the seventh grade and be carried through to an undefined limit of age and attainment.

Continuation work considers the welfare of the State and of civil society as fully as it considers the individual. Hence, ways and means must be provided for giving continuation training to all classes of youths. This fact makes incumbent on society the establishment of a much longer period of compulsory school attendance. Some States have already enacted laws requiring boys and girls to be in school until sixteen years of age unless they have secured permanent positions. The law is inadequate. Compulsory continuation work for all during a period of four or five hours per week for at least two years must be the legal requirement. Morality, business, government, and culture alike demand this continued training.

Obstacles. The greatest obstacles to the further development of continuation work at the present time are two: first, the lack of money, and, secondly, the lack of adequately prepared teachers. Public education is an affair of the State or nation, not of the local community alone. Hence, it is both essential and proper that the burdens of the schools shall be borne in part at least of the State and the United States. To this end friends of public education everywhere and partic larly the Mondv of continuation work, it cooperate in the effort to secure national and State aid for quale en Meatlon adequate financial means a alase

--that of securing called Saache r

for, whenever the sokk for dituen la made an tractive as ctiter professions and sa

available tearten.

To summarize i 'N mar

is a complete reversal of attitude on the part of school administrators respecting the purpose, plan, and administration of public education. Formerly the position most frequently taken was: Here is a school and a curriculum organized alike for all. It is the privilege of all to enter it and remain a definite period of time, but uniformity must be the guiding principle of administration. To-day the ideal is to give every boy and girl the education that he or she needs. Post-elementary education in particular calls for differentiation of schools and school work. The response to this call is the development of the continuation school. Such schools already have proved themselves socially expedient, administratively feasible, politically advantageous, and economically profitable. Investigations, too, prove conclusively that, to be of most service, continuation work, as the term is here used, must begin with early adolescence and continue into mature adulthood. This is the work that, in America, falls primarily within the range of secondary education. It is, therefore, appropriate to regard all forms of it as added functions of the high school. Moreover, if continuation work is to be adequate to meet the urgent demands of business, the State, and civil society, it must be obligatory on all and must gradually lead out from the egoistic vocational interests of individuals to higher social, civic, and moral interests. Hence, continuation work in the schools must of necessity relate itself to allied social questions and to social agencies other than the school which seek the general welfare of human beings.

CHAPTER XXIII

SOCIALIZING FUNCTION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY

FLORENCE M. HOPKINS

LIBRARIAN, CENTRAL SCHOOL, DETROIT, MICH.

Growing Conception of the Function of the Library.The marked growth of the high school library in the past decade reveals the fact that we are facing the rising tide of its place and influence in high school life and education. The attention given to it in conventions and journals of late years is another evidence of the fact that its value is being appreciated and its development studied. According to the report of the Bureau of Education, there were 11,734 public and private high school libraries in the United States in 1912, representing nearly 9,000,000 volumes. The first step, therefore, that of supplying books for definite reference work, has been taken. The need of supplying books in duplicate for large classes is also generally conceded. The seeking of the library by the pupil, when he is in need of information, is an established habit; but the seeking of the pupil by the library is a field just beginning to be developed and might be termed the socializing function of the library.

The Socializing Function of the Public Library.-The seeking of the patron by the library is best illustrated by the marked change in public-library administration in

the past generation. Most of us adults never knew, as children, the joy of a room all our own in a library, with friezes on the wall, inviting grate fires, beautifully illustrated books for us to handle, and some one to tell us stories from them. The children's library, with its freedom in handling books selected by experts, and with direction through the story hour, is a comparatively recent feature which, no doubt, will prove to be one of the farthest-reaching influences for culture in American childhood. A corresponding social feature for adults is being developed by popular lectures, general open shelves, and study rooms. Indeed, the entire architecture of the library has been changed to meet this growing social need. No public library is now erected without including a children's room and an auditorium, as unquestionably as it does a reference room or a stack room. Attention is also being given to encouraging the appointment of social directors in connection with the use of the public-library plant.1

The Socializing Function of the College Library.-Colleges are also enlarging their conception of the function of the library so as to include the social element. Browsing rooms, social-study rooms, club rooms, and racks of new books for general reading are to be found in most university libraries. In Yale University a special room has been established in Byers Hall as a social and reading centre for the students of the scientific department. It aims to be a select library of a few thousand volumes. covering standard works in a wide field, and is open without restriction, though books are not withdrawn from its shelves for outside use. The room is comfortably furnished and is an attractive lounging and browsing place

1 Survey, February, 1913, p. 675.

for the students. It is also used as a social meeting-place for informal addresses.

The Brothers and Linonia Library, a somewhat similar institution at Yale, is housed in the University Library and contains, roughly, twenty-five thousand volumes, with free access to the books. It is selected to cover the whole field of knowledge, and aims to meet the demands of the general readers as opposed to those of the special students whose wants are met elsewhere. The Socializing Function of the High School Library. -The college library, however, reaches only that very small percentage of high school pupils who continue their education beyond high school age; the public library, on the other hand, can reach all who have a portion of leisure time and the power and desire for selfdirection. One of the most important functions, therefore, of the high school library is to introduce pupils to the wise use and enjoyment of the public library. This introduction should be made by bringing the library to the pupil. Trips, conducted by the school librarian, through the public library, talks by the public-library staff to parents and pupils on home reading, books sent by the public library to the school and examined informally by pupils and school librarian together, and many other plans can be devised for awakening this feeling of an ownership in and a responsibility for the public library.

One of the most progressive libraries in its social activities is the Girls' High School Library, Brooklyn, N. Y. At the beginning of each term the head of the English department arranges for each entering class in English to spend one period in the library or to visit the library after school hours. The librarian shows them the illus