New Global Learning Commons Has Both Uncommon Benefits and Uncommon Problems

By Tayler Anderson

The renovation of the library and creation of the new Global Learning Commons required step by step  planning. To help plan the design of the room, the school formed a committee consisting of Ms. Saieva, Ms. Birro, and representatives of every department. Throughout the entire design process, this committee, led by Ms. Nicolosi, the school district’s head of technology, consulted with the architects hired to design the commons. Eventually, the committee and the architects were able to narrow their choices down to three distinct design proposals, with the final design selected by the district administration.

The  design committee’s efforts  have largely paid off. So far, the design has been fairly well-received.  One student, Tyler Willcox, compared the aesthetic of the space to that of Ikea, a comparison he meant as high praise. Another student, Matthew Yates, described the commons as a good place to hang out with friends, and with all of the tables, chairs, and booths distributed around the space. It’s difficult to disagree. In addition to the spaces for socializing, there are also 3D-printers and charging stations, as well as several smaller classrooms and meeting rooms. It is clearly a space trying very hard to meet the needs of 21st-century schooling.

But in order to successfully replace a library, a space cannot simply cater to the needs of the present. It must hold ample space for those things which preserve the past, imagined futures, or entirely fictional worlds. In short, it must hold ample space for books. And that is one of the major drawbacks of the new Commons: there simply isn’t enough room for all of the books that the old library once held. Half of the library’s book collection lives in a closet in the new commons. In the classic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, the world becomes so enamored with entertainment requiring no attention span that books have become illegal. Rather than fighting fires, firemen are enlisted to go around, find books, and set fire to them. While locking books in a closet is not nearly as violent or destructive as burning them, the effect is the same: no one can read them. Thus, the old is shoved out of the way and some semblage of the new takes its place.