Not sure if a newspaper biting the dust is really man-bites-dog anymore. We were hearing warning signs way back when I stepped out of the Sun Tribune building for the last time. It was early June of 2006, now seems so long ago. Well it was long ago. Newspapers were stable but signs were evident due to the Internet, that the salad days were fading in the rear view mirror.
We got a taste of Fargo with the Morris paper. Forum Communications acquired the Morris and Hancock papers and proceeded to trim. We lost the Hancock paper completely. Chokio still has its paper. Hancock has its own batch of varsity sports teams, even softball where they were able to withdraw from the long-time partnership with Benson.
We regularly got reports that the Hancock school was picking up steam. Even if true, we wonder about all the fallout from the shutdown, how it will affect everything. The questions loom. Will we have anything like a normal school year for 2020-21? Will there be in-person classes at all? Not sure if anyone can say yes to that. Even if it launches in part or in full, might there be a new wave of the virus? Certainly happened with the Spanish flu, came back even after celebrations were held.
I'll use a popular word, "existential," and wonder if bricks and mortar-based education faces a truly existential dilemma. It's such a high-cost bureaucracy and one that is worth the price if it develops our young people in the way we like. However, the more time goes on, the more families will work to adjust sans that system. Their kids are not going to be in suspended animation. They are self-starters to a degree we might not appreciate yet, because up until now, we have delegated education to all the professionals working in schools.
Families will see that their kids develop. The kids will want to expand themselves. I was once a self-starter with reading books, magazines, comic books and even the backs of sports trading cards. All of that boosted my literacy and grasp of the world around me. The books assigned in school could be like torture to wade through. We had to try because teachers had the power to grade us.
I should have been working to expand myself in a wide variety of ways including many things outside a formal classroom. Problem was, I allowed myself to be terrorized by classroom judgments. To be preoccupied by all that. It always loomed because of grades on one's report card that you'd have to answer for.
Much ado about. . .what?
We are going through a season of the year when graduations would normally be held. UMM would be done with that. Then we'd get the high schools with the full gymnasiums or auditoriums. It was such a big deal it was almost unnerving. I use the past tense because the ceremonies are on hold as the virus hovers. No need for relatives to get dressed up and perhaps travel a fair distance.
Everyone offers "congratulations" and for what? All the graduates didn't reach some sort of magical "finish line" at the same time. They are highly diverse people with different talents and aptitudes. Much of their schooling was sort of "one size fits all." There is a big difference between my days of reading comic books and today. Today there is the unlimited Internet. I have seen TV ads just today about totally online-based learning systems for kids. Some claim to have no cost. Cost? For assimilating knowledge?
Older folks like me just assume there has to be cost. My parents' generation thought the government-sponsored public schools were essential and could reach all kids. It was like a right in America: a K-12 background with its level playing field. My parents' generation won WWII with a big monopolized government-directed war effort. War is the wheelhouse for big government - there is nothing it does better.
My parents encouraged me to defer to school, to accept all the criteria it assigned for determining success. I struggled. I should have realized there were other things like "life skills" that were just as important. I guess schools eventually came to teach "life skills" to a degree. Manage your finances, tackle household challenges, manage personal hygiene. But the "academics" in school - don't you hate that word? - put up onerous hurdles.
Maybe I could have gotten further in math if I could have been allowed to slow down some. And you know what? I could go online today for sure and find ways to "remediate" in math so that I could complete eighth or ninth grade-level assignments. It's never too late? But don't even come at me with the word "algebra." Why was I dragged into that literal hell? I could add, subtract, multiply and divide as well as anyone, so I could have stepped into many low-level occupations most acceptably. Instead I was just scared.
I'd master certain levels only to be dragged to some higher level where I'd struggle, get reprimanded and perhaps even mocked by some SOB instructor.
Maybe kids and their families are finding in this pandemic shutdown some sense of liberation from the legacy systems. Maybe the kids like not having to jump out of bed at an unreasonably early hour in the morning. Have you asked them about this? Why has formal education judged early rising to be so important? Makes no sense to me.
Papers can't cover sports
So, no more Osakis newspaper. There would be no high school sports for that paper to cover now. There's no high school sports to cover anywhere. How about that? I have not seen the Morris paper since the shutdown began. Don't know how they're adjusting without the usual sea of sports stuff splashed over something like three pages.
Community papers just assume they have to do this. Jim Morrison got exasperated with demands for sports coverage. He'd say "there are so many teams." And I responded: "It's not just that there are so many teams, there are so many games." Yes, the latter began to trouble me. You can argue for sports, but why the avalanche of games all the time, along with the many substantial trips out of town. The late Les Lindor who was school board chairman vented some disapproval of so much travel.
Well, there's no travel now with the shutdown. Do you get at least some sense of peace from this? Do you think the kids do? Do you think the kids find some sense of peace, away from having their ranks always divided between athletes and non-athletes? To the extent it's a status system, it's gone now.
You think it isn't a status system? Look at the Willmar paper sports section every day (in normal times), as it splashes never-ending coverage on all the athletes playing games. For what grand purpose? What about music activities?
Care to speculate on how much longer the Chokio paper will exist? Forum Communications of Fargo was believed to be on the verge of closing the Morris paper. If it was that bad then, one must wonder about the pandemic circumstances.
I don't recall ever visiting the Osakis sports facilities, and believe me I've been around. I have always loved the nickname of their teams: "Silver Streaks." Wasn't Gene Wilder in a movie called "Silver Streak?" I remember Hancock coach Dave Schoeck being a native of Osakis. Dave was a fine person as coach but he wasn't anything like his charismatic/flamboyant coaching peers at Hancock: Spencer Yohe and Dennis Courneya. What an era. You should get a primer if you're not aware.
I'm told the Osakis newspaper was down to 700 for circulation in the town of about 1,100. I will say this: my online writing has become much different with the absence of youth sports to write about. Normally that's a pretty good part of what I do. Time marches on.
Social distancing is the norm now.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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