Why Big Schools Suck

Why Big Public School Systems Suck

By Roy D. Follendore III

June 28, 2002

Big public school systems weigh the good of the student to the good of the teaching management. Large schools with thousands of students do not serve the interests of students, they alienate them. Students get lost in the system. Students never really get to know the teachers. More importantly, the teachers never get to know the students before they move on. Students are isolated among other students struggling to get through the vast system. Less children get to compete successfully in sports because the few dominate over the many. Most are considered less than even second rate at everything they do. Kids end up making their own sub societies so that they can contend in the social pressures. They assign themselves their own social laws to obey. The students that "fit" are classed so that they can not compete at a higher level. The students that do not fit are treated as dummies or geniuses. Both are outcasts. The codeword "special" is reserved by the school systems for those who do not conform to the norm. These huge schools are "printing" students in mass where in actuality no one is truly special except the misfits.

The reason for these huge schools is simple. Someone concluded that it was just not "cost efficient" to operate neighborhood schools. Cost efficient in what respect? The real reason is much less economical. Large school systems concentrate political and economic power into the hands of fewer managers. School system managers become "executives" rather than managers. They can draw larger salaries. School manager can be considered more important than school children. This is why they conclude that a larger staff with a larger budget is required. The kids can get bussed. Supreme Court integration rulings demonstrated that our children can be shuffled around by public schools for reasons other than education. They opened the way for centralized magnum schools.

There are lots of terrific teachers. There are also lots of lousy teachers too. The large school system executives are neither. They are running the school systems like corporations. Frankly they are too often just over educated blood sucking leaches. They are often just MBA's with teaching degrees.

Parents need a special relationship with teachers, not executives and strange corporate policies. Zero tolerance rules are stupid because they come from this crazy idea that rational thinking should not be involved in administering to children. If a kid takes an aspirin for cramps, she should not be kicked out of school because there is a zero tolerance for drugs. If a kid defends himself when struck he should not be kicked out of school because there is a zero tolerance for violence. If a rusty old empty shotgun shell is found on the floor of a bus, the educational program in the school should not be stopped because there is a zero tolerance for weapons. Zero tolerance is simply an excuse for accepting zero responsibility in a corporate school system.

Children should be considered and their perspectives listened to before decisions are made. Zero tolerance does not do that because all situations are predetermined. It is the absolute mark of a police minded encroachment on what is the most domestic of situations. These are our children, not widgets going through a calibrated quality control system as big school systems make them to be. This is our humanity. Every single kid should be special, not just the pretty ones or the strongest. But this is not the case in large schools. Most kids can not be considered special in large schools because teachers have too many students that are run before them each day.

My experience is perhaps unusual because it has given me a lifetime of opportunities to see what has been happening. My family traveled and I went to dozens of schools big and small as I grew up. I have even gone to a traditional two room elementary school. I put my two kids through a large school system because this is where I happened to live. Overall I think it was a mistake.

I say that Kids need to be able to walk to school from their homes. I say that there should be a return to small community walk-to schools. I say that if kids and their parents are actively engaged they are less likely to be involved in gangs or drugs and that the teachers and parents would know if they were. I say that it is time for a nationwide grass roots movement toward smaller and more local schools and the elimination of the huge public infrastructure that gets in the way of education. We need to architect our schools back into our local neighborhoods. I say that it is the hot shot administrator that will be most afraid of local values.

This has been my opinion from personal observation and indirect experiences. Big public school systems pretty much suck and America will eventually pay the price.

April 16, 2003 This article has continued to get a lot of interest and one reader recently wrote this:

"As I was reading this essay on why public schools suck I was, for the most part, in total agreement, especially the zero tolerance rule. Smaller schools would be beneficial but there are a few problems that haven't been addressed. It just isn't conceivable for everyone to have small community schools. Where will all the extra teachers come from? we, the whole country, are already in a huge deficit. Where will the room for the schools come from? most areas with large schools simply don't have room for so many schools. Plus, society doesn't put a huge value in youth education. This is proven by how much teachers make, which is very little compared to other jobs. if people really cared, teachers would be paid more.
Luckily, if kids really want to excel all they have to do is try. Kids do not have to be a "product of their environment" as many people believe.

Mike"

To Mike, I agree with you too to a certain extent.

Teachers need to be paid better and kids do not have to be a product of their environment. I also know that the way that we have established the teaching profession and positioned kids will not get teachers better paid and will not improve the situation with our kids. For these reasons, I feel that we need to change the paradigm again. That happened as the first large schools began to take over. First we need to recognize that most of the time that kids spend in public school systems is wasted. All you have to do is go to a large school and watch objectively.

On one hand, to run a school by the bell and transfer large numbers of students through halls is a gigantic waste of time and energy. On the other hand, when students crammed into rooms on wooden seats, sitting for hours listening to teachers pack as much material into the day, the students are naturally bored and/or over saturated.

Over time the concept of large schools systems have turned into a huge baby sitting institutions. Large schools are an opportunity for large numbers of both parents to go to work and saturate the local public economy through taxes. The parents justify their leaving their children by telling themselves that "they are learning and socializing," that their kids are doing what all parents have traditionally always done. This is just not true.

Up until a few generations ago, kids learned about life and were educated simultaneously. Under this system, kids both worked and were educated. At it's worst, most children were tired, harshly taught to read and write in order for them to get by in life and to do a slightly higher level of menial of work. At it's best, selected individual students were carefully groomed and provided education that brought them higher standards where they were better ready for college than anything that we have today in primary and secondary educational systems.

The fact remains that the introduction of the organized school "system" was more than what it replaced. It has without a doubt been a tremendous benefit to humanity. You could think of it as an administrative "technology" of it's day, intended to improve the quality of the education for the average child. It did that. But it was the "bigger the better" philosophy that continued past the point of rationality. At some point, huge schools have become unmanageable institutions and the institutional economics took over the objectives.

The fact is that there are many ways in which we may choose to educate our children. Education ranges from home schooling to mass learning in large institutions. But there is something valuable that exists in between being lost if we only examine the extremes. There is for instance, the potential unlimited degree of flexibility within educational approaches. To see these opportunities, we just need to understand that flexibility does not run counter to educational discipline and appropriately modify the existing budgets.

The issue of the teacher having both the respect and commiserate pay to go with it is deeply ingrained within the conventional community view of education. When we choose to quit treating our children like they are interchangeable parts being manufactured, we will quit treating our teachers like they are factory workers and begin to give them the respect and pay that they deserve. Not all teachers are good at their job or for that matter should be doing the job. Some teachers don't like kids. Others desperately need a break or to be reeducated. Unfortunately in many cases, some simply need to be fired. Kids do not need lousy teachers teaching them and they don't need impersonal cities that claim that have their interests at heart. One lousy teacher reduces the respectability of one student at a time throughout the day, but a huge impersonal school system destroys the potential of thousands of students each year.

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