Interview Question:
I was wondering if you could tell me what you feel are the strengths of your school, your local school for primary students and also for the secondary students.
I mean a lot of the kids in the school are related and people might laugh at that hillbilly aspect but it is really nice that they are with people that you know well. The other thing is with the High School, I means the High School in town, in the bigger town, have got lots of problems, and it is a really big High School. Other schools have been closed down, the kids are bused in, they have got really big bullying problems, they’ve got, well there is drugs and I mean we know if anything, I mean it might sound like we don’t, but we are parents we know if something is happening in the school that is untoward or if there is any strangers hanging around, we know, so I really like that sort of, you can keep your kids not cotton wool balled, but just protected and I just would hate to see them pushed off.
Janice, one of the mothers whose children attend the school, demonstrates how out rightly wrong it worked be to close down the school for whatever reason. Throughout the interview, she attempts to share her pain and opinions on why she thinks the school should remain that any group of person imagining to close the school any soon need to think again about it. Among the concepts that can be lifted from the coding includes conservativeness and socialization.
In her defense, Janice finds it very wrong for her children to go school in town as the school in town is a very big school that has a very large population and thus the kids are not known to each other. This is contrary to their school in which every kid is familiar with and is known to the other and to the members of their families. The family members are also known to each other. This enhances cooperation among the children both at the same level of learning and at different levels as per the argument by Janice (Salter, 2013). The end result of such cooperation is improved social interaction among the children which is the expectation of the community. The community expects that the children are able to identify each other single handedly and they can share freely on any platform without the fear of integration with those perceived to be intruders or foreigners in the community (Salter, 2013). The country being occupied by a large number of Aboriginal people, the members of the community feel by having their children go to school in town, the quality of their interaction would significantly deteriorate.
The community does not want strange cultures introduced to their children as can be evident from the interview. Janice says the community loves the school as it contains only children from the community and thus sharing the same values. On the same note, she notes that parents have the opportunity to come in and offer assistance to the children in case the teachers are overwhelmed. This facilitates parting of the community needs into the children (Bernard, 2011).
An alternative theme that may be considered by martin is morality. As can be noticed in the interview, the school in town fails to meet the test for moral standards and thus the parents are reluctant to have their children go to such schools. They feel that the children who learn in the town school are not moral and may thus introduce into their children obscene morals that they would not wish to see in their kids. By having their children learning in the school in the village, parents have the opportunity to go the school and train their children on the anticipated moral standards (Reis, 2014). This serves to promote the development of the expected morals. Still, this can be observed by the fact that Janice feels the kids should only interact with kids from the village both in the same level and higher levels for the ones in the higher levels would teach their juniors the expected morals.
The idea to close the school is something that is beyond the imagination of the mothers from the community. It is one of the ideas that they harshly critique and hope that even though a decision has been made, one time things will change in their favor. Janice, in her submission claims that is as much as a decision has been arrived at, it can still be changed as it is not very late already. This represented a feeling by the majority of the members of the community (Smith M. F., 2017). The community members found it important and necessary to keep the school without having it closed that would make their children have to seek education from the schools of the town which they attach numerous challenges and problems.
The main impact of the closure of the school is loss in the sense of a community. The school is situated in the community in which the kids that seek education from there are mainly if not purely from the same community (Veal, 2017). The children are therefore known to each other and to the parents of their schoolmates and classmates very well. This gives the community a sense of ownership of the community in which the school identifies with the community as the community identifies with the school on the other hand as well. The parents of the children who learn in the school know everyone in the school and are able to easily identify any stranger who might have got access into the school and the necessary measures should there need be are taken against the stranger.
With all these perceptions from the parents, it is deductible and can be observed of how much value parents attach to the school. Still, it can be noticed that the parents identify a lot with the school and are up to date with any meaningful information about the school. This is possible due to the relatively small number as well as the geographical confinement of the school that make it only easily accessible to the children from the community (Giles, 2013). By closing the school, the children will have to move longer distances all the way to town to get education. The school in town has a very large population with kids drawn from across the various communities. The parents would thus lose touch with the ongoing in the school and may not be able to have access to as much freedom and access to the school as it was the case with the initial school.
As a result of the large population of the kids in the school in the town, the kids will not be aim a position to easily identify each other as it was in the rural school. There will be hundreds of children all of who do not come from the same community. By bringing kids from numerous communities together, the school loses the sense of community as no community would dominate the others. The school would instead be a metropolitan, addressing the needs of each and every community and kids. The community will thus lose the grip of its conservation thereby foreign and strange cultures finding their ways into their culture. As from the responses to the interview questions by Janice, the community was very conservative and could not allow any culture different from their own to sneak in as they thought such would be the avenues of introducing immoral activities and behaviors among their children (Hammond, 2013).
The closure of the school would mean all the kids would have to seek education from the school in the town. Janice describes life in the town as being problematic. Children learning in the town school have poor moral behavior and engage in such activities as taking drugs while in the rural school, the parents took part in shaping the morals of their children especially in cases where their teachers were too busy (Groot, 2017). The children on the other hand only interacted with fellow children who were from the same community. By being members of the same community, these children shared a lot in common including moral values. This interaction is one of the strengths of the school as proposed by Janice. Janice said that the interaction between the various kids both those at the same level and at different level allowed transfer and circulation of these moral behaviors among their children.
By taking the children to the town school, they would be subjected to such vices as bullying and drug abuse as is the common trends with the city dwellers. Due to the big nature of the school, nobody will always be there to ascertain that the children remain to be doing the right thing all the times. This poses a major threat to the future life of the children. By bringing on board children from the bigger Aboriginal population, various cultures are mixed up and what might be perceived to be good in one culture may be found to be unacceptable in the other culture. This may further confuse the children especially the young ones further as they will have to deal with a mix of unique sets of practices (Gomez, 2010).
The parents had the opportunity to come to the rural school and teach their children the moral values as they know them very well. This served as one of the ways of promoting moral conduct and ethics among the children (Groat, 2016). If parents saw anything wrong or messy in any children, they could correct the child instantly and ensure that the child is back to the right track. In the school in the town, nobody seems to care on the direction the children are taking and no one is there to offer them guidance on the right path to follow. This leaves them at risk of being salvaged by their seniors who in turn introduce them to the various vices among them drugs.
On the same note are the kids being bullied by their seniors in school, a situation which is facilitated by the large human population in the city school that makes it challenging to follow up all the activities in the school (Hewson, 2015). This subjects the kids to very inhuman treatment that may serve to be a permanent harm to their lives besides discouraging them from pursuing their main course in the school which is education. Bullying may lead to psychological damages to the kids leaving them with permanent scars of memories of their encounter during their time of schooling.
The closure of the school would see children either walk or commute over long distances to get access to education (Giles, 2013). Whereas the rural school was located just within the community at a place that was easily reachable by all the children who were learnt from there, the school in town is a distance away and most of the children have to brace relatively longer distances of travel in order to get to the learning institutions. In other cases, the kids may use a bus to school, which is only one bus against the inflated population of the school. This makes it challenging since the bus makes just a single trip a day. It means that any kid who by the time the bus passes is not ready to be picked has to make own arrangements with the parents on how to get to school especially for the young kids who may not be able to walk the relatively long distance (Creswell, 2014).
This is not only unconvincing the learning programs of the children but also tends to make the education process quite expensive due to the additional costs that need to be incurred. Being a farming community, the returns from the farming activity of the community is very and not suffices to support the high charges of the bus fare to school. Janice admits that the bus charges to town where the school is located are relatively higher than the normal charges. This makes it literary more expensive on a trip making the parents to undergo further costs. By closing the school, the parents of the kids would need to make financial arrangements that would ensure that their kids are able to attend school every day besides meeting the other financial obligations (McNabb, 2015).
Conclusion
The above pieces of evidence offer a justification and summary of the impacts of the closure of the school on the community as presented in the interview by Janice. These challenges among them long travel distances, immorality and loss of sense of community have a very great impact on the society ranging from social to economic implications. Whereas Janice offers hopes that things may change at a later date despite a decision having been made, as things as the paints of the kids need to make the necessary arrangements to see the kids adapt and learn in the new environment which is the school in the town.
The success of the education among the children in schools in town is a factor of how much a child braces the challenges. It is a question of how the kid will be responsive to the prevailing circumstances including social evil activities such as bullying and the use of drugs that will see a kid gain the best out of the sophisticated learning environment. The young kids risk being victims due to their ignorance and loyalty to the instructions they may receive from their seniors some of which could be misleading.
It was thus of utmost importance to factor the safety of these children from rural school before a conclusion to shut down the school could be reached. The interests of the divergent human demographics helps in developing strategies that are beneficial rather than harmful and making life unbearable to the occupants of a geographical location (Russell, 2012). The interests of the children would adequately be presented by their parents who always act in good faith on behalf of their children. The submissions by Janice paint a picture of the state of push and pull that the various authorities and the parents find themselves in as a result of failure to cooperate and share ideas on how to resolve issues that are importance to the members of a community.
References
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Bernard, H. R. (2012). Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London: SAGE.
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Giles, D. (2013). Advanced Research Methods in Psychology. Kansas: Routledge.
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