Reflections on My Experiences
As A Henry George School Extension Director

Harry Pollard

[2011]

When I left in 1962, the School was working well under Jim Ramsey whose courses continued the great success we had achieved. Then Jim had to leave for Alberta (where he set up similar courses).

Replacing Jim was someone called Laurie Mannell. I don't know him so he must have been a recent graduate. Bob Clancy never told me this was happening, nor did ask me for an opinion on a replacement. I actually had two good prospects to follow Jim - excellent Georgists. Never got to recommend them.

I rather think that support for these methods never materialized. How dare an out-of-the-way school produce nearly as many advanced graduates as New York, without a HQ building and useful promotional resources.

This was perhaps confirmed by my new job in Los Angeles as Director. First thing that happened was that the annual allocation to Los Angeles was cut in half. I had just arrived from Canada, I had given up my career, and was prepared to start experimental classes in the Toronto fashion. In effect, I was punished. At one point I went for 5 months without pay. I was lucky I did pretty well in Canada!

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, they appear to have abandoned teaching and become "activists". They chose Port Credit and worked to show what would happen if the town changed to LVT. Maybe they thought that if the results were taken to the government it would convert Ontario to LVT.

The next generation had already been produced several years after I left for Los Angeles, but when classes were abandoned for activism, I rather suspect that the grads went to other things. Running classes and producing new Georgists was an exciting and meaningful activity. Working on sales ratio studies wasn't.

Sometime towards the end of the 60's the experiment died, leaving in its wake scores of graduates who could properly be called Jeff Smith Georgists but who like most of us had other things competing for their time.

Meantime, in Los Angeles, we adopted a course that wouldn't cost so much as a full scale newspaper promotion. I should say that both in Ontario and in Los Angeles we had a number of sites that were advertised. We went into the suburbs to find our students. I'm not sure any Henry George School does that any longer. In Ontario, our classes extended from Toronto to Niagara Falls 81 miles away. Can't imagine any School doing that today.

In Los Angeles we would set up a class in a library, then post our brochures into the immediate zip code surrounding the library. Or we would arrange a party to hand deliver the brochures into surrounding homes. Branch libraries are often sited in the middle of a residential area so often students could walk to the library. Also, there was a sense of neighborliness.

We would get classes of 15-20 this way, but we still had to keep them. We would rarely lose anyone. This, because we ran Socratic classes rather than lecture. People who attended class were active the whole 2 hours.

They enjoyed it and kept coming back.

With a large class we would usually split them into groups to work separately, then after a period we would stop discussion and various groups would tell what they had learned and whether they agreed or disagreed. - whereupon others would chime in and a lively discussion would ensue. After a week or two, students would bring coffee and cookies which added to the sense of community. (I have earlier pointed out that in our major sites - YMCAs and suchlike - after class we would go to a local coffee shop and continue the discussion over pie and coffee.)

The fees we charged covered the costs of promotion and materials. These classes went on to about 1992 and were successful even though they competed with "community colleges, open universities, sex, drugs and rock n' roll".

Then, there was a budget crisis and the libraries would not let us charge a fee so we were stymied for the moment. However, another opportunity arose. Since 1970, I had been selling a short course in economics to the public schools. It took 8 weeks and could be used with any course that could accept debate.

It was essentially P & P and took students up to the point where the difference between land and other things was emphasized and showed them how dangerous land speculation was. It didn't offer a solution, but did show the importance of land. History classes got a lot out of it as history is about land anyway.

I would sell it by telling teachers "Whenever you or your class is feeling a bit jaded, run them through an InterStudent MiniCourse."

I don't know how many students were involved in InterStudent. I stopped counting when we reached 85,000 in the first few months. I suppose over the 20 years or so, some hundreds of thousands have learned about land. Often I found the kids would do 4 Minis in one grade and the other four in the next grade.

Now, even as we having trouble with the libraries as venues for adult courses, a different and exciting opportunity presented itself. I dropped the library problems and went in a different direction.

Bret Barker had been using the Mini-Courses and had taken an adult course with me. (Also Bob Scrofani had given him a P&P at a teachers conference we had attended!) He offered to teach a Georgist Economics course if we had one. Well, we didn't, so it became necessary to write one. I dropped everything and proceeded to write the InterStudent Course to be taught as a 12th grade economic course.

Bret got his economics class and began teaching the 9 Cycles a semester. It's safe to say that I wrote InterStudent, but Bret made it work. We fought very profitably for months. Countless changes later, the course is pretty good. (Bret still wants changes - and good ones.) I attended many teachers conferences, sometimes with Bret, and sold it to a number of teachers in schools as far away as Kansas and Ohio. Most sales were made in California.

There is an attrition. Teachers leave, or are transferred away from economics. They are promoted out of teaching, or retire for health reasons. So we have to keep on selling. This I could do when you were President in New York for you supported us well. Later, we faced cuts from New York and could no longer exhibit at teachers' conferences. Our expansion program ended. At the moment we have 3 schools teaching InterStudent to more than 1,000 students a year. There is an occasional chance to expand.

Something new is Bret teaching the course to Advanced Placement (AP) students. These are students destined for college. Bret completes the impossible task of teaching them the complete InterStudent Course as well as the complete AP course in a year. He is also likely to give them Lindy's 10 session web course as well. I think Bret enjoys piling it on.

If my memory is correct, I think 89% of Bret's AP students passed their test last year - an amazing result for AP students.

I didn't mean to, but I've given you a potted history of my career teaching Henry George. What I really want to say is there is always a way to change things for the better, but if we continue to do things the same old way we haven't a chance of success.