Education and the empowerment of marginalized people are essential values for me. They form the core of my ethics, my morality. This is why I chose to go into public library service.
For the past several decades, we’ve witnessed a steady and dramatic increase in the gap between those who hold the greatest wealth and power, and those who don’t. More wealth lies in the hands of fewer people than ever before in the modern world, and more people in the middle and lower classes are struggling harder just to get by. Fewer companies control larger portions of industry and the market. We’re witnessing the destructive consequences of this.
Those who possess wealth and power have a vested interest in holding on to it and in guarding it against those who would compete with them for it. Over the past several decades, those who control the purse strings have been enforcing changes in our nation’s educational milieu and social empowerment systems to produce the kinds of workers who will fit harmlessly into the economic and social structures that reinforce the wealthy and powerful in their power and wealth. The last thing powerful people want is to lift up those who would threaten their position.
The last thing they want is the kind of universal education and social empowerment that public libraries hold as a core value.
Continue reading “Education & Empowerment”
John the Librarian 