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Commentary: Retrenchments in the Trenches: Occupy Schooling!

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 2, 2011I wish everyone could spend a half hour or so with the dry, yellowing pages of Stephen E. Smith's doctoral dissertation, composed in 1934 and titled, "A Description of Public School Conditions in Missouri During the Depression." The late Dr. Smith might as well be talking about us.

What our leaders call "The Worst Recession Since the Great Depression" has actually, in terms of educational consequences, caused us to behave just about exactly as an earlier generation did when faced with the same radical reduction in public funds. Back in the 1930s, reduced property values and tax delinquency choked off the flow of money to districts across the state. School people responded by enacting changes made around schools and school policy, changes they called "retrenchments."

Retrenchments included lowering teachers' salaries; firing teachers and administrators; reducing extracurricular activities; increasing teaching loads; lowering standards for certification of new teachers; postponing repairs of existing buildings and construction of new buildings; cancelling summer school; shuffling students into empty classrooms here and there to consolidate use of space; eliminating playground activities after school hours; rigidly limiting school supplies like textbooks, lab supplies, pencils, paper and other material needs; and cutting physical education, recess and student-centered services provided by librarians and nurses.

At the same time, elementary class sizes rose to 45 students or more. The percentage of high school classes of 35 to 54 students rose, too. And here's what else that went up: the number of intelligence and diagnostic tests administered to elementary school students.

To be fair, the number of follow-up tests and basic achievement tests in various subjects dropped. Testing costs money. And even test-crazed people have to draw the line somewhere.

Speaking of districts getting rid of their more progressive (for that era) curricular initiatives and opportunities, Dr. Smith wrote: "It would appear that in times of retrenchment the particular needs of the children receive less consideration than the question of whether a subject which has long been in the curriculum and is rather firmly intrenched in the thinking of the citizens of the community in question."

In other words, in times of crisis, people fall back on what they know, even if what they know isn't so great for kids. It's a version of "the devil you know..." writ into education policy.

Think about the endless drilling and prepping for the MAP test that occupies public school people every spring. There is nothing -- and I really do mean nothing -- about this system that serves the interests of students and teachers.

So what would happen if we just went ahead and called today's situation a Second Great Depression, kind of like the Second Great Awakening? And what if we challenged ourselves to rethink our responses during this time of retrenchment? If we likened the 10 years since No Child Left Behind to a sailing tack, what if we shouted, "Prepare to come about!"

In other words, what if we set our minds to doing less harm to those who have least power to resist the educational decisions made by others? What would "the doing of less harm" look like in actual classrooms? Lots of people have researched and written on this very subject. Very many teachers know what kinds of plans work best with which kinds of students. But to come about, the wind has to be favorable. And so far, the winds of the Second Great Depression have been pretty unfavorable.

Humane retrenchments are not what we did, with respect to public schooling in Missouri, during the First Great Depression. As Dr. Smith concludes, somewhat wearily, and presciently, "We of the adult citizenship apparently do not grasp the full implications of education in its present and growing form."

We did not then, and we do not now. Unless and until...

Inda Schaenen is a writer and teacher in St. Louis.