Heart of Ag:Lessons Learned From a One-Room Schoolhouse

Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

As a general society, we collectively invest in our nation’s children through taxes earmarked to fund education, keeping schools in districts across the country open and available for all students.

There are many ways to teach a child and bring them up in the way they should go, and as a mother, I’m deeply passionate about this topic. 

Raising four children of my own, we have tried public school, homeschooling and a private school before we found a fit to meet our goals and priorities as parents and serve our children best. 

As a foster mom, I’ve parented children who have come from hard places and relied more heavily on the services the state provides.

As a children’s book author focused on promoting agricultural literacy and education, I have traveled to schools across the nation – big and small, rural and urban. 

At each stop, I have learned more about the unique challenges each school faces to meet the changing demands of society, fill the roles with good teachers and achieve academic success at a time where iPads, social media, apps and other distractions can make it increasingly difficult to maintain the attention of the young people in the classroom to learn.

I’ve seen some of the most inspiring and innovative schools, and I’ve seen some that feel like hopeless prisons. I’ve met some of the best and brightest in the country, and I’ve seen some really hard things which make me wish I could change the outcome for kids who need it most. 

And as discussions intensify on the topic of school choice and student vouchers, I thought I would share my perspective, compiling my wide range of experience on the topic of education.

It seems to me there is no one-size-fits-all way to approach education. If you’re a parent, you know each of your children are unique, with different interests, skill sets and ways they learn and engage on a topic.

Yet, when we hear discussions on education, it seems many are more keen to protect the institutions existing in a school district verses attending to the needs of the individual child and what is best suited to them to learn and grow academically.

Take, for example, my recent trip to western South Dakota. I made five stops to very rural schools. 

These were one-room schoolhouses tasked with teaching kindergarten through eighth grades with one or two teachers on board. 

These teachers also served as the principle, school nurse, lunch lady, administrator, curriculum planners and probably more hats than I could even imagine. 

The schools were modest but ran well, efficient and able to offer individual attention to the students, in a more “family-style” setting I have experienced with my own children through homeschooling. The students were joyful, studious, polite, courteous and eager to learn and grow.

In the 150-mile loop we made to visit these schools, I thought deeply about what would help these rural schools the most. Is it keeping the district fully funded per student or is it having money follow the individual student? 

I was told the district was pushing hard to close these small rural schools. They wanted to consolidate and force families to go to the “big schools,” where they would need to travel upwards of 30 to 60 miles for their children to attend.

Would fully funding the school system help these rural families or hurt them? This was the question I asked over and over again, and as I hear from people on both sides of the school choice and voucher discussion, the only conclusion I can come up with is quite simple – keep the money with the student. 

The decision of how to educate a child should not be made on a state or federal level. It should be decided locally, amongst individual schools and the families who invest in those communities. 

And to keep it as local as possible, I believe parents should be able to invest their education dollars where best-suited to meet the needs of each unique child. 

Although I’m leery about government dollars coming with extra strings and increased oversight on parents who choose private, charter, parochial, online or homeschooling options, I believe as a society we have a shared and mutual agreement an educated child will shape our future. 

We aren’t punching out kids in a factory where one-size-fits-all. Frankly, when the money is invested directly in a child verses an institution, it drives competition for each school to be the best possible mode of education offered in the market.

What are your thoughts on the subject? I would love to hear from you. Shoot me a message with your insights on education at amanda.radke@live.com. I look forward to a robust discussion where we can find the solution to best educate our most important asset – our children. 

Amanda Radke is a rancher, author, motivational speaker and podcast host. For more information, visit amandaradke.com.