When the class had had enough of talk and settled down to real study and investigation, they discovered that the information they needed was often hard to get. Seldom could they find a textbook which served their purposes. Perhaps out of a dozen textbooks they could gather valuable data, but they soon learned that libraries must be searched for all sorts of books, reports, bulletins, pamphlets. The materials collected in advance by the teacher were useful, but often essential knowledge was not to be found in print at all. This forced investigation away from the school building. Sometimes men and women came to the school to tell the class what it wanted to know, but more often the teacher and students went out into town and country to see and learn at first hand.

To find pertinent and accurate information on many of the topics or "units" chosen for investigation was a pressing problem for the teacher. His resourcefulness was severely taxed. In this dilemma he was helped by attendance at Workshops²⁸ in the summer. Here, with other teachers having the same problem, be prepared for each unit a file of materials to be used by him and his pupils when the need arose. Thus he was partially prepared for the new work.

He turned eagerly to motion pictures and radio for further materials of instruction, and in them he found content of great usefulness. By looking ahead and planning carefully, the group could capitalize upon an important radio broadcast. Much more practicable, however, is the use of radio recordings which are becoming systematically available. The recording can be used whenever, it contributes to the study of the topic at hand. Likewise, motion pictures call he used when the theme of the picture is pertinent to the study under way. The great possibilities of these two new means of learning are only beginning to be realized, but already the teacher and his students have found them invaluable.

As the new work has developed during the last two or three years, the teacher's file of materials for each unit has grown larger and richer. In fact, there is now so much in the file that no class can use all of it. This is as it should he, for it affords a range of study and investigation for each succeeding group of boys and girls whose needs may differ in some respects from the present group.

The school library, also, is adding constantly to its store of useful reading matter. But it is now not only a library of books, bulletins, reports, and the like; it is a library of reproductions of great pictures, drawings, sculpture, models, specimens, motion picture films, and radio recordings. The school librarian is no longer the forbidding guardian of the sacred books; she has become just about the most useful person on the school staff. She shares with teachers as new units are planned and brings to the classroom, as well as to the library, a wealth of materials garnered from the four quarters of the earth.

If the reader is a teacher, he or she may be saying that these things cost money and that they are possible only in schools that have abundant financial resources. Teachers in the Thirty Schools would reply that the resources needed are not so much financial as creative. The teacher who sees the need of such material things usually has resources of mind and spirit sufficient to find ways of securing essential things. Much of the most valuable printed materials of instruction may be had free of charge from agencies of local, state, and federal government. Citizens are glad to give their services. Parent and student organizations raise funds in various ways. Their help can be enlisted. In some of the Thirty Schools each pupil contributes annually a dollar or two to a fund which makes possible rich resources for students' investigation and learning. Even those schools with the most limited financial resources found ways of overcoming difficulties caused by the dearth of materials of instruction.

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