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 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.

What message is Roosevelt trying to convey?

A.
A higher priority is needed on learning rather than material concerns.
B.
Parents and children need to be educated about the value of books.
C.
There needs to be greater effort put into teaching children how to read.
D.
Libraries are necessary because they improve people’s overall quality of life.