A Nation of Boutiques

By James Nehring

I teach in a small public charter school in central Massachusetts. In Boston circles, I hear our school referred to as a "boutique." I've seen the label applied to other smallish, unusual schools, along with "specialty shop." The word "fringe" sometimes comes out with the next breath. It's meant as a criticism. We're interesting but inconsequential. Elitist, maybe, and unconcerned about the wider world. Not easily replicated.

Within an hour's drive of my own school stand a number of other schools to which I'll bet the label of boutique or specialty shop has been applied by at least one frustrated bureaucrat: a district pilot school, a school attached to an art museum, an unconventional vo-tech school, several charter schools, and a big city high school that is, as we speak, reconceiving itself as several smaller learning communities—a single building filled with boutiques.