Integrated Services and community education

Community Education has a long history and it requires the integration of different services based on the school.

The Educational Program for Montgomery County Schools in Maryland was proposed by Dr Nicholaus L. Englehardt and Associates and written by Dr Walter D Cocking, New York City (April 1, 1946). It has been called the `Blueprint` of Community Education.`

"The task of the teacher of the future is a greatly different task than that which teachers usually performed in the past. The fundamental equipment expected of the teacher of yesterday was knowledge of the subject he taught. Modern education demands teachers who are acquainted by experience as well as by study with our democratic society and who participate actively in the life of the community... ."

The plan would involve introducing the following services into schools for the benefit of the entire community.

Health and medical services
Feeding services
Recreational services
Library services
Guidance and counselling services
Child care services
Demonstration and  experimental services.
Planning and research services
Employment services.
Audio-visual services.
Social welfare services
Group meeting place services.
Civic services
Consultative services

　
Having begun to explore the possibilities in 1998, Scotland is now well ahead with providing integrated services in its schools. Curriculum for Excellence is blurring the boundaries between education and health by making health and wellbeing part of the curriculum and at the same time giving teachers the responsibility for the development and wellbeing of each pupil. Individual learning plans blur the distinction further between education and guidance; and named persons work collaboratively with social services ready to intervene at the mere hint that a child`s wellbeing is at risk.

In fact, the Scottish Government sees its responsibility as taking care of the whole child: physical, social, educational, emotional, spiritual and psychological. (Scottish Executive 2005) In other words, there is a direct relationship between the State and each individual child which is being acted out in the school.

 

Is this relationship likely to be a healthy one? Indications are that this grandiose vision is already causing alarm to some communities; for the problem is that `without the capacity to collect, monitor and analyse data from different sources` we are informed that the concept of Integrated Community Services  `is not imaginable,` - and neither is the policy to take care of the whole child.

 

The Scottish Review reports on another survey being conducted on school children in Dundee, very similar to the discredited Perth and Kinross Evidence2Success, which failed to inform parents of the very sensitive questions until after the surveys were completed. So desperate is the Scottish Government for data, that it will breach Data Protection law to obtain it. The article sums it up nicely.

In this intriguing new Scotland, where European directives are lightly ignored in the interests of contentment, the only people who will be explicitly forbidden from being named persons are the child's own parents.

http://www.scottishreview.net

Of course, the integration of Children`s Services is only the beginning of the knowledge driven society.

 
This paper argues that the "analysis of knowledge policy is crucial in order to explain changes in education governance in the knowledge society. The integrated services initiative is one aspect of this emerging reality. Above all, it signals a re-invention of public education as having a much broader, and therefore more vague and malleable role in creating a new society of known and governable individuals."

(Note: For knowledge driven society, read data driven society.)