puzzling with the link - school and community

I can’t believe that! Said Alice ‘…one can’t believe impossible things.’ ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half and hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
Lewis Caroll, Through the looking glass

So far I have suggested that we are living through a period of considerable redefinition of the role, function and purpose of many of our previously cherished institutions.
In exploring the idea of a sustainable community, and the creative process that is required to nurture such an idea, I have struggled to reconcile one significant part of community that already exists and plays, or at least can play, a prominent role in leading and providing guidance as we move forward. I am referring to the school.
The school is not alone in being drawn into question in regard to role, function and purpose. It is however, perhaps alone in being an example of human community which can transcend existing boundaries with relative ease.
It is widely reported that the conventional model of school is now fully operationalised and in considerable need of reconceptualisation (see for example the current consultation exercise underway by the UK government DCSF 2009). In examining the possibilities of sustainable communities it seems eminently sensible to consider the transformation of school alongside the transition of commuity from oil to post oil existence. Many of the same messages of community change can be found in the discourse of school reform, and central to any action that has integrity is the relationships between people connected with school – parents, students, families, businesses, and teachers and other staff. They need to be involved not as onlookers, but as participants in the story, ‘not mere onlookers, watching the show’ (Clarke 2000) but players.
To achieve this goal, of establishing learning places that have meaning, resonance and are valued within communities as knowledge creating and knowledge using facilities people need to feel they are able to exercise real power. It is not enough to consult on what schools might be like for the 21st century. The process is meaningless when people are presented with a series of solutions and asked to state their preferences. Practical engagement with people as they create community is an exercise in connecting to real social capital, intellectual capital, cultural capital and knowledge capital. In any other way, for example through consultation processes that serve as little more than staff development sessions, participants are left deskilled and dependent on other people’s models. This inhibits, not enables progress. To fully operationalise community for learning and living sustainably we need to engage people in thinking about what they might like to see change, we need to explore their visions and aspirations and help them to tell their different stories in such a way that enables them to see how they might implement and sustain their ambitions. An ethos which permits innovation and stimulates individual and collective responsibility promotes continuous initiative, it provides a context for novelty - a place and a space for impossible things.