What Libraries Mean to the Nation
by Eleanor Roosevelt
I have lived a great deal in the country, in a state which prides itself in spending much money on
education, and I am quite sure that some people think there is no lack of education and no lack of
library facilities, and sometimes I long to take people and let them see some of the back country
districts that I know, in New York State. I know one place in the northern part of the state where I
camped for a while in the summer, and I went to the school and talked to the teachers. They are using
school books which have been passed down from one child to another. They have practically no
books outside of the textbooks. The children in the district are so poor and some of them so pathetic
that I suppose the struggle to live has been so great you could not think much about what you fed the
mind, but I came away feeling that right there, in one of the biggest and richest states in the country,
we had a big area that needed books and needed libraries to help these schools in the education of
the children, and, even more, to help the whole community to learn to live through their minds.
We are doing a tremendous amount through the home economics colleges to help people to learn
how to live in their homes, to better their standards of material living. We have got to think in exactly
the same way about helping them to live mentally and to attain better standards, and we can do it only
through the children. We can do ground work with the children; we must begin with them; but we have
got to do a tremendous amount with the older people.
I had a letter the other day which was pathetic. It was from a man who said he was 74 years old. He
wrote to ask me to see that the adult education classes in that particular community were not stopped,
because it had meant so much to him to learn to read. He did not think that I could understand what it
meant never to have been able to understand a word on the printed page. He said, "I am not the only
one. My next door neighbor is 81 and he learned to read last winter, and it has just made life over for
us." It gave you the feeling that there is a good deal of education that is not being done in this country,
in spite of all that is done.
We have come a long way. We have done a great deal, but we still have a lot that can be done to
improve our educational system, and we still have a tremendous amount to do with our libraries. We
have got to make our libraries the center of a new life in the mind, because people are hungry to use
their minds.
Which statement best captures the main argument of this speech?
A.The nation has done much work to establish libraries and to improve the education system and the standard of living of its people.
B.We need to improve the education system so that more people get the opportunity to read and enhance their knowledge.
C.The country should have more libraries with books specially tailored to meet the needs of the elderly.
D.Many people in the country do not take full advantage of the libraries and schools available to them.