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The Last Stand: Schools, Communities and the Future of Rural Nova Scotia (Halifax: Fernwood, 2013)
... Education arguably, should benefit not only those being educated, but also the host community. Yet, education benefits other places (Bennett, 2013;Corbett, 2007). ...
... From 2006 to 2011, the enrolment in the SRSB is expected to fall by over 13 per cent, the largest projected decline for any school board in Nova Scotia (see Province of Nova Scotia 2007). Bennett (2013) estimates that school enrolment for Nova Scotia, as a whole, will drop by 16 per cent from its 2011 total of 151,680. 7 The Cape Breton Regional Health Authority administers the Northern and Central portions of Inverness County. ...
... One result is an ongoing debate over school closure. Some parents formed a pressure group to keep two schools open in Antigonish County and two schools opened in Guysborough County (MacEachern, 2010a;Bennett, 2013). ...
... The eventual hub school guidelines, developed entirely by provincial and regional staff, imposed strict criteria and requirements, making it next to impossible for local parent groups to secure approval for innovative proposals to repurpose their community schools. In the case of Chignecto-Central Regional School Board, the superintendent and staff imposed requirements that constantly thwarted hub school proposals for three elementary schools, River John, Maitland, and Wentworth (Bennett, 2013;Corbett and Helmer, 2015). When the Cape Breton Victoria Regional School Board rejected the George D. Lewis Hub School Society plan in 2017, the parent group called for the entire board's resignation (CBCNS, 2017). ...
... Concerned parents, school council volunteers, and smallschool campaigners have plenty of recent experience being managed and ignored by regional superintendents and senior staff. In the case of school closures, parents in River John, Maitland, and Wentworth encountered district administration who created inflexible hub school criteria and thwarted community school advocates at every turn (Bennett 2013). Without structural guarantees of local school-level governance, little is likely to change under the new education order. ...
... This struggle is part of a broader geopolitical process of the continuous spatial production and reproduction that global capitalism represents (Harvey, 2006;Held, 1999;Lefebvre, 1992;Massey, 2005;Pini, Moletsane & Mills, 2014). Small rural schools often represent a 'last stand' (Bennett, 2013) for communities marginalised in the relentless urbanisation and exploitation of rural lands that accompany capitalist globalisation (Corbett, 2007;Sassen, 2001;Spivak, 2013). ...
... The docile body in this sense is one that is prepared to be instructed or directed by those in authority. 2. For example, Bennett (2013) documents the rise of the Nova Scotia Small Schools Association, a network of small schools activists who lobby locally and provincially in support of small rural schools. 3. ...
The history of rural education in North America can be understood as a history of school closure, amalgamation, and consolidation of schools. Typically, historical and geographical arguments have converged in debates about whether or not to close small community schools, which are positioned as the victims of the march of time and reconfiguration of space. In this paper, we analyse the archetypical positioning of rural parents in the 'school wars' as emotional and irrational participants who want to turn back time and who fail or refuse to understand and accept what is alleged to be the inevitable transformation of rural space. We then analyse the political strategy and tactics engaged in by school governance officials and community agents in these struggles over the meaning and future of rural space. We argue that the confrontational politics that ensues do not support strong rural development conversations and that the unilateral search for what we call 'trump cards' to settle arguments with data and rational or emotional 'appeals' has led to ongoing tension in rural communities.
... Our argument is (and thanks again to this reviewer) that innovative and generous moves need to be made to even achieve a baseline level of agreement on the nature of wicked problem at hand. 3 In the Nova Scotian context, these administrative units include the provincial Department of Education, regional school boards, and local school councils, all of which have particular governance responsibilities. In recent years an increasingly coordinated and active group of small schools activists (the Nova Scotia Small Schools Initiative) has grown to prominence in the province (Bennett, 2013). These local activists who may or may not serve on school councils are networked into an organization of small school activist/promoters who have formed a provincial umbrella group. ...
The position of small rural schools is precarious in much of rural Canada today. What is to be done about small schools in rural communities which are often experiencing population decline and aging, economic restructuring, and the loss of employment and services? We argue this issue is a classic "wicked" policy problem. Small schools activists have a worldview that is focused on maintaining infrastructure and even community survival, while school boards are mandated to focus on the efficient provision of educational services across wider geographies. Is it even possible to mitigate the predictable conflict and zero-sum games that arise with the decision to close small schools? That is the subject of this paper, which draws on poststructural and actor network theory. We suggest that wicked problems cannot be addressed satisfactorily through formulas and data-driven technical-rational processes. They can only be addressed through flexible, dialogical policy spaces that allow people who have radically different worldviews to create dynamic, bridging conversations. Fundamentally, we argue that what is required are new spaces and modes of governance that are sufficiently networked, open, and flexible to manage the complexity and the mutability of genuinely participatory democracy.
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