Pictures from Craftsbury Common, Vt.

Imagine a place where higher education includes 6 am farm chores, where students can spend their summer on work crews doing community service to reduce their tuition and their post graduation debt. Imagine all of this supported by a local community, where the entire population of 350 turns out for a high school graduation honoring 13 students. This place actually exists - today in 2006, Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont. Following are a few observations from a one week stay on the campus.

Sterling College is a four year school (the second smallest in the country, with 100 students). Their curriculum focuses on the Environmental Sciences. It boasts one of the best Environmental Science libraries in the northeast. The school has a working farm, raising animals, produce and forest products.

Students work the farm, which includes goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, cats, hens and roosters. They also raise a cornucopia of vegetables suited to their climate: potatoes, rhubarb, beans, tomatoes, peas, cabbage, lettuce, onions, kohlrabi and turnips.

They also work in the school kitchen using produce from the farm, cutting up vegetables, cooking eggs and meat, mixing in maple syrup and creating a cuisine any restaurant would be proud of.

In the afternoon there are clothes on the clothesline behind the dorm, next to the volleyball court.

Doors and cars aren't locked - really - and no one is preaching, “fear your neighbor”.

There are so few security lights that walking across the campus at night requires a flashlight.

Across the street from the college is a parking lot. A sign reads, "This is Sterling College property and is patrolled". How many times have I seen signs in similar locations that read, "The owner is not responsible for stolen or damaged goods".

I was out walking before 7 one morning. I was surprised to see that a car had stopped in the north bound lane. The driver was talking to a lady walking a Chihuahua. When I came back by they were still talking. I went to my room and when I came back down the sheriff had stop in the southbound lane and all three of them where talking. The dog was ready to move on, but the life of the community was rising like sap in a sugar maple.

For most kids, college is one third school and two thirds life lessons; how to get along with peers and professors, how to manage money, how to manage time. Some get it - some don't. These kids are learning more than that, they are learning a work ethic, the true value of hard work, time and money, and, at the same time, a land ethic. I believe our country needs them for they offer it a bright future.