Yes Virginia, There are Excellent Rural Schools

We take pleasure in answering the email below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of Mr. Rural ED:

Dear Mr. Rural ED—

I am 8 years old. Some education experts say there are no excellent rural schools. Daddy says, “If you see it in Mr. Rural ED, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, are there excellent rural schools?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, those education experts are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge and No Child Left Behind.

Yes, Virginia, there are excellent rural schools. They exist as certainly as love and generosity and the Rural Educaiton Achievement Program exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no rural schools! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no six-man football then, no superintendent who knows every student's name, no school breaks during hunting season to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would not make adequate yearly progress.

Not believe in excellent rural schools! You might as well not believe in standards-based education. You might get Margaret Spellings to hire desk-jockeys to watch all the schools to find excellent rural schools, but even if they did not see one, what would that prove? Desk-jockeys don't see excellent rural schools, but that is no sign that there aren't great rural schools. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies scoring Advanced on the math section of the Colorado Student Assessment Program? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, and Vice President Cheney, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No excellent rural schools! Thank God! they exist and always will. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, rural schools will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.