freedom – Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School Library

Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright died on March 23, 2022.

Madeleine Albright was born in 1937 in Prague ( in what is now Czechia). Her family fled from both the Nazis and the Communists. The family first left the country after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, returned after the end of the Second World War, only to flee again, this time from the Communists in 1948. Albright was a brilliant student who would go on to earn her PhD from Columbia University. She then served in both academic and government positions, providing expertise as a foreign policy advisor. In 1993 she became U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1997 she became Secretary of State, the first female to be appointed to that prestigious position in the U.S. Cabinet.

Madeleine Albright leaves many legacies from her life of academics and public service, including the book Fascism: A Warning.

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is essential for all people. Until women are truly equal and free, the world is not as it should be for any human being.

Find out more:

International Women’s Day

UN Women

Amnesty International

United Nations

Join us all month long, in person, and online, as we learn more about the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality for women in Canada, and around the world.

I Have a Dream

Monday was MLK Day in the United States, a wonderful opportunity for people around the world to remember Dr. King and what he stood and fought for. The “I Have a Dream Speech,” delivered at the “March on Washington” in 1963, is one of the most important speeches ever made, and just one of the many incredible achievements of Dr. King. Here is a video of that speech.

A few highlights of the speech by Martin Luther King Jr:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brother- hood.”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream.”

“I have a dream that… one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

“In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

“When we allow freedom to ring — when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God almighty, We are free at last.”

New Non-Fiction

Check out some of our newest non-fiction titles:

If you don’t read, they don’t need to ban books.

People need to read books for book banning to even be a thing. This idea has been expressed in many different ways.

So Read. Keep reading. Read some more. Read what you want to read. Read what you decide to read.

Read for information. Read to learn. Read for fun. Read to escape. Read for entertainment. Read to experience the world from the point of view of different people. Read to cry. Read to be scared. Read to laugh.

Read to understand. Read to learn new things. Read to learn more about things you already know.

Read to learn the point of view of people that you might disagree with, even when you are certain that you will disagree with them. Read to consider new information, new evidence, new perspectives. Read critically, even skeptically, but read with an openness to change your mind when faced with rational and logical reasons to do so.

Read for whatever reason you decide. Stand up for your freedom to decide for yourself what you want to read.

That doesn’t mean you should read anything and everything. People that care about you might know why reading some things, at certain times, might not be so good for you. You might decide not read some books because of your age, maturity, or history. Some books might not be right for you because of your current mental or emotional health. Perhaps some material has nothing to offer you of any value. But that is for you to decide in cooperation with the people that you trust. That is not for other people, other groups, organizations or governments to decide for you.

People try to ban books because they don’t want you to read those books. If you don’t read books to begin with, you are doing their work for them.

VOTE!

The School Library is a polling station for Student Vote Canada. While registered voters go to the polls in the 2021 Federal Election, all over our nation students are participating in a parallel mock election.

Juneteenth

Also known by such names as Freedom Day and Jubilee Day, Juneteenth is a celebration of the end of slavery in the former Confederacy after the end of the American Civil War.

This year marks the first celebration of Juneteenth as an official Federal Holiday in the United States.

Juneteenth has grown to be a day that is observed in the US and around the world, as it symbolizes not only the fight against the evil that is slavery, but also the fight against racism in all its forms. Slavery finally came to end in the US in 1865, but racism lies at the heart of so many of the evils that still haunt the United States, Canada, and indeed, humanity. Current issues such as Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and on June 19th, the establishment of Juneteenth as an official holiday, are all just part of the ongoing and centuries old struggle against racism.

Find out more about Juneteenth:

Freedom to Read Week

February 21 to 27 is Freedom to Read Week in Canada in 2021. Come down to the School Library to find out more. We have a display of books and other resources related to our freedom to read, our right to have access to information, and our responsibility to exercise those rights and freedoms as informed, free-thinking citizens.

Along with our in person display of books, magazines, audiobooks, playaways and more, we will will also feature online resources, such as ebooks, digital audiobooks, online databases, and more, so be sure to check out our site, tweedsmuirlibrary.ca.

You can also click here to find out more about Freedom to Read Week.

Democracy v. Fascism

Our students will leave our school and soon become the adults who will hold the future of democracy in their hands. We must educate and equip our students to recognize the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship. We must help them see the precious nature of the democratic traditions that have been handed to them by previous generations. We must help them see the fragile nature of those institutions and the peril that is represented by those forces that are at work to undermine democracy.

Most pressingly, we must help our students to recognize the rise of fascism, both in the world and in our own backyard. We must equip our students to denounce fascist ideology and to defeat fascist attempts to destroy our democracy.

The politics of fear, division, and hate will fight for the souls of our students. We must counter those dark forces with hope, unity and love. Forces are at work undermining the foundations of democracy, including the rule of law, freedom of the press, public education, respect for science and reason, confidence in free and fair elections, and peaceful transitions of power. We must build up faith in those ideals in our kids, and equip them to demand them as their rightful expectation for a civil society.

Polarizing forces are at work which divide us, resulting in extreme “othering” to the point of dehumanization. We must find ways to help the next generation to reconcile that which divides us, or at least to find respectful and peaceful ways to engage with those divisions. Somehow we must find common ground with our beliefs about truth. We must find some way to agree on “the facts” even if we don’t agree on what do with those facts.