No more books

Cushing Academy is a long-standing prep school in New England that’s making a big change: it’s library is becoming bookless and will be replaced by a computer-based learning center. I came across a link to an opinion piece at New Criterion where the change doesn’t go over very well:

Headmaster Tracy, dazzled by all those colored lights and promises of painless instant enlightenment, has betrayed his responsibility as an educator. He has thrown his lot in with the party of “Now,” heedless of the fact that education must embrace the past if it is to prepare for the future.

I thought this was big news until I remembered that Morenci Area High School used to a have a library. First, it became too expensive to hire a librarian and then it became somewhat of a dead library without someone to maintain it, to help it thrive.

The article says that Cushing is one of the first schools in the nation to ditch its library. I wonder how many others are in Morenci’s position.

Speaking of books, Intelligence Daily states that 80% of American households bought no books in 2008. My wife made up for many of them, by the way, but the article speaks of growing illiteracy as a reason for the declining readership of newspapers:

The rates of illiteracy or semi-literacy—meaning people reading at a fourth or fifth grade level—now comprise one-third of the United States,” says Hedges, “and even those who are technically literate opt into a system where they get most of their information through images—images which are of course skillfully manipulated.”

U.S. vs. Canada: A Canadian doctor takes health care practices into his examining room:

On costs, Canada spends 10% of its economy on healthcare; the U.S. spends 16%. The extra 6% of GDP amounts to more than $800 billion per year. The spending gap between the two nations is almost entirely because of higher overhead. Canadians don’t need thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers to deny care. Even the U.S. Medicare program has 80% to 90% lower administrative costs than private Medicare Advantage policies. And providers and suppliers can’t charge as much when they have to deal with a single payer.

Lessons No. 2 and 3: Single-payer systems reduce duplicative administrative costs and can negotiate lower prices.

Posted in Education, It's life.