For their own good . . .

Ellen Hopkins, the author of Glass, along with Crank an account of meth addiction, was barred from lecturing at a middle school, after some parents objected to her book.  Since its middle-school appropriateness was under review, school officials decided that her visit itself was inappropriate.  Honestly, that seems fine, especially when one reads the book’s reviews.  While they are all very positive, the editorial reviews for the book place it firmly in the high school realm with School Library Journal recommending the book for grades 9 and up, Publishers Weekly for ages 14 and up,  and VOYA for “older teens.” Yet, Hopkins was not allowed to move her talk to the high school, where no parent had objected to her work, and where she’d find a ready, willing, and appropriate audience. 
 
It always amazes me when parents of teens speak honestly and passionately about protecting their children from the horrors of the world by sealing them in, all too temporary and illusory, rose-colored bubbles.  When we ignore issues such as drug addiction, sexual assault, school and street violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, we do not protect our children from them - we, instead, leave them very vulnerable to them.  All too often, instead of educating and preparing our children to face a world full of hazards, adults end up pretending these issues don’t exist, or exist only for other kids in other places.  It’s naive at best and incredible destructive at worst.  Here we have an eloquent writer and speaker, willing to tackle some of these tough issues and she is turned away because some parents are afraid to admit that their little ones may be getting into drugs, sex, alcohol, you name it.  Instead of facing that fear, they are ducking their heads into the sand.

Speaking Freely

Before reading Buschman’s article in the online version of Academe, I hadn’t given much thought to the ways freedom of speech, academic freedom, and intellectual freedom interact - or to the ways they manifest themselves in our public libraries and our school library media centers. I certainly never knew that ALA,

officially states that it might help defend librarians if their employment rights are denied in the process of defending intellectual freedom (for example, in opposing local censorship) but not when they exercise intellectual freedom within the workplace . . . This view is further articulated in the ALA’s explanatory “Questions and Answers on Speech in the Workplace”: librarians have ethical obligations to question policies “detrimental to the public interest or to the profession,” but the ALA cautions that it “does not at this time provide mediation, financial aid, or legal aid in response to” workplace disputes, which are subject to local employment policy, nor does the ALA investigate and publicize abuse as does the [American Association of University Professors.]

It strikes me as particularly absurd that librarians, who work so hard to ensure free access to all information and ideas, have so little protection for the expression of their own ideas, if I am understanding this correctly.

Clearly, there needs to be a certain amount of local authority in matters of free speech and staff management. After all, each community is different (and operates under its own codes of conduct) and their libraries vary accordingly. However, it seem to me that a certain baseline standard for freedom of speech in the workplace should be set and enforced by ALA.

The article does not address school librarians specifically, though many of the same issues apply. As teachers, we must be careful not to allow our biases to interfere with our work, or to indoctrinate, rather that educate. But we must also feel secure enough to stand up to bias and injustice where we find it, and to speak for the truth. In New York City, we are quite lucky to be supported by a strong union (one reason I am a staunch union advocate), I fear our colleagues in other school districts do not fare so well. Without a supportive administration (and especially with a hostile one) freedom of speech in the library media center becomes an issue of job security and efficacy. I hope that ALA considers giving its policy more bite, and backing up its members with legal force.

Play it Again, Sam

Ahhhhh the Youth of Today.  A mess, aren't they?  They prefer texting to talking, online to outside, MySpace to the library.  They are distracted, unorganized, lazy, and disrespectful.  They can't form a complete thought, never mind a complete sentence.  They abuse language and ignore the rules of grammar and discourse.  They have no stamina or deep interest in anything.  They are so fixated on social networking and their cell phones that they aren't learning how to cope and communicate in the real world.  They are coddled and spoiled.  Yet they are exposed to more danger than ever before.

Sound familiar?  If not, then you probably never talk to anyone who works with kids - teens in specific.  I hear variations on this lament nearly daily, from colleagues, grad students, friends, my own mouth.  As someone who rides the digital native/digital immigrant line I can see where everyone is coming from.  Afterall, it's the same place they've been coming from for 2800 years:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words.

When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.
--- Hesiod, Eighth Century B.C.

We thought it was the Youth of Today that were the downfall of civilization and culture.  Turns out it was the Youth of Twenty-Eight Hundred Years Ago that started it all.  Today's kids running around on the internet, playing in the street, talking back in text-speak . . . just the latest in a long history of Youth vs Establishment.

At one point everything is new and with new technologies and new ideas come changes - sometimes cosmetic, sometimes fundamental - to the ways we interact, learn, express ourselves, and navigate the world.  Priorities shift, new information changes old ways of thinking, concepts of what is rude, healthy, or safe reflect these changes.  All of which can be very uncomfortable to the old guard.  Especially to those whose ideas of right and wrong are firmly entrenched in the Truths they were taught.

The internet has had a profound impact on our culture.  It has changed the way we participate, socialize, and organize.  It has shifted the seats of power and influence, and our perceptions of public and private.  As Danah Boyd, of UC Berkeley, wrote in her excellent paper, Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites:

In today’s society, there is a push towards privacy.  It is assumed that people are public individuals who deserve the right to privacy rather than the other way around.  With an elevated and idealized view of privacy, we often forget the reasons that enslaved peoples desperately wished for access to public life.  By allowing us to have a collective experience with people who are both like and unlike us, public life validates the reality that we are experiencing.  We are doing our youth a disservice if we believe that we can protect them from the world by limiting their access to public life.  They must enter that arena, make mistakes, and learn from them.  Our role as adults is not to be their policemen, but to be their guide.

The new isn't necessarily bad, but it is different.  What makes a good friend may not change - a person who listens and hears you, who stands up for you and with you, who is trustworthy, kind and with whom you have fun.  But the ways these characteristics manifest themselves may change drastically with new ways of communicating and new social networks.  Sometimes to the point of not being recognizable to people not immersed in the new technologies.

As people who work with teens, it is important that we try to keep up, admit it when we haven't, and learn instead of judge.  New is not bad, old is not good (and neither is the reverse true), and the Youth of Today are destroying the world, just like they always have.

What is a library anyway?

In this short piece on the transformation of Chelmsford High School’s library into a Learing Commons, author D.L. Whelan describes a shift from a visually unappealing place, with frayed carpets, peeling paint, and prison-like bars to an information palace, with flat screen TV, coffee, couches, and new computers.  But the changes described are more than cosmetic.  The transformation into a Learning Commons is also described a a shift in mindset.  Although it seems to me more a lexical shift than anything else.  A Learning Commons is,

“according to David Loertscher, a professor at San Jose State University and coauthor of The New Learning Commons Where Learners Win: Reinventing School Libraries and Computer Labs (Hi Willow, 2008), a collaborative space created by users that turns the library into the ‘center, the network, of social, cultural and learning in the school.”

That sounds like a library to me.  I find it interesting in that the quest to open up libraries, make them relevant to teachers and useful to students, to get them full of bustle and activity, there is often a “need” to rename them.  How has the word “library” become so immutably boring and staid?  And what does our willingness to abandon it mean for the future of libraries, both public and academic?  I say it’s time we made a concerted effort to reclaim and redefine the word “library,” so that it finally encompasses all of the guts and glory, the fun and learning, the resources and people, to be found there.

I don’t want my students to dread the library, or immediately dismiss it.  I don’t want them to imagine a room of old, worn-out books, and shushing matrons.  Perhaps the best way to counter these stereotypes is to stop delivering them?  For many children their school library is their main library and it’s important that we make creating warm, fun, inviting spaces, with up-to-date resources a priority.  Sadly, there are library media specialists and school libraries that are not warm and welcoming, that saw classes as an intrusion, and kids as problems to be dealt with.  As we move into the 21st century, ourselves and our libraries, let’s work to re-image and redefine the “library” and "librarian," for that matter, and insure that they are all centers of learning and development for all.

On Race and Representation

We discussed in class the other night the intersecting issues of race, racism, representation, and censorship in YA lit and public library collections. I wanted to share some thoughts on these issues from the school library media center perspective. Well, my school library media perspective, at least.

For many children, the school library or media center is their home library. It is one they have regular access to, and one designed specifically for their use. As such, it is central to the question of children’s rights to intellectual freedom and access to information. ALA comes down on the side of children, stating that, “although the educational level and program of the school necessarily shapes the resources and services of a school library media program, the principles of the Library Bill of Rights apply equally to all libraries, including school library media programs." So here, we have the Children's Internet Protection Act regulating internet access, while school systems design their own selection criteria for print and other resources.

It is this selection process with which I am concerned. As we work to build our school library collections how can we ensure that we are building inclusive collections that celebrate our society’s wide variety of cultures, traditions, languages, histories, beliefs, and view points? Is there a difference between selecting for bias-free materials and censorship? How do we take into consideration the greater societal impact of the subtle sexism and racism of many text and children’s books without eliminating problematic materials?

This issue has been of concern to teachers and librarians for years. In 1978, the National Council of Teachers wrote a guideline to recognizing and dealing with censorship in our school systems. They describe some forms censorship may take:

"1. Subtle censorship of "selection." The perspective of the individual or group making selections can be one-sided, sometimes from lack of wide knowledge of literature for children, sometimes from a bias against certain types of books or their content, authors, or illustrators.

2. Deliberate exclusion of certain books. Classroom teachers and librarians sometimes fear that community groups or school officials will object to a book. A list of controversial topics has long kept many books out of some schools or libraries entirely, or on special shelves. School librarians sometimes have a storage room for controversial books."

They recommended creating a written selection policy and a procedure to deal with complaints leveled against materials in collaboration with the PTA and community. They also recommend frequent communication between librarians, teachers, administrators and parents concerning books being used in the curriculum, and available in the library. Inviting the public to book talks and discussions on hot-topic books offer a forum for dissenting viewpoints to be heard, without resorting to formal complaint.

In 1981, the NCTE dug further into the heart of my question with their position paper, The Students’ Right to Read. In it, they discuss the growing pressure from the community at large that English teachers faced in text selection. In it, they discuss issues of racial bias:
Literature about ethnic or racial minorities remains "controversial" or "objectionable" to many adults. As long as groups such as Blacks, Indians, Orientals, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans "kept their proper place"--awarded them by an Anglo society--censors rarely raised their voices. But attacks have increased in frequency as minority groups have refused to observe their assigned "place." Though nominally, the criticisms of racial or ethnic literature have usually been directed at "bad language," "suggestive situations," "questionable literary merit," or "ungrammatical English" (usually oblique complaints about the different dialect or culture of a group), the underlying motive for some attacks has unquestionably been racial.

However, here we are still discussing “traditional” censorship: censoring the voice of the minority, the powerless, the dissenting viewpoint, the dialect. Here we have teachers and librarians fighting the power structure and working to even the playing field for traditionally disenfranchised peoples. What happens when, in the interest of plurality and respect, librarians seek to remove biased works from their collections?

Once again, we can turn to the ALA’s interpretation of it’s Bill of Rights:

"Censorship may include removing or not selecting materials because they are considered by some as racist or sexist ... Librarians have an obligation to protect library collections from removal of materials and resources based on personal bias or prejudice.

Intellectual freedom, the essence of equitable library services, provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause, or movement may be explored. Toleration is meaningless without tolerance for what some may consider detestable."

According to the ALA, the removal, or omission, of works due to bias, prejudicial language, or distortion is a violation of our patrons’ intellectual freedom. ALA has declared that the provisions in the Library Bill of Rights apply to school libraries and media centers, as well as public libraries. However, I think that this interpretation fails to recognize the societal impact of hundreds of years of one very particular viewpoint. It fails to consider the role played by our dominant power-structure in publishing, education, and entertainment. When every textbook a child reads, every informative text in their classroom, the majority of television, movies, and magazines is written from a specific viewpoint that devalues their language, their culture, and their history, I think that it is the responsibility of the school librarian not only to represent other points of view, but to de-emphasize these harmful and repetitive voices.

Children are profoundly influenced by the books they read. The fiction they read informs their world view and their sense of self. The non-fiction texts they read profess to tell them what is true about the world. How irresponsible it would be of a school librarian to stock her shelves with accepted and acceptable lies in the name of tolerance. The problem with keeping, say, The Indian in the Cupboard, on the shelves on it’s artistic merit is how to deal effectively with the incredibly harmful stereotypes is professes. A child who has never known an American Indian, and may never know one, has no existing schema to map this book onto. Offering equal shelf space to Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian does not guarantee that this child will ever read it. So I am left not wanting to censor a viewpoint, but recognizing that a) that viewpoint is harmful, and b) that viewpoint is a pervasive force in society and certainly does not cease to exist outside of that one book. Perhaps pairing problematic books with their more enlightened brethren? Or offering book discussion questions with them? Or sending kids to the public library (I kid, I kid!)?

The Baltimore County Public Schools’ selection criteria come close to riding this selection/censorship line successfully. They state that materials should be:
* Accurate in terms of content: Library media materials should present facts in an objective manner. Authority of the author, organization, publisher/producer should be a consideration in selection. Materials concerning human development and family life should contain facts which are presented in a manner appropriate to the level of the students.
* Reflective of the pluralistic nature of a global society: Library media materials should provide a global perspective and promote diversity as a positive attribute of our society. It is important to include materials by authors and illustrators of all cultures.
* Free of bias and stereotype: Materials should reflect the basic humanity of all people and be free of stereotypes, caricatures, distorted dialect, sexual bias, and other offensive characteristics. Library materials concerning religious, social, and political content should inform rather than indoctrinate.

We, as school library media specialists, are the guardians of the wealth of information available in our libraries. We must make sure that the materials within those walls are helpful, informative, true, and unbiased. This may mean including information we are uncomfortable about, perhaps, on the machinery of warfare or conservative religious ethics. In my opinion, it also means making sure that our stacks are a place of true plurality and not simply an extension of the status quo.

YA Programming

We discussed teen programming the other day and my first thoughts were something along the lines of, "What the hell do I know about library programs?" and, "Crap, I'm so uninformed." As the librarians in the group began discussing the components of effective teen programming, and programs they had run in their libraries, I was struck by how familiar it all felt. Hands on projects that extended from the book, bridging the gap between literature and reality, creating/fostering critical thinking and analysis skills, discussing alternate understanding of the text . . . Hey, programming is a lot like . . . teaching?! Then I rolled my eyes at my idiocy and jumped into my group's discussion.

There are obvious differences between creating a library program around a book and teaching that book in a classroom. But there are striking similarities, as well. Especially for us teachers of kids with special needs. Students with cognitive or language impairments, kids with learning disabilities, emotionally disturbed kids, English Language Learners, highly kinesthetic learners . . . they all need teachers to engage their whole selves in a book, and they need high-interest, thought-and-conversation-provoking activities to scaffold their understanding of the text. They need to do meaningful, fun work around that text, and they need to talk about it. A lot.

If only our local libraries were running programs on what the local schools were reading . . . or, you know, the teachers and school library media specialists ever talked. But that's a-whole-nother post.

On liking teenagers

I just had lunch with an old friend and her old friend. We were two teachers and a school social worker and the conversation naturally came around to the one thing we had most obviously in common - kids. We compared stories, laughed at ourselves and our students, and lamented the paucity of resources. Typical teacher talk.

Then we began discussing teaching and working with kids in general. As we moved off of ourselves and into the wider world in which we work, our stories all seemed to have a common theme - one that begged the question: why do so many adults who work with teens seem (or profess) to hate them?

I've seen a goodly number of teen-hating teachers and librarians in the last few years and I'm starting to worry that I'm destined to become one. Is it possible to maintain your compassion, composure, patience, and humor in the face of a decade or two of teen antics and angst? Will I gradually lose the ability to remember what 14, 15, 16 felt like? Or to remember the crap I pulled at those ages? How bloody annoying I was? How much life sucked?

What do young adults need?

The other night we had an interesting discussion about the critical components that teens need in a library. Specifically, if you were building a YA/teen section from scratch, what are the most important things to include. My partner and I settled on: books published for/as YA, graphic novels/manga, non-fiction, computers, and seating. Yeah, maybe seating is superfluous, and our imaginary, budding teen population would benefit more from study guides, or DVDs, but I like a good sit. A good sit, a comfortable space, a bit of real estate to call your own . . . these things seem important to me. I know they were when I was a teen.

My public library was right next to my tiny high school and I spent many many an afternoon there. I don't remember if it even had a YA section because I wasn't there for the books (gasp!). I was there to hang out in the basement where the past years of periodicals were stored. To be loud and obnoxious, to read ancient copies of Cosmo, to flirt and fight, to smoke cigarettes out back, and to form friendships that sustain me to this day. Occasionally I was there to use the microfiche and photocopier, because I didn't have the internet until I was a senior. I never once checked out an item, I never volunteered, I wasn't a page, and eventually I left.

I remember thinking wistfully how wicked awesome it would be if the library was open late. Or if it served coffee. Or hosted poetry nights. Or short fiction contests. And you know what, it may very well have, only we never heard about it. What my library needed was literal space for us (no, the basement storage area does not count) and someone to talk to us, and to listen. As we discuss relating to teens and drawing teens into our libraries I think back to my young adulthood and I'm struck by how little it would have taken to get me involved.