Looking Back in Order to Look Forward

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Reading Wendell Berry's book The Unsettling of America Culture & Agriculture, I am struck by parallels between the destruction of farming communities that he documents and the breakdown of community in schools.  As recently as fifty years ago, small family farms with diverse crops (both plant and animal) were still normal.  Factory farming has been pushing these small farmers out of operation ever since, although advocates of permaculture and organic farming are trying to turn the tide.

That thousands of family farms have been out-competed by factory farms has also resulted in the fragmentation of farming families who were invested in shepherding land and community.  I am struck by the similarity of language used by big agribusiness and online education companies.  They both promise great gains with less work, "work" being the one case the interaction of people with the land, in the other case the interaction of student with teacher.  But what if we are going in the wrong direction?  What if what is needed in education is not less human interaction, but more?  What if what is needed is really an increase in students' material and social responsibility?

In the rural, segregation-era schools that I have researched, both for blacks and whites (but particularly in Rosenwald schools), students had meaningful roles in the operation of the school.  They gathered wood, kept the fire going, pumped water, swept the floor and the yard.  The older students spent part of each day teaching the younger students.  Strikingly, none of the dozens of Rosenwald school alumni I have interviewed expressed resentment of the work they did.  Instead, it was a point of pride and an expression of community. 

What if, by taking responsibility and work away from students in order to free up more time for academic learning, we actually removed an important way of engaging students in school?  What if students need to feel valued and effective in order to attain an optimal frame of mind for learning?  What if the strict discipline of yesteryear only worked because it was paired with students' sense of meaningful connection to a larger whole? 

What if we could work towards recreating these communal connections to help students feel valued, and to allow them to use their abundant energy in constructive ways?  What if we need to look back to find our way forward?