The fake pro-woke and anti-woke warriors are always battling about school libraries. It’s absurd. School libraries were never meant to be a general reference source, or a place to find enjoyable vacation reading. Public libraries are supposed to carry a broad range of subjects and fiction, serious or non-serious. Bookstores and newsstands carry less serious works.
School libraries had one narrow purpose. They served the curriculum. They included the references and literature needed by this school’s classes.
More importantly, libraries are no longer needed. Looking up things in books is not a needed job skill. Real researchers, in business or academia, do all their reading online now. Schools should be teaching students how to use Google Books and specialized databases like PubMed or WestLaw. The thinking skills are the same: knowing where to look, mastering enough of the specialized jargon to look wisely, filtering out irrelevant items, and using one reference to branch out to others through footnotes.
The warriors shouldn’t be bothering with school libraries. They should be focusing on the state and county accrediting boards who write the curriculum. Those boards are the deciders.
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Later for fairness: It appears that school libraries recognized reality and started training students in online research.
Polistra's Mill 