I work in a school that is more than eighty years old. On most days, its age shows. The wind whistles in through gaps in the windows, the electric outlets wink out and my shades work more in theory than in practice. The building has eighty year old bathrooms, cafeteria, and roof. Almost any school built in the last twenty years has more playing fields, parking spaces, and toilets than we have. But very few of them were built with our great blessing. Location.
My school is smack dab in the middle of downtown. Lawyers walk past it on their way to the courthouse. The mayor and the city council see it from their windows. Postmen and policemen drive past it on their way to work. Ministers greet their parishioners in the shadow of the golden dome. At seven, the buses rumble through the rotary and stop traffic at the doors. At lunch, our students rush out the door to Hot Harryıs, Burger King, Samelıs, and Joanneıs, then clog traffic on their way back to sixth period. After school, they walk home up second street and Pomeroy, Bartlett, and Elm Street. You canıt stand in our downtown without seeing the golden dome on the old high school.
Modern high schools have a whole different ethic. Like everything else in the last fifty years, they were built for cars and not for people. They get placed on the outskirts of town, with traffic lights, turning lanes, and acres and acres of parking lots. Those schools are two stories high, spread out over the ground, and hide behind a hedge of pine trees.
These modern schools have their advantages. They are cheaper to build and expand. They can include field houses and auto shops easily. They are easier to heat and cause far less traffic problems than older, more centrally located buildings. You can leave them quickly. They host carnivals in the summer. Such advantages are not trifles.
But they are out of sight and out of mind. When you hide a high school as you hide the D.P.W. garage, it takes on the same importance. Schooling and snow removal both only matter a few days a year. High school becomes something that happens to someone else, except when the budget comes up for a vote. THEY always want more money. THEY arenıt ready for the future. THEY need to make do in these tough times. The further the school is out of town, the more school becomes someone elseıs problem.
When the old high schools were built, the builders had pride in the structure. The closer the school is to the center of the town, the more it belongs to US not THEM. They created massive buildings that dominated the street because they wanted the job of the school to dominate the community. In building my high school, and placing a golden dome atop it, they said ³Everything we do should focus on the next generation; here is the most important work this town does.²
In the last decades, ³the next generation² hasnıt been the most important work most towns do. Instead our communities have been building banks, nursing homes, and jails. Tucked behind the sand piles and the broken down snow plows, the schools continue to host football games, ³My Fair Lady,² and town meeting. The schools became mushroom farms, with the kids left in darkness and standing in manure for two million minutes.
Now, in the Obama era, the schools seem to rising in the national consciousness. Our national problems have impinged on the national illusion that our kids will have it better than we did. The new stimulus bill has many billions dedicated to school construction and funding. It starts to fund Special Education and ³No Child Left Behind² as if they actually mattered. After fifty years, we are slowly bringing the schools back into town.
Good thing. Jobs that didnıt exist four years ago will be the most sought after four years from now. The internet has come along and changed everything that we used to think about childhood and education. Our high school graduates will watch 20,000 hours of TV, talk on the phone for 10,000 hours but will send 250,000 e-mails and instant messages. 70% of four year olds have used a computer. Google has made encyclopedias obsolete. Itıs a whole new world. And in that world, India has more honors students than we have children.
As those new schools get built, I hope that we put them smack dab in the middle of town. As adults, we need to put the students back in the center of our minds. If we do so, we can be proud of the golden dome in the cityıs skyline, even if the buses tie up traffic for a few minutes.