This is crossposted from my livejournal - I'd be happy for you to comment either here or there! I had a great conversation with two young boys yesterday that raised some interesting questions.
Yesterday, I had to tell two of my 14-year-olds they had to leave the library because we were closing. One boy responded. "Why does something so good have to close?" He also said, "This is the only place I can be myself." Isn't that cool?
Editing today to tell the rest of the story - I think the boys wouldn't mind.
Me: "I really want you on my teen advisory board!"
Boy who'd spoken: "What's a teen advisory board?"
Me: "We get together and share snacks and you tell me what you like about the library, what you'd like us to do, what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong."
Boy: "The library's doing NOTHING wrong."
Me: "Great! I need you to tell the grown-ups that."
Boy: "Don't they know that? Why don't they know that?"
Boy's friend: "Because they're grown-ups."
Wise words. We grown-ups need to be sure we don't forget what it feels like to be a kid, and that we don't forget to listen.
My addition to this blog: we also need to stop valuing things by how we measure them. It seems to me that there are those who attack libraries precisely because they serve the young, the poor, the immigrants, and the relatively powerless. To me, that is precisely why they are valuable, and why everyone should support them rather than attacking them. Thoughts?