Dear Jim:
Wow! It's great your brother took that job. Too bad the principal wasn't open to his teaching. It's always surprising to me that there are many pockets of people and places in our world today who seem still quite close minded and even small minded.
I think your brother did a great job of bringing the world of learning, the joy of learning, of ideas, of inspiration, of success, of opportunity to these people. It sounds like these people really started to listen to your brother, and begin to gain confidence and intelligence to create their own presents and futures instead of going along with the predetermined plan for their lives which the principal was working to uphold probably for his/her own greedy self and for the interests of the lumber businesses in town. The pricipal could have been acting protectively out of concern, care, and fear of the lumber industry in this town collapsing, thus the town collapsing, failing, and everyone loses jobs and has to start a new town or move to a new town. If his students gained a good education and decided not to work in the lumber industry but to move out of town and get another type of job or even start new industry in this small town. I could see this principles possible concerns which I've mentioned, but even with these concerns I don't htink it was right for this principal to deprive these students a good education. He doesn't know what's best for them and doesn't have the right to make this decision and limit and control them in this way. This principal may as well be called a master and the students slaves. In the case of this community, principal, and school the workplace is a direct model of the schooling and vice versa almost, the two sound interchangeable in this community. The school is conditioning them directly and pointedly for a career or work labor in the lumber industry of this community. If the lumber industry is all these people know and they continue to produce generations of lumber workers than they can prosper off the labor off these people. They have a continual supply of labor educated not with choice but conditioned to become the next batch of lumber workers. This all sounds pretty unfortunate for these people. If the principal let your brother teach these people, some would choose to work in the lumber industry and some wouldn't probably. This may benefit this town down the line because diversifying industry's might be good for this town. It might give the town other industry/occupations to fall back on if all the lumber jobs get taken over by machines and get sent over sees etc. These people would be better off having more opportunities.
Your brother certainly made a good difference just by being there, teaching in this community as proven by the improved overall scholastic/academic performances of these students since during the time your brother was teaching there. I hope your brother has managed to stay in touch with some or all of these students. Maybe he can still teach them by long distance correspondence. If some of them have computers they may gain more opportunity/education. I hope they get more education. If the lumber jobs do go oversees or become machine operated, these people will have a better chance of carving out a half-way decent livelihood/existance with better education, and will be able to avoid becoming the reserve army of labor. Your brother, yourself, and other instructors are bringing rays of hope to lives.
Thanks, Shaunasi