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HISD to eliminate librarians and convert libraries into disciplinary centers at NES schools
Not worth a post as top level thread on it's own; but hilariously dystopic enough to post here. It's only one (admittedly large and important) SD, but this is the type of shit Margret Atwood would write about as a totally out there thought experiment.
Hopefully enough people get mad it stops there.
Can somebody please steelman the case for libraries at all? Certainly there was a time when writing things down on dead trees was important, and publishing a book was an important way of contributing to the collective knowledge, but that just isn't the case anymore.
The libraries should be removed from every school, certainly the people with "library science" degrees should be removed, and the space should be used for something more in line with the original intent. Every school should get a few H100s, make a more advanced computing lab, put a CNC mill in there, etc. Libraries should basically be very well funded makerspaces at this point, not shelves of useless books.
I guess I get a library as a sortof throwback to something that was needed a long time ago, but at this point books are like vinyl records. Cool, and I love them, and dream of having a massive library in my home some day, and I am a compulsive book buyer, but...not really necessary for a school. In addition to that, it seems like L I B R A R Y has become some sort of cultural importance for the left, where scary book burning or book bans has become somehow meaningful to them.
Get rid of the libraries. Replace them with materials science labs or something cool.
Steelman: Others have brought up the tactile pleasures of physical books. A library isn't just a storehouse for books; it's a hub for curated information. Yes, so much information is available online, but 90% of my searches are garbage and a good chunk of the rest is unsourced or does not attribute its sources, and often badly needed a proofreader. Not to mention all the wingnut conspiracy nonsense that a discerning searcher has to be able to distinguish from a valuable and competent piece of writing. Most of the high quality stuff is locked down under paywalls. You can argue over whether it should be the case, but for now the current state of affairs throws up a lot of obstacles to a seeker of knowledge. "Free and open" internet is the wilderness without a map or guide.
So libraries curate. They manage books that have been through an editing and review process - not that there's not low quality junk but your ratio of low to high quality tends to be better. Because the books are physical, they can't be tampered with after they've been printed like epublishers do - it's a fixed text. Regarding online writing, libraries get subscriptions to get you behind those paywalls and help provide access to high quality online sources. If you're lucky, your library will have a friendly specialist to help you do your research, point you to the right sources, and even give classes on internet literacy and basic computer skills. Many libraries host author talks, social events, STEM programming, ESL classes and support, and I've even seen workshops on things like doing your taxes and preparing a will, financial literacy kind of stuff. And this is all free.
Generally, librarians have an important job as curators of a repository of humanity's knowledge. Now because it's curated, that can have drawbacks because you have to ask who is doing the curating and with what ideological bias. That's a fair question to consider but I do have two rebuttals. Number one, there are practical considerations. Libraries have to make decisions all the time about which books to buy and which books to keep simply because there is a finite space in which to keep them. Sometimes these decisions may be ideologically driven but more often I think it's just a matter of logistics. I believe they also have certain understandings with publishers which influence what new books are even offered or made available to them. Number two, thank god for the internet because when there is a book the local library doesn't carry, for whatever reason, Amazon is only a click away. There are very few books that are truly banned as in, impossible to get anywhere. If they're out of print it might take some searching, but my point is that libraries aren't the only source for books, as you point out, so the amount of handwringing over them not carrying this or that book does seem a bit overblown.
None of this is specific to school libraries, by the way. I just think this is getting a bit long but obviously there are further considerations when presenting material to minors and who decides what's appropriate. That's a very thorny issue IMO but it doesn't seem to be a factor in this case.
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even if they had no practical purpose whatsoever, a civilized society ought to have libraries. any decent people would understand this point intuitively.
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Libraries are a more romantic and sensual place to interact with words than a computer screen is. I have had dreams about being in libraries full of arcane knowledge, I cannot remember ever having had a dream about surfing Wikipedia. You yourself say that you dream of having one.
I think that what we should really get rid of is mandatory education. It is a day care program dishonestly masquerading as an educational system and it packs kids into close contact with each other right at the age at which most of them behave more like chimpanzees than at any point before or after in their lives. To force this on people is fundamentally abusive. School also trains kids that what they should expect from life is to be closely observed and trained by bureaucrats. And in the age of the Internet, school is also near-irrelevant as a source of learning when it comes to anything above very basic math and reading skills.
Tear down the mandatory education system.
@VoxelVexillologist said below that classroom discipline is red-coded. I disagree. Some boring bureaucrat loser disciplining a bunch of kids into sitting still and listening to him drone on and on is at least as blue-coded as it is red-coded. Sure, maybe classroom discipline supported by a threat of violence is somewhat red-coded (and abusive), whereas classroom discipline maintained by nagging and shaming is more blue-coded (and also abusive, just not as much), but the actual goal of the education system is not red-coded. Really the education system is neither blue-coded nor red-coded. It is corporate-coded. It keeps kids out of their parents' way so that they can work and it prepares kids for a dull life working the cogs of the machine.
A kid's proper response to the education system is to tell the teacher to eat a dick. When I read about school shootings, my usual reaction is to wish that the kid had just focused on shooting teachers and staff instead of gunning down fellow kids.
Do you really think the little darlings who use that language in schools (and they already do) are the kind who are going to educate themselves via the Internet? Maybe if it's about how to get drugs, guns and hos, but nothing that will be useful for paid employment or being a productive member of society.
I don't know where you work, maybe you can get a day's work done with people screaming at you to eat a dick every time you ask them have they that file, did they finish loading that pallet, etc.
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Beautifully said! The mandatory education system is, along with factory farming, one of the most horrible moral abuses of our day. It's incredible how ordinary people just paper over the horror that kids must deal with, and think throwing more money at the problem will solve it.
Tear. It. Down!
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I've had dreams about trying to look up information on a smartphone. It's frustrating because I can't look up anything in a dream that I don't already know.
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Steelman: books are in fact cool, and zoomers would benefit from touching something that doesn't have a screen in it.
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Steelman: every librarian should be a wise old man who can tell you stories and has lists and lists of books for every possible personality type and interest. He should be on call throughout the day for anyone who wants to chat about a book or author. This would motivate children to read, and influence them toward good books!
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I can't imagine how jealous I'd be as a postgrad at some university if high schools were getting more H100s than me... Just stick them in the cloud for the best high-schoolers in the country to use if they can!
Books are useful for children, for developing reading skills if nothing else. Where else are they going to develop vocabularies? Tiktok? Libraries should be modernized, maybe some Kindle e-readers would be more economical. Webnovels, manga, whatever... temples to the written word are still relevant today.
Okay this is fair. Maybe a library for children's books? (I'm thinking like...5 years old and younger?)
This is kindof the world I want. Some cool resources are available to high schools to the point that it makes other's jealous. Noboyd on earth is jealous of a high school library. Change that and make the "library" something cool/something to be proud of!
Why just five years and younger? Reading skills develop long after that. I can't imagine anyone here would endorse any other policy which is even remotely adjacent to "schools should not teach anything beyond what can be mastered by a 5-yr-old." (Note that I am not saying you are advocating that. Only that what you are advocating is adjacent thereto).
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I don't know about anyone else but while I learned to read in early grade school, I developed my reading skill and vocabulary between maybe 12-18 reading adult fiction, plenty of it borrowed from libraries.
I don't see the purpose of people with degrees in "librarian science" though.
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