3 ms·

Public school library != public library

slg 4y ago
Can you clarify what you are trying to say with this comment? This distinction has no bearing on what I said. The same concept applies to both equally regardless of the current political battle being specifically about school libraries.
- temp8964 4y ago
  They are the same just because you say so?
  - slg 4y ago
    I didn't say they were the same. I said the same concept applied to both.
- SllX 4y ago
  I'll chime in here: it's a worthy distinction because one is available to the students and staff of a school and thus is not a "public library", even though it is funded by the public. The other is a library available to the public (generally with a residency requirement as a gatekeeping measure although not necessarily) and funded by the public. The controversy is about the former, because that is the type being targeted with legislation, and arguably as a controversy it is overblown because it does not overlap with the latter which is also available to children and almost always has a superior selection covering a wider breadth of subject matter and genres with greater depth. There is something to be said about letting librarians at either type just make their own decisions without legislating them, but public schools are right at the intersection of all kinds of messed up policies around the staff and students and curriculum due to the nature of these institutions so this honestly doesn't rate very high. You can't fix that, because fixing that would mean fixing people in general, so the alternative is to sidestep it by sending children to private schools, but then it will just be a different group of people making policy decisions about the staff, students, curriculum and materials accessible to them. So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed.
  - slg 4y ago
    >So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed. What do you think is the purpose of a school library? Surely the school library would serve no purpose if every student had the money to buy the book from Amazon or transportation to regularly visit the public library. Removing a book from a school library does mean that some part of the student population loses access to the book. Sure, some kids can still get around it, but that is far from universal.
    - SllX 4y ago
      The purpose of the school library is to provide access to school materials first and anything else is secondary and tertiary. The same children who are qualified to check out a book from the school library may also check out books from a local public library. Unfortunately sometimes they aren’t. For example, I could not check out books from the public library because my one parent could not check out books because she didn’t know where the books she checked out were nor was she able to pay to replace them. That’s life, but it isn’t world shattering and when they have disposable income and reach the age of majority they can make their own life’s choices and not continue to suffer the choices of their parents. There’s no shortage of excellent reading material and no school library or public library will have every book one might want to read. Either will have a lot though, so make do.

slg 4y ago

Can you clarify what you are trying to say with this comment? This distinction has no bearing on what I said. The same concept applies to both equally regardless of the current political battle being specifically about school libraries.

temp8964 4y ago
They are the same just because you say so?
- slg 4y ago
  I didn't say they were the same. I said the same concept applied to both.
SllX 4y ago
I'll chime in here: it's a worthy distinction because one is available to the students and staff of a school and thus is not a "public library", even though it is funded by the public. The other is a library available to the public (generally with a residency requirement as a gatekeeping measure although not necessarily) and funded by the public. The controversy is about the former, because that is the type being targeted with legislation, and arguably as a controversy it is overblown because it does not overlap with the latter which is also available to children and almost always has a superior selection covering a wider breadth of subject matter and genres with greater depth. There is something to be said about letting librarians at either type just make their own decisions without legislating them, but public schools are right at the intersection of all kinds of messed up policies around the staff and students and curriculum due to the nature of these institutions so this honestly doesn't rate very high. You can't fix that, because fixing that would mean fixing people in general, so the alternative is to sidestep it by sending children to private schools, but then it will just be a different group of people making policy decisions about the staff, students, curriculum and materials accessible to them. So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed.
- slg 4y ago
  >So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed. What do you think is the purpose of a school library? Surely the school library would serve no purpose if every student had the money to buy the book from Amazon or transportation to regularly visit the public library. Removing a book from a school library does mean that some part of the student population loses access to the book. Sure, some kids can still get around it, but that is far from universal.
  - SllX 4y ago
    The purpose of the school library is to provide access to school materials first and anything else is secondary and tertiary. The same children who are qualified to check out a book from the school library may also check out books from a local public library. Unfortunately sometimes they aren’t. For example, I could not check out books from the public library because my one parent could not check out books because she didn’t know where the books she checked out were nor was she able to pay to replace them. That’s life, but it isn’t world shattering and when they have disposable income and reach the age of majority they can make their own life’s choices and not continue to suffer the choices of their parents. There’s no shortage of excellent reading material and no school library or public library will have every book one might want to read. Either will have a lot though, so make do.