What Libraries Need Less Of? Books, Obvs

Princeton’s new Gehry-designed Peter B. Lewis Science Library is perfect for bibliophobes, it seems.  Students will be able to enjoy the building without having to confront all those stacks of pesky printed reading material:

Libraries are becoming more a space where people come to access data and also more of a study space, research space and to some extent, a social space,” said Gehry Partners’ Craig Webb, the library’s project designer, in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

So where did the books end up?  The basement, natch.  [Bloomberg]

Solving the Education Crisis

By Jove I think she’s got it! What we need are more maps!

The full text of Miss South Carolina’s train wreck of an answer (via Queerty):

I personally believe that, U.S. Americans are unable to do so, because some… people out there in our nation that don’t have maps, and I believe that our education, like such, as in South Africa and Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should… our education over here in the U.S., should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future.., for our…

Indeed.  I for one fear not for the future of the country after this.

Peeling the Onion — Loquacious Liberals

Well, color me not surprised that a recent poll found that liberals read more than conservatives.

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

Considering I’ve finished sixteen books this summer and counting, and I’m a ginormous liberal, I’m pretty pleased to be pacing the herd.

But whycome the conservatives are so averse to the pleasures of the written word?

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,’” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

So true! Why bother reading about the horrors of war when you can just read the bumper sticker of the gas-guzzling SUV in front of you at the pump that says “Support the Troops.” Phew. Done. Time to watch Fox News! But Schroeder isn’t done yet:

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

But, uh oh, counterpoint:

Rove, President Bush’s departing political adviser, is known as a prodigious reader. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Schroeder was “confusing volume with quality” with her remarks.

“Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I’m not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals,” he said.

“As head of a book publishing association, she probably shouldn’t malign any readers,” said Mary Matalin, a GOP strategist who oversees a line of books by conservative authors, Threshold, at Simon & Schuster. Matalin said conservatives and others aren’t necessarily reading less, but are getting more information online and from magazines.

Right, information from the same sources that espouse the same like-minded (small-minded?) ethos they cling to. Not taking into account that liberals also read for pleasure, for their own betterment. Well, the ones that have the time to do so, the one’s who aren’t working two jobs to put food on the table and clothes on their kids’ backs since most of their comfortable middle-class jobs have been outsourced.

Forget Oprah, it’s time to check what the Bill O’Reilly Book Club is reading these days! Who needs all those “words” when the facts are so clear: the surge in Iraq is working, the economy is going gangbusters and America’s safer from the threat of terror than ever! Suck it, you four-eyed, book-reading liberal naysayers.

[h/t Crooks and Liars]

Bat Boy Unavailable For Comment

In a stunning blow to journalism, American Media Inc. will cease publication of the Weekly World News at the end of this month.

The supermarket check-out line just got a lot more boring.

Pottered: Is Our Children Reading?

Amidst the hoopla surrounding the final installment of Harry Potter, the Times looks into the effect that the series has had on the reading habits of kids these days. What did we learn? Well, yes, the books have sparked an interest in reading, but “federal statistics show that the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older.”

Young people are less inclined to read for pleasure as they move into their teenage years for a variety of reasons, educators say. Some of these are trends of long standing (older children inevitably become more socially active, spend more time on reading-for-school or simply find other sources of entertainment other than books), and some are of more recent vintage (the multiplying menagerie of high-tech gizmos that compete for their attention, from iPods to Wii consoles). What parents and others hoped was that the phenomenal success of the Potter books would blunt these trends, perhaps even creating a generation of lifelong readers in their wake.

Right, so the boy wizard is not the salvation of the pleasure of the written word. If you believe the spoilers, young Harry may not even be able to save himself at book’s end. Surely other series will come along, like The Chronicles of Narnia before it, or more recently, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

I saw firsthand the effects of Pottermania years ago, when I was doing outreach work in schools. And, as a book nerd, every time I read an article about kids lining up for the release of a new book in the series, it warms the cockles of my coal-black heart. Kids. Waiting in Line. For the release a book. It validates all my middle school years, my face buried in a book on the school bus, devouring Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, and the bizarre sci-fi/superhero volumes of Wild Cards.

Until Harry Potter, “I don’t think kids were reading proudly,” said Connie Williams, the school librarian at Kenilworth Junior High School in Petaluma, Calif. “Now it’s more normalized. It’s like, ‘Gosh we can read now, it’s O.K.’ ”

So yes, reading is kinda cool now. Whee! But then, here in the article, comes the scholarly counterpoint that rubbed me wrong:

Some reading experts say that urging kids to read fiction in general might be a misplaced goal. “If you look at what most people need to read for their occupation, it’s zero narrative,” said Michael L. Kamil, a professor of education at Stanford University. “I don’t want to deny that you should be reading stories and literature. But we’ve overemphasized it,” he said. Instead, children need to learn to read for information, Mr. Kamil said, something they can practice while reading on the Internet, for example.

Okay, I’m going to try to unpack this load of bullshit logic through my angrily gritted teeth. Reading for information, fine, kids need critical thinking skills, but something they can practice while breezing ’round the internet? Really? MySpace blogs and cat macros are soooo going raise their comprehension. Right. It’s not like tweens are logging on to Salon.com or The Huffington Post. For me, my early enjoyment of fiction led to my reading of non-fiction, from essays to biographies and so on. Would I even crack a book on U.S. foreign policy if I didn’t acquire reading skills from fiction? No. No I wouldn’t.

Also, reading for one’s profession should be the ultimate goal? Well, what professions? When our technical jobs are being outsourced, our middle class is decimated, by the time most kids grow up all they’ll have to do is punch the picture of the cheeseburger on the cash register. (Whoops! Political screed, sorry.) Maybe, just maybe, these kids, when they grow up and work their shitty two jobs just to make ends meet, would like to come home and read to escape, for pure enjoyment, for comfort or solace, or to make a connection with something deeper, rather than be the mindless automatons you, professor Kamil, seem to want. No imagination? No empathy? Just work, sleep, fuck, drink, back to work?

It calls to mind the central argument of the play (and movie and radio play and probably goddamn cave drawing its been done in so many mediums) The History Boys, where one of the pedants, Hector, wanted to instill a knowledge of poetry and language in his charges for the sake of that knowledge alone. To make them well-rounded. To be closer to that indefinable, intrinsic humanity. Professor Kamil is a shining example of our current education crisis, the “no child left behind”, teach to the test methodology that is inevitably going to produce a generation who have no critical thinking skills, no thirst for knowledge, no ability to question, and no curiosity. It’s not as if learning ends when one gets their diploma. Or at least it shouldn’t.

I’d love to rant more, or be more eloquent, but I have to go. I’m in the middle of a really good novel.