Tuesday 22 October 2013

A Modest Proposal



As most readers will realize, this blog was set up as part of an assignment in my English class although I've always intended to get into blogging. Also as part of my English class, I have to do an innovation project which as seen in last week's post starts with asking the question "What If?'. So I intend to pose my "what-if" question to-day and elaborate on it further to encourage others to do something similar.

The "what if" question I posed for my innovation project was "what if students could obtain free used books for their classes or for general knowledge and enlightenment?". As a result I have come up with the idea of a book exchange at my school. The basic premise of such an exchange would be that used books would be donated by an individual or a library and then people could pick up the books they wish to possess either for free or for a small fee (most used library book stores I've seen charge books at no more than one or two dollars and sometimes far less). Many of the books that would be donated would be books assigned by a class or on a reading list so that students would have a copy of their own that they could write in and so forth without having to purchase it at a relatively high price at a bookstore or waiting for weeks for a shipment to arrive. But, just like the library, there'd be other books to educate or entertain students independently of a teacher's direction.

I hope others will be inspired to follow this area and set up book exchanges at their own school libraries with it being extended to textbooks in colleges. This can even be implemented in workplaces and places of worship to promote life-long learning. Perhaps this may indeed do the same for books what the health insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act is doing.

1 comment:

  1. I believe that in this day and age, books and reading isn't really appreciated. This makes me think of Farenheit 451. When I read this book, it made me contemplate on how important reading is, especially to the younger generation. This idea that you have is a wonderful innovation, but remember that it will take alot of work to do. So, you need to be able to persevere through the challenges that you face, and keep yourself on your desired path. At the end of it all, when you see the fruits of your toil and labor, you will not care how much work you put in, because the end justified the means.

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