No, not what I had in mind, although this effect is certainly real (and is, I suspect, counted on by camel's-nose-in-the-tent "experiments" favored by the right, such as trial voucher plans, charter schools, etc.). But I didn't have a top-down dynamic in mind. The reason is the common-sense democratic one (and I don't have access to ed study databases that I once had, or I could probably find a cite or two, but I remember them as embarrassingly common-sensical) that when people get together to shape this institution that directly affects their lives, the institution--what do you know!--will actually work better all around. Per this topic, people tend to like schools on a small scale, so if people organize around it, they should be supported (assuming no racist or elitist agenda)--but it wouldn't be the small school that's really key, it would be the organizing, and the commitment and increased consciousness that follows from it. And this probably comes as no real surprise to anyone on this list.
I added the "localized, short-term" qualifier, maybe too pessimistically, because the "progressive" small-schools report that initiated the thread implies some call for large-scale action, yet I can think of scant few cases where the enthusiastic organization I mention is carried on beyond the time frame of its originators, or beyond the school. Of course, this can be a problem when organizing anything; but I suspect its a special problem in the schooling system, with its inherent contradiction between its stated aim of spreading Enlightenment and its core conservative function of reproducing capitalist society. Everyone smiles and listens and works hard and things go back to just the way they were; it can feel like swimming through a lake of marshmallow fluff. Personally, I know after trying to get seemingly trivial or obvious changes past sometimes very nice school administrators, I've felt myself missing comparatively straightforward struggles with vicious bosses and lying politicians.
BTW, I'm not convinced of the underlying assumption of the report, that small schools are necessarily better. The impetus for the problems (rather vague, when you get down to it) is to me, clearly, the increased social alienation that is a normal part of capitalist development; the small schools push may then be merely another case of Americans using schools as a symbolic locus of a pathology that they aren't willing to face (or even acknowledge) in the larger society. The real problem is how to build social cohesion, citizenship, solidarity, and democracy within the school setting—and I doubt that most people in the ed biz, even (especially?) most self-professed "reformers," really want to do this.
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 19:46:27 -0500
>
>
>Gregory Geboski wrote:
>>
>>
>> Favor small schools on a case-by-case basis? Sure, why not, especially when teachers and parents express great enthusiasm (*the* big factor for short-term localized success) . . .
>
>Is this a version of what used to be called (perhaps still is) the
>"Hawthorn effect"? About 50 years ago there was an article in (I think)
>_College English_ that argued that _all_ formal experiments with "new"
>ideas in teaching freshman comp worked -- for a semester or two, until
>the thrill of being involved in a formal experiment wore off for both
>teachers & students.
>
>Carrol
>
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