“There Is No School Building, Only the ‘Wasted’ Space of the Community”: Deschooling in Philadelphia During the 1970s

• In Event: Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: Schools, Communities, and Teacher Education: Considering New Perspectives

Abstract

The sanctity of the school building as the place (and space) for teaching and learning continues to be adjudicated and historicized as rational. Conversely, the principles that guide practices for de-schooling call attention to the inadequate results of teaching and learning in the school building and offers an alternative form of educational organization that begins with recognizing spaces within the community that are ideal for learning. By altering the conventional perspective of the school building to be instead a space of restriction and separation,the Parkway Project of Philadelphia (developed in the 1970s) serves as an important historical example of how de-schooling policies were imagined and then implemented in an actual urban setting that was in need of reform.

Author

• Annmarie Valdes, Loyola University Chicago