GIRL SCOUT LEADER FEBRUARY, 1933 FOOD NUMBER VOLUME X NUMBER 2 Guide Posts To Clear Thinking Indications and Counsels from Some Trusted Friends N these puzzling times, it may be helpful to turn over longer demanded that the austere chamber of the soul and I in the mind what some of the wisest of those who love the intellect should also be provided with the running t children have to say about therri. The reader will doubt­ water of criticism and the fresh air of intellectual inde­ less recognize Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Hendrik pendence and courage. Everyone who has been called Willem van Loon as belonging to that class; Amabel upon to deal with the educational problems of today Williams-Ellis, a writer of long standing whose recent will know as well as or much better than I do of what speoch on children's books at the London Girl Guides I am speaking. Headquarters is quoted in full in The Guider of Decem­ " This false doctrine has brought us to the present ter- ber, is, like MrS. Fisher and rible crisis. We are not suffer­ .Mr. van Loon, a keen and ing from an overproduction of courageous observer of chang­ material goods but from an un­ ing conditions. The following derproduction of honest think­ paragraphs selected from these ing." three sources may serve as guide Dorothy Canfield Fisher in posts to some who are facing The Book Shelf for Boys and what seem like insoluble prob­ Girls, issued by the Miss \¥il­ lems. Reviews of some good liams Shop, Bronxville, N. Y., practical books on nature study, points out the need for help­ 's ing- thl' clliJrL~.o_firuLtbP boob whiCh will c~unterbalance the recently published, are ap­ deficiency of his circumstances: pended with the same end in "If you are very rich it is view; they are on pages 16, 17. hard to find just the right, brac­ First of all, let us consult ing companions for your im­ 1\IIr. van Loon's article, "To pressionable boys and girls Have or To Be," in the Journal of If I have faltered more or less among the too-sheltered, soft, under- the National Education Association In my great task of happiness; worked, over-fed young people about If I have moved among my race you; if you are poor it is J. ust as hard for October : And shown no glorious morning face; "Children for almost an entire If beams from happy human eyes to find ideal influences among the generation were placed before the Have moved me not; if morning skies, young people about you, who have choice of to have or to be with the Books, and my food, and summer rain most of them been hurt by too little Knocked on my sullen heart in vain,- sheltering and too much work. accent on the 'to have' and with a Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take, supercilious pity for the weak-minded And stab my spirit broad awake; "But to rich or poor, the bookshop idealists who still preached that 'be­ Or, Lord, if too obdurate l, and public library are open, an.d ing' was infini·tely preferable to mere Choose Thou, before that spirit die, filled, crowded with ... a variety A piercing pain, a killing sin, f • b 'having.' The bathroom with run­ And to my dead heart run them in! o companiOns- etween-covers. ning water became the grand and glo­ -Robert Louis Stevenson, They are all there, -the friends; the rious purpose of a life which no The Celestial Surgeott travels, the backgrounds, the influ- CONTENTS: Guide Posts to Clear Thinking......................................................... ......... 13 An International Handicraft Party ........................... , .. .. ............ HELEN PERRY CuRTIS 15 A Few Notes About Badges .............................................................. ··· .- ..... 16 Message for Our Twenty-First Birthday ................. .. THE CHIEF ScouT AND THE CHIEF GuiDE 17 An International Visit. The Juliette Low Memorial Encampment.................................... 17 Ed,i torial Items .............................................................................. 18, 19 Notes on Nature Study and From Our Mail Bag ..... .. ............... .'.. .... ................. ..... 20 A Singing Game, A Flag Game. 22 Around the Toadstool. Test Ganies .. .... 23 News and Notes of the National Equipment Service.................................................. 24 14 THE GIRL SCOUT LEADER ences, th<l outlooks you wish your children had . all rather the same sort of nourishment are Dr. Dolittle, waiting for you to find them on some book list, or in E111il and the Detectives, and Swallows and Amazons, by talk with some bookseller or librarian." Arthur Ransome. The last concerns, for instance, sail­ The address made by Mrs. Williams-Ellis to the Girl ing boats on a lake. The children have adventures which Guides Association should furnish particular encourage­ are just possible; it contains a good deal of highly cor­ ment in its appreciation of some of the American educa­ rect and practical information about nautical maneu­ tionaL material, as well as in its analysis of why children vres. But it represents wish-fulfilment as well. All is like different books at diff.erent ages: within the bounds of possibility, outside the bounds of "The very first form in which the child takes its un­ probability. And all of it is disguised. conscious nourishment is the nursery rhyme. Robert "Then another type of book is that which conveys Graves's Analysis of 'How Many Miles to Babylon' gives knowledge of the world .... Little Women is a classic one a new respect for nursery rhymes. They are the which exemplifies that side of children's reading. Tom repositories of an odd, fantastic sort of wisdom. A Sawyer is an example of wish-fulfillment plus knowledge great many folk stories are much too difficult for me to of the world. The Call of the Wild and Black Beauty analyze. I only know that children enjoy reading them belong to another type of book dealing with animals tremendously, and so do I. That, I think, means that which combines wish-fulfillment and knowledge of the the symbolism used is dear to my unconscious mind and world. Some Charlotte :M. Yonge comes in here, and that. I do , not have to ·trouble to translate it into con- the Nesbit books, to my mind some of the most perfect sc10usness. children's books ever written. The psychology is ex­ Mrs. Williams-Ellis goes on to point out that the tremely good, and the archaeology is, I believe, equally fairy tale often gives, in poetic and potent language, good . .. warnings about, deeprooted human questions-warnings "Then there are books of pure information-the Won­ tha:t cannot be given to children iri the ordinary sense der Books, Li,ving Races of Mankind, the, Science of but that they unconsciously receive in the form of im­ Life 1\nd others. L)lave contributed to that category agery, like the warning not to be ~ afraid of life but to myself-How You Began, Men Who Found Out, and grasp it boldly. so on. I would recommend two books that have just been published by Lippincott, Black on White and What Encouragement and W arnlng Time Is It? As examples of the clever presentation of "Then there are other things; people have sometimes facts to children, they are most interesting. They are objected that traditional stories were very bloodthirsty; translated from the Russian of Ilin ... I think they are like that because the world is like that. "In speaking of books of pure information I have only The world is in many ways a dreadful, cruel and horrible touched really on books on science and technics. Why.? I think it is because such selection represents the facts. place. None of my generation who have lived through Authors are writing, publishers are publishing, booksell­ the war can doubt that. The child lives surrounded by ers are selling, and children are reading more books that love and tenderness in its home and somehow, without give information on technics and on science than on any disillusion, has to realize what the world outside its other subject ... In a school which devotes an average home is .... There is an abysmal remark in a Russian time to science, you will find that the proportion is an fairy tale. The prince goes to the wizard and says, hour a week, and in most schools children learn nothing 'There is the tower! Shall I go there?' The wizard says, 'Fair Prince, if you enter the tower you will regret about industrial and technical processes--children living it. If you do not enter the tower you will regret it.' in a world where everything they see almost is the result of applied science, and of applied technics! I believe it Well, real life is like that, we know it. But that is the sort of thing we dare not and rightly dare not tell our is part of the duty of education to make the world com­ children in bald words. But the poets-for they were prehensible to the child ... I think, by the way, we have poets who wrote these folk-lore stories-they can tell, a good deal to learn from America in the matter of pro­ making the harshness of the world noble, giving our ducing children's books, particularly those giving infor­ children encouragement and warning. mation ... "Later on comes the desire for wish-fulfilment sto­ Provisioning the Child's Mind ries ... power stories. And that is where the first con­ flicts come about between teachers or parents and their "A last word from the parents' point of view . You children; that is the stage to which one of my children may say: 'Well, what is the good of it all? Do we really has got most emphatically just now.