[LM_NET] "CLASSICS" IN A MIDDLE SCHOOL MEDIA CENTER

[Dyanna Meekhof <dyanna_meekhof@HOTMAIL.COM>]

Dear LM_Netters:
 
As a SLMS very close to endorsement, and currently working in an urban public 
school under control of a Governance Board due to non-AYP for 6 years, I would 
appreciate your thoughts on the importance of the Classics in a middle school 
library.
 
Our school has over 400 middle school students, and zero library budget. With last 
fall's donation of $36,000 by a local university, I purchased around 2,000 new 
books, and had another 2,000 existing titles worth keeping. Of the 4,000 books on 
our shelves, 800 are new fiction which I selected with great care. Only 1 of those 
800 is a "classic": The Old Man and the Sea, which I kept as a pair to Philbrick's 
The Young Man and the Sea.
 
A member of our 12-person Governance Board is concerned that we do not have 
"classic" fiction, such as the works of Twain and Cervantes.
 
While I, too, love the classics, I fail to see how urban middle schoolers can 
appreciate dead-white-man's literature, particularly since we have so many talented 
and diverse writers of fiction today. The classics that make a difference for urban 
children of color, in my view, are the works of and about the Harlem Renaissance 
writers, poets, intellectuals. But that is not what the Governance Board means by 
the "Classics". I am not being directly challenged on my fiction choices; 
nevertheless, I am deeply uneasy.
 
Would you share your views on this issue on or offline?
 
Dyanna L. Meekhof
SLMS-to-be
Burton Middle School
Grand Rapids, MI
meekhofd@grps.k12.mi.us
 
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