Bring Back the Books
We recently renovated the library at our secondary school. Out went the imposing, 1950s shelves which projected invasively into the room, providing hidey-holes for generations of teenagers to pass the time in ways other than reading books. With the removal of the shelves went too the various outdated reference books, including one with the title 'The Role of the Modern Woman', sporting a smiling wife and mother on the dust(y) cover, wearing a pinny and standing at the kitchen sink. It was at this point that we decided that the new library would be dedicated exclusively to works of fiction, up-to-date reference material perhaps more readily available elsewhere as a different medium. So what role do books play in the lives of young people in 2017 and to what end the library?
It also occurred to me how little books are actually used in modern teaching and how few are encountered in the average class room. In recent years, teaching from a textbook has become somewhat frowned upon, so children are even to a major extent denied the peculiar smell and feel of a Tricolore, and the excitement of 'looking ahead' to see what they may learn in the coming weeks has been taken away from them. In replacement of this, we teachers are encouraged to use modern technology as a way of enthusing our pupils into the delights of our particular subject. In so doing - unable to keep up technologically with the children we are teaching - we still have the air of the inept teacher we can all remember who struggled to operate the VCR, which had arrived ceremoniously complete with a huge TV in a steel cage. Or worse, the appearance of a middle-aged uncle struggling still to be "with it" by inexplicably wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a base ball cap!
More poignant still is the fact that for many of our pupils - particularly those from a disadvantaged background - their only access to books will be through school. Many households have not a single book in them, other things naturally being of greater priority. It is the school's duty, therefore, to promote a love of books and demonstrate the joy and enrichment that they can bring - the texture, the smell, the weight; to remind young people that there is another medium away from gadgetry in which they can lose themselves and learn something.
And whereto the library? Well the space is now transformed and used more often than not by our disadvantaged pupils as a place away from their classrooms where they feel relaxed and less anxious - one pupil recent described it as a 'zen' space and meditation sessions are now not an uncommon sight there. There is no coincidence that the Latin word 'liber' can mean both book and free, where a sense a freedom certainly prevails in the place to which the books have now been brought back.
