Taking the Measure

Students at Cushing Academy will be heading back to class in a couple of weeks, but for the most part, they won't be headed back to the books. The Boston Globe reports, "Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception.

"This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital."

The Globe quotes James Tracy, headmaster, as saying, "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books."

Instead of reading books, students will visit a new $500,000 learning center that will include large-screen TVs, laptop-friendly study carrels, and a $12,000 cappuccino machine. Students particularly interested in literature will receive Sony and Amazon.com electronic readers.

Not everyone is ready to drink the E Ink. People not totally enthusiastic about the scheme, the Globe reports, are concerned about students being constantly interrupted with e-mail and instant messages while working on their laptops." Further, "They worry about an environment where students can no longer browse rows of voluptuous books, replete with glossy photographs, intricate maps, and pages dog-eared by generations of students."

The Globe adds, "William Powers, author of a forthcoming book based on a paper he published at Harvard called 'Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal,' called the changes at Cushing 'radical' and 'a tremendous loss for students.'"

Cushing is in the process of giving away its books. Perhaps some will end up on the New York City subway system.