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For decades, the federal government had funded a program, Reading Is Fundamental, that provided free books to patrons who came into the library. It may be that other districts implemented it differently, but at least in Brooklyn, this is how it worked:
We had RIF time from 2-4 on Fridays. Children could come into the library, sign up, and from then on, they could get a check mark on their record every time they came for RIF. If you came 3 times, you could get a free book to take home and keep. So, if you attended reasonably diligently, you could easily get 12-15 books in a year.
Stephen Krashen, in a talk I linked earlier, talked about a survey that was done on access to books. They found that if you counted the books that children had access to, either their own books or their siblings' books, children in Beverly Hills had an average of 200 books.
Children in Hollis had an average of 0.4 books.
I think that access to books is really important. I think that no matter how good libraries are, owning books is important -- because there are a lot of people who are part of two-income families or three-income families, who are pressed for time to the extent that it's a real hardship to have to make sure to bring books back to the library on time. And there are families who end up having to pay $20 or $30 in library fines and get soured on the whole thing because it's just too expensive.
So, I think that RIF was really important.
But the federal funding has been cut and it won't be continuing past August.
I wasn't always happy to be doing RIF, because it could be stressful and crowded and hard. But I am sad that it won't be there for the people who need it.
And I'm resentful that people keep making noise over the federal government taxing too much and spending too much. You can argue that the program was or wasn't a good use of money, fine. But clearly these are not the actions of a tax-and-spend government.
We had RIF time from 2-4 on Fridays. Children could come into the library, sign up, and from then on, they could get a check mark on their record every time they came for RIF. If you came 3 times, you could get a free book to take home and keep. So, if you attended reasonably diligently, you could easily get 12-15 books in a year.
Stephen Krashen, in a talk I linked earlier, talked about a survey that was done on access to books. They found that if you counted the books that children had access to, either their own books or their siblings' books, children in Beverly Hills had an average of 200 books.
Children in Hollis had an average of 0.4 books.
I think that access to books is really important. I think that no matter how good libraries are, owning books is important -- because there are a lot of people who are part of two-income families or three-income families, who are pressed for time to the extent that it's a real hardship to have to make sure to bring books back to the library on time. And there are families who end up having to pay $20 or $30 in library fines and get soured on the whole thing because it's just too expensive.
So, I think that RIF was really important.
But the federal funding has been cut and it won't be continuing past August.
I wasn't always happy to be doing RIF, because it could be stressful and crowded and hard. But I am sad that it won't be there for the people who need it.
And I'm resentful that people keep making noise over the federal government taxing too much and spending too much. You can argue that the program was or wasn't a good use of money, fine. But clearly these are not the actions of a tax-and-spend government.