Q:
Should a twelve-year-old girl be forbidden from going to the library? And are there alternatives?
A:
As far as the first question, today the library is off limits for anybody. Everybody knows that they have stocked toeivah books and there are other books too like that; and they’re in the children’s section. So letting a child go by herself to a library and looking through the books means that the parent is either entirely ignorant or doesn’t care.
Libraries used to be good places. When I was a boy, we could go with confidence to the library. There were shelves of books where you could read about poor boys who worked hard. Horatio Alger books; shelves filled with books about people who worked hard and were honest and they became successful. Inspiring books.
Today, all you read is books of criminals and wicked children. You read about a child who murdered his father or who brings a gun to school to shoot his teacher. And besides violence, today the books are filled with immoralities. Terrible things. Libraries are off limits today. They are foul places and I think that even adults shouldn’t go to the library.
What’s the alternative? If you must read English books, you can buy old-time books, old-time sets of Mark Twain. Now it’s not that I’m recommending it. Mesillas Yesharim is better than that. But if you must read English books then read the old-time sets of O. Henry. Old-time sets of Dickens. If you like heavier stuff, old-time sets of Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe and other such books. There are plenty of books that won’t poison the mind as virulently as today’s books. There are plenty of books. There are alternatives.
And I want to tell you that it’s a big error of the principals of the English Departments of the Yeshivos and Bais Yaakov schools, when they give children assignments to go to the library. It’s irresponsible. Maybe twenty years ago, but not today. So the principals, the men and women principals of the English Departments of the Yeshivos and the Bais Yaakovs, should no longer send their pupils to the libraries.
TAPE # 561 (August 1985)
