At times it feels as if Richard Shaull was shouting at us when he wrote the following paragraph in the "Forward" to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed back in 1971:
There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes "the practice of freedom", the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
Therefore, my fellow educators, in the spirit of dealing critically and creatively with the reality of our day, I wonder aloud if it is it really so detestable to want the libraries in our schools to look more like THIS?
Comfortable, open, collaborative, social, connective, modern, clean, up-to-the-minute, and with shooshing not generally required.
Highly liberating and definitely my kind of library.
Sources:
- Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the opressed. Trans. Myrna Bergman Ramos. New York: Seaview.
- Quotation embedded in image: Carolyn Foote, punctuation altered.
- Original image: Flickr user sylvar.
