Indeed. A love of reading for pleasure is one of the greatest things you can give to a child. A prinary school without a library is like a football club without a ball.
25 Apr 2023
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Look, I'm not anti books. I read a lot. But it seems somewhat anachronistic to spend tens of thousands per school to stock it with books when there are lots of other demands on that same money, and lots of more efficient ways to engage and harness children's imaginations.
Your children are adults. Like it or not, this is a different world. It's great that kids discover a joy of reading and we should absolutely encourage it, but "a library in every primary school" is gammon feed. There's a reason there isn't a library in every primary school any more.
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My son left school 3 months ago!
So zee we give every kid a kindle loaded with a selection of suitable books?
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Good luck fostering a love of reading. Florida* appears to drain all the fun out of reading during Middle School. By the time they get to me (and this is advanced studies, mind) many of them all but refuse to read.
*And, anecdotally, it doesn’t seem a lot better elsewhere.
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Money.
Libraries are perfect when every child doesn't have a Kobo (they can connect to central libraries in a way that Kindles cannot). It's not realistic to expect a kid to read a book on a computer screen. Bad for the eyes anyway, but they will absolutely do something else with their computer time.
And I'm really not very gammon despite meeting a lot of the demographic qualifications.
A lot of kids learn best in environments like libraries, and homogeneous education isn't going to be effective. Definitely not for every kid, but excellent for those that benefit. -
Fuck reading books for a bit. Time to get on the internet and learn Guerrilla warfare.
Chicago: Only joking NSA!
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My kids are 9 and 4 and have never ever looked at a book on a screen. My 9 year old absolutely loves reading and his bedroom is full of books and he also has a reading book he goes through at school. We can’t be only ones as there are two bookshops in a smallish town.
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I hope they will also have a librarian in them. Reading is crucial and just reading what is fed to you by an algorithm is a terrible idea, but rifling through a series of shelves with a knowledgeable person to help guide you when needed is an opening to worlds.
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Quite. The utility of this idea depends rather heavily on whether a library is a room with books in it, or a room with books and a librarian in it.
Russ’ position it seems to infer it is the former. Yes.. most kids have access to near-unlimited reading material online.. but, as the world is realising, good and hard, they don’t have anyone helping them navigate it.
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"Have a copy of The Fountainhead."
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There was some merriment, and some serious point in my post.
I had a librarian, they inspired me to read Tolkien and understand the library classification system. It was a pleasant enough diversion at the time. I can't honestly say that there were any tangible lasting benefits from it. I was already reading books.
But there was only three TV channels at the time, the internet was but a distant dream....video games hadn't even been invented.
In all honesty (and I do work in the education sector to a degree), I'm not sure that I would recommend widely reading books recreationally, as one of my top 100 tips for advancing your prospects in the modern world. There's a bit of a boomerish tendency to think that failing to do the things that we did fifty years ago to equip us for a successful and prosperous life is what's wrong with the world.
But it isn't.
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But libraries are about far more than reading books. They are repositories of information, and Librarians are trained to help navigate that. Of course, a bunch of primary school libraries aren’t going to be full of journals and newspaper archives for all the seven year olds… but they would be more than just books and having people there to help kidsunderstand where they can look for information and how to handle what they find seems… good?
What with kids today growing up with multiple of of magnitude more information available to them than the likes of us… and just look at how well our generations are handling this shift in matters. Don’t you think a different approach might be worth trying?
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I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the value of reading for pleasure, especially fiction. Agree with Tricky that this may not advance your prospects, if by prospects you mean financial reward, but it will immeasurably advance your chances of being a bright, sensitive, empathetic person able to make sensible decisions, contribute to your world and be well liked, loved even, by your family and others.
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Depends what you read, and what you take from it.
Personally I think that recreational reading libraries are best served at the community, not the individual school level. Bear in mind schools don't have playing fields, or the money to provide text books, or writing materials. Too many Kids are in food poverty, subject to severe mental health problems without access to support. Community libraries should be available online with access to the range of information like British standards, in the way that private (university) libraries are. Sourcing information and referencing them should be an integral part of education. Integrated with community level resources for book lending and provision of specialist librarian services.
Smells more like a sop to nostalgic old folk, rather than actually addressing important missing components of education for young people. Not sure a room with a limited collection of books and a personnel overheard that the current funding model for ordinary schools can ill afford solves many real world problems.
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I see that the autocrat elect, part of a clear project to propagate fascism and division, using lies and bigotry to split us into ineffective special interest groups, is whining about being called out in the mildest possible terms through the use of "hurty words" (objectively defendable accusations).
