Legal Research

School Library Crime

By scott

Being one of those strange creatures that still insists on buying a newspaper ever day, I was interested by a short piece in today’s Independent (my weekday paper of choice ? and yes it is too preachy, but it’s easier to read on train/DLR than Guardian/Torygraph) by Terence Blacker on the gradual killing off of school libraries.

He points out that whilst prisoners have a statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and that we have a government that keeps spouting on about ‘Creative Britain’, yet is the same one who has overseen the decimation of school libraries in this country.

Departing Culture Secretary (and new Heath Secretary) Andy Burnham was often keen to ensure people that his and the government?s commitment to provision of comprehensive library service is ?absolutely non-negotiable?. And yet whilst on the one hand he has said “there is a real thirst out there from people looking for opportunities to come together. Libraries should be the place where real social networking happens - libraries as Facebook-3D; libraries as OurSpace instead of MySpace”; on the other, he and his government has turned their back on the ideal people to explore and develop just this kind of real social networking ? children.

No doubt, he, and the government would point the fingers at others, at school finances, at local councils etc, but if as Blacker (and campaign for the Book) suggest our school children were given the same guaranteed statutory right to libraries as our prisoners were, this would not be an issue. And lets us not forget the words of our (old) ‘great’ leader: “Education, Education, Education.”

Full post as published by Information Overload on June 09, 2009 (boomark / email).