Smaller Schools

When I worked as an education reporter some years ago, my coverage area had unexpected crisis: a sudden surge in high school enrollment leading to massive school overcrowding. This was driven, in part, by the growth of the immigrant community, which threw off the county's model for calculating population by living in larger households than the average American family.

The school board and central administration had two solutions: adding on to six existing high schools to raise their student populations from about 2,000 to about 2,500 and building a new, 2000-seat high school for between 70 and 80 million dollars.

All my instincts screamed that both of these were the wrong solution. What the school system needed to do, I thought, was acquire small buildings here and there and set up perhaps 10 new high schools of about 500 pupils. The community I covered had a charming old brick school building, that would have been perfect for such a project, needing a few million dollars for a new roof and other repairs. (This versus $70 million for a new school ... $3 million each put into ten smaller buildings would be ... $30 million ... at least something for the frugal to ponder.) The high school in that community, which was slated for a 600 "seat" (not pupil, but "seat") addition, was already well past what experienced people agreed was its former its optimal size of about 1,200 students. It was, in many ways, dysfunctional despite the best efforts of teachers and administrators to run a good school.

While I couldn't "prove" anything, what I saw, in both the above county and a neighboring more affluent county, was that once schools pass a certain size, they tend to become impersonal, bureaucratic places. Administrators can't know all the students, and kids end up herded through the system in the most efficient way possible, which often doesn't meet their individual needs. I sometimes witnessed students being treated rudely by harried school staff. I could hardly blames the staff, but also had the uncomfortable feeling I wouldn't want my children spoken to that way.

Yet, parents clamored for the larger schools with all the bells and whistles. To send a child to school without the same state-of-the-art gym as the best school in the county, and without a full-blown music program and six languages to choose from was seen as unacceptable. To have all these amenities in one place meant building large schools.

But are these the most important things? I often feel as if I am sister from another planet, and somehow miss seeing life the way the rest of the world does, but how is a state-of-the-art gym better than a small, caring community dedicated to knowledge and to knowing each student personally? Obviously, it would be ideal to have both, but as Gym Ex illustrates, students' bodies can be well served through the simplest exercise technologies.

I wish we could focus more on the soul of our schools than on their material attributes. Are students nurtured and known? If that element is in place, and academics are taken seriously, learning will follow. Quakerism, in general, with its emphasis on "small is beautiful," is well-placed to be a leader in this alternative way of thinking.

Gratitude and Giving

This is a response I posted on Jeanne's blog on giving, but since it fit with the theme of gratitude, I thought I would post it here.

Jeanne,

I appreciate your blog, and I hear what you are saying about elites supporting other elites ... Quakers supporting Quakers. I do get angry when I see the symphony hall built in my home town from a major donation and know the money came from the profits of racist fear-mongering in real estate years ago. They helped wreck the city and now they’re putting up a fancy venue? And in a city full of housing that you wouldn't let your pet live in ... a symphony hall? Then, like Chuck, I do remember I appreciate Mozart --but that too, I recognize this as a class-based taste ... and why should educated class tastes be supported ahead of others?

But as I mull this, I think of how healing it was for me for my Quaker meeting to support its own after coming from a church that always seemed to want to take my money. Take and take. It meant a great deal to me that the meeting would support my children going to Quaker camps ... and it meant a great deal to my children. When my meeting cares for me that models how to care for another ... but I agree, that care has to push out to the "least of these."

Also, my husband works for and two of my children attend Olney Friends School, hardly an elite boarding school. It's a school that provides a true Quaker education to kids who might not have any other opportunity to get one--because they would might be turned down for admission at the elite Quaker schools. Not because they couldn't do the work, but because they couldn't pass the test or look good enough on paper, which in itself might be a class issue. Or because they want an alternative to an elite school. I see hope for the world in schools like Olney. However, Olney does depend on support from other Quakers--it can't make it on tuition alone ... so I struggle with this. I hate to see needs compete and want to believe there's abundance for everything important, that we don't need to divert from one charity to the next but to divert funds from the latest consumer good so we can support more charities, especially these days.

As I write this, I realize how tight the budget is at Chez Reynolds, tighter than in decades. I think many people are feeling the pinch. All the same, I think we could look at our spending creatively and find ways to support more groups ...While I think it takes a leap of faith to believe the resources are here, I believe they are here. Do you believe they're here?

Do we pit Quaker children against Quaker education?

Do we pit Quaker children against Quaker education?

Ann wrote the following comment:

"I was told that to favor Quaker children, by offering them places first, and scholarships (for Quakers only) was against the equality testimony. Well, I'm trying to wrap my head about elite schools that cost more than college (well over five figures) meshing with simplicity!

Plus, a family with a stay at home parent was penalized when evaluating the need for financial aid. They were given an amount they 'could' be making, if they worked.

It's funny. Quakers have such difficulty with outreach, for fear of turning people off, or being pushy, or attracting the wrong sorts of people (not genuine 'seekers', might get some simple folk who just like the message) and so on, but they also have problems supporting a FULL Quaker lifestyle, including education."

What do you think? This post resonated with me, because, frankly, it sounded familiar. I know most Quaker schools charge what they do because, the way the system is currently set up, they have to. They also often (but not always!) lack the big endowments that allow liberal disbursement of scholarships. But still I can't help but see a conflict between the Quaker testimony of simplicity and the high cost of a Quaker education.

Sometimes when someone mentions that the high price of a Quaker education excludes some Quaker children, someone else will bring up the need to charge high tuitions to pay teachers a decent wage. Since most Quakers don't approve of exploiting workers and as nobody wants to look selfish and say, "I don't care how much teachers make as long as my child gets a Quaker education," teacher pay usually stops the conversation.

Clearly, we do want to pay educators as well as we can. And from what I can tell, because of the way the system is currently set up, most Quaker schools charge what they do as a matter of survival.

However, I can't help but think that rather than set parents and teaching staff in opposition, there must be a way to find a "win-win" solution.

I'm very sympathetic to the plight of Quaker schools. Having been "up close and personal" with one for almost a year, I know that they're, at least in one case, running on slim margins and need tuition money to survive.

How can we balance the needs? How important is it to make Quaker education affordable for Quaker families?

First, I've seen very few people embrace simplicity without lowering their incomes. High-pressure, high-paying jobs are seldom compatible with a simple heart. Often, one way or another, what people do when they embrace simplicity is free up time for themselves so they can serve. John Woolman is a good example of this. Yet, it appears as if at least one Quaker school wanted to penalize parents who were living on one income. I can understand a family in which the non-working spouse took a job to pay for Quaker education feeling it was unfair to give financial aid to a family that didn't do the same, but I also have to wonder at system that pressures people to take on a second job. It seems to buy into the notion that the answer to everything is to earn (or get) more money. And why stop at valuing in the cost of what a spouse "could make?" Why not penalize the two-income families that have not chosen the highest-paying use of their educations? Why not penalize the lawyer working for a social services agency who "could" be making five times as much in corporate law? Or the medical researcher trying to find a cure for cancer who "could" have become a plastic surgeon at a far higher rate of pay?

Assuming they can, should Quaker school cut amenities to become more affordable? Should they offer a preference to Quaker children in scholarship money? Where does the true value of a Quaker education lie?

Quaker Education 2

I'm here at the beach, thinking about Quaker education and John Woolman.

In "Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," written in 1746 and published in 1754, Woolman argued that one of the drivers of slavery was parents' overblown affection for their children. The natural desire to give one's children good things--including a comfortable inheritance--helped people rationalize the slave trade.The economics of slavery allowed people to amass fortunes from the profits of the cheap labor of slaves, and people justified this ownership by contending they had to take care of their families.

"If we do not consider these things aright, but ... conceive views of interest separate from the general
good of the great brotherhood, and, in pursuance thereof, treat our
inferiors with rigour, to increase our wealth and gain riches for
our children; What then shall we do when God riseth up?
and when he visiteth, what shall we answer him ? did not he that
made us, make them? and did not one fashion us?"

Earlier in the essay, he writes:

" It appears by experience, that where children are educated in
fulness, ease, and idleness, evil habits are more prevalent than
is common amongst such who are prudently employed in the
necessary affairs of life. If children are not only educated in
the way of so great temptation, but have also the opportunity of
lording it over their fellow-creatures ... how can we expect otherwise than that their
tender minds will be possessed with thoughts too high for them ;
which gaining strength by continuance, will prove like a slow
current, gradually separating them from or keeping from acquaint-
ance with that humility and meekness in which alone lasting hap-
piness can be enjoyed.

Man is born to labour, and experience abundantly showeth,
that it is for our good : but where the powerful lay the burden
on the inferior, without affording a Christian education, and suit-
able opportunity of improving the mind, and a treatment which
we, in their case, should approve, in order that themselves may
live at ease, and fare sumptuously, and lay up riches for their
posterity; this seems to contradict the design of Providence, and,
I doubt not, is sometimes the effect of a perverted mind ; for wdiile
the life of one is made grievous by the rigour of another, it entails
misery on both."


Do we also make idols of our families?

And does this get to the heart of Quaker education?

I have read in the newspaper quotes from administrators at elite Quaker schools distressed about helicopter parents who want their teenage children protected from facing any of life's rigors. Of course, we don't want our children abused by teachers or classmates, but graduating entitled nincompoops who think life will give them special protection might not be the best idea either.

I was an education reporter for a few years, covering a county with a large minority population. That meant witnessing white flight from that school system to nearby school systems with "higher test scores" and "safer schools" and white flight to "independent" schools. Of course, the question frequently arose: shouldn't families support the public schools instead of fleeing? Yes, but having covered public education, I would say that individual families simply can't take on the school system. I've seen many families try valiantly, with mothers (it's usually mothers) heading PTAs, safe school programs, working on academic committees and fundraising drives, and ultimately having to throw up their hands and yank their children from the schools. The schools' problems are a symptom of a deeper social and spiritual malaise that must be addressed first.

I would also say that entering elite public or private schools isn't totally the answer either. What we need, for starters, I would argue, is an "independent" school option that's less elitist than much of the private (and elite) public school strata. Many Catholic schools, I believe, do this well. Some are elite schools, but many are modest schools serving average people. Of course, it could be argued that Catholics--here I speak of Roman Catholics--who comprise a quarter of all Christians in the United States, have vastly greater resources than Quakers. At the same time, Quakers have a history of achievements disproportionate to their numbers.

Another thing we possibly need to rethink is pitting public versus private (they're now called "independent") schools. There are elite public and independent schools and down-to-earth public and independent schools. Public is not necessarily more virtuous than private and vice versa. If we have our children in public schools in an affluent county (as our family did for years) or in a top magnet program in a less affluent county, we could be more elitist than a family sending its children to a modest independent school. I have heard parents say things to their magnet school children such as "You are in a school where the kids really want to learn." What does this teach but that "you are more deserving and kids who don't achieve don't want to." Is either true?

Quaker schools can excel, I believe, by practicing the Quaker testimonies, putting Christ at their center and emphasizing education--and life-- not as a way to get "a competitive advantage" over others, but as training to serve. They could change the world. I dream, but enough independent schools practicing Woolman-like principles could at least gradually change the education system in this country. But how many do? Olney does, yet does that fact mean many parents will reject it for its simplicity?

Conversely, to the extent that Quaker schools appeal to the social or economic elite, does that mean they are not in full compliance with Quaker values? Would Quaker schools that really practiced the Quaker values espoused, say, by John Woolman, appeal to elites? Or would they flee from such schools as too austere? Not taking good enough care of their children?