Comments on Why Carr Is Wrong About Cushing Academy

• Kim is Right On
• Posted by Angela at Indiana University Southeast on January 27, 2010 at 8:00am EST

• I agree that I wouldn't want my institution to follow Cushing's lead, but I think that this is an exciting and worthy experiment. I'll await the results with great anticipation, and will hope that they learn things my school can use.
  It strikes me as odd that people argue that educational institutions are inert and unwilling to adapt to the changing world, but then some gatekeepers smack schools on the nose when they propose changes seem trangressive, simply by virtue of being different.

• Electronic devices are not welcome everywhere...
• Posted by A. on January 27, 2010 at 10:00am EST

• I love having the ability to put books on my netbook and use any number of programs to read them -- the Kindle software, Adobe Digital Editions, Adobe Reader, etc. -- but what about those times when you're not allowed to or are unsafe using a digital reader?

  I've spent hours on the runway when the use of digital devices was forbidden. I occasionally travel to cities and take public transportation in areas where displaying an ebook reader of any sort invites trouble. Just yesterday, a student in my city was stabbed for his cell phone. When was the last time someone was stabbed by someone looking to steal his/her book?

  Clearly, the folks at Cushing expect their students not to travel, nor will they leave their rarefied educational environment.

• Posted by Barbara Fister on January 27, 2010 at 10:15am EST

• What's so innovative? Schools have long been filling their classrooms with smartboards and funding computer labs (with filters; getting around filters is problem based learning at its best) and saving money by getting rid of media specialists/librarians and the library's budget line. Cushing's behind the times.

  I don't see innovation in putting all your eggs into one vertically-integrated corporate basket, but then we're already down that path; smartboards are a lot more expensive, proprietary, and trendy than chalk. And I hear kids love to recalibrate them several times a day. Gives them a chance to get out their chairs.

  What Cushing did (starve your library; replace with Kindles) was great PR though. But it will be tablets tomorrow, and Cushing will be so last year.

• How about the Guinea pigs?
• Posted by Phred on January 27, 2010 at 11:00am EST

• The chief problem with Cushing's "experiment" is that it fails to consider the subjects of the experiment, namely the students (and,to a lesser extent, the faculty). What consideration has been given to the possibility of harm? Why have students and faculty been given no choice? Who will benefit? It seems to me that the real beneficiaries will be the people building careers on being innovative, not the students.
  It has never seemed to me that educational institutions are unwilling to change or experiment. Politicians think so, but they are grandstanding most of the time. Schools are cautious, which befits any large bureaucratic organization. The most thorough revolutions are those that recognize that change is both gradual and inevitable.

• Posted by Elizabeth , Librarian on January 27, 2010 at 12:30pm EST

• I actually referenced the Cushing case during my interview presentation at my current job. If you actually pay attention to the statistics Cushing released, just a few books were checked out each year. The library was not being used regularly. In a case like that it makes sense to change what the school offered, give the students the resources they were interested in and would use, rather than holding on to an outdated (in this case) model. I don't believe that these students will in any way be considered behind their peers once they get to college/university. More and more schools don't have a library or a trained librarian on staff, and many of the freshmen we get at my institution have never been taught how to research or use the library. At least these students will have some experience with the digital offerings.

• silliness
• Posted by PiledHigher&Deeper , PhD at European on January 27, 2010 at 3:00pm EST

• First, I concur with Barbara Fister. "Innovation" is outmoded tomorrow. The current infatuation with technology seems little more than a higher stakes version of the same game that's been played for years on campuses, where students must buy the new edition of a book that was perfectly acceptable in its older form. "Revising" means that those used books are no longer on the market and the publisher can make fortune by merely changing the pagination.

  Second, Phred hits the nail on the head! Joshua Kim and Angela seem more interested in "experimentation" and "transgression" than they are in the students who must endure (suffer!) their flights of fancy. I remember being told years ago that students are not experiments. Evidently, Kim and Angela would disagree. Such "humanitarianism" is a little like those experiments in which individuals are pushed to their limits, in the name of science, just to see what might happen. I'm sure Kim and Angela are happy to be the observers, and not the guinea pigs, of the experimentation.

  Third, Elizabeth seems a little naive in believing that "library was not being used regularly" because it was uninteresting technology. By offering "students the resources they were interested in and would use, rather than holding on to an outdated (in this case) model," Cushing should expect...what? She writes, "At least these students will have some experience with the digital offerings." Not necessarily so! Why do we think that a backlit computer screen (or kindle) will make learning more interesting, or students more willing to read? Technology, that great peace that will break down every wall, in fact makes seclusion and isolation only that much more possible. Tailored, insular, and flattering lives. The motto of the technocratic administrator: Only satisfy student desires that already exist when they walk through the classroom door!

• So nice to know that everyone hasn't got the facts
• Posted by Red , Alumni at Cushing Academy on August 1, 2010 at 5:30pm EDT

• OK folks. I'm not a professional educator I'm only a Cushing Alumni who went there some time ago and did in fact benefit from the BOOKS in the library. Oddly enough, I NEVER TOOK ONE OUT. For those of you who have probably never been to Cushing or a similar place, the library was the one place in the classroom building where students could go during a free period, or a break after classes, or a quiet place to read and study when a blizzard closed the school. I did my reading IN the library. I found the most wonderful and unexpected old books racked under the bow window in the rear, ranging from hundred year old "Boys" projects that included building your own steam pile driver, to treatises on military history and strategy written by and for West Pointers. You will never, ever, get that kind of odd and eclectic exposure to the breadth of human knowledge and experience from some gizmo that doesn't allow you to make random acquaintances with interesting titles and bindings. And I say this as a technophile with great computer literacy and skills. eBooks are fine for a research tool, but lousy at randomly widening the human experience. The books Inever took out, probably were not available for loan. Most reference and older volumes are not available for loan in may libraries. Have you ever found a dollar, or a twenty dollar bill, while walking down the street? that's what you find with stacks of real books, and what you'll never find on ebook readers. Literally, treasure. Noble experiment. Great budget saver. And a horrible thing to do to young minds, which should be encouraged to seek and wander and broaden their experiences. No, Cushing didn't have the imagination to poll the alumni before they did this, either.

• Posted by Broward Maryan on August 10, 2010 at 7:15am EDT

• I find it interesting that everyone seems lament for the lost opportunities to find that gem in the corner while spending time searching for that book you just can't find, but ignores the opportunities that this change offers. I went to Cushing in the mid-90's, before the grand internet really took wing. I loved to go to the library and just browse, looking for that gem. I knew what I wanted to look for, and would find that section then see what was near on the shelf. Well, that is still possible. The only difference now, for those industrius students who love to look for that gem, is that they now have so many more volumes to choose from. Granted, they won't get the same tactile sensation as they open that dusty old volume and smell that paper, but they will get the knowledge and the rewarding feeling that they found something fresh and interesting. Just because the search involved a computer or an iPad instead of a card or an afternoon spent getting lost in the books, it doesn't mean they can't get lost in the knowledge and excitement of discovery. They have the same chance for literary discovery I had when I was a student, but now they have so many more volumes from which to choose when they begin their journey!

• Bookless Library
• Posted by George Johnston, Cushing, l938 at RE: Cushing Academy's on October 23, 2010 at 5:00pm EDT
• My late wife, Katharine (Kit Lansing, Cushing Graduate, Class of l939, then a nurse, then a librarian) would have an interesting comment to make about a bookless library...especially at Cushing. I dare not chance expressing what her opinion would have been but as for me, with almost 60 years spent in the publishing business....magazines....newspapers....books...,etc,I am just as much at a loss as to my own opinion! My daughter dragged me kicking and screaming into the 20th Century to the keyboard of my first computer, about l990, and to me it has been little more than a fancy typewriter and not an all-consuming passion as seems to be common with most persons I meet...so I think there is no longer any question as to whether the infernal machine is here to stay or not....just some question as to whether it is actually going to replace all of us in time. I will never be at home in a library with no books...the library at Cushing in my time was not much larger than a bread box but, oh my, what a trysting place! I hope that extra curricular use of Cushing's Library never loses that little extra something...bookless, or whatever. Good luck all of you Penguins now present and yet to come.

• Cushing Academy going bookless
• Posted by Robert Simon on December 20, 2010 at 5:30pm EST
• 
  December 20, 2010
  
  
  
  To all Cushing Academy friends, administration, and Alumni:
  
  After reading several of the Blogs about Cushing's change from paper to electronics including a bookless library I decided to express my opinion. I have, as a former student of Cushing of 1952, contacted some of the administration about this situation. My response given to me was that it was not the school's intention to get rid of all the paper books but could not verify a present holding location of the library's books. Except for a few easy chairs and computer monitors, etc the library was empty. I find this emphorviating. To become fully electronic is one thing but to completely eliminate all books in the initial process is quite another. Also, the school's statement that the action taken is primarily one of experimentation ...SHAME ON THE SCHOOL for experimenting with students' lives and education. I wish as a former student that I had been previously informed by Cushing of its intent. Perhaps if enough of Alumni and friends make an all out effort we can affect a change before this experimentation reaches uncontrollability.
  
  Bob Simon
  45 Keddy Street
  Springfield, Ma 01109-1433
  413-783-6376
  email: robert.simon3@verizon.net