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My son is taking a woodworking class in high school. First week, he came home and I asked him what he was doing in his woodworking class… “Disassembling the lib

• breakyerself 1y ago
  Wish I could say we were moving in the right direction, but it's going to be getting worse for the foreseeable future. What part of the country is this?
• monkeyelite 1y ago
  I went to a high school with lots of kids that read and nobody ever checked out a book from the school library. Their interests were specialized and they got their books online or from larger collections not offered at a school. It’s fine - libraries aren’t sacred. If nobody uses them we don’t need them. The joke about football is often made but they pay for it, because people use it. > “Disassembling the library bookcases” I am skeptical. This is not the subject of wood working. And why would the school entangle students with a task to be performed by professional vendors.
  • inetknght 1y ago
    > why would the school entangle students with a task to be performed by professional vendors. Why pay a vendor to do it when you can get the students to do it for free?
    • monkeyelite 1y ago
      Because of legal problems if the job is performed improperly or someone is injured. This is basic administration. Also once again, this sounds like what someone would imagine they did in wood shop if they never took wood shop.
      • dec0dedab0de 1y ago
        maybe they used the wood to make something else
      • piggg 1y ago
        At my HS in the 90s students were frequently used to do stuff like this. Ex: this ravine/brush area we want to clean it out and chop some stuff down to make it a "nature center". Similar in woodshop and metal working - doing stuff to fix the schools infra/bldg.
        • TimedToasts 1y ago
          It's actually the basis of community building. The students take some ownership of the area they work/live in by fixing/building for others. Wonderful idea.
      • fooqux 1y ago
        > Because of legal problems if the job is performed improperly or someone is injured. This is basic administration. You do know what goes on in wood shop class right? Some light demolition is nothing compared to the power tools they'll be using soon.
      • jmpman 1y ago
        Well, this is what they did in wood shop. Happy to send proof. My son documented the full process.
        • monkeyelite 1y ago
          Yeah please share his documentation.
  • Rooster61 1y ago
    > The joke about football is often made but they pay for it, because people use it. This is not a joke. At all. There are a LOT of high schools that actively prioritize football facilities over education. I grew up in one. It's very frustrating, and that's coming from someone who DID play football.
    • monkeyelite 1y ago
      At my school the kids asked for donations to fund their equipment and they brought in money on the games for their budget. But once again… students and community use football. They do not use high school libraries.
      • nevertoolate 1y ago
        What is your point? One of education’s primary goals is / were to help learning to enjoy the “right” things. Football field or library are not “good” in themselves, people learn to enjoy reading books and playing football via guidance.
        • monkeyelite 1y ago
          My point is you don’t need to spend money on high school libraries if nobody uses them. You can even just buy students books.
      • mynameisvlad 1y ago
        > students and community use football. They do not use high school libraries. That's literally the problem being presented, the "joke" as you called it. This isn't something to be weirdly proud about. This is something to be extremely concerned about. Prioritizing football over education in a place dedicated to the latter is absurd. Like, Idiocracy-levels absurd. How has it gone so far over your head?
        • monkeyelite 1y ago
          So which is worse? - funding something people benefit from but is not part of your mission - funding something which is in your mission, but nobody uses? The former is questionable. The latter is a just a waste. Do you care about education outcomes? Or do you care about 90s symbols of education, like libraries.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • nancyminusone 1y ago
    >This is not the subject of wood working Sure it is, it's free wood for the woodshop. Unless the library is very new, those are probably solid planks. No shop teacher is going to say no to free wood. The real mystery is how the woodshop survived longer than the library did. Usually woodshops are the first thing to go.
    • everybodyknows 1y ago
      > Usually woodshops are the first thing to go. Perhaps your experience is with states whose legislatures are dominated by trial lawyers, who can hope to retire on one really good, fat personal injury judgment? Mine is, but I hope that's not the case everywhere.
    • jmpman 1y ago
      Wood shops don’t have books in them that have naughty words or share ideas to children contrary to their parent’s conservative beliefs. I doubt there’s a true budget crisis. It was manufactured to justify getting rid of the books for political reasons.
  • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
    Libraries are more than checking out books, but your point is well made. I prefer printed books, but absolutely use e-books when they're more convenient. I still think it's useful to have a librarian AT THE SCHOOL to help students with all the things libraries do that aren't related to circulation or lending. Having the librarian at the point of use increases the chance that students, faculty and administration will make best use of the library's services.
  • jmpman 1y ago
    The woodworking teacher had a source for free furniture grade lumber. Of course he’s going to jump on it. If you demand “proof” (not very HN like), I’m happy to send pics.
• cevn 1y ago
  Wow, I spent 90% of my free time as a kid in the school library. Reading this hurts. At least they are protecting them from using their brain
  • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
    +1. Libraries are about more than just lending out books.
  • wing-_-nuts 1y ago
    I got shunted into remedial reading in the 1st grade because I had a visible disability. I was there for about a week before the teacher noticed I was bored to tears. Bless her, she had me tested. Turns out I was reading at a 4th grade level, so I immediately got taken out of that class and put into the 'gifted' class. That class was the best kind of unstructured. We had a new teacher with little experience, but she just turned us lose on the school library and let us read whatever and then talk about it in class. I *ADORED* that class. It was getting an hour a day to basically do what I wanted to be doing anyway.
    • deleted 1y ago
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• sleepyguy 1y ago
  Here in North Texas, school districts drop tens of millions on artificial turf for junior high and high school football fields. Some even run bond elections to build stadiums and training facilities that would make an NFL team jealous. Meanwhile, academics sit dead last on the priority list—kids are walking across the stage barely able to read or write. Honestly, if AI came in and torched the whole education system, it might be an upgrade. Hard to do worse than the geniuses running things now, who seem to think Friday night lights are more important than literacy.
  • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
    It's very sad... I went to schools in Arlington that were quite good when I attended in the 70s and 80s. Our high school routinely ranked high on the academic achievement ratings (% of students going to college, average SAT score, etc.) _AND_ we routinely sent our high school football team to district and state competitions. Our soccer team was undefeated for years. I've often thought it would be a good idea to separate academics from athletics. Have a "school district" that runs the schools in a building next to the football field run by the "athletic district." I think both are important, but you're right, North Texas public schools have fallen quite far from the academic standards they used to hold.
    • SJC_Hacker 1y ago
      > I've often thought it would be a good idea to separate academics from athletics. Have a "school district" that runs the schools in a building next to the football field run by the "athletic district." I think both are important, but you're right, North Texas public schools have fallen quite far from the academic standards they used to hold. It’s my understanding this is what they do in much of Europe.
      • foobarian 1y ago
        Are federal public schools a bad idea then? Wonder how much of this kind of thing would be unlocked without their interference. Presumably the bottom would also get a lot lower though
• Spivak 1y ago
  > Yet the football team is fully funded, and the baseball diamond is kept up The football team makes money, why do people constantly ignore this. There's always money for ventures that have positive ROI. It has nothing to do with priorities. At schools with top theater programs they're also always fully funded because they bring in outside revenue.
  • dec0dedab0de 1y ago
    I seriously doubt that most highschool football teams make a profit. I would be surprised if ticket sales even cover the cost of the staff working the game.
    • Spivak 1y ago
      Then you didn't go to a football school. We had a multi-million dollar stadium that could hold a thousand-ish fans and it was packed every game. Most of them were season ticket holders. We also raked in $$ from other schools who wanted to host their events using our stadium. Also none of the people working the game are paid except for the ref (and the TV crew if you have one). It's all volunteers and students. Our principal was the announcer. The revenue from football paid for every other sport and then some. Schools that weren't football schools had much more modest stadiums, usually just a field and a pre-fab bleacher.
      • jbeam 1y ago
        The vast majority of high school sports teams aren't coming anywhere close to a profit. Your experience is unusual, which answers your question: > why do people constantly ignore this.
        • Spivak 1y ago
          Because people who talk about "the football team always is fully funded" are from schools that are turning a profit. We played teams from schools that weren't. They had ancient gear and a field. The public HS across the street from us didn't even have a field, they used ours.
• alchemical_piss 1y ago
  The future needs serfs, not readers.
  • georgeecollins 1y ago
    Perhaps, but the past also needed more serfs than readers. I don't think that is good, but maybe it is too idealistic to think you can create a nation of 330m critical thinkers. Not because it isn't possible, but because not everyone wants to approach life that way.
    • int_19h 1y ago
      The past needed more serfs than readers until the Industrial Revolution, but once we got those going, all that machinery required skilled people to operate.
      • p1esk 1y ago
        Did making things without machinery require fewer skilled people?
        • int_19h 1y ago
          Depends on what you're making. Pre-industrial society was mostly concerned with growing food to feed itself. Things like say blacksmithing or advanced weaving certainly did require skilled professionals, but they were proportionally a tiny minority of a society consisting mostly of farmers.
• OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • swampthinker 1y ago
    Sounds very Florida public schooling. Just not the case in states like MA (re: quality and efficacy of education).
    • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
      Found some data. Not sure if it's accurate... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-s... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/educational-attainment-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/educational... There's broad correlation between per-pupil spending and academic achievement. Massachusets has high per-pupil spending and high academic achievement. Florida's educational attainment is higher than I would have thought, given how little they spend on education. Maybe their graduation requirements are laxxer than Massachuset's? Maybe they're more efficient? Cost of living in rural Florida has to be less than in Mass.
  • seneca 1y ago
    I'm not sure this is all that unpopular of an opinion anymore. Government schools have been in decline for decades, and a lot of people were exposed to the truth of just how dysfunctional they had become during covid lock downs. Perhaps before that more people still believed in the noble myth of public education, but I, at least, have seen more and more people agreeing with the sentiment you put forward, minus the statement about keeping teens out of the job market.
    • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
      Historically, labor unions opposed child labor for reasons that a) they should be in school learning things and b) they work really cheaply since they're unskilled. Unions in the 1800s were pretty open about why they opposed child labor, and they always mentioned the corrosive effect of an underclass of unskilled labor. So yeah... people might not think about it much now. But if you repealed child labor laws, I'm pretty sure the unions would be trying to fund high schools EXPLICITLY so they could shape the structure of labor participation by cohort.
• bpt3 1y ago
  People keep talking about education cost. By and large, this isn't a cost issue. The lowest performing schools get the most funding per student, and while school boards and teacher's unions always are going to advocate for more money spent on education, spending in the US isn't low objectively or based on per-pupil averages elsewhere. The issue is who is ultimately in charge of students and who is responsible for raising them (which should be the same thing, but doesn't have to be), making this ultimately a control issue. Certain people want to use the school system to raise children based on their own moral system because they could be learning the "wrong" thing at home, and other people want the schools to defer to parents' wishes. Most people want their kid to get a good education and otherwise be left alone by teachers and administrators, but that group gets very little attention. At the end of the day, parents are legally responsible for their children, and unless that is changed, schools play an important but secondary role in caring for and raising them. Until that is widely accepted or changed, conflict will continue.
  • tracker1 1y ago
    I think it's mostly that too much is spent on administration and middle-management type roles both in public schools and higher education. They're IMO largely a less than useful drain on funding that could be better spent elsewhere. At least as far as budgeting is concerned. I have completely separate views on how kids are being raised and educated and how things have changed just in my half century on this planet.
  • dayvid 1y ago
    I taught in the Japanese school system for 2 years. Very low funding, but actually the opposite of your example. Teachers had a high level of respect and ability to act in the child's life. Also almost every kid had club activities in and in class all day long. Primary goal is to drill in discipline and conformity over education to be honest.
• rayiner 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • repeekad 1y ago
    Stereotyping white students as already fine and thus undeserving of any attention contributed this cultural mess in the first place, JD Vance wrote a book about white American struggles and now he’s VP. The school district might be primarily white, it’s more clearly likely poor and rural, and the electoral college values it more than dense educated rich cities.
    • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
      I'm sure the white dude from Middletown with a law degree from Yale is personally familiar with systemic social depredation.
      • hollerith 1y ago
        JD Vance famously grew up in poverty and chaos caused by his mother's chronic drug addiction and his father's having abandoned him when he was a toddler.
        • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
          It's interesting to note that Vance's assertion he grew up in poverty has been challenged. My assertion was that his position as a white middle class kid from suburban Cincinnati taking golf lessons does not necessarily make him the best person to speak from first hand knowledge about the effects of poverty on educational attainment. I'm also fairly certain that Vance did not wander the streets of Middletown, feral and unparented. My understanding is that he was raised by his grand-parents, not that he lived with the chaos of his mother's situation. Also... great deflecting.
          • coldtea 1y ago
            >I'm also fairly certain that Vance did not wander the streets of Middletown, feral and unparented. My understanding is that he was raised by his grand-parents, not that he lived with the chaos of his mother's situation. So an addict mother, having to be raised by grand-parents, having to go to the army and then use the GI Bill to study, growing up in an declining small working class town in Ohio, are not enough? He had to be "feral and unparented" to qualify? Because that's what people mean when they talk about the working and middle class "white American struggles"? Vicorian street urchins? In any case, by those elements alone, he knows 100x about "white American struggles" than the average champion of the poor at the Met Gala and the New Yorker.
• OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  The ironic bit here is the local high school where I live in the Pacific North-West doesn't have a copy of Homo Ludens (either in print or as an e-book for lending) which is sort of the Sine Qua Non text on the philosophy of sport (which would explain why having a Football Team is important.)
  • breakyerself 1y ago
    I tend to think sports is good for kids. Not football though. My kids in high school marching band so I'm at the games. It's stupid how many kids get hurt on any given Saturday and some will go on to have CTE
    • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
      Yeah. I was the only kid in Texas who was vaguely interested in athletics but completely uninterested in football. I mean... I was never insulted for playing baseball or soccer, but yeah, we need a better game than football as the go-to for Texas sports.
      • ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
        >we need a better game than football as the go-to for Texas sports. Freestyle[0] FTW! Let's Jam! [0] https://www.freestyle-frisbee.com/index.html https://www.freestyle-frisbee.com/index.html
        • ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
          Why the downvotes? Just because it doesn't require a cup or serious risk of CTE/TBI doesn't make freestyle bad, does it?
• crazygringo 1y ago
  This is probably an unpopular opinion, but is there still much purpose in a modern high school libraries except as a work/study space? Elementary school libraries are important because kids can check out books at their reading level and you don't need a huge variety. But in high school, when I wanted a book for research or recreational reading, 99% of the time my high school library wouldn't have it anyways. You had to go to the public library anyways for decent fiction, and the local college library for non-fiction you would need to cite. I think it's important to preserve the high school library space for working and the computer access. But I'm just not sure how relevant the actual books are. Especially since public libraries now have e-books, so you don't even have to go there in person if it's inconvenient. Should maintaining a collection of physical library books really still be the job of high schools, when public libraries will do it better and are open to everyone, not just high schoolers?
  • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
    Libraries are about more than lending books (or media). Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library
    • crazygringo 1y ago
      Your patronizing comment is unhelpful. My high school library certainly didn't do anything but lend books and store some AV equipment, and provide a computer/study space, and I already referred to keeping the space for those other purposes. If we wanted information or recommendations on books to read, that was definitely what our English teachers were for. The library wasn't helping with that.
      • OhMeadhbh 1y ago
        Okay. You don't have to read about libraries if you don't want to. But you'll likely sound a bit more informed if you do. Your comment makes it sound like the only thing you think ALL libraries do is lend out media. Maybe you just had a crap library. Learning about a library's complete range of services is a decent idea and I encourage you to do so. If you don't want to read about it on the Wikipedia, I encourage you to engage your local librarian. Just ask them what they do. They will be delighted someone took an interest. Here are a few examples... In the 70s, our high-school librarian was the go-to person to ask about where to find specific types of information. Before the internet, I think most people didn't know how to look up raw data in the reference stacks. My high school librarian showed me where to find state and federal data and departmental reports. I learned what "semiotics" was by asking my Jr. High School librarian about how the library was structured. When I worked for the government, we had a departmental library whose librarian was much more like a research assistant. The Seattle Public Library maintains 3-d printers they let the public use. I mean... I would not have guessed that was a thing the library would do. (Though I didn't see them the last time I was there, so maybe they're not doing that anymore.) My previous comment wasn't intended to be patronizing, but I guess I can't control how you interpret comments from other people. Feel free to think I'm a jerk... but please ask your local librarian what services their library offers.
• JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > there were 95 books in the school library which were being questioned by some parents. Instead of removing just those books, and being accused of book banning Would those parents really have support in your community if they were named and shamed?
  • standeven 1y ago
    In my community, those parents occasionally get elected to the school board.
  • zamadatix 1y ago
    Those parents genuinely believe the presence of certain books in school is harming children, they are unlikely to throw in the towel because someone runs a shame campaign against them for it. That doesn't make the school caving on the topic any more forgivable, but we can't trivialize how difficult small but dedicated groups in a local community can make things either. The community typically only shows up to worry about it after a bad decision is imminent, the small group shows up 24/7/365 pushing the issue.
    • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Those parents genuinely believe the presence of certain books in school is harming children, they aren't looking for community support I'm not saying their feelings aren't sincerely held. My point is they need community support to ban books in a public school.
      • zamadatix 1y ago
        They just need the school board to cave to the constant annoyance. The community only shows up when the bad decision is imminent (or, often, has already passed) because they cannot treat this issue as their only #1 priority, as a small group can. What the school board did here is sneak out of the battle, which would continue long after community says "no" once.
        • 1y ago
• Projectiboga 1y ago
  Ugh, I was born in 68 and I always advocate for doing some research in libraries. The important factor is the serendipity of finding random stuff as you walk around and the narrowed part when you get to your target's area on the shelves and seeing other volumes in the same subject area.
  • DanTheManPR 1y ago
    I'm much younger than you, but I had the experience of having a difficult-to-find-info-on-the-internet subject for a high school paper, and the opporunity to researching the subject at a well stocked library. There was a lot of friction to the process that I wasn't used to, but the serendipity aspect was absolutely revelatory. There is something fundamentally unfiltered about walking past shelves of books with titles on subjects you never even knew existed.
• austin-cheney 1y ago
  Sounds like a town named Southlake.
• constantcrying 1y ago
  Good riddance. Libraries are totally pointless and a waste of money. Almost every book that is available at all can be accessed within seconds on any modern digital device. You will learn how extremely valuable that is when you actually are doing research. Students should be taught how to actually do research, not how to waste time looking things up in some small buildings which doesn't have the resources they need.
  • kulahan 1y ago
    Have you not been in a library in like 50 years? It’s a hell of a lot more than a “small building which doesn’t have the resources they need”.
    • constantcrying 1y ago
      Without a doubt in my entire academic life the books have been the least useful thing libraries contained. Getting rid of them provides space for the good and productive things people do in a library. It is important that students have quiet space to study. But libraries as book storages have very little utility and seem very hard to justify.
      • kulahan 1y ago
        Ah, from that point of view, I can agree. It’s shocking how few books I can find in my local library. Not a single one by GK Chesterton, and half a million people live in my town. Wtf? Still, I think we should keep books as available to citizens as possible.
        • constantcrying 1y ago
          >Still, I think we should keep books as available to citizens as possible. I agree. But it is obviously far more cost effective and useful to have that access be digital first. Do not understand me wrong, I like physical books. But for doing research it is almost always preferable to have the books be available digitally. And students should learn to make use of that.
• giardini 1y ago
  Sounds like a reasonable decision to me: let the schools teach and let the city/county maintain the library separately. But disassembling the library bookcases is hardly an appropriate woodworking project.
  • rtaylorgarlock 1y ago
    I consider the 'freedom' felt in the library as a successful part of my growth in elementary and beyond, and I don't like moving that further away from the education environment--even though city/county libraries in my experience have been fantastic.
  • naet 1y ago
    Having a library on location at a school is valuable. You can do research, you can discover new books, you can have a quiet place to study... I have loved every school library I've ever been in. Any library is a nexus of knowledge and learning. They should be in schools.
    • giardini 1y ago
      The libraries in the schools I attended were primarily used to detain misbehaving students in quiet. The public library was much larger and was indeed worthwhile as a library per se. But our school libraries were small and poorly funded. That was fine: they still served a useful purpose. It appears that today's school libraries and libraries in general have become a means for activist liberal political groups to introduce children to political/social ideas that, perhaps, those children are not yet prepared to deal with (YMMV). As a child I went to the public library for science and they had it in spades. Nowadays the science is still there but the librarians would rather you read something else. My inclination is to de-fund any organization that pursues a political/social agenda by taking control of established institutions of government (schools, libraries, etc.). If necessary, I would de-fund the institution being abused.
  • georgeecollins 1y ago
    Not to me! But then I think we should stop trying to think of K-12 education as a national issue because clearly there are regional differences and regional preferences. And I don't mean this as a red / blue thing-- there are places where the challenge is bilingual education and their are places where parents are uncomfortable with a non-christian education. These challenges are more than a hundred years old! We have turned this into a national issue, made national standards and its not clear we are making that much progress. Many US states are effectively large countries. Why don't we let them decide what they want to do democratically. Whether you agree with it or not, it is what happens effectively. In the US you can move if you don't like where you live.
• geocar 1y ago
  > which were being questioned by some parents I doubt that: My experience is that people who complain about books don't read them, let alone understand them enough to "question" them. > This society has priorities which aren’t education. Forgive me, but it's your society: You live there. It's that way because of you. I know that sucks to hear; it's not all your fault; it seems like there is a lot of inertia; and you definitely can't overcome it all by yourself, and it is was like that before you were born; and so on, But I urge you to take responsibility to right the ship anyway, and at risk of mixing metaphors too much stop worrying so much about who started the fire and work on putting it out. Make friends with your neighbours, and get them to help you. Stop enabling bad behaviour by referring to those other parents "questions" in their couched weasel-words and call them out for their hate and the spread of hate and ignorance. Because literally nobody else is going to do it, and we need you.
  • jmpman 1y ago
    I live in a town of over 200k people. When I moved here, it was 12k residents, and dominated by religious conservatives. When I graduated high school, I vowed to never return. My wife however had other ideas, and as soon as my kids were school age, we were back. The town remains politically dominated by the same conservative religious group, even though they’re less than 20% of the population. Could I go to the school board meetings and raise and issue? Sure, but my son, who would be the recipient of any retribution, requested I not. I even offered to pay for private school for him, but he still wasn’t willing. Once he graduates, maybe I’ll spend my time fighting this fight. My peers from high school who weren’t from this religious group fled. None remain to fight. Even if I win a seat on the board, I’d be just one of 7, and nothing would change.
    • geocar 1y ago
      > When I graduated high school, I vowed to never return. My wife however had other ideas, and as soon as my kids were school age, we were back Listen brother, if you do something, it is your choice. Nobody can make your choices for you. Not the government. Not a god. Not even your wife. And the choice to do nothing is still a choice. > Could I go to the school board meetings and raise and issue? Sure, but my son, who would be the recipient of any retribution, requested I not. You are the adult: You are making this choice. Your son is the recipient of the future you are creating whether you like it or not. And what will happen is son's children (if they have any) will have a slightly worse version of the problem you are facing, because of the choices you are making. > Even if I win a seat on the board, I’d be just one of 7, and nothing would change. Nonsense. It always starts with one. Didn't you know the first black person to sit in the front of the bus was just one person? I bet if you try you can think of a lot of firsts that led to change.