War of Words

“If I wanted the best scores in the state, I can move to Falmouth.”

Kenneth Smith, Millinocket School Superintendent

  Photo by David Jakes

A while back I wrote a piece about a little school in New York that found a novel way to fill its classrooms: woo foreign students (A Tale of Two Cities). It turns out the idea wasn’t so novel after all. Small schools around the country are doing the same thing. But when a school in Millinocket, Maine (population 5,322) set its sights on students in China, it set off a war of words.

Here's what happened. Looking to boost its numbers, Stearns High School (enrollment 200) turned its charms on China and its 1.3 billion people. Stearns set an ambitious goal by its standards—persuade 60 Chinese students to come give the small town school a try. The campaign caught the attention of an ex-Pat American living in China. He fired off an editorial about the scrawny school and its “run-of-the-mill” academic offerings. He scoffed at the thought of Chinese parents sending their students to such a school. The Millinocket school superintendent shot back his own editorial, casting dispersions on the character of the columnist and defending its humble school. Stearns might not be the best school in the state, he said, but its teachers are dedicated and its students have pride. A columnist from The Atlantic caught wind of the dueling commentaries and jumped in the fray, taking aim at the Chinese newspaper that published the piece. A blog in written by another American living in China picked it up from there, adding that it’s downright unfair for a big newspaper in China to pick on a little town in Maine.

When the dust settles, what it all comes downs to one question: do kids from China want to come to a small town in the United States to get an education? Probably, yes. I know kids here who jump at the chance to study abroad. It’s more than book learning and grades. It’s learning about foreign customs and cultures, and learning how to get along despite, or because of, your differences. Now, if the adults could just learn the same lesson.

Read the Article ® Chinese newspaper slams Millinocket; student recruiting effort sparks cold war of words

Follow-up: The columnist who wrote the original piece in the Chinese newspaper wrote a second piece, this time in the Maine Opinion, the newspaper folks in Millinocket read. He didn’t take back what he said, but he did say he’d visit Millinocket to see if there was more to it than meets the eye.
Read the Article ® Is a Millinocket education a good buy for Chinese families?