Interestingly, funds for the creation of Kansas' first government-financed university were already allocated by the state leadership of Kansas as early as the 1860s. In fact, in "1859, provisions were written for a state university into the Wyandotte Constitution, under which Kansas became a state in 1861. Finally, in Lawrence city, "the University of Kansas officially opened on September 12, 1866, with 26 girls and 29 boys registered in the preparatory school." Currently, The University of Kansas has about 28,000 students and 2,600 faculty on five campuses. (I graduated from here with an M.A. in TESOL and the education department is consistently in the top 10 or top 20 in the nation.)
Meanwhile, the state's first land grant university was sponsored by federal and state government largess in 1863. This institution was located in Manhatten, Kansas (far out on the great plains and Smokey Hills of the state) and is now known as Kansas State University. Today, there are several other large public state universities scattered throughout the state--in Wichita, in Ft. Hays, in Emporia and in Pittsburg. Of the five universities in the Kansas State university system, Kansas State in Manhatten, is still the largest with a student population of up to 25,000 students, depending on the term. (Both K-State and the University are almost always in the top 100 engineering universities.)
In addition to Kansas private colleges and state-run universities, Kansas offers an astonishingly large number of community colleges. "Community colleges are centers of educational opportunity. They are an American invention that put publicly funded higher education at close-to-home facilities" across the states. There are 1600 such institutions in America. In Kansas, a state which has long already been saturated with tertiary institutions of education, there are still currently to be found operating more than 30 public community colleges and technical colleges at the county and city levels.
"[C]ommunity colleges have been inclusive institutions that welcome all who desire to learn, regardless of wealth, heritage, or previous academic experience." Concerning the mission of this American institution, a community college's mission is "to provide education for individuals, many of whom are adults, in its service region. Most community college missions have basic commitments to:
- serve all segments of society through an open-access admissions policy that offers equal and fair treatment to all students,
- a comprehensive educational program,
- serve its community as a community-based institution of higher education,
- teaching,
- lifelong learning."
In summary, between 1837, when the first mission schools were opened for native Americans by churches and non-profit organizations through the rise of large scale state sponsored tertiary education, Kansas (with a population of only 2.9 million people and vast swaths of barren or open agricultural land) has historically maintained educational achievements (or at least a great reputation) at fairly high levels for decades. Only austerity campaigns of the past few decades have clearly endangered the state' status as an educational powerhouse.
I need to emphasize, thought, that I am not certain that the standards of education and achievement at a majority of the above-discussed educational institutions and institutional types in Kansas were particularly high by 1900, 1920, 1940, or even 1960. The biggest or most obvious ingredient in Kansas education has been its saturation. In a way, the growing saturation of educational opportunity throughout Kansas over the century between 1860 and 1960 operated in the form of the metaphor: "as the incoming tides raise all ships". I mean to say that tides of educational institution planting then empowered educational development and achievement and/or higher standards with each new wave of immigrants to the state.
I say this because of my review of literature on Kansas biographies. For example in the biography of Kansas' famous son, Dwight David Eisenhower, who became a four-star general in the 1940s and then the president of the United States in the 1950s. "Ike", as Eisenhower came to be called in Abilene, Kansas during his formative years, was able to maintain a job at a creamery, play football and other sports, and graduate from the integrated Abilene High School. In short, the high school study load must not have been very heavy.
At the same time, growing up as Ike did on the wrong-side of the tracks in Abilene, he spent a lot of time playing poker and was well-known for it--in and out of school. Although, Ike showed a penchant for reading, history and politics in those same years, he was not known as a star student. For me, I would venture to guess that Ike was actually a high performer in education for his time. Most Kansans still did not start nor finish high school in 1909 the year when Ike graduated, especially in the many rural areas that still had mostly one-room public school until mid-century. (The masses of Kansas farmer children would have had to move away from their families and into towns and cities if they wanted to attend a good high school. )
One of the things, it turns out, that was very important in Eisenhower's education, I believe, was that he was encouraged during his years in an integrated school district (not all schools in the state were integrated) in Abilene, Kansas to treat people fairly--regardless of their skin color and position in society. For example, "when some of his football teammates refused to line up opposite a visiting African American player, Eisenhower volunteered for the position, and shook the player's hand after the game." In short, education is about character as well as about educational achievement or knowledge for many Kansans. That is many Kansans are invested closely in local educational institutions historically--through the creation of booster clubs, foundations, and even in legacy grants or endowments to private and public colleges, universities, and schools.
Oman: From Hermit Kingdom to Renaissance
"Hermit kingdom is a term applied to any country, organization or society which willfully walls itself off, either metaphorically or physically, from the rest of the world." Historically, at different junctions, the Koreas, Japan, Bhutan, Tibet, Albania, Oman and Yemen have been home to such kingdoms or countries. (Today, North Korea is still seen as the number one h ermit kingdom in the world.)
In contrast to Kansas and most of the world, the 20th century found Oman having almost totally exited the world stage. In the 19th Century, a once great Omani empire fell apart and went into almost complete hibernation and soon opposed new developments on almost all fronts--isolating itself socially, politically, educationally, and economically from most of the rest of the planet. By the mid-1960s it was even fairly fully isolated from its former colonies in Africa and South Asia. The only strong alliance the Omani Sultanate had was to the UK from the late 19th century onward.
Oman was nicknamed by the mid-1960s both the "Sick man of the Middle East" or the "Tibet of Arabia" Five "decades ago, Oman's customs harked back to the Middle Ages. The wooden gates to Muscat, the capital, were closed each night to keep out intruders, and anyone walking about in the darkness (there was no electricity) was required by law to carry a lantern or risk being shot as a thief by city guards. The country had only three miles of paved road and 12 telephones."
By 1970, when the current Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said took power, there was in the entire country only one single school. (Some educated at home but most could not read, write, nor educate their offspring.) In short,prior to the 1970s, the Sultanate of Oman was observably fairly anti-education and against international exchanges by and for its own peoples.
In fact, forty-six years ago, as Sultan Qaboos took power, "Oman was an erratic hermit kingdom. Today it is the quiet friend of everyone. This subtle (and even humble) foreign policy stands in stark contrast to that of its other Arab neighbors, which tends to be characterized by thin skins and easily wounded pride that makes chest-thumping declarations of confrontation a common spectacle."
Qaboos has also built up educational institutions across the country from scratch--and through borrowings from neighboring societies and through migration of educators and planners from around the world to Oman. (It should also be noted that well-educated and returning exiled Omanis from both sides of the Iron Curtain arrived and helped Oman considerably during the early decades of Sultan Qaboos' reign.)
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