School does away with library, adds capuccino machine
Quote:
The last thing a school library needs these days is books, the headmaster of a New England prep school told the Boston Globe.
What it really needs is a good cappuccino machine.
James Tracy, headmaster of the Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Conn., told the Globe that ink on paper is so 20th century. So his school library is doing away with it -- and its 20,000 books.
"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology like scrolls before books,' Tracy told the (pardon the expression) paper.
He swears this isn't a school production of "Fahrenheit 451," Ray Bradbury's cautionary tale about books being burned in an anti-intellectual hysteria.
"We're not discouraging students from reading," he told the paper. "We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology."
Administrators at the 144-year-old prep school 90 minutes west of Boston have already given away many of the library's previous collection of classics, poetry and reference material. They are choosing instead to spend $500,000 on a digital "learning center" that will include flat-screen TVs for cruising the Internet as well as cubbies designed for laptops and a coffee shop with a $12,000 cappuccino machine.
The TV sets alone will cost $42,000, according to the Globe.
Liz Vezina, Cushing's school librarian for the past 17 years, told the Globe she will miss the books.
"I love books," she said. "I grew up with them, and there's something lost when they're virtual. There's a sensual side to them -- the smell, feel. The physicality of a book is something really special."
William Powers, the author of the upcoming book "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal," told the Globe the changes at Cushing are as depressing as they are radical.
"There are modes of learning and thinking that at the moment are only available from actual books," he told the paper.
"There is a kind deep-dive, meditative reading that's almost impossible to do on the screen. Without books, students are more likely to do the grazing or quick reading that screens enable rather than be by themselves with the author's ideas.
The good headmaster needs to get his head out of his ass. He should be in a bread line looking for work.
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Sometimes, I get the feeling that the education establishment from kindergarten through PhD is as much of a self licking ice cream cone of an industry as there ever was. So many studies so few students to try them all out on.
Whatever, as long as they are not using my money to do it, they can replace the desks with private putting greens.
I'm as much of a techno-progressive as you'll find and even I think it's dumb to get rid of printed books. I can't read long things online worth a shit, and Kindle? Kindle sucks.
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Yeah, I agree with Tracy, he's definitely not discouraging kids from reading. After all, getting rid of all the non-textbook reading material in the school is a great example to set!
Poor kids of Cushing Academy. Books are what got me through a lot of boring high school classes. I'd like to see a cup of cappucino last me through a fifty minute lecture.
... though, to be fair, a cappucino machine is a pretty damn good idea. It just shouldn't replace books.
A lot of college textbooks are now offering e-Book only options for less money, but most students still choose the printed versions. While I do think libraries should offer as much electronic content as possible, getting rid of books is stupid.
I'm as much of a techno-progressive as you'll find and even I think it's dumb to get rid of printed books. I can't read long things online worth a shit, and Kindle? Kindle sucks.
When non-phone PDAs were still big, I read A LOT of ebooks on my Sony and Palm PDAs, but mostly it was used in between meetings, on trips, etc. Reading on a blackberry totally sucks. And, when I want to read at home, I want paper.
I like ebooks because you can search them, etc. but the technology for taking notes isn't all that great yet and/or mainstream on PC/Mac/Linux platforms. Most are proprietary/different/unique, so many people publish in PDF, which is good for printing, but bad for viewing on any normal monitor. So, I tend to print an ebook if I find it good enough keep going back to.
And to replace those old pulpy devices that have transmitted information since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. Administrators plan to distribute the readers, which they’re stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature.
Those who don’t have access to the electronic readers will be expected to do their research and peruse many assigned texts on their computers.
Instead of the $50K coffee shop why not buy another 90 readers so the kids have more access? Not very forward thinking for what's touted as a forward thinking project.
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re: PDFs and reading on computer - I installed the Adobe Digital Editions reader for the PC and tried it with normal PDFs (e.g. 5-3-1 and PMDLs book) and liked it a bit better than just the Adobe reader. The ability to set a bookmark made it more attractive for e-books as well.
re: the library - making electronic content more readily available to the students is a fine idea - giving away the real books is not.
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Until e-paper is at a point where it is cheap enough that you can lose it and not care and flexible enough so it can fold like paper to fit in a pocket, books are going to be better. They are working on this stuff, so it might not be much more than a decade before it's available.
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School does away with library, adds capuccino machine
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