Re: GEN: Dewey Decimal and Reference Books

[Mr Craig Tolson <cltol1@MUGC.CC.MONASH.EDU.AU>]

G'day to alll LM_NETters from Australia!
I've been watching your debate with interest and have decided to "chip
in" a response of my own.  I think the question of "teaching" Dewey is
really central and important to many peoples' idea of just what
costitutes a teacher-librarian [or library media specialist].  To me, it
lies on the periphery.
Diane is right- the skills, if thet're not taught in the context of a
research assignment, don't transfer across.  That's where cooperatively
planning assignments with teachers and building the skills we want kids
to develop into those assignments comes into its own.
And, of course, this also enhances our roles as teacher-librarians [two
words, both equally important] as we move away from explicit dewey
"teaching" to skills teaching embedded in a real learning context.
It reminds me of trying to teach "grammar" [another sacred cow!] by
itself - it bored the kids, bored me and they never learned a lot.
Regards to you all
Craig Tolson
Melbourne
Australia

On Mon, 8 Apr 1996, Diane Durbin wrote:

> Johanna has questioned the Dewey system itself, but I have a smaller
> question.  It is about the way we teach the Dewey system.  I see several
> people have asked about creative or successful ways to teach the system.
> Replies have included games, worksheets, etc.  In my experience there is
> no transfer of knowledge from this kind of exercise to *real* use of the
> system.  If you teach kids to play Dewey Decimal Bingo, they get real
> good at that, but they can't find materials for research when they get to
> high school or junior high.  I take the kids coming into 7th and 8th
> grade from elementary school and ask them about author, title, and
> subject cards.  They know what they are, can find them in the card
> catalog, and if they find a card in the catalog can go to the shelf and
> find the book.  Repeat - they can't apply this to real needs.  Yet every
> kid knows where the books that interest him/her are - the sports books,
> the animal books, the reproductive system - you just choose it.  I heard
> lan interesting talk by a librarian who was a K-12 librarian.  She said
> she *knew* she was giving kids Dewey lessons in elementary school, and
> she was considered a master teacher, but those same kids could not apply
> Dewey *in the same library* when  in the upper grades.  Does anybody
> think it might be better to forget making kids learn the Dewey system (I
> never learned it till I went to library school and still can't remember
> the part I don't use regularly).  If we were teaching location skills in
> the context of a real classroom unit, the kids would remember where to
> look a lot faster.  You can talk about logical arrangement and finding
> things, etc., without a major emphasis on learning the Dewey Decimal
> System.  At least that's what I think.
>
> Diane Durbin
> dianed@tenet.edu
>