| Opinion
& Essays - Jan, 1991 Issue |
Are Large Schools Humane?
By Lon Woodbury
Of course not - by definition.
The Dictionary defines "humane" as, "having what are considered the
best qualities of mankind; kind, tender, merciful, considerate, etc."
These qualities can only come from an understanding individual. They
cannot come from a body of rules and regulations. As a school gets larger,
rules and regulations become more important in the lives of the students.
As a school or program grows, there is a tendency for the authority
of the teachers and administrators to be expressed less by their personal
presence, and more through the authoritarian (demanding unquestioning
obedience) body of rules and regulations. The distinction is subtle
and not very obvious, but extremely important. For example, when a student
in a small program of, say ten students, wants to do something, he or
she will ask the authority figure. The authority figure is readily available,
the answer can be tailored to the needs of the student, and there is
no appeal from the decision except back to the authority figure at a
later time. This forces the student to be accountable for his or her
actions and to learn how to work successfully with people in authority.
On the other hand, when a student in a large school of, say 1,000 students,
wants to do something, he or she will check the rules and regulations,
and then talk to some underling (i.e. a teacher), since the authority
figure (i.e. the principal or the school board) is not readily available.
The final answer will have basically been determined by some committee
somewhere setting general policy, and whatever response the student
gets from the teacher can easily be challenged by appeal to the authority.
To get what he or she wants, the student must learn how to manipulate
the system. In a large school, a clever, manipulative student can get
away with most anything he or she wants with little accountability.
The movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" comes to mind as an example.
Another example on a larger
scale is the evolution of the public school system during the past 50
years or so. The one-room school house tends to be seen as the romantic
past in the history of our public school system. The "romantic" memory
is because even people who never saw a one-room school house somehow
feel we lost something important when these schools disappeared.
These schools disappeared
over the years to school district consolidation. The main argument for
consolidation was economies of scale. A small one-room school usually
struggled just to provide an inadequate facility with an underpaid teacher
who too often had little training or experience. On the other hand,
a consolidation of several small school districts allowed for an adequate
physical plant with proper equipment such as science labs or gymnasiums.
The consolidated school district could also compete more effectively
for trained and experienced professional teachers. This argument held
the day and the tendency toward consolidation became a major movement
during the 1940's, continuing on to the present time. The number of
school districts in the United States went from 127,000 in 1932 to 16,000
in 1980. Contemporary schools are consequently much larger, allowing
more room for students to manipulate the system.
In looking at the public school
system, it is important to remember that the gains from consolidation
were at the expense of the more personal environment of the small school,
especially the student learning how to work with and respect authority.
It is significant to me that the young people who came of age in the
Sixties by rebelling against all forms of authority were those who were
the first recipients of the economies of scale and the larger schools
developed in the forties and fifties. A major movement in public education
this last decade has been toward smaller classes. Basically, what is
happening is an attempt to modify the move toward consolidation to regain
the benefits lost in the rush for consolidation. The hope is to obtain
the personal contact benefits of a small school within the economies
of scale from a consolidated district.
The lesson is clear for Special
Purpose Schools and programs. When a program grows beyond 15 or 20 students,
considerable efforts must be made to maintain the personal environment
of a smaller program. If these efforts are not successful, then the
program's effectiveness is either reduced or the program self-destructs.
One of the things that happens is the development of an underground.
It is for this reason many programs keep the number of students low.
The owners of these small programs do not wish to bear the risks of
reduced quality.
Copyright
© 1991, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced without
prior approval if the copyright notice and proper publication and author
attribution accompanies the copy.) |
