When Fighting for A Rural Community is Fighting For Rural Kids
When small rural communities close (or lose) their school it’s equivalent to a major employer shutting down, AND it redirects local tax money to another town.
Those are major points in an interesting comment posted yesterday on the Consolidation/Small Schools Resource Page here on Rural Matters. You can read the comment here by scrolling down the page.
The fate of the community is one of the most common concerns of rural people when the school is threatened. And with good reason. Schools are often the only public institution in rural communities, the largest employer, and the single organization that touches almost everyone. The community’s tax dollars support it, and if it’s in its own district, the community governs it.
The school in a rural community usually provides a common ground of shared ownership and responsibility that knits people together, strengthens the informal channels of communication, fuels the economy, and creates structures through which people know and help take care of each other. It’s true that some communities want to keep a school primarily to horde wealth or deny opportunity to others. But by and large rural communities want to keep a school because they want to remain a community.
When the school is closed, the basic infrastructure of the community is gutted. The community has a harder time communicating with and taking care of itself—including its children.
Which brings up one of the most common, yet illogical, charges against rural communities that are fighting for their school. That charge (almost always made by people whose own children are securely attending school where they live and not a two hour bus ride away) is that the sole purpose of school is for "educating children--individual children, not for keeping a community alive.
As if you can kill a child’s community without harming the child. As if a drastic reduction in the opportunities of adults to spend time with and know their children has no implications. As if the removal of the structures that enable the child to contribute in a valuable way to the life and liveliness of the place he or she lives has no consequences. As if the destruction of a public institution has no effect on a growing citizen’s sense of what her or his own civic obligations might be. As if all of this has no impact on the education of the child.
We’re fond of saying in this country that public schools aren’t just about preparing kids for vocations—however lofty those vocations might be. We like to say that public schools are also for preparing kids to be good citizens—to know and practice and test the ethics and responsibilities of citizenship. We even go so far as saying that public schools serve the good of the country as a whole by forging the concept as well as supporting some reality of the common good.
If we believe what we say, then schools are fundamental public institutions and do, in fact, have a role in creating healthy communities where opportunities are possible, citizenship and democracy are practiced, and individuals nurtured by others who know and value them throughout their life times.
It’s hard to image that any small city would think it a good idea to close all its schools and send kids to a larger city an hour or two away—where presumably the students could have more varieties of classes and activities, more individual choices. Parents and others would be up in arms, recognizing the harm to their small city, the harm to their children. (And these small cities would still have other public institutions, government offices, markets, and employers helping to keep the city intact.) Almost everyone would understand that the small city could not take care of its children if it did not provide schools. The imminent economic decline and social collapse would be obvious, as would its potentially disastrous effects on the children.
Why should it be any different for rural communities? And, why should the fight of rural communities to retain a school be complicated by the chronic under-resourcing of rural schools that is so common across the country?
It shouldn't be different for rural communities. Small rural communities deserve the resources to provide good schools for their children where they live. And when rural people fight to keep their school as a way to keep their community alive, it should be viewed for what it is: a fight of citizens for a basic resource of a healthy community. And that’s a fight for the well-being of that community’s children.
What do you think?
How are communities important to the well-being and education of children and teenagers? How does your rural school contribute to the well-being of your community?
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