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Paul Shirren's Education Blog

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Thursday Apr 02, 2009

Shoot the librarians

I like books. I guess I must be getting old. I quite like librarians as well and I don't really want them shot. I had to get your attention somehow.

What I dislike is the special place librarians have in the school system. The teacher librarian is an equal. A valued contributor.

Yet schools are increasingly relying not on books but on technology. Technology which is changing very rapidly. Schools have two types of technology specialists. They have the sort who are not teachers on a low pay scale with no influence or career opportunities. And the rarer sort who are teachers but don't have enough time to maintain and transfer their skills.

If you have worked in school IT support you are left with no illusions about the value the system places upon you. Your declining hours see you spread out over a number of schools as you struggle to make ends meet. You know that the department really wants to replace you with an outsourced whole of government contract. You keep your head down and know your place.

So why don't we have Teacher-Technologists?

Teachers complain that they do not get time to leave the classroom and learn new things. So why not have inhouse expertise that can go to them and assist in class?

Imagine if there were no teacher librarians. Imagine that schools were forced to buy books that kept on falling apart. That all they could do was employ people to fix the bindings. Imagine if nobody knew how to exploit the potential of the books in class or even knew their contents. It wouldn't make sense would it?

Books are an ancient technology which everyone is familiar with yet we employ experts to maximise their potential in education. Why don't we treat new technology which teachers are struggling to utilise with the same respect?

I suspect the only reasonable answer is misplaced snobbery. Teachers, librarians and tertiary educators are all part of an established academic elite. You can teach the fundamentals of computer science but you can not teach the day to day stuff as it changes faster than people can write courses. IT people are always going to be self learners either by inclination or necessity. Does that mean that institutionalised education is simply incompatable with the IT crowd? Perhaps it does.

My gut feeling is that something has to break not just in schools but in our whole understanding of formal education before reform can happen. There is something wrong that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on equipment yet are unwilling and unable to ask for assistance in it's utilisation. It clearly is not the result of the open minded, critical thinking that formal education is supposed to be producing. The open minded, critical thinking is coming from the barbarians at the gate.

Posted at 03:00AM Apr 02, 2009 by Paul Shirren  |  Comments[2]

Comments:

Brilliant post Paul, and pleased to have the chance to comment (albeit from a history of close association with teacher librarians).

Firstly let me say how disgusted I am at the level of IT tech support budgets in most Australian schools, and the woeful conditions that these staff work under. Not many in corporate IT have to deal with the variety of apps, the hotchpotch of hardware, the network cobbling, constraints and active sabotage by users experienced by school IT staff.

Your argument for Teacher-Technologist is of course logical and seems common sense to many teachers in schools. In some places this position is even a reality - a teacher with specialist technology knowledge, skills and curriculum expertise who is treated as a specialist, and given the time, status and resources to lead/work beside teachers.
In many schools, particularly primary schools, it is the teacher librarian who has had to morph into this new being and add technologist to their existing load.

To me the obvious answer (although unpopular in terms of budgets calculated on class size) is that both types of specialist are required. I had a chance in the late 90s to lead a school wide team that worked from this philosophical stance.

Of major concern are the very many schools that have neither teacher librarian nor technology specialist. Ironic how many of these are getting new library buildings and 1:1 laptop funding through DER & BER. I believe both library and ICT teacher associations plus unions need to make our first priority to convince employers that a specialist teacher in at least one of these breeds is a minimum requirement.

PS I smiled at your comment about teacher librarians as 'an equal. A valued contributor' and remembered all the times I have listened to my colleagues whinging about not being appreciated.

Posted by Pru on June 08, 2009 at 07:59 PM CST #

Thanks Pru.

Whether you are appreciated or not you have some professional standing. If a school has the resources and sense to employ a good librarian I think it is still a sound investment.

I moonlighted as a library assistant at a TAFE while studying at Uni. When I visit my public library I sometimes feel like stepping behind the circulation desk. There is something very comforting about libraries.

I think a lot of opportunities are being lost at the moment and I don't think we can wait for Universities to come up with a solution. I think education needs to look to the wider community for skills and whether they harness these by teacher training or some sort of mentoring system I think the need is dire.

Posted by Paul Shirren on June 08, 2009 at 09:10 PM CST #

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Paul Shirren


I exist on the outermost fringes of education playing with technology. Occasionally I work with a school or RTO doing IT support or elearning/moodle t...
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