A One Room Schoolhouse- Without the Room

I loved school. I went to public school for grade school and high school. In elementary school, I was in the advanced classes, I had a diverse group of smart and caring friends all coming from different backgrounds with different religions and races and economic classifications because our common denominator was a sheer love of learning. In high school, I was a cheerleader and the yearbook editor and was voted “Most School Spirit” by my peers when I graduated. I feel my experience was enhanced by going to public school and could never imagine any alternative providing a more enriching experience.

Now, ahem, something like 10 years later, I am married, with two preschoolers, and the idea of sending my children to public school scares me like I never thought possible. In the years between the culmination of my public school education and the time now when I am preparing to register my oldest for preschool, there have been countless newspaper headline accounts of abductions, molestations, bullying and even shootings. Kids bring guns to grade schools now and not JUST in the big cities.

I though, a LOT, about home schooling, but I can’t get past the importance, necessity, of not only the social skills one acquires in a classroom setting, but also the thought of my children missing out on having and making friends.

There are budget cuts in school districts all over the country. Educators at every level are expected to do more with less. Class sizes are getting larger, teachers have more responsibilities and children are slipping through the cracks.

All these thoughts have made me reminiscent of the days of yore, the days of the one room schoolhouse. It was small and quiet and quaint. The kids all knew each other, they all walked to school together and there as never any fear. In fact, everyone knew each other everywhere. A typical journey to school consisted of kissing mamma goodbye, walking a couple blocks, all the while stopping at friends’ houses, checking in with friends’ parents, acquiring yet another addition to the little gaggle and arriving quite safely at their destination. There was no possibility of abductions or crime, because if the parents weren’t watching, the local store keeper was or the old men sitting on their front porches, or the old ladies hanging laundry to dry.

When the kids got to school, the teacher was able to focus on teaching each individual child in the classroom, at their own ideal pace, without worrying about standardized testing quotas or the healthcare benefits in their union contract. The teachers never had to be vigilant about bullying or gun toting students- and the reason they didn’t have to worry was because they KNEW their students. No one fell through the cracks.

What has happened to education in this country? There are other countries who achieve far more with far less. Finland, for instance, has managed to establish solid rules that have remained in effect for over 40 years. These rules allow for students to continue to excel, with appropriately allocated funds and only the top educators are given jobs. Finland, has figured out a way to make use of their resources, specifically money and talent, not because they have limited funds or Mensa candidate educators, but simply because they know how to spend their money wisely and they can prioritize with a system that focuses on shaping each individual student instead of being concerned with standardized testing . For a more in depth read, check out http://bertmaes.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/why-is-education-in-finland-that-good-10-reform-principles-behind-the-success/.


We have resources in the United States that we ignore every day. Think of the money wasted on up keep for traditional brick and mortar schools: heating, air conditioning, lighting, even toilet paper . Think of the money spent on busing, grounds maintenance, ad infinitum. Then, after roughly 9 months of instruction, minus, of course, snow days, holidays, in-service days, delays, early dismissals and the like, children get three months off from school, forget half of what they had learned, and go back to do it all over. And we wonder why our country is so far behind? Investing in education is investing in the future of our country. We need to shop smarter and spend our dollars wiser.

What if we could easily achieve a personalized learning experience for each and every child, for a fraction of the cost? What if we could take all those extraneous expenditures, and roll them into a single laptop (with webcam) for every student, a high speed data voucher (or maybe rebate on school taxes, ) and create a one room school house for every student? It would be a one room school house that would eliminate bullying and other threats of violence. It would eliminate the need for snow days and busing and soaring fuel and heating costs. It would eliminate the need for building maintenance, especially on the increasing number of dilapidated structures strewn throughout our country. School work could be just that, school work. There would be no dress codes or metal detectors or locker searches or even note passing. Physical education? Can be done online too. Sporting events? Make use of community rec centers and create outdoor fields that can be shared for a fraction of the cost. Lack of interaction with others? Anyone have a child over the age of 6 that actually doesn’t know how to chat online? Low income meals? Simply work the rebates for feeding the children at home into the tax structure. Childcare options for the younger set? Come on folks, we’re talking quality education for a fraction of the price, why not take your boss up on that flex scheduling and team up with some of the neighbors you never talk to, get to know them, trade cookie recipes and take turns. It’s worth a shot?

Obviously, the way we have been doing things has gotten us poor results, for a price tag high enough to call most diplomas full fledged lemons. Maybe we need a carfax report for school systems before investing in them? Or maybe, just maybe, we need to think outside the box a bit. The last time the country had one room schoolhouses, it eventually yielded minds that were innovative enough to engineer some of the greatest years in all of United States history and those lessons from the past, always find a way to creep back up on us.

Tierra de los Libres, Hogar de los Valientes

If illegal Mexican immigrants spent half as much effort on fixing their own country as they do on getting into ours, Mexico would be a world super power.

With all the focus on the cost of illegal immigration to the United States, specifically focusing on Mexicans that cross the border , it’s rather surprising that there is so little information on the “cost” to the immigrant that is leaving their home country and entering the United States.

How much do these immigrants pay to the human smugglers to get them into the United States? They actually pay these smugglers big money to put them in life threatening situations in order to gain illegal entry into the country. They then go on to pay for fake social security numbers, shoddy housing. They go without preventative health care, they work 80 hour weeks performing often dangerous tasks for less pay than their US citizen counterparts.

Many immigrants leave their families and loved ones behind, unprotected, in the very country from which they are trying to escape because of such deplorable conditions. So, they leave their wives and children and elderly behind in a country riddled with crime, a failing economy and political unrest.

Once these illegal immigrants feel more comfortable with the arguable squatting they are doing in the US, they begin to refer to themselves as Mexican Americans, or Latin Americans. They take such pride in the heritage of a home country that has given so many of its citizens no other option than to run away.

The critically acclaimed Broadway musical, Les Miserable, is an interesting parallel. In Victor Hugo’s story about The Miserable, the French proletariat were oppressed as well. They had few economic opportunities, they were sick and starving, many worked from cradle to grave and dusk to dawn only to end up where they began, at best. There was crime and inequity and desperation. They were oppressed and there was heartache, but instead of fleeing their homeland and giving up, they stayed, the fought hard and they rose up to greater heights.

It’s curious then, that there are Mexican citizens that are willing to endure as much as they do to fight for a space in another country, when they could just take those efforts and fight to repair their own home. According to http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1191/mexican-immigrants-in-america-largest-group , as of 2008, three whole years ago, 12.7 million Mexican immigrants lived in the United States and 55% were undocumented. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces, active United States military personnel as per the date of the article was 1,477,896. The United States military is one of the most powerful in the world, and it’s staffed at less than 1.5 million, even with the Reserves, the United States military is at less than 4 million. Imagine the change that could be exacted if those 12.7 million Mexican immigrants banded together and fought for a better tomorrow in Mexico. Imagine the new level of pride they could take in their heritage. Any home that rich in history and culture is surely worth the fight.

Fool on the Hill

When the Beatles sang about The Fool on the Hill, they sang about a man that simply sat on a hill and watched life happening before him. Was he a fool for not actively participating in the world around him or was he brilliant in that he was able to remove himself in a way that allowed him to analyze and dissect and discern actions and ideas in which the rest of the world was too immersed?

In our current society, most of the proletariat is too busy reacting to the world- between current economic crises to environmental crises to never-ending wars and just daily life. We are busy working 2 jobs, running households and many of us are just barely holding our heads above water. We don’t have the luxury of the fool on the hill that got to sit and watch, some of us are lucky we have time to stop and pee during the day. It makes sense to “outsource” the responsibility of every citizen to participate in their government and monitor the legislators that that we hired in the hopes that they might be able to make our lives better. Our jobs are being done by people in other countries, our children are be being raised by babysitters and nannies, our homes are being cleaned by cleaning ladies, our meals are being cooked by cooks at restaurants and the choices affecting our lives are being made by other people. The question here then, is what part of our lives are WE living? Maybe we are no different than the fool on the hill, except that while he is “not living his life,” he is doing it consciously.

It’s kind of hard to see things clearly when one is “in the thick of ‘em” and we all know that hindsight is 20/20. One might think that we are at a disadvantage in that we cannot predict the future, per se, however, we do have the past upon which to gaze, and history is cyclical.

It’s very possible that the solutions to the problems of the present are actually nestled within the pages of the history books that are collecting dust in some cardboard box in the attic. So there is such thing as a Life’s Little Instruction Book? Maybe so.

“Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws. It is true, we are as yet secured against them by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”


Those were words written by Thomas Jefferson, taken from an excerpt from “Notes on The State of Virginia” in 1781 and this excerpt can be accessed, among other places, at http://classicliberal.tripod.com/jefferson/vnotes.html.
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