Apparently the kids were rowdy (big surprise, they're young!) and disturbing other patrons not to mention the library staff (which is a problem that needs a solution.) And it reminded me of a time when I was just out of high school and home on break. I was at the library to help a friend of mine search for schools and I saw, what I later found out was the head of the library, disciplining some middle school students for doing many of the minor things described in this article. (To my knowledge, none of them were accused of peeing on the bathroom floor. Yuck!)
Now, to be sure, the library has to be available for everyone and at times, people aged 10-14, can be rowdy, particularly if they're with other people their own age and there are no respected adult role-models around to reign them in. After watching a heated exchange between a student I didn't know and the library director, I went over to speak with the older gentleman and get the kid's back (as they say in the parlance of our times.)
In that instance, the kids were running around the two floors and interacting with each other as middle school students do, and have always done, at least in modern America, only now parents are whipped up into a frenzy that if kids run around their neighborhoods after school, some predator adult will do something terrible to them. Nevermind that terrible things can happen to kids in school, I think public libraries have a special obligation to serve the community, particularly young people, and it's in everyone's interests that students have a safe place to be after school before their parents get home.
I suggested to the Library Director (I forget his name, but a fairly nice older man) that perhaps the unused auditorium space in the library could be used by kids who come in from the nearby middle school (in my town, one middle school was relatively near the public library, while the other -- the one I went to -- was not) but he was concerned with liability, having kids unsupervised in his building, yadda yadda. (Btw, ain't it always the most convenient excuse for someone not to do something, that they'll get sued?)
Long story short, some of the kids were kicked out that day (as I recall, it wasn't even the real sources of trouble, just the ones unfortunate enough to be caught), but at least they got to see a young adult/older kid verbally supporting them in front of other adults who'd just as soon not have to deal with any of this.
Now, understand, I'm not condoning rowdy, disruptive behavior. I'm simply suggesting that after school, kids have a lot of bound up energy from sitting in class all day and they want to express that and be around their friends. Wouldn't it have been better for the library, the school and the town to find some way to allow that energy to be expressed, without bothering other library patrons, yet keeping those kids in a safe, supportive environment and surrounded by books, of all things, that they may actually decide to pick up.
I suppose the point of me re-telling all of this, is that kids need to be around older people who show them respect and I believe they'll behave respectfully, in return. It's certainly been my experience over the last decade and a half that I've worked with kids of all ages. That idea seems to be backed up by the experts:
Linda W. Braun, a librarian and professor who has written four books about teenagers’ use of libraries, said the students want only to be treated like everybody else.There may be a solution at hand, using the soon to be replaced police station as an after school youth center, but I don't know if it will come quickly enough, and besides, those programs, like Teen Advisory Group the library tried to implement, will only be successful if the people involved with them aren't seen as tools of the adults in charge.“If there are little kids making noise, it’s cute, and they can run around, it’s O.K.,” Ms. Braun said of standard library operating procedure. “Or if seniors with hearing difficulties are talking loudly, that’s accepted. But a teen who might talk loudly for a minute or two gets in trouble.”
She added: “The parents don’t want them, the library doesn’t want them, so they act out.”
Although the sunlight of an NY Times article can usually act as immediate disinfectant for most local problems, particularly those in a suburb as diverse and affluent as Maplewood, NJ, it remains to be seen what will happen to Maplewood's middle schoolers with no library to go to from 2:45 to 5pm.
2 comments:
“If there are little kids making noise, it’s cute, and they can run around, it’s O.K.,” Ms. Braun said of standard library operating procedure. “Or if seniors with hearing difficulties are talking loudly, that’s accepted. But a teen who might talk loudly for a minute or two gets in trouble.”
Well, yes. A teen is not a little kid; he or she presumably understands that the library is a place for quiet study and reflection and that their behavior disrupts and impinges upon other patrons' use of the library. If said teen does not understand this, then it would appear he or she does indeed have the mental age of a little kid and perhaps should have a diaper affixed to their nether regions as their bowel control might also reasonably be questioned.
The analogy to hard-of-hearing seniors is so absurd as to barely require refutation. A person who is hard of hearing has great difficulty controlling THE VOLUME OF THEIR VOICE. Teenagers have no such difficulty. They just often choose not to.
I think the point is, the library tolerates differences in behavior for some patrons, but is quick to condemn others, especially teens, for similar behavior. Is that just? Perhaps it is, as you point out, they are different and should be treated differently. I guess the question is, if you'd let an adult off the hook with a warning, why is the library closing its doors to the teens and is that the best solution?
But if you can account for the hard of hearing's difficulty in MODULATING the SOUND of their VOICE, why not give teenagers, with their under-developed pre-frontal lobes, some consideration for their inability to control their impulsive behavior?
Of course, I'm kidding, as I think the infantilizing of young people is terrible and more and more we should expect teens to take on adult responsibilities in exchange for the right to enjoy more adult privileges, but you know as well as I do, that as a society, we allow people to get away with many things that we are quick to condemn teens for simply because there is an irrational fear of this age group among many older and younger people. I'd call it, teenaphobia.
I think I may have just coined a new phrase, but unfortunately, a quick Google search reveals others have already used it.
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