Life in these United States involves immersion in a culture where bigger is typically considered better. That’s undeniable, I think. We naturally count likes and followers, poll numbers and votes, items sold and bottom lines, box office receipts and numbers of thumbs up, runs/goals/points leading to wins and losses—and judge what is “successful” accordingly. The more, the merrier, so they say. I have yet to see someone enter the Shark Tank and say: My dream is a nice, small business. Hell, no one gets to be a “shark” on Shark Tank for having a small business. Like I said, everywhere we turn: bigger = better.
Not surprising. Our foundational institutions are based on competition: a capitalistic economic system; an adversarial justice system; a democratic political system: in a competitive world, bigger numbers are how we establish the winners and the losers. That is just what we do.
I opened my laptop last Friday to the New York Times article, “Trump Claims Harris’s Rallies are Smaller. We Counted.” Of course, you did. That’s what we do: count sizes of things. It is like we all wear glasses with special lenses so that every person and everything that we see is on one side or the other of a greater-than or less-than sign. Those familiar mathematical signs sit above the commas and periods on our keyboard, and even the words themselves imply value. Greater than. Less than.
This is all well and good (I guess), unless you are on the less-than side. Unless you are (brace yourself)—small. In a competition-based society, the underlying idea is that being small and coming up short is unfortunate and that such misfortune provides the motivation to do more, to grow bigger, based on the assumption, of course, that bigger is better. I mean, one of the very definitions of “small” is “insignificant and unimportant.”
I’m not sure that I buy the entire premise.
__________________________________________
Ten years ago, during the college search journey with our youngest daughter, we learned about small, liberal arts colleges. I confess: as a first-generation, Pell-eligible student myself, I knew very little about an awful lot, and these small colleges were a revelation. My primary experience had been with large, public universities, community/junior colleges, or generally mid-sized, private, faith-based universities. But as we searched, we found these cool, tiny places fascinating.
We learned of the work of Loren Pope, an independent college counselor who said, “The smaller the school, the more impact it can have on a kid. My mission in life is to change the way people think about colleges.” Pope wrote a book titled, Colleges that Change Lives, and we visited several on his list, including a tiny place in rural Wisconsin. We loved our visit to Wisconsin, but our daughter ultimately decided that that particular college was not the place for her college education. But she said to my wife and I: “You two should work there someday.”
Well, life is funny. Several years later, my wife and I did find ourselves working at a small, liberal arts college in rural Illinois that we loved very much. And now, hot off the presses, we are working at a small, liberal arts college in rural Wisconsin — not the same one we visited a decade ago, but nearby, and for us, even better.
I can say from personal experience that, despite today’s disturbing rhetoric, colleges of all shapes and sizes can change lives for the better, but I must also say that I find myself enthusiastically agreeing with Loren Pope that these small colleges can have an extra special sort of impact. In my short time at Ripon College, I have watched the presidential debate and considered the future of our nation with an intimate group of students; watched a football game on a lovely Saturday afternoon where none of the players involved had an athletic scholarship; attended an activities fair and visited with students promoting interests ranging from paranormal activity to equestrian sports, from Greek Life to service organizations, from physics to art, from College Democrats to College Republicans, and affinity groups representing Black students, LatinX students, Asian students, LGBTQIA+ students, and more. All on a campus with less than a thousand students, and all on a campus where these students with diverse backgrounds and diverse interests know one another and the professional educators that love what they get to do here.
There is a particular beauty in something small, but to be small is to be at risk in this world. Small businesses, small farms, small towns, and small colleges are all at constant risk of extinction. But I think there is a corresponding and greater risk on the other side of the equation. In my early days of full-time ministry, I stumbled on some writings of a youth pastor/theologian named Mike Yaconelli, who was considered sort of edgy in a way that I found interesting. It was the heyday of “church growth” strategies, and I remember that he wrote something like, “The only thing you need to worry about with church growth is not to grow too big.”
I liked that then, and I like it now, more than ever.
Aristotle had a similar idea, from what I understand, and wrote extensively on his belief that a city-state should be big enough, but not too big, and that maybe 500-1,000 people was, to quote the philosopher Goldilocks, just right. To present day, Simon Sinek makes a similar argument. In his wonderful book, Leaders Eat Last, in Part 5 he outlines “the abstract challenge,” i.e., as civilizations and organizations grow large, the people the leaders purportedly protect tend to become abstract, invisible to the leaders. Sinek doesn’t hold back on the ramifications and titles chapter thirteen: Abstraction Kills.
All I hear is Yaconelli saying to literally take care not to get “too” big, i.e., so big that you cannot know one another. Don’t grow so big that people become just a number.
What is it that I find so special in the small college setting, the thing about small anything that transcends the typical experience in our particular “advanced” culture? It reminds us to truly see each other.
I often wonder if the world is losing its marbles, and although questioning institutions is one of my favorite things to do, the warlike drumbeat questioning the age-old assumption that a college education is a good thing sort of blows my mind. Is college for everyone? No. Is college too expensive for many? Yes. Should we work to improve things? Sure. But my goodness, I could write forever about the impact of college on the world as well as individual lives and families, including mine.
Instead of feeding our tendency to ask poorly-framed questions (which, ironically, college can help address), maybe the overly broad “Is college worth it?” should be reframed as “Which colleges are worth it?” And if so, I humbly suggest that we check our culturally-influenced tendency to evaluate an answer thinking that bigger is better and be willing to look to the small places. You just might discover a gem.
“Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.” – Jesus (Matthew 20:16, MSG)
Starting to Look Up 