Abstract
Schools are ubiquitous in American society. Among their central functions is relating to and building the sense of community. Experiences in schools tend to have an intimate connection to people’s identities and to social networks that persist throughout their lifetimes. School relationships shape community relationships. This chapter explores schools as a dimension of community life. The focus is different from what we usually see where schools and communities are interrelated by social scientists since the concern here is not with what makes schools and schooling more effective. Rather, the discussion talks about how schools relate to what community is and how schools help to build or undermine a sense of community. While the focus is not on how communities make schools more effective, much of the literature on community explores how schools are embedded in communities and how qualities of community relate to schooling. One of the most important themes involves the concept of social capital, which at the beginning was developed as a way to account for differences in school success. That literature also shows us things about how schools and other community institutions interrelate, thereby telling us how communities are structured. The chapter explores the concept of “settings”, how this relates to building a “sense of community” and how this, in turn, relates to the welfare of children. Children tend to be tied to and dependent on the community as a place, and as such their prosperity is related to the kinds of activities that are available in that place, the values and goal orientations that are developed in the setting, and the way schools are integrated with the setting. Finally, the chapter explores ways schools self-consciously build and are dependent upon local residents identifying with the local community. School sports have a strong role in the development of community identity. But the chapter discusses how schools as organizations depend on the local sense of community and actions schools take to encourage residents to feel that they are part of a community.
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Milofsky, C. (2018). Schools as Community Institutions. In: Cnaan, R., Milofsky, C. (eds) Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations in the 21st Century . Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77416-9_27
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