Beyond Free Schools: Community
(Page 6 of 11)
November/December 1970
By Jerry Friedberg
More than this, the parents came from very different backgrounds (that had, in fact, been one of our initial goals), and shared very little of their daily lives, perceptions and orientations with one another or the staff. With several notable exceptions (for example, we wound up having three parents on the staff), parents did not—could not—partake of an organic, self-selecting, daily sharing, working-things-through-process such as the staff experienced.
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Here was no group of close friends shaping day-to-day a common experience as part of their overall life-way . . . but rather, BY VIRTUE OF BEING A SCHOOL IN THE CITY, a well-enough-intentioned group of heterogeneous people pulling and tugging at one another and the staff.
The gradual shift to joint parent-staff control did take place as planned and promised. It was a joy and a drag. There were parents who were spurred to read and think about education as they never had. Some recognized that far more was involved: That what we were doing really meant a revolution in our way of life. It was a joy to be with them, help them work through their sticking-spots, learn and get invaluable help from them.
There was Iris, saying she never spoke at meetings and such, who was delighted to find that at Lorillard meetings she felt so much less reserved; Dave, whose warmth came through more and more as the year went on; Ronnie, whose defensive belligerence gave way to such openness and affection-giving-and-taking; Clara, who overcame her shyness so much and joined the staff; and many more.
And it was a drag. Nicki, a staff member who commuted two hours each day to work for nothing at Lorillard, burst into tears at one of our parent workshops at the parents' constant criticism, tugging and lack of appreciation. I became defensive and strained as turned-off staff stopped coming to parent-staff administrative meetings. I felt little positive support and much hassle. Families moved away, new families came in and everything had to be freshly explained, built from scratch.
Operating by consensus on the basis of honesty, caring and sensitivity is a fragile and difficult business at best: It requires having a basic cohesion, common commitment and a fairly stable group whose growth is organic and gradual. It was no one's fault—but simply a condition of being a city school—that these conditions could not apply.
Two things turned the staff off most: Constant tugging and pulling by people who were in very different places and the institutionalization of Lorillard as a school. To be with children from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M. five days per week and see them go off to radically separate and different situations for the remaining time, felt often hopeless and always amiss. We wanted to be with children in ways that integrated with their home and total life contexts. We had, instead, the feeling of clashing, working against, pushing uphill. It was dispiriting.
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