We really did walk a mile and half to and from our one-room school. I measured the mileage last summer when I visited our old rural Illinois homestead. Big farm families resulted in their being a pack of big kids shepherding little kids mornings walking to school; afternoons herding little kids on the walk home.

In the one big room where I started school there was a row of three children in 1st grade, no second graders, four boys and girls in 3rd grade and so on. Sister Alice sat on the far wall with the big 8th grade kids. Strict Mrs. Lund ruled with a kind iron hand. That is how it was before one-room schools "consolidated" into big centralized districts in 1948.

Almost everyone attended consolidated schools. Big yellow busses drove hour long routes gathering farmer's children, factory worker's children, and children from wealthy and poor families. Almost everyone learned reading, writing, arithmetic, history, biology, chemistry, science and civics in-class together. Only a few Catholic families opted out.

Boys took industrial arts and shop and girls took home economics and typing. Everyone attended High School athletic events cheering on their "Home team". Earning a High School Diploma was what most parents wanted for their children.

Russia launched Sputnik in 1957. Frightened about the possibility of World War III the Federal Government funded advanced science and math courses in the hope some of us would grow up to be rocket scientists. The High School I attended suddenly had an electronic microscope; advanced math and physics teachers appeared. Subjects like civics, industrial arts and shop gradually disappeared.

Implementation of The Civil Rights Act in 1964 had consequences. Initially integration of public schools brought everyone reluctantly together. Soon white flight to suburbs and rural communities, combined with people not wanting to pay taxes to educate "other people's kids", defunded minority-majority public schools.

By the 70s there was a dichotomy of poorly funded minority-majority schools and well-funded white suburban and rural public schools. School Choice emerged and in North Carolina, where I lived at the time, white children attended "Christian Academies" while black children attended poorly funded public schools.

School choice is now pervasive. Career Technical Education Centers teach vocations, Charter Schools teach specialties from computer science to performing arts. College prep schools make it possible to graduate from High School with up to two years of college completed. These are plusses.

One negative of School Choice is that for the past several years Legislators have sent increasingly more money per student to public "Charter" schools, which do not have to provide transportation or accept problem students, than they have sent to traditional public schools. Their stated goal is to provide parents an opportunity to send their children to specialized schools that better meet their children's needs.

This diversion was finally expanded in 2023 by sending money directly to parents who choose to send their children to private and parochial schools. The goal is to reimburse parents for the additional tuition and transportation costs they incur by sending their children to private and parochial schools.

Most children still attend traditional public schools. Public schools do more than teach reading writing and arithmetic. How well a community school is fitted out with attractive physical facilities, a wide variety of elective courses in addition to required academics, intramural activities, athletics and extracurricular activities makes it clear to everyone who lives the extent to which the leaders of that community value their children. Poorly funded public schools can remain open as hollow shells filled with children whose parents are too poor to send them elsewhere. Children charter, private and parochial schools do not want.

While the wide choice of specialized schools may enhance academic learning. the societal cost of losing the solidarity that comes from everyone in a community intimately knowing their neighbors, may outweigh the increased academic ability that comes from returning to segregation.