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READERS' FORUM

The Changing Schools:
A Look At Community Control

CHARLES B. McMILLAN

IN THE PAST, educational reform has been the brainchild of pro-fessional educators, while parent and community interests rein-forced the status quo.  The cur-rent thrust for "community control" which I will define as the efforts of predominantly black and Puerto Rican parents to have a larger voice in the ed-ucation of their children, is spearheaded by parents and com-munity, and aimed largely at ed-ucators who burrow in the existing system.  Despite this, the essential goals of community control are similar to nearly all past reforms, that is, to uplift or mold or remake societal values in a particular way by influencing the operation of the public schools.
  Early reformers believed that universal, compulsory education was a prerequisite for a demo-cratic society; the right to learn, they argued, should belong to every child (Katz, 1970) . The ef-forts of Horace Mann and his followers have succeeded admir-ably, or so it would appear from the tremendous rise in public school enrollment from his day to ours.  It is doubtful, however, that much of the society was ever convinced by his stance.  That these reform efforts coin-cided with the arrival of large immigrant groups, and that economic and political interests demanded some expression of conformity, uniformity, and do-cility before allowing immigrants to move into the economy as un-skilled laborers or into the polit-ical arena as voters, seem to be more likely explanations for the success of Horace Mann, et al.  It is likely that 19th century Child Labor Laws spurred the growth of public schools far more than parental or community acceptance of the intrinsic val-ues of learning (Lauter, 1971) . 
  Early 20th century progressive educators, reflecting the egalitar-ianism of the then current pop-ulist and progressive political sentiment, attempted to reorient American schools toward in-tellectual and emotional fulfill-

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