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Topics:
Youth
Education-Based
Community Development
Michael
J. Shannon
Center for Design Studies
1992
Most people
today agree that deficient public education is a root cause of
the nation's social and economic problems. Most also blame teachers
and schools. I agree about education's deficiencies, but do not
blame teachers and schools. I'm convinced that the fundamental
problem with public education is that our schools are divorced
from their communities; education is divorced from everyday life.
Americans are arguing over abstractions like restructuring, choice
and equity, but what I believe education needs most is a hands-on
link to the "real world."
The current
separation of school and community began with the formation of
the "factory model" schools early in the century that were designed
to channel the flow of immigrant children into American society.
Children, whose parents could not speak English, had to be taught
the new culture. This expropriation of education from community
to school accelerated with the demographic changes, population
movements and rapid growth of cities following World War II. Increased
federal dollars fueled a process of bureaucratization and "professionalization"
of the nation's public education system. Cadres of new specialists
discouraged "meddling" in the schools by lay citizen and parents.
The price of this separation has been high. It has cost educators
a wealth of resources and potential support. It has alienated
adults, diminishing their understanding of education, their interest
in lifelong learning and their ability to help their children
learn. But most detrimental to society as a whole has been the
weakening of children's ties to their parents, to their communities
and to the idea of learning as part of life.
Politicians
and industrialists, mired in socioeconomic crises after twenty
years of deficit growth, declining competitiveness and global
recession, have eagerly made education the scapegoat for their
mismanagement. The public, also avoiding responsibility, has accepted
this verdict. Accordingly, a vast array of government and industry-sponsored,
public and private ideas and programs are being advanced to "fix
the schools." But the schools are not what is fundamentally
wrong with education. The issue is more complex, profound and
difficult to remedy. It is a systemic social problem exacerbated
by Americans' institutionalized racism and disregard for the weak,
including lamentably, their children.
The critical
and essential question, and one not being asked is: Who is
responsible for education? The answer, of course, has to be:
We are. We the people, we the parents, relatives, neighbors
of the children, we the citizens of communities. We are responsible.
Without public acceptance of this truth, our latest attempt at
educational reform will become, like our inability to confront
the deficit, another dispiriting example of failed leadership.
Asking who
is responsible for education begs the question of what education
is for. Education is for the person to optimize unique, individual
creativity and capacity, but in the context of community.
The goal of education should be to create individuals who understand
that the essential meaning of being human derives from acknowledging
our interdependency and, therefore, accepting our mutual responsibility.
One of the unfortunate ironies of civilization is that it enables
people to ignore their dependence on the many others whose labor
sustains them. The asocial individual simply takes others' support
for granted.
It is the
community then, that benefits from education, and therefore must
take responsibility for it. The fact that this basic understanding
is not thoroughly instilled in our population reveals an essential
flaw in our education. We don't make the connection between school
and community, because it was not made for us. The link between
education and daily living goes unconsidered in this country.
It is a blind spot. Operating in this vacuum, educators, indoctrinated
by their training in centuries-old pedagogy, convert our children
into listless students rather than enabling them to become motivated,
participative human beings.
I realize
that public education was never intended to produce whole, mature
adults. In the past there were support systems in the form of
family, church and neighborhood that contributed to the process
of making productive citizens. And, in any case, in simpler times,
the quality of education was not critical. The "self-made man"
was common. There were plenty of jobs, and hard work was always
rewarded. Then, during the second half of the 20th century, great
changes, unprecedented in speed, depth and breadth, transformed
the nation. Traditional family, church and neighborhood support
of child development evaporated. The schools were left to educate
alone. The tragedy is that we let them try.
What we
must do now is to restore community support for education. But
the concern of family, church and neighborhood is no longer enough.
Our world is demanding much more of young adults than it once
did. To meet their needs the resources of entire, extended communities
must be mobilized. We are fighting a war for our future. No community,
city or country can afford the social, cultural and economic costs
of subverting the potentials of its young people. What we must
have today is a new collaboration of schools and community, a
new integration of academic study and "real world" community experience.
I am calling this new process Education-Based Community Development.
The concept
of Education-Based Community Development (EBCD) is founded on
the profound interdependence of learning and life, of education
and society. That few would dispute the mutuality of education
and society, makes all the more astonishing—and regrettable—the
lack of cooperation that exists between schools and communities.
The first imperative for education, therefore, is to reintegrate
our schools with their communities. We can then utilize their
interdependence. That is, what renews education, renews the community.
Each has much to offer the other. Communities, even economically
poor ones, are rich in human and material resources, and all schools
have facilities, skilled faculty and student manpower to offer.
We simply can no longer afford, for any reason, to waste these
assets.
Education-Based
Community Development (EBCD) is an integrative process that makes
education the engine of school and community renewal and development.
The "community" in this case is defined as a school district.
EBCD is administered by an "EBCD Council" that is run by a team
of superintendent, school and civic leaders and whose members,
including students, represent the community's various constituencies.
The Council, with the special assistance of the city planner,
assesses, reviews and prioritizes community concerns. It then
designs projects that address those concerns. Project teams are
formed of students, teachers, including faculty from local institutions
of higher education, parents, lay citizens, professionals, and
local businesspeople. The teams work on their projects on a yearly
cycle. Each year progress is evaluated, new projects are designed
and new teams assigned.
This process
for educational and community renewal touches virtually every
aspect of academic and social, student and adult community life.
Everyone shares in the design, development and maintenance of
the community. EBCD certainly doesn't solve every problem, but
it creates a positive, cooperative context for addressing them.
Alienated youth and adults become community resources instead
of community problems. Lifelong, shared, and cooperative learning
become a part of every citizen's life, young and old, student
and retiree, lay and professional. Lives are changed by working
with, serving, teaching and learning from others in multicultural
and intergenerational contexts.
The schools
and local college curricula (K-16) are keyed to the projects.
Academic credit is awarded for community service. EBCD effectively
supports vocational training, apprenticeships and school-to-work
transition programs. Young people become actively involved in
the operation of their community, learning about and participating
in governance, cultural affairs, finance, business, infrastructure,
education, health, social services, police and fire departments—all
the elements that together create community. EBCD truly represents
an education for living. Children are motivated through learning
in tangible ways that they belong, that they are needed,
that their ideas are respected, that they can design their lives.
These are the essential lessons of life that every person has
a right to learn. Of course, teaching these lessons requires
substantive work from every corner of the community. But on what
basis can we avoid making this investment?
As EBCD
transforms the community, it transforms the schools. Working year
round and on an extended daily schedule, the schools become the
centers of community life. They offer coordinated health and social
service delivery, intergenerational recreation, job networking,
and counseling of all kinds including parenting and life-skills
training. Most importantly, the centers offer instruction to all
segments of the community. This is the real meaning of Education-Based
Community Development. The centers become the hubs not only of
community activities, but of a new community spirit, one of self-management
and self-determination. In addition to adult education of all
kinds, business and university partnerships are established to
offer courses on the social, political and economic aspects of
community governance and development.
The EBCD
approach is particularly effective in disadvantaged communities.
Here the need is greatest for programs that can help people help
themselves, rather than programs that foster their dependency.
I recently wrote the following about EBCD in the inner city:
Before reforming schools, we must question the meaning of education
for those living in despair and hopelessness. The authority of
state, church and family, once the provider of education's rationale,
has disintegrated. The first task, then, must be to regenerate
education's future-oriented rationale, to resurrect trust and
hope by enabling people to build something they can believe in.
We need a coherent, community-wide program, whose goal is to
make the subjects of assistance the agents of their own relief.
Adults
must be offered a compelling opportunity through partnerships
with business and universities to acquire the intellectual,
political and economic tools with which to develop and manage
their communities. The whole assistance enterprise has to be
run from the inside, on users' terms, as a managed resource,
rather than from the outside, on givers' terms, as an
entrenched poverty industry that institutionalizes dependency.
In the inner cities we need to begin again, to reconstruct for
the people there the enduring basis for education—faith
in the future. Assuring parental self-determination through
adult education is the first end most essential step
in assuring children's education.
In spite
of racism and despair, and regardless of welfare policies, the
bare truth remains that the only way people can reduce their dependency
is by learning to manage life. I believe, therefore, that of all
the kinds of assistance being offered, it is comprehensive adult
education based on the EBCD model that can attack most directly
and powerfully the fundamental causes of poverty and socioeconomic
dysfunction. Children follow their parents' example. I propose
that this example be one of lifelong learning in the service of
community.
In the first
part of this paper I explained what Education-Based Community
Development is, and in the second part, how it works. I said that
"fixing the schools" isn't enough. That approach misses the point.
The problem is systemic. We have to address the school and
the community to create a learning environment that can in Jerome
Bruner's words:
enlist the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning—curiosity,
a desire for competence, aspiration to emulate a model, and a
deep-sensed commitment to the web of social reciprocity.
[1] (my emphasis)
Education
is too important, too indispensable today to restrict it to children
and a single, distressed institution. Adults need academic skills
and children, life skills. In learning together, we learn to live
together. This is my point—that education is for living,
that people can learn to design communities that are economically
productive and humane, culturally diverse and unified in spirit.
Education-Based Community Development upholds a basic tenet of
democracy—the reciprocity of individual gain and community
achievement.
1. Jerome
S. Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, 1966, p. 127.
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