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The School As a Social Partner in Urban Communities

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The School As a Social Partner in Urban Communities University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1970 The school as a social partner in urban communities. Royce Marcellus Phillips University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Phillips, Royce Marcellus, "The school as a social partner in urban communities." (1970). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2544. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2544 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL PARTNER IN URBAN COMMUNITIES A dissertation presented by Royce Marcellus Phillips Massachusetts Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of degree of in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Education December 1970 Major Subject: Urban Education Royce Marcellus Phillips All Rights Reserved THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL PARTNER IN URBAN COMMUNITIES A Dissertation By Royce Marcellus Phillips "As to the qualifications of low income poorly educated parents to engage in educational decisions, the question should involve not what parents know now about the technicalities of education, but what they can come to know. That they want to know is suggested by the few instances in which they have become more or less equal partners in the process." Gittell, and Richard Magat, Mario Fantini , Marilyn Community Control and the Urban School, p. 97. Dedicated to Mary Conway Kohler v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the many individuals who assisted in the prep- aration of this work. Professor Byrd L. Jones spent many irretrievable hours reading and rereading, editing, and counseling me toward this study's completion. To him, my major advisor, I am deeply indebted. The Assistant Dean of Off-campus Affairs, Dr. Robert Woodbury, provided sustained encouragement and assistance to me throughout all phases of this writing. Professor Richard Clark made valuable contri- butions and gave needed advice. Professor Lawrence Johnson, Assistant Dean of the School of Business Administration, willingly contributed his time and effort. The Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Earl Seidman, offered warmth and patience which were encouraging to me. A person who offered persistent and steady guidance throughout my entire period of study at the University of Massachusetts was Professor Atron A. Gentry, Director of the Center for Urban Education. with the tables, I am thankful for Thomas Anderson's assistance staff of the Center and for Billy Dixon's proofreading. The following this work: Warren for Urban Education helped in collating and compiling Gerald Schwartz, Mersereau, Theodolph Jacobs, Diane Nolan, Anne Dolan, thank them all. Judy Glazier, Ashton Higgins, and Anita Ertola. I vi — TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi LIST OF TABLES ix Chapter I COMMUNITIES AND SCHOOLS 1 Introduction 1 Toward a Definition of Community 7 The Idea of Community Conflict 17 II THE LARGER COMMUNITY 26 The Many Images of Harlem 26 Central Harlem and East Harlem A Comparison 32 Pathologies—A Varied Harlem 41 The Positive Side 45 III THE IMMEDIATE COMMUNITY AND THE SCHOOL 51 An Impression of the Neighborhood 51 The Franklin Plaza Complex and Neighborhood Area 55 The World of an Inner City School 69 An Inner City School at Work 78 IV THE SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY IN CONFLICT 94 Strike Perspectives from an Inner City School ^4 A Chronology of Three Strikes 106 Ideologies, Personalities, and the Strike The Strike Settlement— Its Urban Relevance 1 91 vii VI 11 Chapter page V THE SCHOOL-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP 140 Social Change and Social Systems 140 The School and Community as Social Systems 146 The Systemic Linkage 153 The Dimension of Rational Options 161 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY 173 LIST OF TABLES Table Page I Number of Businesses in Central Harlem— 1960 34 II Percentage of Males and Females in Various Occupations for the Nonwhite Residents of Central Harlem and New York City— 1960 36 III Percentage of Males and Females in Various Occupations for the Residents of East Harlem and New York City — 1960 40 IV Occupancy and Structural Soundness of Housing Units-~1960 Census 59 V Race and Ethnic Characteristics — 1960 Census 60 VI Employment Status — 1960 Census 62 VII Years in Which Families Moved into Present Housing Units— 1960 Census 64 VIII Family Income~~1960 Census 65 IX Gross Rent Paid— 1960 Census 67 X Population by Households and Group Quarters, and Household Status of Residents— 1960 Census 68 XI School Years Completed by Persons Twenty-five Years Old and Over— 1960 Census 70 CHAPTER I COMMUNITIES AND SCHOOLS Introduction This dissertation, "A School as a Social Partner in Urban Com- munities," attempts to describe the relevant communities and the social organizations of an inner city school in such a way as to reveal their important interactions. During the last half of the 1960's no issue or proposed reform for urban education gained more publicity and interest than community control or community involvement. Yet, like compensatory education programs which preceded it as a panacea for failing schools, community control carried too many hopes and too lit- tle understanding of its difficulties as well as its persistent necessity. This study aims to be a guide for school personnel, educational leaders who have considered the social administrators , and community who are per- issues of effective teaching in inner city classrooms or however, is plexed by the current urban school crises. The intention, but rather a frame- not to produce a list of specific 'do's and don'ts' problems of community work for understanding the possibilities and recent model involvement as they relate to schools. For example, a 1 2 program for teacher training proposed neighborhood walks as essential for student interns as well as for pupils, but the substantive connec- tions between the neighborhood and teaching, and the school as a social organization, were left unstated and unclear. The indifference and austerity of modern institutions along with their size and complexity had stirred a restiveness among some American subgroups. Those relatively powerless segments of society, affluent students and low-income Blacks, demanded a greater role in the shaping of policies that they felt vitally affected their lives. How- ever, the impasse between participation and action became tightened when demands and well-entrenched interests clashed. At that point, chaos entered because priority had not been given to whatever concrete forms greater participation ought to have taken. Roles and responsi- bilities had not been defined. The demands made by the low-income Blacks and other minority groups for greater participation might have implied that the term had a single authoritative definition. That was not the case. Actually, the general demand was indicative of a variety of specific aspirations that might have been considered from a separate and analytic basis. The problem of participation was unwieldly and complicated. It became more difficult to regulate when the voices of those minorities became louder as their numbers increased. The demands of minorities for some type of greater participa- tion in their communities had educational as well as political and economic implications. In a formal sense, the redistribution of author But, in the ity as it related to their communities was implied. — 3 informal sense, they wanted the pursuit of equality as a complement to policy making with the people, not for the people. They felt that wealth and power were essential to infuse self-respect among minorities. They advocated that inner city mobilization incurred equality, and equality would bring about integration. After all, most inner city areas had been defined in terms of disorganization and the culturally deprived. The notion of community had lacked intuitive sense for most Americans in connection with slums, ghettos, or inner cities. During the last half of the 1960 's Americans even those living in comfortable suburbs —became aware of the failure of public schools to educate poor and minority children. Increasingly, poverty and prejudice had concentrated those failures in inner cities. Apparently, unwilling to alleviate underfinancing and discrimination against Black, Spanish-speaking groups and other minorities through com- pensatory spending, liberal leaders turned toward proposals for commun- ity participation. A movement against bureaucracy and centralization at the grass roots level was stimulated. During the 1960 's a growing liberal concern with poverty and racism led to a search for a solution in the communities of poor and minority persons. The battles against discrimination and deprivation produced community action programs, community control, community involvement, community schools, and scholarly studies of community con- flict. But in all of that talk about community there was no satisfac- tory definition that dispelled the aura of nostalgia surrounding a community. Could the incantations of community this or that have developed a unity of action in areas that were normally referred to as : 1 4 ghettos or slums or inner cities (the common trait having been defined as social disorganization)? When the community action programs started
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