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163 comments on The geopolitics of expertise

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Don Sailorman on March 17, 2006 - 7:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Rather than having children biking to schools, I think we should do something much more radical: Go back to small schools, including the one-room school house in rural areas.

At one time it was thought that consolidating schools and busing children would lead to better education and lower costs. The world did not turn out that way.

Why waste huge resources on busing children and on hordes of educational administrators? Put the school buses to work on transit, as you suggest, and perhaps the brighter of the educationists put out of work by getting rid of school bureaucracy can retrain as diesel mechanics or coal miners.

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totoneila on March 17, 2006 - 9:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Sailorman,

One room schools sounds good to me too--whatever the local community Peakoil consensus decides is best to save energy.  Just turning off the damn streetlights and shifting the energy savings to heat/cool schoolhouses would help alot of kids as we go postPeak.  I think people overrate nightlights as a deterrent to crime-- most burglaries happen during the daytime when homeowners are at work.  When energy costs skyrocket, most people will go to bed soon after dark, like in the old days.  In the future, having lights burning after dark will be a 'beacon' to attract the most violent kind of thug.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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Todd on March 19, 2006 - 12:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Actually, California funds "necessary small schools."  This has been a financial boon to many rural school districts since the state gives block grant funding and districts can usually operate the schools for less then the grant.

The school district (which covers about 500 square miles with a K-12 student population of under 400) in my very rural area has two such school.  IIRC, they are 1-4 or 1-5 grades.  The parents would like to see them go into junior high or HS.

A far cheaper long term alternative is to simply go to home schooling.  The are many circula used today by home schoolers with excellent success.  Of course, this assumes someone is home to do the schooling.

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163 comments on The geopolitics of expertise

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