What are we thinking?

Our director of schools has interpreted data collected about public preferences for a single high school as a clear indication that people desire a common experience. (See R. Neal's post below for link to full article)

I have another interpretation. People’s preferences for a single high school indicate a confused sense of nostalgia and a failure of leadership.

Nostalgia: People’s visions of a small-town high-school life are really less about having a single high-school that unifies than having a school small enough that they are truly known as people. Cheering on a town’s single football team against "foreign" rivals (from just down the road) is, quite frankly, a shallow way to build a shallow sense of community. Strong community spirit comes from pride in a community’s choices…in this case, we have a chance to be proud of how we plan for every young citizen to have a great education.

Arguably, the best feature of public schools is that students come into close contact with ideas, identities, abilities, and beliefs that are different from their own (this feature is much harder to come by in private schools). This close contact challenges students to either defend their ways of thinking and being in the world or to change their ways of thinking and being in the world. Course content gives them the tools and practice they need to think through these challenges. In a word, this is education.

Large secondary schools do not allow for this close contact. Rather, stereotypes and narrow thinking are encouraged as students must spend their time simply trying to carve out a space for themselves amid the masses.

Failure of leadership: There is nothing surprising in data showing that people are resistant to and fear change and that people will choose the option that proposes the least amount of change. It is easy for us to sacrifice (other) people’s homes to cobble on to a high school we're afraid of changing in any meaningful way. It is hard to think through new ways of educating our children.

Great leadership helps us imagine new ways of moving forward and helps us not be afraid of change.

Where is our great leadership?