Small Towns Under Siege

A series of discussions about small town issues

Small communities right across Canada are under siege. They are assailed from all directions and from many sources. They are at risk economically, culturally, medically, socially, politically, educationally, and some of the troubles come from within the communities themselves.

While we occasionally hear our politicians declare their concern about “protecting small town Canada” (usually when talking to a small town audience), they continue to enact policies that damage small towns, and ignore opportunities to protect them.

While Jan and I were driving the other day, we got to talking about the negative things that are happening now and those that took place in the past. Sometimes you need to list these things in order to realize the extent of the problem. As we talked, we saw the items as the result of trends. The over-riding trend has been that of control being moved progressively farther away from our community.

Take education for example.

When this community was first formed in the mid 1800s, there was very little money available, but the people found enough money to build a school and to hire teachers for it. The question never arose as to “whether we could afford it or not”.

In 1896 the village opened a modern two-storey school to house the Blyth Public School (Grades 1 to 8) and the Blyth Continuation School (Grades 9 to 12).

In 1946 district high school boards were formed, with one representative from Blyth on that board, and the Blyth Continuation School was closed. Students from 9 to 13 were bussed to Clinton to attend the newly named Clinton District Collegiate Institute. Blyth had an elected representative on that board.

Some time later the Huron County Board of Education was formed, and more recently Huron County and Perth County boards were combined to form the Avon Maitland District School Board. If there is a board member who represents Blyth, no one seems to know who that is. In any case, if there is such a person, he or she will be representing so many communities that none of them will be truly represented.

Now because of declining enrolment across the county, it has apparently become too expensive to educate Blyth children within Blyth, according to the AMDSB, so the school is likely to be closed permanently. This is a terrible blow to Blyth as a community. Many of the ramifications of this latest move is against the wishes of nearly all the parents and the members of the community. There is a deep anger throughout the community about this unfortunate turn of history. But that remote, foreign body – the Avon Maitland District School Board - does not care. Blyth is not their responsibility. While their actions have a direct effect on the community’s economy, society, culture, and the children’s development within their home town – there is no means to hold that foreign board accountable for the collateral damage they inflict, the negative side effects they cause.

The standardized tests reveal that Avon Maitland Students on average perform below the provincial average on all measured subjects. The changes being discussed provided an opportunity to make changes that would support strategies to improve education quality. Instead the board staff have recommended actions that will do nothing towards that end. These changes do not take children, parents, communities, or education into account - only the equation of bodies and desks to hold them.

Perhaps the board and staff members’ mentalities are victims of that whole centralization process – a process which has some good points as well as a good many negatives. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a mentality emerging which is capable of finding ways to ameliorate those negatives.

So, what are these damaging effects?

The education system has been completely divorced from the community context in terms of education content, community engagement, and acceptance of accountability to the community.

The fact that the larger unit of administration has almost completely eliminated the community’s meaningful representation on the Board has not been lost on the board staff and the board. They are showing that they feel no obligation to consider the community and make no attempt to even pretend to be accountable to the community.

According to the plans that we have heard about, the Blyth school children will be split off in several directions: Grade 7 and 8 children will be bussed to Wingham to take classes in that town’s high school, while some of the K to 6 children will go south to the Hullett school and others will go north to a school near Belgrave.

The curriculum will not relate to the Blyth community context since few if any of the teachers will have any interest in or loyalty to or knowledge of that village.

The Blyth community, devoid of any school, will be less attractive to young couples seeking a place to raise their families.

There will be an economic impact since fewer people will come for shopping to the village when the school link is broken.

The exposure of Grade 7 an 8 students to the influences of secondary school students is still of grave concern to parents and the educators have done nothing to assuage those concerns.



The next addition to All About Blyth will look at the municipal amalgamation process of 2000