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Filed under: In The News, Weird But True
Something you won't see anymore at a New England prep school: library books. Credit: Getty Images
The last thing a school library needs these days is books, the headmaster of a New England prep school told the Boston Globe.
What it really needs is a good cappuccino machine.
James Tracy, headmaster of the Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Conn., told the Globe that ink on paper is so 20th century. So his school library is doing away with it -- and its 20,000 books.
"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology like scrolls before books,' Tracy told the (pardon the expression) paper.
He swears this isn't a school production of "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury's cautionary tale about books being burned in an anti-intellectual hysteria.
"We're not discouraging students from reading," he told the paper. "We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology."
Administrators at the 144-year-old prep school 90 minutes west of Boston have already given away many of the library's previous collection of classics, poetry and reference material. They are choosing instead to spend $500,000 on a digital "learning center" that will include flat-screen TVs for cruising the Internet as well as cubbies designed for laptops and a coffee shop with a $12,000 cappuccino machine.
The TV sets alone will cost $42,000, according to the Globe.
Liz Vezina, Cushing's school librarian for the past 17 years, told the Globe she will miss the books.
"I love books," she said. "I grew up with them, and there's something lost when they're virtual. There's a sensual side to them -- the smell, feel. The physicality of a book is something really special."
William Powers, the author of the upcoming book "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal," told the Globe the changes at Cushing are as depressing as they are radical.
"There are modes of learning and thinking that at the moment are only available from actual books," he told the paper.
"There is a kind deep-dive, meditative reading that's almost impossible to do on the screen. Without books, students are more likely to do the grazing or quick reading that screens enable rather than be by themselves with the author's ideas."
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ReaderComments (Page 3 of 3)
9-18-2009 @ 11:21PM
Brandon said...And we wonder what's wrong with our educational system? As a kid, I loved reading. Regrettably, I don't read nearly as much as I used to, but do pick up a book when I did. If my school had tried something like this, I would've been pretty depressed.
I seriously hope the school reconsiders this, for the sake of their students...
Reply
9-18-2009 @ 11:47PM
nulifeonline.com said...no surprise here........that's why our education system is so horrible and falls way short of most other countries in the world.....
thank god for touch screen cash registers.....our children (and adults) need to know how to get those fast food orders correct.......
Reply
9-19-2009 @ 11:00AM
mail said...I am a tech geek. I have three monitors in my home office, a nice high-speed link with 5 static IPs to support my workstations (NOTE THE PLURAL) and servers (PLURAL AGAIN!). Thus, I consider myself a technical person. I have over 10GB of e-books consisting of reference materials I use in my IT consulting career. I also have a little under 1 TB of music, etc. (which is A LOT by any standard). Yet I also am surrounded by shelves of books...and stacks of them when I get lazy.
During my 20's I read one book per week. I read Plato and Aristotle as well as Ayn Rand, Emerson and Thoreau. I read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the newspaper each day. Because of this I understand my government and the essential nature of a free economy. Without books I doubt I would have done more than skim the digital media.
It is, after all, hard to read an e-book in some environments.
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9-19-2009 @ 2:33PM
elizabeth shipley said...I also could not believe what I was reading! I grew up with books, encouraged my kids to read and to this day, rely very much upon the local libraries for my books. Yes, I use the internet but give me a good mystery book and I am set for the evening.
There should be a parental revolt unless they don't have a clue about what is happening in their kids' school.
I read this article from a link on my DorothyL mystery list.
People of Boston march in the streets to get books back into this school.
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9-21-2009 @ 2:00PM
Frank said...Has there been any discussion of letting the headmaster go? How can he get away with this?
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