Public library in every town
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007I vow, once elected to the Senate, to file a bill requiring the establishment of a public library or cluster of public libraries in every town or city.
Lack of access to reading materials is to blame for the country’s deteriorating quality of education. The libraries should be able to address that problem.
In the unlikely event of schools closing down, the education of the youth can continue as long as there are libraries well-stocked with science and technology publications, novels and collections of short stories, and newspapers and magazines.
Books open a world of possibilities. They transform readers into dreamers and challenge them to travel the paths blazed by other men and women in other climes. For that reason, the libraries should be open to everybody although their primary targets are students.
I acknowledge that cost is a constraint, but the government can get around that problem by seeking out donations.
The US Government gives us discarded war material under the mutual defense pact. It will only be too happy to donate second-hand books under a similar arrangement. In fact, we are already getting shiploads of books from time to time, but local organizations divert the books to commercial second-hand book stores.
As I envision it, the libraries should be able to balance the attraction of internet cafes, which are going up all over the country. It is lamenting to note the fact that all too often the young flock to these establishments for the games, thus missing out on the unlimited research potentials offered by the so-called information superhighway.
I do not propose a retreat back to the past, but even serious students need to correlate facts and information found in cyberspace, and only well-researched, well-written materials can do that.
The establishment of the libraries will be the responsibility of the national government, but the local government should be required to allocate a counterpart fund for their operation.
A number of bills have been filed in the 13th Congress for the purpose, but they remain pending to this date.
