(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange laments the likely demise of small rural schools.
(LANGE) I got hugged recently by a kindergartner. It wasn’t that much of a hug. She was so tiny her shoulders were about the height of my hips, and she was clutching a half-eaten cookie in one hand; so it was really just a one-armed squeeze. But it meant a lot.
I’ve made visits to three small Vermont schools this year, and found them to be moving experiences. I felt I was looking at the end of a unique rural phenomenon, one that’s helped shape Vermont ever since the state led the nation in establishing public education.
Years ago, when I was traveling school to school, I found that, just walking into an entry hall, I could smell the morale of a place. I can’t define it exactly, but there were happy and unhappy schools; welcoming and suspicious schools; schools in which I could talk only to the principal, and others where I could chat with anybody.
I’ve never walked into a small school without feeling energy emanating from the place like warmth from a space heater. It’s noisy, but it’s happy noise. And if someone raises two fingers in a V, everybody raises his own arm, closes his mouth, and looks to see who wants to make an announcement. There’s an important difference – and a message – between being silenced by an authority figure and cooperating in creating your own chance to listen.
I got my hug in a school almost up on the edge of the Kingdom. I was blown away by the enthusiasm and happiness of the place. Seven grades, 53 students; it’s one of those schools that planners are bound to target in the current push to consolidate in the name of efficiency.
The planners should not just crunch numbers; they should spend a day there. The teachers ran their classes with what looked to me like almost magical skill. We sat in the gym together. The sixth-graders looked incredibly young, and the kindergartners so much younger, I couldn’t believe they could sit quietly. But they did. Later, when the cook and some volunteers fed everybody cornbread with warm maple syrup, the principal asked the sixth-graders to "buddy up" with the kindergartners. Each of them took a kindergartner under his wing, helped him through the chow line, and then sat down with him to snack. The sense of family was palpable.
I went with the youngest kids to their classroom. It was clearly for them a place where they did exciting things; where they formed a group that would be together for years; where they felt absolutely safe. They presented me a picture book they’d made, and we went through it page by page. (They’re Abstract Impressionists.) We shared some cookies, and when it came time to leave, I got another round of hugs.
When Vermont decides schools like this are too costly, it will have given up something precious and utterly irretrievable.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.