Ferengi is US - How much am I bid for the future of education?

Bowker published its Annual with some ominous data, and independent publishers discussed the changing landscape where hedgefunds buy and sell them forcing staff cuts and requiring a 25% profit on any book published. In the past, wildly popular books helped to pay for those which were deemed worthwhile, but not so profitable. Harry Potter could have supported several hundred perhaps. Benefit to society? PRICELESS!

Independent bookstores used to buy niche books and stock unusual gems waiting to be discovered, but large chains pushed them out of business. We consoled ourselves with the thought that at least there were a number of national chains - Today I read that Borders may be going under- falling prey to Barnes & Noble. Independence and diversity? Cost to society? PRICELESS!

Libraries once had the buying power to keep independents alive, but Cuts to library funding are ever popular in a world where personal gain is the yardstick by which to measure success. Impact of the Loss of Library purchasing power? PRICELESS

Libraries are pressured to throw out (weed) books that are more than a few years old. They no longer provide an opportunity for authors to be discovered or re-discovered on a dusty shelf by that unique reader. In doing this they are forced to ignore Ranganathan's 2nd & 3rd laws. As a result authors do not have the time needed to find their readers because the time they sit on a shelf waiting for that right reader to arrive is too short. Cost to readers? PRICELESS

I remember the joy of finding Generation of Vipers on my high school library shelf in the late 1960s. Published in 1942, I glimpsed a world that was already disappearing. That book lead me to Wylie's ficitonal classic, When Worlds Collide, published in 1933. My librarian would have been given a warning for having aged tomes on her shelves in today's world. But, thankfully that was a different time, and I, the reader found my books! Today, readers are denied the joy of finding such treasures. Cost to Authors and Publishers and readers? PRICELESS!

As a school librarian I am writing about these issues because reading and learning are individual and personal - they cannot be mass produced - they spread virally. I am writing about this because thinking and learning cannot be reduced to a profit/loss or test/measure mentality.

Finally, I am writing about this because the gift of education is not the sole purview of formal public or private schools and universities!

As a public librarian in Clovis, N.M., in the 1980s, I used to travel to Albuquerque to visit a marvelous children's bookstore, Tresspassers William. It was owned and operated by a free spirit, Gwynne Spencer. She was a beuatiful woman prone to wear Indian bedspreads, trailing long, wild ,curly hair, and effusing about the latest childrens book! I used to look forward to her monthly newsletter filled with the newest and best books, and great ideas to help children respond to them! I learned about storytelling from her after I had started telling tales in my story hour. Her bookstore sponsored workshop after workshop with the finest people in the West! In so doing she provided one of the invaluable services that books,bookstores and libraries provide; they are the University of Life-Long Learning. How can we calculate the economic impact of that? It is truly PRICELESS!

So what does this have to do with the Ferengi? The Ferengi were a race of beings who valued only the material and the ability of each Ferengi to create personal wealth. The concept of greater good did not exist for them! Can America be far behind? Everything we do is based in profit. Education, health care, even prisons are privatized!

As educators we are to educate children so that they can integrate into the workforce and to the extent that we succeed in this task we are deemed to have value. The problem is the workplace and indeed the world is shifting beneath us and we are training a workforce for jobs that will not exist when today's kindergarteners graduate! We continue to measure discrete skills in a world that needs something we are not measuring! The cost of measuring the wrong thing? PRICELESS!

I read with deep sadness that our Mayor, Karl Dean, here in Nashville, (a mayor I voted for) has decided to fully fund "education" (I should be cheering, right?) BUT to do this he is cutting Public Library services. Clearly he and others on the 1% of the LCurve have missed the point. Indeed, he is not fully funding education when he cuts public library funding!

How costly this is to our societey (if we measure using something other than money) would be difficult to assess. I'd like to ask my wise friend, Gwynne how she would do it.

If you find this confusing -- watch this video which is on You Tube -- but I have included it from a new site which allows you to view it in many languages -- how about Esperanto?