Library Work with Children Part 19

Floors rendered noiseless by some good covering help wonderfully to keep voices pitched low. I have seen this ill.u.s.trated almost amusingly in Newark, where frequent visits of large cla.s.ses were made from the schools to the public library. The tramp of forty or fifty pairs of feet in the marble corridors made such a noise that the legitimate questions and answers of children and librarian had to be given in tones to be heard over the noise of the feet. The change that came over the voices and faces as the cla.s.s stepped on the noiseless "Nightingale" flooring of the great reading room was almost funny. The feet made no noise, therefore it was not necessary to raise the voice to be heard, and no strictures of attendants were needed to maintain quiet in that room.

Under the head of furniture I will give only one or two hints of things worth remembering. One is that whatever you decide upon for a chair, in point of size, shape, or style, make sure, before you pay your bill, that it cannot be easily overturned. If you have a chair that will tip over every time a child's cloak swings against it, your wrinkles will multiply faster than your years warrant. And reason firmly with your electrician if he has any plan in mind of putting lamps on your tables of such a sort that they positively invite the boy of a scientific (or Satanic) turn of mind to astonish the other children by the way the lights brighten and go out, all because he has discovered that a gentle pressure to his foot on the movable plug under the table can be managed so as to seem purely innocent and accidental while he sits absorbed in the contents of his book. I would also ask why it is that librarians think we need so MUCH furniture, when our rooms are as small as they sometimes are? We seem to think it inevitable that the floor s.p.a.ce should be filled up with tables, but, as Mr. Anderson remarked in his paper at Magnolia, if we saw a family at home gathered around the table, leaning their elbows upon it and facing the light, we should think it a very unnatural and unhygienic position to adopt. Why should we, in the library, encourage children to do just what physiologists tell us they should not do? Why provide tables at all for any but those actually needing them as desks for writing up their reference work? For the many who come merely to read, why is not a chair and a book, with light on the page of the book, and not glaring into the child's eyes, enough for his comfort? This is worth thinking about, I am sure, and worked out in some satisfactory, artistic little back-to-back benches perhaps, would change the stereotyped appearance of the children's room, and give the extra floor s.p.a.ce which is always sadly needed. It is an axiom in library architecture that perfect supervision should be made easily possible. In a children's room this should be taken very literally. There should be no floor cases, no alcoves in the room, no arrangements by which a knot of small mischief makers can conceal themselves from the librarian for she will find such an error in planning, a thorn in the flesh as long as the room stands.

So much time devoted to the planning of the children's room, may give the impression that the room is of more importance than the librarian. It is a plat.i.tude, however, to say that the ideal children's librarian, with every material condition against her, will do a thousand times more than the ideal room with the wrong person in it. The qualifications necessary to make the right sort of a disciplinarian are, many of them, too intangible for words, but a few things strike me as not always distinctly recognized by librarians.

In the first place, no librarian should compel that member of his staff who dislikes children to do the work of the children's department. While on general principles to let an attendant choose the work she likes to do would be disastrous, since the person best fitted for dusting might choose to be reference librarian, in this one particular at any rate, the wishes of the staff should be consulted. For while all may be conscientious, faithful workers wherever placed, mere conscientiousness will not make a person who frankly says children bore and annoy her, a success in the children's room. Love for children should be the first requisite, and the librarian who puts a person in charge of that work against her will, will hurt the department in a way that will be surely felt sooner or later. While love for children, sympathy with, and understanding of them are all of the first importance in the composition of a children's librarian, some experience in handling them in large numbers (as in public school teaching, mission schools, boys' clubs, etc.) is extremely desirable. To deal with a mob of very mixed youngsters is a different matter from telling stories to a few well-brought up little ones in your own comfortable nurseries. The best qualification for the work of children's librarian is successful experience as a teacher, in these happy days when it is coming to be the rule that law and liberty may walk side by side in the school-room, and where firmness on the teacher's part in no wise interferes with friendliness on the child's.

The children's librarian should have the sort of nerves that are not set on edge by children. This does not mean that she may not be a nervous person in other ways, indeed she must be, for the nerveless, jelly-fish character can never be a success in dealing with children. But I have seen people of highly nervous organization who were really unconscious of the ceaseless tramp, tramp, of the children's feet, the hum and clatter and moving about inevitable in a children's library. Visitors come into the room and say to such a person, "How can you stand this for many minutes at a time?" and the librarian looks round in surprise at the idea of there being anything hard to bear when she hears only the little buzz that means to her hundreds of little ones at the most susceptible age, eagerly, happily absorbing the enn.o.bling ideals, the poetic fancies, the craving for knowledge that are going to make them better men and women than they would have been without this glimpse into the realms beyond their daily surroundings.

To attempt to enumerate, one by one, the qualities that combine to make a wise and successful disciplinarian would be fruitless.

We can talk endlessly about what OUGHT to be. The most practical thing to do to obtain such a person, is not to take a raw subject and pour advice upon her in hopes she will develop some day, but to hunt till you find the right one and then offer her salary enough to get her for your library. And this suggests a subject worthy of future discussion, that head librarians should reckon this to be a profession within our profession, just as the kindergartner is a specialist within the teaching body, demanding a higher type of training than is the rule, and PAYING THE PRICE TO GET IT.

Just a word about what degree of order and quiet to expect, and to work for, in a children's room. Are we to try to maintain that awful hush that sends cold chills down the spine of the visitor on his first entering a modern reading room, and tempts him to back out in fright lest the ticking of his watch may draw all eyes upon him?

I should be very sorry to have a children's room as perfectly noiseless as a reading room for adults. It is so unnatural for a roomful of healthy boys and girls to be absolutely quiet for long periods that if I found such a state of affairs I should be sure something was wrong--that all spontaneity was being repressed, that that freedom of the shelves which is a great educator was being denied because moving about makes too much noise, that the question and answer and comment which mark the friendly understanding between librarian and child, and which make a good book circulate because one boy tells another that it is good, were done away with in order that no slight noise might be heard.

If there were such a thing as a meter to register sound to be hung in a children's room beside the thermometer, I should not be alarmed if it indicated a pretty high degree, provided I could look around the room and observe the following conditions: a large room, full of contented children, no one of whom was wilfully noisy or annoying, most of them being quietly reading, the ones who were moving about asking in low tones the children's librarian or each other, perfectly legitimate questions that were to help them choose the right thing. It is inevitable that heavy boots, young muscles that have not learned self-control, the joyous frankness of childhood that does not think to keep its eager happiness over a good "find" under decorous restraint, will result in more actual noise than obtains in the adults' reading room. And yet, while the "sound meter" of the children's room would register farther up, it might really be more orderly than the other room, for every child might be using his room as it was intended to be used, while the adult department might contain a couple of women who came in for the express purpose of visiting, and yet who knew how to whisper so softly as not to be invited to retire. We must remember that, if children make more noise, they do not mind each other's noise as adults do. The dropping of a book or overturning of a chair, the walking about do not disturb the young student's train of thought; and while I do not wish to be quoted as advocating a noisy room, but on the contrary would work for a quiet one, day in and day out, I do feel that allowances must be made for noises that are not intended to be annoying, and that we should not sacrifice to the ideal of deathly stillness the good we hope to do through the child's love for the room in which he feels free to express himself in a natural, friendly atmosphere.

PROBLEMS OF DISCIPLINE

The Wisconsin Library Bulletin for July-August, 1908, is given up to the presentation of widely varying experiences in regard to discipline, in a report by Mary Emogene Hazeltine and Harriet Price Sawyer, who sent a list of ten questions to 125 librarians, and incorporated the replies.

Mary Emogene Hazeltine was born in Jamestown, N. Y., in 1868, and was graduated from Wellesley College in 1891. She was librarian of the James Prendergast Free Library in Jamestown from 1893 to 1906, when she became Preceptor of the Library School of the University of Wisconsin, the position she now holds. She has given much help to small libraries.

Mrs. Harriet Price Sawyer was born in Kent, Ohio, received the degree of B. L. from Oberlin College: was an a.s.sistant in the Oberlin College Library 1902-1903; was graduated from the Pratt Inst.i.tute Library School in 1904; was librarian of the State Normal School at New Paltz, N. Y., 1904-1905; a student in the University of Berlin, Germany, 1905-1906; Library Visitor and Instructor, Wisconsin Library Commission, 1906-1910. Since that time she has been chief of the Instructional Department in the St. Louis Public Library, including charge of the training cla.s.s.

In 1917 this cla.s.s was expanded into a library school, with Mrs.

Sawyer as princ.i.p.al.

In March, a list of questions concerning the problem of discipline in the library was sent out to 125 librarians. The answers show a most interesting variety of experiences and conditions. A few report that it is no longer a "vexed" problem, and one librarian thinks that it is "only a well-maintained tradition," but most of the writers agree with Miss Eastman of Cleveland, who says: "You will note that while conditions vary somewhat in the different branches, discipline is a question which we have always with us whenever we work with children. I do believe, however, that each year places the library on a little higher and more dignified plane in the minds of the children as well as the public generally; and that the question of discipline becomes more and more a question of dealing with individuals."

As to disturbance without the library, there is but one opinion, viz., to turn the matter over to the policemen, and this is reported in every instance to have put an end to the trouble.

Any serious misbehavior within the library has been treated by the suspension of library privileges, ranging in severity of sentence from one day to a month or, in a few cases, even longer.

The variation, however, in the manner of carrying out the sentence forms an interesting study, from the lightest form reported, at Chippewa Falls, where the child may draw a book, but remains in the library only long enough to secure it, to the drastic measures taken at Sheboygan where the students were ordered out of the library en ma.s.se even in the midst of preparation for a test in history.

Miss Wood's plan is an interesting one, but the tactful helpers are difficult to find.

The card system at Kenosha will no doubt solve the difficulty for many librarians who find the initiative in the disciplining of the older visitors at the library most difficult to undertake.

In some communities, the personal letter or visit to the parents has proved most helpful, and, doubtless, the plan reported by Miss Lord of asking the boy to sign his name will find favor in the larger libraries.

The aim of discipline, according to educators, is the moral foundation of character. The library as well as the school has to make up for the lack of moral training in many homes, and good conduct must be taught by the librarian as well as by the teacher. The whole matter is very well summed up by Miss Dousman of Milwaukee.

"It seems to me that order and good behavior are absolutely imperative in the library. Good manners, that outward and visible sign of the respect for the rights of others, should be expected of children. How? By never failing yourself to treat them with respect, courtesy and justice. To distinguish between unavoidable disturbances and those made with mischievous intent. To see and hear only the things you can prevent, else your nerves will get the better of your judgment.

"Allow children as much freedom as possible, consistent with the rights of others--and don't nag.

"In case of bad behavior, make a tactful and pleasant appeal to the child first, thereby giving him a chance to reinstate himself. This appeal failing, reprimand in no uncertain terms.

Dismissal from the room is the natural punishment for refusal to obey regulations. Obedience as a virtue has not entirely gone out of fas.h.i.+on. Suspension for a definite or indefinite period, according to the offense is necessary for the maintenance of good discipline. Limitation as to the number of times a week a mischievous child may visit the library has a good effect. A suspended sentence of permanent dismissal on failure to behave has a most salutary effect. Reinstate as soon as there is an evident desire to improve.

"In our zeal to control the child, some have lost sight of the fact that it is quite as important to teach the child to control himself; that if he is to become a good citizen, he cannot learn too early to respect the rights of others."

At a meeting of the Ma.s.sachusetts Library Club, reported in Public Libraries, v. 12, p. 362 (Nov. 1907), Miss Harriet H.

Stanley of Brookline said of "Discipline in a Children's Room,"

that unnatural restraint was to be avoided, but the restraint required for the common good was wholesome, and that children were more, rather than less, comfortable under it, when it was exercised with judgment and in a kindly spirit.

"Judgment comes with experience. ... As far as you are able, be just. If your watchfulness fails sometimes to detect the single offender in a group of children and you must send out the group to put an end to some mischief, say so simply, and they will see that they suffer not from your hard heartedness, but from the culprit's lack of generosity or from the insufficiency of their devices for concealing him. Be philosophical. Most disturbance is only mischief and properly treated will be outgrown. Stop it promptly, but don't lose your temper, and don't get worked up. To the juvenile mind, 'getting a rise' out of you is no less exhilarating than the performance which occasions it. Habitually deny them this gratification and mischief loses its savor.

"Talk little about wrongdoing. Don't set forth to a child the error of his ways when the 'ways' are in process of being exhibited, and the exhibitor is fully conscious of their nature.

Choose another time--a lucid interval--for moral suasion.

"When children are intentionally troublesome, the simplest means of discipline is exclusion from the room; when necessary, formal exclusion for a definite period with a written notice to parents.

The authority of the library should be exercised in the occasional cases where it is needed, both for the wrongdoer's own good and for the sake of the example to others.

"Provided you are just and sensible and good-tempered, your patrons will respect the library more and like you none the less for exacting from them suitable behavior. We talk a good deal about the library as a place of refuge for boys and girls from careless homes, and they do deserve consideration from us, but to learn a proper regard for public law and order is as valuable as any casual benefit from books. The children of conscientious parents whether poor or well-to-do also deserve something at our hands, and we owe it to them to maintain a respectable standard of conduct for them to share. Let us be hospitable and reasonable, but let us be courageous enough to insist that the young citizen treat the library with the respect due to a munic.i.p.al inst.i.tution."

It has been impossible to publish in full all of the replies to the circular letter sent out, but as much as possible has been incorporated in this report, believing that each situation delineated may give helpful hints toward the solution of this general difficulty. The list of questions is given in the synopsis appended to the admirable and helpful report contributed by the chief of the children's department in Pittsburgh.

Miss Frances Jenkins Olcott, Pittsburgh

After ten years of experience we find our most difficult question of discipline arises when the older boys and girls come into the library. They usually come in the evening and we have the greatest trouble with the boys. Sometimes we suspect that our trouble with the boys is due to the influence of the girls, who know how to keep quiet and yet make confusion!

The question of discipline depends largely on the district in which a branch is placed and also on the planning and equipment of the children's room--in fact of the whole branch building, and on the personal attention of the branch librarian toward the children.

In answer to question ten I might say that everything depends on the children's librarian's judgment and also on the children.

Some children come into the library to be sent home. They wish to see how many times they can make mischief, and it is really a pleasure to them to have you send them out. In other cases children are much mortified by being sent from the room. It is necessary that the children's librarian and her a.s.sistants should know the children individually, especially their names and something of their home conditions wherever possible. The handling of "gangs" takes a great deal of tact and sympathy with boys.

On the whole, given a well-planned and equipped children's room, plenty of books, a sufficient number of the right kind of children's librarians who are firm, tactful and sympathetic (having a sense of humor and a wide knowledge of children's books) and by all means a sympathetic branch librarian, the question of discipline will usually smooth itself out. We have one room in a crowded tenement district where the right young woman has produced unusual order. The children come in and go out happy and interested in their books, and there is little need for reproof. This is due largely to the fact that we started in with a determination to have reasonable order and the children learned that to use the room it was necessary to be orderly, and they are much happier and get more from the library.

SYNOPSIS

1. At what hour is the discipline most difficult?

Discipline is most difficult during the busiest time, the evening, our branch libraries being open until 9 o'clock.

2. With what ages do you have the most trouble?

The greatest trouble is with children from 10-16.

3. With boys or girls, or both?

Both boys and girls, but the greatest trouble with boys.

4. Are the scholars from the High School a special trouble?