Schools That Don't Close: Possible Places and Spaces for Progressive Teaching, Learning, and Research

• Published in: Alberta journal of educational research Vol. 60; no. 4; pp. 656 - 673
• Main Author: Harris, Carol Elizabeth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Alberta, Faculty of Education 01-12-2014
• Subjects: Consolidated Schools; Foreign Countries; Newfoundland; Rural Schools; School Closing; School Community Relationship; Small Schools; Canada
• ISSN: 0002-4805

Small schools and their communities contribute to an important, though threatened, knowledge base. The threat adheres in underlying technologies (conceptual and material) that propel the capitalistic world towards the rationalization of all aspects of human activity. In education, this appears in the consolidation of small schools and ever larger units of organization. From three studies of Newfoundland coastal communities, I describe schools that were deemed to be "necessarily existing." Because of their isolated location, students from the schools could not be transported to larger centres. While reporting both positive and negative features of actual small, rural schools, I argue against hasty school closures and point, instead, to rural school and community opportunities for "place, voice, and space-based" teaching, learning, and research. Small, rural schools can be pivotal in leading Canadian education from its deeply rooted, market-based ideology to progressive and socially relevant practices that embrace lifelong learning, community involvement, and ecological awareness and action.