Every School a “Community School”? / Deschooling Society

The community school designation is intended to go a step further than a normal school’s duties, providing community-wide support, resources and guidance.

 

LCPS Superintendent Ralph Ramos’s strategic plan is to eventually have all LCPS schools designated as community schools.

PSA supports the concept of Community Schools as a way to evolve schools toward full integration of community assets, including parents and grandparents, aunties and uncles, and more.

Community School forms or MO can be defined very differently. .

A form that encompasses the entire school district, as Ramos plan does, brings up more questions, as neighborhoods are different in various parts of the district. Needs are different, participation of residents would likely be different, funding possibilities might be different.

All of which may eventually develop new models and new methods for accomplishing learning and education as an integrated function, not a “separate” thing we do for kids. Perhaps along the lines of Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society”.

Deschooling: Noun. 1. The action or process of transferring the function of education within a society from conventional schools to non-institutional systems of learning.

 

Deschooling is an educational method and philosophy that refers to the process in which the student leaves traditional education to adapt to learning at home,

Paradoxically perhaps, Community Schools integrate a community with its neighborhood school, but may also be seen as “Deschooling” society, in a way.

Community Schools can be seen to redefine schools as less institutional, or more user controlled than the current educational establishment institutions. Students learning from home can also be supported by a neighborhood community school, providing face to face interactions, and possibly affordable broadband connectivity.

Part of the idea of community schools is to experiment and find out how to do things differently in a new communication and learning world.

(A cynical POV might suggest that when the LCPS Superintendent says he wants all schools in the district to become community schools, he is hoping to head off a movement that purports to create more autonomy for the local school. Regardless of the LCPS Superintendent’s motives, which of course may be all to the good of the community at large, the proof will be in the pudding, as community schools are about offering the neighborhood an opportunity to create a better way of doing many things, including education, and that will take many twists and turns along the way.)