Posted on 01/02/2007 8:05:04 PM PST by indcons
Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly. Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day.
As a result, starting on Jan. 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice.
An institution that, like many nationwide, strives to attract young people, even offering beading and cartooning classes, will soon be shutting them out, along with the rest of the public, at one of the busiest parts of its day.
Library employees will still be on the job, working at tasks like paperwork, filing, and answering calls and online questions.
“They almost knocked me down, and they run in and out,” said Lila Silverman, a Maplewood resident who takes her grandchildren to the library’s children’s room but called the front of the library “a disaster area” after school. “I do try to avoid those hours.”
This comfortable Essex County suburb of 23,000 residents, still proud of its 2002 mention in Money magazine on a list of “Best Places to Live,” is no seedy outpost of urban violence. But its library officials, like many across the country, have grown frustrated by middle schoolers’ mix of pent-up energy, hormones and nascent independence.
Increasingly, librarians are asking: What part of “Shh!” don’t you understand?
About a year ago, the Wickliffe, Ohio, library banned children under 14 during after-school hours unless they were accompanied by adults.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How stupid.
Call the police.Take the kids to the police station. have the parents pick them up. end of story.
That might hurt their feelings and/or trample on their self-esteem. /sarcasm
The product of public schools.
Sometimes I think that the only thing that will work is armed citizens and a judiciary that will look the other way.
Why am I not surprised?
“If there are little kids making noise, it’s cute, and they can run around, it’s O.K.,” Ms. Braun said of standard library operating procedure. “Or if seniors with hearing difficulties are talking loudly, that’s accepted. But a teen who might talk loudly for a minute or two gets in trouble.”
Absurd equivocation.
My ex-wife was born in Maplewood.
This comfortable Essex County suburb of 23,000 residents,... is no seedy outpost of urban violence
Oh no. 'course not.
Spent over a year working in a Woolworth store across the street from a middle school in Freeport, NY. If we didn't lock the doors when school let out, and the kids had the numbers, they would trash the store on the way through. Just walk down the aisles with their arms outstretched and dump everything on the floor and laugh at the people that worked there.
I've lived there for over 40 years. This situation doesn't suprise me in the least. At least half of the town residents these days are recent transplants from Brooklyn lured by the town becoming a beacon of ultra-liberalism. Save the world, screw thy neighbor is the reigning attitude.
We now have one foot out the door...
I have a close friend who has lived in Maplewood for 10 years or so. He moved there "because of the diversity." His son attended a "magnet school" in Maplewood. He pulled his son out for the current school year. The "magnet" school had completely degenerated, his son was being bullied every day, was miserable, not learning.
The "magnet" school is a little less diverse now. My friend's son has learned a life lesson. If my friend has learned anything, he doesn't talk about it. And I don't ask, either. Guess why.
Library employees will still be on the job, working at tasks like paperwork, filing, and answering calls and online questions.
Naturally, the main job of the library is to provide jobs.
And to think I got Kicked out of the Library once.....for lots of giggling.....course that was in 1969 when rules were rules!
This is why all Librarians should be allowed to carry tazer guns.
This is what we get when we coddle our kids. Parents and teachers are so afraid to discipline....and the kids know it.
I hope the New York Times recognizes signs of the approaching dark age they brought on.
Sharp declines in circulation, increasing illiteracy, barbarians destroying libraries . . .
In SF, many stores near schools will not admit more than 5 students in the store at the same time.
I was inside one morning before school hours, and 4 were inside. They were black, and they yelled the N-word about every fourth word or so.
They were....about 13 years old, or younger.
Teachers cannot effectively discipline kids if the parents have done absolutely nothing to create a base of respect in their children. I'm reminded of the beatnik parents of Ned Flanders in the Simpsons who tell a psychiatrist "We've tried nothing, man, and we're all out of ideas."
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