Our German teacher, a Jew whose family escaped from Germany prior to World War II, attended the Munich-Schwabing Rudolf Steiner School after the war, and remembers carrying bricks to school in the morning, as many children did, to assist in building the school.
Earlier this week, I learned that an east coast Waldorf high school will close this spring after about five brief years of operation. As I understand it, the school has only about 20 students enrolled for next year, and the powers that be can’t support it. One consultant apparently told the school that is would need to find $2 million in the next few years while it tried to grow to full strength, and advocated closing it if this amount could not be found.
I don’t know that the school made the right decision or the wrong decision, but I do know that a school of only 20 students does not necessarily need $2 million to succeed and grow, given time, creative thinking, appropriate resources, commitment, and a conservative model or business plan. I know that the high school with which I have been involved for the past ten years has graduated five classes; operated in the black for six of ten years—including the past four; paid its debts from the years it was in the red; and hasn’t spent $2 million total in that whole time.
The story of how we built our “organic, free-range” Waldorf high school is worth telling. As a farmer friend of mine, an organic vegetable grower, said toward the beginning of our enterprise, “Someone can tell me how much it costs to grow corn, but that presupposes that I’m going to grow corn according to the prevailing model of corn growing. If I do it in a different way, his assessment of the costs will simply be wrong. Growing corn is the easy part; if I want to succeed and not to pay his costs, my job is to figure out a different way of growing corn.”
It only costs millions of dollars to educate a few private school kids, Waldorf or other, if that’s the model you use to build your school.
Here are the key points that have enabled us to succeed against the odds. (And, don’t be fooled: The odds aren’t very good even if you have pots of money. A day school near us started a high school around the same time we did, poured a few million dollars into it, and, unable to attract sustainable numbers—which, given its model, were much higher than ours—closed it four years later. The only way—the only way—to try to beat the odds is to have an endowment of such size that the existence of the school is ensured regardless of enrollment. And this model, almost impossible to attain, brings a huge and different set of challenges with it.)
1. Independence:
We began as an outgrowth of the Great Barrington Rudolf Steiner School, a pre-K to grade 8 school, and, during our second year, the Board of Trustees voted to close us. We had enrolled 13 students in our pioneer class, but could enroll only 4 for the following year. Our choice was to close or to incorporate independently. We chose the latter, and, as difficult as this separation was, have been grateful for it ever since. Although we recognize the ideological value of being “one school,” this ideology rarely seems to serve practical necessity. We have been able to make our own decisions, stand on our own feet, take our own risks, write our own budget, and not contend with or worry about elementary school teachers, parents, trustees, decision-making, or governance. We incorporated, formed a small board of committed members, found a building in town in which we could rent the second floor, and set to work.
2. Community resources:
We had a building, a used school bus, some blackboards that were hand-made by a trustee’s husband, and a core faculty. What about a library, a science lab, athletic facilities, art studios, and so on? We found them. Students obtained community-use library cards at a local college for $5. The college rented us use of a chem. lab in January and May when their students were on break. All we provided was an insurance waiver and our own chemicals. We scheduled use of the elementary school playing fields for soccer, and, with the elementary school, rented a basketball court at a local athletic center. We rent a performance space and have a “real” theater for our annual play. We mined the area for local artists who could teach in their own studios—pottery, blacksmithing, glass-blowing. Without intending this, exactly, this “practical arts” program became one of the strongest in the school. Yes, there were some disasters. A wonderful weaver turned out not to have the touch with adolescent students. All escaped with their lives.
We may grow to the point at which we no longer require such involvement in the community, but we have grown to value this integration. We plan to continue it long after it is mere necessity. Our students gain immeasurably from having teachers who are professional artists, from meeting community standards of behavior when they’re out of our building, from being treated not like immature teens but like members of a community.
3. Big world:
One of our first ads, copied almost immediately by another school in the area, read “Small school, Big world.” Because we were so small, we deliberately sought to get out into the world, not just in our integration in the local community (see above), but in trips to New York, Montreal, Boston, and, in our third year, Munich and Lima. Students and families raised money, and, ever since, every student has traveled abroad at least once in high school, regardless of ability to pay. Every student at our school can take a semester abroad; what big school can say that?
4. Part-time teachers:
We currently have one full-time teacher/administrator (me), two ¾ time teachers (one in English and drama, one in math and physical science), and two 3/8 time teachers (our foreign language teachers). The rest are paid smaller salaries or work hourly—arts and physical education, mostly, although some itinerant humanities or science teachers. If we had had to wait until we could afford 3-4 full time teachers, we never would have begun. We plan to add full-time teachers as we grow, another possibly next year, and 2-3 more in the next five years. Fortunately, we have found excellent, committed, experienced teachers, many with experience in Waldorf schools, some of good will who otherwise have no prior experience in Waldorf schools, to help us.
5. Combined classes:
With the exception of math sections, we have combined grades or classes throughout our history. Sometimes, as in a foreign language class, this is a compromise—it’s difficult (difficult, but not impossible) to teach two sections simultaneously. Sometimes, as in, say, history or science seminars, it’s a compromise—students have occasionally learned courses out of sequence (modern lit. before medieval history, for example). Sometimes, students have had a course a year earlier or a year later than “the” Waldorf curriculum “says” they should. We have found that our students have thrived, regardless. Their enthusiasm for their school and their education has not been compromised.
Basically, in seminars (what other Waldorf schools call “main lessons”) and other classes, combining classes introduces an economy in that we’re generally paying two teachers where other schools might pay four. We rotate the curriculum every year, so every student graduates having completed every course.
We have found that the educational costs of combining classes are minimal and that the social benefits of combining classes are enormous. We have decided that, even when we can afford not to combine classes, we will still combine many because to do so introduces a healthy cross-class dialogue and understanding that introduces social harmony far outside the classroom. We simply do not have “class consciousness” in our school, and students are as likely to have school friends two years older or younger as they are to have them in their own class.
6. Conservative planning:
By writing a budget based on actual money received, we have crept forward, growing each year from a low of 13 to a current high of 35. When we were in the red, it was because of unforeseen circumstances. In each case, we have been able to adapt, cut our losses, carry debt for a while, and pay it off. Every teacher has deliberately made sacrifices to work here. In at least two cases, teachers worked for a year for no salary in order to support our effort. It could have been different. We came close to closing many times, but, each time, asked ourselves if we could go forward one more semester, one more year. We cannot underestimate the flexibility our small size and conservative view has given us. We have no debt, and we have run a small surplus each of the past three years.
7. Commitment:
Between our first and second year, one parent, committed to our endeavor, announced to what I call the “game of chicken” meeting, that her daughter would be in the school the following year even if she was the only student and the meeting place was someone’s living room. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
I call it the game of chicken because you have a room full of people each of whom would like to send a student to the school, but very few of whom are happy to be the first to commit.
The intense commitment required characterizes our early years, necessarily, because the commitment was to an idea, not yet to a school—we had yet to demonstrate that we could educate students and send them off to college and out into life. (This is the Catch-22 of any school start-up: You have nothing to sell but a vision and those committed to it.)
From the start, we saw no conflict between academic excellence and Waldorf education. We are committed to preparing those students who wish to attend highly selective colleges to do so. Teaching bright, motivated students is easy; the challenge is to teach to the top of each class and then work like heck to bring the rest along.
We also believed completely in the value of the creative, humanistic aspects of Waldorf education. We are committed to educating students to think for themselves and to think of their own lives, responsibly, as creative works-in-progress.
We are not a private school because we believe in private education; if we believed we could teach as we like in a public school, we might do so. But our experience is otherwise. Similarly, we are not a Waldorf school because we believe in Waldorf education. We have found, individually, and for as many reasons as there are teachers who teach here, that the principles of Waldorf education are healthy for adolescents. We do not see ourselves as implementing some already thought-through program, handed down by Steiner or AWSNA, but as educating students according to the best practices and best principles we can find.
8. Small is beautiful:
At first, we apologized for our small size. People believed in us anyway. After a few years, however, we began to discover the value of being small. Small schools are incredibly flexible—fiscally, educationally, you name it. Want photography class? Give us three weeks to locate some equipment and a teacher, and you have it.
Small schools are highly individualized. No one falls between the cracks because there are none. Want to come for one class? We can arrange that. We’ll take your little bit of money, give you a great course, and you’ll contribute to the social life of our school.
Small schools are inclusive. Everyone plays on the sports team or the team doesn’t exist. There’s no room for cliques. The students don’t even date each other—as one boy said to me, “it would be like dating your sister.”
Small schools, necessarily, are creative. If necessity is the mother of invention, at this point we are practically Thomas Edison, and not just the teachers and board members, the students, too. How do you have a Student Council in a school of 35? How can you raise money to go to Germany in such a small community? Many, many of the rules the govern our day—eating out, computer and cell phone policies—were written by the students and approved by the teachers.
9. Miscellaneous
This list could go on and on, and I’d be happy to answer questions for anyone who is interested. We have never had tuition remission. We can’t afford it, and we are all in the same boat. A teacher should pay whatever he or she can, just like everyone else. Fundraising happens because of volunteers and passion. Our business manager has been a volunteer; next year will be the first year we pay someone to oversee accounts. (We have had a paid bookkeeper since the beginning.)
At the graduation of our third senior class, one of our trustees reminded me that this was the first graduation—in our seventh year—that we closed up for the summer knowing that we would reopen in September. He was right; every previous June brought the uncertainty of wondering if we could get everything in place—especially including enough students—to open again in September. Since then, however, we haven’t looked back.
One of our first graduates made a short film about our first three years. She called it “The Pioneers.” By the looks of it, we were all laughing all the time. It was great fun, an adventure. We laughed all day, perhaps, and stared into the darkness at 3 in the morning, when her camera wasn’t running, wondering how long we could keep things going.
She’s now in graduate school in creative writing. Three of our first seven graduates are in graduate school, soon to be four. We’re no longer so young; our board will meet later this week to discuss accreditation and our first five year strategic plan (our strategic plan to date has been, “All hands on deck!”). We have survived, even thrived, so far. In doing so, we’ve learned a lot.
We hope our experience can encourage other small, committed schools and groups to make a go of it, a rational, hard, risky go of it. Adolescents need the best education we can give them, and we can’t rely on one model or one vision to provide this for them.
Showing posts with label small schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small schools. Show all posts
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Friday, November 20, 2009
Growing a Small School and Avoiding the Deadly Middle Ground
I'm often asked how we can keep our tiny high school going--23 students this year, our largest number in our eight years. We have no capital, no cash reserve, and no primary source of funding other than tuitions.
The answer has a few parts. First, we're not paid much. Our salaries are based on $40,000 per year, and all teachers (except me) are part-time. I'm full time but, for now, taking only a part-time salary. Our teachers are sometimes shared with our local elementary Steiner School, each school contributing part of a salary and benefits (we don't offer any benefits through our school; we can't yet afford to). Through our brief history, we have been fortunate to find teachers who are willing to work for less than they're worth; in at least three cases, teachers have donated a year of teaching time.
Some of these teachers will move to full-time when numbers of students and numbers of dollars allow this, but many will continue as part-timers, and that's the way we have planned it. Our potter and our blacksmith, for example, work as professionals most of the year and take time out a couple of afternoons a week for part of the school year to teach our students. These men are not art teachers in the conventional sense; they're working professionals who enjoy teaching what they know to adolescents. The students respect their skill and knowledge, and look forward to their classes.
Second, we use community resources. We're an academic school from 8 a.m. to 12 noon most days, and then a "school without walls" in the afternoon. Students head out to Dan Bellow's pottery studio, John Graney's blacksmith's shop, "Mixed Company" theater, Berkshire Pulse dance studio, Mike Bissaillon's BizFit gym, Simon's Rock College library or chem lab or athletic center--Simon's Rock has been extraordinarily generous, allowing us to use facilities for little rent. To rent or pay community use fees or have these venues donated saves a bundle. How much does it cost to build and maintain a studio or a library or a gym? A lot more than the hourly fees we contribute to most of these places. (It has long struck me that we build and operate tremendous facilities for our public and private school students, and then they sit unused most of the year--school is in session about 180 days, and facilities may be used only a few periods of each of those days. It seems so wasteful.)
Third, we combine classes. We believed initially that mixed-age, mixed-ability classes were a necessary compromise to keep the school going. Now, although we may grow, we will work to maintain at least a few combined classes. Older, more advanced students help younger, less advanced students. Class distinctions blur; the artificial divisions of age--where else in your life except a school classroom do these things matter so much?--recede. Math classes--math is sequential and cumulative, no matter how you teach it--are not combined. But all other classes are likely to be, including English, foreign languages, history, science... This requires us often to teach a curriculum over two years--a course offered one year is not repeated the next; something else is taught in its place. But, over the course of four years of high school, each student receives each required course, often in the company of students older or younger than he or she.
We are growing and we plan to grow--we are in the second year of a five-year plan to grow to 40 students, and we may reach our goal early. We grew this year, in a year when most private school enrollments decreased. And interest for next year is already greater than ever before. About half our new students come from a Steiner or Waldorf school background, and about half come from prep school, public school, or homeschool.
We broke even last year, for the first time, with 20 students. We won't show a surplus this year because we will use any extra revenue to improve our program.
We won't grow too large, however, even if we receive more applicants than we plan for. According to our analysis and our methods, a school can make money up to around 60 students. It can also make money with, let's say, 180 students. Between these rough boundaries, however, lurks a "deadly middle ground," in which a school requires facilities and resources that would enable it to educate larger numbers but that cost more than the revenue it generates. It's interesting to us that many Waldorf high schools fall in this middle range.
We plan to cap enrollment at 56 students--that's four classes of 14 students each, exactly enough to fit in a 14 passenger school bus. And a 14 passenger bus is the largest that a teacher can drive without a commercial license. A full enrollment of 56 would allow us to send each class to a different location each day, each in its own bus. More than that, and we'd have to add teachers and resources (including a bus) that would cost more than they're worth.
The answer has a few parts. First, we're not paid much. Our salaries are based on $40,000 per year, and all teachers (except me) are part-time. I'm full time but, for now, taking only a part-time salary. Our teachers are sometimes shared with our local elementary Steiner School, each school contributing part of a salary and benefits (we don't offer any benefits through our school; we can't yet afford to). Through our brief history, we have been fortunate to find teachers who are willing to work for less than they're worth; in at least three cases, teachers have donated a year of teaching time.
Some of these teachers will move to full-time when numbers of students and numbers of dollars allow this, but many will continue as part-timers, and that's the way we have planned it. Our potter and our blacksmith, for example, work as professionals most of the year and take time out a couple of afternoons a week for part of the school year to teach our students. These men are not art teachers in the conventional sense; they're working professionals who enjoy teaching what they know to adolescents. The students respect their skill and knowledge, and look forward to their classes.
Second, we use community resources. We're an academic school from 8 a.m. to 12 noon most days, and then a "school without walls" in the afternoon. Students head out to Dan Bellow's pottery studio, John Graney's blacksmith's shop, "Mixed Company" theater, Berkshire Pulse dance studio, Mike Bissaillon's BizFit gym, Simon's Rock College library or chem lab or athletic center--Simon's Rock has been extraordinarily generous, allowing us to use facilities for little rent. To rent or pay community use fees or have these venues donated saves a bundle. How much does it cost to build and maintain a studio or a library or a gym? A lot more than the hourly fees we contribute to most of these places. (It has long struck me that we build and operate tremendous facilities for our public and private school students, and then they sit unused most of the year--school is in session about 180 days, and facilities may be used only a few periods of each of those days. It seems so wasteful.)
Third, we combine classes. We believed initially that mixed-age, mixed-ability classes were a necessary compromise to keep the school going. Now, although we may grow, we will work to maintain at least a few combined classes. Older, more advanced students help younger, less advanced students. Class distinctions blur; the artificial divisions of age--where else in your life except a school classroom do these things matter so much?--recede. Math classes--math is sequential and cumulative, no matter how you teach it--are not combined. But all other classes are likely to be, including English, foreign languages, history, science... This requires us often to teach a curriculum over two years--a course offered one year is not repeated the next; something else is taught in its place. But, over the course of four years of high school, each student receives each required course, often in the company of students older or younger than he or she.
We are growing and we plan to grow--we are in the second year of a five-year plan to grow to 40 students, and we may reach our goal early. We grew this year, in a year when most private school enrollments decreased. And interest for next year is already greater than ever before. About half our new students come from a Steiner or Waldorf school background, and about half come from prep school, public school, or homeschool.
We broke even last year, for the first time, with 20 students. We won't show a surplus this year because we will use any extra revenue to improve our program.
We won't grow too large, however, even if we receive more applicants than we plan for. According to our analysis and our methods, a school can make money up to around 60 students. It can also make money with, let's say, 180 students. Between these rough boundaries, however, lurks a "deadly middle ground," in which a school requires facilities and resources that would enable it to educate larger numbers but that cost more than the revenue it generates. It's interesting to us that many Waldorf high schools fall in this middle range.
We plan to cap enrollment at 56 students--that's four classes of 14 students each, exactly enough to fit in a 14 passenger school bus. And a 14 passenger bus is the largest that a teacher can drive without a commercial license. A full enrollment of 56 would allow us to send each class to a different location each day, each in its own bus. More than that, and we'd have to add teachers and resources (including a bus) that would cost more than they're worth.
Monday, February 9, 2009
A Small School in Medicine Root
Drive southeast from Rapid City, South Dakota, on Route 44, down into the Cheyenne River valley, past the ranches on the plateaus above the river, on poor land that will soon look rich by comparison with the near-desert given to the Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Pass through Scenic, SD, the last, depressed storefronts before the Rez, and pass within sight of the rock castles of the Badlands in their Roadrunner-and-Wile E. Coyote strangeness. Now you’re on the reservation itself. The herds of shaggy beef cattle and blunt-nosed, round-bellied horses, animals that ignore the low barbed-wire fences that line the roads, belong to Lakota ranchers. The rolling, treeless hills trick an east-coast eye. Is that next ridge half a mile away, or five miles? Oncoming headlights appear minutes before you pass an old truck, Lakota men seated three abreast, gone at 70 mph--140 if you add your own speed to theirs. Small ash trees, cottonwoods and scruffy pines huddle and snake through creases between the hills.
The Pine Ridge Reservation is only a bit smaller than Massachusetts--minus Cape Cod--about 50 miles north to south and 100 miles east to west. Depending on whom you ask, the population is between 15,000 and 30,000 people. The U.S. government census of 1990 lists a smaller figure of little more than 12,000, but two Lakota men with whom I spoke emphasized the larger number. Many of the Lakota, they claimed, lead semi-nomadic lives, lives that stretch from Alberta to Nevada, and that disdain the white distinction between nations such as Canada and the United States. Further, suspicion of the government certainly leads to underreporting and to a lack of faith that any attempt is really made to obtain an accurate number. A smaller number, they claim, means fewer dollars for the Reservation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Turn left at the convenience store in Sharp’s Corner, and drive eight miles to Kyle (“Pejuta Haka,” “Medicine Root,” in Lakota). Trailers, shacks and small houses, some old, some new, are scattered like dice over the landscape. Many have half a dozen old cars, scavenged for parts, up on blocks or down in mud and frost, littering the yards. A halo of old tires, clothes lines--laundry sideways in the wind--and children’s toys around each house soon gives way to the relentless rise and fall of the grassy hills. Oddly, the untidiness of this rural poverty can’t compete with the bed of landscape and sheet of sky; what would be eyesores elsewhere are swallowed by the majesty of the land. People with an astonishing gift for painting and sculpture easily ignore the junkyard aesthetic of their own homes. (On the other hand, describing white people’s impressions of the Rez, John Haas said, “You see ‘Dances With Wolves’ and think, ‘How beautiful!’ You wouldn’t mind driving around. But a week of driving 200 miles a day will change your mind.” It’s 80 miles or so to the nearest supermarkets, in Rapid City.)
A right on a rutted dirt road puts you within sight of the Wolakota Waldorf School, two trailers, one doublewide, the other not. Three vans, one of which works, a Ford, a Dodge and a Chevy--effectively preventing part-swapping that might make life a bit easier--are parked before the west side of the main building. On the wall is a medicine wheel, a circle enclosing a cross, about eight feet in diameter, painted in traditional colors, black, red, yellow, and white. Four directions, four winds, four races of people.
The trailer opens into a main room--classroom, dining room and kitchen in one. Off one end are a larder, the bathroom and an office. Off the other, the teacher’s bedroom. Six students presently attend the school, three in kindergarten and three in first grade. The kindergarten teacher, who lives at the school, is a white man named Christopher Young (who is, incidentally, my half-brother). He attended Waldorf schools himself on the east coast--the Hawthorne Valley School and The Waldorf School of Garden City--and had some observation and student-teaching experience before he took the job in South Dakota. The first grade teacher lives nearby with his family. His name is Reggie Little Killer. He is a Lakota man, a Marine veteran and a Mormon. He believes strongly in Waldorf education, he says, but has little experience of it and virtually no training in its methods.
School comes with breakfast and lunch. There is no tuition. Unemployment runs between 75% and 85% on the Reservation, and most families clearly cannot afford to pay even a small tuition. The teachers are paid $10,000 to $12,000 per year from money raised primarily in Europe, especially in Germany and Switzerland. Some summers, Mr. Young or Mr. Little Killer travel to Europe with photographs of the school, visiting different Waldorf schools, raising money. Isabel Stadnick, wife of Bob Stadnick, deceased, one of the founders of the Wolakota Waldorf School, also raises money for the school in Switzerland. The school also receives small contributions from some Waldorf schools in the United States, and is planning a more concerted fund-raising effort.
The Reservation, I hear, attracts a large number of central and northern European tourists in the summer (I was there in bleak February). Many come for a “spiritual” experience they cannot seem to find in Europe but that they believe lives strongly in the native Americans and the austere land of the Rez. A Swedish woman camped alone on a butte, vision-questing. It’s something of a joke to the Lakota, for many of whom spirituality is simply not something foreign or exotic. I was impressed, for example, by the effortless, seamless expression of prayer before a conference I attended and before each meal. Everyone stands, and someone is asked to say a prayer. The prayers I heard were an easy combination of Lakota tradition--mention of the Great Spirit, grandparents before us and grandchildren after us--and Protestant Christianity--ad hoc, “traveling mercies” for those attending, and thanks for the gifts around us. Some were in English, some in Lakota. Some ended with “Amen,” some with the Lakota words “Mi’takuye’ Oya’s’in,” “All of my relations.” Before sitting, many Lakota would add the phrase, “Oh han,” expressing agreement with what had just been said. If the Lakota have formulaic, written, memorized prayers, I did not hear them.
In the late 1980s, several Lakota people, including John Haas, Lemoine Pulliam, Robert Stadnick, and Ermina Red Owl, active in local schools but suspicious of involvement with the elected tribal Council, believed there had to be a better way to educate children. Dropout rates at the public schools on the Rez were approximately 70%, they said. Schools, under Federal law, could not acknowledge Lakota spiritual traditions, which would conflict with the “establishment of religion” clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And as money found its way from the BIA through the tribal Council to the schools, it was allegedly funneled off by rampant corruption of elected and appointed school officials and others. School governance, spirituality, and teaching and learning. In each of these areas, these people believed, there had to be a better way to educate children. And in their research, according to John Haas, the one name that cropped up again and again was “Waldorf.” So, knowing relatively little beyond what they had read, they founded the Wolakota Waldorf Society.
Robert Stadnick, school custodian at the public Little Wound School in Kyle; Norman Underbaggage, a lawyer; and Richard Moves Camp, a medicine man from nearby Wanbli, SD, traveled to Dornach, Switzerland, to research Waldorf education. There they met with Dr. Heinz Zimmerman, head of the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society, who was “extremely enthusiastic about the idea” of a Waldorf school on the reservation, according to a promotional pamphlet produced by Mr. Stadnick. This trip raised money for the school, as well, which then opened in 1993. The small school began with only a kindergarten, but the founders hoped it would find support in the community and grow quickly through twelve grades.
According to some rumors, however, rumors that have hurt fundraising efforts since, Mr. Stadnick appropriated some of the money intended for the school in order to build himself a large house. (The house is now a bed-and-breakfast owned and run by Lemoine Pulliam and his German wife, Ulrike Frei. It is by far the largest and best appointed house I saw on the Reservation, although in a middle class suburb of any city in the United States it would pass unnoticed but for four round rooms that protrude from the ground floor. These are based on traditional tipis; Lakota life is lived in a circle literally and metaphorically.) It would be almost impossible to substantiate--or disprove--such rumors today, but, according to another version of the story, Mr. Stadnick’s wife, Isabel, brought money of her own to the marriage, money enough to build a large house.
Climb a small hill behind the school, less than two hundred yards, and you can see the rocky spine of a ridge a mile to the south, beyond the school and the track of the road. Hills roll for miles to the north. East, one small house. Little else. The wind drives ice before it, and provides the only sound. At your feet, another medicine wheel, about 18 inches in diameter, made of small rocks and pebbles. In the center, wrapped in red cloth tied at the ends, like hard candies, are ceremonial offerings, probably tobacco. Here, in what is literally the backyard of the Waldorf school, people used to come on vision quests. Again, I am struck by the nearness to the road, the school, the town. Spirituality is part of life here, not distant in space or in mind. I walk down the hill, away from the tiny acropolis behind this struggling school.
***
At the invitation of the Wolakota Waldorf School, I returned to participate in a teacher-training workshop. I remained after the conference to see the school in operation. The day I observed was typical in most respects. History cannot be built on one day of observation, but this day contributes to an image of contemporary Waldorf schools, an image that is part of a changing history.
The school has three teachers now: Susan Bunting, an experienced, trained kindergarten teacher from England and then Vermont; Christopher Young (mentioned above); and Edwin Around Him, a jack-of-all-trades who teaches Lakota language and culture. There is talk of, eventually, converting the school into a Lakota immersion school. (Reggie Little Killer discovered that teaching was not the career for him, and has moved on.) The school has grown from 6 to 21 students in kindergarten and third grade. Mr. Young, in good Waldorf tradition, has remained with the class that he started with in first grade. Because money and teachers were lacking, this means there are no first nor second grades. Mr. Young and Ms. Bunting are certain that, with funding, they could add first and second (and next year, third) grades. They have a small pool of talented and interested local people, two Lakota and one white, who would be willing to teach, and many families who would send students to the school. Mr. Young and Ms. Bunting are in the middle of a fundraising campaign, based on a poster and a letter from the school, and their joy was obvious at receiving a $100 donation from a medical doctor on the east coast the day I observed. They presently run the school, including instructional salaries, on $32,000 per year, or about $75 per day excluding salaries.
Their day begins before 6 am, putting classrooms in order for the day, and by 7:15 Mr. Young left to drive an hour and a quarter bus route to pick up about two-thirds of the students (the rest are dropped off by their parents). Ms. Bunting stayed at the school to prepare breakfast for all of us. Mr. Young stopped first at a general store--an unmarked metal barn with gas pumps out front--to pick up milk. The store doesn’t need a sign because everyone knows about it, Mr. Young said, and it stays in business by bootlegging alcohol, illegally, from the back.
The bus route wound through the town of Kyle and surroundings. Children appeared from derelict trailers, run-down government-built housing, and small ranch houses. They were neatly but frequently underdressed, and got in the van eagerly. They obviously had much affection for Mr. Young, telling him “knock-knock” jokes and teasing him. They also were precociously aware of mainstream American culture, far from the Rez, talking about movies like “The Matrix” and “Fast and Furious.” Their conversation was larded with violent images (“I’ll blow up that house with my bazooka.”), but my overriding impression was of their sweetness and openness. They looked after each other in small ways, buckling the seat belts of younger children, offering to lend a sweater, and asked many questions about my life in Massachusetts. Given the harsh home lives and poverty from which many of the children come, they were extremely well-disciplined and mature. A calm word from a teacher was enough to still them instantly. Eleven children, about two-thirds of the possible total, got on the van. Mondays and Fridays are not well-attended, Mr. Young told me, because of family activities that may involve driving to or from a powwow, for example.
We returned to the school a bit after 8:30, and all the students followed Mr. Young to the top of a knoll behind the school. We stood in a circle, as they do each morning, to say the morning verse. Then Mr. Young greeted each student in Lakota. Some responded in Lakota, and some in English (all but one of the students is Lakota).
Breakfast was cold cereal and milk, sugar or honey, and fruit juice. The tables were laid immaculately, with cloth napkins and rings, and children sat to bless the meal and eat. They chatted during breakfast, the routine well-established. After breakfast, the teachers put out bins of soapy water and students cleaned and dried their own dishes; a couple took it on themselves to wash my dishes for me.
The kindergarten children left the table to play, which they did spontaneously and imaginatively. The two boys who had been discussing bazookas and explosions on the bus stood at a play stove cooking an imaginary meal for the rest of the class. Other students built with blocks or played with dolls.
The third grade building is a shed, really, with a classroom about 15 by 20 feet behind an unfinished plywood alcove or mudroom off which are an enclosed toilet and a small storage closet. Untrimmed windows look roughly north and south, and a “blackboard” is painted on the east wall. Student paintings are pinned to the walls, and some seedlings rest on a shelf near the south window. There is a sink and some storage space in the rear of the room, with a recognizable clutter of painting supplies, chalk, beeswax for modeling, crayons and drinking mugs. The desks and chairs are hand-me downs from the local public school, or look like this, formica and brown-painted steel. The walls are painted a cool blue. There are 7 third graders.
The third graders sauntered up to their building, where they said another verse and then answered math problems that Mr. Young asked them to solve in their heads. Their abilities varied tremendously, and Mr. Young tailored his questions appropriately. He then asked for quiet and told part of the Lakota creation myth. Mr. Young spoke the names of the gods in Lakota, so it was hard for me to follow, but the story involved the creation of plants, with their differently colored flowers, and animals, with their different numbers of legs. When Mr. Young sensed attention flagging, he ended the lesson, and the students poured out for recess.
The playground consisted of a small swing, a climbing structure, and a (broken) slide. These occupied one end of a level dirt patch about 25 yards long and 10 yards wide. In the middle was one pole of a broken volleyball set, with shreds of netting wrapped around it. The children quickly decided to play an imaginative game of tag, similar to “Red Rover”, with the volleyball pole as “home base.” They were remarkably uncompetitive, taking the game seriously, but not crowing about winning, losing, or rules violations. This attitude manifested throughout the day in each activity, and I take it to be part of their culture, part that has not been destroyed by the circumstances of their lives. One boy had brought a baseball and bat, and I pitched in turn to those who wanted to play. Each batted until he got one solid hit, then gave the bat to the next hitter. Older children helped younger ones hold the bat and stand properly.
Following recess, the class returned for a brief math class, and then it was time for lunch--sausages, potatoes and mixed frozen vegetables. Several of the students drowned their food in ketchup. The routine was the same as that at breakfast, although some of the kindergarten children were noticeably tired, slumping in their chairs and having a hard time finishing their meals. (Ms. Bunting described some students living in large extended families in very small houses, and not getting to sleep until after midnight.) After lunch, the kindergarten bedded down for rest, and the third grade had painting. Once again, their mood was calm, serious, and good-humored. They were eager and helpful in setting up to paint and cleaning the room at the end of the day. A stepladder from outside the building was brushed off to provide an easel on which the teacher could demonstrate.
School ended at 2:30, and students piled into the van. Mr. Young’s route was extra-long because one parent had asked him to drop his daughter off at her aunt’s house, far outside of town. Mr. Young returned to the school a bit after 4 pm, during which time Ms. Bunting had washed the pots from lunch. They had about an hour to unwind before they cooked dinner for themselves (and me), cleaned up, maintained buildings or van or kept appointments in town, and began to prepare for the following day. The pace at which Mr. Young and Ms. Bunting worked was relaxed and deliberate but ceaseless. While students were in the school, the teachers’ focus never left them.
Monday is not a Lakota language day, so Mr. Around Him was not officially there, although he showed up at lunch time to discuss car trouble he was having. As soon as he walked throught the door, he was surrounded by, especially, the younger students. They clung to him and gazed at his face. (Mr. Around Him normally drives the van, but suffered a diabetic seizure a couple of weeks before I arrived and was awaiting a doctor’s clearance to continue this work.)
The day I observed was postcard-perfect, warming quickly into the 80s. Other days, the dirt roads are impassably rutted, or the van won’t start. Then Mr. Young cancels school and waits, or repairs the van. There is no set number of school days, and the schedule is extremely flexible. Mr. Around Him is expected on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but lives far from town and does not have a reliable vehicle. The school runs on “Indian time,” something Mr. Young seemed more content with than did Ms. Bunting, although, often, neither has a choice.
I realized on this second visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation that, despite my attempts at a realistic view of, for example, Native American spirituality, I had romanticized it. I had initially taken, for instance, the prayer wheels on the school building and on the top of the knoll behind the school as evidence of a worldview. Come to find out that both are the work of German visitors, not of the Lakota people.
Before dinner on the first day of my second visit, Edwin Around Him held a small styrofoam bowl containing bits of each of the dishes we were to eat. We stood in a circle and he said a prayer in Lakota. Then he handed the bowl to Mr. Young and said brightly, “Now, go run up that hill!” I assumed the food would be placed at the top of the knoll as an offering to the spirits.
After dinner we walked up the hill to survey the school’s land and picture plans for developing the school when more money is raised. No styrofoam bowl in sight! A new, larger medicine wheel in a saddle between two small hills, however. I turned to Mr. Young: “You’ve got a new, larger medicine wheel,” I said. “Yeah,” he said, resignedly, “the Germans built it last summer.” “And where’s the bowl of food?” I asked. “Oh, around the corner of the school,” he said, which meant that it was in some undergrowth near the non-working vans. “You don’t take it anywhere in particular?” “No, just outside.” Telling Mr. Young to run up the hill had been a joke for my benfit.
Here I was, continually arguing against the improper objectification of things like Waldorf education that were not objects, coming to realize that I hadn’t given the Lakota credit for the same concept. Tops of hills, medicine wheels made of stone, and small dishes of food are not the point. The land on which we were standing wasn’t even Indian land until a bit over a hundred years ago when the Lakota were sent there, from more fertile and arguably more beautiful land in the Black Hills, by the whites. The Lakota could find a holy site, or make one, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but if life took them elsewhere, as it had brought them here, they could do the same.
(Since I wrote this in 2002, Lemoine Pulliam died--he was diabetic--and Ulrike left the reservation, likely to return to Germany. The school closed briefly after Chris Young moved to New Hampshire, but it retained its Board of Trustees and then re-opened as a kindergarten only. Patricia Lambert is the current kindergarten teacher. The school's current website is http://www.lakotawaldorfschool.org.)
The Pine Ridge Reservation is only a bit smaller than Massachusetts--minus Cape Cod--about 50 miles north to south and 100 miles east to west. Depending on whom you ask, the population is between 15,000 and 30,000 people. The U.S. government census of 1990 lists a smaller figure of little more than 12,000, but two Lakota men with whom I spoke emphasized the larger number. Many of the Lakota, they claimed, lead semi-nomadic lives, lives that stretch from Alberta to Nevada, and that disdain the white distinction between nations such as Canada and the United States. Further, suspicion of the government certainly leads to underreporting and to a lack of faith that any attempt is really made to obtain an accurate number. A smaller number, they claim, means fewer dollars for the Reservation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Turn left at the convenience store in Sharp’s Corner, and drive eight miles to Kyle (“Pejuta Haka,” “Medicine Root,” in Lakota). Trailers, shacks and small houses, some old, some new, are scattered like dice over the landscape. Many have half a dozen old cars, scavenged for parts, up on blocks or down in mud and frost, littering the yards. A halo of old tires, clothes lines--laundry sideways in the wind--and children’s toys around each house soon gives way to the relentless rise and fall of the grassy hills. Oddly, the untidiness of this rural poverty can’t compete with the bed of landscape and sheet of sky; what would be eyesores elsewhere are swallowed by the majesty of the land. People with an astonishing gift for painting and sculpture easily ignore the junkyard aesthetic of their own homes. (On the other hand, describing white people’s impressions of the Rez, John Haas said, “You see ‘Dances With Wolves’ and think, ‘How beautiful!’ You wouldn’t mind driving around. But a week of driving 200 miles a day will change your mind.” It’s 80 miles or so to the nearest supermarkets, in Rapid City.)
A right on a rutted dirt road puts you within sight of the Wolakota Waldorf School, two trailers, one doublewide, the other not. Three vans, one of which works, a Ford, a Dodge and a Chevy--effectively preventing part-swapping that might make life a bit easier--are parked before the west side of the main building. On the wall is a medicine wheel, a circle enclosing a cross, about eight feet in diameter, painted in traditional colors, black, red, yellow, and white. Four directions, four winds, four races of people.
The trailer opens into a main room--classroom, dining room and kitchen in one. Off one end are a larder, the bathroom and an office. Off the other, the teacher’s bedroom. Six students presently attend the school, three in kindergarten and three in first grade. The kindergarten teacher, who lives at the school, is a white man named Christopher Young (who is, incidentally, my half-brother). He attended Waldorf schools himself on the east coast--the Hawthorne Valley School and The Waldorf School of Garden City--and had some observation and student-teaching experience before he took the job in South Dakota. The first grade teacher lives nearby with his family. His name is Reggie Little Killer. He is a Lakota man, a Marine veteran and a Mormon. He believes strongly in Waldorf education, he says, but has little experience of it and virtually no training in its methods.
School comes with breakfast and lunch. There is no tuition. Unemployment runs between 75% and 85% on the Reservation, and most families clearly cannot afford to pay even a small tuition. The teachers are paid $10,000 to $12,000 per year from money raised primarily in Europe, especially in Germany and Switzerland. Some summers, Mr. Young or Mr. Little Killer travel to Europe with photographs of the school, visiting different Waldorf schools, raising money. Isabel Stadnick, wife of Bob Stadnick, deceased, one of the founders of the Wolakota Waldorf School, also raises money for the school in Switzerland. The school also receives small contributions from some Waldorf schools in the United States, and is planning a more concerted fund-raising effort.
The Reservation, I hear, attracts a large number of central and northern European tourists in the summer (I was there in bleak February). Many come for a “spiritual” experience they cannot seem to find in Europe but that they believe lives strongly in the native Americans and the austere land of the Rez. A Swedish woman camped alone on a butte, vision-questing. It’s something of a joke to the Lakota, for many of whom spirituality is simply not something foreign or exotic. I was impressed, for example, by the effortless, seamless expression of prayer before a conference I attended and before each meal. Everyone stands, and someone is asked to say a prayer. The prayers I heard were an easy combination of Lakota tradition--mention of the Great Spirit, grandparents before us and grandchildren after us--and Protestant Christianity--ad hoc, “traveling mercies” for those attending, and thanks for the gifts around us. Some were in English, some in Lakota. Some ended with “Amen,” some with the Lakota words “Mi’takuye’ Oya’s’in,” “All of my relations.” Before sitting, many Lakota would add the phrase, “Oh han,” expressing agreement with what had just been said. If the Lakota have formulaic, written, memorized prayers, I did not hear them.
In the late 1980s, several Lakota people, including John Haas, Lemoine Pulliam, Robert Stadnick, and Ermina Red Owl, active in local schools but suspicious of involvement with the elected tribal Council, believed there had to be a better way to educate children. Dropout rates at the public schools on the Rez were approximately 70%, they said. Schools, under Federal law, could not acknowledge Lakota spiritual traditions, which would conflict with the “establishment of religion” clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And as money found its way from the BIA through the tribal Council to the schools, it was allegedly funneled off by rampant corruption of elected and appointed school officials and others. School governance, spirituality, and teaching and learning. In each of these areas, these people believed, there had to be a better way to educate children. And in their research, according to John Haas, the one name that cropped up again and again was “Waldorf.” So, knowing relatively little beyond what they had read, they founded the Wolakota Waldorf Society.
Robert Stadnick, school custodian at the public Little Wound School in Kyle; Norman Underbaggage, a lawyer; and Richard Moves Camp, a medicine man from nearby Wanbli, SD, traveled to Dornach, Switzerland, to research Waldorf education. There they met with Dr. Heinz Zimmerman, head of the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society, who was “extremely enthusiastic about the idea” of a Waldorf school on the reservation, according to a promotional pamphlet produced by Mr. Stadnick. This trip raised money for the school, as well, which then opened in 1993. The small school began with only a kindergarten, but the founders hoped it would find support in the community and grow quickly through twelve grades.
According to some rumors, however, rumors that have hurt fundraising efforts since, Mr. Stadnick appropriated some of the money intended for the school in order to build himself a large house. (The house is now a bed-and-breakfast owned and run by Lemoine Pulliam and his German wife, Ulrike Frei. It is by far the largest and best appointed house I saw on the Reservation, although in a middle class suburb of any city in the United States it would pass unnoticed but for four round rooms that protrude from the ground floor. These are based on traditional tipis; Lakota life is lived in a circle literally and metaphorically.) It would be almost impossible to substantiate--or disprove--such rumors today, but, according to another version of the story, Mr. Stadnick’s wife, Isabel, brought money of her own to the marriage, money enough to build a large house.
Climb a small hill behind the school, less than two hundred yards, and you can see the rocky spine of a ridge a mile to the south, beyond the school and the track of the road. Hills roll for miles to the north. East, one small house. Little else. The wind drives ice before it, and provides the only sound. At your feet, another medicine wheel, about 18 inches in diameter, made of small rocks and pebbles. In the center, wrapped in red cloth tied at the ends, like hard candies, are ceremonial offerings, probably tobacco. Here, in what is literally the backyard of the Waldorf school, people used to come on vision quests. Again, I am struck by the nearness to the road, the school, the town. Spirituality is part of life here, not distant in space or in mind. I walk down the hill, away from the tiny acropolis behind this struggling school.
***
At the invitation of the Wolakota Waldorf School, I returned to participate in a teacher-training workshop. I remained after the conference to see the school in operation. The day I observed was typical in most respects. History cannot be built on one day of observation, but this day contributes to an image of contemporary Waldorf schools, an image that is part of a changing history.
The school has three teachers now: Susan Bunting, an experienced, trained kindergarten teacher from England and then Vermont; Christopher Young (mentioned above); and Edwin Around Him, a jack-of-all-trades who teaches Lakota language and culture. There is talk of, eventually, converting the school into a Lakota immersion school. (Reggie Little Killer discovered that teaching was not the career for him, and has moved on.) The school has grown from 6 to 21 students in kindergarten and third grade. Mr. Young, in good Waldorf tradition, has remained with the class that he started with in first grade. Because money and teachers were lacking, this means there are no first nor second grades. Mr. Young and Ms. Bunting are certain that, with funding, they could add first and second (and next year, third) grades. They have a small pool of talented and interested local people, two Lakota and one white, who would be willing to teach, and many families who would send students to the school. Mr. Young and Ms. Bunting are in the middle of a fundraising campaign, based on a poster and a letter from the school, and their joy was obvious at receiving a $100 donation from a medical doctor on the east coast the day I observed. They presently run the school, including instructional salaries, on $32,000 per year, or about $75 per day excluding salaries.
Their day begins before 6 am, putting classrooms in order for the day, and by 7:15 Mr. Young left to drive an hour and a quarter bus route to pick up about two-thirds of the students (the rest are dropped off by their parents). Ms. Bunting stayed at the school to prepare breakfast for all of us. Mr. Young stopped first at a general store--an unmarked metal barn with gas pumps out front--to pick up milk. The store doesn’t need a sign because everyone knows about it, Mr. Young said, and it stays in business by bootlegging alcohol, illegally, from the back.
The bus route wound through the town of Kyle and surroundings. Children appeared from derelict trailers, run-down government-built housing, and small ranch houses. They were neatly but frequently underdressed, and got in the van eagerly. They obviously had much affection for Mr. Young, telling him “knock-knock” jokes and teasing him. They also were precociously aware of mainstream American culture, far from the Rez, talking about movies like “The Matrix” and “Fast and Furious.” Their conversation was larded with violent images (“I’ll blow up that house with my bazooka.”), but my overriding impression was of their sweetness and openness. They looked after each other in small ways, buckling the seat belts of younger children, offering to lend a sweater, and asked many questions about my life in Massachusetts. Given the harsh home lives and poverty from which many of the children come, they were extremely well-disciplined and mature. A calm word from a teacher was enough to still them instantly. Eleven children, about two-thirds of the possible total, got on the van. Mondays and Fridays are not well-attended, Mr. Young told me, because of family activities that may involve driving to or from a powwow, for example.
We returned to the school a bit after 8:30, and all the students followed Mr. Young to the top of a knoll behind the school. We stood in a circle, as they do each morning, to say the morning verse. Then Mr. Young greeted each student in Lakota. Some responded in Lakota, and some in English (all but one of the students is Lakota).
Breakfast was cold cereal and milk, sugar or honey, and fruit juice. The tables were laid immaculately, with cloth napkins and rings, and children sat to bless the meal and eat. They chatted during breakfast, the routine well-established. After breakfast, the teachers put out bins of soapy water and students cleaned and dried their own dishes; a couple took it on themselves to wash my dishes for me.
The kindergarten children left the table to play, which they did spontaneously and imaginatively. The two boys who had been discussing bazookas and explosions on the bus stood at a play stove cooking an imaginary meal for the rest of the class. Other students built with blocks or played with dolls.
The third grade building is a shed, really, with a classroom about 15 by 20 feet behind an unfinished plywood alcove or mudroom off which are an enclosed toilet and a small storage closet. Untrimmed windows look roughly north and south, and a “blackboard” is painted on the east wall. Student paintings are pinned to the walls, and some seedlings rest on a shelf near the south window. There is a sink and some storage space in the rear of the room, with a recognizable clutter of painting supplies, chalk, beeswax for modeling, crayons and drinking mugs. The desks and chairs are hand-me downs from the local public school, or look like this, formica and brown-painted steel. The walls are painted a cool blue. There are 7 third graders.
The third graders sauntered up to their building, where they said another verse and then answered math problems that Mr. Young asked them to solve in their heads. Their abilities varied tremendously, and Mr. Young tailored his questions appropriately. He then asked for quiet and told part of the Lakota creation myth. Mr. Young spoke the names of the gods in Lakota, so it was hard for me to follow, but the story involved the creation of plants, with their differently colored flowers, and animals, with their different numbers of legs. When Mr. Young sensed attention flagging, he ended the lesson, and the students poured out for recess.
The playground consisted of a small swing, a climbing structure, and a (broken) slide. These occupied one end of a level dirt patch about 25 yards long and 10 yards wide. In the middle was one pole of a broken volleyball set, with shreds of netting wrapped around it. The children quickly decided to play an imaginative game of tag, similar to “Red Rover”, with the volleyball pole as “home base.” They were remarkably uncompetitive, taking the game seriously, but not crowing about winning, losing, or rules violations. This attitude manifested throughout the day in each activity, and I take it to be part of their culture, part that has not been destroyed by the circumstances of their lives. One boy had brought a baseball and bat, and I pitched in turn to those who wanted to play. Each batted until he got one solid hit, then gave the bat to the next hitter. Older children helped younger ones hold the bat and stand properly.
Following recess, the class returned for a brief math class, and then it was time for lunch--sausages, potatoes and mixed frozen vegetables. Several of the students drowned their food in ketchup. The routine was the same as that at breakfast, although some of the kindergarten children were noticeably tired, slumping in their chairs and having a hard time finishing their meals. (Ms. Bunting described some students living in large extended families in very small houses, and not getting to sleep until after midnight.) After lunch, the kindergarten bedded down for rest, and the third grade had painting. Once again, their mood was calm, serious, and good-humored. They were eager and helpful in setting up to paint and cleaning the room at the end of the day. A stepladder from outside the building was brushed off to provide an easel on which the teacher could demonstrate.
School ended at 2:30, and students piled into the van. Mr. Young’s route was extra-long because one parent had asked him to drop his daughter off at her aunt’s house, far outside of town. Mr. Young returned to the school a bit after 4 pm, during which time Ms. Bunting had washed the pots from lunch. They had about an hour to unwind before they cooked dinner for themselves (and me), cleaned up, maintained buildings or van or kept appointments in town, and began to prepare for the following day. The pace at which Mr. Young and Ms. Bunting worked was relaxed and deliberate but ceaseless. While students were in the school, the teachers’ focus never left them.
Monday is not a Lakota language day, so Mr. Around Him was not officially there, although he showed up at lunch time to discuss car trouble he was having. As soon as he walked throught the door, he was surrounded by, especially, the younger students. They clung to him and gazed at his face. (Mr. Around Him normally drives the van, but suffered a diabetic seizure a couple of weeks before I arrived and was awaiting a doctor’s clearance to continue this work.)
The day I observed was postcard-perfect, warming quickly into the 80s. Other days, the dirt roads are impassably rutted, or the van won’t start. Then Mr. Young cancels school and waits, or repairs the van. There is no set number of school days, and the schedule is extremely flexible. Mr. Around Him is expected on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but lives far from town and does not have a reliable vehicle. The school runs on “Indian time,” something Mr. Young seemed more content with than did Ms. Bunting, although, often, neither has a choice.
I realized on this second visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation that, despite my attempts at a realistic view of, for example, Native American spirituality, I had romanticized it. I had initially taken, for instance, the prayer wheels on the school building and on the top of the knoll behind the school as evidence of a worldview. Come to find out that both are the work of German visitors, not of the Lakota people.
Before dinner on the first day of my second visit, Edwin Around Him held a small styrofoam bowl containing bits of each of the dishes we were to eat. We stood in a circle and he said a prayer in Lakota. Then he handed the bowl to Mr. Young and said brightly, “Now, go run up that hill!” I assumed the food would be placed at the top of the knoll as an offering to the spirits.
After dinner we walked up the hill to survey the school’s land and picture plans for developing the school when more money is raised. No styrofoam bowl in sight! A new, larger medicine wheel in a saddle between two small hills, however. I turned to Mr. Young: “You’ve got a new, larger medicine wheel,” I said. “Yeah,” he said, resignedly, “the Germans built it last summer.” “And where’s the bowl of food?” I asked. “Oh, around the corner of the school,” he said, which meant that it was in some undergrowth near the non-working vans. “You don’t take it anywhere in particular?” “No, just outside.” Telling Mr. Young to run up the hill had been a joke for my benfit.
Here I was, continually arguing against the improper objectification of things like Waldorf education that were not objects, coming to realize that I hadn’t given the Lakota credit for the same concept. Tops of hills, medicine wheels made of stone, and small dishes of food are not the point. The land on which we were standing wasn’t even Indian land until a bit over a hundred years ago when the Lakota were sent there, from more fertile and arguably more beautiful land in the Black Hills, by the whites. The Lakota could find a holy site, or make one, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but if life took them elsewhere, as it had brought them here, they could do the same.
(Since I wrote this in 2002, Lemoine Pulliam died--he was diabetic--and Ulrike left the reservation, likely to return to Germany. The school closed briefly after Chris Young moved to New Hampshire, but it retained its Board of Trustees and then re-opened as a kindergarten only. Patricia Lambert is the current kindergarten teacher. The school's current website is http://www.lakotawaldorfschool.org.)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
In Praise of Really Small Schools
Research shows that, for education, there’s no such thing as a school that’s too small. Sit next to Socrates on a stump in the woods near Athens, and you’ll get an education. Ross Perot was a political kook, but the little red schoolhouse to which he kept referring educated many persons well. My grandfather grew up in an unorganized territory in North Dakota, went to a one-room schoolhouse, and then on to Brown when he was fifteen.
I’m not exactly sure of these numbers, but it sticks in my mind that the U.S. once had as many as 140,000 schools, mostly so-called one room schoolhouses, and now has around 14,000 centralized school districts. Anyway, the order of magnitude is correct.
Michael Katz makes clear (in “Alternative Models for American Education”) that large urban and, eventually, suburban schools arose because of movements toward bureaucracy and the professionalization of education. The decisions by which incipient bureaucracy became the triumphant model for public education had much to do with processing hordes of immigrants and those moving from farms to cities and little to do with the actual quality of education.
It’s similarly clear that the “corporate volunteer” model—the model for contemporary independent schools and private colleges and universities—and the model of “democratic localism,” which fostered community control of schools—educated students more thoroughly and more humanely.
Who benefits from large schools, if not the students? Today, somewhat tongue in cheek, I’d say there are two primary beneficiaries: Textbook publishers and football coaches. Alexander Stille, writing in the “New York Review of Books” in 1998, discloses the degree to which high school history textbooks are manipulated by Texas and California public school districts and school boards—the largest districts, on average, in the country, therefore the largest purchasers of books, and the most ideologically driven in that school boards represent groups that inspect prospective texts and submit lists of demands (including the elimination of the word “imagination;” some Christian fundamentalists locate its root near that of “magic,” a practice they associate with the devil…).
Similarly, if you want to field a good football team, the larger the pool of potential players, the better.
But, for actual quality of teaching, why not think of Deep Springs College in Nevada, quirkily devoted to teaching two dozen—and only two dozen—first and second year college students? Why? Because a “teacher proof” curriculum, and the leveling dross-making of textbook publishing, work against the conversations at the actual heart of teaching and learning.
(For how NCLB hurts small public schools, see http://www.matr.net/article-30517.html)
I’m not exactly sure of these numbers, but it sticks in my mind that the U.S. once had as many as 140,000 schools, mostly so-called one room schoolhouses, and now has around 14,000 centralized school districts. Anyway, the order of magnitude is correct.
Michael Katz makes clear (in “Alternative Models for American Education”) that large urban and, eventually, suburban schools arose because of movements toward bureaucracy and the professionalization of education. The decisions by which incipient bureaucracy became the triumphant model for public education had much to do with processing hordes of immigrants and those moving from farms to cities and little to do with the actual quality of education.
It’s similarly clear that the “corporate volunteer” model—the model for contemporary independent schools and private colleges and universities—and the model of “democratic localism,” which fostered community control of schools—educated students more thoroughly and more humanely.
Who benefits from large schools, if not the students? Today, somewhat tongue in cheek, I’d say there are two primary beneficiaries: Textbook publishers and football coaches. Alexander Stille, writing in the “New York Review of Books” in 1998, discloses the degree to which high school history textbooks are manipulated by Texas and California public school districts and school boards—the largest districts, on average, in the country, therefore the largest purchasers of books, and the most ideologically driven in that school boards represent groups that inspect prospective texts and submit lists of demands (including the elimination of the word “imagination;” some Christian fundamentalists locate its root near that of “magic,” a practice they associate with the devil…).
Similarly, if you want to field a good football team, the larger the pool of potential players, the better.
But, for actual quality of teaching, why not think of Deep Springs College in Nevada, quirkily devoted to teaching two dozen—and only two dozen—first and second year college students? Why? Because a “teacher proof” curriculum, and the leveling dross-making of textbook publishing, work against the conversations at the actual heart of teaching and learning.
(For how NCLB hurts small public schools, see http://www.matr.net/article-30517.html)
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