Harkavy (1998) believes that the partnership between the school, community and the university is far more complex and inter-dependent that believed by the masses. In his study he brings forth new theories and explanation of his statement with the help of annals and current studies and examples. He feels that the academic improvements and restructuring are inter-connected and highlight dependent on the overall development and modernization of the society or district. He feels that not only universities but various non-profit and for-profit organizations have a major role to play in the development and modernization of the district, and hence, as a result, in the academic revolution.
3. Records of community partnerships programs;
Before looking at the history of community partnerships and assessing its success it is vital to note how this phenomenon actually began. Doherty (2000) gives a historical description of community partnership programs. He writes:
During the 1920s and 1930s, family professionals set about the task of bringing expert knowledge about children and families to the public through government-supported publications and the proliferation of parent education programs and study commissions. Over the remainder of the twentieth century, the scholarly field of family science emerged, along with the applied professions of parent education, family life education, and marriage and family therapy. Like other disciplined professions created in that century, ours embraced a vision of making the world better through the work of University-trained professional experts who would generate new knowledge and pass it on to families in the community. Professional training in the twentieth century, first in medicine and then in law and the emerging modem professions, moved away from community-based apprenticeships offered to local citizens, to recruiting and credentialing individuals who had no necessary tie to, or endorsement by, a local community. For the first time, professional expertise was established by large institutions specializing in abstract, universal knowledge, not local, contextualized knowledge (Doherty 2000; pg, 319).
When looking at the history of the school-community and/or university partnerships, Harvaky (1998), in his study first notices them in the late stages of the 19th century when the University of Columbia and Chicago and the Johns Hopkins University, had incorporated into a linked and interlinked network of collaboration. All these universities jointly carried out studies and examinations that analyzed and modeled various community ventures in the urban districts to not only endorse academic endeavors but also community, humanitarian and labor beneficiary activities. The end of World War II was the beginning of a completely new phase of the partnership programs structure. Now, the community and school development was rated as the most important factor and element to work on. All the social and scientific efforts being made were more and more demarcated within the workings of the academic institutes and universities. After that, the phase shifted to a more profession and office-based training in schools, mainly during the 1960s and 70s where education mainly focused on training students so that they would have the ability to adapt, survive and thrive in the cut-throat business world. A good example to explain this change can be seen in the study done by Pitsch (1991) which clearly showed statistics that proved that till the end of the 1970s, the main aim of these partnerships and collaborative schemes was to give the teachers the opportunities to explore and expand their training and teaching skills but the remarkable turn of events that led to the industrial revolution and the population boost became the critical factors that highlighted the decreasing contribution of the universities and establishments in the primary and secondary academic spheres (Morse, 2001; Sommerfield, 1996).
Sommerfield (1996), in his study, does awesome analyses of the reason behind the low period that the school-community development partnership faced during the 1970s and he 1980s. He first highlights the rise in the crime rates and violence within certain communities that forced the policymakers and authoritarians to tighten the security around the college campuses and hence build new institutes in areas that are far from the societies. Secondly, the university adopted the curriculums that gave the students more opportunities to specialize in certain aspects of labor and work that divided and disintegrated the education inside and between the communities, isolating them furthermore. Thirdly, he says that the communication...
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