Schools: Pay As You Work

• Share

The name sounds like the nonsense syllables of a school yell: Rabun Gap-Nacoochee. The school that bears the name is every bit as unusual. It is half private, half public. Set in the Appalachian foothills of northeastern Georgia, it aims to work not only the minds but also the muscles of its teen-age students. "We believe there is education in physical work, in spiritual development, in living together," says its president, Karl Anderson, 41.

Rabun Gap-Nacoochee is a 1,800-acre farm run largely by its 100 boarding boys and girls, who pay tuition. Under a unique setup, their high-school education is provided by the Rabun County public school system, which gives the farm school $1 a year as rent for classrooms, supplies ten teachers and 130 day students (who pay no tuition). To compound these contradictions, overall control is vested in the Presbyterian Synod of Georgia, and the school trustees make a point of seeing to it that religion is stressed for all 230 students.

Up to 35¢ an Hour. The boarders, core of the school, are down for tuition of $738 a year. But even if they have the money, which most do not, they are not permitted to pay in full. Each student must agree when he enters to owe the school at least $81 and up to $300 a year —and then pay it off by hard work at varying rates of up to 35¢ an hour. The rates depend on quality of work, says Anderson, who uses such gauges as "being punctual on a job, following instructions without grumbling, and care of tools." Sloppy work can slash the pay to a loss per hour.

Up at 5:30 a.m.. the rotating dairy crew milks the school's 70 cows, meets the other boarders at 7:30 breakfast. After tidying their rooms, the youngsters attend chapel, join the day students in regular classwork until midafternoon. Then the boarders get cracking again. The boys polish floors, mow lawns, repair buildings, haul garbage, plow the fields. Girls swarm into the boys' dormitory with mops and pails, cook dinner using produce from the school's 350-acre truck garden. After dinner: study hall, lights out by 10:30 at the latest. Saturday morning is for more work; Sunday hikes exercise those who still need it.

Building Character. Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School owes its birth to Andrew Jackson Ritchie, a "mountain people" Georgian who worked his way through Harvard at the turn of the century, returned in 1903 to found the Rabun Gap trade school. When it burned down in 1926, Ritchie pooled his efforts with Georgia Presbyterians, whose own Nacoochee Institute had burned the same year. Wisconsin-born President Anderson, whose doctorate is from Columbia University's Teachers College, has run the place since 1956, with a goal of character building and the faith ("not just a platitude") that "prayer changes things."