What’s Wrong with Our Schools?

by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.

Libraries are cutting edge. Schools are not. Librarians move with the changes in technology. Teachers do not. And we need to ask ourselves why that is, because we spend a lot more on our schools than on our libraries.

Now let me make the obvious amendments: Not every library and librarian rides the cutting edge of technology, and not every school is stuck in the 19^th century. But if you had to make a generalization about each of these two pillars of our culture, that would be the one to make, because it’s largely true. And this is ironic, because these two institutions should, theoretically, complement and support each other as sources of knowledge, understanding, even wisdom in our society.

Why is this so? Why have they moved in such divergent fashions when they have so much in common? Well, first of all, libraries are affected by something very like market forces. In a world where a computer may cost a few hundred dollars, and where I or almost anyone else can perform the research that we need online, without ever venturing into a reference library, and where kids and younger adults live and play in cyberspace as easily as they breathe, then what is the role of a library? When people can buy and download books into an iPad or smartphone, and carry an entire library’s worth of books in a laptop in a backpack or briefcase, what is the role of a library? When cyberspace provides places for people with like interest to congregate, discuss, and network, no matter where they live, what is the role of a library? When you can consult experts, either live or through their video, audio, and published works, from wherever you are, what is the role of a library? When traditional print media are under siege by cybermedia, and you can read any newspaper or magazine from anywhere you want, what is the role of a library?

Nobody forces you to go to a library; you go because you want something and they have it, whether for pleasure or for serious intent. As a result, libraries have to operate at the cutting edge of technology, because otherwise they will loose their relevance, and patrons will stop coming through their doors. And librarians have long since not only realized this, but embraced it, seeing in technology new, and more powerful tools that can help them to help library users.

There is no such force acting on schools. Students are required by law to go to public school (or find an acceptable and sometimes expensive or labour-intensive equivalent), so schools have an effective monopoly – which they abuse by forcing students to endure years of agonizing boredom. It is well-intentioned boredom, and possibly useful-at-times boredom, but boredom notwithstanding.

Next, for the most part, except in major cities, libraries are lightly administrated and not terribly politicized. Most community libraries have a volunteer board that steers and assists them. There is usually a head librarian who acts as an executive, but there are not layers of administration heaped on top of the basic operations. There is no “ministry of libraries”, and about the most political aspect of libraries is their funding, and whether it’s too much or not enough.

Public schools, on the other hand, are top-heavy in administrators. They have principals and vice-principals, each of whom must adhere to ever-thickening books of rules about what they can and cannot do, plus the many things they absolutely must do. Teachers have forms to fill out to convince the education bureaucrats that they are complying with the prescribed teaching plans and teaching the prescribed material. Each district has a board that administers the buildings, the staffs, the budgets, and the pedagogy. And every state or province has a secretariat or ministry, usually a very big one, to make sure that everyone else is doing just the right things at just the right moments. (And an obvious comment: clearly the sheer size of our education system, and the importance of its task require that there be administration; but private schools seem to function perfectly well with a much, much lighter load.) All of this mass of people making sure that other people are doing just the right things, and only just the right things means that change is very difficult. It is a dead weight on the progressiveness of schools.

Next, libraries don’t usually attract a lot of political attention. Those who don’t like them typically just don’t go there. They don’t argue that what’s being done in libraries is undermining our rights or our government, or spreading unhealthy lifestyles or propaganda. Schools, unfortunately, have become highly politicized, and everybody disagrees about what should be done, and how, which tends to exacerbate the paralysis.

And whereas people who don’t like libraries probably never liked them, and probably never went to them, everyone had to go to school. And everyone who went to school as a kid thinks they know what’s going on in our schools, and that it’s really pretty simple stuff that anyone could do, if they weren’t occupied doing more important things. Couple this with the widely held misperception that teachers have a cushy number, knocking off work at 3, taking extended holidays at Christmas and in the Spring, and enjoying Summers off, and it’s clear to anyone that teachers don’t work very much or very hard. Nobody complains about “librarian’s hours,” because people mostly don’t care, even when libraries are publicly funded. Of course, that this perception of teachers and teaching is mostly wrong doesn’t get much attention.

Then there’s the union issue. Librarians in big cities tend to be unionized, but with smaller community centers, this isn’t usually the case. And while there is clearly a valid and legitimate reason for teachers’ unions, they have, in the main, tended to block and fight changes in the way schools operate. They must feel threatened by such changes, although I’m not sure why. But the result is that they act like lead boots, further adding to the difficulties that prevent schools from changing.

The end result of all this is that we have one of the critically important foundations of our society and economy – our school systems – mostly stuck in the 19^th century, whereas our libraries are racing forward into the second decade of the 21^st century, and stretching towards the third.

It’s not good enough, and it needs to change. But who has the courage, the will, and the authority to change it? That may turn out to be the critical question for the 21^st century.

© Copyright, IF Research, September 2011.