A holler in Britain, a (long-awaited) peep in L.A.

I'd just locked up the library and jumped in my car when an NPR story about protests in Britain over public library closures grabbed my attention. The main activist in the movement, mom Lauren Smith, who said that she'd never fought for a cause before, summed-up the scope of the tragedy brilliantly:

"Smith said politicians in London don't appreciate the role libraries play — as gathering spots for young children to read ... 'all the way to a 93-year-old lady whose husband had died, she only spoke to one person on a Tuesday, when she went to the library, and that was the person in the library branch, behind the counter.'"

If only library-closure protests looked like this one.

Sounds so familiar. In one protest, desperate patrons went to a threatened neighborhood library and checked out every single book.  A musician is doing a library tour. Read -- or listen -- to the story here.



After being amazed by the groundswell in Egypt and witnessing its effects, I've often thought about the lack of protest over so many lamentable things in America. On a local note, it's been a little sad to see the lack of outrage over the Los Angeles Public Library closures. Are library lovers just not the types to raise a ruckus over something that impacts their lives weekly?

Now there is something that those quieter people can do. Just got the list of endorsements for Measure L, the "fund the library" measure for the city, and was happy to see some of my friends (like David Kipen) and favorite writers (Pico Iyer, Ray Bradbury) speaking out for it. Check out Measure L's endorsements here.

L.A. residents need to take a tip from the British -- time for some news-grabbing protests here, before it's too late.

Huck's fate

The other day, an instructional aide at my school asked me how I felt about new revisions to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. "I think it's horrible," I replied. "It's censorship!" Seemed like a no-brainer.

Happily, I actually got a few seconds to scan the New York Times' Sunday Opinion today and had a chance to read a more nuanced view of the situation. I've been thinking a lot about how we need to revolutionize the way we teach reading and novels in high school, and there's plenty of food for thought in writer Lorrie Moore's excellent take on the Twain debate -- and the issue of "the n word" -- "Send Huck Finn to College."

Here's an excerpt from Moore's piece:

"There are other books more appropriate for an introduction to serious reading. (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” with its social-class caricatures and racially naïve narrator, is not one of them.) Sherman Alexie’s “Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which vibrantly speaks to every teenager’s predicament when achievement in life is at odds with the demoralized condition of his peer group, is a welcoming book for boys. There must certainly be others and their titles should be shared. Teachers I meet everywhere are always asking, How can we get boys to read? And the answer is, simply, book by book."

She's speaking as a mother who has, first-hand, experienced the withering impact of giving a child the wrong book at the wrong time. (She seems to have a black son, to whom the novel's language has a special sting -- though the term is used promiscuously in the hip-hop he listens to.)

To read the entire article, click here. Moore, an amazing short story writer, wrote the powerful The Gate at the Stairs, one of the most brutal and beautiful novels that I've read in the past decade.

Brown's Brutal Cuts

It's hard to envision where California will be in five years after the reality of cuts upon cuts transforms our already troubled state. Governor Brown's cuts come on top of devastating library layoffs and weekly closures and they will take down literacy programs.

What will happen when people become used to a closed library and what will be the percentage of the populace who struggles to read -- or is entirely illiterate?

Click here to read the Library Journal's account of exactly where these cuts will hit.

In the article, Paymaneh Maghsoud, head of the California Library Association, says that libraries have done more than their fair share in placing their people and programs on the state chopping block:

"The revelation ... that Governor Brown is proposing to eliminate all $30 million in state funding for three of California's most valuable public library programs ...is both disastrous and disheartening," she said in a press release.

Maghsoudi said that library funding had already been cut 75 percent under the two previous administrations.

"The public libraries have done more than their share to assist with the budget deficit over the years by absorbing painful cuts," she said. "The time has come to stop the bleeding and CLA respectfully asks the members of the legislature to oppose these proposed cuts to our valuable programs."

Shaming the teachers

Recently, I opened the Los Angeles Times online and the big story of the day was about evaluating teachers. A man with white hair and jeans was pictured in action in his classroom, and I assumed that he was one of the top-ranked because of his prominence. Rather, he was one of the worst-ranked. The Times set the scene for his official public shaming.

Most teachers are eager to learn more about their effectiveness and how they can improve. When I posted the piece on Facebook, upset about its inherent meanness and the focus on standardized test scores, former and current teachers laid into me. They were chomping at the bit for something like this.

With this story, the Times has created its own news, stirring up a firestorm that has prompted many subsequent articles and a slew of smart comments. In their relatively new role as LAUSD watchdog, they've exposed some travesties, like the "holding tank" of teachers who can't be in a classroom because of serious charges against them but who are still collecting salaries, sometimes paid to stew for years. Another piece on the ridiculously soft evaluation process was dead on.

This is something different. Here's the original article, "How Good Is Your Child's Teacher?" 

Diane Ravitch, author and education expert who has come down hard against standardized test culture, called the article "disgraceful."

My favorite response to it has been "The Measure of Our Worth," an Op-Ed in the LA Times by Ivanhoe Elementary fifth-grade teacher Kim Jones.

Arne Duncan says that releasing this data (based on a "value added" approach that many experts distrust) is about looking at success. It's more about looking at failure -- the failure of an education system that is becoming more about standardized test scores and less and less about nurturing creativity and curiosity.

Where's the middle class hero?

It seemed for a little while that Congress was going to be the superheroes for public schools and laid-off teachers, but, alas, their interrupted vacations were for naught. Rather than spend the money now to rehire educators, most districts have decided to sit on the funds and prepare for the budget-cutting storms to come. Here's the New York Times story about the crushed hopes of laid-off teachers.

The face of the teacher in the photo echoes Dorothea Lange's brutal Great Depression photographs -- which is apt.

Whenever I read the comment threads about these stories, somebody inevitably says something to the tune of, "What makes teachers so special? They need to take the hit like so many others." Problem is, Sir (and it's always a sir), that we're not just talking about people's jobs; this is about children and our already over-strapped, struggling public school systems.

It makes sense in these dark times that so many people are turning to Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of Stieg Larsson's blockbuster fiction trilogy. Lower class, tiny, female, fragile, furious, doll-like, brilliant, anti-authority, anti-consumer, and vengeful, Salander is a great hero for our troubled times.

David Brooks jumps in the Books vs. Internet debate

I've had so many conversations about this with librarians and educators recently -- and everyone that I'm talking to is landing heavily in on the books side. This may seem obvious, but a New York Times article a year or so ago tried to suggest a counter-intuitive and hopeful argument, that kids are reading more than ever before, but that reading just happens to be on the Internet. No real reason to devalue that, or is there?

And here comes the New York Times columnist David Brooks -- a controversial figure, but a very smart guy -- who argues that the mere presence of books seems to enrich students. He cites a study which revealed that kids who brought home a stack of free books over the summer fended off the traditional summer decline. The books actually did a better job of bolstering the brain than summer school did.

Then he launches into the old Internet vs. Books debate, arguing that authority matters. Books do something different for our minds and our culture.

He says, "A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation."

As exciting as this can be, he says, the Internet keeps us on top of things, but it doesn't enrich us. And there's something to be said for authority and respect for books and writers.

Read more of this powerful piece by clicking here.

Neil Gaiman, Librarian's Son

I'M trying to make this blog about more than just the collapse of the library system -- really I am -- but events keep bringing me back to the matter. The latest is the report of an excellent speech by writer Neil Gaiman about the importance of libraries. 

This article, in London's Daily Telegraph, reports on the novelist -- whose mother was a librarian -- picking up the Carnegie Medal for The Graveyard Book. (The award is given by the Chartered Institute of Information Professionals.)


In short, Gaiman described closing libraries as "stealing from the future." Here's what he said:

 "Libraries are our future – to close them would be a terrible, terrible mistake – it would be stealing from the future to pay for today which is what got us into the mess we’re in now.

"In this austerity world it's incredibly easy if you are a local authority and you are looking for cuts, to say 'Let's cut libraries'. But that's borrowing from the future."

Part of what I also like is the way he insists on the importance of libraries and librarians in the Internet age -- calling them "more important than ever."

Anyone who follows this blog -- or the current debates over libraries, information technology, and so on -- knows that libraries are hardly just about musty old books. Though without musty old books, we surely wouldn't have writers like Neil Gaiman.