The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Dave Cullen's new book
Front-Ranger:
A book I have read most of has explained a lot of things for me lately, and caused some of my suspicions to be confirmed, not about Columbine, but about life in general. The book is called Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam. Here is a quote from it:
--- Quote ---American adults average 72 minutes every day behind the wheel....This is, according to time diary studies, more than we spend cooking or eating and more than twice as much as the average parent spends with the kids."
--- End quote ---
Commuting is the symptom and the disease is sprawl. Sprawl is the very definition of unincorporated Jefferson County. Sprawl is only one of several important elements that are destroying American community, according to Putnam. The sense of community is called "Social Capital" in the book and, when it is missing, it can lead to not seeing other people as human beings, among other things. Again, this is a reason, not an excuse. If anyone is interested, I'll tell you more about the book and its findings. It has 541 pages full of analysis, charts, the works!
injest:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on April 22, 2009, 08:26:07 pm ---A book I have read most of has explained a lot of things for me lately, and caused some of my suspicions to be confirmed, not about Columbine, but about life in general. The book is called Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam. Here is a quote from it:
Commuting is the symptom and the disease is sprawl. Sprawl is the very definition of unincorporated Jefferson County. Sprawl is only one of several important elements that are destroying American community, according to Putnam. The sense of community is called "Social Capital" in the book and, when it is missing, it can lead to not seeing other people as human beings, among other things. Again, this is a reason, not an excuse. If anyone is interested, I'll tell you more about the book and its findings. It has 541 pages full of analysis, charts, the works!
--- End quote ---
there have been people here in this area talking about breaking up schools and making small neighborhood schools like back at the turn of the twentieth century. I am not so sure that is such a crazy idea. I think it would get parents and the community involved I think..
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: injest on April 22, 2009, 08:31:33 pm ---there have been people here in this area talking about breaking up schools and making small neighborhood schools like back at the turn of the twentieth century. I am not so sure that is such a crazy idea. I think it would get parents and the community involved I think..
--- End quote ---
That structure has some advantages, as you say, for communities. Unfortunately, economy isn't one of them. Schools these days tend to be going the other direction -- merging smaller districts into bigger ones -- because they're cheaper to run that way.
Tom Brokaw just wrote something urging small municipalities to merge operations to save money. He points out that the tradition of having lots of small towns, villages, townships, etc., dates back to the days when travel was slow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/opinion/20brokaw.html?sq=tom%20brokaw&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print
The New York Times
April 20, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Small-Town Big Spending
By TOM BROKAW
DURING these uncertain times we’ve yet to hear a phrase with the resonance of Franklin Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but there are a couple of minor-chord expressions that should have staying power.
One is the observation of Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Another comes from my boss, Jeff Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, who has warned, “This is not a cycle; it’s a reset.”
Taken together, these remarks challenge us to go beyond trying to quickly fix the immediate problems of toxic mortgages, risky banks, a struggling American car industry and escalating health care costs. If the American people are tuned into the need to change the irresponsible, inefficient practices and systems that created those problems, why not enlist them to take the next step and radically change the antiquated public structures that exist beyond the Beltway?
Here are a few examples. It’s estimated that New York State has about 10,500 local government entities, from townships to counties to special districts. A year ago a bipartisan state commission said that New Yorkers could save more than a billion dollars a year by consolidating and sharing local government responsibilities like public security, health, roads and education.
One commission member, a county executive, said, “Our system of local government has barely evolved over the past one hundred years and we are still governed by these same archaic institutions formed before the invention of the light bulb, telephone, automobile and computer.”
In accepting the commission’s recommendations, Gov. David Paterson promised to work diligently to put the changes into effect. When his budget was presented this spring it included several of the proposed changes, but it immediately met stiff resistance even from members of his own party who were determined to protect their parochial interests. It appears that few of the original recommendations will survive.
In my native Great Plains, North and South Dakota have a combined population of just under 1.5 million people, and in each state the rural areas are being depopulated at a rapid rate. Yet between them the two Dakotas support 17 colleges and universities. They are a carry-over from the early 20th century when travel was more difficult and farm families wanted their children close by during harvest season.
I know this is heresy, but couldn’t the two states get a bigger bang for their higher education buck if they consolidated their smaller institutions into, say, the Dakota Territory College System, with satellite campuses but a common administration and shared standards?
Iowa, next door, is having its own struggles with maintaining population, especially among the young. As the Hawkeye State’s taxpayers grow older and less financially productive, the cost of government services becomes more expensive.
Yet Iowa proudly maintains its grid of 99 counties, each with its own distinctive courthouse, many on the National Register of Historic Places — and some as little as 40 miles away from one another. Each one houses a full complement of clerks, auditors, sheriff’s deputies, jailers and commissioners. Is there any reason beyond local pride to maintain such duplication given the economic and population pressures of our time?
This is not a problem unique to the states I have cited. Every state and every region in the country is stuck with some form of anachronistic and expensive local government structure that dates to horse-drawn wagons, family farms and small-town convenience.
If this is a reset, it’s time to reorganize our state and local government structures for today’s realities rather than cling to the sensibilities of the 20th century.
If we demand this from General Motors, we should ask no less of ourselves.
Tom Brokaw, a special correspondent for NBC News, is the author, most recently, of “Boom! Talking About the ’60s.”
Front-Ranger:
That's an interesting idea, Jess. The high schools in Jefferson County are big megaliths with hundreds and hundreds of students.
Here's one of the many things Putnam says about schools:
--- Quote ---First, where civic engagement in community affairs in general is high, teachers report higher levels of parental support and lower levels of student misbehavior, such as bringing weapons to school, engaging in physical violence...
--- End quote ---
.
--- Quote ---..among all these factors the strongest predictors of student violence across the states are two-parent families and community-based social capital, dwarfing the importance of such social conditions as poverty, urbanism, or levels of parental education.
--- End quote ---
injest:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on April 22, 2009, 08:50:48 pm ---That's an interesting idea, Jess. The high schools in Jefferson County are big megaliths with hundreds and hundreds of students.
Here's one of the many things Putnam says about schools:
.
--- End quote ---
I think that Hillary got a lot of flack for that phrase "It takes a village" but I think it is true. When people in the community were invested in schools the schools were better..the kids were better behaved. There were a hundred eyes watching, instead of two or four...
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