By Harvey Joe Sanner

After reading a column by John Brummet I had the following thoughts. I've been doing some mental wrestling concerning the school consolidation issue.

Before concentrating on the issue itself, I have to resolve this inner turmoil I'm suffering because many of the people I usually agree with are on the consolidation band wagon. John Brummet and several other journalists who are normally balanced and apply a degree of depth to issues they cover seem to have joined the crowd of elitists who think they know what is best for everyone else's education system.

Although they can't identify "adequate", it is serving as the description that is driving their cry for severe consolidation. Puzzling indeed. Trying to meet an unidentified goal by throwing out solutions like extreme consolidation is kind of like rabbit hunting with an elephant gun.

You make a lot of noise, the quarry gets demolished (like our schools and communities) and too late you realize that the disruption and damage you caused didn't achieve the goal you desired.

How and why did so many intelligent people get aboard the consolidation wagon with hardly any alternatives being studied? One glaring fact emerges, they aren't impacted by their recommendation!

John Brummett calls the consolidators, "brave, forward-thinkers." Now there is the epitome of elitism. "We consolidators, us brave forward thinkers, know what is best for you in the small towns with schools that have less than 1500 students." I suppose that the opposite of the brave forward thinkers would be the cowardly backward non-thinkers.

How did these self anointed brave forward thinkers become so brilliant? It must be because they grew up in schools of more than 1500 students. Could someone tell me how the Little Rock School District has been better for pupils, parents and taxpayers than the Des Arc School District?

We haven't had to pay attorneys millions of dollars; we used our money to educate kids. We haven't had an exodus of students because of district problems.

When our enrollment drops, it is due to other factors, mainly economics. It hasn't been fun down on the farm recently. They didn't leave our school because of violence, because of teacher strikes, or because our district became a ward of the court

I'm sorry, John, but I can't see any brave forward thinking in the proposed consolidation effort. I see the proponents as elitists, perhaps unwittingly, who are out of touch and will not feel the pain of their proposal.

Perhaps arrogance is a better fitting description for those who would propose the inevitable disruption in the lives of tens of thousands Arkansas parents and students.

That disruption won't be felt just by the communities and parents. The students, the very group of citizens the brave forward thinkers are claiming to save, will be among the casualties.

I also see too little attention being given to any alternate plan. I honestly don't know, nor would I presume to put forth a plan for what Arkansas needs to do with our educational system.

I do know that it needs reform and in fact the High Court has said it must reform. Some schools can't teach all subjects that all the kids should be exposed to. That has to change.

But I know this, haste makes waste. I learned that in a small, less that 1500 student school system. To watch the consolidators rushing headlong into a plan that deserves more study and research of alternatives, I'm more afraid than ever that the merits for consolidation aren't there.

No, studying the whole issue a while longer is not stalling. It's common sense and that too can be learned in a small school.