The American Spectator : Book Ends

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Book Ends

By Christopher Orlet on 12.9.10 @ 6:07AM

High School students don't need no stinking books.

Leave it to our urban high school principals -- those stout-hearted, heroic figures, daily battling the forces of ignorance and cynicism -- to come up with a novel approach to solve our nation's public education woes. Yes, I said solve. As in, there's an app for that. Who would have thought it would be as easy as converting school libraries into coffee shops?

At first blush, this seems like a smart business decision -- clearing out all that stale inventory. Libraries, you must agree, are notorious money pits. Hardcover books? Might as well be saddled with a stockroom full of buggy whips.

But why stop with the library? With a little more outside-the-box thinking we can radically improve the bottom line. The gymnasium, for instance, would make an ideal auto parts warehouse. Plow that football field and put in alfalfa. So what if Principal James McSwain's idea sounds disturbingly like a Marx Brothers' film:

PROF. WAGSTAFF: Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.

HORRIFIED PROFESSORS: But, Professor, where will the students sleep?

PROF. WAGSTAFF: Where they always sleep. In the classroom.

A high school classmate of mine had a similar idea when he tried to turn Mr. Beine's chemistry classroom into a meth lab. I lost track of him after his expulsion and subsequent incarceration, but he was obviously way ahead of his time.

Eventually, the cold light of reality sinks in, and you realize this is a high school library we're talking about, and, like museums and the American auto industry, it wasn't designed to turn a profit. Nor are the students supposed to learn anything practical, like how to plant and harvest cash crops.

Another thing. Maybe it's not such a hot idea to keep high school students hopped up on high doses of caffeine, unless you really hate teachers, which a lot of people do because teachers get summers off, while the rest of us are chained to our desks year round. Besides, what was the point of the past twenty years of sedating millions of students with Ritalin if you're only going to allow them to counteract their meds with a stimulant?

TO BE FAIR, the principal did replace the library books with 35 new laptop computers. That's 35 laptops for some 3,000 students, which must make for lots of opportunities for teachable moments. Today's lesson: sharing. Well, not really sharing, since as a practical matter, most of you will never come close to using one of these laptops. Today's lesson updated: doing without...Oh, forget it. Just try not to kill each other.

What, then, are the other 2,965 laptop-less students supposed to do? Sure, some can update their Facebook status on their Blackberrys. But we're talking about an inner-city school, and the administration won't get around to purchasing 35 Blackberrys till they've finished throwing out all the test tubes and Bunson burners.

It's not entirely clear, but the idea here seems to be that you can trick students into going to the library if you call the library something else -- like a coffee shop -- and then fool students even more by tossing out all the books and laying off the librarians and actually turning the library into a coffee shop. Boy, did we fool them kids! Suckers!

Or could the idea be that students simply will no longer read anything unless it appears on a screen and can be whooshed around with the swoosh of a finger? This, no doubt, explains the sudden popularity among teenagers of thick Russian novel eBooks, and is probably why my 17-year-old son and his formerly no-account friends spend hours at a time glued to their iPhones. Most adults assume they are texting their girlfriends, but in reality they are perusing The Brothers Karamozov and Anna Karenina, and all that thumb tapping is their way of scribbling insightful notes in the margin.

Or, perhaps, the idea is that students regard books as uncool, but haven't yet made that association with computers, since on laptops you can play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or watch videos of cats playing ping-pong. (Let's see a book do that!) So anything on a laptop must be cool, even math homework. Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.

Until I read this story, I had little hope for our nation's urban schools. Now I see we'll be saved by innovative, market-driven administrators utilizing the latest and most expensive technology.

So go ahead and tear down the colleges. At this rate, we won't be needing them.

About the Author

Christopher Orlet writes every Thursday from St. Louis.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (38) | Leave a comment

Appleby| 12.9.10 @ 6:45AM

I reiterate: read BRAVE NEW WORLD. Coming soon to a world near you.

susan myers| 12.9.10 @ 10:18AM

The lie that books contained arsonic and must be burned did not work. On-line stuff is not truth. Older books have facts. Schools teach PC Zinn and progressive garbage - like on the History channel now - instead of History , indocrinational PC reading in lit classes, and Gore's fake science in place of actual scientific facts.
Why else is DSL in every government housing project now human right given by our Constitution?

Alan Brooks| 12.9.10 @ 3:23PM

"I reiterate: read BRAVE NEW WORLD. Coming soon to a world near you."

It has already arrived; it arrived on January 20th, 2001.

idalily| 12.9.10 @ 4:38PM

Please explain the connection of that date to Appleby's comment of BRAVE NEW WORLD. I'm curious.

Alan Brooks| 12.9.10 @ 8:34PM

Bush's administration inaugurated Brave New World in every respect.

Alan Brooks| 12.10.10 @ 2:48AM

I am very very sorry.I am very very sorry.I am very very sorry.I am very very sorry.I am very very sorry.I am very very sorry.

Chef Schnauzer| 12.9.10 @ 7:05AM

Will an American liberal (or progressive) ever admit a mistake? I'm not asking a liberal (or progressive) to actually take responsibility for their actions. I suspect they are genetically prevented from accepting responsibility for their actions - but will they ever, ever, ever say: our notions have been wrong, costly and damaged the American experiment. Will they ever turn to the townsfolk and say, "we took your money for education and clearly pissed it away and left you and your families worse off than ever?" At some point the left (or progressives) comes to grip with reality or there will be an ugly situation.

skedaddle| 12.9.10 @ 9:09AM

The answer to your questions is no. Liberals are never wrong, their ideas just better cooperation from us neanderthan holdouts.

Darin| 12.9.10 @ 7:10AM

Actually, this is a step in the right direction. Books are great, and I love reading, but they are expensive and it's hard to carry many around. If you utilize a device like a laptop or iPad, you've got the potential to store hundreds of books as PDF files. They are searchable and there are ways to add your own "notes" as you read. For text books, the publishers could be encouraged to incorporate tools like embedded video links (show how to do something like troubleshoot and fix an engine). The actual logistics of making this happen are very complex, and there are excellent reasons NOT to do so. But an enterprising publisher could lead the way by putting together top-notch content and providing an easy, secure way to access it via portable hardware. What hopeful doctor wouldn't love to have their assorted medical books in such a portable format? Pharmacy references could be kept current, and as the doctor prescribes medications, they would have access to current data on potential drug interactions.

Dan Hirsch| 12.9.10 @ 9:00AM

Darin,

Oh please! Save your features-benefits analysis for your marketing day job. Sure it's all great. But how can you really get lost in a good book, if it's constantly popping up saying 'forget what you're reading, look at this over here!'

Sure there are still buggy whips out there, but if you can afford the time, the horse and the buggy, a buggy whip is very useful. A well-written book however is an inanimate object offering a deep conversation with a fellow human.

You can get that experience from a Kindle(tm) or an I-Pad(tm) but I am pretty sure that all those cross references and eventually commercials popping up will degrade the story to bits.

Too bad we are further destroying our children's chances for learning how to concentrate on one thing, to focus on one thing, to do one thing well, instead of ten poorly.

I'm no Luddite, but not everything "new" is better!

PS Chris, it's a "Bunsen" burner...got that out of a book, I did. DH

Franco| 12.9.10 @ 1:34PM

I must agree. Curling up with an actual, weighty, papery, dog-eared book is an irreplacebale act of sanity. Elcronic gizmos are useful for their storage capability and convenience, but books aren't about convenience. They're about reading.

Think I'm kidding? In which form woulud you prefer the Bible--the book, with its gravitas and comforting weight--like a gold coin in in the palm--or a flickering calculator? No wonder people distrusted paper money when it was intoduced.

Let us, then, progress towards Dumbass Nation.

Ray| 12.9.10 @ 1:26PM

"Actually, this is a step in the right direction. Books are great, and I love reading, but they are expensive and it's hard to carry many around. If you utilize a device like a laptop or iPad, you've got the potential to store hundreds of books as PDF files."

Sure. let's replace those "expensive" 3 dollar paperbacks with 500 dollar ipads or 800 to 1200 dollar laptops, just to spend 40 dollars a month in order to have the internet access required to "download" the pdf's which cost, on average, 5 to 10 dollars apiece. Yea, like that's cost effective.

I'll stick with the books, thank you.

joyce| 12.10.10 @ 12:33PM

Actually you don't need to spend even that $3 for a paperback. Just trip on down to your local public library and check it out. Or better, buy that book at a library book sale for a dollar or less. Better hurry, though, before long we won't even have public libraries. Funding problems, you know.

Doctor_X| 12.9.10 @ 7:16AM

Instead of using ProQuest and EBSCO to find articles and research papers I’ll drive an hour (one way) to the University, spend several hours looking though indexes and abstracts just to find outdate articles. I’ll then wait while the library requests copies of the journals and I’ll spend hundreds of dollars to have them copied only to use half of them.

If nothing else it will be a great way to stimulate the economy, the extra money I’ll spend on gas and coping should put more people back to work!

Maybe we should ban the use of word processors! I’ll retype my dissertation 12 times on an IBM electric typewriter. Yes without the use of the computer, on-line databases, and journals in electronic format, I should be done with my D.Sc in about 7 years.

I’d much rather have all my textbooks on an IPAD or Nook.

LMajito| 12.9.10 @ 9:23AM

Doctor_X, no wonder it'll take you 7 years...the IBM Selectric Typewriters came with a whiteout ribbon that erased complete words by just pressing the appropriate X-return key.

btw, most library systems in the US have online catalogs that allows the user to search and if so desired to reserve a copy to be delivered to your home or be held to be picked up...

if you went through all that exercise is because it appears somebody has not learned to use the local library system. it's only one individual to blame for this and no amount of ipads/ereaders will correct faulty research

MoeBlotz| 12.9.10 @ 7:34AM

Now that Lamar High has a coffee shop instead of a library,can students read or study in peace and quiet? I don't see how. A library is not just about printed pulp .

Andrew B| 12.9.10 @ 7:54AM

This is the kind of innovative thinking our educational system needs! Teaching students, especially inner-city students, that books are an impediment is a great first step! I can only hope that some brave trailblazer will take the next bold step and replace all the blackboards with big-screen TVs, which can be tuned to ESPN or MTV during class hours. And who will be first to fire all the teachers and replace them with McDonald's wait-staff? That way the students will have good role models for the only jobs to which they can ever aspire.

Donna| 12.9.10 @ 8:44AM

My child’s private school has implemented technology only (laptop) program for textbooks and to submit homework, class work and some reading (still using paperback which we buy for lit class). As a parent, there are challenges to this as a first time user student with this type of learning medium, but he’s learning how to be disciplined with the Net distractions to get his work done. When these students graduate, they’ll need to be tethered to these portable computing devices in the workplace, so I say start now and learn the software, skills etc necessary to be employed.
I agree with Doctor X about current material not being available in libraries when needed. I think there is an extra benefit b/c some of these books in print for the school system tend to be inaccurate and left leaning so I am pleased about the laptop program. It helps me direct his attention to the Heritage Foundation, Imprimus and other very educational material to refute textbooks inaccuracies.
BTW: Facebook is blocked along with other nefarious Web browsing at school and there are inexpensive tools to monitor classroom activity in real time. It’s been great!!! I say keep on converting but don’t serve soft drinks and sugar. PS: He can even browse the Bible! Imagine that!

CalMark| 12.9.10 @ 1:15PM

Oh, so you can read anything you want--even the Bible!--thus, we should throw away all those nasty, bulky, expensive, germ-breeding books.
This kind of pie-in-the sky thinking gave us "New Math," "open classrooms," and other so-called "modern" educational methods.

What, never heard of this stuff? With good reason--it all failed miserably. As will the effort--whether anyone admits it or not, much less recognizes that it has, before it's too late--to throw out books.

Technology-based stuff only works so long as there is a huge data infrastructure to support it: data processing, software, computers. And don't take it for granted, reliable electricity. One part of that goes missing, and then what? You have, as the saying goes, not a computer but a very expensive doorstop.

The golden age of publishing--quality books and magazines were widely available and consumed--was in an era when radio was newfangled and television, but a dream.

Worst or all, electronic data can be manipulated, literally continuously, in the way printed matter cannot. What appears in books is there. Books, if not eternal, are far more permanent than electronic ephemera.

Karen| 12.9.10 @ 8:58AM

I really can't believe people are defending this. I am sorry, but I can't get over that they Threw Away Books. I have no problem with electronic books, but they aren't a replacement for real ones (maybe one day they will be but they aren't now). and to say books are expensive, so lets throw them away makes absolutely no sense. Btw, shouldn't this be considered censorship and also what kept these thrown away books from being burned?

SecretMole| 12.9.10 @ 4:49PM

"but I can't get over that they Threw Away Books" -- you don't know the half of it!
At my university library, the top "digital guru" administrators have embraced "on-line full-text" to such an extent that decades worth of physical bound journals are being thrown away (cause we have full-text access now and all those dusty old volumes are so old school!)

Curly Smith| 12.9.10 @ 9:05AM

I see four problems for the coffeehouse:
- A massive copyright infringement lawsuit as the various e-books are copied and distributed when the school only bought a single license. The kids respond "What? It's online so it's free".
- Long prison terms for serving foods laden with trans-fats, sugar, caffeine and other "deadly" chemicals. Those kids won't pay for celery and carrot sticks.
- A lawsuit brought by a parent over the school creating a hostile environment because her kid was sexually harassed by unsupervised, over-caffeinated twerps.
- And, finally, a bullying lawsuit because only the "cool" kids get to sip beverages while the rest of the school just watches from the outside.

Why not go "full Monty" and layoff the teachers as well? Recognize that the kids run the school anyway and you're just wasting taxpayer funds on jailors. The kids know what they need to learn, let them do it at their own pace. The smart kids will teach the dumb kids, the cool kids will include the nerds, the thin will help the self-image of the fat, and we'll all have a Merry Christmas.

Petronius| 12.9.10 @ 9:10AM

And this is why there are picture menus in every burger and taco joint. No reading. No thinking. No problem.
In the long lost days of misrule under GHWB I gave a lady in my office George Seldes, The Great Thoughts for Christmas. Most of the others were incensed over my gift. Gift certificates are pro forma. So how dare anybody to be different. Look dumb. Be dumb. Stay dumb.

skedaddle| 12.9.10 @ 9:13AM

What happens to all the e-books when the server crashes or the words get changed or your service provider blocks your access to a book you had. Wasn't there an uproar about the book 1984 being deleted from people's e-readers? A real paper book in my hands is mine for as long as I keep it and it will never change and it can't be taken away from me without a fight. I'll keep my real books, thank you.

LMajito| 12.9.10 @ 9:35AM

As somebody who thinks spending hours at the local library or bookstore is a delight, i cringe at the current idiotic state of affairs at high schools...kids do not learn critical thinking (outside of thinking their parents are clueless about life) nor they're taught the value of 10,000 years of human experience on the planet. of course ignorant masses are easy to handle (just look at the middle east countries and see that they have not moved forward since the 7th century AD). so now we have the massive dumb-downing of the us citizen by providing 'tools' that actually require less brain power...hs algebra...well honey you need a scientific calculator...literature? who needs reading the books, just google or wikipedia it and there is the summary...then just cut/paste into your paper and voila, lit homework in less than 10 minutes...like those infomercials claiming that 5 minutes thrice a week is all that's required to have muscles that'll make Arnold envious...a child must learn the value of learning not by being fast but by actually removing the darkness of ignorance from ones' brain with the light of knowledge...this process takes more time that just point and click...a computer is as smart as a semi tractor transmission...it takes real brains and skills to use them.

Sandra| 12.9.10 @ 10:10AM

The word in print (or hand writing) has an impressive advantage over electronic media.

1. One huge solar flare will not wipe out centuries of books on shelves, can't say the same about images stored in a computer database.

2. Books are portable to places a computer can never go, and do not need batteries to be operational.

3. Much harder to "alter" hard copies of books, than to "edit" all the copies on electronic devices.

4. There can be hundreds, thousands or even millions of copies of a book, at least ONE, will survive almost any natural or man-made disaster we can think of. Detonate a few nuclear weapons to bathe the globe with EMP signals, and ALL electronics are GONE.

I'll take the "hard copy" over the kindle/iPad any day.

John2| 12.10.10 @ 2:47PM

Don't forget, you can read a book much faster than a screen.

Tim Williams| 12.9.10 @ 10:21AM

Too often, schools begin with the technology, and just try to shoe-horn it into the old school. They start with a solution, because it looks great, rather than with the problem, because that's too hard.

As others have pointed out above, today's technology can be a tremendous asset in education, increasing productivity just as it does in business.

But that's not what the school in the article is trying to do. They just see "laptop" and "coffeeshop" as available things that they will squeeze into the building. They are not trying to improve productivity or efficiency, their strategy is hope; hope that shoving some technology ("laptops!") into the building, their own failures will disappear.

Lamar (the school in the article) brags about the high number of graduates who receive IB diplomas. No doubt those IB kids will enjoy the coffeehouse - they are probably more likely to have laptops of their own, as well. But a third of Lamar's students don't even graduate. Their problem is not that they have to spend too much time - as Doctor_X explains - researching and drafting dissertations due to lack of technology. Their problem is that they can't read.

And the school's problem is that they started with a solution - coffee & technology - rather than with the problem - failure to graduate.

Technology - and coffee - are just tools; like hammers. But a hammer can just as easily be used to build a house, as to tear one down.

hardcard| 12.9.10 @ 11:40AM

hitler and his crew also did away with those bothersome books

Tim the Enchanter| 12.9.10 @ 1:04PM

Mr. Orlet: Funny you should mention The Brothers Karamozov. I just started re-reading it two days ago. Also, it seems that Dostoyevsky wrote a book called The Idiot. Didn't know they had Democrats back in his day, as well!

reflective_rain| 12.9.10 @ 8:49PM

Another good thing about written text found in hard copy i.e. books, is that, if people try to redefine words, such as "journalist" "justice" "equality" "racism" (all of which have undergone distinct tinkering during the last 25 years), we still have those inconvenient books to show the past accepted usages of those same terms. One good reason to collect old outdated dictionaries, also.

Guillierme de Fora| 12.10.10 @ 8:42AM

Doesn't anybody see a bright side to this? Maybe it's just the first step toward replacing the public schools and their administrators and unionized teachers with something more efficient!
As for tossing the books, it reminds me of a scene from Gordon Liddy's "Will". The Atlanta penitentiary, which had been receiving donations for a hundred years, indiscriminately threw out loads of books, including rare first editions. On day Liddy was picking through a heap of books that had been left outside, and a guard remarked "What do Liddy want a book for, he already got a book."

jgo| 12.10.10 @ 3:46PM

My teacher acquaintances told me back in the 1990s that, for marginally ADD students, caffeine works well as a substitute for Ritalin; they're both stimulants, which, counter-intuitively, let ADD and ADHD students focus better.

Besides, printed paper books are superior in many ways to e-books: much easier on the eyes, easier to spread out across a table with various contextually related pages open. These stupid little e-readers are just annoying.

doctorluger| 12.10.10 @ 3:56PM

Unfortunately, this is the future. Our public library is full of great biographies, histories and classics. They gather dust while patrons fight over computer time. Some of these kids have never read a book and have no desire to. Facebook, Youtube, Myspace rule their world. They have no sense or understanding of history.

Renata| 2.25.11 @ 1:10PM

I have to say that if the kids are refusing to read books but are engrossed by the computer, why not use that to our advantage? I'm lucky to not have this worry as all three of my teens willingly and happily dive into a book when they have the chance. However, there are many kids out there that refuse, and the reading proficiencies across this country are horrific. Getting them to read something, ANYTHING, is better than allowing them to continue passing by the dusty shelves and ignore books completely, don't you think? There are places and reasons for technology. I don't at all believe that text books or libraries should be thrown out in favor of online sources; however, schools are having a tougher time these days of finding resources, and I know in my kids' schools, they have classes where they aren't allowed a text book because the school can't afford enough copies. It would be easier for them to do homework if they have access to printed copies or online access to a text book rather than just having access while in the classroom during the school day. I guess my point is that if we don't adapt to the changes in our society and take advantage of what options we have for our children and find ways to reach them that make them want to learn, then no matter what we think they SHOULD know, they're going to fail.

MikeBee| 12.10.10 @ 4:17PM

Detroit Public Schools is actually talking about buying every child a laptop, and no longer providing each child books for learning. The childrens' books can be downloaded to their laptops. They see it as a way to save money, while the district is something like $250M in the red. They figure that the up front cost of the laptops will be far surpassed by the savings from not having to buy hardcopy textbooks.

At this point, I don't like the idea. Like other commenters here, I would rather have a book in my hands and turn the pages. Do ebooks allow you to (almost) instantly return to an earlier page, say 100 pages earlier, to reread something, or do you have to hit "Previous Page" 100 times before you get there? Anyone have any experience with this?