Read the following excerpt from Eleanor Roosevelt's speech "What Libraries Mean to the Nation." 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
the textbooks. The children in
down from one child to another. They have practically no books outside of
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 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 d
to do a tremendous amount with the older people.
ground work with the children; we must begin with them; but we have
got
What message is Roosevelt trying to convey?