Dear Deb and Colleagues
In this discussion of who drives democratic change, it鈥檚 worth recalling what can be called the 鈥渃itizen-centered鈥� model (perhaps 鈥渃ivic populist鈥� model) of making change to achieve goals like racial justice and fairness and the flourishing of every student.
I鈥檝e been reading Minority Outcry, an important book by Abdiqani Farah, a Somali educator in Minnesota. He documents the despair and anger many Somali students and their families feel at schools which turn a deaf ear to their language, culture, and interests. But it is not a despairing book.
Farah argues convincingly that teachers haven鈥檛 been well prepared to understand Somali young people. The solution is education which focuses on agency. 鈥淓mpowered students can lead successful academic and professional lives.鈥� He calls on educators 鈥渢o open their eyes and empower their students.鈥�
He also calls for the Somali community to be involved. 鈥�69传媒 can be empowered through their own cultures and values. [69传媒 need] the infusion of culture and norms into curriculum and lesson delivery.鈥�
As you say, my background in the freedom movement made me aware of the racial inequities and injustices in America, reflected in residential segregation, inferior schools, lack of adequate legal redress, and many other areas. It also made me aware of the profound cultural and human resources in African American communities - just as in Somali communities.
The problem I see in the last generation of school reform efforts is that these resources have been neglected. School change approaches have been driven by government and focused on deficiencies and injustices not on resources (there is a clear parallel here with the ways educators don鈥檛 see young people鈥檚 wonderful capacities).
The remedy has been government action - laws ending segregation, court busing, other legislation that seeks, at least rhetorically, to ensure that 鈥渁ll children are treated equally.鈥� All these are important goals but it鈥檚 a mistake to substitute government action for citizen action.
I want to recall citizen-centered philosophy and politics.
In his first book drawing on organizing experiences in the 1930s, Reveille for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, the community organizer, put the citizen-centered philosophy well. 鈥淭he world is deluged with panaceas, formulas, proposed laws, machineries, ways out, and myriads of solutions,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t is significant and tragic that almost every one of these proposed plans and alleged solutions deals with the structure of society, but none concerns the substance--the people. This, despite the eternal truth of the democratic faith that the solution always lies with the people.鈥�
Alinsky wasn鈥檛 the only one with such a view. Mary Mims developed the 鈥渃ommunity organizing method鈥� in the cooperative extension service in the 1920s which spread to more than 1000 poor black and white communities across the south through the 1930s.
Mims, like others in cooperative extension (home economics, 4-H and other areas) drew on the Jane Addams Hull House tradition. She was also inspired by folk schools in Denmark. These had a focus on agency, building the civic power of students, families, and larger communities. They were 鈥渟chools for life,鈥� grounded in the experiences and life of common people not elites, with parallels to the 鈥淣ew School鈥� (Escuela Nueva) movement in Latin America, begun in Columbia, which we鈥檝e discussed before (鈥�,鈥� December 22, 2015).
In Mims view, professionals of any kind should be a 鈥渓eaven鈥� for community self-organization. 鈥淪o-called 鈥榮ocial workers鈥� cannot hammer a community into shape,鈥� she argued in her book, The Awakening Community. 鈥淚f a community grows, it must do so from the inside.鈥�
This is not to say government policy and government workers don鈥檛 have important roles in educational change. The New 69传媒, grounded in communities and empowering teachers, students, families and communities were spread through government policies in Columbia and other countries.
In the US, the United States Department of Agriculture and land grant colleges from 1937 to 1942 involved more than three million people in rural America in community discussions about the future of rural life, taking up issues that ranged from commodity prices and soil erosion to the future of democracy in America, described in Jess Gilbert鈥檚 book, .
Why can鈥檛 we envision -- and develop strategies to catalyze and organize -- an initiative like this about 鈥渃ommon schools,鈥� or 鈥渄emocracy schools,鈥� for the 鈥渁ge after DeVos and Trump鈥�?
This citizen-driven change approach is more important than ever now, in our time of bitter partisan divisions and widely distrusted public institutions. We need a plan for making school change where politics is citizen politics, change occurs through civic organizing and deliberation, and government is 鈥渙f the people鈥� and 鈥渂y the people.鈥�
If we develop school change strategies based on this model we will build mainly on assets of poor and minority communities not mainly their needs. We will also be able to tap the assets and resources of other communities.
I am certain that this is the path to real democratic change.
Harry