SCHOOL LIBRARIES VITAL FOR STUDENTS
THIS EDITORIAL RAN IN WEDNESDAY’S WATERLOO ONTARIO, CANADA REGION RECORD | HTTP://BIT.LY/JZ8FBC
●●smf: Mark Twain said: “First God created idiots, that was for practice. Then he created school boards”. Apparently the phenomenon is international – as is the desire for politicians to become “The Education [Whatever]”.
18 May, 2011 - Nothing liberates the mind of a young person more than a good library. For this reason, school libraries could be seen as the most important room in the entire school building. The way school libraries operate might be the subject of legitimate debate but there shouldn’t be any doubt that publicly-funded schools in Ontario should have them.
Surprisingly, one school board in the province, the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, is dismantling all of its libraries. It has laid off all but four of its library technicians and has started dividing the library books at its elementary schools among individual classrooms.
This decision conforms with a trend uncovered by People for Education, an educational advocacy group. In a survey released this week, People for Education found that while 80 per cent of Ontario elementary schools employed a teacher-librarian a decade ago, only 56 per cent do so today.
That’s a huge drop. And, as a trend, it is unacceptable. A school library is more than just a collection of books — important though that is. It is