Shot In The Dark: Small Town, Small School, Big Bureaucracy

November 07, 2005

Small Town, Small School, Big Bureaucracy

The collapse of the inner city school system gets a lot of coverage (although almost none of it will come anywhere near the true cause of the problem of blue-city schools).

The disappearance of the small town school is at least equal in terms of the threat it poses.

I remember my father - a retired teacher with nearly four decades in the classroom whom nobody has ever mistaken for a Republican - complaining as the school district in Jamestown (population 15,000, which makes it an inner-city by North Dakota standards) made room for more and more administrators, bureaucrats, and programs - with the accompanying erosion of focus on teaching the basics. (Dad, if you see it differently, leave a comment to set me and the readers straight).

In an article in today's NRO, Dennis Boyles at NRO discusses the future of the small school. It's all the stuff Dad complained about, only much bigger.

Boyles discusses the phenomenon Dad noticed:

The schools that remained came eventually to mirror the schools in bigger towns and cities...The schools in Kansas, Nebraska and elsewhere in the Midwest have been inflated by the decades-long liberal impulse to make them into government facilities that provide an endless array of social services and loopy programs, none of which have beans to do with math and reading but all of which bloat the cost of "education" without actually educating anybody. While local efforts are often made to infuse schools with the excellence good teachers in small classrooms can provide, modern schools built to satisfy the whims of city and suburban folk just can't be supported by small towns like Burr Oak. The result: schools are forced to close, usually on the grounds of financial expediency, and towns die.

Now, I'm not one who fusses about "the basics" excessively - I think there are kids, and not a minority, who learn more about critical thought, and whose minds are better expanded, by studying languages and art and auto body repair and music than by getting endless reading and math crammed down their reluctant throats - but the point applies, nonetheless.

The answer? Maybe...choice?

The state's new conservative commissioner of education, Bob Corkins, explained to me that reconsidering the state's charter-school laws and other policies might stimulate municipal imaginations and help small towns do what Tipton did and come up with a model for the kind of small, rural school that can work. "We should try to...give them choices and alternatives," he told me. The goal, he said, should be to find something "that isn't like these schools we have today."

In this, he seems to have found an unexpected ally in one of his chief nemeses, Mark Tallman, the advocacy director of the Kansas Association of School Boards. "There may be alternatives," Tallman agreed. "But...let's see if [the school boards] can think outside the box."

Republican legislators seem ready to help. "I think there are a number of us open to finding new solutions," said state Rep. Kathe Decker, who chairs the legislature's education committee, and the majority leader of the Kansas house, Clay Aurand of tiny Courtland, told me he's got some ideas. The problem was nobody was asking him what they were. "You'd think they'd want the help," he said.

Charter schools on the plains, vouchers in the inner city - it seems like the best answer for education is to kill "Education" - the "Educational/Industrial Complex" if you will.

Read Boyles' piece. Discuss. More later.

Posted by Mitch at November 7, 2005 12:59 PM | TrackBack

Comments

the links broken

Posted by: shawn at November 7, 2005 03:18 PM

It works for me.

NRO's been having some network issues lately, I think. I've had some strange non-responses from them lately...

Posted by: mitch at November 7, 2005 04:11 PM

Very good idea. I had a thought where we go back to a school in every township...yes, maybe some of the townships would have more "resources" and so would have more to offer, but that's the way it goes...move or do something to improve the school in your township. We go to vote in a little old schoolhouse that my dad went to school in in the 30's...his desk is still there with his initials carved into it. It would seem like a good idea for those who are incapable (or don't want to or haven't the time for) homeschooling to have all ages and backgrounds in a small setting and being taught the basics and (life) until at least 9th grade...then transfer to a high school...or not. Like Mitch said, some kids can excel at auto mechanics, art, music, etc. They don't need to go to high school for any of that. They could apprentice, work, study at a college or university....all of this is what used to happen...and it worked pretty good. I'm sure I have a bit of a utopian view of it all, but I don't see how it could have any worse an outcome academically than what we have now..."Course, no "organized sports"...what a pity.... Parents in each township would have so much more control over what went on...there would be much more accountability of their tax dollars (or maybe educational fees instead). I don't know...something like that..just a thought. One thing I do know is that I'm happy my kids are grown.

Posted by: Colleen at November 7, 2005 05:24 PM

What?? Parents taking responsibility for their children's education? insisting on their mastering the fundamentals? helping them to make informed decisions? What a concept!!

But what about diversity? How will the children learn about the normalcy of homosexual practices and how evil multi-national corporations intend to destroy the planet? --or how white slave traders invented the country just to rape and pillage Third World dictatorships who only want peace? and why everyone must always, always depend on the expansion of government programs to solve all their problems? Where's the groupthink? How are they going to learn about their entitlements if they instead grow up learning to be self-reliant, independent, and to think for themselves?

Before you know it, all we're going to have is a nation of young entreprenuers starting their own businesses and getting mad about taxes and the loss of their property rights, who might actually believe the 2nd Amendment means they have the right to own a gun, and who might think a marriage between a woman and a man is the best way to raise a family? What if they start going to church or something? Or join the military? What if in the end they don't want the United States to be just like France or the United Nations to rule the world?

You know, Colleen, once you start teaching children to think for themselves, "peace, justice, and equality" goes right out the window. They'll start thinking about excellance and integrity and learn what it takes to actually achieve something all by themselves.

Where's the Utopia in that, huh?

Posted by: Eracus at November 8, 2005 11:01 AM

Anyone listening to Dr. Lu Ann Walters? She has the answer, the infrastructure, plan, and a 13-year proven model. Founder of the original, 21st Century One Room School, The One Room Schools Foundation, and host of Talk Education radio, Saturdays 11-noon on am 1570, Patriot II. Anyone outside the Mpls/St. Paul area can listen live via the internet by visiting the Talk Education website. This woman is turning the ship.

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