Interesting article and idea. There is a sense in which public schools have always been “big box” enterprises. From an architectural perspective, design hasn’t changed since smaller one room schoolhouses were consolidated into larger community-based enterprises.

I’m wondering if you could elaborate on the attributes of today’s schools that would be considered more “big box” when compared to schools of the mid 20th century when I began my life in the system.

Perhaps you have written about this in another place?

Well, when I wrote that big-box schools are a fairly modern invention, I was thinking more in terms of their being less than 100 years or so old - 100 years being a pretty short time period in the overall scheme of things.

But I would also submit that even 50 years ago the big-box approach was less universal. I, for example, got my start in teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in the mid-sixties. That schoolhouse is of course long gone, and the kids are now being bused to a big-box distant school. In the intervening years, many small schools have been sacrificed on the altar of the religion of big comprehensive schools that can offer all kinds of specialties and services. In my opinion, there were a lot of compensating benefits in the small schools - benefits that are not found in the big-box schools - like customized teaching and a feeling of community.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I actually lived in a one room schoolhouse a few years back, and tried to do as much research as I could on the house, the community and the system.

But, I began my own schooling in a local school in a suburban area of what is now Mississauga, Ontario. That was also the same school that I taught at in my first years as a teacher.

I would agree that something “big boxish” has happened to our systems of schooling, and I would agree that the symptoms of the change include less customized teaching, less creative teaching, and a diminishing sense of community.

But, I’m not convinced that this has to do with the way that schools are organized or constituted. I sense that other factors such as increased centralization, less local control, and a greater focus on how our schools look to the outside world have all contributed to the “big box” feel.

There are other considerations as well, ones that are more a reflection of general trends in society: decrease in the lack of trust, questions about safety, less community cohesion outside of the school, etc.

Good conversation to have!

I would have to respectively disagree Stephen.

I attended a semi-rural community school in Ontario, a K to 8 elementary school of a population of 800 students or so. Even though the school could be describe back in the 50s and 60s as a big box school in today’s terms, it was far from being a big box feel in the 50s and 60s. The school consistently produce high levels of reading, writing and math proficiency, in an environment where the school had more or less full autonomy in their curriculum, instruction and their goals. Going into high school,with a student population of 1800 or so, the high school teachers certainly express out of the 8 feeder schools, the school I attended was the top school for academics and achievement.

Back in the 50s and the 60s, schools had the ability to blend in the community needs, the student learning needs, and the ability to adapt to the social, moral codes of the community. Schools of the big box kind in the 21st century, forces the communities and students to adapt to the agendas and visions within the highly centralized education system. There is no sense of community within the school walls, because the forces within the public education structure, opposes all reforms that are calling for the schools and their staffs to adapt to the community, the learning needs of their students as well as localized autonomy at the lowest levels.

Having kindergarten classes in a retirement home, or at the Y, or having home-schoolers support centres, is breaking the foundation rule within a highly centralized public school structure, only certified teachers are allowed to teach.  In today’s world, schools have no used for parents that do not have a teacher’s certificate. Today, my mother who spoke 4 different languages with fluency, wrote fluent languages in two, and had a grade 9 education would be discarded under the current ideology and dogma, as not having the ability to teach.  In the years of the 50s and the 60s, the school saw my mother as the portal, to provide the much needed lessons in the 3 Rs and the practice, that I needed over and above what the school provided. Today, a student like myself is labeled and tossed in the discarded pile as not being academic material, as well as my mother who would be bombarded with the excuses why I am not academic material, and be told to lower her expectations. In the same way, as I was told to lower my expectations for my youngest child starting in 2001.

You state, “But, I’m not convinced that this has to do with the way that schools are organized or constituted.”  I disagree because it is the core problem, and the rest of your statement is stating the symptoms of the core problem. Much like a student who is struggling in reading, the present prescription by a school, is to treat the symptom but not the underlying core deficits. Likewise, when I was attending school, the school had the autonomy to treat the underlying core deficits of my learning struggles in the 3 Rs, and the symptoms disappeared in time.

Regarding your last statement, “There are other considerations as well, ones that are more a reflection of general trends in society: decrease in the lack of trust, questions about safety, less community cohesion outside of the school, etc.”

I sometimes wonder if it is not the centralized structure, as well as the many agendas within the education system, adapts very quickly to the general social trends in society, to protect the best interests of those who work within the education system. It does provide the wealth of excuses and often creative ones, to keep the students and their parents in their place, as passive and accepting, and never questioning the expertise from within.

Hi Nancy,

Actually I don’t think that we’re on the same page here. If you walked into the school that I attended in the early 60’s, things would look pretty much the same physically.

It too would have been considered big box. But something else has crept into the system over the years that has made the experience of that place very different. But just like walking into Home Depot in Milton is the same as walking into Home Depot in Brampton, centralized agenda, practices and priorities have wrested the school experience away from communities and have made them look and feel like every other school.

And I don’t think that’s a good thing.

But neither is a centralized agenda conducive for tending to the needs of the individual schools, the individual student learning needs, and the local community, when the needs are defined by the gate keepers, and pushes all students within the norm, without regard to the individual needs or the local community needs. Smaller schools addresses this problem more effectively, than large schools, because in general it is left up to the individual teachers, and where they fall on the knowledge, training and experience spectrum, in relationship to their beliefs, values that are shaped by the very education policies and designed by the gatekeepers to maintain the best interests of the education BLOB, and student/community needs are secondary.

Secondary, and sometimes at the bottom of the list. Students needs no matter what they are, are conditional by the education policies and goals of the public education system. The individual teacher will overlook, and even encourage parents to help the struggling learner at home, sending them to tutors, that often represent different instruction methods and not the approved instruction methods of the gatekeepers. Centralized operations that are of the monopoly kind, tends to structures that forces the users to adapt, and not concern about quality as well as running an efficient operation. Currently individual teachers will overlook and abet parents to secure the necessary remediation for their children, when the gatekeepers will not provide or what is provided is not an effective method for the child. It is all they can do, without risking the attention of the gatekeepers, and they put their job at risk. Parents have no choice, but to take on the risks, in an education system that is a monopoly, serving the best interests and agendas within, trying to make the best decisions for their children sorting out what is good and what is not, in a rigged system that always points to making your children adapt to the education system and its policies.

It is why as Malkin declares in her last sentence, “The possibilities are endless once one grasps that the modern big-box school is a fairly recent invention - and that it doesn’t have to be like this.” 

The modern big-box school is designed to control the individual as well as the community characteristics, to make them more like the characteristics of the goals, policies and the values held by the gatekeepers, to control what is and what is not being taught at the schools today. Placing schools outside of the big box concept, would mean the education system would lose their control in knowledge, and students would be exposed to other adults with different sets of knowledge and experience, other than the student’s family, extended family, and neighbours.

The gatekeepers won’t allow it, and everyone is back to square one, including the individual teachers who are dealing with the reality on the ground, but are limited to what they can do. And the parade of excuses rained down onto the public, for so-so achievement and low literacy and numeracy rates.