How local librarians are helping everybody’s kids
Editorial
FILE/IAN GRENIER/STAFF Encouraging kids to read and be read to early helps prepare them for kindergarten, which makes learning easier for them and their peers.
Librarians, long the caricatures of blend-into-the-woodwork boring, have suddenly become the bete noire of self-proclaimed parental-rights activists who are far too puritanical in their judgment about what other people’s children should be allowed to access in public and school libraries, and far too willing to believe everything critical of the public schools and libraries that they see on social media.
Of course, some librarians have been too quick to insist that they alone have the wisdom to determine what books are ap-propriate or not for children at what ages — and have, on occasion, been shown to be clearly wrong. They have been too quick to declare any questions about their decisions “book banning,” even though we’re not aware of a single person in this country who has been arrested for buying or selling any of the books that critics have targeted.
Against this backdrop of unwavering tribalism on both sides, it’s useful to remember that librarians spend most of their time on completely uncontroversial work that makes our kids and our communities a little bit smarter. On Monday, The Post and Courier’s Maddy Quon provided us that reminder, with an article about some incredibly important work the public libraries in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties are doing in conjunction with the Trident United Way.
Their 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten challenge, launched locally at the dawn of the anti-librarians movement in 2021, is something no reasonable person could object to: It’s an effort get parents to read to their kids and then, over time, to get very young children to read to themselves.
Parents have full control over what books are checked out; they just have to check in.
The effort flows from an impressive body of research — and just plain common sense — that shows the sooner that kids read (and are read to), the better they do in school, then in life.
The obvious benefit to exposing young children to books in a positive way is that they get a leg up on the skill that’s most critical to learning. Less obvious are the skills that middle-class parents take for granted but poorer children often start school without — to their great detriment.
Once children start participating, “they’re used to sitting for an amount of time and listening to a story from beginning to end,” said Cassie Welch, children’s system coordinator at Charleston County Public Library. “They’re used to hearing an adult’s voice. They have stronger language skills. They’ve been exposed to letters, so they know that the little black squiggles on the page actually represent language. They have those core skills that you need to be able to interpret the world around you.”
The result is that they enter kindergarten ready to learn, and kindergarten teachers don’t have to devote extra time to teaching them the basics that their betteroff peers already know. That means even kids who don’t need such a program to get them and their parents involved benefit, because their classmates are less disruptive, and their teacher has more time for everybody. Our whole state benefits as well. If you live in the Trident region, you should thank a librarian for that.
Of course, some librarians have been too quick to insist that they alone have the wisdom to determine what books are ap-propriate or not for children at what ages — and have, on occasion, been shown to be clearly wrong. They have been too quick to declare any questions about their decisions “book banning,” even though we’re not aware of a single person in this country who has been arrested for buying or selling any of the books that critics have targeted.
Against this backdrop of unwavering tribalism on both sides, it’s useful to remember that librarians spend most of their time on completely uncontroversial work that makes our kids and our communities a little bit smarter. On Monday, The Post and Courier’s Maddy Quon provided us that reminder, with an article about some incredibly important work the public libraries in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties are doing in conjunction with the Trident United Way.
Their 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten challenge, launched locally at the dawn of the anti-librarians movement in 2021, is something no reasonable person could object to: It’s an effort get parents to read to their kids and then, over time, to get very young children to read to themselves.
Parents have full control over what books are checked out; they just have to check in.
The effort flows from an impressive body of research — and just plain common sense — that shows the sooner that kids read (and are read to), the better they do in school, then in life.
The obvious benefit to exposing young children to books in a positive way is that they get a leg up on the skill that’s most critical to learning. Less obvious are the skills that middle-class parents take for granted but poorer children often start school without — to their great detriment.
Once children start participating, “they’re used to sitting for an amount of time and listening to a story from beginning to end,” said Cassie Welch, children’s system coordinator at Charleston County Public Library. “They’re used to hearing an adult’s voice. They have stronger language skills. They’ve been exposed to letters, so they know that the little black squiggles on the page actually represent language. They have those core skills that you need to be able to interpret the world around you.”
The result is that they enter kindergarten ready to learn, and kindergarten teachers don’t have to devote extra time to teaching them the basics that their betteroff peers already know. That means even kids who don’t need such a program to get them and their parents involved benefit, because their classmates are less disruptive, and their teacher has more time for everybody. Our whole state benefits as well. If you live in the Trident region, you should thank a librarian for that.