Throwing the Book at Progress.

• Author: LARSON, ERIC
• Position: Books in schools are disappearing - Brief Article

SANTA FE, TEXAS--Books are becoming extinct. I realized it slowly. It's not that I was oblivious to television, computers, CDs, movies, or any of the 20th century's other artifacts of "progress" that have cut into books' domain as society's forum for information and entertainment. I just always believed that as long as books remained safe within the citadels where they were valued most--schools--they would never perish, like dinosaurs marching into oblivion. But that's where the threat is. Books haven't suddenly lost their merit, yet they are losing their place in schools. In terms of progress, they're the enemy.

When I returned to my high school from summer vacation one year, I found an intruding armada of computers had replaced a venerable bookcase of reference materials. These machines were to provide encyclopedias on CD-ROM and access to the world's trash heap, the Internet. That was my first indication that books were on the endangered list. Even though the printing press was the better invention, our culture values Gates over Gutenberg.

True, computers belong in schools, but in technology courses and not the library. You can learn to use a spreadsheet or program a language without surrendering libraries to computer labs. Besides, computers could prove more expensive than books. Along with the initial cost, there's also the need to purchase new equipment and software to keep current. A 40-year-old book is still valuable to a library, while a three-year-old computer is not. Combine that with the fact that no student is particularly careful with school materials, and you have the cost of repairing and maintaining computers.

But the highest price is the sacrifice of reliability. When was the last time your set...