This is the Librarian episode of Your Life Work, a series of vocational films for young people. This one was filmed in 1946:
Aside from some mildly embarrassing sexism, I’m amazed at how little hilarity I could find in this. The media are different, but the job hasn’t changed much in 65 years. The funniest bit is the part at the end about job security. *sigh*
I found this part particularly interesting, after a few examples of people calling to ask the librarian to “compile a bibliography for a project on radar” and the like:
The reference librarians locate various materials through their familiarity with the contents of the library, a very important money- and time-saving service to the public.
Replace “contents of the library” with “resources available” to take into account databases, websites, Google Scholar, etc., and it sure as hell still is. “Information overload” is a major modern concern. But people don’t turn to librarians to deal with it; they turn to the writers of probably obnoxious books like this one. I think people tend to have the attitude that information filtering isn’t our job, that we will snarkily respond “Let me Google that for you.” We have done some poor marketing, y’all.
This article from The Atlantic has been making the rounds lately: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success. Basically, Finland’s children are “accidentally” scoring at the top of the world’s standardized test charts, despite (because of) a system that focuses on “equality more than excellence.”
For me, the crux is in this passage:
[I]n Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master’s degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal’s responsibility to notice and deal with it.
And this one (emphasis mine):
Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.
In the Finnish view, as [Pasi] Sahlberg [director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility] describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Treat teachers and principals like professionals. Give them training and autonomy. And then do the best you can to give students a level playing field in the school, despite the mess they may come from at home. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
As a private school teacher, I feel I need to address the “Finland has no private schools” issue, which the article really emphasizes. Private schools are a symptom of the fact that the American public school system is appalling. Eventually I think we need to do away with them, yes — if everyone’s part of the same system, there’s far more political will to keep that system functioning well. (…See that disclaimer up there about how my opinions are not necessarily my employer’s?)
But I do not think that outlawing private schools tomorrow would make a damn bit of difference. Everyone is not part of the same system, even in the public school world. It’s no longer an option to send your kid to an expensive private school? Fine, buy an expensive house in a good school district instead! There are districts that might as well be private schools, for the educational resources they have and what it costs to attend, and there are districts that might as well be in the developing world. Until educational expenditure is no longer tied to local taxes, we are screwed.
(I have a million questions about the rest of the Finnish system. Is there a national curriculum, or are teachers entirely autonomous? Are there teachers’ unions? How do urban schools differ from rural schools? The article briefly addresses heterogeneity in Finland vs. the U.S. as measured by immigrant populations, but what about poverty? What about absentee fathers, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and all the rest of the crap that puts “at-risk” kids here at an almost insurmountable disadvantage before they get anywhere near a classroom? How does Finland handle special education? Kids are doing well by educational measurements; how about jobs? Has educational equality improved economic equality? I really want to read Sahlberg’s book now.)
Happy New Year! Of course, my favorite part of today is checking out the Cybils finalists. Please go peruse.
My YA fantasy & science fiction list is more of a surprise this year than usual. For one thing, Daughter of Smoke and Bone isn’t a finalist! Really thought I had a slam-dunk there. In fact, I’ve only read one, and hadn’t even heard of most of them. Not only that, but one — Angelfall — is an e-book-only publication, a first in my Cybils career, anyway. And it looks like only 2 out of 7 are part of series. Maybe we’re swinging back to a stand-alone trend? I can only hope.
I’m excited to dig into some books I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Cybils YA F&SF: Blood Red Fire edition, you may commence! (Note: I’m not allowed to review these between now and when the winner is announced on Feb. 14, lest enterprising souls try to triangulate a winner from the judges’ reviews. I’ll have to keep with my Post-a-Day mission in other ways, which may or may not be relevant/interesting/sane. You have been warned.)
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1), by Susan Ee
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I do New Year’s wishes.
When I was a kid — 10? 11? — I had a book of magic instructions for kids. It was cute: making yourself fairy wings and doing spells. One of the “spells” suggested that you write three wishes on a piece of paper and then hide it to open a few months later. Would your wishes come true?
I loved the idea. I’m a ritual fiend, and New Year’s Eve is my birthday in addition to being that of the Western world, so somehow the wishes became my New Year’s ritual. I’ve opened last year’s wishes and written next year’s every New Year’s Eve for more than 20 years.
In junior high, I usually wanted a better relationship with my parents and “to lose weight,” which was a sad proxy for “to become pretty and less awkward so boys will like me.” As I got older, the wishes got more specific: this boy, this college, this fight with a friend. In 1999 I wished for the power to stay on so the world wouldn’t end.
There are rules. Personal wishes only, because otherwise I’d feel so guilty I’d wish for variations on world peace every year, and that’s not the point of this exercise. (1999 was an exception.) Only wishes that might realistically come true that year — nothing crazy like winning a million dollars or finding alien life. As often as not, they’re aspirations or goals more than wishes: create better work-life balance, say, or find a volunteer project.
I’ve always been a person who takes the long view. (Though I’m not sure now whether the wishes tradition appealed to me because it took a long view, or whether years of wishes influenced me to think that way. Probably some of both.) But I am also a person with a lot of fears. The wishes are a way to take those fears and cast them into the long view — to get perspective on them. A year from now, will I still care about this? Will it be resolved, one way or another?
Typically, one wish comes true, one wish doesn’t, and one is a complete wild card that I don’t even remember making and couldn’t have guessed until I opened it. Often the wish that doesn’t come true turns out to be one I don’t care about anymore anyway; I’ve grown past it. That’s the beauty of the long view. Sometimes I’m not so lucky, and one wish fails to come true and causes a lot of pain in the process. This is one of those years.
But now I get to wish again. And as this ritual has taught me, all kinds of things can change in a year. Happy New Year, everyone.
Aren’t Guy Laramee’s sculptures beautiful? As usual, I found his artist’s statement to be almost impenetrably pretentious, but I do love the idea of books — the representation of knowledge, particularly older knowledge — eroding into ancient landscapes.
Ok, let’s get through this as quickly and painlessly as possible. There’s a series of books called The Clique. If you know Gossip Girls, it’s basically the same deal, only for middle schoolers: shockingly privileged, entitled girls who only care about fashion and popularity bitch at each other and name-drop their favorite brands. This book is the prequel to The Clique series, and I read it because my 6th graders chose it as their book club read. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they conspired to torture me.
I put “review” in quotes above because I already knew what I thought of this book before I read it. Except that I hated it even more than that. Here is a representative excerpt:
An itchy wool peacoat of sadness hung over Massie’s entire body, weighing her down with despair. She’d ditched her parents, Paris, and Chanel shopping for this? Not even one compliment on her fetching outfit/chignon/makeup/charm bracelet/brooches/or ability to pull off mixed metals had come her way. Nawt one!
Yup, I read 175 pages of that. Sober. Who’s librarian of the year now?
Here’s the best part: in this book, the characters are in fourth grade. That means they’re 9 or 10, and spending all their time worrying about popularity, designer clothes, having “friends” who will make them look good, and their freaking weight. There is one scene in which a character meets some boys who teach her to burp words, but I think that’s the only time anybody acts authentically like a fourth grader. Most of their parents set them free at an adult New Year’s party, and the only set of parents who are upset about their daughter’s behavior “punish” her by sending her to boarding school (where she will meet the rest of the characters and become even more morally bankrupt).
I don’t want to sound like the sort of bunhead shusher who thinks that all books should have Redeeming Social Value. I do understand why girls think these books are fun: they’re wish fulfillment and escapist fluff. We all need that every so often, and most kids are smart enough to recognize, at least consciously, that there’s more to life than the way Massie lives it. But if you read a steady enough diet of anything, it can’t help but seep into your subconscious, especially for kids as young as 4th-6th grade. (I grew up on a pretty steady diet of stories about True Love, and that’s another whole post, at least.) And that worries me for my impressionable young ladies, particularly the ones for whom this sort of life is possible and they have to actively choose otherwise.
A friend and I just saw Young Adult, a movie in which Charlize Theron plays Mavis, the alcoholic ghostwriter of a popular YA series called Waverly Prep (Gossip Girls, more or less, with less brand name-dropping). Her life is miserable and empty, so she decides to return to her hometown to get her high school boyfriend back. The problem, naturally, is that he’s happily married with a new baby.
This has sort of been done before, of course. But unlike in, say, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Mavis is actually a thoroughly terrible human being. She manipulates everyone around her, has zero compassion, is basically the high school queen of popularity who never figured out that in order to be successful in the adult world you have to at some point give a crap about someone other than yourself. Because Charlize Theron is a fantastic actress, though, she was never a caricature. Awkward as hell to watch, yes. But believable. I appreciate a movie in which the protagonist is unlikeable in every way, but you still can’t help but feel compassion for her.
From a YA perspective (because let’s be honest, why do you think I saw this movie?): I loved that Mavis’s character, Kendall, is exactly as vapid and in love with herself as Mavis is, in a way that perfectly nails that genre of YA. Mavis hasn’t grown up much since high school, and the books she writes are the kind of YA that are in no way about personal growth. (Fortunately this genre seems to be on the wane.) My main objection is the covers, which look like Scholastic reprints of middle grade Boxcar Children novels or something. How about some headless photos of girls in stylish prep school uniforms? Come on, I could design you some covers for this shiz in about 20 minutes.
This was a third-life crisis movie, which is my current favorite topic. I am, in particular, working on a theory that if I read more books written for grown-ups about grown-up lives, I might be able to make a more coherent, mature story of my own life. This movie possibly supports that theory, but I can’t quite decide whether it made me feel better or worse about my life.
Ok, I have 8 minutes before today is over, and I have nothing to post because I’ve been in New York all day. Also I’m writing this on my phone. So you get the picture that my friend Paula took of me today at a fancy cafe in the Village. Lucky you!
I’m spending my day watching Lord of the Rings, extended editions (or as far as I get, anyway). There will no doubt be some Chinese food at some point. I’ve never had a traditional Jewish Christmas — I’m looking at this as an opportunity to explore my heritage.
The folks behind Jewsmas would like a different traditional Jewish Christmas, so everyone will “leave Chanukah the hell alone!” Traditions include The Refusal of the Ham and The Mumbling of the Carols. Sounds like not quite as much fun as The Airing of Grievances, but I’d give it a try.
Time for more Terrible Christmas Things! Erin McKeown, a wonderful singer-songwriter with whom I went to college, has an “anti-holiday album” entitled F*ck That! It’s not her best work, certainly; it’s a bit brittle and obvious, as you might guess from songs like “Go Tell It on the Mountain (That Karl Rove Is Born)” and “Santa Is an Asshole.” But I am in exactly the right mood to appreciate that sort of thing, and have been humming “You wish us happy holidays / But you really mean merry Christmas” for days.
I’ve had Rare Exports, a Finnish horror comedy about “the real Santa Claus,” recommended to me several times recently. I have a pretty limited appetite for horror, but the trailer was entertaining, anyway.
Do you have a Terrible Christmas Thing you’d like to share? I mean, nothing’s going to top “Said the raptor to another one / Do you smell what I smell?” But I’ll appreciate your attempt.
You know what? I apologize. There was not nearly enough Krampus in that last post. The internet is all about Krampus this year (for the obvious reason that he’s awesome), so allow me to further Krampus up your day.
Anthony Bourdain made a Krampus video. It’s a pretty good overview of the story, in case you still haven’t read the Wikipedia page and have no idea what I’m on about:
Here’s a traditional Krampuslauf (Krampus run) in a town in Austria a couple of years ago. These days they’re tourist attractions all over the country in December. (The metal soundtrack might be less traditional, though they are Austrian, so who knows?)
Philadelphia rocked their own Krampuslauf this year. If you want to help me make Krampuslauf Boston happen next year, stop whatever you’re doing and email me right now.
The opinions here are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of my school. Also, even when I review books for younger kids, these posts are written for older teens and adults. In other words, I swear sometimes. Don't get upset.
