Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts is a B-list prep school, old enough and rich enough to merit the appellation “elite,” but academically a cut (or two) below such first-rank institutions as Deerfield, Exeter, and Andover. If you have a spare $44,000 and you wish to unload Junior for grades 9-12, I suppose you might consider Cushing an option.
If you care about Junior’s education, however, you’ll want to think twice about sending him (or her) to Cushing. Why? Well, despite boasting all of the accoutrements of a traditional prep school, Cushing has decdied to embrace the Brave New World of educational trendiness and dispense with its library and the contents thereof.
This was one of those eye-rubbing announcements that sparks a double response: incredulity, first, followed closely by outrage and contempt. The October issue of The New Criterion has a note on the subject.
Thomas Parkman Cushing, who originally endowed the school, was careful to stipulate that it be provided, in addition to other accoutrements befitting an educational establishment, with a “suitable library.” James Tracy, the current headmaster, finds the whole idea of a library, and the objects they traditionally contain, positively quaint. Speaking to The Boston Globe, he actually said, apparently without embarrassment, “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.”
Where, I wonder, were Cushing’s Trustees when their school was being vandalized? Were they happy to sit back and watch as the intellectual center of the institution was eviscerated? How’s that for leadership?
The Globe reports that Cushing is “one of the first schools in the country to abandon its books.” Is this embrace of the new illiteracy a trend, for heaven’s sake?
The story seems straight out of the pages of some third-rate satire: “In pursuit of a ‘bookless campus,’” The New Criterion reports,
Cushing is disburdening itself of its library’s 20,000 books and spending $500,000 to establish a “learning center” — the name, the Globe reports, is tentative, but whatever they settle on you can be sure the scare quotes will be appropriate. Of course, once you dump a library’s books, you have a lot of extra space to fill, so Cushing . . . will be spending $42,000 for some large flat-screen monitors to display data from the Internet as well as $20,000 for “laptop-friendly” study carrels. In place of the reference desk, the Globe reports, Cushing is building “a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.”
The cappuccino machine is a nice touch, I think you’ll agree. Here’s the bottom line:
at a moment when American students are positively inundated with various forms of electronic media competing for, and eroding, their attention, an institution entrusted with (in Thomas Cushing’s words) “strengthening and enlarging the minds of the rising and future generations” decides to jettison one of civilization’s most potent aids in furthering that project. Fifty grand per annum for a school without books.
You really can’t make it up.
The obviously poorly read and intellectually shallow Barack Obama should have attended Cushing Academy. He would have felt right at home. Van Jones was happy at Yale because he did not have to worry about grades. The dude would have been delirious at Cushing. Harvard University has long been guilty of widespread grade inflation. It may also want to adopt a no book policy. So much money would be saved. Graduates like Obama and Caroline “you know, you know” Kennedy didn’t read them anyway. So what the heck?
Big mistake. MIT Media Lab study showed, years ago, that people make 40 percent more errors when proofreading on video displays than on hardcopy. What does that say about comprehension. Any editor worth his salt knows that it’s very dangerous to skip a final proof on printed paper – you always, always improve your draft. Finally, it’s just plain harder to read on screen than on paper – way to go Cushing.
What will happen to the books? Will they be sent to the Library of Congress, a landfill, burned? Why does the Library of Congress exist for that matter if this attitude becomes prevalent?
Would it be hard to believe that a young student having heard about Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, goes into the new “learning center” and asks about it (remember no more books) and is told that it is unavailable but here is a DVD of Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story.
What good are books when you have TV, an iPod, and the internet?
This doesn’t bother me in the least. 95%+ of the students have laptops, smart phones, and kindle-type devices. All the school’s curriculum and most of the library’s books are available on these devices, which is why they decided to do this in the first place. Why do you need a library when all the books can come to you instantly over the campus wi-fi? This article sounds like an old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
How can I get on the list to buy some of the books? I’ve been building my library with the intent of passing it on to some SYT after my demise. This would be a great way to expand it cheaply.
The books are being given away to the faculty. This is not a joke. That’s the plan.
Maybe they can get Google to scan them to Googglebooks. Or convert them all to voice format.
But I have to ask what benefit is there for a generation raised on text messaging in learning to read?
As a Kindle owner, I at first assumed Cushing was just replacing paper books with Kindles. That would have been a sensible though still potentially controversial decision.
I have to agree that replacing books with PCs for kids who can almost certainly already afford their own PCs makes little sense.
On the other hand, it’s nice that someone is giving this a try. In a year or two, they can serve as a good example for other schools to either emulate or avoid.
@ #2 George Beinhorn
Big mistake. MIT Media Lab study showed, years ago, that people make 40 percent more errors when proofreading on video displays than on hardcopy.
I took a course ten years ago which the prof teleconferenced to another school several hundreds away. We sat in a classroom with several big screens and could see the other class on one of the screens.
In accord with being up-to-date-in-Kansas-City, the professor required that all assignments be delivered via e-mail, for both in campus and long distance students. By the end of the semester, the professor had not handed back a single assignment. He also tried to be up-to-date by reading assignments from a screen instead of in hard copy, and typing in comments. He just couldn’t keep up with it. This was a professor who when dealing with hard copy assignments, returned them promptly and with copious comments. He was unable to do so with electronic documents.
Next semester he went back to students handing in hard copy assignments, with any long-distance students e-mailing it in and his printing them out.
I can curl up on a couch or in a lounge chair and spend hours reading a book. I am unable to do so from a computer screen. Regarding Kindle books, I don’t know.
progressives in a conservative/traditionalist occupation.
I cannot read unless I am comfortably sprawled on a sofa or bed. Who ever heard of curling up in bed with a good flat screen monitor ?
Obviously these chaps haven’t thought through the impact on their collective carbon footprint from all the increased electronics usage. And they will rue the day when we cannot afford to generate enough electricity to charge our Kindle’s for more than an hour or two of use per day. When that happens, all us knuckle-draggers who pack around a dead tree copy of New Criterion will be quietly smiling to ourselves!
A tangential comment: New England has historically been the most literate region of the country, and one manifestation of that has been that almost every town, even the smallest, has had it’s own public library for over a hundred years. Some of these are tiny one- or two-room gems, testifying to the importance the people placed on learning and an educated citizenry. Follow the links and look at them all:
http://www.publiclibraries.com/massachusetts.htm
A PROJECT: Some talented photographer needs to travel all across New England and make an elegant coffee table book with photos of all these beautiful places, each one a tiny temple to American culture, history, and civilization. This needs to be done now, before the barbarians eliminate them.
I cannot read without being comfortably sprawled on a sofa or bed. Who ever heard of curling up in bed with a good flat screen monitor ?
I believe every generation should have access to books that were old when their grandfathers we young. As a teenager in the 1970′s I was browsing my high schools book collection when I came across a book on the British Navy published in Britian before WWI. In the back of the book I read that the luisitainia was listed as an Auxillary Cruiser in the Royal Navy. Just a few short months later Life magazine had a cover story on the sinking of the ocean liner by a German submarine. That book gave me perspective on the Life article that the other students didn’t have. Given the way data on the internet is edited, will the students of tomorrow be able to know anything? Or will have have to keep waiting for the latest revision of events by the internet “experts”.
The barbarians long ago forced the gate and are among us. If an expensive private education comes to this, imagine how long it will take for the already disgraceful public schools to follow suit.
Why does my mind go to the fire at the Library of Alexandria? Barbarians at the gates? More like barbarians in the ivory tower.
Please let me know where I can bid on the books of history, biography, and literature. Consider me the landfill for those books. It reminds me of ‘bag day’ at our public librarybook sales. Books – nothing reads better than a book!
Perhaps it will become the Learning Center of Congress.
My daughter was attending a small private school in California when the Board hired a “new wave” headmaster from Connecticut. He came in and made all sorts of “progressive” changes. Parents objected and a Board member said, “Well, if you don’t like it, you can withdraw your child.” They lost a third of the school. I wonder if that headmaster moved back to Massachusetts ?
I have books that I haven’t opened in years, but when I need to refresh some bit of knowledge, I remember the correct book and can look the item up. I look at many things on the internet, and sometimes drill down into an obscure site to find an item. But a day later, I can’t find that exact same place.
“All the school’s curriculum and most of the library’s books are available on these devices.”
That’s about as naive a comment as possible. No doubt you found your percentages on Wikipedia–if you didn’t just make them up because, you know, people who know nothing about research or libraries are just so intuitively smart.
Oh, Roger. You and Hilton do make a cute pair, but as silly as your bow tie. The contempt is so, so overdone and tedious. Though I can see the two of you as models for a darling salt & pepper shaker set–all ruddy cheeks and oddly shaped heads and other body parts.
What will happen to the books? Hey, if Cushing doesn’t want them I’ll take them.
Frankly this make sense, and yes I’m writing this from my laptop on my sofa
Bartleby, yes, I was thinking the same thing. Around where I live, we have enough power outages that depending completely on such things is foolhardy. We will never give up our land-line phone, which has never gone out despite numerous power outages.
It’s always a great idea to have a back-up system, and in the case of a library, that would be actual books.
Cushing . . . will be spending $42,000 for some large flat-screen monitors to display data from the Internet as well as $20,000 for “laptop-friendly” study carrels.
My children can read “data from the Internet” just fine right here at home. Why would I want to pay $44,000 to send them to Cushing?
In place of the reference desk, the Globe reports, Cushing is building “a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.”
There are eleven coffee shops within five miles of my house. So I’m still not seeing what I would get for my $44,000.
I’m all in favor of books. But frankly, libraries in the traditional sense are something of an anachronism. 20,000 books is fine, and maybe there were a few good ones in the bunch. But I’m guessing most of them hadn’t circulated in years. And books are cheap enough and available enough that even a “poor” kid at Cushing can get them easily and cheaply – surely much cheaper than paying salaries for librarians.
I think Kimball is taking a cheap shot here. It’s one thing to forward learning – yet another to retain 19th century technology.
MDV,
You make the assertion that ‘all’ of the schools library books are available in electronic format (PC, kindle etc.). Where is your data for such an assertion?
As an example, I pulled a copy of Essentials of Geology by Chernicoff, Fox & Venkatakrishnan from my bookshelf. It’s a relatively modern textbook published in 1997. Is this typical college geology text available for the kindle or PC?
BBB
Why worry about the books. If they duplicate what is in the Qu’ran, they are superfluous, if they contradict it they are in error.
The idea that one would sit alone and read books that differ from the approved official point of view is positively antisocial and dangerous. The next thing will be people actually thinking! Who knows where that will lead?
A book exist as a physical object that preserves opinions, novel ideas or objective truth. Each individual book is essentially a snapshot in time that exists until physically destroyed. Doing so has proven to be exceedingly inefficient to accomplish even with a massive physical apparatus that can reach into every household. A Gestapo.
Physical books can be owned and preserved as independent and decentralized objects that are not easily manipulated except through the printing of new editions to supplant the old over the course of the hundreds of years a book can exist. The ideas contained therein can stand as testaments to challenge any newspeak that is manufactured to supplant its existence.
Getting rid of books is essentially about seizing the ability to edit, suppress, or outright erase the past with but a few key strokes from some empowered and remote authority like we see being done with hosted streaming videos and HTML documents that can be disappeared in an instant or seamlessly replaced with a changed simulacrum.
Instantaneous revision of the past becomes ever more dangerously possible for those persons and institutions who may chose to do so for various often subtly manipulative reasons.
I see this dynamic nearly every day with regards to the often opaque revision of news items that too often end up being gutted of their original content and entirely changed during the course of a few short minutes through the pressure of targeted campaigns by those who dislike what the original piece either stated or inferred.
I see a fine wisp of parallels between this manifestation of the centralization of knowledge control and the recent barrage of remakes of culturally iconic movies. The remakes often piggyback upon the veneer of familiar past cinematic works to inject the ‘new’ iconic consensus as decided by those who would deign to decide what is best for us to think and learn. I’m reminded of the radios of National Socialist Germany that were manufactured to receive only state approved stations, but even then a state apparatus was required to find and remove the remaining free band receivers that some Germans bitterly clung to.
Already in the few short years that this emerging ability has existed, a simple google search for any past cultural object is already partially obscured by static from the new “remade” versions of the original. Danger lies in the increasing ability to in essence, google bomb the past out of existence entirely…But for the physical existence of books which cannot yet be switched off short of the invention of a paper or ink eating viral pandemic.
Alas Gleichschaltung becomes ever more efficiently achieved with smiley faced remote keystrokes and deprecated formats than it ever was through the old jack booted searches and burnings.
I suspect the singularity is gonna suck.
One step closer to a new dark age. Once all the schools get rid of these superfluous items known as books.
Bravo Monkeyfan. A book is indeed a physical object.
Ashburnham Massachusetts is a backwoods town in North Central Massachusetts. On December 11 to 12, 2008 we suffered the effects of an historic ice storm. Many residents were without power for 7 t 10 days.
I do not know if Cushing Acadamy has standby generators. If they do, good for them. Internet and cable service was out for even longer in certain areas (not as critical as electric service).
The best way for an ivory tower to stay literate, is to not through out the books.
I’m wondering when was the last time the commenters who agree with Mr. Kimball actually went to a library? The idea of libraries sounds great, but they aren’t particularly useful anymore.
Fifteen years ago I used to go to libraries all the time to do research. Now, google and citeseer are so far superior that going to a library is counterproductive. I buy a fair number of books, at least some of which I could borrow from the local library, but like the kids at cummings, I can afford to buy them and add them to my own personal “library”.
Times change and technology moves on.
The small set us of us reading this who have read Vinge’s Rainbow’s End are no doubt amused.
Not that we aren’t also terrified, for this is a tell that any good poker player would recognize through a locked door, but first we are amused. First we laugh, then we cry.
Roger, “you can’t make it up”…but you can certainly err in your research. You and the New Criterion seem to base your positions entirely on the flawed Globe article. Did you bother to read anything from Cushing Academy on this subject? Try http://www.cushing.org, for starters. Frankly, it was irresponsible for you and the New Criterion to attack this school without doing your homework.
I generally try to stay out of the comments section, figuring I’ve already had my say. But I would like to second #41 “John II”‘s suggestion that readers look at the Cushing web site at http://www.cushing.org. What do you find? A certain amount of backpedaling about how throwing out the library’s books does not really mean the campus is going “bookless” and a good deal of frothy nonsense like this empty peroration by headmaster Tracy:
“The future of learning is electronic, and it opens up possibilities for the democratization of knowledge that humanity has rarely dared dream before. The continuing reduction in cost and dramatic expansion in the availability of technology will soon put all of human culture in the palm of every student’s hand, from Boston to Bangalore. This is a different future, I grant you, but one that, if properly shaped for humanizing contingencies by pioneers such as Cushing Academy, holds the promise for extraordinary unleashing of human creativity and potential. The future is here at Cushing.”
You have to love the bit about “the democratization of knowledge” in tandem with “the future of learning is electronic,” as if it were computers, not people, who were doing the learning. As for “the future is here at Cushing,” surely headmaster Tracy should have thought twice before echoing Lincoln Steffens’s 1921 statement on his return from the Soviet Union: “have seen the future and it works.” We know now just how well it works.
I stopped reading comments at #25 and #26. Why?
They prove the point. They cannot make a point in writing.
Whatever they try to say comes out in a kaleidoscopic mish-mash of image fragments which they have for language.
Their teachers have gifted them with false precepts, no logic, no history and little hard science.
Only “you know”, “something ‘n’ stuff” and today’s version of “so’s yer old man” comes out when they try to speak or write. No idea, no relevance.
I doubt my kids would have gotten into MIT and Caltech attending a pseudo school like Cushing.
Not only wouldn’t I have paid a dime for such a school, but I wouldn’t let my sons go there if they paid me thousands of dollars.
The money I spent on private high school more than delivered the goods. After 4 years of tuition the best schools were chasing after my kids, can Cushing say the same?
Memo to Cushing parents – you’ve been robbed!!
Its good to see that 50 grand a year schools are doing ok in America. I went to a public school, but I was always jealous of those private schools in my neighborhood when I was growing up. We had almost everything they did, but everything they had was perfect. But they lost in all the sports competitions because they decided to play the lower class schools. I never figured out why. Maybe the parents and the school board secretly hated their own rich athletes…kind of a reverse bullying eh?…who knows. I was a quarterback on the ‘ner do well side and I always felt bad for them, which is something my team never understood. Good Luck to the rich kids !!
“When I look at a books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.”
Why stop at books? Get rid of the buildings too. And most or all of the teachers and administrators. Not just a “bookless campus,” but a campusless campus. Students can stay home and take classes online.
That would be carrying Cushing Academy’s first step into virtuality to its logical conclusion.
At least now the restriction of knowledge can come with a simple keystroke rather than a pile of burning books. Ever seen the edits on some of the “information” websites, everyone and their brother is adding and deleting and contradicting and opining. But hey, those sites have “fact checkers” to keep the really egregious stuff out, though one should ask where the fact checkers are getting their information.
For the money Cushing is spending on their library overhaul, they could have built a new wing and kept the library; why not offer both as alternatives, maybe even incorporate them in the learning process.
#35 Monkeyfan raises some unsettling points about the elimination of books. The move toward total immersion in electronic information seems very elistist which is what I guess you would expect from this kind of institution. And it is a first step because of course those elite know what is best for everyone else also.
But to think of how the printing press changed the course of mankind, how so much of the world does not have access to books much less computers, and now we have czars to control the media, its delivery, and consumption (read indoctrination), is more than worrisome. It won’t take long for teachers unions to catch the fever as they demand more computers for students as if that causes learning. In California, even with smaller class sizes and large spending per student, academic achievement continues to decline. But the problem is always “We need more money!” Yeah, right.
Even in third world countries, knowledge channels on TV are making their way into schools as if the fact that technology being used means that students will learn better, learn more. Some on this site are apostles to the technology train.
I worked in hi tech my entire career in California and think I understand the benefits and limitations of technology. Flat screens, computers and the internet do not replace good teachers and good books. Putting kids in front of a PC does not guarantee they will learn their writing, reading and arithmetic. We still need great teachers to teach and inspire. The internet can give you lots of data and lots of opinions but not necessarily useful information. Learning to think critically is another matter.
As a proud Kindle owner and user, some here might think I support Cushing’s decision.
I don’t.
The logic is simple: As handy and user-friendly as a Kindle is, and even though it’s much closer to reading paper than it is to reading a computer screen, the Kindle currently has one major debilitating flaw: there are millions of books not available for Kindle.
If and when the Kindle gets a lot closer–I mean 99% or more–to having every single book available, I might–MIGHT–support a decision like Cushing’s.
I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without books. Cushing’s student body is being cheated, not only of a proper education, but of the rich pleasure of holding a book in their hands, reading the words, and taking the time to mull over the ideas presented. It’s no wonder critical thinking is in short supply in today’s society.
Why not have both kinds?
See?
Eazy peazy Japaneze.
I remember dean Swift describing some very impressive educational improvements in Laputa. The Cushing trustees might find useful to review that on their Tweeter accounts.
Hurrah! I a have to hussle on over to that school and buy up (or pull out of the dumpster) all those “useless” vestigages of the past called “books.” For an old school they may have some choice titles in vintage binding.
For those who despair – be prepared to wear a social mask, to hide your nature (book reading, thoughtful, in my opinion – nature’s aristocrats) from the swine that will overrun society in general. Oh, and guard your children that they are brought up in the light and do not falter and marry swine.
Electronic libraries are at the nascent stage of their existence. It may very well take another twenty years before both the technological and legal issues are resolved. The current desire to get rid of paper libraries is way too premature. These advocates, in the back of their mind, actually desire to lower the standards of their institutions. They want to make it easier for everyone to obtain a degree behind their name. This nonsense is merely an example of out of control egalitarianism.
Re: Electronic books as “democratization of knowledge” and
#2″Big mistake. MIT Media Lab study showed, years ago, that people make 40 percent more errors when proofreading on video displays than on hardcopy. What does that say about comprehension.
Pesky thing, comprehension. From what I’ve observed, the goal of modern education theory is not comprehension but reaction–when you read, you are not supposed to grasp the thoughts of the writer but to react and relate the words to your own self-absorbed world. It’s not WHAT the author says but how you “feel” about it.
Pesky thing, those hard-copy books. Electronic books are much easier to edit to reflect the current party line. You thought that you read “x” in an online article contradicting the party line? You were mistaken, comrade. Check again. The words have been changed? Prove it.
As a graduate of Cushing (1979), my initial response was somewhat akin (akindle?) to much of the dismay expressed above. Long before my first day at CA I had been raised to respect, even revere books. I enjoy the sensuous nature, the tactile verity, of a book. And I’ve come to believe a vital measure of any school is the depth and breadth of its library. After some thought, however, it occurs to me that even if (as has been posited above) many books are not available with this or that particular technology, the depth and breadth of Cushing’s “library” has been expanded exponentially with this move. Add to this the fact that only about 30-or-so library books were ever actually in circulation at any given time (most of them reportedly childrens books among faculty families), and I can better appreciate the decision.
I’m impelled to ask myself what it is I’ve been respecting all these years, books as objects, or the knowledge within? If it’s the latter, and I hope it is, then I think we should embrace this experiment. The scrolls metaphor may yet prove apt.
Fahrenheit 451 might be closer than we think. Bradbury wasn’t concerned so much with censorship per se, but with how television (this was early 50′s) was reducing the art of reading to the collation of trivia devoid of context. The internet is doing this in spades.
Something else to think about as library dumping expands from the wealthy (who can afford books and alternatives anyway) to the poor – when all those libraries are gutted that literature will largely no longer be available to the people who can not afford their own internet access – which is by and large the inner city minority populations (black and hispanic). See, for example the Census figures) from 2007. Keeping a large block of voters illiterate and uninformed appears to be SOP on the Left.
The small towns of New England and the Midwest are littered with libraries, many of them minor gems — the ones that haven’t been flattened for handicapped access — but as far as my observation goes, their charm is mainly architectural. The shelves are stocked, for the most part, with ephemeral fiction and how-to books: stuff people really should buy themselves, and not have me buy for them. There are exceptions, thank goodness, but the idea of the local public library as a community collection of the canonical documents of civilization has largely evaporated, and it’s probably true that few libraries run on the old-fashioned basis would survive for long.
Mr. Ingram:
I am not a historian, but my understanding has always been that scrolls and books coexisted for quite a long time before scrolls became extinct. It’s even quite conceivable that many books were merely bound collections of scrolls.
However, a similar situation does not pertain with the Kindle or other electronic media and books. Books are still being printed in large quantities, even as a certain percentage are also being published in electronic formats (including Kindle).
When printed books start to give way to electronic books, then perhaps you’ll have a good parallel to the way scrolls gave way to books, but we are a long way from that. In the first place, there is no universally recognized format for electronic books. The Kindle format may be the leader, thanks to the backing of Amazon, but there are others out there. I suspect we will see a necessary “VHS-vs-Beta” battle in the next few years, with one emerging as the victor. After that, we might–MIGHT–see e-books outdoing print books.
Until then, this proud Kindle owner and user, I remain resolute in my belief that getting rid of old-fashioned libraries is a mistake of the first order.
(p.s. When is PJM gonna be available as Kindle blog? I can get NRO’s Corner wirelessly on the Kindle, but not PJM)
The world will be much advanced when the last sheet of paper is recycled.
It’s not about dumbing down the curriulum, it’s about individualizing education, by dumping the 500 year old lecture model in favor of individual pacing with the unlimited ability to instantly get answers to questions from knowledgeable (online) tutors and repeat tasks until mastery is achieved.
Viva the multi-media, interactive, searchable, linkable, instantly updateable, e-book!
The “advantage” of digital libraries is that they make it so much easier for information to disappear down the memory hole.
I teach a university course that uses an open-source textbook. PDF or HTML version are free, printed softcover is under $25. Typically, at the start of the course about 20% of the class decides to forego the printed copy. That number usually dwindles to about 5% by the time the second test is given.
Like it or not, students still appreciate a physical book. (And these are students who have always known the internet.) In addition, reading habits differ by medium. Cushing has made a very foolish decision.
1) I can calculate a square root by hand. I can, but I don’t.
2) When my friend asked his college adviser why he had to take physics to get into medical school, he was told, “Because no one wants doctor who can’t do physics.”
Lesson: It is not necessarily the information that we want from books, but people who can get that information if it is necessary – no matter what or where it is.
Do we want opinionated people or knowledgeable people, people who suppose, presume or accept without questioning or people who can quote a source, prove a point, or reject self-contradictory information?
Who do we want making policy? – someone who believes that “my opinion is better than your opinion” or someone who believes that my opinion and your opinion need to stand some test of veridicality or be tested for outcome.
Let us take the example of President Obama trying to pass a health care bill in August before Congress’ summer recess; yes, before the bill could be fully composed or read or in any way considered for its merits. Yes, indeed! That sounds like an example of a school without a library!
A library of 20,000 books for a prep school, or whatever Cushing is, is not terribly impressive. I have a largish library for an individual, of about 5,000 BOOKS. I’ll bet Cushing, center of intellectual chat around the cappucino machine, is counting the pamphlet file too in order to come up with “20,000.”
Maybe it will be an improvement, setting up a cappucino machine in the lobby. The kids can learn to be baristas onsite and at graduation go immediately to work at the nearest coffee shop.
Hard copies of originals or old printings also circumvent the clever bowlderizing, censoring, and otherwise political correctification of the works.
The Left cant wait to literally rewrite history.
Their latest effort, the burning of millions of childrens books accross the country (pre 1985 or some such so as to get rid of all those pre PC books), for the Orwellian stated purpose of protecting the children (from lead).
How about protecting them from ignorance?
Book burning as civic duty?
And so it goes…
Who needs Fahrenheit 451 when so-called educators will just toss the books away? If all you have access to is electronic, then it can be easily deleted and removed from your so-called library.
The stated cost of putting in the technology to sustain a bookless library is entirely misleading. That’s just the front-end cost. How much of the technology put in place will be useable in five years? In ten years? Every few years, all the technology (not just the laptaps) will have to be trashed and new stuff bought and installed.
63. CJ
I’ll second everything you said. I’ve seen this through the years with high school students as well. Reading a physical book cultivates different habits of mind. Online sources lead readers to hunt and peck, and it makes it very hard for a reader to absorb a complete thesis or explanation. It is an absolute fact that all of my best students have also always been the same students who were book readers.
And, the fact is, books are much more permanent. I have books on my shelves that I have owned since childhood. It isn’t just simply that books are durable, it is that they are also a permanent record. For example, I faithfully keep books. I also faithfully keep a file of links to online articles and essays that I enjoy. Everyone once in a while, I look back at one of those links and find that it has expired. For that reason, I often also save a digital copy on my own computer.
How much easier is it for a diversity of opinion and perspective, and even truth itself, to be lost when the written word can just disappear into the ether?
And why am I always afraid that there are people who encourage the shift away from physical books for exactly that reason?
I recommend some reading: Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and others have commented very convincingly that there is a strong relation between the type if media and the message being conveyed (“The medium is the message”).
There also is a very solid body of knowledge about screen reading habits. We are trained, or we train ourselves, to scan screens in a way that is distinctly different from what we do when we’re reading a book.
I propose that even if Cushing were to make electronically available all the books that they currently hold in their physical library, the learning that occurs would be different. That is, if any of the books are being read. I suspect that this is simply a way of throwing in the towel because the under-18 generation is largely aliterate.
I dunno. As an admitted book loon (the novelist Richard Price’s term), I’ve accumulated too many thousands of books – a fact that became all too clear when I had to move them to my new digs last November. After packing and carrying box after back-breaking box (some of which are still unpacked), I’m ready to curl up with a Kindle.
Fuggeddaboutit. My previous post, that is. I will NEVER be able to pass up a good used bookstore. Let the damn books pile up! Finally, it will be my kids’ problem.
First thing we do is kill all the lawyers or was it all the librarys?
I’ve been a librarian for 19 years, and I believe that the profession is going down the tubes. Libraries should adapt to some extent to the times and offer significant electronic resources, but most librarians seem to have lost the belief that accumulated wisdom from the past should be preserved for posterity, and that classics should be promoted. Also, the professional librarian organizations have been severely politicized for the last few decades, in leftist, politically-correct directions, which certainly doesn’t help.
Many public and even academic library book collections have been gutted in favor of space for more computers. What this usually means, which I have often seen firsthand in various libraries, is more computers in the library for users to play online games on, or to look at perezhilton.com, or to try to sneak some pornography. One great joy of library book collections used to be browsing and finding great gems on the shelves–something for which the online world doesn’t really provide a satisfactory alternative. Today, more public libraries are ripping out the older, meatier books and only keeping newer, dumbed-down material.
Also, library administrators today are often in thrall to such snazzy, nebulous features as “Web 2.0,” or are obsessed with providing a more “user-friendly environment” for patrons by adding coffee machines, etc. It seems that many librarians feel they have to jump on the latest technology, and that’s where so much of their energies are expended. Its a very sad state of affairs, and Andrew Carnegie must be spinning in his grave.
Something we can agree upon, Biblio. I have great difficulty passing up any book store, used or new. I do check to see if the books are available on Kindle, but there are still quite a few very good books that aren’t. So, I still spend a big chunk of my paycheck on used books.
Re: #66 – here’s a link to the City Journal article on the Consumer Product law implemented earlier this year, the one that mandates the removal of pre-1985 children’s books from public schools & libraries:
The New Book Banning by Walter Olson
http://city-journal.org/2009/eon0212wo.html#
Quote from City Journal: “People who deal in children’s books for a livelihood now face unpleasant choices. Valerie Jacobsen of Clinton, Wisconsin, who owns a small used-book store and has sold over the Internet since 1995, commented at my blog, Overlawyered
(http://overlawyered.com/2009/02/cpsia-what-will-be-enforced/#comment-39954): “Our bookstore is the sole means of income for our family, and we currently have over 7,000 books catalogued. In our children’s department, 35 percent of our picture books and 65 percent of our chapter books were printed before 1985.” Jacobsen has contacted the CPSC and her congressional representatives for guidance, but to no avail. “We cannot simply discard a wealth of our culture’s nineteenth and twentieth children’s literature over this,” she writes. She remains defiant, if wary: “I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I’d love to run a black market in quality children’s books—but at the same time it’s not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before.”
Cushing & its elite students are just leading the way to that brave new world without books.
One more thing, why on earth do 9th graders require cappucino while reading their computer screens? Does the average 14 y/o boy really need that shot of caffeine? Fine if they want it but methinks the fancy coffee is for the comfort of the Cushing adults, not the youngsters.
I went to a B grade boarding school in Massachusetts, now closed. I became a librarian/archivist. I guess this is a funeral for the loss of innocence like sitting curled up with a book, sitting under a tree with a book, and knowing that book did not glow and was not power hungry! Yes, they take up a lot of space which is precisely why there is something called “weeding’ a collection. Moderation in all things. Too much computer makes Jane and Spot and Dick rather zombieness. I’ll miss seeing Spot run!
what?me worry.uva65
The Cushing students should rush out and buy a copy of The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss, to see how a school should be run. Good luck Cushing students.
@76
Boots, its as if they are trying to erase the history of Western Civilization and replace it with some kind of multicutlural diversity sensitivity mind numbing dumbness. Programming the childrens minds in witless slogans.
I recommend this book from Ravich for those interested in teh indoctrination that our Children are being bombarded with since the 60s New Left got organized and marched through the institutions.
The Language Police
How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
by Diane Ravitch
http://www.textbookleague.org/124ravbk.htm
Its a erasing of history of a certain groups cultural heritage to make way for the new dominant groups (New Leftist Coalition)…their mythologies and preferred histories.
And my last post was modded, for some strange reason.
There is going to be a reckoning in Western Civilization and Islam(and its alliance with Western New Leftists), is going to bring it to a head. Obama is laying the groundwork for the US finally saying enough is enough…but it Europe, its going to get real ugly.
I was graduated from Cushing Academy in June of l938….yes, I’m 90 years old. I am astounded at Cushing’s reason for eliminating a library but suspect I know the real reason. For me and for my late wife, Cushing graduate of class of l939, and for many classmates the library was also a great trysting place (hard to come by in Cushing days of yore) and someone must have recently discovered that fact!!! A shame…