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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Closing of CCI will have negative impact upon all of Chatham-Kent
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
It appears, unless there is once again an unlikely miracle, Chatham Collegiate Institute will, this June, close its doors for the last time as a small public secondary school. Although it is, after last year’s gnashing of teeth and sad lamentations, a bit anti-climatic it is nevertheless a sad, unfortunate and bitter pill to swallow for all of Chatham-Kent.That being said, let us first of all declare our personal involvement with the Collegiate and admit out front that we may very well be a bit biased. Lisa was a graduate of CCI, editor of its centennial year book and currently teaches there while I was the school’s last vice-principal and I retired from my career in education at CCI last June.
As a result. someone could, justifiably, accuse us of writing a column from a purely selfish point of view; however, we feel that most members of the community of Chatham-Kent will realize that the impending closure of CCI is an issue that supersedes personal bias and encompasses an entire community’s past, present and future.
The plot of land that CCI currently exists upon has been the site of secondary school education in the area since 1854 when the Chatham Grammar School opened its doors. The current school is the third ( and possibly fourth) secondary school to have existed within the confines of this lot at the corner of Murray and Prince Streets. It is, to say the least, “sacred ground” from a local educational as well as historical point of view.
To simply visualize the number of students who have received their secondary school education here and the vast amount of knowledge imparted within the confines of this small plot of ground virtually staggers the imagination! A good portion of the “movers and shakers” that shaped Chatham-Kent’s economic, social, and political image and “personality” are proud graduates of the “old Collegiate”.
However, history no matter how important or treasured does not pay bills and, as we all know, in these dying days of the “Harris/ Eves hostage-taking of Ontario” that money rules in all matters. There is, in the current provincial political mandate, very little room for the poor, the destitute, the ill, the handicapped or “less-than-bursting-at-the-seams”schools that are more assembly line factories than dignified places of higher learning.
We must all be “efficient” cogs in a wheel created by the monolith of an unthinking, uncaring government. The problem is, of course, that the word “efficient” is not synonymous with the word “effective”. In fact, when it comes to small schools, like CCI, studies abound that conclusively prove that these smaller places of learning are the best suited to produce a truly efficient and effective product ( i.e.. students) and are “absolutely vital to the social and educational fabric of Ontario”.
It is, when viewed from a “business perspective”, rather perverse and a bit bizarre to even imagine closing a place like CCI . What other business, outside of the educational world, would go against all professional advice, surveys, analysis and purposely pursue a plan that has been proven, time and time again, to be a less effective and efficient way to “manufacture a product”? Especially at a time and in a country where there never has been a greater need for these more efficient and effective “products’!
Maybe it is time for local boards of education who have, for the last number of years, been decimated, stripped of much-needed funding and cruelly bullied by the Harris/Eves Government to stare the Ministry of Education in the eye and simply voice what a good portion of their communities feel - “No! We will NOT close one more school in our area. We need you, as a government, to be responsible and provide us with adequate and reasonable funding”!
This sort of “grass-roots rebellion” has worked before in history and none of us should forget that all great movements in history have always started with a few dedicated, passionate individuals who had a vision of the distant future rather than only the immediate.
Not only does the closure of CCI result in a loss to education and local history but maybe more immediately is the damage that such a move would do to Chatham’s oldest neighbourhood. Victoria Park school is already closed, the Court House is scheduled to be closed as is Victoria Residence. The loss of still another public institution in this lovely, well-manicured neighbourhood will be a further, unnecessary, blow to the area.
In the last few years, our community has suffered enough closings. We have lost, among others, Victoria Park, Blessed Sacrament and McKeough in Chatham as well as schools in, Wheatley, Orford, Wallaceburg .
We must as an entire community be outraged as well as concerned. Neighbourhood schools everywhere are being placed in jeopardy and the problem is accentuated by the fact that local boards of education members lack the will, the creativity or the innovative thinking necessary to consider other ways of using these schools rather than simply closing them.
What concerns us the most is the fact that if CCI, the oldest and one of the most revered schools in Chatham-Kent can be shut down, what school, in YOUR neighbourhood could be the next one to go under the gun. And as CCI parents found out, it does not matter if you come up with facts, figures, plans or even money to keep a school going. If the Board makes a decision to close a school, it will ultimately happen.
The current provincial government has made us all into mean-spirited, selfish and greedy individuals intent on saving money at all costs and gambling away our future for the empty promises of to-day. They cannot be banished into obscurity quickly enough. The question remains however, whether any future government will be any better.
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
