Talking to the librarian

[ailbhe]

Well, when I arrived, there was a man at the counter talking about sex education and how it causes teenage pregnancies and how "it's not a mechanics problem, it's a moral problem," and things. And the librarian seemed to be agreeing with him that there was far too much sex education and not enough reading and writing.

And the librarian came over to talk to me about it. And I pointed out that in other countries, children don't go to school until they are seven and have much more sex education than they do here and end up not pregnant and well-educated at 18. I suggested that a large part of the problem was related to the fact that anyone who is good at or enjoys being in school is in serious social trouble. The assistant librarian - the one who's so helpful about requesting Home Education books for me, nudge nudge - agreed with me.

The real librarian said that she thought it was "a cultural issue." I agreed - "Oh yes," I said, "as long as it's trendier to smash up bus-stops than to read a book, there's going to be tihs problem." She disagreed with me. "Oh no," she said, "I meant people coming here without, you know, the language, and their mothers don't change their language, so they can't help them wth their homework. They come in here all the time, you know."

If that's who she means, then, she means brown people. Grr.

She also thought that children shouldn't be taught French because it detracted from their learning English and Sums (Sums are like Maths but for children, I think). She didn't like the Swedish solution at all.

She also believes it used to be better long ago, and that it's terrible that there were adults in the adult literacy classes who couldn't read, even though they were obviously intelligent.

It was a most bizarre conversation. However, I have now sold fifteen copies of before baby walks so I only need to sell two more to buy it an ISBN. Then it'll be listed by Amazon. Ha!

(We brought Linnea to the doctor and I'm doing all the right things. We also asked at another pharmacist for the vaginal dilators and they phoned up and the customer has to order them direct, so I have to get Rob to do that because I'm shaking and crying just thinking about it. I have yet to say "vaginal dilator" out loud.)

Comments

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Things were MUCH better long ago when the literacy rate as a whole was substantially lower and there WEREN'T literacy classes for adults, so they just stayed ignorant. Where the heck is she coming up with this? I mean, I know it's a stereotype that librarians are not "hip and with it" but for crying out loud, READ A BOOK -- The British Empire encompassed bzillions of non-white Britains for centuries up until just before our births, and she thinks things are worse NOW? I mean hello, here in America we're a whole NATION of immigrants, each wave more economically assaulted than the last, and every culture more diverse from the melting pot just to weird out the natives and give new root to old dormant nightmares.