Again, I can agree on those themes of size, with some nuances. First, the size of institutions in any culture are culturally derived - 400 kids in a school in New York city is very small, in Idaho may be large, and in Sri Lanka may be comprehensive. Many US small schools are Early College High Schools, offering 6 years of education in any calendar from 4 to 7 years long. That also changes both the "feeling" of size and its absolute number. Many others just treat grades 11 and 12, and they can also be 400 kids, much larger than most other Gates standards. Whether from the "organizational press" or "classroom climate" literatures, I would still contend that size is mostly an affective quality in spite of how attractive it would be to presume some absolute number.
Within that scope, I strongly concur that there is little or no evidence of any economies of scale reflecting large schools. Even facilities that are large usually require much, much higher construction and maintenance, and pay back few if any benefits. Technology makes that even more apparent, and that particular impact will begin to appear more and more among the large schools where specialized courses are available online and support for that enrollment can be accommodated in much less space and with much less or at least very differently certified personnel. I think that problem will begin in higher ed, incidentally, where the bonding power to build is less well developed than in public secondary schools, and where the "edifice complex" has hugely overbuilt institutions that will change dramatically with things like MIT's OpenCourseWare will transform the delivery of content, making much more available to many more teachers and paraprofessionals for use with many more and different students. Whether this begins with developing countries or with developing institutions in the US and EU makes some difference, but ultimately will have the same long range impact: less will, in fact, mean more. Regarding redundancy, I still don't agree. One of the benefits of technology - sorry to infuse this into the discussion, but it gets increasingly critical to addressing the "musical chairs" "zero sum game" you raise regarding school size - is that the capital value of curriculum, institutional resources, staff development, and the whole infrastructure of schools and colleges can be shared by many more players, people, institutions, and courses. A school which would otherwise limit its enrollment in a developing environment to, hypothetically, 400 kids could be much more flexible in those limits when accounting for "enrollment" as face-to-face, part-time, workplace-based, or any of many different alternate formats. Less does mean more when the books and lectures are available in asynchronous forms, and groups and tutoring in small, paraprofessionally led events. I think the argument you make about the "arithmetic of opportunity" is all off, in other words, since opportunity itself is a much more elastic concept. When higher education was at least hypothetically "Mark Hopkins at one end of the log," surely there weren't many spaces at the other end. But it need not be ONLY that paradigm any longer. It hasn't been, in fact, since Charles W. Elliott discovered classes of 600 have some cost-benefit. In other words, I'm all for coziness and smallness, but would rather take it in any form we can find it than hold out for school size as the exclusive defining moment. I think we can generate lots more cozy learning (you might look at JB Priestley's Delight for a discussion of cozy planning, along the same vein) in small places, but, again, we can make those places in any larger environment. To me the value of small schools is that the force teachers to examine their resources as a group, not once in the beginning of the year, but continuously, and they help teachers compare what happens with individual kids in different circumstances, again, on a continuing basis. That is possible in much larger places, but much more rare. And Reagan was a lot older than my 61 years when he dumped on Mondale ;>) Joe -----Original Message----- From: Dr. Steve Eskow [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2005 7:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'The Digital Divide Network discussion group' Subject: RE: [DDN] personal vis social and the academic Joe Beckmann writes: <<I further agree that small schools are desirable but not determining, marginally worth their marginally higher costs, and have an organizational impact that exceeds those costs sometimes substantially. That said, I'm not sure how Chickering's insight into redundancy substantially differs from my argument that the size the institution "feels" depends more on its leadership and the collaborative quality of its staff than absolute numbers, but Chickering says this better and is a much better source than my limited 30 years in the field.>> Since this matter of size is indeed critical to the smaller and poorer nations, the two points here need to be contested. The evidence to support the widespread belief that the larger schools cost less is shaky; giantism introduces all sorts of new costs into the comparison. More important, the redundancy argument has nothing to do with "leadership and collaborative quality" of staff. If there are nine positions open on the baseball team, and ten students interested in playing, one student is redundant. If ninety are interested in playing, eighty-one are redundant. Redundancy is not a matter of institutional "feel": it is a matter of the arithmetic of opportunity, and the learning and joy that smallness affords and redundancy denies. On the matter of your 30 years of experience, I say to you what againg Rongald reagan said to Walter Mondale when the age issue was introduced: I will not hold your youth and inexperience against you. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
