The Emperor’s New Literacy
Sieglinde Stieda, B.A., B.L.S., M.Ed. With a thank you nod to Hans Christian Andersen and Ken Haycock.
Mission, B.C.
Issue Contents
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Once upon a time in Lotusland, there lived a vain and literate Emperor who worried about the literacy levels of his subjects. He loved to show off his book knowledge and told the world that he wanted to make his empire the most literate in the world. Word of the Emperor’s desire for literacy spread all over his empire and beyond. His politicians, advisors and government officials decided to take advantage of the emperor’s literacy ambitions.
Some advisors went to the Emperor and said, “We are very good literacy workers and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to improve reading with books and teacher-librarians that are invisible. As a matter of fact the method is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality.”
The chief of the guards heard the advisors’ strange story and sent for the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor’s curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two advisors. They stated, “Besides being invisible, your Highness, these invisible books and teacher-librarians will be created especially for your Empire’s schools.”
“Just tell us what you need to get started and we’ll give it to you,” the Emperor said. The advisors told the Emperor to cut teacher-librarian FTE positions (Full Time Teacher equivalents) by 19%1 across the empire. The advisors also told the Emperor to ignore the research which claimed that “Studies connecting teacher-librarians and school libraries with achievement in reading have been available for more than 50 years”2 and a “qualified library team and resources can bring scores up by 3 to 15 percent regardless of economic or social factors.”3
So the Emperor cut the teacher-librarian positions in the empire’s schools by 19%. These teacher-librarians were highly educated specialists in books, motivating children’s reading, and information literacy. As well, the cut teacher-librarians knew the Empire’s Curriculum and had catered to the teachers and students in their schools. Teacher-librarians in the Empire have run book clubs, photo clubs, book fairs, and invited Canadian children’s book authors, writers, and scientists to their schools. The teacher-librarians worked hand-in hand with local bookstores as both independent bookstores and teacher-librarians respected each other. So the 19% of cut teacher-librarians became ghosts in the system. They became classroom teachers so that at least their students could be bathed in books and thus were motivated to become readers. The remaining 81% of the empire’s teacher-librarians were asked to do more with less. In a way, they too became invisible as the new literacy workers rarely consulted them.
Instead, the Emperor created an unstable funding system of giving literacy grants to people who didn’t always respect the knowledge and experience of the remaining teacher-librarians.
The advisors who recommended to make the teacher-librarians in the empire invisible told the Emperor that the teacher-librarians who had promoted the cultural heritage of the Empire by buying books written by Lotusland authors, were too dangerous to keep around as the teacher-librarians had systematically encouraged students to think, read, and get to know their Lotusland cultural heritage. Thinking students who appreciated their heritage were too dangerous to the Emperor as the students might question some of his decisions.
According to Ken Haycock, Ed.D.,4
“It seems somehow strange to have to prove the self-evident benefits of a library, one of human civilization's greatest and more enduring institutions. But this is the daunting task confronting advocates for…[Lotusland] school libraries and teacher-librarianship as they face steady and troubling disinvestment. Their challenge grows even more perplexing when policy- makers grope around for novel tactics to solve literacy concerns - e.g., the deployment of school-based "literacy coordinators" - when there's a tried-and-tested solution close at hand. Nor is the empirical evidence all that surprising. No one should be shocked to learn that if children have access to a wide range of relevant books and library materials, they will be more likely to use them, both for learning and pleasure. No one should be astonished to discover that if students can take advantage of the guidance provided by a qualified teacher- librarian, they will be more likely to learn the sorts of critical thinking skills that are increasingly important in an information-saturated society. Lastly, no one should be taken aback to discover that when children are introduced to books and other learning materials that tell them about their own society and its values, they will begin to soak up what that culture has to offer. Yet if …[Lotusland] politicians demand hard evidence of the utility of school libraries and teacher-librarians, they can refer to the myriad studies cited in this report. Taken collectively, these studies demonstrate, with great clarity, that an investment in school libraries and teacher-librarians provides the sorts of dividends educators now seek from public school funding: better student achievement, improved literacy and reading skills, and enhanced readiness to succeed in a post-secondary environment. [Lotuslandian]… young people surely deserve to see the revival of a resource for which this country was internationally renowned for so many years. But beyond the moral argument, the research overwhelmingly supports the case for revitalizing … [Lotusland’s] school libraries.”
To help confuse the citizens of Lotusland, the Emperor’s advisors told some of the Emperor’s government officials to define literacy as,
| “ an essential cultural, social and academic practice that involves, not only reading, writing and numeracy, but also a variety of abilities including viewing and representing, aural literacy including language, musical and listening skills, cultural literacy including media and social literacy and critical literacy including civic skills.” |
While others were told to define literacy as “essentially, the ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities”. By floating around two different definitions of literacy, literacy results in Lotusland would become as invisible as the teacher-librarians, as the results were more difficult to measure. Even the Emperor’s own Auditor General noticed this lack of accountability when he stated, “Monitoring and performance reporting should be improved so that progress can be traced accurately and meaningfully….” Since the Auditor General did not include a bibliography or footnotes in his report, we do not know if he has read the research by Dr.Haycock and others, that when and where the teacher-librarians were visible in Lotusland, there was plenty of accurate and meaningful progress in literacy.
So now after 20 years in all the Lotusland Empire, they now can’t find enough educated young people to fill the jobs. Sadly, most of these Lotusland youths were now ignorant of their culture and history, so could be more easily manipulated by corporations, one of which donated racist books to the Empire’s school libraries administered by invisible teacher-librarians. Not only did Lotusland become poorer, so did all its citizens.
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References Cited
1 BC Ministry of Education form 1530,
2 Ken Haycock Ed. D., The Crisis in Canada’s Schools, June 2003.
3 Keith Curry Lance, Globe and Mail, May 22, 2002.
4 Ken Haycock, The Crisis in Canada's School Libraries: the Case for Reform and Re-investment: A Report for the Association of Canadian Publishers. Toronto, Association of Canadian Publishers and Canada Heritage, June 2003. Retrieved from the Internet on March 4, 2008 from http://bccsl.ca/execsum.html. The whole Haycock report can be retrieved from http://bccsl.ca/download/HaycockReport.pdf
5 Literacy Now: A Planning Guide. Retrieved from the internet on March 4th, 2008 from http://cms.nortia.org/Org/Org136/Groups/LiteracyNow%20Resources/literacyfinalweb.pdf
6 John Doyle, Auditor General of British Columbia. Literacy: Creating the Conditions for Reading and Writing Success. Victoria, Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia, February 2008, page 3. Retrieved March 4, 2008 from http://www.bcauditor.com/
7 Ibid, page 5
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