[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Tony Townsend and this is Course eight, Developing Relationships. We're into week five now and, we're suggesting that it takes a whole village to raise a child. So, we're thinking about working with your community. And in this first lecture, I want to think about, why do we need communities involved in education? And what we could argue is that school has both a horizontal function and a vertical function, where on the one hand horizontally it is trying to improve the relationships that it has within families and within local communities. But on the other hand it provides an opportunity for people to move from that community, into higher or better communities. And so what we look at, is this notion of schooling being a horizontal community. School having this horizontal function, of broadening itself out. We're not looking at in this particular case, schooling as a mechanism for leaving your community. We're looking at schooling as being part of your community. Now we could turn around and we could suggest that there are two different things we could look at in terms of why community should be involved. And the first one would be value for money. Now I wanna make the comparison between two different public organizations, and that's the public school and the public hospital. Now in many parts of the world, the amount of money spent on public hospitals is about the same as the amount of money spent on public schools. But let's just look at the difference between the two. On the left-hand side we can see that the public school is used by around 15% of the population. And there would be some people that would argue that the other 85% of the population is really not welcomed into the school at all. Records suggest that the school is only used for approximately 15% of the year. And the rest are times when the school is not being used at all. Facilities of the school, are shut down and nothing happens. On the other hand, we could look at the public hospital. And the public hospital in theory at least is available to 100% of the population. Everybody is served as they need. And it's open 100% of the year. Now, both of these organizations are paid for by public money. If we were to compare the value for money of the public hospital system compared to the public school system, I think we'd have to argue that the public hospital system is much better value from money. And so the first argument about why communities in school should be closer together could be an economic one. We have a public results that designing use for a small proportion of the year and designing use by a small proportion of the community. So perhaps we need to thing about how that might be improved. Well, we can look at the research. If we look at the difference between a public school that is a regular school and a community school, what we find is that in the community schools, there's much higher level of community support because people use those schools themselves. We find that in community schools parents and community members trust what schools are doing because they had more knowledge about what the school is doing. They find that community support the work that teachers do because they see teachers at work when they are in school themselves. And I thought that they are more informed about the schools because the community school is very active in making sure that the community knows what is happening in school. What we can see here, in the USA at least and perhaps in society in other parts of the world as well, is that people who are active users of the school, that is people who are involved in community education programs that are offered by a school. Rate the quality of education provided by that school as being much higher, as people who don't use the school at all. What we're suggesting here is that there is a really good support reason, why schools should be more actively involved in their communities. So we have a financial reason and we also have a support reason. A third reason might be something that comes from this particular African proverb. It takes a village to raise a child. And what we could argue here is that the raising of a child now is so complex, with so many things to take into account, that any single institution that tries to do it by itself will fail. And so what we see here is the statement, it takes a village to raise a child, means that we need to have an entire community to participate to some extent in this task if we are to have children. Who are successful as adults. What we see in this particular statement by Antwi is that the traditional communities in many of the countries that we're working in have a collectivist nature. And so the total life of the society Is a shared responsibility. And because of this, education too was a shared responsibility because the learning of all of the children in the community was a responsibility of the whole community. But we also need to remember that communities are very important in shaping people. And this particular comment by Hart, that no child can escape his community. The life of the community flows about him. He swims in it, drinks in it, goes to sleep in it it. He belongs to it. It nourishes him, or starves him. What we need to remember, is that the community by itself, is very significant in terms of developing a young person. And we need to support and perhaps in some ways guard the community towards appropriate ways of doing things. We can see how the community is influential in shaping people by these two comments. He's gone from being a polite, shy, and sensitive boy to being a boy with a criminal record. How does that happen? It's because of the people that this young person is involved with, the people who are shaping the way in which he thinks. So, we have these situations of the school in some respects is trying to work against the community, to try and provide a safe, secure and positive environment for students from the community. But at the same time given what we spoke about in the last week, we recognize that the community being involved in the child's education, is very influential in terms of how that child will turn out. So it's one of these things that goes in two directions. But what we can argue is that if we adopt a nurturing approach to education then in fact a young person is like a young tree and in order for that young person to grow into a successful, strong, sturdy, tall, upright tree, a certain number of things made to occur and young people require a healthy ecosystem. So what we could argue is that the young person on the left here, characterized by just this sapling before any growth occurs. Is within a family of trees. Is within a family and that family is part of a broader community that contains all sorts of different types of things. And as we can use this particular example as an analogy for growing young people. The young person is part of a family, but you also have a community that contains many different things. We can look at the analogy of a school. The school provides knowledge, provides sustenance, provides shelter. And we can see the result of what happens if we treat young people in isolation. Without the support of their forest, without the support of the nutrients that they need. And we can also see the benefits of partnership. So if we look at these three different parts, that are impacting on students. We have the schools, we have families, and we have the community. And what we recognize now is that if these three things overlap, what they do? With the focus on producing a positive environment for the student. And this is the best opportunity that the student has for learning and growing into a strong positive adult. In the next lecture we are about to look at is a particular program that is called developmental assets. This program is run by an organization in the United States, but it is operating in many different parts of the world. And so at the next lecture what I would like to look at is an asset approach to improving the education of students. Until then, thank you for watching. [MUSIC]
