Rural Schools: Going Forward by Looking Back?

If you live in a rural area in the United States, chances are that you are near a school district that has undergone the consolidation of schools in multiple small towns into one, larger school in the past few years. As I wrote about here, rural communities are generally shrinking and aging, which obviously leads to lower school enrollment as there are fewer school-aged children around. At the same time, property tax revenues - nearly half of which nationwide are used to fund public elementary and secondary schools - have been declining in recent years due to lower property values and the generally poor economy (and, at least where I live [in Colorado], ag land assessments are not based on market value - thus limiting how much the upward spiral of land prices can contribute to property tax growth). Given these two considerations, it is natural for school districts to want to save money. What more could any conservative want than for government entities to do more with less?

The problem - or, rather, the first problem - is that study after study concludes that the perceived savings achieved by consolidation are minimal at best. University of Michigan researches reported in 1994 that "there is very little evidence that larger educational units will achieve economics of scale in administration or operations." The Rural School and Community Trust summarized the literature on the subject by saying, "Projected cost savings from consolidation are either temporary or illusory because lower costs in some expenditure categories" [e.g., administration] "are often offset by higher costs in other areas" [e.g., transportation].

The other major problem with school consolidation is simply that it tends to have negative results for both students and the surrounding communities. Bard, Gardener, and Wieland, writing in The Rural Educator in 2006, summarize their findings by saying, in part:

• Smaller districts have higher achievement, affective and social outcomes...
• Local school officials should be wary of merging several smaller elementary schools, at least if the goal is improved performance.
• After a school closure, out migration, population decline, and neighborhood
deterioration are set in motion, and support for public education diminishes.
• There is no solid foundation for the belief that eliminating school districts will improve education, enhance cost-effectiveness or promote equality.
• Students from low income areas have better achievement in small
schools.

However, the fact remains that many rural schools are in drastic - and disproportionate - need of improvement. Only about a fifth of American students attend rural schools, yet those same rural schools "account for an estimated one-third of the roughly 5,000 schools nationwide targeted for improvement." But how can schools improve when facing decreasing revenue streams and frequent budget shortfalls?

The answer - according to Lips, Watkins, and Fleming - is not to simply throw more money at the problem (even if the money were available). They suggest that "policymakers should resist proposals to increase funding for public education" because "[h]istorical trends and other evidence suggest that simply increasing funding... has not led to corresponding improvement in academic achievement." Combine this with the case made above against school consolidation, and readers are probably wondering what other alternatives might exist.

A starting point may be to realize that the very schools now threatened by consolidation are themselves the product of previous consolidation. As anyone who's ever read Little House on the Prairie or seen "Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman" knows, most rural areas in the Midwest and West were once served by iconic "one room schoolhouses." In fact, those schoolhouses were the primary mode of education for children up to about 8th grade in my part of the country until the middle of the Twentieth Century. The first half of my dad's siblings attended a country school; the younger ones were bused into town.

So, what happened to all of those schools? Was there something fundamentally flawed with that model of education? In the view of Bard, et al., the biggest strike against them seems to have simply been intellectual fashion:

The rise of industry in urban areas in the late nineteenth century contributed to the school consolidation movement. The prevailing belief during the industrial revolution was that education could contribute to an optimal social order using organizational techniques adapted from industry (Orr, 1992). Early school reformers and policy makers felt that an industrialized society required all schools to look alike, and began to advocate more of an urban, centralized model of education... urban and larger schools were adopted as the “one best model,” and from this context rural schools were judged deficient.

However, the new schools (which we now consider the mainstream) were inferior to the old model in several important ways. This is now being recognized by reformers of the large, urban schools that served as the "one best model" decades ago - so much so that The New York Times reported that "the fundamental aspects of teaching inside them [one room schoolhouses] - from multi-age classrooms and peer tutoring to interdisciplinary projects and keeping students with the same teacher for more than one year - are being copied in large school systems across the country."

The same Times article (which highlighted one of an estimated 380 traditional one room schools still operating in the US) quotes Professor Andrew Gulliford of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado as saying:

One-room schools really represent, I think, the best model for training American children for the first through the eighth grades... In terms of ego development, in terms of character, in terms of personality, in terms of the well-rounded individual fitting in with the group, country schools are very efficient - they helped train generations of Americans... In a one-room schoolhouse, every child counts - they've always counted, whether it was 1890 or 1990. How can you say that in most modern educational systems today? It's just not true.

This superior model may also be far more cost-effective than our current system. Charlie Martin, writing for pajamasmedia.com, conducted a "thought experiment" in which he developed a proposal for a one room school in midtown Manhattan. Parker used the general class-size and square footage of a preserved schoolhouse he had visited at the Adams County, Colorado Historical Society, but equipped his hypothetical school with new furniture and modern technology (including one computer for every two students, internet connections, plus $1,000 each for other books and supplies). Applying the current per-pupil funding in New York City, he was left - after paying to rent, furnish, and supply his school - with $230,000 to apply to the cost of salary and benefits for a teacher.

Sadly, the public education system in the United States has gradually become so unionized, bureaucratized, and monopolistic that such dramatic institutional change is likely to take decades (if it is even possible). There are some things concerned parents and/or taxpayers can do within the system to pursue real change: in Douglas County, Colorado, four Republicans ran for school board as an organized slate of candidates specifically to oppose union-backed candidates in November of 2009, and they won. One year later, the Douglas County school district is seriously considering a proposal in which it "could be the first wealthy, high-performing district to introduce vouchers." In California, a "parent trigger" law went into effect this January which gives parents of students in failing schools a mechanism that can "trigger a forcible transformation of the school - either by inviting a charter operator to take it over, by forcing certain administrative changes, or by shutting it down outright."

But these options will be (and have been) fought tooth and nail by those who benefit from the status quo - typically the teachers' unions - and inevitably take a great deal of time to set in motion. Once successfully implemented, they may still be for naught as an activist judge or court could overturn them, as the Colorado Supreme Court did with the state legislature's last effort to provide a voucher program in the most poorly performing districts. As Eva Moskowitz, the charter school founder prominently featured in the film The Lottery, says, "Parents need options now. Their 5 year old can’t wait five years."

One immediate option available for parents who are able and willing to take on the work, financial hardship, and possible stigmatization is to homeschool. Especially when more than one sibling is being educated, children receive many of the benefits listed for one room schools: mixed age classes, peer tutoring, keeping students with the same teacher for multiple years, and (of course) individualized attention. If parents can find at least one other family with whom they share these ideals and are willing to keep "minimal records" and abide by other statuory requirements, Colorado law actually permits them to establish an "independent school" in which "The administrator can be one of the parents... teachers are the parents, and all teaching is done in separate campus sites in each home." So, even if the days of the schoolhouse are essentially over, rural parents may want to consider the idea of "house schools" for their young wards.

*(Black and white photographs used above were taken for the United States Library of Congress and are considered public domain.)*

Monopoly Money

The other day, frequent contributer J-Lo posted a link on our Facebook page to an article her friend had sent her regarding one person's explanation of economic problems and potential fixes from a point of view of someone on the left.  (Said friend has commented here, and I hope you're still reading).  I later got a chance to read it fairly closely, and came to the conclusion that the whole thing is nonsense on stilts.  The whole thing is full of weasel words (many, much, hardly any, etc.) that don't mean anything concrete, and sometimes even mean different things in different contexts.  My favorite "weasel" is when 20-34% in one context is "only a fraction," whereas in another, 20-30% of the same figure is "much of the money."  And, as an added bonus, the whole thing is steeped rather heavily in Marxist class rhetoric, with a few "Uber-Rich"es thrown in for good measure.  If you want a fun exercise for your evening, click on over, print a copy, and black out every weasel word and gratuitous mention of class, wealth, and status.  It'll end up looking like a FOIA request about Area 51. 

Stylistic criticism aside, the whole thing is also full of contradiction and fallacy, but if you want a point-by-point rundown, I'd be happy to give one later.  But for now, I'll keep this narrow, because it's going somewhere eventually, and I'd like to still have an audience by the end.  In the article, the author makes the following assertion:

Whenever The Fed buys securities in the open market, it pays for them with money that it creates out of thin air with a keystroke.  It does not draw the money from some reserve account that is limited in size.  It is "new money" that did not exist prior to the keystroke that created it.  With any of its purchases of securities, the Fed provides loanable funds to banks that were not saved by any saver.

From a certain point of view, this is technically correct.  The cash did not exist prior to the purchase.  But cash and money are not the same thing.  Cash is just a measure of the value that money has in an economy.  But the Fed's creation of cash out of thin air did not add to the overall value of wealth in the economy.  It just changed the relative value of the ratio between cash and money.  Look at it this way:

Courtesy Hasbro

Say you're playing Monopoly on a table, with a real game set.  I know, I know, it takes so long, and everyone always fights, and there are better things to do.  It's sort of like life in that way.  But say there's a blizzard, and the TV's out, and you've worn the spots off of all the decks of cards in your house, so you're left with playing Monopoly.  After a while, the banker gets crazy, and decides to add an extra zero to some of the money.  For a while, making change might get a little tricky, but you'll keep playing.  Then say the banker adds some more, and some more, and some more, until every bill in the set has an extra zero on it.  The banker has undeniably created more cash out of thin air.  But the amount of wealth has not changed.  There are still the same number of bills, same number of cards, and same amount of property.  After a while, the game will get pretty dumb, and even staying at a hotel on Boardwalk won't hurt.  Eventually, everyone will either tire of the game, or just add an extra zero to all the bills to restore balance between cash and wealth.  What was gained by this magical creation of cash?  Not a darned thing, but a few extra hours of frustration, and damaging the resale value of the set. 

Courtesy Hasbro

Now, say you could change the game and actually affect how it plays.  What sort of rule changes could you make that would actually increase the wealth available?  First, you could tinker with the "zoning code" of the game.  You could add more houses and hotels to the available set.  You could even increase the number that can be put on a property, and correspondingly increase the amount you can charge.  Second, your mini Atlantic City could "annex" more property, increasing the size of the board and the available property to buy and charge rent on.  But perhaps the simplest hack, one that doesn't require printing a whole new board or figuring out how to build more little plastic houses, also happens to be my favorite "house rule:"  Put all of the tax money collected in the game in the middle, and whomever lands on Free Parking gets a tax refund.  What good does putting your $150 income tax in the bank do for anyone, if it can't come back to someone who can turn it around into putting houses on Connecticut and Oriental? 

Read this book.

Not that the idea of fixing the economy by toying with the value of money is a new one.  According to Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man, during the Great Depression, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. related the story of President Roosevelt deciding to increase the price of gold by 21 cents, because, in the President's words, "It's a lucky number, because it's three times seven."  Another time of economic trial, before depressions were called "depressions," was the Panic of 1893.  The Panic happened, as they often do, as a result of the bursting of a bubble, in this case a bubble that developed in overbuilding railroads.  Another major contributing factor was a long period of low inflation, and even deflation, of the currency.  The panic, combined with monetary issues, gave rise to a populist movement, of which a major goal was "Free Silver." 

Free Silver was a movement that sought to include silver in the pricing mechanism of the dollar, which to that point had been based on the price of gold.  At the time, the gold mining industry was slowing down significantly, while silver was so plentiful that many mines lay empty because it cost more to mine than you could sell the silver for.  The ultimate goal of the populist movement, of which the rural farming population was a significant portion, was inflation.  In the big picture, inflation helps debtors, while deflation helps borrowers, and folks who were still paying down land that they had bought in the rapid expansion of the nation in the previous decades definitely didn't mind any help in paying the mortgage, so to speak. 

Going back to our Monopoly example, let's say you're playing the long-form version of the game, and happen to land on Boardwalk, which the bank still owns.  The $400 price tag is a lot of scratch.  What if you could set up the purchase on an installment plan of a $20 every turn for 20 turns?  That would be a much easier decision, wouldn't it?  Three turns after this agreement, though, is when our crazy banker starts putting zeroes on the money.  Then each $20 becomes a $200 bill, and you can pay off the "mortgage" on Boardwalk in a couple turns, and be free and clear 15 turns earlier than the banker was expecting full payment.  Similarly, if the crazy banker scratched out zeroes, causing deflation, those two former-$100 bills you'd have to start paying your mortgage with would run out pretty quickly. 

William Jennings Bryan

So in the 1890s, the people who owed the most money – folks who had purchased property like farmers being a large number of them – wanted a monetary policy that included silver to inflate the currency and be out of debt that much easier.  Of course the evil "Eastern Banking Establishment" would lose a lot of money, so clearly they were behind keeping gold as the only measure of the dollar.  The Populist movement beginning in the Panic of 1893 gave voice to perhaps the most well-known populist in history, William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska.  He was noted for soaring oratory, and was even nominated to be the Democratic Party's candidate for President once in Denver, although that was 15 years after the Panic. 

In a sense, this all sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?  Of course, nowadays, the biggest debtor in the country isn't landowners (although that's not to be discounted with the bursting of the housing bubble), and a growing global market has helped the farm economy improve with higher prices.  The biggest debtor in the country, as you may have guessed, is the US Government, of course.  So it's no wonder they'd want to tinker with the price of money, is it?  Keep that in mind next time you read about the Fed tinkering with interest rates or buying debt. 

Oh, by the way.  In the year after the Panic of 1893 was the midterm election of 1894.  As Michael Barone was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying, during that election, the Republican Party gained 130 seats on the Democrat and Populist parties, to take a 151-seat edge in the House of Representatives, or nearly three-quarters of the total seats in the House, making that election the tsunami of all electoral tsunamis. 

Take from that what you will, and please pass the dice.  I think it's my turn to roll.  

The Country Citizens’ Revolt

Democracy As it Was

I’ve been struggling with this essay for quite some time.  I haven’t been able to answer the “So what?” question, but it may have come to me recently.  You can let me know.  Another problem I dealt with was in the topic and message.  So far, this site has been heavy on the “Rural,” and not so much on the “Republic.”  We’ve been trying to stay fairly non-partisan, although that’s not the same as unbiased, and I wasn’t sure if getting too overtly political would damage that.  I have come to the conclusion that there’s nothing wrong with discussing the modern civic live in the Rural Republic.  Indeed, one of the animating forces behind this concept, in my mind, was the image from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, where he describes the unique political character of discourse in the rural stage of this republic: 

The cares of political life engross a most prominent place in the occupation of a citizen in the United States, and almost the only pleasure of which an American has any idea is to take a part in the Government, and to discuss the part he has taken…  Debating clubs are to a certain extent a substitute for theatrical entertainments:  an American cannot converse, but he can discuss; and when he attempts to talk he falls into a dissertation.  He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to warm in the course of the discussion, he will infallibly say, “Gentlemen,” to the person with whom he is conversing. 

 Of course the esteemed Frenchman is having a bit of fun at early Americans’ inability to separate political discussion from other social interaction.  The difference between the two cultures was incredibly portrayed in the HBO miniseries John Adams, in the episode where the eponymous founder found himself on a rather uncomfortable diplomatic envoy in France.  He may have been English just a few short years earlier, but, as his later trip to England showed, it’s the difference between the politically free citizen and the socially free subject that caused the rift, greater even than that ancient Franco-English rivalry.  Apart from his poking fun, Tocqueville had high praise for the new American society, though. 

 I am persuaded that, if ever a despotic government is established in America, it will find it more difficult to surmount the habits which free institutions have engendered than to conquer the attachment of the citizens to freedom. 

This ceaseless agitation which democratic government has introduced into the political world influences all social intercourse.  I am not sure that upon the whole this is not the greatest advantage of democracy.  And I am much less inclined to applaud it for what it does than for what it causes to be done.  It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts public business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower orders should take a part in public business without extending the circle of their ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of their mental acquirements.  The humblest individual who is called upon to co-operate in the government of society acquires a certain degree of self-respect; and as he possesses authority, he can command the services of minds much more enlightened than his own.  …  I have no doubt that the democratic institutions of the United States, joined to the physical constitution of the country, are the cause (not direct, as is so often asserted, but the indirect cause) of the prodigious commercial activity of the inhabitants.  It is not engendered by the laws, but the people learns how to promote it by the experience derived from legislation. 

The men, and even the women, as mentioned in the remainder of that passage, of that era were steeped in democratic responsibility.  The discussion in the “ale-houses” was as often as not discussion regarding various measures and policies in the local, state, and federal governments.  Can you imagine having a discussion about state bill 1365, or the latest ballot proposals down at Buffalo Wild Wings?  I mean, I can, but I’m a nerd and I’m writing this essay.  But it certainly would be out of the ordinary.  Either way, that’s an image that’s stuck with me for a long time.  

Perhaps more than that image, though, was what he said later in the passage.  The reason everyone talked about politics was that everyone was involved in politics in one way or another.  Everyone, even the lowliest citizen, would serve on some council or board, and would be a more complete, more informed, more confident citizen as a result.  

The Division of a Democracy

My, what progress hath wrought.  In the July/August issue of the American Spectator, Angelo M. Codevilla wrote an incredible, and incredibly influential essay regarding the class stratification of American society.  In a situation of which the “Tea Party” (more on that later) is a symptom, rather than a disease, he theorized that the society today is split not along Marxist class lines, but along lines of political influence and philosophy, into two classes:  a Ruling Class and a Country Class.  There have always been those with more influence than others; it’s likely Tocqueville’s extremely democratic democracy  was more illustration than reality. 

 Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust.  Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others.  But until our own time America's upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter.  The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another.  Few had much contact with government, and "bureaucrat" was a dirty word for all.  So was "social engineering."  Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed.  All that has changed.

 Indeed, it has.  Today, as Codevilla uses polls and demographic statistics to illustrate, the Ruling Class is incredibly uniform in background and ideas.  They’re usually coastal, went to an Ivy League or other extremely prestigious school, and work in more liberal “professional” careers, such as law, education, journalism, or politics.  They all behave and believe a certain way, and even talk a certain way.  They overwhelmingly self-identify as Democrat, although some other members of the class are establishment Republicans.  

On the other side of the divide is the Country Class, a group as varied as the Ruling Class is uniform.  (Let me note here that I’m not making this “Country Class” thing up, though it’s certainly a happy accident that the terminology chosen by Codevilla matches so well with the concept behind this site)  The most interesting thing is they don’t identify as Republican consistently, but as “independent,” or perhaps in some polls as a practitioner of a generic “Tea Party” if given the option.   Regardless, while some members of the Country Class may aspire to the same careers as those in the Ruling Class, a Country Class lawyer will have less in common with his Ruling Class colleague, and no one will know it more than the latter.  

The whole essay is as fascinating as it is long, but it’s well worth the read.  It’s already being treated as a fundamental shift in the way of looking at the American political scene.  It certainly illustrates the difference between the democratic America described in Democracy in America and the aristocracy we experience today.  

Democracy as It Is

In their recent book The Blueprint, political journalist Adam Schrager and former Colorado state legislator Rob Witwer delve into the creation of a progressive political machine that has reshaped the state of Colorado, and indeed races across the country, in method and infrastructure.  While there is much to glean from a relatively short book, a few things stand right out, in addition to the occasional despair experienced on the part of those who would lament the creation and effects of a progressive political machine.  First, the system is what it is, or, as my college philosophy professor was fond of saying “Every system is perfectly designed to effect the result it does,” and the modern political system is apparently perfectly designed for such a progressive political machine.  So what are the rules of the system?

The first rule bounding the system is term limits.  While it’s not a necessary condition, it accelerates the effects of the “machine,” and recalled a line from Aeschylus:

So in the Libyan fable it is told

That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,

Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,

‘With our own feathers, not by others’ hands,

Are we now smitten.’

The reason term limits matter is that any given seat in a state legislature will be in play at some point in an eight year period.  With enough influence, no seat is safe.  

The second bound to the system is the campaign finance law.  To contribute to a campaign or a party, a person must pass a minimum standard (e.g., citizenship), will have their identity recorded and made public, and can give a maximum amount, which is usually fairly nominal when compared to the amount of money spent on a campaign.  There is one major exception to all of these caveats, however: so-called 527 organizations.  Simply put, these 527s can collect an unlimited amount of anonymous money from anyone, anywhere, and put it toward a political goal, or, more properly, against a political candidate.  See, one of the restrictions on 527s is that they can’t collaborate with a political campaign, which in practice means they can’t support a given candidate; they can only oppose the other candidate.  Incidentally, if you were wondering why you were getting covered in mud this campaign season, that’s why.  

Out of these rules grew an organization designed to take advantage of them for progressive political ends.  Various “anonymous,” though we know who they are, ultra-rich donors funded massive coordinated smear campaigns under numerous 527s, all with vague, fuzzy-as-a-bunny-sounding names to get their candidates elected.  It was devastatingly effective in Colorado, and is surely on its way to a political race near you.  

Democracy as It Is Becoming

But the other side of the political spectrum has an answer to the coordinated, hierarchical, unified structure of the progressive 527 machine: the “Tea Party” movement.  As I noted above, of the two classes, the Ruling Class identifies with progressive politics, while the Country Class can be said to identify with the Tea Party.  Although, since there is no real “Tea Party,” perhaps a better way of saying that is that the Tea Party is a loose collection of politically-motivated members of the Country Class.  

Either way, the Tea Party movement is as different from the progressive machine as can be imagined.  Where the “machine” is hierarchical, the Tea Party is organic.  Where it is well-funded, the Tea Party survives on small donations and volunteer leadership.  Where the machine has defined objectives and carefully-calculated campaign strategies, the Tea Party runs on free information and sheer energy. 

In the end, both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.  In an article in the National Journal, Jonathan Rauch discussed the advantages of the Tea Party’s disorganized structure with a few of its facilitators.  In one such vignette, one of the leaders explains to a newer volunteer how things really work:

 Rick, from Albuquerque, N.M., asks if the national agenda includes investigating voter-roll irregularities, something his group is concerned about. Mark Meckler, a Tea Party Patriots coordinator and co-founder, weighs in. Newcomers "often don't understand how badly we need you to lead the way," he says. "If this is an area of concern to you," he admonishes, "the way the Tea Party Patriots works is that you guys really lead the organization. We're a relatively small group of people who are just trying to help coordinate. We're not in charge; we're not telling anybody what to do. You need to take a leadership role and stand up." Meckler suggests that Rick gather a group of people concerned about the issue and go to work.

Rick gets the message. "We'll get on the Ning [social-networking] site and try to take the lead on that."

 The interesting thing about the Tea Party movement is not that it’s spontaneous, not that it’s organic, but that it’s not at all novel.  As Rick in Albuquerque may soon discover, he might become a volunteer expert on voter-roll irregularities, and have his understanding and methods of dealing with other problems change.  And if he is successful, Rick may find himself chosen as a subject matter expert by other volunteers interested in the same problem, and bringing his newly-found expertise to other races and other areas of the country, if not in reality, at least virtually.  

 Rick is just one of hundreds of volunteers who are “The humblest individual who is called upon to co-operate in the government of society.”  In the formless, leaderless structure of the Tea Party, it’s not the goals, or the races, or even the politics that matter the most.  It’s that the people are rediscovering “the habits which free institutions have engendered” one conference call, one social-networking post, one political action at a time.  It’s no accident that the new organization of the Ruling Class is hierarchical and precise, while the new organization of the Country Class has turned out to be so chaotically democratic.  Politics is, after all, just the practical application of a given philosophy.  

Democracy as It Will Be?

Where is all this taking us?  The obvious answer is all the way to November 2nd.  If you are interested in politics or the election, but don’t feel you have enough background or experience, that’s no excuse.  As Tocqueville said, everyone was involved in politics in one form or another, and not only did they learn from it, they became better citizens and built a better republic as a result.  For my part, the recognition that the system is, if not broken, far from perfect has made me recognize the need for balance in future policies that may emanate from the political realm, particularly regarding campaign finance.  

But the real big picture we see is something more than just “man a phone bank” or “knock on doors” or even “here’s my new wonkish policy solution.”  What all of these things paint is a picture of our Country Class as an active political society, diverse and unique in every way imaginable, independent-minded, and interested in any number of important and practical subjects.  Corn prices matter.  But so do elections.  Maybe we shouldn’t be as afraid to say so.  

A Clog in the Brain Drain

By most accounts, the first half of the 1940s was an exciting time to be living in the rural “neighborhood” in which I (and my father before me) grew up. There was, of course, anxiety throughout the country about the war, but it was also hard to ignore how much of a boon World War II had been to farmers. At the same time, the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 was enabling sparsely populated areas such as this to get “on the grid.”

Electricity is today so much a part of our daily existence that I know I, for one, completely take it for granted. It was new enough then, though, that the wonder of such things as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, electric lights, and more was certainly not lost on country people who had almost literally been given what we always seem to be wishing for: more hours in the day. While electricity was making the land more able to support greater production by providing power to large irrigation wells, it was simultaneously giving farm wives and children something novel to them. Farm life was still hard, but household and farmyard chores that had previously required hours of drudgery to complete were now often a matter of minutes. For many of these people, this allowed more leisure time than they had probably ever had before.

In our neck of the woods, people responded to this extra free time in a uniquely American way: they built a baseball field. There were enough children and young people nearby to make games possible, and enough neighbors cared enough about the project to bring it to fruition. One land owner donated a few acres of flat ground in the corner of an otherwise very hilly pasture, and gradually fences, bleachers, and even lights were erected. In the 1970s (around the time my dad was entering high school), a nice metal building was put up that would double as a community center and concession stand - complete with a hood and grill that would allow parents to serve up some of the best hamburgers I ever tasted. A playground was built to entertain the kids who weren’t out on baseball field. My siblings, cousins, and I all have very vivid memories of times playing there.

Gradually, however, something started to change at the ballpark. By the time I was old enough to be on a baseball team in the mid 1980s, some of the original families who had helped establish the area (and the ballpark) had nearly died out or moved completely away. My extended family seemed to have large families for the time, but these families of 2 to 5 children were small compared to what their parents had raised. Contraception had become as widely available here as virtually anywhere else in the country, and the mentality had changed from “having more children around will help us get all of the necessary work done” to “we can’t afford to have any more children.” The teams I played on already had to bring in a few “ringers” from town to fill out the roster; my brother, nine years my junior, played during some of the last years that a team could be fielded.

In the first few years of the 21st Century, there were almost no members of my generation in the surrounding area and certainly not enough children for a baseball team (even now, after a few more of us have returned to the neighborhood, we could probably only come up with half a baseball roster - and it would have to be co-ed). Just about 60 years after the ballpark was built, the fences and lights were sold off, the outfield planted with NRCS-approved windbreaks, and the old “pop stand” hauled off to serve as a storage building on the corner of a cornfield. The concession stand continued to serve as a community center, but it has since become unusable due to burst pipes during this past winter (it is currently in a purgatory of contractors bidding and the neighbors trying to decide what to do with it). And the playground has fallen into disrepair, with a tree growing up around the bottom of the slide.

The same pattern of aging, shrinking communities is repeating itself throughout rural America. This is documented a book published this year by husband-and-wife sociologists Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, entitled Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America. A few weeks ago I came across an article in The Rural Sociologist called, simply, “The Rural Brain Drain,” in which Carr and Kefalas outline their book.

The authors start by recounting the grim statistics: in little more than 20 years, more than 700 rural counties lost 10 percent or more of their population. About half of all rural counties in the United States have more annual deaths than births. Perhaps worst of all, the out-migration of young people - especially most of the college-educated “best and brightest” - from rural to urban areas has “reached a tipping point,” with consequences that “are more severe now than ever before.” To study the reasons for this phenomenon, Carr and Kefalas spent a year and a half living in a northeastern Iowa town of 2,000 people, interviewing more than 200 young graduates of the local high school (both those who had left and those still living in town).

By their reckoning, the 20 and 30-somethings the authors met fell into four general groups (with some overlap between them). “Stayers” were generally under-achieving students who often came from less affluent families and went on to fill blue-collar jobs in the community. “Achievers” were most of the kids who went on to college, very few of whom came back to town. “Seekers” were similar in background to the stayers, but wanted to see the world - often by joining the military. And “returners” were those young people who (obviously) returned to town after some time away. About 30 percent of the people the authors interviewed were returners, but only a very small number of them were the highly educated, professional returners they call “high fliers.”

Their interviews with these various categories of young people led Carr and Kefalas to the two-pronged thesis of their book, which they state in their Rural Sociologist article by writing:

What surprised us most was that adults in the community were playing a pivotal part in the town’s decline by pushing the best and brightest young people to leave, and by underinvesting in those who chose to stay, even though it was the latter that were the towns’ [sic] best chance for a future.

Now, most of you who grew up in towns like the one Carr and Kefalas visited would not have been “surprised” the way they were by the first half of that statement. I spent quite a bit of time during high school feeling pretty schizophrenic because of the mixed messages I was being given: so much of my identity was wrapped up in being from my hometown, I had been taught to love my hometown, but I was fully expected to get the heck out of dodge and only return for holidays (if I knew what was good for me).

The parents and teachers the authors met weren’t surprised by this paradox, either. At one point, Carr and Kefalas dropped what they seem to have thought was a bombshell that it took outsiders to see on the principal, telling him the school was systematically encouraging what were potentially the town’s best civic leaders to leave for good. Their response was essentially a shrug and a “that’s what we’re supposed to do” kind of statement.

The part of their statement about stayers being the best chance for a future for these towns is something to think about, though. The authors discuss how, after spending so much time and energy getting achievers ready to leave, many small towns are focusing primarily on getting high-fliers to come back as a way to rejuvenate their communities. However, very few of these programs seem to have had much success (which stands to reason, as there just aren’t that many of the white-collar jobs these young people have been encouraged to do in most small towns). What these towns should be focusing on more, the authors say, is working with what they have: spending more time when future-stayers are in school on helping them improve their own lots, and the corollary of helping young adult stayers become stronger leaders in their communities.

Carr and Kefalas don’t have everything right: a year and a half doesn’t seem to have been enough for them to really “get” small-town people; as well-intentioned as they are, they still seem condescending about their subjects (referring snidely in the book’s introduction about the gun cases in many living rooms, for example); they try too hard to draw parallels (and moral equivalents) between urban and rural problems; they seem to blithely accept that the way the film Food, Inc. portrays current - and ideal - agricultural practices is accurate and unbiased. They look to government (including the Obama administration’s stimulus fund) for too many of their solutions. And, as far as I can tell, they never address the impact wider acceptance and availability of contraception had on the demographics of rural America, but rather toss around terms like “corporatization of agriculture” and “globalization” as reasons for the problem’s compounding impact. Bill Kauffman, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says of one of the authors’ claims about interactions between economic classes, “[it] is so howlingly inaccurate that only displaced urban academics could believe it.”

But I think their two basic points are correct. First, by defining success as moving away, people in small towns impose a certain exile on high-achieving young people; conversely, if moving away is success, then staying is failure… and young adults who stay are often looked upon as failures for doing so. Second, while it would be nice (and it’s worth pursuing, to some extent) to get those young people who have left to come back, it is absolutely vital for rural communities to focus more on maximizing the potential of those who stay.

Some of the ideas Carr and Kefalas have for placing greater emphasis on the needs of stayers are laid out in an essay they wrote for the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business magazine:

Matching students not headed for university with appropriate vocational or community college programs and nurturing their interests through internships and training will prepare them for new, developing economic opportunities. Such partnerships require close collaboration among business and civic leaders, elected officials, and secondary school and community college administrators. Business leaders and educators should partner to counsel younger workers—those not headed to four-year colleges—to cultivate the right skills and interests to meet the new demands for labor in their region. That partnership will need to develop pathways for the next generation to pursue opportunities that may have only come into existence in the last five years, such as in medical technology, wind energy, or sustainable agriculture.

Again quoting Bill Kauffman in The Wall Street Journal, this “language of policy (‘invest more efficiently’) is inadequate to what is really a crisis of the soul.” But, however people smarter than I figure out how to do it, the “stayers” must be nurtured. They are small towns’ future, for better or worse. Their hometowns can make it “better” by raising the expectations we have for them. If we treat them like leaders, they will take on leadership roles. If we expect them to be losers, we will get exactly what we expect (and deserve). Not all of the “brains” have been drained out of our communities; we just need to learn to value the ones we still have.

The Fringe of History

Yesterday, I got back on the bicycle, and found myself traveling down chipseal roads on the fringe between town and country in my neighborhood of the Rural Republic.  As I pedaled between subdivisions and sorghum fields, between pre-fabs and pasture, with nothing to occupy my mind beside the next foot-stroke, I found that what I saw around me reminded me of an article I'd read a few months earlier about the shrinking of a city, rather than the growth of one.  The article was a piece from The Economist about efforts to “right-size” Detroit, and in hunting it down, I found a New York Times piece dreaming of using that shrinking city as an opportunity to “green” the city.  At issue here is not what to do about Detroit, however.  It got me thinking instead about the fringe between urban and rural. 

America is a young country.  Ours is a country with a history devoted almost entirely to unhindered growth and expansion.  In fact, the idea of shrinking and disappearing cities barely registers in our collective, and then only in tales of frontier towns somewhere else, of boom and bust and gold rushes.  Ghost towns are ghostly – empty and abandoned – but they're also towns: small, out of the way, and easily forgotten.  Historically speaking, however, the idea that only small towns disappear, while cities are permanent, is an outlier – one that could only exist in a country that's only a few hundred years old.