Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994                   TAG: 9407070065
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROBERT BENNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

EDUCATION

There are obviously other factors in educational decline. Poverty, disintegrating families, the narcotic of television and the general cultural slide toward quick pleasures all play their part. Even if we had perfect schools, these challenges would make the task of education difficult.

But we have compounded matters by increasing the size of schools, particularly those from middle school on up. This rush toward largeness has been done in the name of efficient and better schooling. But these desired effects have not been achieved; indeed, larger schools are neither efficient nor good for the majority of their students.

Large schools demand more administration, and since administrators are paid more than teachers, there is a strong incentive to proliferate administrators. Big-city systems like Chicago's have produced a nightmare in which there are more administrators than teachers. Also, since schools are so large, the interest groups within them organize into boards, administrators and unions of teachers. These elephants engage in constant turf warfare but are rarely hurt in their skirmishes; only the grass (the students and parents) gets trampled.

Large institutions, because they are at the same time powerful and lethargic, seem to need more regulation and financial support, particularly if there is a proliferation of administrators. So huge public bureaucracies are created at each governmental level to fund and regulate. (The two go together, of course; whoever pays the piper calls the tune.) Layer upon layer of bureaucracy soaks up money, talent and energy that might better be employed in the schools themselves.

Not only organizational activities are regulated. Soon the county, state and federal governments begin stipulating what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, and even when it is to be taught. (Can you imagine the idiocy of the state telling each local school when it can begin its school year and what holidays it must observe?) Control - and its attendant invitation to participation on the part of parents - departs from the local level and moves to higher and more distant levels.

These huge behemoths - schools and their bureaucracies - also spawn ancillary industries that consult, advise and provide ideologies for schools. These industries - some are schools of education in universities but others are private for-profit consulting firms - move from one fad to the next. Right now the ideology demands that schools increase all students' "self-esteem."

Other themes in the ideology often include a strident multiculturalism in which any normative American tradition is deconstructed in the name of "inclusivity," and a secularist orientation that expunges the role of religion in American life from textbooks and school observances. (We now have winter vacations instead of Christmas holidays.)

But the major charge against big schools is that they don't educate as well as small ones do. It is noteworthy that the schools that prepare their students best are those in North and South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. They also have the lowest costs per student. Even if one admits that these schools exist in more intact and homogenous cultures, there is yet another important factor. There are many small schools in small towns in those states. (I know because as a native Nebraskan, I was educated in one of those small schools in one of those small towns.)

There aren't many administrators in these schools, but those who are there know the teachers and the students. Each teacher knows every student in the school. They give personalized attention to each. On the positive side, teachers can sense the needs and possibilities of every student, challenge and support them. Good work is personally noted and rewarded. On the negative side, discipline is effective because so many persons know immediately of wrongdoing, and the student knows that they know. Stigma is real.

Small schools cannot offer as many electives, programs, preparatory tracks and extracurricular activities as large schools, but that is not always a bad thing. Academics in small schools are often basic, but what is a secondary school for but to impart basic skills in reading, writing and math, and basic knowledge in the sciences and history? Since they are fewer, students in small schools can and often must participate in the extracurricular activities the school does offer. They need not specialize as kids do in large schools where, for example, involvement in one sport often precludes participation in other school activities.

Because students in small schools can try their hand at many activities - band, vocal music, several sports, school newspaper, debate - they learn practices that are crucial to their flourishing as human beings later on. They may not be the greatest trumpet player or debater in the world, but they learn to enjoy a practice in which the satisfactions inhere in the activity itself. Further, they are able to recognize and appreciate real excellence in those activities when performed by others. Learning "practices" in this old-fashioned sense is one of the most important things a school can impart. Students so educated are unlikely to be bored.

Finally, students in small schools swim in small ponds. Often they are under the healthy illusion that they are world-beaters in their academic work or in their extracurricular activities. (I thought I could easily be the next Harry James after playing trumpet in our high school marching and dance bands for five or six years.) They rise above the small number of competitors they have in one or another field or activity. Some excel in all of them. Teachers praise them. Younger students look up to them. The community honors them. Their confidence is built up.

Surprised by their own capacities, they often continue to surprise themselves and others when they enter colleges and universities. (Why is it, for instance, that Roanoke College's valedictorians often come from small Virginia schools in small Virginia towns? Two of the best students I've had this past year are from New Castle.)

All of the points I have made above can be applied to colleges and universities, but that would make another article. Suffice it to say that the huge universities we have are more like factories than colleges, i.e., where professors and students are actually colleagues. Since there is so little chance for real collegial relations to emerge among faculty and students, such relations are taken over with doleful effects by fraternities and sororities. Those who are left out are treated to mass entertainment (an odd service for universities to provide) supplied by football and basketball teams. But the learning connection is ever weakened as schools get ever larger.

The upshot of all this? Neighborhoods and small towns should fight fiercely for their small schools. Authority, funding and control should revert as much as possible to the local levels. (The Coalition for Equity in Educational Funding should beware. State money will bring state pressure to merge and consolidate schools so that they are more "efficient" in the ways I have described above.)

Already existing large schools should be broken into smaller units on their own sites. State colleges and universities should increasingly be funded indirectly through tuition vouchers usable at either public or private institutions of higher education. Given a more level playing field, smaller colleges and universities would become far more attractive places for students and their parents.

All in all, human-scale educational institutions might well nurture more educated and civilized citizens. Small isn't beautiful in everything, but it sure is in education.

Robert Benne, a professor at Roanoke College, graduated in a class of 22 from West Point High School in West Point, Neb. His children have gone to public schools in Chicago and Salem.