I spent a good part of my high school years in the school library at St. John’s Prep in Danvers.
I remember when I first discovered it — they have a whole library? Just for the students, I thought? We didn’t have anything like a school library at the Catholic parish grade school that I had previously attended. We barely had enough seats in the classrooms for all the kids.
I was a freshman at The Prep and I hadn’t done research yet so I didn’t fully understand all the reasons for a school library. But when I didn’t make any of the athletic teams I tried for, I very soon landed in the library during my study hours or when I had missed the early bus, or a ride home with the teacher who lived in my neighborhood.
The St. John’s library was on two levels and to this day, I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Jutting out into the sunshine of the school’s back parking lot, it was like a part of the school that wasn’t the school. A part of the school that was a world unto itself.
I had other pastimes during high school.
I was on the school paper, and the yearbook staff too. But those entities were dominated by more self-confident kids. I was very definitely most comfortable in the hours and hours I spent by myself reading in the library.
That library had everything. First I went through all the faraway newspapers and magazines that I had heard about but could never afford to buy at the newsstands in my hometown.
Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, they were all there. If I remember correctly, even some alternative publications like the old Boston Phoenix and The Village Voice. By the time I got to college, the alternatives were definitely there.
But it wasn’t just periodicals. There were all kinds of atlases in the school library about history and science and geography. As nerdy a kid I was, I pored over them all — especially reading political features like the ins and outs of George McGovern’s quixotic 1972 anti-war campaign for president, or maybe all about the tribes in the Amazon jungle who wore very little, if any clothing. That was a revelation!
I was surprised to learn that the school librarians were there to teach me how to use the card catalog, enabling me to find books in the stacks by myself, even when I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for.
It was a different era, of course.
There were no computers between 1966 and 1970 when I attended high school. Certainly no internet. The idea of an electronic device whereby you could reach the worlds of politics and history by typing on a keyboard at your desk would have been unfathomable to me.
The St. John’s Prep library, and the college and public libraries I used afterwards as a newspaper reporter and then as a columnist, didn’t make me a good reader. I was already a good reader when I discovered the libraries.
What the school libraries did make me was a confident reader. They made me a student who knew there was a large, large world out there beyond my childhood reading. My books during grade school had mostly consisted of childhood fare like the Hardy Boys mysteries or Lives of the Saints that my mom and dad had purchased for me. We were a Catholic household. The Lives of the Saints were big!
So it was with some despair this week that I read Colin Hogan’s important story about the demise of school libraries in New Bedford, Fairhaven and Dartmouth.
It’s not just a South Coast problem, of course; it’s a nationwide dilemma, and like everything else with public education, it’s significantly worse in low-income and minority school districts than in affluent ones
I have known for a while now that public libraries were struggling. I’ve been at a government meeting or two where some penny-pincher would stand up and ask why we even need libraries anymore. Everyone can get anything they need through the computer, went the arguments.
That’s a canard.
It’s certainly not true that one can get everything one would ever want to read online.
Internet access is definitely not the same as a free public or school library. First of all, everyone can’t afford the same internet access, and beyond that, many online archives, as they exist, have even more gaps in what’s available than the average library.
I’ve also heard the arguments that school literacy specialists and media centers are doing all the things that libraries and librarians used to do, and more. That classrooms have their own libraries these days and computers too, with their own ample assortment of book selections and access to online books.
I don’t think that’s the same.
First of all, teaching literacy is not the purpose of a library. Amplifying literacy is the purpose.
The school’s library is not solely a place for instruction. It’s a place dedicated to books and the internet for its own sake. It’s a place of refuge and a place of adventure. It’s a place of choice that is often the opposite of required reading and learning.
Libraries exist as a place to get away from the practical and solely what’s good for you and necessary. And this is so, even in a computer era, in which those powerful little information machines are as important as the library stacks.
In my opinion, a contemporary library needs to exist as a place apart. A place to get away from the teachers and administrators and to be lived and enjoyed on its own terms.
Computers, printers, books, periodicals and maybe most important of all, professional librarians are the sorcerers who can guide both our young and old through this magic world of the printed, and yes, recorded audio-visual word.
Email columnist Jack Spillane@jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.
I went to Roosevelt Middle School from 2002 until 2005 and that was my first experience with a library. I remember as a kid, going there after school and taking out a myriad of different books. I found biographies of my favorite pro wrestlers, Tom Clancy stories, and Star Wars books. There was so much there. I discovered Catcher in the Rye and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Reading this article, I’m shocked that they apparently don’t have a library anymore. It made me genuinely sad.
I am pleased to inform you that I am a current student at RMS. We don’t have a library at the moment, but I am working to get it up and running again for a project in my civics class. My goal is to bring enough attention to this issue so that the library can be reopened soon or an equivalent alternative can be found, allowing all future students to flourish and enjoy it.
“Amplifying literacy” is absolutely a huge part of the job, especially given that there are so many more distractions than ever before. Recommending books and getting kids to read consistently is a huge part of what we do at Dartmouth Middle. It’s a team effort with myself, the literacy coach, reading specialists, and ELA teachers all working together to offer different opportunities like book buffets, book talks, book clubs both structured and unstructured, and whole class novels. For example, 8th grade (structured) book clubs just finished up and several students were reading Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; I knew there would be high demand for book two so I ordered several copies via delivery (we’re part of MassCat, a system similar to SAILS) in advance so I would be ready. I did the same for the sequel to Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk, which was also a book club choice. As the librarian it’s my job to anticipate what books students will want and be able to recommend/provide those books to keep kids reading!!
.ooo1 % of school age kids use libraries. Plan accordingly.
That is an inaccurate statement. Not sure where you got your statistic, or what to what population you are referring; but school library use is alive and well in many, many areas of the U.S.