Lynch, Sean

English

Loyola Marymount University

Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiryand PracticeVolume 8 | Issue 2 Article 412-1-2004Building Community in Schools, by Thomas J.SergiovanniSean LynchFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ceThis Book Review is brought to you for free with open access by the School of Education at Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University andLoyola Law School. It has been accepted for publication in Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice by the journal's editorial board andhas been published on the web by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. Formore information about Digital Commons, please contact digitalcommons@lmu.edu. To contact the editorial board of Catholic Education: A Journalof Inquiry and Practice, please email CatholicEdJournal@lmu.edu.Recommended CitationLynch, S. (2004). Building Community in Schools, by Thomas J. Sergiovanni. Journal of Catholic Education, 8 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.15365/joce.0802092013fully reminds readers to be vigilant in finding connections in their humanity,to dig deep in order to find commonalities and to do the research and reflec-tion necessary to find what truly connects us with one another as humans andas a pilgrim Church.Amanda B. Angaiak is the principal of Immaculate Conception Grade School in Fairbanks, Alaska.BUILDING COMMUNITY IN SCHOOLSTHOMAS J. SERGIOVANNIJOSSEY-BASS, 1994$25.00, 256 pagesReviewed by Sean LynchBy combining research, case studies, and original ideas, ThomasSergiovanni attempts to address the major obstacle to providing quality edu-cation in schools today: a loss of a sense of community. Building on previ-ous books about effective school leadership, Sergiovanni offers the readerideas about the root causes of this loss of school community and ways inwhich individuals concerned with this issue might reverse this trend. Writtenfor parents, teachers, superintendents, scholars in educational administra-tion, organizational theorists, and others interested in building community,the author expounds on why reversing the loss of community is not only inour best interest for children, but why such community development isessential for us, as human beings.The opening chapters of the book lay out the origins of community losstoday, how the loss is manifested in our schools, and why its re-establish-ment is so critical. Sergiovanni sees the breakdown in school community inits relation to the dissolution of community in society at large. In our past,the socialization of young people was shared by the family, the neighbor-hood, and the school. Today, societal changes have contributed to the partialfailure of each of these institutions to provide social support for children,leading them to look internally or to dysfunctional substitutes to address thisBOOK REVIEWS      253need for community. While the author is careful to state that the schools cannever be a replacement for family and neighborhood, “community buildingin schools can provide an important safety net as an interim strategy” for “asschools become communities, they facilitate the strengthening of family andneighborhood” (p. 13).Sergiovanni claims that schools have come to be seen as organizationsrather than communities. Dividing content areas into departments, separat-ing students into grade levels, and designing explicit instructional deliveryvehicles are all ways to convince the public that the school knows what it isdoing; creating rules and regulations and monitoring programs convey themessage of control. However, Sergiovanni claims that such directives overtime separate organizations from the people they are created for and end upserving their own organizational goals. The resultant self-interest tricklesdown to each level of the organization, leaving principals, teachers, and stu-dents working solely for their own calculated reasons, seeking reward andavoiding punishment. Communities, however, are different in that they joinpeople to a purpose, connect people via commitment not contract, and relyon norms and values over external control measures. The reason community is so critical, according to Sergiovanni, isbecause of its status as a basic human need. Drawing upon the work ofLeakey, Oldenquist, and Durkheim, the author furthers the claim of humansas social beings who, when faced with the absence of social constructs, expe-rience negative consequences. Needs are divided into rational connections,emphasizing the pursuit of self-interest, and cultural connections, focusingon loyalties, purposes, and sentiments. While both connections are part ofour human reality, schools have begun to promote a dominance of rationalconnections over cultural ones. The remainder of the book reveals Sergiovanni’s ideas on how commu-nity can be incorporated into today’s schools. While schools can becomecommunities in many different forms, the need for them first becoming pur-poseful communities is paramount. These purposeful communities are“places where members have developed a community of mind that bondsthem together in special ways and binds them to a shared ideology” (p. 72).Curriculum is another way to help create community in a school by trans-forming the ideology into decisions about what should be taught and how thecurriculum should be organized. Yet both the discipline of adhering to suchshared beliefs and the discretion of allowing teachers and students somefreedom to create their own teaching objectives and learning outcomes areessential. On a classroom level, democracy can be used to include all class-room members in designing discipline strategies, instilling a spirit of gen-erosity, engaging students in service projects, and enabling students toresolve conflicts peacefully. Such a democratic community promotes active254 Catholic Education/December 2004citizenship and student involvement, leading to intrinsic classroom motiva-tion. Professionalism can assist this transformation by committing educatorsto improving their practice, assisting their colleagues, and viewing studentsas persons who require care. Professionalism transforms a school into “aplace where everyone is involved in learning and everyone is involved inteaching” (p. 143). This characteristic reveals Sergiovanni’s two remainingutopian ideals for today’s schools: becoming communities of learners andcommunities of leaders. Only where openness to new ideas, suspension ofjudgments, and commitment to inquiry exist can true reflection and dialogueoccur between all members. Sergiovanni claims that when such learning ismade manifest, there is no need for a single, authoritative leader. The cre-ation of a community of the mind, centered around the all-encompassing ide-ology, “becomes the primary source of authority for what people do” (p.170). Principals, teachers, and students alike are followers of this ideal, andtheir commitment to making this a reality makes them all leaders. Sergiovanni makes a convincing argument for the need to create com-munity in today’s schools and offers some helpful guidelines which schoolscan use to implement change on different levels to reach this goal.Particularly enriching are the means by which the mission of a school can beinculcated into each realm of a school’s social and intellectual structure andinto the relationships exhibited by its members. Likewise, the concludingchapter on leadership is beneficial for its summation of central themes andits innovative application of these ideals to the nebulous and evolving con-cept of school leadership. The only detractions from this book were its lack of specific means bywhich to achieve the community constructs extolled by the author, someminor inconsistencies in the intellectual arguments, and a seeming discon-nect between some of the author’s ideas and the target audience.Sergiovanni provides the intellectual framework and benchmarks toachieve a successful school community but does not clearly represent themeans by which these community standards can be achieved. The authordemonstrates how a school with an established community atmospherewould appear and suggests certain essential elements inherent in the exis-tence of such an atmosphere, yet for the process involved in creating such acommunity, Sergiovanni relies exclusively on case studies. While many ofthe case studies are helpful and informative, not all of them clarify the meth-ods used to achieve the specific community characteristics for which theyare being recognized. Further, the case studies which describe the process ofcommunity building are often situation-specific and may not be applicableto all schools. Such an open-ended set-up allows for a fair amount of orga-nizational freedom in constructing community, but might not meet the needsof administrators from schools who are suffering from a dearth of concreteBOOK REVIEWS      255ways in which to begin the community development process. Therefore, thecontent of this book offers a clear look at the final destination of a schoolembracing a model of community but at times remains vague on the journeya school must take to reach this goal.This reviewer also takes issue with some of the terminology and argu-ments used to further the points being made about community. The use ofsome terms and examples causes one to question whether they were chosensimply as a convenient means to drive the author’s preconceived argumentsor if they are supposed to truly reflect established community practices. Themost glaring example of this occurs in the section on democracy. The notionof infusing democracy into the classroom has merit, but the wholesalereliance on this notion opens the entire concept to question. The author con-tends that a classroom in which students design the discipline policies ispreferable to one in which those same policies are created by the teacher.Sergiovanni posits that in the former, fewer discipline problems occur, whilein the latter, “no lessons are learned” (p. 133). The author offers a contrivedexample of a student who fails to complete an assignment, but is allowed toreflect on how he let his classmates down and turn in the assignment later.Leaving aside pedagogical theory and practice, one has to wonder the truelesson that is being learned by the student in this situation. Is it more valu-able to learn that through a student-created discipline policy approach, sec-ond chances are to be expected, or that, as is the case in the traditional sys-tem, that actions have consequences? Combine this with the earlier assertionof the author that a community breakdown exists in the home. If the home isnot providing structure or discipline, is it not contradictory to claim that theschool should provide this support for the child yet deny the school themeans to discipline? While the author admits that certain behavioral actsshould be explicitly up to the determination of adults, the list Sergiovannimentions includes such extremes as weapons, fire alarms, and alcohol.Clearly there is a middle road that should allow teachers to infuse their ownmeasure of rule-making and discipline, as opposed to wholesale reliance ondemocracy to enhance community. Apart from this example, the entire notion of democracy and its use inthe book calls into question what the author is trying to get across.Throughout the book, Sergiovanni meticulously chooses words and phrasesto emphasize precise meanings. Yet the author incorrectly applies the termdemocracy to the classroom environment when discussing disciplinestrategies to promote active citizenship. Sergiovanni contends that studentsshould be enlisted to help determine the rules and norms of classroom behav-ior in order “for the classroom to become a democratic community” (p. 120)to prepare students for active citizenship. The author then cites the U.S.Constitution as an example of “unflinching testimonies to democratic values256 Catholic Education/December 2004that define the obligations of citizenship” (p. 123). Yet, the obligations of cit-izenship spoken of by our ancestors was not one of democracy, but of arepublic. Our system of government requires citizens to voluntarily handover their individual rights or control to the care and guidance of others whorule for them. It is this ideal, if the author wishes to draw the connectionbetween present and future citizenship, that should justify allowing theteacher to prescribe the rules of classroom behavior and discipline.Therefore, are the examples of a democratic classroom advocated bySergiovanni designed to bolster this incorrect view of citizenship, or is theparamount ideal of democracy, regardless of the accuracy of its portrayal,used to construct these notions of classroom practices?The greater point rests in the potential reason why such terminology waschosen and the audience for which the book was written. Throughout thebook, there are a lot of unnamed, but clearly identifiable religious notions.The author suggests that community cannot be achieved unless we commitourselves to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (p. 29). Private schools are cham-pioned over public schools in promoting cultural connections because oftheir “well-established religious and other traditions” (p. 59). In discussingprofessional communities, the author laments that “even though we fallshort, our quest for the professional ideal is a worthy end in itself” (p. 152),reflecting the wisdom of Christian spiritual masters, such as Thomas Merton.Yet when referring to discipline, Sergiovanni claims that the purpose is toteach students citizenship. It seems rather odd that in a book about commu-nity which contains hidden references to religion, that the purpose of disci-pline would not elicit calls to justice, to divine love, or to help build the king-dom of God on earth. This reviewer has to wonder if Sergiovanni has tem-pered beliefs about community for a secular audience. It would be interest-ing to see if, in dealing with Catholic schools, Sergiovanni might movebeyond the notions of democracy and citizenship to a more satisfying theo-logical foundation for community. Sean Lynch is an assistant administrator and teaches American history at Bishop Sullivan HighSchool in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.BOOK REVIEWS      257

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