On the Blog Again....

I guess I'm not too good at this blog thing; too many large gaps between entries. The sad fact of it is, that's pretty much my life. Long gaps of same-old-same-old, punctuated by periods of frenetic activity. And such it is now. We're having a wild heat wave here; at six o'clock this morning, it was 75 degrees, with 85% humidity; they're promising 105 degrees by five o'clock. It's been like that all week.

So of course, what do I do? I go on a walking tour of Berea with my son and my friend. Seriously, it was pretty good. We had to take Adam home anyway -- he'd been home for a week long visit, and I was very glad to have him home -- so we thought we'd make a road trip of it. Even though it was VERY hot, we had a good time. Let me tell you, if you get the chance to tour Berea, TAKE IT. It's very much worth it.

Berea is a fine arts college, and very unusual. According to my son, the school was originally set up before the Civil War, to be a racially integrated school. Later, its mandate changed to serve the poor students of Appalachia. Nowadays, naturally, it does both.

My son, and every student at the school pays NO tuition. None at all. It's basically a free education. How do they do it? It's a combination of federal grants, and slave labor. Every child is automatically enrolled for every grant and financial aid they qualify for. The rest of the bills are covered by the fact that the students are required to work for the school. If you don't have a job, you are out. They pay the kids a minimal cash wage (I think Adam's making about $1.50 an hour), but it really is basically slave labor. The students fill the jobs that another school would have hired staff doing: janitorial, food services, etc. According to my son, some of the buildings of the campus were built -- that's framing, bricklaying, electrical, plumbing, the lot -- almost exclusively by student labor (properly supervised, of course).

In addition, there are a number of crafts that are done by student-manned workshops. Weaving, spinning, broommaking, woodworking, candlemaking, various sorts of sewing, are all done on campus by student labor, to cater to the significant tourist trade that comes to the city. We toured a couple of the workshops yesterday, and it was really really interesting.

What Adam found most exciting: the school has recently gone paper-free. AND! Every student is issued a loaner laptop on his first day of school. He keeps that computer -- with free maintenance through IS&S -- until his junior year. At the end of his junior year, he is issued another computer, and that is his; he keeps it.

Berea was founded as a church school, and, in a way, it still is. No, it's nondemoninational now, and has Muslims, Pagans, atheists, agnostics, the lot. But it's a small school, and they maintain the demeanor of a church-founded school. It's an absolutely dry campus, for example; if you drink off campus, but get caught on-campus in an intoxicated state, that's grounds for suspension. There's a strict code of conduct, and high expectations of its students.

It sounds bad, I imagine. But I approve. It beats the heck out of some of these schools, where kids come onto the campus, and then run plumb wild, drinking and whoring and whatnot, making like Lord of the Flies until they're suspended, or they graduate. The student worked very hard to get to this very exclusive school, he knew what he was getting into; if he can't live up to a code of conduct, then he can go to a state school, right?

For the record, my son is doing very well here. He likes his student labor (he works in IS&S, doing maintenance on the school and student computers), he's enjoying his classes for the most part (English, umm, not so much), and he's made some good friends. He seems very happy to me.