I have to rant about something, and thought this might be a good place for it. I'm a librarian with a Master's in Library/Information Science and a BA in English, and have been working at a public high school for the last 4 months (after being in the public library for years). I am only part-time right now, but was told there might be a full-time position for me in the fall. Yay.... right??

Well, unfortunately the school district is facing major budget cuts, and considering laying off 10% of their teachers... and of course that includes the librarian position, and there actually hasn't been an MLIS (professional librarian) at this school for over 10 years. Instead they're thinking of filling the position with a 60+ year-old English teacher, just so they don't have to lay him off. Okay, I understand all of that, and realize my position here was never secure. But then a teacher said something that shook me, just because it's so indicative of the problems with our educational system... she said they're cutting everything but science, math and special education - meaning they still don't care about English, foreign language, music/arts, and apparently libraries being run by real librarians.

Then we wonder why so many kids, and even adults, can't speak proper English?? And I'm referring mostly to native US-born (or raised) folks, who still can't compose a coherent sentence without numerous spelling & grammatical errors. We also wonder why kids aren't reading today, but how can they when their schools don't have proper libraries? People outside of the profession may not realize this, but librarians are specially trained with Master's degrees (required to even apply), and there is a reason for that... not just anybody can select/order books, catalog, advise readers, maintain a collection, etc etc.

So my question here is, why do they place so much importance on math & science, while ignoring the fact that our society is becoming LESS literate in recent years? And please don't blame this on immigration, because I work in a school that's comprised of at least 40% foreign-born students, and can tell you that is NOT the problem... in fact, some of my ESL students speak and write better English than the US-born kids. I'm not saying math & science aren't important, but how you speak, write and read is sooooo important in the real world. Isn't that still a priority in our schools? Not to mention the fine arts, which are basically non-existent in this district (very sad to me as I'm also a musician). Sorry for the long rant, but I just had to get this off my chest... anyone else agree or disagree?