Education and the Community by Midwinter Eric;

Author:Midwinter, Eric; [Midwinter, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO A POSSIBLE OUTLINE OF EDUCATIONAL PROVISION

Chapter 6

The Educational Community

Those of us who have been concerned with ‘community education’ have amassed a considerable amount of descriptive literature about how the community school might operate. Both the theoretical implications and the present state of practical experimentation has had fair coverage in book form and through the media. The application of the principle to pre-school provision, notably in terms of a mother-orientation, is now well rehearsed and, indeed, reasonably well proven. The application of the principle to the primary school, chiefly in terms of improved home-school relations and a sharper concentration on an environmentally-centred curriculum, is as well-covered. The application of the principle to the secondary school, mainly in terms of a more life-centred syllabus and a broader usage of the school plant for the whole population, is generally well known now. The application of the principle to further and adult education, mainly in terms of a wider range of vocational training and talk of recurrent education, is, if not so well discussed, at least part of the great educational debate.

In each of these cases, there are a number of illustrations, dotted about the country, but principally at a school-based, rather than an authority-based level. Two allied elements are sorrowfully lacking. The first is an all-through continuous illustration of educational provision for a community, whereby the two-or three-year old entering the system, may see the way, evenly and fluidly, ahead through an educational avenue, community-orientated. Put negatively, one hears of mothers attached to pre-school playgroups who are frustrated by seemingly closed-door policies when their children reach school-age; one hears of primary children, used to a socially engaged educational attack, baffled by the narrow and introverted academicism of their secondary school; one hears of secondary school-leavers, the happy novitiates of an excitingly relevant adolescent education, disappointed by the tawdry dryness and aridity of their further or higher educational experience. Or, of course, the reverse, with parents and children ‘liberated’ by a move upwards from a secluded nursery class, a dulling, over-formal primary school, a chilling and tedious secondary experience, to the relevance and stimulation of a splendid college course.

The second absentee is an authority structure in which community education happens laterally. This may be a little unkind. There are authorities which have bravely tried to instil both the precept and the practice of community schooling into their areas, attempting to devolve administrative power to local and school levels and to encourage heads and teachers to alter their educational style to suit community needs. Partly because of the autonomous nature of the schools system, it is difficult, even within these rare examples, to discover solid phalanxes of pre-schools or primary schools or secondary schools or further education agencies, each series of which link together in concerted pattern. For instance, one could scarcely find a normally-size district of about 15,000 or 20,000 souls, and, hand on heart, boast that its half dozen primary schools formed a coherent nexus of infant/junior community education.

Lines of latitude and longitude are what are missing.

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