From the Academy

School Libraries

I don’t know about you; but when I went to school, primary and secondary—in Plymouth, Michigan—we had admirable school libraries. They were open in the summer, too, and it was in that season I did my serious reading. Nowadays I wonder who selected the books in those sound libraries; probably it was some oldfangled old-maid teacher of English with no librarian’s certificate. What a wealth of fantasy and history and science on those shelves! I believe, indeed, that library reading was nine- tenths of what I got from my schooling; for although Plymouth had good schools in those days, I learned much less from my classes than I learned from my mother and my grandfather.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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School Libraries

I don’t know about you; but when I went to school, primary and secondary—in Plymouth, Michigan—we had admirable school libraries. They were open in the summer, too, and it was in that season I did my serious reading. Nowadays I wonder who selected the books in those sound libraries; probably it was some oldfangled old-maid teacher of English with no librarian’s certificate. What a wealth of fantasy and history and science on those shelves! I believe, indeed, that library reading was nine- tenths of what I got from my schooling; for although Plymouth had good schools in those days, I learned much less from my classes than I learned from my mother and my grandfather.