Library Stats and FixedSchedules

[Debra Gniewek <dgniewek@MAIL.PHILA.K12.PA.US>]

One thing I wanted to mention about circulation statistics taken from a
fixed library schedule is that circulation may have very little to do with
books actually read.  My son is in 7th grade now and has checked out a book
every week from first grade until sixth grade and has not read a single
page of any school library book checked out. As he told me in first grade,
"Library books are old, smelly, and ripped." This year in 7th grade he
asked me to write a note requesting that his teacher and librarian not
"force" him to check out books he will never read. (In our district the
average yearly per pupil expenditure has been $3-5.50, with many elementary
schools spending zero! The average copyright date is 1972, with elementary
schools having many books from the 1960s.)

My son's principal does not think it's important to have new library books
since they have fairly new books in the classrooms. My son reads books for
classroom assignments, where inane activities are enough to make a
nonreader out of anyone. Last May the entire class was assigned The Devil's
Arithmethic by Jane Yolen. He had six end-of-chapter-tests, 4 vocabulary
tests, 2 reports, and as the culminating activity, an assignment to make a
pop-up book of Holocaust scenes! (If I were Jane Yolen, I'd sue.)

I attempt to compensate for the damage done to my son's love of reading.
But I don't believe that I can undo all the damage. And I contantly ask
myself, "What about the other children whose mothers are not librarians,
who have practically no books at home, whose experience of reading is a
library book called Tizz on the Farm, copyright 1962, and the painful
dissection of children's literature in the classroom?"



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 Debra Lyman Gniewek                    dgniewek@phila.k12.pa.us


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