The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1903-09-25
RURAL SCHOOL LIBRARIES
I'm NORTH CAROLINA


yi-1L that state aid should be available
for not more than six school districts
in any one of the ninety-seven counties.
Within five months, a third OF the
counties reached this limit. and appli-
cations from other communities within
their borders had TO be rejected. Be
fore the General Assembly Of 1903 met.
in January. Our hundred and thirty
one of a possible five hundred libraries
had peer helped. In the face of such
success there was nothing for he leg
islature to do but make an appropria-
ton Of 1--WE thousand dollars more for
the ensuing two years while twenty
five undred dollars was added to main
tain and enlarge the libraries already
established, the same Carnegie like
principle OF cooperation to be observ-
ed: each gift from the state to be du-
plicated by an appropriation from the
school fund. anad again duplicated by
private subscription.
Already many applications for aid
from the new appropriation have been
received, and Superintendent Joyner
confidently predicts that before the
next legislature meets North Carolina
will have one thousand state aided ru-
raj school libraries. Then there are
LII = tSLdb44SAACu lAN4AI ny II VIZ y
| gifts. In one county (Durham) ad-
| joining that in which the writer lives,
a wealthy citizen continued the good
work begun by the Is ate. He offered to
| duplicate mounts r. SD after the state
aid limit had been reached, n now
every one of the forty white schools IN
the county has a library.
One other fact deserves mention. Not
only does the rural school library de-
velOp the reading habit,-it develops it
| along right lines. Since, as Emerson
| says the ancestor of every action is Il
thought" how important it is that the
literature that is to provoke thought be-
wholesome and we'll balanced! In our
city libraries, fiction, has much too
| large a place, many women AMI young
DaOpIe read nothing else. But whiie
| these rural libraries contain a few
! novels the chief effort is to develop Il
proper appreciation of choice works of
! science, travel. nature study, poetry,
history, biography and mythology.
Even if the child formed the reading
habit outside the school, 1t would still
be worth while for the state 20 have
these libraries for the sole urpOse OF
turning his new found love of litera-
ture INTO right channels of truth and
beauty.
Nor have the boys AMI girls oeen the
OnIv beneficiaries of the new move
ment. 1t has opened up L rev Word
for many of the "areutS, n has one
i~ncalculable good in continuing the
education of persSEs too Oh or TOO pol
to longer attend school. The superinten-
dent of schools for Durham county says
that the books are used almost as
much by the parents as by the children
themselves, and the Pitt county super.
intendent says that the Libraries have
caused hitherto Indifferent parents tC
become deeply interested in reading and
in the education of their children. The
peculiar value of the school library
as the New York Evening Post rightly
observes, lies in the fact that it edu-
Gates the younger generation as we'll as
the older
All in all, the North Carolina plar
has proved a strikingly successful in
nOvatiOn. and we are moved to won
der hat our educational leaders did no
long ago perceive the value of rura
library work. or. realizing it, did no
think of the ease with which it may b.
conducted in connection with the pub
lie school,. We are now not far from
the time when no house where childrcr
meet for study, whether in town o.
country, will be regarded as eve tOler
ably equipped without a small collec
ton of the best bOoks.-Clarence Fl
Poe, editor of the Progressive Farmer
in Review of Reviews.