From City Lights to Starlight

Abstract

Abruptly though not unexpectedly my father was laid off from his work in 1932 as the Depression of 1929 deepened beyond all hope of an early bounce-back. When Grover was killed, my mother had received a railroad life insurance payment that my parents invested in a 160-acre farm about 45 miles southeast of Wichita near Milan Kansas. I became a farm boy at age 5 for most of two years that will leave an indelible mark on me that I still carry. Difficult economic years for my parents will be truly wonderful years for me, learning about animals, cooking, gardens, home canning, milking, Coleman lanterns, fence mending, and first-grade class in a one-room schoolhouse under the tutelage of my teacher, Mr. Hemburger. He was in charge of an extinct, highly functional, fully decentralized American institution, whose light penetrated well into the twentieth century. A predominantly centralized top-down public education system has replaced that institution, and its decentralized urban multiple room counterpart. For economists, as much a part of the problem as the solution, education is a public good, thought to require government for its efficient production. That proposition would fail as authority gradually passed from teachers and principals to superintendents and the Department of Education.