Libraries and Learning

In a recent interview, Alan Moore of V for Vendetta fame stated:

“All too often education actually acts as a form of aversion therapy, that what we’re really teaching our children is to associate learning with work and to associate work with drudgery so that the remainder of their lives they will possibly never go near a book because they associate books with learning, learning with work and work with drudgery. Whereas after a hard day’s toil, instead of relaxing with a book they’ll be much more likely to sit down in front of an undemanding soap opera because this is obviously teaching them nothing, so it is not learning, so it is not work, it is not drudgery, so it must be pleasure. And I think that that is the kind of circuitry that we tend to have imprinted on us because of the education process.”

Is this what we do? If so, how can we turn this around? As teacher librarians, we often discuss how to engage kids in reading – perhaps we need to turn the circuitry off that Moore is talking about.

Consider graphic novels – Di Laycock and Carol Snowball have researched this and found one way of engaging kids with books, teaching strategies also exist. Or perhaps a re-organisation of our libraries to reflect a colour bias!