Homework help: A brief ode to The Local Library

Reason #71839 why local libraries are the friggin' best: I learned the other day that the Multnomah Country Library in the Pearl District offers live homework help.

Live homework help! How cool is that? I haven't gathered hard data to back this up but I suspect that interventions at this stage (eg grade school) can have a giant impact lasting throughout a kid's life. This is an intuition based on the physics of how a tiny change at the beginning of a long journey will result in vast lightyears of difference later in the journey. Kind of like this illustration:

Small changes at the start lead to huge differences down the line. (Image source)

In any case, I was blown away: this means that the library has proactively stationed people to simply sit there and help anyone who comes through needing homework support. Are you kidding me? Growing up in a place of perpetually stressed resources, this feels near utopian to me. I almost struggle to fathom it. And it's free! Unreal. [1]

The service runs 2pm - 10pm, every day. That's right, it goes all afternoon and night, starting even before kids let out of school. So whenever a kid is done with school, and they're not sure how to handle their homework, they can waltz over to the library and get help figuring it all out. Have soccer or and practice right after school? No problem, go afterward. Have a basketball game or karate class later in the evening? Go beforehand! Stomach dropped because you finished dinner but just remembered you need to complete some important work by tomorrow? Hit the library before you go to bed! Any time they need it, they can go get it, for free.

Just pause for a second and think of how cool that is. How that positions our younger generations to feel about life, about community, about giving back. "Somebody was there for me when I needed it; I am going to be there for the next generation." Some will call me Pollyanna for thinking this way, and I will retort that they have become too cynical. Believe in the world you wish existed. Act to bring about that world.

Libraries are the friggin' best.

Your partner in growth, learning and curiosity,

Jacob

Footnote

[1] Yes, I am a good student of Friedman: nothing is free, tax dollars are involved, etc etc. I worry about this fact enough that I'm comfortable taking this brief moment to appreciate that to mind of the student who needs help, this is completely free. The deeper economics of this service do not negate the life-affirming magic conferred upon the kids who can walk into the building and get quality support from helpful grown ups without the single whiff of a transaction. In my book, that's a kind of world worth making space for.