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BLACK COMMUNITY REALITIES                        HAMILTON

sensitive black principals and teachers and parents must be in those school buildings in the black communities. Community control of the schools becomes, then, a prime prerequisite.  This is not an effort to fractionalize and decentralize for the sake of fractionalization and decentralization.  It is a blatant recognition of the socializing function of the schools, and it is an effort to insure the legitimacy of the function vis-a-vis black children... and black parents... and the black community.

School systems must be developed which recognize that education in the black community is not simply a child-oriented affair, but it must be family-and-community-oriented. A new family-community-school-comprehensive plan must be devised. The school must cease being a 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., September to June institution. We must think of the school as a locus for the entire family, year-round, day and evening. The public welfare system, as a separate entity, should be absorbed into the educational system. Parents could participate in the schools in a number of ways, as students, teachers, decision-makers. There is no reason why ADC (Aid To Dependent Children) mothers could not teach in the community schools. They possess innumerable talents that a particularly structured society has refused to acknowledge. Day-care center should, obviously, be a part of the schools. Already, we know of the existence of such an experiment in Chicago with two Family Educational centers. The parents serve on the governing boards, and there is excellent child-care on the premises. This plan should be expanded to include fathers as well as mothers. There is no reason for caseworkers to go into the home to "investigate" recipients.

A family-community-school-comprehensive plan would vary in size depending on the area served and other logistical matters which could be worked out. The school would be the center of community life: recreationally, educationally, socially. In the school, one could locate the local law enforcement agency-again, controlled by the community. Local community medical clinics would have an important place in the program.

I am not envisioning some variant of using mothers as teachers' aides. I am, instead, suggesting that we rethink our whole notion about what constitutes "qualification." Certainly, professional standards as now defined have not served too well in preparing teachers for jobs in the black communities. Equally as certain, such a new plan will receive staunch opposition from established professional associations and unions. These groups see their vested interests

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