Bye, bye, libraries

There once was a society that banned books. Not all books. Just some books. It was Germany. It was Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany did not like books. At least, Nazi Germany did not like some books. So officials piled them up and burned them. I wonder what they would have done to the internet?

Our society does not value books. It does not protect its library services. LAs, looking for ways to cut more things of value to ordinary people (besides, of course, ordinary people's jobs) are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of getting rid of libraries. Unless, of course, those people who are the backbone of the land - the volunteers - will offer to step forward and run the libraries.

The writer, Philip Pullman, is on it here:

http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/save-oxfordshire-libraries-speech-philip-pullman#

Did you linger in libraries when you were an emerging writer, Mr. Pullman?

I bet you did.

Were they important to you?

I bet they were.

When I was little, libraries, to me, smelt of holiness. They were a sanctuary of quiet, and an oasis of learning. They were respected. They were well-thought of. They were necessary because you just couldn't manage to buy ALL the books you might ever need.

Everyone can use libraries. Any age. Any stage. Come. Try a book. Even buy a book.

They give imagination free flight. They make you laugh. They flick the conscience. They stimulate your desire to know and grow. Books do.

So get rid of the libraries. Great plan.

A pivotal service in our country.

Shows that we are literate. That we read. That we seek knowledge. That we love knowledge. That we cherish knowledge.

And we meet other people in those places. And, if we have a home that's expensive to heat, we can sit reading in peace until closing time, and save a few pounds on the gas and electric in the flat or the house. Then there's always the social side of it. A smile from a toddler as he reaches that big fun book he's had his eye on since he first got strollered through the library door. A nod from the elderly gent combing through the newspapers. It all adds up to community.

Isn't too much to ask to spare them, is it? The staff probably get paid peanuts; our library building is old and tired, but still has life and value.

Do we value important things in this country?

No, only money. We only value money. And what value has money?

What indeed?

Progress

I just thought I'd write a few lines (sounds like school, doesn't it?) on progress.

A few people's blogs have mentioned the concept this month. It appears to be related to children going or going back to school and it can be a bit of a tin of worms. Home educators panic a bit when they see coevals of their own children 'progressing' in school. They question what they are doing. They think about exams and measurement of what cannot be measured which is knowledge and wisdom.

Anyway, what is it? What is progress?

What does it mean?

Does it lead anywhere?

In my teens I decided I would take up the guitar. Not a modern screeching impressive electric one. I bought a cheap cheerful ordinary-looking guitar and was sold a plectrum to go with it which I never actually used. The local music shop offered lessons with a pleasant enough young man called J.

For two years I went on the bus, accompanied by my guitar in a large black case, to the middle of our local town to see if I'd 'cracked' the guitar. I suppose, on one level, I progressed because I went through the simple starting-to-learn book and graduated to the next-to-simple-starting-to-learn book.

But I never felt right. The guitar did not sing under my fingers. My hands did not itch to play the guitar. I confessed my feelings to J and he advised me to practice more. I did.

However much I strummed away, I grew increasingly aware that the guitar and I were not destined for a career or even a heavenly time of hobbying together.

I - I suppose you might say - progressed through whatever set me off on this hunt to become a guitar player to the realisation that I would never be a 'real' guitar player (whatever that might be). Meanwhile my friend - another J - told me that, at the age of 30, his big brother had picked up a guitar and began to play and play well.

After gnashing my teeth I had a moment of truth and I gave the guitar away to an eager friend who was desperate to learn.

I have not since regretted my time struggling to progress with the guitar. Maybe I needed that space with a musical instrument to inform me that my interest in music will probably remain that of a close admirer.

Outsiders would think I failed at guitar. I think I learned a lot from guitar. I learned that I have to really adore something to dedicate the time to it to become competent if not good at it. I learned that I cannot magically be good at something that I have little or no aptitude for.

I have made progress.

Evolution, not a building

Where people mislead themselves about the process going on in someone - a magical, mystical process of learning - is that they think learning is akin to a building. With a building you make plans, obviously, or you'd forget the wiring in the basement or forget the basement altogether. You might place the front door too close to the garage or lay the garden path in the wrong area. You need plans to construct a building.

Education, though, isn't a building. It isn't predicated on plans. Those poor souls who lay down thousands of plans, as if they were piloting aircraft, can get very frustrated because people do not actually learn that way. They twist and turn, and check and regress, and find out and digress and skip steps and intuit and leap forward and have a bad day or bad years, and then have gestalts where they 'get' it. People evolve in their learning.

Learning is an evolution. When I was a little girl my father thought he could help me with my Maths homework. I was always quite excited by this because Mathematics was pretty well incomprehensible to me. He showed me what to do on two or three problems from one night of homework. Then I had to go and try to puzzle out the rest.

I confided solemnly that I didn't like Maths, but ran to my French lessons. He explained that he had squirmed through French lessons but whizzed happily down the corridor to Maths. We laughed gently together.

My Dad had a plan. His plan was simple. To lay the foundations of my learning how to do the mathematical questions he explained the first one or two. He thoroughly informed me how to do those sums. Unfortunately, I scuppered his careful ideas by going back to say I couldn't fly solo. I had failed to solve number three, four, five and six and, by the way, could he show me one and two again because I just couldn't really remember how they went again.

My father yelled at me. For a while.

As a result of such humiliation I decided to take my fate in my own hands, stumble through each set of problems according to my level of comprehension and decided bravely to pass or fail by my own efforts.

I failed.

Often.

For years, Maths was my worst, and most heartily loathed, subject. It let me down and I let me down by being very poor in Maths.

A few years later, after the ignominy died away a little, and I only changed colour slightly at the mention of a fraction, I went back to the scene of my battle.

I tried a Mathematics course in University.

Oh, what a mad girl. What a silly chicklet. What a complete...

I called myself all sorts of names, stumbled to the Maths lab between classes, worked through various sets of lovely juicy problems.... and GOT them. Understood. Comprehended. Completed. Loved the course. Passed with an 'A'.

So, although I thought I was as good at Mathematics as a hamster is at chess, I was wrong. I had matured in my abilities. My father's natural mathematical bent had not jumped a generation and lurked waiting for my offspring to make him proud. I had some maths savvy buried somewhere just lingering until the right moment appeared. Waiting patiently to reveal itself when I had evolved to a point where I could host it properly.

Such a shock to find what you believe about yourself is not true. Never too late to learn, springs to my lips, when people tell me that they cannot do basket-weaving, Geometry or Haiku poetry.

Give it time, petal, I tell them, it will happen, you will evolve into someone you never gave yourself credit for being. You'll change and morph into that basket-weaver or look at an angle and know it immediately or produce poem after poem of hot Haiku.

I believe it will happen. Holy differentials, I've seen it up close and happening.

Funny thing, though, my Dad never did learn French.

Motivate me, please!

This is just an interjection. I'll get to my Paolo Freire blog later.

I have been reading or, actually, re-reading the excellent 'Sometimes it's Peaceful' blog and have been struck by the trying to reach 'hard to reach' people with the magic of technology aim. Maybe it's even at 'vision' status now.

Here is how I see it. It's all about motivation, isn't it? The whole kit and caboodle of learning is dependent upon a person WANTING to learn something. If you don't have that motivation, you don't have anything.

Recently, I've been dipping in and out of a very good book about motivation which I'll share with you when I've dipped enough; however, at the moment, I can sum up the problem in an old saw which is "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." To paraphrase, you can lead a child (or anyone) to information but you can't make him/her learn it.

You can pretty up the National Curriculum, whatever its form or content, and wrap it in nice coloured paper on a computer monitor. You can make the avatar sing to me, the avatar dance and talk and give advice, and test my 'progress' but you cannot make me learn. To learn or not to learn. That remains my private and hidden choice.

What makes a person choose to learn? A person learns when he or she chooses to.

No amount of pretty packages from Becta or the government is going to change that.