School Libraries: The Great Forgotten

 

They have wondered what the state of the school libraries in our centers is. Perhaps we imagine spaces full of books where students can go there to study, consult or investigate, or to look for readings that may interest them to take them home. But is this so?

In principle, this space, sometimes misunderstood as a multipurpose classroom, should be the ideal environment to instill and encourage the habit and pleasure of reading in the youngest from the very center. The use of these resources should make up for the lack of many of these books in numerous homes, being the only point of reference for students during their first years of life.

Although, I do not think it is necessary, although it never hurts, to highlight the importance of reading to make us in this world, grow, know, tolerate, and create our own vision of the reality that we build and live. I feel that in many of the centers, for various reasons, it has been forgotten.

"The library is the most democratic of institutions because no one at all can tell us what to read, when and how" Doris Lessing

In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to visit a few Primary schools and I have been very surprised. Not in all, but in some, entering a school library was a trip back in time. And you will think, of course, a journey between readings that transport you in history. Well no, it was a trip to the past because I felt like when I start digging in the closets of my parent's house and I find things from my childhood that no one has touched since then.

I saw the same books as I, more than twenty years ago I was able to hold in my hands in childhood. And that's not what surprises me, what I couldn't understand was how there were only those same books. Are there no new editions in the last decades? No new titles? Not to say, that in reality the shelves were covered by the same copy repeated thirty or more times. Just enough for the use of a class. And, the variety, was forgotten to search on some shelf. In some, I could even assure that no children had passed through there for some time. Why aren't these spaces used?

What is the state of your school libraries? If this is it, sadly we can promote reading in our schools. Sending a recommended or textbook to our students is not instilling a habit. Freedom of choice and finding a useful place for it is a duty of the institutions themselves. For education, let's defend our libraries.

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