Why does it Matter? How do we, as School Librarians, answer this question?

Celebrating 3 years of chat and 15 years of friendship! Thanks to everyone for listening and making this podcast worthwhile. Today we discussed Pope Leo's first encyclical, Tolkien and our clarity of purpose. A great question or statement that stood out from this conversation is: how do we focus on what we allow our minds to dwell on… an appropriate thought in today’s world of AI and social media. After some reminiscing with Darryl, we got down to laying the foundation for our next episode, which is the school librarian's vital contribution to the educational process in terms of Dallas Willard's 4 factors involved in the domain of thought, namely, (1) ideas, (2) images, (3) information, and (4) our ability to think.Links* Keynote for the UK School Library Association 2021 Conference | Inquiry: An Educational and Moral Imperative (includes links to the IFLA School Library Guidelines and the IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto).* SJSU 2026 | ALiVE Library | Teaching Inquiry as Conversation with David Loertscher now includes a link to the recording. Details of the book may be found here.* Article for The School Librarian (74:2) | Inquiry: Fundamentally Creative and Fundamental to Creativity.* Forum post with links to infographics for Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity): On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.* Tolkien/ Gandalf quotation: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”* Neil Postman: “The question is not, Does or doesn’t public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance?”* Matt Seybold’s The American Vandal podcast. “The durability of a totalitarian state depends upon systemic assaults on mass literacy followed by continuous suppression of conditions for its reemergence.”* An article for ACCESS (37:4) | Constructing an Instructional Identity and Destiny From the Stories We Tell and the Songs We Sing. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit elizabethhutchinson.substack.com