Just...Why?

There are many things in life that I don’t understand.

For instance, why are we the only creatures in the universe that wear clothing? Even the people who have been abducted and probed by aliens have not reported any of them in attire, fashionable or not. Animals, even the most intelligent dolphins and chimps, feel no inclination to cover their body with fabric. Now, I’m not saying that people should run around naked! But I just don’t understand why we don’t.

Also, where do all my socks go? I have an entire drawer full of socks without a match because I’m afraid that if I throw them out, the counterpart will show up and I’ll have essentially ruined a perfectly good pair of socks. But where is the counterpart right now? We may live in and acknowledge three dimensions, but there must be a sock dimension that we cannot comprehend, where they exist when they don’t come out of the dryer with their twin.

However, what’s bothering me lately is why do libraries teach computer classes? Libraries pick this one technological advance in society and feel compelled to give organized instruction in using it, which is utterly unprecedented. I understand that the bulk of their questions have, for quite a few years, revolved around how to use a computer and it was sensible to do something about that, but I still don’t get why we have bitten off this societal responsibility for ourselves. We are a gateway to knowledge, not a choreographer of the social misfits with two mental left feet.

We have not offered classes about programming your VCR, how to drive, or even the applicable library skills like literacy and using the less-than-forthright catalog to find something on your own. Nope. Occasionally we’ve offered programs where we paid a speaker to teach about gardening concepts, genealogy, specific cooking techniques or financial planning, but because the public never showed up, these programs didn’t repeat. Why did we bite off the responsibility to give technophobes computer instruction from the very rudimentary tasks of what a mouse is, right on up to two-part classes on individual Office programs? Why? And if you take a look around at other libraries, they’re all offering these classes, yet many (if not most) are bringing in outside instructors for these classes. What makes us so stupid?

Perhaps I could get behind it if what we offered was useful and I believed the people who took the classes were going to use what they learned, but time and time again people feel overwhelmed by what there is to learn, how little time we have allotted to teach them, and they give up. We give them 90 minutes to learn what we have to teach about the Internet or Word. Of course, we emphasize that practice is essential, but more people disappear and surrender to a computerless existence than actually pursuing improving on what we offer. We have certain patrons who take the classes over and over and over, but nothing sinks in. We’ve had people who show up drunk, people who have mental disabilities and aren’t capable of learning what we have to teach, and others who are staunchly against computers. These are the unteachable members of our community, and yet we put an extraordinary amount of time and effort into offering them classes that I don’t think we have any business offering, repeatedly.

My suggestions fall on deaf ears. I have tried to teach more advanced classes about using particular websites or particular web utilities, hoping that the people who register for my classes would actually care and practice what I was teaching because they already know how to turn on a computer and where to put a CD. Largely, the results have been favorable and many of my students have come to me later to proudly say that they have continued with what I taught them, which is what I think we should be striving for. Yet, not many people take the classes. I also suggested we invest in take-home computer instruction software, of which we have next to nothing in our collection. No one thinks this will work. I suggested we set up one or two workstations specifically designated as computer practice terminals, with the software already installed so we can get them started and they can follow along. This, also, received almost no acknowledgement.

And I go in to work now and discuss with my department how we’re going to organize the classes in the fall, right back to the same old thing we’ve always done, which leads to negligible student advancement.

Much of library work is like shooting yourself in the foot. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the collection, and I’d venture a guess that half of what we purchase is dead weight and uninteresting to our patron base. We put up displays that no one pays attention to. We offer programs that no one attends. So much of our effort is for naught, but at least we try new things. Not so with computer classes. We teach the same crude things over and over, with most of the registered students blowing off the class, and the rest being unteachable, so sitting around and trying to plan out the identical classes we’ve always offered leave me feeling angered. Why can we not just let go of the computer classes and focus more on books that our patrons won’t read, which will save time and money?

When did libraries become the cornerstone of offering free computer classes to people who think “computer” is a bad word?

We are true gluttons for punishment.