University of Virginia Library

Relevant Curriculum

Center Opens To Coordinate Schools With Communities

The School of Education has a new
Community School Center that is
expected to help school systems in several
states make better use of their schools to
the entire community and at the same
time open up the possibilities of making
the curriculum in the classroom more
relevant to the situation in which the
students live.

Robert T. Frossard, director of the
new center, said that "educational, social
and recreation needs should be served by
the public schools."

Matching the resources of a community to
its needs could be achieved in many ways, he
said, such as getting school athletic facilities
open to non school football or basketball games,
giving meeting space for civic clubs, boy scouts,
or theatrical groups, or by starting night-time
vocational educational classes for adults.
According to Mr. Frossard, the school should
serve as a catalyst for community and
neighborhood planning by providing public
forums for discussion of social problems.

The purpose of the University's center, he
said, is to encourage school divisions to appoint
community-school directors, and to consult
with the directors to help get them started. The
director "helps get people organized on
common goals and common problems."

"The first thing he does," he added, "is to
form a community council-a citizens' advisory
council."

The director's role is not specifically
intended to deal with regular curriculum, he
added, but "we hope we will have an impact on
curriculum."

Through involvement the curriculum can
become more relevant to the needs of the
children." He gave as an example the fact that
instead of presenting all courses in the context
of the "white Anglo-Saxon culture" certain
subjects could be presented in terms which
would be more familiar and understandable to
children with other backgrounds. Mr. Frossard
emphasized that this concept is just as
applicable to rural school districts as to urban
ones.

Although reminiscent of the neighborhood
schools of past years, the community school
concept has developed in the last several years,
so that now about 10 per cent of the school
systems in the United States have at least one
community school in effect. Four
states-Maryland, Florida, Michigan and
Utah-have passed legislation for funding of
community schools.

The center at the University, one of 14
centers established throughout the United
States, was established with an $88,000 grant
from the Mott Foundation of Flint, Michigan.
It is set up to serve school districts in Virginia,
North and South Carolina, West Virginia,
Maryland, Delaware and the District of
Columbia.