This essay appeared in the Atlanta Constitution last May and is reprinted here as a service to our readers. American education is neck-deep in Internet hype. The Internet is a great thing, but it is not a teacher.
Libraries are indispensable aids to education.
But they are not teachers. To learn very much and very well, most students need teachers. If it were otherwise, libraries would already educate students without teachers. The great majority of students at every level of education do not fit this profile. Teaching has stayed much the same since Socrates's time not because of the failure of imagination of educators.