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Education in Athens Co., Ohio: A clash of cultures

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Education in Athens Co., Ohio: A clash of cultures

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Content EDUCATION IN ATHENS CO., OHIO: A CLASH OF CULTURES
by
Jill Patrice Hanning
A Professional Project Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PRINT JOURNALISM)
August 2002
Copyright 2002 Jill Patrice Hanning
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UMI Number: 1414880
UMI
UMI Microform 1414880
Copyright 2003 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The Graduate School
U niversity Park
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695
This thesis, w ritten b y
-duLVjgfal _____________________
U nder th e direction o f h . Z X .. . Thesis
C om m ittee, an d ap p ro ved b y a ll its mem bers,
has been p resen ted to a n d accepted b y The
G raduate School, in p a rtia l fulfillm ent o f
requirem ents fo r th e degree o f
Master o - f t ftHs __________________
A ugust 6 , 2002
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ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 . ABSTRACT iii
2. BODY 1
3. BIBLIOGRAPHY 15
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ABSTRACT
Malin dropped out of high school during his junior year. Chris graduated and
entered a limited local work force. Their situations are typical for people their age.
Here in Athens County, Ohio, trailers and unemployment are familiar ways of life.
The county is best known as the home of Ohio University, located in the city
of Athens, one of the top academic institutions in the Midwest.
Despite the university’s proximity, Athens County, like the rest of
Appalachia, faces a particularly challenging feat in educating its youth, one
complicated by history, geography, a lack of resources, a lack of economic
opportunity, inequity in state funding and a unique set of values that often clash with
those of modem educators.
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1
ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio - “Mind if we stop to smoke a joint?”
1 pull into a gravel drive and park on the grass at the bottom of a hill beside a
rusty white trailer, as per my hosts’ request. Malin, 21, and Chris, 22, climb out of
my jeep— my “nice ride,” as Chris says— and head up the hill toward the trailer.
Malin proudly tells me this is his trailer, his very own place and first
residence outside of his father’s house. I ask him how he managed to pay for it; he
currently has no job. “My dad bought it for me, but I have to pay him back. It cost
$500,” he says, not indicating whether he thinks this is a large sum or not.
Malin dropped out of high school during his junior year. Chris graduated and
entered a limited local work force. Their situations are typical for people their age.
Here in Athens County, Ohio, trailers and unemployment are familiar ways of life.
Athens County is one of Ohio’s 29 Appalachian counties. The state has 88
counties altogether. Once a thriving farm and coal community, only small family
farms and a handful of mines now operate.
The county is best known as the home of Ohio University, located in the city
of Athens, one of the top academic institutions in the Midwest.
Despite the university’s proximity, Athens County, like the rest of
Appalachia, faces a particularly challenging feat in educating its youth, one
complicated by history, geography, a lack of resources, a lack of economic
opportunity, inequity in state funding and a unique set of values that often clash with
those of modem educators.
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Historically and geographically isolated, Appalachia is not a dying region, but
one in flux, slowly adjusting to a shrinking world. It is too simple to say that its
people either reject or accept modem values, especially in Ohio, where cosmopolitan
cities and suburbs neighbor many Appalachian communities, unlike Appalachian
regions of West Virginia and Kentucky .
But close ties with family, history and nature are traditions that are precious
to this area. An indigenous culture exists that often clashes with a more worldly one
that values material wealth, exotic travel and corporate jobs.
There is tension, fear and suspicion; but there is also curiosity, especially
among the region’s youth. Often, the war over whose values are most important is
waged in the state’s public educational system.
We climb up the shaky concrete blocks that serve as the trailer’s front steps
and Malin shows me around. He and Chris plan on sharing the two-bedroom bachelor
pad once they haul it into the woods, near a pond on Malin’s father’s property. And
once they patch up the holes in the walls and sagging floor. Malin acts the
consummate host by offering me a seat, a rusty metal folding chair, the only piece of
furniture in the trailer, while he and Chris roll and smoke their homegrown marijuana.
Malin says the administrators at his high school knew he smoked pot and
wanted him out of the school.
“They ran me off,” he explains. “They could never catch me with anything,
so they kept thinking of other reasons to suspend me.”
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When I ask how his father reacted to his decision to drop out, Malin frankly
responds, “He understands that I left because they were {messing} with me.”
Aimee Howley, Ph.D., chair of the educational studies department at Ohio
University said there is a high level of “academic disengagement” in Ohio’s
Appalachian counties that accounts for a higher drop-out rate.
According to the Ohio Department of Education’s 2001 statistics, the drop
out rate for the entire state is 12.54 percent. For the 29 Appalachian counties, it is
14.42 percent. While drop-out rates in urban school districts are well publicized,
those in rural, mostly white areas remain a largely overlooked problem.
“There is often a mis-match of home culture and school culture,” Howley
said. “Schools perceive certain students as trouble-makers and are just as happy to
get rid of a kid as the kid is to get rid of the school.”
Malin says he used to sell the pot he grows to students at O.U. on the
weekends, but never at his own school.
“I made a couple hundred dollars every weekend without even trying,” he
says. “Before I knew it I had $1,500 in my pocket; but I was only 16 and I just blew
it.”
He currently has no job. “I don’t work, I’m a bum,” he says.
Malin and Chris have similar aspirations. In their idealized future, they both
see themselves staying in Athens County, buying their own plots of land, building a
house and settling down with a nice girl.
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Chris specifies that his mate would be “a nice, cool girl who likes to smoke
pot and listen to reggae.”
Although Chris has no concrete job plan, Malin has dreams of entering the
wrestling business and opening his own promotions company in Athens, complete
with a competition ring in the woods.
“I’m not into keeping up with the big timers,” he says. “If you’re content
with not having it all, you’ll be all right. You can’t always be striving for more. It’s
better to relax and enjoy it.”
I ask him if he thinks the fact that he didn’t finish high school keeps him from
getting jobs, but he says probably not, since he lies about that on job applications.
“I probably don’t look too attractive to an employer because of my
appearance,” Malin says. Tonight his long hair is pulled back into a ponytail and
covered with a handkerchief. He’s wearing a sports jersey, army camouflage pants
and black boots. He has three large silver hoops in each ear, an unkempt beard and a
long chain drooping from his pocket.
“You don’t get jobs because you look like a goofy space pirate,” laughs Chris.
Chris graduated from high school and, like the majority of his classmates,
entered the labor force. He now works as a roofing sub-contractor. His mother works
for Head Start and his father is on staff at Ohio University. Chris could take classes
there free of charge; but he likes his job and the steady paycheck.
“I guess I don’t go to college because I’m lazy. My parents think I have a
decent job now and I can make money to move out of the house,” he says.
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“It’s a rational choice for kids in a working class community to take jobs
when they’re available instead of going to school,” said Howley.
Traditionally, Appalachian communities, like Athens, depended on every
member of a family for survival. Conventional vocations, like farming and mining,
required that children stayed close to home to help with their share of chores. If they
didn’t, the family may not have had enough food to eat or enough money to buy
necessities.
“Historically, education in Appalachia was valued for basics,” said Howley.
“Parents wanted their children to be able to read the Bible, become citizens and build
bams.”
An education beyond those basics was viewed as an extravagance. Today that
ideology has been translated into a modem Appalachian culture that doesn’t hold
education as a strong value, said Mike McClelland, principal at Nelsonville-York
High School in Athens County.
“There used to be a big dropout problem because the farmer needed his kids
at home; but now parents don’t push or support their kids in school because there is
a lack of education on their part,” he said. “A lot of the population is the second or
third generation on welfare. The kids look to their parents’ example and think,
‘They’re doing fine, why shouldn’t I do that?’ ”
Dick Fisher, Ph.D., professor of education at Ohio University and director of
the Coalition of Rural and Appalachian Schools agreed that education in Athens
County is challenging. However, he cites the state’s educational policies, not cultural
devaluation, as the main stumbling block for the area’s youth.
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“I believe the limiting factor is the State of Ohio’s neglect of elementary and
secondary education in the Appalachian region of the state,” he said. “The lack of
available resources for school districts to offer educational programs, hire sufficient
staff, and provide adequate facilities has contributed to young people lacking
preparedness for higher education and job opportunities. The cause, over-reliance on
the local property tax to support schools.”
Fisher referred to Ohio’s school finance system, which doles out district
funds based on that district’s property tax value.
According to the Ohio Department of Education’s 2001 statistics, the mean
for the state’s per pupil property tax valuation was $103,814, while the mean for the
29 Appalachian county’s per pupil property tax valuation was $74,108, nearly
$30,000 below the state’s average. The average teacher’s salary, which is also based
on property tax, was $42,892 for the state, yet only $36,978 for the 29 Appalachian
counties.
The lawsuit, DeRolph v. State o f Ohio, was filed in 1991, claiming that Ohio’s
school finance system was unconstitutional. After a decade of court battles, a
consensus was reached last September when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled to uphold
the system in a 4-3 conditional compromise that required the state to significantly
increase spending in poor districts through a new type of state funding known as
parity aid, Education Week said on September 12, 2001.
Ohio’s Republican governor, Bob Taft, stated, upon the court’s
announcement, that, “it is heartening to see the court trusts that the state has acted,
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and will continue to act, in good faith to provide a quality education to prepare the
children of Ohio for a prosperous, productive future,” the Web site reported.
But on September 17, six days after the World Trade Center attacks and 11
days after the court’s ruling, Assistant Attorney General Mary Lynn Ready filed a
motion on behalf of the governor asking the court to re-examine its ruling, claiming the
justices’ decision stemmed from flawed data that placed too large of a demand on the
state. Education Week said on September 26,2001.
“The economic pressures upon the legislative and budgetary process of the
past year are magnified in these trying and uncertain times,” read the motion.
“I anticipate a stalemate,” said Howley in reference to the case. “There are
too many rich conservatives involved.”
Chris and Malin finish their smoke and we walk back to the car. We’re
heading to their friend Andy’s house to watch wrestling on TV, a Thursday night
ritual for the three friends. Even though Andy likes to smoke with them, he still lives
with his mom, so Malin and Chris wanted to get the evening’s first joint out of the
way before we arrive.
“She’s cool, but she’s a mom; so we don’t smoke there out of respect,”
explains Malin.
The road winds, dips and bends as we travel farther away from Athens and
surrounding burgs. The forest is lush and the green is fresh and new. It’s mid-May
and the April showers have been plentiful this year. “It’s like a rainforest here,” says
Chris, taking obvious pride in his home.
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“It’s not too flat, not too dry, not too wet, not too many people,” adds
Malin. “I don’t like a clustered environment too much. I like living in the woods,
hearing the birds, going hunting, going fishing, growing plants and just taking walks
and seeing the wildlife. You know how some rappers have tattoos on their arms that
say ‘Westside’ or ‘Eastside?’ I want to get one that says ‘Hillside,’ ” he says, as he
takes in the scenery through the windshield and smiles.
Both Malin and Chris have little desire to move away, despite the lack of jobs
in the area. “If I moved to Columbus I could probably get a job at McDonald’s
pretty easily, but even that is hard here,” says Malin. “Everybody here needs jobs.”
Principal McClelland projected that roughly 70 percent of the students that
will graduate from Nelsonville-York this year will enter the workforce. He estimated
that 25 percent will attend vocational schools and only 5 percent will go on to four-
year universities.
“Our higher level classes, like physics or anatomy, are very small,” he said.
“The students don’t want to take classes they don’t think they’ll need; but we still
need to offer them. A lot of kids do want to leave the area.”
When a young person from a poor community receives an education and then
leaves that community in search of higher education or a professional career, that
cycle is referred to as “brain drain.” It is a problem that plagues Appalachian Ohio.
“Since there are few opportunities for employment in the Ohio Appalachian
counties, many leave. The potential leadership needed to develop the region, the
‘best’ and ‘brightest’ go to where the jobs are,” said Fisher.
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The result of brain drain is that the population left behind has a limited skill
level. Those who remain are only qualified for low-level jobs. Larger businesses stay
away from the area for fear that it lacks a competent labor force to make the business
successful. The blue collar jobs that do exist are competitive, leaving many
unemployed.
Howley explained that brain drain and a lack of parental support in the
schools are related. Traditionally, communities set the curriculum for local schools
and responded to parents interests.
“Now that the state controls the curriculum, the agenda has changed,” she
said. “For instance, schools teach competence in jobs that can be exported to cities.
Rural people became suspicious of what schools were up to, suspicious that schools
were trying to remove their kids from rural life.”
As a result, many children in Appalachian Ohio are not encouraged to apply
to four-year universities.
“Being close to family is a reasonable version of a good life,” said Howley.
“Educators see this as irrational.”
Andy’s house is a quaint, two-story, wooden, country home with a big porch
on the front. His mother greets us as we head up the stairs to Andy’s room and urges
us to not pay any attention to his room. His room is painted black and filled with
bookshelves housing CD’s, wrestling videos and books titled “Covencraft,” “To Ride
a Silver Broomstick” and “Wicca Love Spells.” The wrestling has already begun, so
we sit down quickly and quietly to watch.
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Andy, 19, graduated from high school and began taking classes at Hocking
College, a local technical school, but quit because he couldn’t decide what he wanted
to study.
“My mom’s lobbying for me to go back to school, especially so I can get my
health insurance back,” he says. “I think it’s important too, even though I didn’t like
it when I was there.” He would like to study art history, but says, “I’ll never find
anything locally to do with applied or fine arts. There’s just normal shift work
around here.”
For those interested in art, like Andy, there are only a handful of galleries in
town, most exhibiting folk art and crafts.
In fitting with a necessity-based approach to education, pieces that
contemporarily would be considered art, like quilts and baskets, were historically
viewed simply as ways to keep warm and carry things, said Lisa Quinn, education
coordinator at the Dairy Bam Cultural Arts Center in Athens.
Slowly, this attitude is changing, thanks in part to cultural offerings from the
university. But art remains, chiefly, an extravagance that is lacking in Athens County,
both in exhibition and education.
“To make a career in the arts, you’re better off to go where there’s more art,
but then there will also be more competition,” said Quinn. “It takes a lot more
creative thinking to stay in Athens and make a way for yourself.”
Quinn also believed that art and art education are especially important in
Athens because there isn’t a lot of public art for kids to be exposed too. “In cities,
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schools take groups to plays and museums. Here, a school might have one art teacher
that sees the kids once a week and has to set up in the cafeteria,” she said.
What the youth of Athens are familiar with is a strong artistic cultural
heritage. “During the quilt show, kids relate, they remember their grandma making a
quilt,” said Quinn. “I don’t think the typical Appalachian family values heritage as
art until they come here and see it on display and start to take pride in it.”
Several local organizations are tapping into these traditional skills and offering
alternative education classes in subjects such as arts and heritage, medicinal herbs,
forestry, water restoration and agriculture, hoping to generate some pride-and jobs-
from the fields Appalachia historically excels in.
But not everyone is convinced these programs are worthwhile.
“None of the 29 counties will be agricultural again,” said Howley. “There is
no forestry, no farming, no continuous stream of history that has everyone making
quilts. That’s a romanticized, Disney version of Appalachia.”
Principal McClelland agreed. “It’s important that alternative programs are
offered— our guidance counselor tries to talk everyone into continuing their education,
whether it’s at a traditional institution or not-but the programs need to be realistic;
there are no jobs in forestry,” he said.
Andy, Chris and Malin agree Hocking College teaches useful trades, but Ohio
University teaches you things you can’t use in Athens.
“If you go to O.U. you can count on moving to a big city afterward,” says
Malin. Chris, Andy and Malin never considered taking classes there.
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“O.U. is just a big fat party for the kids that go there,” says Andy. “They’re
only here for a few years and then they leave. I used to work in the cafeteria, and the
kids were assholes, they thought they were better than me.”
“It {O.U.} is kind of our local evil empire,” says Malin. “They own all the
land, taking over everything.” Although, all three agree that there wouldn’t be much
of an Athens if it wasn’t for the University.
“Athens has a huge library, art, music, a film series. A place like Athens is the
rural ideal--a close-knit community with culture,” said Howley. “But there are
interesting indigenous political forces that fight O.U.’s ability to wield power. Some
parents push academics in the schools— ‘my kids must go to Harvard’— while others
want it the way it was when their grandfather was there.”
Howley and Fisher agreed the university could do a better job of reaching out
to the community by opening its resources and helping strengthen secondary
education.
“With rural kids, the trick is to position educational opportunities side by
side with local economic opportunities,” said Howley. “But O.U. does not see
Southeastern Ohio as its primary market.”
Howley reiterated the suspicion parents feel toward O.U. and many of the
secondary schools. A fear that any skills they teach must be exported to the cities to
be taken advantage of. “Schools try to give kids the message that anything good is
outside of ‘rural,’ ” she said.
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Principal McClelland admitted he would love to expose his students to more
outside culture, to be able to take his students to New York and Paris. But there’s a
general disinterest in the students— a “what’s that got to do with me attitude”— that is
inherited from their parents’ apathy and fear.
“Parents would be surprised how many kids would go to New York and say
‘I’m glad I live in Athens,’ ” said Howley.
With wrestling over, we emerge from Andy’s room and head outside for one
last joint.
It’s a bright evening. The sky is clear and the moon is nearly full. We walk
single file up Andy’s gravel driveway, away from the house and the road and into the
tall grass behind, our steps changing from a crunch to a swish as we do. The fresh
smells of grass and dirt are released, wafting up around us as our ankles glide in
rhythm through the field.
We reach a small abandoned trailer. This one has no steps or even concrete
blocks, so one by one, with hands on either side of the door frame, we hoist ourselves
inside. There’s not much room. It’s dark inside, but I can make out some scale models
under glass and several ascending and descending stair pathways with railings.
Chris explains that this trailer used to be owned by the Southern Ohio Coal
Company; it once traveled to local fairs to demonstrate the mining process to kids.
“The models would light up and move,” he says. Chris, Malin and Andy all
remember going through it when they were younger. S.O.C.C’s local mines were
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14
closed in February and the trailer now serves the three friends as a secret locale for
smoking pot.
Malin and Andy sit opposite each other on the exhibit stairs and Chris settles
in on the floor between them. I stand by the door so as not to disrupt the loop. As
they pass the joint back and forth they talk mainly about wrestling, politics and their
futures. Then, as the high takes hold, they sit quietly, deep in their own thoughts.
Finally, Malin breaks the silence.
“You know, you can get a lot of good creative ideas about the future when
you’re high,” he says.
“Yeah,” laughs Andy sarcastically, “that’s why I’m sitting here.”
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dailey, Chris. Interview by author, 23 May 2002, Athens County, OH, Notebook.
Fisher, Ph.D., Dick. Interview by author, 27 May 2002, Dayton, OH/Athens, OH,
E-mail.
Fisher, Ph.D., Dick. Interview by author, 12 June 2002, Los Angeles, CAJAthens,
OH, E-mail.
Hanning, Malin. Interview by author, 23 May 2002, Athens County, OH, Notebook.
Howley, Ph.D., Aimee. Interview by author, 23 May 2002, Athens, OH, Notebook.
Howley, Ph.D., Aimee. Interview by author, 12 June 2002, Los Angeles, CA/Athens,
OH, E-mail.
McClelland, Mike. Interview by author, 24 May 2002, Nelsonville, OH, Notebook.
Quinn, Lisa. Interview by author, 24 May 2002, Athens, OH, Notebook.
Robinson, Chris. Interview by author, 23 May 2002, Athens County, OH,
Notebook.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Hanning, Jill Patrice (author)

Core Title Education in Athens Co., Ohio: A clash of cultures

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Print Journalism

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag education, sociology of,Journalism,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-302904

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Legacy Identifier 1414880.pdf

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Rights Hanning, Jill Patrice

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