Dear school librarian,
Forgive me for not using your name. There were so many of you who helped me in my nine primary schools and five different high schools.
I’m now a 41-year-old published writer. I have a happy family, a beautiful wee boy I take to libraries often and, despite these “interesting times” we live in, strong mental health.
I’m writing this to you because I credit so much of this to school libraries and librarians. I don’t know how I would have survived those years had I not been able to disappear into the books and safe space you provided me.
As the new girl with the second-hand clothes, wrong trainers and my mixed-up accent I was constantly trying to change, I was an easy target for kids, also uncertain and insecure and striving for some power during adolescence when we all feel powerless. But, whatever school I went to, there was a school library.
It wasn’t just the books, and it wasn’t just this warm, quiet space where I escaped the concrete jungle of the school corridors. It was also a haven where you were – an adult who I knew cared about me and whom I could trust. A reassuring presence. Who, when I asked about books, would answer my questions and find me stories that opened up my world, like an origami swan being smoothed out.
You, who encouraged me to see myself not destined to repeat the same generation poverty, but as a kid with a valuable creative interior world that was worth as much as the maths, science and geography exams that I regularly failed.
School librarians don’t just organise books
I’m writing to you because, along with other librarians, you saved me. Like so many others – the freaks, geeks and misfits. Kids going through unthinkable things that could have no voice, and so they went to the quietest place they could to find some solace.
I’m also writing to you because this week I discovered that North Lanarkshire has plans to make redundant all of their school librarian posts. They want to save £657,000 by taking away school librarians, and integrate the public service.
When you see these figures, I can see how, if you’re mathematically minded, this might seem like a good deal.
But, the people they are making redundant don’t just order and organise books. They have a whole other role. They are trusted and represent safety. Safety for kids who are struggling. For LGBTQI+ kids. Safety for kids with troubled backgrounds, or those having a hard time at school.
And school librarians are not just safety. They’re aspiration and inspiration, too. Every time a trusted adult hands a book to a child or a young person, what they’re actually saying is: “Look at the world and all the things you might do in it.”
But, of course, you know this. You give that gift every day.
Research suggests pupils will suffer without libraries
I do not see the world in checks and balances because I was that kid who sought refuge in the school library every lunchtime. Without your supportive presence, without books to escape into and to use as a template for another sort of life, I do not know how I would have managed.
How many school librarians have stopped kids slipping right off the tracks by simply existing, by handing them the perfect book at the perfect time?
If we want to be more analytical, then I could point to international evidence from school libraries all around the world that showed consistently higher test or exam scores and academic attainment. Perhaps more important, the research also pointed to more positive attitudes toward learning including increased motivation, attitude, self-esteem and reading for pleasure.
Maybe this isn’t enough to justify those checks and balances or the saving of all those noughts, but the Lanarkshire Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy for 2019 to 2024 states itself that “in Scotland, the social, economic and human costs of mental health problems are estimated to be around £10.8 billion per annum.”
Cost does not always equal the true value
How many school librarians have stopped kids slipping right off the tracks by simply existing, by handing them the perfect book at the perfect time? By listening to them and creating a safe, quiet place where they can talk about difficult things?
I imagine the kids who were able to ride the stormy seas and make it safely to shore because of school libraries and school librarians.
Nearly 3000 on the petition to save school librarians in North Lanarkshire. If you haven't already, please sign and sharehttps://t.co/4v5pdxswOh
— linzerella 🐋 (@rapidnarwhal) July 11, 2022
When you look at a figure like £10.8 billion, the savings gained by dispensing with school librarians, who are often the first intervention for young people’s mental health, suddenly seems very paltry indeed. I wonder, then, if even the mathematically minded would be able to see that cost does not always equal the true value.
I’m writing to tell you this because you saved me, and so many others. Because, yes, you loan books to school kids and books in themselves are glorious, magical things. But what you do is so, so much more.
Kerry Hudson is an Aberdeen-born, award-winning writer of novels, memoirs and screenplays. She lives in Prague with her husband, toddler and an angry black cat
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