| Read
Any Good Books Lately? |
I
try to keep my personal opinion out of my work. It's vital that news stories
be as objective as possible, especially given the near-total lack of objectivity
in broadcast news stories.
But sometimes
a story comes along in which it's hard to keep my opinion quiet. Fortunately,
it's the kind of story where the numbers speak for themselves.
I've spent the
week working on a piece about school libraries. Now if you think back to
your school library, do you remember it as being mostly useless, filled
with outdated, boring books? You'd be right.
But some school
libraries go beyond boring and outdated to truly frightening:
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In a book called "Women at Work," found in
a Tarzana, Calif., library, there are seven occupations open to women:
librarian, ballet dancer, airline stewardess, practical nurse, piano teacher,
beautician and author. I didn't see "reporter" on the list.
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In another, "Colonial Life in America," plantation
life is depicted as idyllic, with happy slaves working in the fields. "A
plantation was like a village," it said. "Slaves had their own cabins."
Even by 1962, they should have known better than that.
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There is no shortage of books referring to
East and West Germany, marvelous up-to-date books like "Meet Soviet Russia."
There's a great review of Communism, describing the Communist plot to take
over the world.
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Don't get me started on the careers sections.
One book about postmen, found in Hanover Park, Ill., predated the introduction
of the ZIP code. I didn't even know there was a time before ZIP codes.
Another, called "Airline Stewardess," states that part of the job is "keeping
that waistline slim and those pounds down."
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My favorite has to be the 1962 "How Families
Live Together," a charming picture book that explains that Mother stays
home with the children while Father goes off to work. A Philadelphia library
kept THAT beauty on the shelves.
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Here in my local school district, the science
section included a book called "What a Boy Can Do With Electricity." Leaving
aside the various prospects I imagine in my filthy mind, there is a slight
gender inequality. Anything a boy can do... well, let's just leave it at
that.
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Other science and technology books describe
a computer as "so big it fills a room the size of a basketball court" and
breathlessly forecast that one day, man will walk on the moon.
Some of them are
just plain funny. But the humor fades when you read about a 1994 study
in Colorado, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, that concluded
that students at schools with better funded libraries tend to achieve higher
average reading scores, whether their schools and communities are rich
or poor and whether adults in the community are well or poorly educated.
I never had much
use for my school libraries. They were completely useless. The fiction
sections included the French translations of "Les Miserables," but try
finding a Harlan Ellison or Orson Scott Card novel. Stephen King, of course,
would never be found.
I remember that
in my senior year of high school, I studied from a sociology textbook that
referred to women as "the weaker sex" and informed me that mothers have
a greater effect on children than fathers because they were home with the
children all day while the men went off to work. Poor Al Gore. He took
so much flak for that supposed statement that fathers do have an effect
on their children. Everyone dismissed it as blatantly obvious. Except that
they were still teaching that tripe in 1992, weren't they?
So when I started
crunching the numbers, I expected to be disgusted. In fact, the average
expenditure for school libraries the year I graduated from high school
was about $8.50 per student. That's about one paperback per kid. The local
schools were spending about half that, all the way down to one district
that spent 90 cents per child.
How do they justify
this? I read books when I was a child - hell, I lived books, breathed books.
My parents gave up grounding and television restrictions as punishments
early on - they had to take away my books to punish me or I'd never behave.
Go to my room? Oh, yes, please!
When you look
at the amount of money school libraries spent on books over the past 50
years, you see that when adjusted for inflation, they peaked around 1973
and have declined ever since. That's why so many books in the libraries
date back to the 1960s and 70s - that was when there was money from the
federal government for library books.
But what
about alternatives? you ask. Grants, state funds, price breaks? Of course.
Block grants are given to state school boards, and some of those state
boards send the money on the school districts for books. But many of them
direct them to school construction programs, busing, etc.
Private grants
are plentiful - and they come with strings attached. You have to fill out
these forms, you can only buy these books, and by the way, you do have
filtering software on your computers, don't you? Civic organizations will
donate books sometimes, based on their own political agendas. Yes, the
local Veterans of Foreign Wars will donate books, but you can bet they
won't be "The Tragedy of Vietnam" or "A History of the Anti-War Movements
in America." Private citizens will donate books that have been collecting
dust in the attic for 20 years and feel very good about themselves. This
doesn't help update the collectons.
But surely schools
get a break from the book companies, right? Surely they don't pay
full price like the rest of us.
Surely...
According to
the librarians I talked to, schools get a pitiful discount, often no better
than 20 percent, since each library only buys a few copies of a specific
title. Barnes and Noble has a better deal.
It's hard to
get too angry with the school districts. I've covered them for years, and
I know the problems they have to wrestle. Too many senior voters who remember
their schools fondly - from 30 years ago - and refuse to vote in a raise
on their property taxes to bail out schools fighting very modern problems.
One local district spends less than $2 per student on library books - and
hasn't been able to increase its tax rate in nearly 20 years.
There's one person
trying to help the situation. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) has introduced an
amendment to the massive education bill pending in Congress that would
provide $500 million in direct federal funding for school library book
purchases. It's the first time since the glorious 1960s that the federal
government will give money directly to schools for the books, according
to the American Association of School Libraries. Of course, the education
bill is hopelessly stalled in the House.
People love to
scream and yell about the illiterate children in American schools. Is it
any wonder? Who among you, when a child asks for a book, gives her "Women
at Work?" |
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