The above picture is of the main hallway in my old high school in Pimento, Indiana. The building and hallway are now both in sad disrepair. I can still remember–the room on the left that was the English with Mrs.Riddle. Second room on the left the math room and the last room on the left History. The first room on the right typing with Mrs.Pitman and the last two doors on the right were into the study hall and the library. The other pictures are of the current status of the old high school. Sad.
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Just some thoughts:
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Just some thoughts:
“I love driving down their streets and having the townspeople wave and say hello. I love the community spirit you see in these little stadiums, the smell of the hamburgers and hotdogs cooking on the grills to be sold in the concession stand by members of the booster club, and the public address announcer’s saying things like ‘all students are welcome to the fifth-quarter gathering that will be held at the education building of the First Baptist Church immediately after the game.”
Carlton Stowers: Where Dreams Die Hard
Often I have wondered just how much better things have been with school consolidations.
Now before someone takes me apart, I don’t have all the answers to that question. Possibly it was best that many small schools in various locations did close and consolidate with a larger system. But I also think sometimes folks fail to realize the cost, and I am not referring to the financial cost. I am talking about the kind of cost that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
I graduated in 1960 from a very small high school in southwestern Indiana. How small? Well my graduating class had twenty-seven, and that was the biggest class of the upper four grades. The following year it closed and consolidated with a larger school just a few miles away. A few years later consolidation again took place and where there once were fifteen or so high schools in that county, now there were only two. Small schools gave youth the opportunity to participate in many activities such as school plays, clubs, cheerleading, bands, and various athletic teams where the odds and the opportunities in a larger system would not. A case is often made for consolidation saying educational opportunities will be better for the students. I don’t strongly argue against that, but I do note that of the twenty-seven in our graduating class, I believe ten or eleven went on to gain college degrees.
In Carlton Stowers book Where Dreams Die Hard he talks of this. Stowers spent a year in a small town of less than three hundred in the hill country of Texas. His purpose was to chronicle the school’s six man football team and its effects upon the community. It was not just football, but also the other opportunities that a small community and a small school were able to offer that larger communities could not.
Today when I go back home to Indiana, I often drive through some of these small towns that no longer have schools in their community. I could name them; they are the kind of names that make you smile or could be a good Jay Leno reference. Names like the Farmersburg Plowboys, Prairie Creeks Gophers, Graysville Greyhounds, Fontana Beantowners, Otter Creek Otters, Blackhawk Chieftians, Fairbanks Trojans, or the Riley Cossacks. You heard enough? As you drive through these towns you will see buildings boarded up or sitting in disrepair, the heart of these communities is gone.
When a school is taken from a community many of the people will eventually leave also. Towns are shut down, the streets have died and many businesses are lost for some who once lived in that community. As I said, I do not have the answer and would not say this should not have happened, but I am of the opinion that:
Now before someone takes me apart, I don’t have all the answers to that question. Possibly it was best that many small schools in various locations did close and consolidate with a larger system. But I also think sometimes folks fail to realize the cost, and I am not referring to the financial cost. I am talking about the kind of cost that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
I graduated in 1960 from a very small high school in southwestern Indiana. How small? Well my graduating class had twenty-seven, and that was the biggest class of the upper four grades. The following year it closed and consolidated with a larger school just a few miles away. A few years later consolidation again took place and where there once were fifteen or so high schools in that county, now there were only two. Small schools gave youth the opportunity to participate in many activities such as school plays, clubs, cheerleading, bands, and various athletic teams where the odds and the opportunities in a larger system would not. A case is often made for consolidation saying educational opportunities will be better for the students. I don’t strongly argue against that, but I do note that of the twenty-seven in our graduating class, I believe ten or eleven went on to gain college degrees.
In Carlton Stowers book Where Dreams Die Hard he talks of this. Stowers spent a year in a small town of less than three hundred in the hill country of Texas. His purpose was to chronicle the school’s six man football team and its effects upon the community. It was not just football, but also the other opportunities that a small community and a small school were able to offer that larger communities could not.
Today when I go back home to Indiana, I often drive through some of these small towns that no longer have schools in their community. I could name them; they are the kind of names that make you smile or could be a good Jay Leno reference. Names like the Farmersburg Plowboys, Prairie Creeks Gophers, Graysville Greyhounds, Fontana Beantowners, Otter Creek Otters, Blackhawk Chieftians, Fairbanks Trojans, or the Riley Cossacks. You heard enough? As you drive through these towns you will see buildings boarded up or sitting in disrepair, the heart of these communities is gone.
When a school is taken from a community many of the people will eventually leave also. Towns are shut down, the streets have died and many businesses are lost for some who once lived in that community. As I said, I do not have the answer and would not say this should not have happened, but I am of the opinion that:
“Bigger is not always better… and new is not always best”
(Johnny Wooden)
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March 20, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
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March 20, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson
Love your blogs Larry. Put me on the list please
Keep em coming