A dumpster full of books..... :(

I wasn't in the PTA and it wasn't really a fund raiser so I don't think that was it.

I actually get annoyed at parents and teachers who wring their hands over books and all that garbage about how having books in the house is indicative of a child's future success. If it was true just think of how cost effective it would be to send every baby home from the hospital with a stack of books! All the problems of American society would be solved for next to nothing.

Knowing how to read is important, owning books is not.

My problem is that there are a lot of kids who could have used those books. And yeah, the fact that they needle us for more books and more books and yet more books while they throw so many away -- that's a pisser.

Guilty that I did not, but I will.

it is not the ability to decode words that is important, it is reading books. having books around the house models that reading is important to obtaining the good life. when i walk into a house where there are no books I form a low opinion of the people in that house which is rarely proven wrong.

Okay, read it. It's the same argument I heard back in 1986 when schools like Yale and Harvard started to require their incoming freshman to buy laptops (pre-internet mind you) instead of a typewriter. Everyone cried Elitists! Too Expensive! and it was, but the reality is the new world is digital and cheaper does not always win. I think it was Plato who said the written word would be the end of people's ability to remember anything and told his students to avoid depending on it or their minds would be made poorer. They wrote down what he said anyway. I'm sure some bard upon seeing the first written text of Beowulf probably complained it was too expensive compared to memorizing it. Yup, it's an old argument against new technologies. I'll say again I understand your concern at the waste you witnessed, but as Walter and I experienced there seems to be a glut of books available in this world and no one wants them.

PS I see a big difference in an e-reader with download abilities and an ipad that has a lot of distracting features like email and movies on demand. I think the schools should go with cheap e-readers.

I used to really feel that way too!

I don't so much anymore. I think it's because my mom reads more than any person I know and you don't see any books in her house since she got her Kindle. She lives in a smallish place and she doesn't like to dust so books were the first thing to go when she moved in.

I did a big book purge a few years ago with the goal of keeping no more than 100 books. Even though I have a Kindle books still accumulate. Some books aren't available in ebook format and I still buy some photo books (Kindle will never replace a good art book).

Yeah... but schools have no money now. None. Everything is getting cut. Money matters. What do we cut to afford to do this?

We say we want every child to have internet access. Not every child has electricity. I've been reading some interesting things today about "information poverty" and how it is a growing social concern. I agree.

Nods.

Sure! Sounds like a good idea to me.

Factually, an internet connection is cheaper than trucks and people to drive them.

I suppose the principal won't read your email on Labor-Day weekend. But I'm curious to read her response if and when she gives it.

I'm not disagreeing with you about the expense and access. I'm one of those people willing to pay more in taxes so schools are well funded. I want to see equal distribution of taxes so there is less inequity. I grew up in a school district that had so much money it built a state of the art gymnasium with a pool and offered Japanese language electives. Ten miles away they couldn't afford to fix a leaky roof or pave a basketball court. Maybe we need to rethink how we fund schools. I think digital information systems have the potential to be a great equalizer, if there is access - just like when libraries were made available for everyone. I think funding access is the choice we have to make as a society. As an American, I am not very hopeful this equality will happen.

You are making the wrong argument-- at least with me. I am not arguing that books are more expensive (right now) than iTexts.

I am arguing that for a school, throwing away books that are no longer being used is the best way to deal with them. Anything else will be a waste of the schools time and resource dealing with paper that has very little monetary value, and will very likely never be used again anyway.

Storing huge stacks of paper that aren't being used and can easily be reproduced doesn't make any sense.

If these books are not being used, their value is $0.00. Keeping them has a cost, if you stick them in the cellar they will not only take up space, but in 5 years someone will have to take the time to figure out what they are and what to do with them.

There are only a certain number of books that a school can use. More than this number of books are useless, especially if there is limit space to display them. If the choice is to be made between new books and old books, most schools will rightfully choose the new books.

Because books are so cheap to manufacture, it really doesn't make economic sense to keep them around when they are not being used.

Storing and redistributing old books doesn't make economic sense. If it did, we would have a good way to do this.

I agree with all that, Green Witch.

sure...I am out of date. we have three kindles and rarely buy books now, but I refuse to use it and we never purged our books. now that i am working so much I dont read much at all, and even when I do the only new stuff I tend to read is mags like vanity fair and atlantic, as I am a big re-reader of books. I love to go back to books, as I am constantly in change and each read tends to be a new experience, the things I newly notice on a read educate me on how I have changed which is information that I find highly valuable .

I am with you on the sadness of the books in the dumpster, where you lose me is thinking there was any other possible outcome. Reading is increasingly less valued, and books are far less valued than they were earlier in my life. one need only listen to high school grads bragging about how they got out without ever reading a single book to understand how far reading has fallen.

edit: for me walking into Powell's books is exactly like walking into a giant fancy but dead church in Europe....great as a history lesson, as a taste of once was, but not for much else. I still like looking, but I have not bought much of anything the last three trips.

Hawkeye have you try audio books that you can listen to when driving or in the gym or taking a walk and so on.........



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Why be sad?
Books are only a medium to transfer information into you. I can not wait until data transfer technology occurs. Mind downloading, has a nice to ring it. Mind uploading and mind downloading, basically pumping data directly into your brain in and out would be more efficient and less time consuming than reading.

Not only that, books can be traded. I've been living on traded books for the past month.

I assume that's factored into the cost of the books.

And devices don't arrive on wishes, either. There are transportation costs involved, usually by shipping things from overseas where they are manufactured.

We absolutely need to rethink how we fund schools.

Everybody is so nuts about Finland's schools so I read a lot about Finland's schools. The director of Finland's schools came to America to give a speech and said "It's about equity, not excellence -- you can't have excellence without equity".

They were appalled when everyone crowded around asking only about PISA scores...

(sigh)

As I've said -- it's fine with me if a school wants to get rid of books, but they should give them to a school that is begging for books instead of dumping them in the trash.

We're talking about transferring books a few miles across town, within the same district. How is that not a worthwhile thing for a school to do?