Introduction Schools as Imagined Communities

  • Barbara J. Shircliffe
  • Sherman Dorn
  • Deirdre Cobb-Roberts
Chapter

Abstract

We often envision schools as communities. Some of us picture a little red schoolhouse where all the children in the neighborhood came to learn and play together. Others have memories of a school down the road they could not attend because they were shipped off to other neighborhoods far away. And, finally, there are those who remember a school that denied them access and made no other educational provisions. This last type of memory makes imagining schools as communities problematic. At first glance we would like to see a school as a place where children, teachers, and parents gather with a shared sense of purpose. The image of everyone working together has been an ideal. In an 1899 lecture, John Dewey said, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy” (emphasis added). In the midst of industrialization and the growth of bureaucracies within schools, Dewey was trying to justify humanitarian treatment of children by reference to supposedly bygone communal values.1

Keywords

Social Capital Cultural Capital African American Student Limited Liability School Community 
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Notes

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Copyright information

© Deirdre Cobb-Roberts, Sherman Dorn, and Barbara J. Shircliffe 2006

Authors and Affiliations

  • Barbara J. Shircliffe
  • Sherman Dorn
  • Deirdre Cobb-Roberts

There are no affiliations available

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