Development Note #46
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Imagine two classrooms, in which the same course is taking place using two very different formats. The course is entitled: How To Improve Everyone’s Life. At the end of the term, students are to write what they learned.
One class has a teacher, doing teacher-like things—writing on the blackboard, assigning and going over readings, asking questions around related topics. The other classroom has no teacher, just students. This classroom contains only one book, the title of which is: Should You Decide To Learn, Here’s How To Go About It.
The book’s contents are something like this:
- Introduction: If you decide to read further, tell everyone in the class that you are going to read more of this book
- Chapter One: Discuss among yourselves how it feels to be making your own decisions in this class
- Chapter Two: Discover the personal interests of your fellow classmates
- Chapter Three: Write your interests and display them in the room somehow
- Chapter Four: Write what you feel confident in your life about, and what you need to learn to feel more confident
- Chapter Five: Have a party—music, refreshments, perhaps an old fashioned disco ball
- Chapter Six: Write about your experiences in this class, share with everyone if desired
Of course, the question is—how do these two class experiences compare?
Each classroom models a different method not only of learning, but of experiencing a shared process. In one case, the primary relationship is between teacher and student. In the other, the primary relationships form between students themselves.
These examples of process can also be applied to how community development functions: the choice to rely on top-down instruction to direct development, or encourage people to meet and develop working relationships.
In any situation, program instruction can range from purely educational, such as procedural guidance for officials, to actually providing a service, like building pocket-parks to improve livability. In both cases, the design and planning phase is dominated by an expert or authority deciding, delegating, and informing what will happen, how, and where.
Modifications to the local institutional framework—the laws, policies, and procedures of local government and nonprofit organizations—can enable citizens to meet, encourage relationships, and increase overall transparency.
Changing a law or policy, creating a community mission statement, being welcoming to volunteers, increasing access to nonprofit services and activities, are all structural efforts that can generate civic involvement using existing local resources.
Both models—program instruction, and relationship building—have value. Instruction can provide structure, build expertise, and foster efficiency. But peer interaction can create ownership, motivation, and mutual accountability. One transmits knowledge. The other builds capacity.
Communities improve when people know one another. Trust forms through repeated contact. Unless programs enable people to meet and get to know one another, any instructional initiative will risk losing the enthusiasm, trust, and communal wisdom that will help it to have a maximized and sustained impact. When people are given opportunities to meet, share interests, recognize their strengths, and celebrate together, they begin to teach and support one another.
Over time, this informal exchange of knowledge and trust can accomplish things that formal programs alone rarely achieve. Sometimes the most important role a community can play is simply creating the conditions in which people can learn from each other.