dirtygames.ca

We hear a lot about the underfunded education system, both here and in the United States. We hear about a lack of teachers, old and outdated textbooks, no money for special needs education, cutbacks in fine arts classes and book shortages so extreme that in some schools children are not allowed to take their books home with them and must leave them at school to share with their neighbour the next day.

All of which makes a picture like this, and the accompanying slideshow, even more heartbreaking.

(This is a picture of a tree, growing out of the rotting paper of long-abandoned textbooks left in a Detroit Public School Book Depository. Check out the slideshow in the link above. The photos are gorgeous, and depressing as hell.)

I like to read. Always have. Maybe it’s because I have an active imagination and a naturally inquisitive mind. Maybe it’s just because I didn’t have a television until I was 13 years old and had to get stories from somewhere. Regardless, I love books.

I don’t treat my books with reverence or even with extreme care. They’re meant to be read, so I read them. If that means the corners are dog-eared, the pages are stained and some of the spines are so close to collapse that I call them ‘Steve Moores’ (Ooooo — cheapshot!) … so be it. That means that they were good books and I read them a few times. You can tell from a look at my shelves which books I don’t like; they’re the ones in good condition.

Which is why it’s so sad to see so many books just wasted. Yeah, they’re textbooks. Yeah, most of them are probably the ‘old and outdated’ kind that I mentioned above. But you’re telling me that there wasn’t anything else that could have been done with what looks like hundreds of thousands of homeless tomes?

I know that a good chunk of Detroit is a ghost town these days. (Hell, it’s so deserted that the best hockey team in the world has trouble finding patrons). I know that probably (or maybe it’s just wishful thinking) the school board likely has newer editions of these books. I hope that this is just some sort of experiment in open-air recycling or a public school project illustrating the circle of life.

Most likely, however, it’s just a sad and careless waste of resources in a system that can’t afford to be throwing this stuff away.