Probably some hard over-thinking.
A few years ago, I sat through a staff development with the rest of the English department and saw a video that (articulately) put into words much of what I had been struggling with in public education. The video in question:
Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms
The part that struck me was the idea that education today was still patterned after the goals of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution; we teach things just for the sake of knowing them (rather than things students need to know in the real world). The best example of this phenomenon that I can think of is the fact that students are not required to take or pass a personal finance class before they graduate high school. If the goal of public education is to arm students for real-life with much-needed life skills, we fail miserably.
I'm not saying that we should stop teaching e.e. cummings or particle physics; on the contrary, I think the more poets and and scientists we inspire, the better. But our goal shouldn't be to JUST produce poets and scientists -- it should be to accept and inspire auto-mechanics, welders, plumbers, bakers, firefighters, and all other manner of professions, too.
And my library's collection, right now, is seriously neglecting those other professions.
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