It shook me.
I thought I'd post it verbatim because public and school libraries are about to be attacked again in this province (Ontario), as they are around North America.
Dear Editor,
As someone who writes for children and
visits about forty or so schools in the GTA each year I was (as you can
imagine) alarmed at the story about the Windsor-Essex school board’s decision
to drop its libraries.
Yes, the library should be the heart of a school.
It should be a place where children go for information, for relaxation and for
support. Librarians are the original search engines, and can still do something
Google Chrome can’t… they can enter a discussion with the students about why
they are looking for something in particular.
Would you rather have a human being or an
algorithm helping you child write that essay on Leonardo da Vinci?
Some of the suppositions of the people
making these decisions have me really worried, because they seem to make sense.
There’s an assumption on behalf of the
school board, and of many people, that the book is a fading bit of nostalgia (a
term used by at least one educator in the Star). Computers are replacing books
as the source of literacy, the thinking goes.
As a writer, I can tell you that I don’t
miss the manual typewriter and I own an iPad and a Kobo. But the computer is
just part of an education puzzle. I’d like to point to the recent Forest of
Reading celebration which was held this week down at Harbourfront.
More than 8,000 school children packed the
site to celebrate their favourite authors. These are children who have been
raised to be computer literate from childbirth – children who have easy access
to video games, laptops, cell-phones.
Yet, books were held like cherished teddy
bears or held high as the winning books were announced. (It’s worth pointing
out that the press coverage of this was practically nil. How can we decry the
loss of a school library if we adults ignore the value of kid’s reading? C’mon
media, catch the wave.)
This is an event coordinated, supported and
celebrated by school librarians. The students qualified for the event by
reading most of the nominated books. These are not all high-achievers but a
real cross-section of the school system. And there were many kids in that crowd
who would fall by the wayside without the encouragement and guidance of the
school librarian.
Besides, who says the computer can’t find
its way next to the books in a well structured and well-SUPPORTED school
library?
I just returned from the TD Book Week tour
of Quebec. While there, I visited a number of loaded private schools. One thing
they all had in common, whether they were all-boys or all-girls… each had a
full-time librarian (or two!) They had iMacs set up at comfortable desks,
comfortable seating areas for the younger students.
Yes, they have the money to make that
choice. Maybe the question is, why doesn’t everybody?
Kevin Sylvester
Author/Illustrator
Toronto
May 16, 2011
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