The Canadian Report

So I have just finished reading the Canadian report by Haycock. It's a long read! But it did raise some interesting points about teacher librarians. Also had a bit on the role of so good assignment material too.

Anyway one of the first quotes that really jumped out at me was about how the decline in school libraries is "almost certainly linked to the erosion of research skills among students at the post secondary level" (Haycock, 2003, pg 11). The reason I found that interesting is I am a student who never had library time. My primary school didn't have a library (but it only had 50 students) and my secondary schools didn't seem to think library time was in any way important. And when I got to uni and had to research and find my own information I floundered. It took me a while to develop some skills and strategies and even now I struggle with researching. So whether the two had any correlation with each other would be interesting to know.

Another point raised was "school libraries expose children from low income neighbourhoods to reading materials they may not otherwise had access to" (2003, pg 15). Whilst I am not refuting this statement I would also point out that whilst exposure is good for all students its often more of a problem with motivation levels. Such as the phrase 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink', librarians need to focus on how to make accessing the materials more interesting then just pointing in the direction of books on a dusty shelf.

The last point that confused me a little bit was the one about flexible learning. Whilst it would be ideal to have only small groups of a class come in for lessons you have to wonder about the practicalities of it. In a school of 500 is there time? And would you separate the groups by ability level? And if there is no fixed day and time then how would the teacher know when to send them down. I very much doubt a classroom teacher is going to appreciate having to change around lessons and catch students up because they were at the library. Plus that would mean less RFF for the teacher as that is often what library is used for. Does anyone work in a school where this sort of learning happens?

Anyways I shall stop my rambling as 'short and succinct' has turned to long and waffly. Hopefully random discussions of other readings shall appear soon :)

Lizz