Curriculum Control

Before I entered library school I got a BA of Art History with a minor in history.  But that is not where my love of history began.  In the study of history we learn where we have been so that we might not repeat every mistake.  As my father always quoted, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."  I took that to heart as a child and in high school had several amazing history teachers who continued to emphasize this view of history.

So, you can imagine my horror when I read this YALSA blog about the Texas Education Board's new conservatively bent history curriculum.  If any other state did this it would be disappointing and outrageous, but Texas wields economic power to decide the textbook publishing for the whole country.

This has been a problem for many years now and has lead to history texts for 11th grade to be at a lower and lower reading level.  Reading level, however, is a small issue compared to skewing the take on history.  I understand that I am a liberal in my views, but I believe that I can sort out facts well enough when they are presented to say that a decidedly conservative bent to history text books in not good for the accurate portrayal of our nation's past.  There are those who say that it is unpatriotic to teach American history in a way that is not flattering to our current political climate or government, but I will repeat my father's words, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."  If we cannot learn to live with our past and learn from it, then we will continue to repeat our mistakes.

I will also point out briefly that it is a sign of a totalitarian regime when history is censored.  Stalin did it as did many others.  Perhaps I would not be so quick to judge if I had never learned such things in history classes, but I don't think it is the depictions of our enemies that are being changed in this curriculum.  I can think freely and critically about other countries but am asked to put on blinders about my own.  This is not "fair" or "balanced" nor is the vitriolic right wing media campaign that has encouraged such repugnant behavior out of the Texas Education Board.

I encourage everyone to find out how textbooks are chosen by your state or local education board and encourage them to fight for solid, accurate texts that reflect the best scholarship available not a personal viewpoint.

Oregon "Celebrate the Freedom to Read" won the IFRT ProQuest/SIRS State and Regional Intellectual Freedom Award in 2009

Many of my posts have been about challenges and things that we can't do.  I feel like that gets to be unhelpfully negative after a while.  So, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize an initiative in my home state for its work to raise awareness of censorship in our communities.  

It is awards like this one that try to point out what we're doing right and what we should strive toward.  They give me hope that the work I do is not in vain and that there is national recognition of the important work to stem censorship.  Working for a positive goal helps me to keep my motivation up when I feel like I have to fight so hard against those who accept censorship as a legitimate tool.  Often these are people who want to protect their own children or society so it becomes difficult to be the "bad guy" in the situation.  Learning to respond respectively to objections helps, but it is always nice to know that there are larger organizations that agree with the IF principles I espouse.

I included a link to the press release about Oregon's winning program as well as information about the award itself.  I also want to give kudos to ProQuest for funding this award and state IF awards around the country.

Press release
IFRT ProQuest/SIRS State and Regional Intellectual Freedom Award

Catcher in the Rye vs MySpace

Is there really any difference?

One was created by an adult and published through the accepted publishing architecture while the other is a place where anyone can add almost any content anonymously or not with no editors or filters other than other users.  One is text, the other is video, ads, blogs, music, flashing pictures and more.

They both capture teen angst and the thoughts of a young generation.  They both have many adult opponents and proponents.  Both are free expression of what it is to be young and American in their time.  Both foster the creative writing dreams of a generation.

Yet, ask a librarian if you should remove Catcher in the Rye from the YA section and they will turn to you horrified.  How could you suggest we ban a book or otherwise censor our precious books!  Ask the same librarian why they have just restricted access to MySpace on the teen computers and the answer is very different.  Something more like, "To protect them from potentially sharing too much personal information" or "The bandwidth cost is too much for the demand."

These arguments would never hold up with books.  Too much demand for a best seller? Buy 200 copies.  Potentially dangerous information? That's censorship and you can't do it.

Why do we treat new technologies so very differently from old ones?  Because we don't get it.  Kids need social outlets be they online, over the phone or in person.  They will use whatever technology they can to make communication easier and more convenient.  In many ways the server logs and other information available under a warrant make online communication all that much more safe than any other conversation that a teen might have with peers or adults in public places.

Librarian as educator

I've been thinking a lot lately about how librarians can encourage intellectual freedom when there are somewhat reasonable arguments against it.  This comes up particularly with Internet access and safety issues where children are concerned.  Laws like CIPA and others that have stood up better or worse to court scrutiny aim mainly to create better safety for children even though they do so by restricting access.

The best way I can think of to do that is to make sure that we are educating the public (both parents and kids) about how to be safe on the Internet and what are actual dangers versus hype.  This excites me because I started on the path towards librarianship so that I could teach.  I never wanted to tech high school or college and never really had an interest in wrangling younger kids everyday, what I wanted was to teach new things everyday to different kinds of people.  General computer literacy and safety skills fit perfectly into this.

I see librarianship as essentially a super educator extravaganza (with lots of directing people to the restroom) most days.  Sometimes we teach classes and sometimes we just open access to previously unknown resources.

Group presentation

My group focused on Teens and Technology in Public Libraries.  Since many of my entries cover similar issues I thought it would be nice to have it here.

Presentation

Thanks for reading and watching.