BetweentheBookends

A Blog about Connecticut libraries and librarians

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Place Matters

I admit it. I’m the only semi-literate American who hasn’t actually read Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. I have, however, read about it, and so I was feeling pretty comfortable with the topic, “Can the New Haven Region compete in Tom Friedman’s Flat World?”, the subject of a community discussion at New Haven Public Library’s new Wilson branch in The Hill neighborhood, subtitled “Action-Oriented Dialogue on Economic Development.” (I was actually more comfortable with the topic than I was with my ability to actually find the Wilson branch at 5:30 pm post daylight savings, but who can refuse an invitation from New Haven’s courtly City Librarian Jim Welbourne? And New Haven does have the best signage of anyplace in Connecticut in which I’ve been lost.)
What struck me was the last point that the speaker made about Freidman’s take on the global economy--place matters. It doesn’t matter in the sense that one has to be close to where one works, as it did before the flattening. In this global economy with its virtual highways, cities like New Haven don’t have to worry so much about attracting business and industry as they do about attracting people who want to live there. (In my breakout group I made the astute observation that I had to agree with one of my twenty-something students that New Haven is much cooler than Hartford, a fact signaled by its proliferation of downtown women’s clothing stores. One of the other participants, also a woman of a certain age, although less so than I, said that when I said "cooler," she thought I was talking about the climate, until I mentioned the shopping. This could be another blog, but I’ll spare you.)
The follow-up discussion of the importance of place led to some radical talk about one of this country’s most sacred cows, and the source of much of its workforce’s inflexibility and subsequent inability to compete in the global economy. That would be the public school system, and the places that matter are the very expensive buildings paid for by the taxpayers and presided over by very proprietary local boards of education. As Jim Welbourne said, “Why can’t we transform these wonderful school buildings at 3:00 to serve other community needs?” He and others called for people to make some big changes in the opportunities that Americans have to educate themselves outside the K-12 system. Take back the schools? When I heard that K-12 students in Connecticut have an average of 3.6 computers per student, I was ready to enlist a gang of librarians to liberate some of those computers for the lifelong learners in the public library who make due with an average of one computer for every 1911 people, (and that is in the Fairfield County public libraries!) Place does matter, and beautiful places, especially like some of the magnet schools in cities like New Haven, should be places for everyone in the community.