest in the high school. No really good high school is possible without at least fair library equipment. The use of books in the high school can not be what it should unless there is progressive training in the use of books throughout the grades. The child that reaches the high school with no training in the use of informative. books except that gotten in the preparation of lessons in the adopted texts is poorly prepared to do even ordinary work. If in addition to this he has not made the acquaintance of a number of good inspirational books he finds himself unable to get the enjoyment out of life that is his right. This leads us to conclude that the proper use of books by high school pupils is the result of much well directed effort throughout the grades. In fact unless preparation is made in the grades desirable work can not be done in the high school.

The matter of books for young people and the direction of outside reading in the grades has received much careful attention. Very desirable results have been attained. More than twenty years ago the teachers of Indiana through their state association organized the Young People's Reading Circle. This has been operated through the schools and has resulted in many grade schools accumulating good libraries of books for young people.

The directors of this work have always been teachers well fitted for the task and greatly interested in the children. The teachers of the state have

taken this matter up with enthusiasm and have helped to make it a success. Books have been selected for all grades from the second to the eighth. The selections have been made with a view of cultivating the reading habit and the taste of the reader and also for the purpose of helping to broaden the work of the school. The books have been inspirational and informational with the first more prominent than the second. These lists have included the good stories of the present, biography, history, fairy story, myths, poetry, classics and science. Every valuable field of literary effort has been touched.

The results of the twenty years' experience are very gratifying. The teachers are enthusiastic in praise of the good things accomplished. Many boys and girls have formed the reading habit and have become regular patrons of the library. In many cases they have begun the collection of books of their own. They have formed discriminating tastes and are no longer in danger of being led astray by vicious and unclean books. They have learned how to use books as helps to the regular school work.

In addition to these very specific results there have been a number of valuable by-products. Many problems in school discipline have been solved in an easy way because of the presence of the reading circle books. The bad boy often forgets to be bad if he is interested in some splendid book of adventure. The restless boy becomes quiet and the silly girl sane under the magic spell of a good book. Many parents have caught through these same books their first glimpse of the world of story and as a result have become patrons of the library and subscribers to good papers and magazines.

Experience has convinced most of us that nothing in the way of li

brary training for the children of the grades is so effective as the reading circle and the school room book shelf filled with just the things a child loves. Given these conditions plus a teacher who believes in the efficacy of books, the conditions are favorable to send the child from the grades into the world with good taste, good reading habits and good character well started, or to send him into the high school with such a back ground of knowledge of books that he can use most effectively all the opportunities offered him there.

A high school without a library is as impossible as a high school without a laboratory, or a high school without a teacher. As to the size and quality of this library there will be various and varying notions. Certainly it can not be too large and certainly it may be easily too small. There are some few things concerning this library upon which we may quite fully agree. These will be stated.

1st. It should be informational. It should contain books of poetry, fiction, aries, encyclopedias, atlases, gazeteers, books of facts, hand books, indexes and books of quotations, besides standard reference books and treatises in every subject taught in the high school.

2d. It should be inspirational. It should contain books of poetry, fiction, essay, drama, history, romance, art, travel and biography.

In both these fields there is no limit. The library should grow. Additions to it should be made frequently and regularly. These additions in part, at least, should be made upon the recommendations of the high school teachers. It is in this way, only, that a well balanced library can be maintained. With all deference to the librarian it is true that he is not omniscient, and therefore he can not know all the good and need

ed things in the many fields that must

be represented.

be represented. For the work of the school a library covering all fields of study represented in the curriculum is absolutely essential. Nothing short of this should be tolerated.

The library should be catalogued completely and both library and catalogue should be accessible to the student. I am aware that many librarians feel such a personal responsibility in the matter that they are unwilling for large numbers of readers to have access to the shelves. I think, however, that in a high school library this restriction should be removed and every pupil should have the chance and the invitation to browse among the books. What if a few books are lost. Better lose a hundred or a thousand books a year than to lose that fine appreciation and growth that results from free association with books. Many a boy will read if he can select the book from the shelf who would never make a selection through the cold cards of a catalogue. Selecting books from a catalogue is about as satisfactory as selecting clothes or food in that way. Of course some standard things may be gotten, but much of the best will be passed by. One must see and handle if he would make the best book selections.

The high school library should have as careful direction as any other department of the school. A stock of books, a good catalogue and free access is not enough. There should be a sympathetic and efficient director in charge. This individual should understand the school situation and be able to work in perfect harmony with the teachers. His rank should be equal to that of a head of a department. He must be a superior man. He must get results without specific assignment or direct recitation. He must be sympathetic

and unobtrusive. His work must be quiet and very largely individual. His purpose must be to make the student independent and self-reliant. The high school student should learn the machinery and the technique of the use of books. He should learn early in his course the standard works of reference and know in what fields of learning each is particularly strong. Incidentally but certainly the librarian should teach the student how to use these books of reference readily and economically. When a new class enters the high school no better service could be given it than a number of lessons in the library upon the use of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and all other books of reference. Early acquaintance with these helps to knowledge is more essential than knowledge of algebraic signs and Latin declensions. Training in the use of these helps should continue throughout the school course because it is from books that mature men and women must gain their information. The school should give them great facility in using these means of information. All the departments should cooperate in this and frequently make assignments that will require search in reference books. Of course judgment should be used so that work of this sort does not become burdensome. With proper care such work is not only of great value to the student, but it proves to be intensely interesting also. Many teachers have found that by the proper use of the informational part of the library pupils have been retained in school and started on the road to useful lives.

Every high school course should be planned so that there will be time for reading outside of regular assignments. The pupil should read much for the pure joy of reading. The inspirational side of the library should

be used freely. To this part of the library the pupil should be induced to go for joy and recreation. Librarian and teachers should conspire together to entangle him in the lure of literature.

The importance of the proper relation of the high school pupil and the library is so great that one can not adequately express it. The nature and joy of the entire mature life is involved in it. Among many people both young and old, conversation is a lost art, not always lost for many times it has never been possessed. It is rare indeed that a group of people can spend an evening in conversation and agree that it has been profitable and pleasing. In general such a group vote the evening a failure unless they have spent the time studying the artistic representation of diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades upon a small piece of pasteboard. The fine art of conversation will not be realized by people generally until the school succeed in having books yield their treasures to all pupils. This calls for a well planned conspiracy among teachers, librarians and school officials. The teachers must study each pupil and discover an avenue of approach to his interest, the librarians must use the most modern means to display the books and exploit their contents, the school officials must appropriate the money, buy the books and keep the library up with the times. That such a conspiracy will succeed is an assured fact. Each high school boy and girl will become a lover of books if the proper opportunity is given. The lover and reader of books always has something to comunicate when he is with his fellows. He is on the road that leads to the good conversational power.

Many high school courses would be more effective if some of the pressure was removed from examination courses

and in its place encouragement given to reading. One who goes to the library merely to prepare for an examination does not necessarily become a lover of books, nor does he get from them their best message. The whole academic life in America is weakened by the mad desire for credit. Many of our young people are piling up credit instead of culture. They think they are so rushed that they have no time for the finer things. For the relief of this situation. the most potent factor yet discovered is the library, not the general circulating

library, but the library connected with the school.

Library people everywhere should turn their attention to this fertile field. Teachers and school officials should likewise give it their attention. All those interested in the future of the republic should unite in an effort to bring in the way of the youth of the land books, to make them lovers of books, and to help them to get through books the culture that the future demands.

An autocrat can build up a strong unity but it takes a broad-gauged man to establish the unity and at the same time maintain the wholesome variety that will prevent the crushing of the individuality of the Board members, the teachers and last but not least the pupils, for which the whole system is maintained.

A definite program is far more important than at any time in the past and a supervisor without it may be a very great menace because he can not possibly have a clear vision of the unity and the very great variety that must be maintained in this unity. He must be broad enough to see that this programme must be inclusive enough to include not only the school but the whole community and that the programme must be subject to change as educational ideals change. And he will find it no small task to keep abreast of all the changes that are rapidly coming about. If the ship is to be in safe hands he must be in the pilot house where he

may get a broad view of all the units that comprise the system. The supervisor with his broad, inclusive programme will be able to organize his schools with sufficient unity to hold the structure together, but not enough to crush the great variety of individual action that must be present if each teacher and each pupil is to have an equal chance.

The wise supervisor will see to it, if his corporation is not already up to the limit, that sufficient rooms and sufficient teachers are provided so no teacher will be asked to teach more than thirty pupils. Each child is entitled to a good room, a good seat, a good teacher, plenty of fresh air, sanitary toilet rooms and lavatories, plenty of light and heat, a good play ground and good environment. With this number and with sufficient apparatus and by the use of some of the different systems of teaching such as the Pueblo, Cambridge, Batavian, Elizabeth, Group System in New York City and

lo, Cambridge,

others, conditions should be such that each and every pupil should have an equal chance.

Because of the congested condition of our schools and because of the lack of insight we have been doing too much general and not enough individual teaching. We have contented ourselves with the thought that the work was pitched for the average child. But that kind of a child does not exist, so what is the sense of trying to unify our systems on the basis of a myth. Certainly we should not do less for those with whom nature has not dealt very liberally but my plea is for sufficient variety in this unity so each child may have a chance. There has never been a time that we did not need leaders and we have never needed them as we do now. So plead for the ones that we have been overlooking in the past, the bright ones that they be able to have their chance in our hands.

The selection of the teachers is probably the supervisor's most important duty. If his school programme is adequate, no pressure from without or from within himself will even tempt him to recommend anyone whom he does not believe is the best prepared person available for the piece of work to be done. If his programme is known to be the broad gauge variety, no pressure from without will be attempted.

In this presence, it is needless to say that the teachers' meetings do not exist for the supervisor, but they do exist primarily for the teachers and secondarily for the pupils. If this be true then the meetings are not for the supervisor to show his large insight into the problems of education and teaching. For this reason he should not be the whole programme, but he should be satisfied to arrange the programme, plan for the meeting and guide it, but the teachers should fur

nish the programme and participate freely in the discussions. In other words, the supervisor should dominate the meetings, but the domineering attitude should be conspicuous for its absence. It arouses a very strong feeling in me when I step into a meeting where a domineering personality has charge. It not only arouses a wrong kind of feeling in the visitor but it is a very deadening influence so far as the spiritual condition of the meeting is concerned.

The school programme must include the ability to scientifically measure the results that can be measured. He must be able to justify to the public the expenditure of the money of each and every department of endeavor. This programme will also force him to take into account the relative expenditure per capita of the grades and the high school. If one is top heavy and the other is skipped he should know it and how to remedy it. If the supervisor has not begun the study of the question of measurement, he should begin at once, as the general public is making more inquiries regarding the efficiency of the public schools than ever before. But in measuring the efficiency of a school system we should be careful of the measure used. A short or a long yard stick is a dangerous measure to use. Neither can it be fair to the system and the child at the same time. We must know that our measure is more reliable than a "wet rope." So I should urge that before we apply a measure to any part of our system we should know who worked the measure out, how many particulars he used in reaching general conclusion, his general and special preparation for such delicate work and above all his insight into the line of work that the measure is intended to measure. A man whose interest is