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July 20, 2006
Concern
I have received this from someone I know and respect greatly - it is in response the article in the Guardian yesterday.
I fully share Rebecca Front’s consideration in her Guardian piece on libraries “that playing fast and loose with free books is akin to mucking about with the state education system.” Some years ago many councils had a perfectly good state school system including grammar schools to help develop the nation’s brightest pupils and they threw them in the bin. We also had rigorous examinations with spelling and grammar being part of the marking. That was deemed unfair(!?) and standards were repositioned. Now councils are throwing library books in the bin as part of their belief in improving their offerings to a broader general public including teenagers, the disadvantaged and non-English speaking citizens while turning their backs on the book lending library user. The leadership and vision by this government and its advisers over libraries is simply wrong. As shown in education mistakes can take decades to reverse (we are seeing many such moves today). If we do not halt the current madness of reducing the funds going into new books for the shelves of Britain’s libraries then the next generations will once again have to undo the mistakes of its supposedly wiser elders.
Posted by Perkins at July 20, 2006 8:49 PM