The Life and Death of a Rural American High School (1995)

Farewell Little Kanawha

Deyoung Alan, DeYoung Alan

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351104180
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Education General

Published in 1995 this book provides an account of a detailed research project focusing on a rural school in West Virginia. Researched from several social science perspectives the book strives to capture intersections between biography and history in a particular public school – Burnsville High and Middle school in Braxton County - that has been influenced by social, political, and economic forces, eventually leading to its closure. The author also discusses how the example of this school can be applied within the framework of American public education and Western culture itself.

Based on research from unstructured interviews, oral histories, historical records, and intermittent fieldwork that took place between 1989 and 1992, the book provides an in-depth look at a specific school, offering a basis for discussing rural schools in general. It challenges the idea that bigger schools are better and more efficient schools in terms of the individual, the social life of the school, and the surrounding community, and considers the lack of scholarly accounts available on the issues, controversies, and social dynamics that surround these vital community matters.

CHAPTER 1
Methodological Framework

Sociology is as inescapably rhetorical a discipline as it is a moral discipline, and for much the same reason. The texts of sociology—its papers and its monographs—are predicated upon the texts of everyday life. The discourse of sociology is not identical to that of everyday life, but it cannot escape the poetics of everyday life. There is no other realm of language to which the sociologist can escape.

Atkinson, 1990, p.10

The Life and Death of a Rural American High School: Farewell Little Kanawha is a story of a particular school and its social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. It is also a story about a series of school consolidation events related to the changing nature of this context which surrounded the school from the early twentieth century. At the same time, this study focuses upon institutional culture, school-community interaction, and upon the experience of school loss for the community in question. The research was generally carried out within the qualitative research tradition (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982; Peshkin, 1982a). At the same time, the use of oral history, prose and verse to illustrate and document the following narrative clearly illustrates the sort of methodological “genre blurring” described and endorsed by Clifford Geertz (1983).

The Life and Death of a Rural American High School: Farewell Little Kanawha is technically not an “ethnography,” for within the following pages I pay great attention to economic and social traditions of the communities under consideration perhaps as much as I do to contemporary community cultural themes. It is also not a “case study” per se, for I am just as interested in how the experience of community erosion and school consolidation has been and continues to be perceived and interpreted by local residents as I am in relating some hypothetically objective unfolding of economic and political events. To complicate matters, the historical approach I employ in the following pages is not accepted historicism. The sources I use are typically oral ones or historical rememberences of local writers who wrote about a number of the same cultural themes I was concerned with. A number of these themes are also central ones in regional literature and music. I therefore incorporate portions of such “texts” into this work as well.

Such caveats notwithstanding, I yet contend that what follows is a social scientific undertaking. There are various books whose focus is marginally related to the subject of this writing, but few closely approximate what I will attempt here. Like other social scientists, I would like to claim both that my work follows in some particular intellectual tradition, while at the same time expanding and extending it. And, of course, I want to claim that my writing is on important academic themes as yet undeveloped by erstwhile colleagues.

At the same time, as a social scientist interested in a particular cultural setting, I have sought out a place for research that has seen few similar sorts of investigations. I also use several sources of data that were for a number of years viewed as methodologically “tainted” (Becker, 1970), but which have enjoyed a recent rebirth. What follows in this work is a story about a set of particular cultural scenes; the description and interpretation of which is loosely framed by the sciences of sociology and anthropology; and written in an effort to contribute to several academic and professional literatures in the (broadly defined) areas of education, rural education, and Appalachian studies.

Observations and interpretations about to be given beg another key question, specifically the one suggested in this chapter’s epigraph. What follows is a written narrative in which I have attempted to frame questions, collect data, and conduct interviews in order to produce a monograph. This monograph has then been organized into a story, with a beginning, middle and end—as constructed by me.

Choosing to present observations and interpretations about a place and those who inhabit it in the form of a narrative constrains, however, both the types of questions posed, as well as the sorts of evidence and documentation offered to answer them (Peshkin, 1982a). While researchers may want to explain social dynamics and processes as a series of stories, tales, episodes, etc., social life really has no such objective forms. Narrative forms are what we all use to explain to ourselves and to others how things work and how we should understand them.

To the extent that perceptions and interpretations are shared between individuals—i.e., that there is some consensus regarding both—it can be argued that the teller and the hearer share important cultural information and ways of perceiving. Even so, social science research—like other versions of “storytelling”—cannot escape the limitations of narrations and narrative forms. I acknowledge this dilemma in the following analysis: a dilemma that of course is cogent to almost any form of human inquiry, description, and interpretation.

Whether the following observations, descriptions, and interpretations appear a convincing version of “the truth,” then, is primarily to be judged by the reader. To the extent that the reader comes to accept the version of history and experience I am about to tell, to that same extent I will argue the reader has come to share my particular narrative framing and culture. As Atkinson notes:

There is no scholarly nirvana which is untouched by mundane discourse, or our aesthetic or moral appreciation of the texts of the life-world. Unless the sociologist is to lapse into meaningless solipsism and “private language,” then he or she must engage in communicative acts with hearers or readers…. the lecturer or author will have effects upon recipients—of persuading them of the existence of facts and winning them to a point of view (or failing to do so), of surprising or shocking them, or amusing them, annoying, mystifying or puzzling them, boring or exciting them. Readers of sociological texts will find themselves convinced or incredulous, engaged and intrigued or repelled and alienated; they will judge the text and its author correspondingly. (1990, pp. 10, 11)

Framing Qualitative Questions

In addition to issues of genre and narrative forms, there is also the issue of objectivity to be reckoned with. Confounded with limitations of how a story is told, there are also limitations regarding starting places and documentation. I accept upfront the fact that most if not all social science research has some non-objective or normative origin, and some built-in orientations (or biases) that help to frame questions and influence the interpretation of “data” in important ways. If any stories could be told about the places that are the subject of this study, many stories could undoubtedly be told. Descriptions and interpretations about how to “understand” an institution and its context depend as much on the frames of reference that inform questions posed as they do about the “facts” or “data” collected (Bredo and Feinberg, 1982).

Demographers interested in explaining the emergence and disappearance of a place like Little Kanawha, for example, might attempt such an analysis with reference to population figures of Braxton County like the ones earlier sketched. Political scientists might attempt to explain a primary issue of this writing (i.e., school consolidation in rural America throughout this century) by focusing on the increasing power of state governments to affect county/city government and school district policy (Spring, 1993). In point of fact, I too have authored manuscripts using such perspectives (e.g., DeYoung and Howley, 1992; DeYoung and Boyd, 1986).

The following descriptions and interpretations, however, while they use data and insights sometimes consistent with these research perspectives, are concerned primarily with the experience of school consolidation at the personal and community levels. Although I pursue research themes and questions that have emanated from my own concerns and those expressed in the literatures reviewed in chapter 3, the “answers” to these questions are not primarily sought in census tables or school statistics, but rather as told by those who actually have and are experiencing the school and live in its communities on a daily basis. As suggested by C. Wright Mills adequate social science requires articulating the intersection between biography and history. There are many biographies in what follows; and there is much history. To what extent I am able to wed the two and convince the reader that my interpretations merit belief resides substantially in the reader’s eye.

Using Qualitative Methods

C. Wright Mills, almost forty years ago, issued a powerful indictment of scientific undertakings which reduced the human experience to quantitative and/or statistical categories. According to him,

Much that has passed for “science” is now felt to be dubious philosophy; much that is held to be “real science” is often felt to provide only confused fragments of the realities among which men (sic) live. Men of science, it is widely felt, no longer try to picture reality as a whole or to present a true outline of human destiny. Moreover, “science” seems to many less a creative ethos and a manner of orientation than a set of Science Machines.… With all this, many cultural workmen have come to feel that “science” is a false and pretentious Messiah, or at the very least a highly ambiguous element in modern civilization. (1956, p. 13)

At the time of his writing, social science research was equated with numbers and statistics (i.e., quantitative approaches). Although such approaches are certainly not out of vogue among contemporary social scientists, qualitative methods—which attempt to describe and interpret the effect of structural conditions upon the participants within any cultural scene (and vice versa)—also have become generally accepted among the research communities in sociology and education (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Fetterman, 1984).

Satisfied to be labeled a “cultural workman,” I aim here to interweave “hard” data types with the reported experiences (and with the interpretations of these experiences) of cultural “natives” (both present and past) into a coherent narrative. Such qualitative data, collected from those who live and work (or used to) in and around Little K, are required for better understanding of how the dynamics of the sorts of economic decline and adversive social change which developed here affect the perceptions and behavior of those enmeshed in Little K during the late twentieth century.

Of course, qualitative inquiry per se doesn’t answer all the social scientific concerns raised by theorists like Mills. In this tradition, looking for what is unique about a particular place is just as important as is raising and answering universal theoretical concerns like “human destiny.” In this book I actually attempt to interweave a particular story into a national and international one, suggesting later how the particular events discussed are part of the larger social and economic transformation of the U.S. To argue that my study reveals “human destiny” would be somewhat presumptuous, although the processes I discuss herein may be of this order.

To this latter end, qualitative inquiry has important weaknesses. As various anthropologists have admitted, qualitative and/or ethnographic methods typically either overlook, underspecify, or are not able to systematically investigate the history of cultures under study (Puckett, 1988; Precourt, 1982). Because this monograph is very keenly focused on the intersection of biography with history, more explicit use of historical data and oral histories are utilized than might ordinarily be the case in any study purporting to be a qualitative one. As I hope to document, the history of Little K and other subcultures of work, religion, and play continue to carry important legacies from decades past. This has mandated far more emphasis on historical interpretation and case study methods than might ordinarily be the case.

Walter Precourt, some of whose ethnographic research also focused on Appalachian communities (and Appalachian schools), argued that historical emphasis was essential for cultural understanding in the mountains of the American Southeast. In the following pages I attempt to document the importance of this perspective in the case of Little Kanawha, agreeing with Precourt when he suggests

Ethnographic studies on education tend to be synchronic in orientation. The historical context, while implicit in many studies, is seldom dealt with systematically. Long-range historical trends are frequently ignored or treated only tangentially. Ethnographers obviously must observe specific events and discover how educational phenomena manifest in the stream of behavior. Ethnographers must not, however, lose sight of the fact that the unfolding of educationally relevant behavior is embedded in a broader historical complex of cultural patterns and processes. (1982, p. 442)

Much of the following monograph, then, is guided by a conviction that “being there” is and was essential for understanding the cultural scenes in and around Little Kanawha. So too, the history of central West Virginia, as it affected both community and school cultures in and around Burnsville, is an important component of this investigation. Much of the lived culture(s) of Little K are suggested by the demographic and economic statistics which others use to describe it. Much of what follows then is an effort to investigate and interpret how the “facts,” figures, developments, trends, and problems existing in the communities under study affect the lives of those who experience its social and economic life.

Studying School and Community Cultures

I have already used the terms “culture” and “cultural scenes” extensively to this point. Before continuing I should perhaps try to define these concepts, although many definitions themselves are fraught with various sorts of difficulties. For example, almost every cultural anthropologist believes in the concept of culture, and would agree that culture includes everything learned, produced, and believed by particular groups of people.

The list of social phenomena/objects typically involved in definitions of cultural content include modes of dress, values, architecture, language, kinship patterns, etc. Peter Woods (1983), a sociologist working in the “interactionist” tradition (and thus concerned with the reproduction of culture in interpersonal interaction), is particularly interested in the construction and reconstruction of school cultures. According to him, cultures

develop when people come together for specific purposes, intentionally or unintentionally, willingly or unwillingly. People develop between them distinctive forms of life—ways of doing things and not doing things, forms of talk and speech patterns, subjects of conversation, rules and codes of conduct and behavior, values and beliefs, arguments and understandings. These will not be formally regulated, but heavily implicit. One’s part in them may not be consciously recognized. Rather, one grows into them, and may recognize them as a natural way of life. (pp. 8, 9)

Even so, most anthropologists and sociologists use slightly unique interpretations of the concept of culture in defining the focus of their empirical efforts. For my purposes, the definition put forward by Spradley and McCurdy (1972) some years ago is as good as any, for it involves both a general perspective as well as one related to ways of researching school and community cultures. Their anthropological definition also corresponds greatly with Peter Woods’ views just cited. For Spradley and McCurdy

the concept of culture (means) the knowledge people use to generate and interpret social behavior…. Cultural knowledge is coded in complex systems of symbols. It involves the “definitions of the situation” that must be learned by each generation. (1972, p. 8)

Further difficulties emerge, however, even if a working definition of the culture concept can be deduced. For example, are there free-standing cultural sites in the U.S. which are dissimilar enough to constitute specific inquiry, or do our current systems of mass communication and market economics doom any sort of regional cultural investigation? Furthermore, given the great many numbers of formal institutions in operation in America today, how could an erstwhile field researcher study and/or make sense of the multiple contemporary cultural scenes operating in our country, even assuming an affirmative answer to the first question posed above? And finally, are there significant subcultures in particular places which challenge the dominant cultural ethos? Are there “oppositional” social groups whose values, beliefs, goals, and ways of interpreting social situations challenge “official” cultural orientations and the institutions that attempt to promulgate them?

I can’t completely answer all of these questions here. I raise them primarily because I recognize they are all important, and because in a number of ways what follows in this book is implicitly targeted at them. It is my contention that important cultural differences exist in America, despite the establishment of national institutional forms set up to homogenize/incorporate them.

An additional point raised above is also important. Holistically studying “cultures” in the U.S. can be a daunting possibility, given the myriad of social institutions that have divided up the social, economic, and political functions/concerns existing within any given social place. On the one hand, the wealth of potential institutional (and informal) settings for observing cultural behavior is almost unlimited. On the other hand, since social life and social services are fragmented into many places, attempting to piece together cultural themes and stories that are germane to more than one setting becomes a logistical night...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Methodological Framework
• 2. Contributing to Relevant Literatures
• 3. Braxton County, West Virginia: Historical Vignettes
• 4. Boom and Bust in the Salt Lick District
• 5. Braxton County Schools and Communities
• 6. Lost People, Lost Communities, and Lost Schools
• 7. School Consolidation and the Locus of Community
• 8. Little Kanawha: Looking Out and Looking In
• 9. Interpreting Rural School Consolidation
• Bibliography
• Index