The opening of Preface
The Junior High School offers exceptional opportunity for relating literature to life. In addition to the aesthetic and ethical purposes, long recognized in the study of literature, the World War emphasized the need for an extension of aims to include the teaching of certain fundamental American ideals. To marshal the available material, setting it to work in the service of social and civic ideals, is to give to literature the “central place in a new humanism.” When we organize reading in the schools with reference to the teaching of ideals—personal, social, national, and patriotic—we “put the stress on literature as one of the chief means through which the child enters on his intellectual and spiritual inheritance.” Outstanding among these ideals are: freedom, love of home and country, service, loyalty, courage, thrift, humane treatment of animals, a sense of humor, love of Nature, and an appreciation of the dignity of honest work. In a word, to provide a course in the history and development of civilization, particularly stressing America’s part in it, is the present-day demand on the school.