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The books that matter aren’t in the library
I know this is going to sound like a walked-uphill-two-miles-both-ways-to-school-in-a-blizzard story, but this Globe and Mail article made me do it. It concerns People for Education’s annual lament about the decline of school librarians.
I know what I learned when I went to school in a northern Ontario town in the fifties and sixties, and I know what my children learned when they went to school in the eighties and nineties and, trust me, I got a far superior education. My impression is that today’s public school kids are getting about the same as what my kids got 10-15 years ago, that is to say they too are being cheated.
Yet my elementary schools had no library, let alone a dedicated librarian. They also lacked a gym, a school nurse, consultants, subject specialists, a vice-principal, ESL teachers, secretaries, teaching assistants, resource teachers, money for field trips - indeed all the staff they had were classroom teachers, a janitor, and a principal. Class sizes were in the range of 35-40. And yet we were all taught and we all learned.
To me it’s ridiculous to play the violin about kids who can’t learn as well because they don’t have access to a school librarian. If People for Education really cared about kids’ education, they would be focusing on the things that really matter - teaching methods and materials.