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.