Success Strategies for Teaching Henry George

Harry Pollard

[Reprinted from a Land-Theory online discussion, 20 February 2004]

I agree that the Henry George School is the most rewarding source of Georgists. (Perhaps second is the people who pick up a copy of Progress & Poverty.)

However, I believe the Henry George School blew it.

The basic course is essentially a course in land-value taxation. By no means does it take us into the philosophy of Henry George. This is accomplished by studying the other books in our advanced classes.

Yet, very few continue past the first course.

I got past this problem in Canada by promoting only "long courses". Students began in September and continued through 30 weeks until they had finished the four books. We charged them $29 fiat currency (that would be $194 now - actually, a lot more Canadian fiat).

My original thought was that if we were spending a lot of promotional money, we might as well try to recover it. Henry George Schools would spend what they had on promotion, but recover very little in purchases and contributions. Then schoolwork would stop until another little nest-egg would accumulate, whereupon the process would begin again. (From one of the professional Reports the School paid for back then).

During my eight years in Toronto, we always recovered our promotional money and we often made a profit. We spread to a number of other towns and cities - as far away as Niagara Falls - 80 miles away.

There were other benefits.

Our drop-out rate was practically nothing and students were exposed to 60 hours of Georgist study. If they hadn't become Georgists at the end of that, the fault was theirs, not ours!

My efforts to get this tried in other Georgist Schools failed completely. We wanted to continue our plunge into oblivion using the old mostly failed methods.

In California, I continued the process, but with my own course drawn from George's books. I called it Classical Analysis, we ran 30 sessions, charged $29 (should have been more) and had the same good results.

We relied on libraries and they had a budget cut and no longer allowed us to run classes free - unless we didn't charge. Fortunately, something new had developed - the somewhat tenuous chance we could put a full Georgist course into the public schools - for credit.

Of course it couldn't be done - something I've been hearing all my life. So we did it.

I had had a smaller Mini-Course Program running in the high and junior high schools for more than 20 years. This ran for 8 weeks (5 hours a week) and ran our analysis through to the island demonstration of Ricardo - we called it Fantastic Island.

It could be used in any course that lent itself to debate - history and English mainly. (I chickened out of "Driver's Education when a teacher asked!)

I would say to teachers: "Whenever the kids or you are feeling jaded, throw in a Mini-Unit." The kids loved it and through the year, the 8 Minis would be completed.

Its intention was to show students that land was different - a vital part of production that could cause us trouble if weren't careful. We didn't give them a solution.

Probably hundreds of thousands of kids have been through these Minis over the years. Back in 1970 I would count them, but I stopped counting when we reached 85,000.

But, here was the chance to have high school kids do a full Georgist course for credit. So, I wrote it (some 80-90 hours worth) and we began to expand. We had a number of schools in California along with some in other states. But we needed the money to push hard in social studies conferences and our money was cut back We simply couldn't do what needed to be done - particularly in the area of post-high school follow-up.

I think too that the InterStudent Program was so different from the way the School had always operated that there was little enthusiasm for it.

No, we didn't get the kids to come to HG School conferences - except once. However, teachers who were influenced by the course as they taught it came to School Conferences to proselytize and help us present - both at California Conferences and out-of-state, where they paid their ways.

'We could have been a contender' but we are now reduced to about 840 or so grads this year - but with the possibility next year of getting to a thousand - all of whom will have completed the equivalent of four Henry George School courses - between 80-90 hours of work.

And we are still coming up with new ways to teach.