Let's get rid of all those nasty book things

A very busy day today, but just as we were leaving the house I caught a fragment of a news item on the wireless which is so absurd that I doubled over in mirth all the way through the sermon.

I'm sure I heard the newsreader say that a headmistress of some barmy seminary for the terminally barking, possibly or possibly not in Chesterfield, is getting rid of the school library, yes, all of it, because she thinks children don't need books any more - the Worldwide Web is now all things to all persons.  This no doubt highly paid leader of a staff of highly paid people charged with the education and development of young minds proposes to get rid of all books and establish her school as a Virtual Learning Centre (click for the story).

(I was reading something the other day by someone who isn't a musician, but for whom I had until then had the greatest respect.  He preferred Haydn to Mozart, he said.  He knew all about Mozart because he'd seen the film Amadeus and it had put him off Mozart.)

When I retired from the day job, which had imprisoned my mind for 30 years, I started thinking for myself, and not according to somebody else's agenda.  But part of this process of dissociation required me to give away three quarters of the library I had amassed from the age of five, to make room for shoes and frocks (my wife's, not mine) and saucepans and egg-timers and all the other necessary accoutrements of practical living.  Many of those books I gave away by mistake - I hadn't realised I needed them so much.  When I  wanted them they weren't there, and I'm spending a lot of time I can't afford, now that I am in control of my life again, trying to put that old library back together again.

One of these days somebody, and I hope it is the employer of deranged people who for some incomprehensible reason find themselves in positions of education influence, is going to notice that the emperor is naked.

The Worldwide Web is totally democratic, and therefore completely anarchic.  It is about as useful a teaching aid as six of the best.  In order to use the Web effectively you need to be literate, suspicious, and resistant to chicanery.

And how do you become literate, and suspicious, and protected from crooks, and perverts, and loonies who tell you the world is flat, if your headmistress has just thrown away all the books from which you might, just might, have learned something?