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A library without books

Dec 27, 2012
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A library without books

Stacks of books are history at Benilde library

…the tall stacks of 5,000 books that towered in the main room last school year are gone. Teachers brought a few into classrooms, but most were donated to schools in Africa. Now the room is filled with tables and chairs where students gather with their school laptops.

You know, they had a name for this kind of room when I was in high school: it was called study hall, and we held it in the cafeteria.

There’s a lot to be sad about in this article, like the student who admits, “I never really used the actual library before. I’m a senior in high school and never used a book.”

But even more terrifying to me: “This generation of kids … learning is a social experience for them.”

My learning in the library was very social, if you count socializing with dead people.

I’m a supreme extrovert, and yet I despised group work and never felt like I learned anything from my classmates, other than, you know, that I wanted to move the fuck away from home and get away from all of them. (Maybe I’m just a dick — I do believe that all art requires a certain amount of misanthropy…)

God, when I think of the hours I’ve spent in libraries, just following the scent of paper trails and wandering around, bumping into books… is my kid not going to experience this?

And as for social learning: the best formal education I got was 6 months of the tutorial system at Cambridge University, in which I read all week at the massive library or in my Raskolnikovian closet of a room, wrote a paper, emailed it to my tutor, walked over to his house and talked about it for an hour, then went off to pick up the books he gave me to read the next week. The only group work I did was play keyboards in a band and go get pissed at the pub. It was glorious.

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  1. ohapriljoy reblogged this from themonicabird
  2. borntodietoday reblogged this from themonicabird
  3. themonicabird reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian
  4. lavacheestdanslepre reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian
  5. strawberrybubblesthepony reblogged this from nyabunny
  6. nyabunny reblogged this from turdbaths
  7. turdbaths reblogged this from austinkleon
  8. timelytimelessness reblogged this from austinkleon
  9. highdesertmoon reblogged this from austinkleon and added:
    The only bright spot in this was they donated books to schools in Africa.
  10. velogiraffe reblogged this from austinkleon and added:
    1. I agree with Austin Kleon here that this is more or less reinventing study hall. A room where students hang out and...
  11. elaine4queen said: not sure where i read it, but there was a study about ‘bainstorming’ v working alone and the working alone yielded better results than the group work. it looks like you are ‘doing’ something in a group, but it’s none of those people’s best work.
  12. handsoccupied reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian and added:
    Sharing w/o comment.
  13. violentviolate reblogged this from deviationsfromreality
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  15. susannagaston reblogged this from silencewhippersnapper
  16. deviationsfromreality reblogged this from austinkleon and added:
    This is terrifying.
  17. silencewhippersnapper reblogged this from healthscireflib
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