Quote of the Day: Moon on Parental Despotism

"We need to take a hard look at the rights of the young to access information. It is an issue we have avoided for far too long. And what seems to have become our traditional stance—that it is up to parents to control the reading and viewing of their offspring—may be politically expedient but it isn't particularly principled.

The arrival of compulsory education provided one escape route for those children whose parents seemed determined to establish a dynasty of ignorance. Some parents still struggle to protect their children from education but, by and large, society has come to accept education as among the rights of the young. Society usually does things for selfish reasons, however, and this may be no more than acceptance that the need for an educated next generation to continue or improve upon what we have wrought is so important that it must even supersede the rather despotic rights we have customarily accorded to parents.

The question for us, though, is do we then accept that the child's or young adult's right of access to knowledge stops when the school doors close? Do we believe that education happens only in school, that libraries are not educational, that they are less important, less relevant than schools? If we do not believe these things, then how come we do not protest as strongly when an individual parent bars the door of the library (or the adult section) to his or her child as when the governor of a state stands in the schoolhouse door and bars entry to children who seek nothing more dangerous than an equal crack at a decent education?"

— from Eric Moon's inaugural address as president for the American Library Association at the conference in Detroit in 1977, as quoted in Lillian Gerhardt's critical editorial on page 9 of the Sept. 1977 issue of School Library Journal.

Quote of the Day: Public Libraries as Literary Culture Incubators

"The third and last class of objections to public libraries to which I shall direct your attention relates to the kind and quality of the books circulated. These objections, which are usually made by educated and scholarly persons, are based on an entire misconception of the facts in the case. The objectors do not divest themselves of the old ideas that libraries are established for the exclusive benefit of scholars; whereas the purpose of these [i.e. public libraries] is to furnish reading for all classes in the community. On no other principle would a general tax for their support be justifiable.

The masses of a community have very little of literary and scholarly culture. They need more of this culture, and the purpose of the library is to develop and increase it. This is done by placing in their hands such books as they can read with pleasure and appreciate, and by stimulating them to acquire the habit of reading. We must first interest the reader before we can educate him; and, to this end, must commence at his own standard of intelligence.

The scholar, in his pride of intellect, forgets the progressive steps he took in his own mental development—the stories read to him in the nursery, the boy's book of adventure in which he revelled with delight, and the sentimental novel over which he shed tears in his youth. Our objector supposes that the masses will read books of his standard if they were not supplied with the books to which he objects; but he is mistaken. Shut up to this choice, they will read no books. When the habit of reading is once acquired, the reader's taste, and hence the quality of his reading, progressively improves."

Poole, WM. F. (1876). Some popular objections to public libraries. The American Library Journal 1(2), p. 48-49. [Paragraph breaks added for readability.]