By Michaela Corniea 

Looking at the Larry Olds collection feels like looking at a bag of library secrets. More of an open secret at the East Side Freedom Library, it lives on rolling shelving carts rather than the traditional shelves and is less a secret than a bit of secluded treasure to discover. The Olds’ collection spans two shelves and holds all the information a social justice educator could dream of.  

There you will find teaching guides, books on theory, how-tos for community building, and a wealth of books on adult education and social justice.  Black spiral bindings, thin journals, and small pamphlets are scattered throughout the shelves; these items seem as though they belong on a desk rather than the shelves of a library.  Even from a visual aspect, this collection is focused on teaching and is reflective of Olds’ life work.

Olds began in education after graduating from college, when he joined the Teachers for East Africa program in Uganda in 1961. The experience made a big impact on his life, and he began tying his teaching into social change. In the 1970s, he was involved with the alternative schools movement and in 1974 began teaching at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Larry was a leading member of The North American Alliance for Popular and Adult Education, and he founded and edited Popular Education News, a global online newsletter.  He also teamed up with the Headwaters Foundation to create a popular education fund to support the next generation of popular educators. In all of the biographies about him, one of the main and recurring themes is the community he gathered around him.  As well as being an educator, Larry was considered by many people to be a mentor, and his house was a gathering place for artists and activists (Star Tribune).

Larry Olds was a proponent of popular education, an approach made famous by Paolo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  This approach encourages learners to take an active role in their education by examining their lives critically and taking action that leads to social change. The Olds Collection definitely reflects that approach. 

The main themes are education, community, and adult learning.  Certain words pop out repeatedly from the collection of spines: pedagogy, justice, democracy, activist, transformation, anti-racist, multicultural, and above all, education.  Another word too, stands out. “Handbook.”  The shelves hold the Handbook for Nonviolent Action by the War Resisters League, D.I.Y. A Handbook of Changing Our World by Trapese Collective, Handbook II: Advanced Teaching Strategies by Donald E. Greive, A Popular Education Handbook by Rick Arnold, The Anti-Nuclear Handbook by Stephen Croall & Kaianders, and The Little Green Handbook by Ron Nielson. There are also several plan books, training manuals, and resource books, including Resource Manual for a Living Revolution by Virginia Cooper (which I have added to my own reading list).

For the first time in my exploration of the collections at the East Side Freedom Library, I did not recognize any books in this collection, nor any authors who were familiar to me apart from what I have learned working at the East Side Freedom Library.  However, I did notice some repeat authors on the shelves of the Olds collection.  First is Jonathan Kozol, an author and educator who advocates for equality and racial justice in schools; the collection features three of his books.  There are also six editions of Training for Transformation – the first three editions are by A. Hope, S. Timmel and C. Hodzi, while the Books 1, 3, and 4 are by Hope and Timmel alone– and there are two companion books as well.  

Finally, the most prolific author on the shelves is Paolo Freire.  In his lifetime, Freire wrote and co-wrote over twenty books.  The Larry Olds Collection has thirteen of them.  More than any other author or book, Olds focused on Freire. In his reading, in his teaching, and in his goals as an educator, Larry Olds looked to Freire most of all. As a fitting companion to the collection, I read and reviewed Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed here.  But I couldn’t stop there, and also grabbed Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century by Riane Eisler to read and review, which you can find here.  Both books focus on education and teaching, but Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire links education to social change and is aimed at adult education while, Tomorrow’s Children examines the models currently used to teach children and proposes a new model for education.

When going through these collections, I have the opportunity to learn about so many different topics.  I started at the Toni Randolph collection, where her books focus on writing and giving voice to the voiceless.  Next I looked at Salvatore Salerno’s books, and learned about labor history, the Industrial Workers of the World, and how they used art as a tool to organize.  

Going through the collection of Larry Olds, I learned that it is not only what gets taught, but how it is taught that can make all the difference in education.  As we see in the collection of Larry Olds, he knew and lived this difference.  Olds actively worked for change in his teaching, focusing on anti-racism, on community, on sustainability and nonviolence, and above all on justice through education.  Thanks to the donation of his collection, we can begin some of this work in ourselves as well, whether we are educators or simply looking to be educated.

Citations:

Jonathan Kozol. www.jonathankozol.com/

Van Berkel, Jessie. “Obituary: Educator Larry Olds brought people together for ‘popular education.'” Star Tribune, 31 Oct. 2016, www.startribune.com/obituary-educator-larry-olds-brought-people-together-for-popular-education/399390641/