Re: GEN: Dewey Decimal and Reference Books

[Cyd Sheffy <cyds@TENET.EDU>]

Hurrah, Diane!  I wondered if anyone was ever going to question why we
"make" students learn Dewey... like every other skill that I taught in
isolation for years, I have abandoned this one too.  Point-of-need makes
almost every "skill" transferrable.  I tell the children that they don't
need to leanr what the numbers mean -- that's what the catalog is for.
They always figure out the important areas for themselves...

Cyd Sheffy
Bruce Shulkey Elementary
Fort Worth, TX
cyds@tenet.edu

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
>