I sometimes like to joke that my students are like my kids. I try to raise them to be the best librarians they can be, and it is my hope that they will go out into the library world and make me proud. There are moments where I hear about a student's success after graduation and get a warm, fuzzy feeling that could only be described as parental pride.

Last night in class was not one of those moments.

Everything started friendly enough. We were discussing the Romance genre when out of nowhere the discussion took a turn for the ugly. I can't even remember how the topic was broached (I think we were talking about reader statistics, but I'm not 100% positive about that) when one of my students said that they really didn't see the point in reading romance. Another student jumped in (one who before last night I had thought of as sane) and said that they thought reading it was a "waste of time." A handful of other students nodded their heads or echoed the same thoughts.

If this is a one time anomaly maybe I could brush it off (although I probably wouldn't be happy about doing that). But it's not. Last week when discussing Horror one of my students wanted to discuss "what was wrong with people who read Horror."

Whenever I talk about reader advisory, regardless of whether it is in my reference class or my reader advisory class, I try to stress how important it is to 1) respect the reader and 2) respect the genres they read. I don't care what you think about the author, the book, the genre, whatever. You will show respect to the reader. While I believe every reader has the right to their opinion, when you are a librarian you check your opinion at the door. Any discussion that happens between a librarian and a reader should be open, encouraging, and accepting at all times. I thought I was getting that across to my students. Clearly I am not if they feel it is okay to openly trash a genre in a class were the entire goal of the class is to 1) get a better understanding of a genre as a whole and 2) understand what draws people to that genre.

I'm not angry, I'm not hurt. I'm disappointed. Really, really disappointed. Actually, let me change that. I'm disappointed and worried. Right now my kids are broken, I need to fix them, and I haven't a clue how to go about doing that.

--------------------------------------------------------------------