community renaissance paper

Community renaissance
Paul Clarke
St Mary’s University College, London
Contact paul.clarke@iqea.com

There is no middle path. Do we join together to build an economy that is sustainable? Or do we stay with our environmentally unsustainable economy until it declines? It is not a goal that can be compromised. One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation. But it will affect life on earth for all generations to come. Lester Brown, Eco-economy. 2002

This chapter explores the development of community, within which our idea of ‘school’ is currently located. When we think about the future relationship between the community and school, it seems to me that community is what will be developed, and what develops it will be learning. The chapter will suggest that it is only through thinking about community as a forum for development of interdependencies that we have any real possibility of making progress with the urgent agenda for a more sustainable form of life on the planet. If we are to enhance our capability to learn new ways of living which have a reduced footprint on the environment of the planet. I think we have to consider how we re-define our relationship with a dominant community based institution – the school. This takes us beyond our current idea of building schools for the future, into an exploration of renaissance of community for the future.

I suggest that the development of community is not to be defined as new buildings and priorities imposed through government reforms, nor as recycled ideas of the old model of school, but as a set of interdependencies which may be practiced face to face, or through the new opportunities open to us through technology. These interdependencies come in the form of individual engagement, through connection with ideas and shared interests, and through collective action in the pursuit of new freedoms. As Sen (1991) argues, ‘Greater freedom enhances the ability of people to help themselves and also to influence the world, and these matters are central to the process of development’ (p.18). As such, I am interested in a new economic model, or more particularly an eco-economy (Brown 2002) or what is also called eco-eco (Kelly 2009) where development of community is the practice of sustainable development.

In the chapter I will use ‘community’ as the term which captures a set of capabilities (Sen 1999) – one where we depend upon each other to generate understanding, engagement and participation and through which we can respond to social, environmental and economic collapse (Putnam 2000, Orr 1994, Soros 2008). I describe the concept of community as a network. It is an interdependent construct of human activity. Community functions as the manifestation of a set of capabilities within and between communities of connection, communities of place, communities of interest, and communities of action. Learning plays a significant part in framing our definitions of community and the capabilities that sustain communities, sometimes impeding, sometimes enabling and focusing the development of these capabilities. Historically the school is located at the interconnect of these capabilities. However, increasingly the school is a part player, the setting is always within the wider social context of the community and as such, learning takes its place (see figure 1).

Community is both boundaried and at the same time is boundless. We live our lives largely dependent on systems which have no respect for national boundaries such as the atmosphere, oceans, ocean life, biotic provinces and the Sun, without which nothing lives. All these natural structures demonstrate forms of community interdependence which function as flow, an entangled alliance. This illustrates sufficiently that community can exist as something visible and tangible and at the same time something abstract.
This forms the basis of much of my own work, exploring the practicalities of new forms of what I have come to call ‘local dependency’ (Clarke 2009) where example can be drawn from what happens in one location and can serve as a stimulus to develop new ideas and new activity in another. Since our world is increasingly connected through cultural, economic and technological mechanisms, and proportionally ever less physical, the meaning of 'local' is not geographical, at least not only geographical, it explores the ways in which flows of ideas combine as communities in the form of practices, theories, possibilities to be realized as forms of wealth as environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, manufactured capital and financial capital (Porrit 2009) – the flow is between people sharing and playing with these things both in real-time together, separately, and at times virtually in their own time.

Figure one: Capabilities of an interdependent community













Sen (1999) describes the qualities of collective action which widen the opportunity for individuals to generate forms of wealth as ‘capabilities.’ It is a combination of these capabilities in the form of dependencies of what I call connection, place and action that I wish to explore when we move forward in our consideration of the role and function of a relationship between community and new forms of learning.

A community of connection
Governments, regions, communities and individuals are beginning to recognise the scale of the environmental challenge that human beings face in this century as we have to make the move from an oil based industrialized economy to an ecologically focused post-oil economy (Steffen 2008). This transition is starting to happen and recent predictions suggest that it will have to have completed within 50 years regardless of whether we want it or not, as oil is rapidly running out and a looming prospect of energy shortage and blackouts gets ever closer .

Whilst the 20th century is now well behind us, we have not as yet, learned how to live, yet alone think in terms of actions and relationships, in the mindset we might need for life in the 21st. This should not be all that difficult, as the dominant ideas of the economic and political model from the 20th century have clearly just fallen apart around us in the last two decades and the lessons are there for all to see. These models have until now been looked upon as mutually exclusive, the failure of Soviet state socialism in the 1990’s, and now Western market driven capitalism have both defined in their own ways, the failed ideologies of national systems. However, as Hobsbawn (2009) argues, both are ‘bankrupt ideas’ when we contemplate our futures. We need a progressive model to transcend the old order and respond to the new situation in which we find ourselves.

One particular feature of both of these ‘bankrupt’ models, is the reliance upon institutions to perpetuate particular ideological viewpoints. Ivan Illich (1973) argued that modern societies across the industrialized world appear to create more and more institutions, and that the consequence of them is that we live our lives in ever more institutionalized ways. This makes it difficult for people to challenge the existing order of things, or to suggest and to have taken seriously the idea that there are alternative ways of living. 'This process undermines people - it diminishes their confidence in themselves, and in their capacity to solve problems... It kills convivial relationships. Finally it colonizes life like a parasite …that kills creativity' (Finger and Asún 2001: 10).
Institutions do other things too. They create experts. In Medical Nemesis (1975) the book began, 'The medical establishment has become a major threat to health' (ibid.: 11). In much of my work, I maintain a similar argument, that the educational establishment has become a major threat to education (Clarke 2008). The case against expert systems is that they produce a form of damage which outweighs the potential benefits they offer, because they obscure and collude with the political conditions that render society schooled but ill-educated, and they perpetuate the idea that people are unable to act for themselves. They diminish the power of individuals to learn and value their personal and social experience of learning themselves the means by which they might shape and improve their own community.
This problem of expert systems becomes particularly acute when there is a need to redefine the relationships that exist between school and community. Here, the institutional boundaries and structures can compromise the institutional potential to learn from the community, its default position being that the school educates the community and not the other way around. Despite plenty of examples that refute this claim, particularly coming from recent changes in communications technology (Leadbeater 2000), the underlying cultural message from schools remains the same, ‘we know, you don’t know, how to educate.’
It seems to me that as a result, community and school are stuck in a perpetual cycle of dependency of the worst possible kind. One where professionals and the schools in which they work tend to define the activity of learning as a commodity which they call education, 'whose production they monopolize, whose distribution they restrict, and whose price they raise beyond the purse of ordinary people and nowadays, all governments' (Lister in Illich 1976), and the community receives the product. Extending an earlier notion of schooling, it might be suggested therefore that people are conditioned to believe that the self-taught community is being discriminated against; that learning and the growth of cognitive capacity, require a process of consumption of services presented in a planned, a professional form (quoted by Gajardo 1994: 715 my insert of community) In this way, learning is a commodity rather than an activity, so any way in which a community might attempt to engage with a school is inhibited by its inability to present a form of knowledge to the school in a recognizable and therefore acceptable professional manner.

Just like cigarettes, institutions and institutional practices would appear to be addictive. The fact that school is perceived to be compulsory may be significant here – as institutions, schools generate habitual activities and rituals and these are difficult to quit once people get hooked on the idea that they are the only way to behave, or to solve existing problems. If as individuals and communities, we can develop the capabilities to distinguish between what we want and what we understand to be a requirement, we can use such capability to make proactive choices acting as agents rather than consumers of learning.

Having grown conditioned to schooling of a certain type (Orr 1994), the action of individuals, communities, regions and countries to overcome the challenges we face from economic and ecological meltdown demand the cleverest of inventions, the smartest of technologies, and the most politic and decorous of societies. The current landscape of challenges offers immense potential for people to work together in new ways to form new types of economic well-being which serve both personal and societal needs (Porritt 2009). By challenging the process of institutionalization, by questioning the established notions of expertise and experts, and by critiquing the idea of learning as a form of commodity, we should be able to move towards a way of living and working in our communities where collective wisdom is captured and focused with clarity and purpose and without the embedded issues of ownership and power getting in the way; where people have a clear sense of the purpose behind the initiatives which serve self and others and indeed the well-understood needs of the community as a whole. A transition in thinking about how to live in the 21st century that redefines wealth in the form of environmental capital (Clarke 2009), human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, cultural and creative capital, manufactured capital and financial capital needs mediation. The basic ideas need to be explored and discussed from which practical actions can flow.

A ‘community of connection’ that develops capabilities to appreciate and engage with alternative solutions, designs and opportunities and which values the very process of connecting meaningfully with others, helps us to think differently and enables us to respond to the eco-eco (Kelly 2009) demands of the 21 century. This model of community serves as a frame for thinking about the contributing factors which inform a dialogue for transforming the relationship between community and school.

A community of place
In a similar way to the failings of the macro system, the micro-level is not without its problems (Klein 2001). Whilst state-led reform of ‘communities’ continues to illustrate systemic failings through the alienation and disengagement of the majority of those this hoped-for reform is intended to assist, other, equally problematic issues arise when the alternatives being pursued are for self-sufficient purposes. As an idea, the notion of self-sufficient communities has done just as much harm than as good. It perpetuates the ‘otherness’ of those beyond one’s own clique, and it generates economic inequality just as efficiently as any macro market-led solution. The self-sufficiency argument extends now into our current school model. While defined primarily through school choice, it is just as much about exclusivity and self-sufficiency. Academies, Trust and Foundation schools are quite possibly the next failed extension of the industrialized, individualized cultural obsession with privacy and isolationist solutions to large-scale problems, they are the macro solution to mico challenge and they perpetuate the myth that a new building with a new name (Academy, Foundation) will redefine the relationship between it, as an institution, and the community in which it exists. ‘We don’t need you, we are self-sufficient, we generate our own solutions’ is as much a lie as that which argues that we can only make cultural, environmental and economic progress with government. The message is clear, there is no dissectable self, we depend on each other.
It is therefore a maturation towards some other form of interdependency, one which connects rather than dissects self from community and from wider networks, that we urgently need to develop.

So a community of place is particularly important as a way of making sense of the important role school plays within a social context. When one’s environment has a ‘sustained and lasting human value’ (O’Sullivan 1999) the result of the individualized and commodified version of globalization, rootlessness, transitoriness, and dispossession become more and not less transparent (ibid p245). The dependence by people on a community of place becomes in itself a value. Place is often cited as a significantly important feature of schools in locations of economic disadvantage, where, in the best examples, students are embedded into activity which help to develop capability in the forms of environmental capital, human capital, social capital, spiritual capital, creative and cultural capital, manufactured capital and financial capital. However, just as the community of place can be a physical reality it can also demonstrate capability in the form of a virtual reality. Take for example the degree of interest young people have in facebook, Bebo and other social networking sites.

Our capability to create and maintain a sense of place within a community – school relationship therefore explores both physical and virtual realities. To be successful it needs to generate capabilities which include a sense of identity, a need for love, care, protection, affection, understanding, participation, creativity, and friendship.

Community as action
A particular form of community capability is often found in and around schools in the form of active groups who pursue specific projects on behalf of the school such as community liaison, parental outreach, after-school and breakfast clubs all of which illustrate the commodity function of school. Whist they are interesting and in some cases quite powerful examples of ways in which relationships can be developed between school and community. They do not go far enough to illustrate the capability in which I am particularly interested because it seems to me that they maintain, rather than transform the possibility of greater levels of interdependence.
However, there are some interesting examples of community as action which are showing signs of significantly contributing to the redesign of existing systems.
In one example, an action community in the form of a local food production project approached a school to form a community interest company (CIC) which is joint owned between school and community trustees. The CIC applied for and won a significant lottery fund which is establishing a sustainable fish farm eco-business on the school site. The students from the school, working with a number of local businesses and regional agencies, are actively involved in all stages of design, commissioning, construction, maintenance and development of the business. There are new school courses being established in land management and eco energy, which will run within the school and the local college. Alongside people from the immediate vicinity of the town who are helping to support and provide guidance, there are students and lecturers from University departments from other countries who have experience of developing this type of farm with associated aquaponics and filtration systems.
Furthermore, to illustrate the idea of community as connection, place and action; the town has partnerships with other communities in Ghana and Tanzania in Africa who are involved in knowledge transfer, planning and development conversations as they too are undertaking similar projects in their localities.
Conclusion
This chapter has attempted to provide a stimulus for a different way of thinking about the complicated issue of school and community. Instead of suggesting more of the same, I have argued that we need to radically realign our concept to take full advantage of the types of capabilities we might need to encourage if we are to truly transform our education system to meet the changing demands of an eco-eco society.
I have suggested that the future of sustainable economy and community depends on the connections we choose, the place we define as local, and the life we subsequently decide to live in the form of deliberate action.
The implications of this type of reform are considerable. In conclusion, it is worth thinking about some of the challenges and posing some questions.

Capability building for communities – What would need to happen if these kind of changes were to be brought about in disenfranchised communities which are characterized by an absence of collective vision, aspiration or leadership? Who would take responsibility for the development of the ‘capabilities’ that would be necessary for the first steps of positive action? This could generate a new role for school – a model of learning as community capability building, where the school has as much responsibility for developing the wider context for learning (i.e. the community and the connected members within it) as it does for the process or activity of learning (teaching).

In the chapter I have briefly referred to the radical change in the perceptions of educators of themselves as experts. Any profession under fire (as teachers always seem to be) clings onto its ‘expert’ status as a last resort in the face of change. Unless the practical and attitudinal changes required to bring about this new vision for a sustainable learning ecology are acknowledged we may find ourselves locked into the increasingly desperate version of ‘sustainability training’ as another bolt on reform. An exploration of the capabilities that teachers may need to help them to contribute to community capability seems a practical way to proceed.

It seems that a deeper consideration of values may be useful in seeking to bring about such change. Whilst a great deal of the thrust of my argument centres around the impending disaster and possible response anticipated when the oil runs out, we may usefully engage people more fully in the debate through a broader consideration of the need for change. This discussion could include:
➢ The need for greater social cohesion
➢ The need for improved physical and mental well-being
➢ The need for greater personal agency and active citizenship
➢ The need for greater social justice and equality
➢ The need to address ‘crisis’ issues such as crime, poverty etc

I would also suggest that it is through deep consideration of the values that drive and shape our education system that change might be more widely justified or rationalized. When people think about re-visioning education they often ask ‘what kind of young adults do we want to see as a result of this process?’ – and those imaginings are shaped by a set of values. At the moment the vision is limited and largely defined by government, as is the tradition in education – primarily by the values associated with economic productiveness. Perhaps the question needs to shift to ‘what kind of community do we want our schools to build as they redefine their service to others?’

We urgently need the process of learning to be meaningfully integrated into the social, the community context, and for learning transactions (the process of education) to be more closely aligned with the transactions that are more widely necessary for the development of sustainable communities and societies.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those colleagues who generously gave me feedback on this work, especially Tony Kelly, Jane Reed and Chris May.
Further rea ding and references
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