EDUCATION BY BOOKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18763, 17 January 1923, Page 6

EDUCATION BY BOOKS

ENCOURAGING CHILDRKN IN NEW SOUTH WALES. (Frcoi Oob Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 11. The encouragement of children to read books for pleasure and profit is being made a feature of civic' effort in Sydney. This is being done through the children s department of the Municipal Library. Five thousand juveniles have become borrowers. By a system that needs to be better understood to bo more appreciated by thousands of ohildren to whom similar privileges apply, there is a constant exchange of books dealing with biography, history, travel, natural science, useful arts, poetry, stories from poetry and drama, fiotion, fairy tales, games .and sports, architecture, and miscellaneous subjects. The Government is being urged to provide more funda for the distribution of books to school children in the country by the country reference branch of the Public Library of Sydney. Progressive education has created a need for library work with children, nnd in aiming at the widest possible reproduction of that work story-telling is used at a means of inducing children to become constant readers. The telling of stories on Monday afternoons at the children's library by students of the Kindergarten Union, who liave given their services gratuitously, has proved a strong personal means leading children to good books. Story-telling is not for amusement; it is not to tempt childron to come to the library; it ia not to help in the discipline. It does all these things, it is pointed out, bnt it must also leaa to books, or it is out of place in the library. Another factor in the training of the child mind that is receiving greater recognition is the educative motion picture. The City Librarian is convinced that films will enter into our school life in a few years to a degree that would be considered farcical to-day. In American schools educative films were playing a great part in the dissemination of knowledge, and one could hardly conceive the film being put to any better ■use than for teaching such subjects as ceography, history, anatoaiy, and so on.