Volume 71, Number 4, Winter 2023 was the last in the series of Between the Library and the Classroom: Becoming Integral to the Educational Process for The School Librarian, the Quarterly Journal of the School Library Association.

However, starting with Between the Library and the Classroom: Becoming Integral to the Educational Process 2.1 below, I continue this series for the School Library Association Blog.

—

Between the Library and the Classroom: Becoming Integral to the Educational Process 2.1

“Of all the ‘survival strategies’ education has to offer, none is more potent or in greater need of explication than the ‘inquiry environment’” (Postman & Weingartner, 1969, p. 36).

An educational inquiry environment is potent because and to the extent that it develops engaged and empowered inquirers. This is because inquiry is how we, individually and collectively, acquire the knowledge and understanding necessary to deal successfully with reality, which, in the final analysis, is the only true measure of human success.

Our collective failure to deal successfully with reality is painfully and alarmingly evident, as even a glance at any day’s news headlines will confirm, which is a consequence of our failure to establish an effectual inquiry environment in school.

However, the school library is by its very nature an inquiry environment, and it is, therefore, both a vital enabler and driver of inquiry within school. This makes the school library integral to the education process of school, properly understood. This also, then, positions the school librarian(s) on the frontline of the struggle to shape the answer to, as John Dewey (1956) puts it, the “fundamental … question of what anything whatsoever must be to be worthy of the name of education” (p. 17).

The future of school libraries, and that of our children, hinges on the shape of the answer to this question.

Now, the potency of any given school library will depend on the extent to which it is true to its nature, which is not solely and/ or fully under the control of its librarian(s). This is because any given school will itself only ever be a more or less vital and enabling inquiry environment. This is a complex situation that exists between the library and the classroom, and one that requires explication, still. And this brings us to the purpose of this series of blog posts, which is an online continuation of my defunct TSL column of the same name (plus 2.n), the articles of which have been collated in the FOSIL Group forum, A theory of the role of the library in the student’s intellectual experience.

I will continue this work of explication every 2 months, with the next post developing the argument outlined here more practically. However, as the eventual shape of the answer to the question of what is worthy of the name of education and its outworking for ourprofession will emerge out of professional conversation, I will in the meantime, as time permits, join in the conversation here (FOSIL Group members) or there (SLA members).

The revolution will not be televised.

References

• Dewey, J. (1956). Experience and Education: Selections. In Great Issues in Education (Vol. II, pp. 3-17). Chicago, IL: The Great Books Foundation.
• Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

—

The FOSIL Group is an international community of library- and classroom-based educators committed to building an effectual inquiry environment in primary-secondary / PK-12 education.