School Libraries as Curriculum
Every few weeks, I come across articles or news stories about conversations around the notion of “book banning” in local schools. As certain groups have increased their efforts to push their agendas into schools by adding books to their libraries with overtly LGBTQ content, concerned parents and organizations representing them have sought to remove these books from libraries or required reading lists. While some parents see this as necessary limitation of content unsuitable for minors, others have labeled it as attempts to ban books.
It’s important to realize that books included in school libraries (or even classroom libraries) are part of the curriculum of the school. Granted, it’s a different sort of curriculum; I’ll call it the informal curriculum. In my opinion, anything that contributes to a school’s program to shape or educate a child is part of the curriculum. Classroom math lessons are part of the formal curriculum. Pep rallies, Morning announcements, Spirit Days, hallway decor, and library collections are part of the informal curriculum of the school. Each of these are formative in the life of a student; they all play a role in shaping who a student becomes. We need to continue to remember that the formal, classroom lessons are not the only aspect of the school that prompts learning. In fact, often the informal parts of the school curriculum often have longer-lasting influence on who a student becomes.
Purpose
The Covenant Christian School library exists to further the school’s mission to educate the whole child to the glory of God within a grace-filled environment. Housed in an intentionally creative space which nurtures wonder and imagination, our library enhances our integral curriculum, develops our students’ informational literacy skills, and provides opportunities to train our students to interpret the various ideologies found in books through a Biblical worldview.
Goals
To curate a collection of books that supports the mission and goals of the school.
To support and enhance the curriculum, providing materials for class projects and for additional academic exploration.
To nurture a culture of life-long readers who learn to see God’s goodness, truth, and beauty because of and within the things they read.
To foster and resource curiosity, allowing and encouraging students to explore beyond the curriculum into areas of personal delight.
To teach students to read widely with the goal of gaining a deep and wise understanding of a topic.
To teach students to seek out wise, knowledgeable, and credible sources.
To provide a quiet space within a busy world where students practice stepping away from the busyness of life and settling into a book.
To nurture an appetite for well-written, solid fiction.
To expose students to a variety of fiction and nonfiction through reading aloud and to share the joy of books in community.
To affirm students as individual readers who have profound value because they are created in God’s image.
To provide a physical library space that inspires and delights in a way that ignites curiosity and encourages exploration.
To provide students with a librarian, curator, guide, and an embodiment of the joy of reading.
The Power or Reading
Being schools that exists for the glory of God, we recognize that everything we see comes from, through, and toward God (Romans 11:36). As a result, our schools should seek to be those which recognize His goodness, truth, and beauty in all things. We do this by learning more about Him, about His world, and about ourselves, and reading is one of the most powerful tools to develop this ability. Certainly reading stimulates knowledge, understanding, and the intellectual development we desire to see in each of our students. Reading also nurtures wonder, creativity, and the imagination which are so deeply vital to the one who is amazed by who God is and the grandeur of what He has made and done. As the Redeemed Reader states, “…reading engages and disciplines the mind like nothing else. In reading (and later, in writing), children learn to engage first with meaning and then with comparison, logic, generalization, specification, and fine distinctions … That’s what good literature does: immerse the reader in a world or a mind or perspective that’s foreign in some ways and yet recognizable as common to all of us. Good literature illuminates truth we already know and awakens us to truth we might pursue. Good literature warns us away from falsehood and provides unforgettable examples of how now to live” (7-8).
This is especially true with stories which help us connect foundational truths and ideas to things we experience in our own lives. In fact, God chose to reveal Himself to us (in part) through the truest of stories, and Jesus often taught His followers through stories. God did this because stories seep into our own experiences as they enliven our imaginations, creativity, and our hearts. For this reason, good stories often stick with us and even change us. Redeemed Reader adds, “…we want to shape redeemed readers, who engage both mind and heart in dialogue with the culture around them. Humans are story-loving and story-telling; that’s the way God made us” (8).
As a result, we should have great intentionality about the books we include in our libraris. When we place books on the shelves, this places a stamp of approval on their content. We are mindful of this, because students typically walk out the door of the library with books without comment or discussion. These books have opportunities to speak various authors’ versions of truth into children’s hearts. Fiction books possess the unique ability to create worlds and experiences that are beyond a reader’s own personality, story, and circumstances. Children can slip into a character’s mind and experience just as they might slip on a costume during a play. This has transformative power, especially as they “try on” worldviews and attitudes as they follow characters through a story. This is why reading changes the heart; it is why we must be mindful when we place a book in a child’s hands.
Questions to Guide a Christian School Library Collection
Recognizing that our students have broad access to a wide array of books in a multitude of formats, our goal is not merely to provide reading material or to entertain. Instead, we should seek to offer materials that encourage students to seek books with depth, insight, and artistry—books that will nurture, challenge, and inspire. Here are some helpful questions to guide what books we select for our collections:
Does this book uphold the school's purpose: Educating the whole child for the glory of God?
Does this book reflect or respect the beliefs of the school?
Does this book belong in an elementary, middle, or high school library? Is it age-appropriate?
Does this book nurture the character, behavior, and qualities that we seek to cultivate ?
Does this book have the potential to delight and thus motivate reading?
Does this book support and enhance the curriculum in a meaningful way? (Particularly for nonfiction books.)
Do the quality of writing and level of creativity reflect the abilities that we seek to nurture in our students?
It’s important to recognize that some books may be included while not resoundingly affirming each of these guiding questions. However, these books could still have a place in these collections because they meet the majority of these guidelines, address a strong educational or curricular objective, and because our librarian, teachers, and administration are equipped to address potential issues in mission appropriate ways.
Limiting a library collection to only those books which affirm the school’s mission would eliminate and overwhelmingly large number of volumes that would be necessary to include for the purpose of exposing students to good literature. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a thoughtfully selected collection should include books that are contrary to the mission of the school. Not recklessly, but for the purpose of enhancing the curriculum, as the sixth guiding question suggests.
But, the school should be aware of the content of these volumes, and the teachers should be on the same page in regard to how this content is addressed. For example, it would be hard to imagine having books in a healthy school’s library collection that don’t insist that God didn’t create the world. Now, Christians can be all over the spectrum of the length of time over which God did His creating, but teachers in a Christian school should be equipped to address those questions if a student were to call attention to a book that the school has place in its library. Because I feel confident about a school’s capacity to equip its teachers to know how to respond to these sorts of questions, it’s entirely appropriate to allow such books in a library collection.
It becomes trickier when we get into topics that aren’t readily acknowledged as essentials of the faith. For example, because faithful Christians are all over the map when it comes to issues of homosexuality and same-sex attraction, it’s more difficult to assume that an entire faculty would be on the same page concerning how to respond to LGBTQ content. So, a school needs to do the work to make sure the entire faculty can get on the same page about how to respond to these sorts of questions or not include these sorts of books in the library. At the end of the day, one of the guiding principles for dealing with controversial content must be that a school’s employees are equipped to respond to the controversial content in a way that is consistent with the school’s mission. That takes significant work, either on the faculty-training end or the book screening and selection end.
But, I believe that having a school library and individual classroom libraries are extremely important to the life of the school. I can’t help thinking that a school has failed in some capacity if it doesn’t nurture a love of reading. And, considering that modeling is one of the greatest teaching tools we have, it’s difficult to hope that students will love reading and books if they don’t see them readily available within the walls of the school.
