The Vital Connections of Small Towns to Their Schools

Those vying to convert education from a public good into a private commodity threaten that relationship

After all these years, I’m still a knight. I don’t mean a medieval tin-can clanging knight. I graduated from high school in 1975 at a ceremony held, not at the school, but in the city park. Back then, the school’s mascot was a knight, and it was still a knight when I taught there for nearly 40 years.

Franklin Area High School is situated in a small town in a small county in northwestern Pennsylvania, a short distance from the Ohio state line. It is the type of area where the high school you attended is on your list of identifiers, along with your family connections and your job. Tell someone where you went to college, and they may well reply, “Yes, but where are you from?”