I don’t know about you, but occasionally, the challenges of K-12 education seem to press in on my spirit like a vise. Increased external pressures, “everyone’s an expert” syndrome, recession-based funding difficulties, oversimplification of teacher evaluation, insanely high poverty rates for children, overemphasis on testing, oversimplification of what defines good teaching and learning, conversations about the future of K-12 education that pull together “education experts” without any teachers, students, administrators, education researchers, or preservice educators on the invitation list; and a fundamental us vs. them, right vs. wrong binary approach to reform are stressing. us. all.out.

So, I admit it: I was skeptical about Seth Godin’s latest work, Stop Stealing Dreams. Godin is a great marketer and a refreshing thinker, and I like his blog — but he’s not an educator. Please, please, please, I thought, let this not be one more diatribe against teachers. I can’t handle it. But when downloads reached 100,000 days after its released, I realized that a lot of people were reading it, so I’d better read it, too, if only for cocktail conversation.

87 pages later, I’m pleasantly surprised. Godin’s book, in his time-tested, succinct style, is divided into over 100 mini-chapters or brief essays ranging from K-12 to higher education to libraries. Godin has a strong basic grasp of the over-tested, fact-crammed, under-motivating gestalt that is currently pervading much of K-12 culture. And although he talks about teachers who have passion versus those who do not, he steers clear of teacher-bashing. If there is any finger-wagging at all, it is to America itself for not asking for more creative, engaging work for its children and for believing in multiple-choice testing as judge and jury of student knowledge and teacher effectiveness. We educators can only hope that the parents and decisionmakers in our community read Godin’s book and are motivated to begin big conversations with us about how we can, collectively, change education so that our children’s individuality is embraced and we look holistically at the purpose of education in the 21st-century.

Godin also talks about the changing purposes of libraries in ways that are very compatible with the ways folks like David Lankes (in his award-winning Atlas of New Librarianship) are discussing them, the ways that we, in our Professional Practice class, discuss how we can keep libraries vibrant and lively at a time of change. From Chapter 123, “The Future of the Library”:

The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa, and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user …

Industrialists (particularly Andrew Carnegie) funded the modern American library. The idea was that in a pre-electronic media age, the working man needed to be both entertained and slightly educated. [Note from me: our own Melvil Dewey said the same, remarking that libraries should keep similar hours to bars.] Work all day and become a more civilized member of society by reading at night … Which was all great, until now …

Wikipedia and the huge databanks of information have basically eliminated the library as the best resource for anyone doing amateur research … Is there any doubt that online resources will get better and cheaper as the years go by? Kids don’t schlep to the library to use an out-of-date encyclopedia to do a report on FDR. You might want them to, but they won’t unless coerced.

They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all …

Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario …

The library is no longer a warehouse for dead books. Just in time for the information economy, the library ought to be the local nerve center for information … the insight and leverage are going to come from being fast and smart with online resources, not from hiding in the stacks.

The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do coworking and to coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who understands … domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information.

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user-serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. This librarian takes responsibility or blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark…

Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousand things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community, and create value.

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.

Preach on, Brother Seth. We’re on it.

If I have one complaint about Godin’s book, it’s that it references a lot of other works without citing them in-text. There’s a hyperlinked bibliography at the end (and that’s causing an interesting territorial stink: this bib’s titles are hyperlinked to Amazon, which has reportedly caused Apple to block it from the iBookstore — a huge market fragmentation issue for discussion on another day), but when you run across an interesting fact, like this from Chapter 96:

Apple just built a massive data center in Malden, North Carolina. That sort of plant development would have brought a thousand or five thousand jobs to a town just thirty years ago. The total employment at the data center? Fifty.

you can’t figure out where that information came from. And more and more, as my own education is self-driven rather than driven by an institution’s syllabus or curriculum map, I find myself following those citations with questions like, “What else did that article say? What else is happening in that plant? Who said that?” A written work with citations is more than a stand-alone; it’s the citations that help connect those thoughts to a larger, interconnected world of ideas. Which is, ironically, what Godin is trying to do with this book and hoping that future educators will help students do.

Image: “Mal di Testa/Headache”

A few days ago, our Professional Practice class had a quick conversation about the messages our physical layout communicate. (It came out of a bit at the end of a chapter from How People Learn.) A student, in her follow-up blog post, referred to the “silent contract” that libraries issue when a patron walks in the door. What a brilliant, brilliant phrase.

What does our library layout say about what it expects our patrons/students/faculty/parents to do, say, not do, or not say?

I don’t have my own library anymore, but I do have a private office. And one interesting thing I notice as we wander in and out of our faculty colleagues’ offices is how much of the occupant’s personality is manifest based on what’s on their shelves. The computer folks tend to have fewer books than the LIS folks. Some have more binders, some have more photos. Some have whiteboards for visual brainstorming or chart paper on the wall, and some staffers have beautiful original artwork. One of our faculty members is rather well-known for her love of squirrels, so her office door and interior are covered with gifts of all things squirrel. Some office reflect travel; others are more spartan.

I have the detritus from my years in K-12 education (e.g., the shekeres gourd I used to use to get students’ attention), along with gifts I’ve received from students (e.g., the softie with the blacked-out eye or the little library kit complete with date due stamp), books I’ve written, nice notes I’ve received, magnetic poetry, and photos and mementos that remind me of my family and travels. One of my colleagues calls it a “museum,” but trust me — it’s nothing that wouldn’t fit right in on a K-12 teacher’s desk! The rest of my bookshelf is actually books, and they clearly transmit three things I’m passionate about: children’s/young adult literature, teaching and learning, and librarianship.

Under one set of shelves, there’s just enough room for my grandmother’s stool, so we can pull it out on those rare but wonderful occasions when my two guest chairs aren’t enough. The overhead fluorescent lights do a number on me, so I have scattered, mismatched lamps instead. It’s cozy to me, and I like that I can plug in my iPhone to speakers and listen to music when I’m in the mood.

So yeah. My office offers a silent contract, and I hope it’s an inviting one, even though I’m always having to shuffle papers to clear a space for guests. I should ask some of my more-frequent visitors to double-check.

It reminds me of a pair of stories I heard on the radio program The Story a few days ago. First, there was the story of Reddy Annappareddy, who, amid a community where 22 of the 25 pharmacies were national conglomerates, started his own pharmacy, placing customer service — from free home delivery to running errands for folks — at the top of his priority list. After 5 years, he had gone from zero income to $50M in profits. Customer service paid. That was his not-so-silent contract.

And secondly, the host Dick Gordon interviewed Andy Shallai of Busboys and Poets. In a discussion about the B&P menu, Shallai said that the menu transmits who is welcome. So if you want people to feel included, then, on the most basic level, a kosher meal signifies that those who keep kosher are welcome, and collard greens signify that Southerners, specificlally African-Americans, are welcome. The menu was Shallai’s silent contract.

We all have some institutional elements that we cannot control. (I’m thinking of the nearby school that is an amazing collaborative space, where more room is given over to tables for group work, with books stored off to the slides, but which has an entrance door flanked by the largest, tallest, darkest circulation desk this side of Folsom Prison.) But we have those we can.

What does your library’s silent contract say about you, the learning you aspire to host, and the people who are welcome? I’d love to know.

Photo “Contract” by Steve Snodgrass from Flickr, used with a Creative Commons license

For the third year now, I set aside some time in our last meeting of SI 624: Media for Children and Young Adults for students to reflect on what they have learned in the past term. Perhaps it will coincide with what I believe, and perhaps not, but it’s important for reflection to happen in a quiet, unhurried way. And because the end of the term is so chaotic, the classroom feels like the place to allot that time.

So … here’s what I believe in 2011:

I believe in the power of story transmit, transform, and transcend. I believe that stories impact us in various ways and that we can no longer expect a single canon of works or a single format to satisfy everyone. That being said, I find myself more and more concerned that we are losing a sense of common literary, musical, or cultural heritage. As four-part harmony hymns give way to contemporary unison songs in church, something is lost for me. Similarly, to grow to adulthood without having experienced some of the authors and works who have impacted those who came after feels like a truncation. Trees need both branches and roots, and I continue to question how we develop our children’s literary roots without privileging one culture over another.

I believe in the power of information to impact lives. I want better K-8 database interfaces with better content. I want those paid subscriptions to be better than the results brought in an open Web search: more visually rich, more customized, more multimedia. I am worrying that we, as librarians, privilege children’s database content that is not developmentally appropriate or reading-level appropriate just to say that we use databases. Most K-8 databases have not had a face lift in years; and while they may have updated some of the articles, they remain focused on text, much of which is more sophisticated in style than the reader needs. Database content should be wondrous. Open Web searching by the very young means they begin brand affiliations at a very young age. Right now, they choose Google or Bing as their brand of choice, and while those are merely portals to content, they are seen as easier and more barrier-free. I want to see database companies do what Capstone did and create digital media that meets children where they are, that celebrates the unique needs of the young researcher. Invest now, or lose users later.

I believe that we are living in a time of unprecedented change in society, technology, student interactions with schools and community, and culture. I am excited by the possibilities of a digital life but also believe that we will eventually settle upon a world where there is a place for print and a place for digital. I recognize that many in our nation lack the digital access and tools that I have, and that to pull the print world out from under them, like the proverbial rug, would be a dramatic setback. I believe that, like today’s kitchens that have both stove and microwave, we do not need to choose one or the other.

I believe that libraries are important community centers. This morning, on my way to school, I stopped off at the library just as it was opening. At the opening hour, half of the patrons’ parking lot was already full. My home library matters to people. I also recognize that patrons do not understand the pricing of serials or the costs of eBooks (both to the library and, in the case of Kindle and Overdrive, in the cost of their long-protected library privacy) and that new conversations are needed in order to secure the ongoing funding necessary for thriving, vibrant intellectual neighborhood hubs.

How about you — what do you believe this year?