As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“Over the last few years, new terms like ‘cisgender,’ ‘intersectionality,’ ‘heteronormativity,’ ‘centering,’ and ‘white fragility’ have suddenly entered our cultural lexicon—seemingly out of nowhere.
“Even if they read well, technology has harmed many of them: shortened attention spans, a compulsion to overshare every trivial detail of their lives, an expectation that they be entertained at all times, and an exaggerated focus on themselves.” - Homer Meets Generation Z
Presented August 1, 2018 to the Bible Faculty Summit, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina.
Sam Weller, associate professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago and authorized biographer of Ray Bradbury, recently published an article in The Chicago Tribune that got me thinking: “Without school librarians, we’re on a dystopian path.”
In his commentary he expresses his concern about cuts in staff and funding for school libraries. During a visit to rural Shawnee, Oklahoma, he found out that their school library received no funding whatsoever for new library books in 2016. In Wichita, Kansas, certified librarians were being replaced by clerks. The Kansas Department of Education has reduced the number of certified librarians in their state by 31%. The number of school librarians in the Chicago public school system has dropped from 454 to 160.
Mr. Weller reminds the reader that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 depicts a dystopian society that no longer values reading and education.
Worldwide, “[t]he vast majority of Christian adults ages 25 and older (91%) have at least some formal schooling, and one-in-five have post-secondary degrees.” Pew
Discussion