whole school meetings and the development of radical democratic community

Whole School Meetings and the Development of RadicalDemocratic Community

Michael Fielding

Published online: 13 November 2010� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Serious re-examination of participatory traditions of democracy is long over-

due. Iconically central to such traditions of democratic education is the practice of whole

School Meetings. More usually associated with radical work within the private sector,

School Meetings are here explored in detail through two examples from publicly funded

education, (1) Epping House School, a mixed residential primary/elementary school for

students with severe emotional, social and behavioural difficulties and (2) secondary/high

schools within the Just Community School movement in the USA. In addition to providing

richly textured accounts of the multiple realities and challenges of pioneering overtly

democratic practices such as School Meetings within the publicly funded sector of edu-

cation substantial attention is paid to analytic engagement with the kind of organisational

structures, practices and cultures that seem to play an important role in their successful

operation and development. The different phenomenological and theoretical strands

weaving their way through the texture of Meeting practices also raise a number of key

issues within the fields of social and political philosophy, in particular, whether School

Meetings are best understood as predominantly political or communal phenomena. In

gesturing towards the philosophical groundwork of a satisfactory answer I argue for the

importance of the undeservedly neglected notion of democratic fellowship within the

lexicon of democratic polity and aspiration.

Keywords Democracy � Fellowship � Radical � Participation � School Meetings

Introduction

For the last 150 years most of the theoretical and practical work on student engagement

and the development of democracy and citizenship within schools in North America and

M. Fielding (&)Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UKe-mail: [email protected]

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Stud Philos Educ (2013) 32:123–140DOI 10.1007/s11217-010-9208-5

the UK has presumed the desirability and viability of work within representative traditions

of democracy. There are, of course, exceptions, often associated with developments in

radical private school traditions, most notably A. S. Neill’s Summerhill School in England

and Sudbury Valley in the USA. There are, too, traditions in mainland Europe and many

other countries across the world in both southern and northern hemispheres that have their

own, often interconnected radical narratives in both public and private sectors of schooling.

There are also particular epochs where more adventurous experimental work seems to have

flourished more widely and more confidently than it does now. Whilst largely under-

standable, this marginalisation or rejection of participatory traditions of democracy is

regrettable and disappointing: regrettable because, as we approach new crises of political

legitimation, participatory traditions of democracy have much to offer public systems of

schooling that are witnessing increasing levels of student disaffection and intellectual

dereliction; disappointing because the kind of thing myself and others were arguing for as a

young teacher nearly 40 years ago (Fielding 1973) seems to have made little headway.

Amongst the most iconic of practices within the participatory tradition of democracy is

the General or whole School Meeting in which students and staff sit down together as

equals, reflect on their work and aspirations, raise matters of individual and communal

significance, celebrate achievements, hold each other to account, and decide on what to do

next. In focusing on two examples of such practices within the state/publicly funded sector

of education I hope not only to convey the vibrant sense of possibility such approaches

make available to us; I also want to address a number of strategic professional and

intellectual issues. Strategically we are living in interesting times: the literal and meta-

phorical near-bankruptcy of dominant economic and political systems under which many

of us live might well accelerate the range and depth of questioning, not only of its excesses,

but of its fundamental presumptions. For those working in schools now is as good a time as

any to take stock, not only of current realities but also of future possibilities. An intake of

professional breath is not, of course, just a pragmatic matter: it is also and interdependently

an intellectual and philosophical matter reflected in the structure and underlying dynamic

of this paper.

The decision to focus on the publicly funded sector of education is not intended as a

rebuke to teachers and students within radical private traditions: without their pioneering

bravery and tenacity1 the flames of alternative approaches to democratic living and

learning would be weaker than they are already. Those in the tradition of, for example,

Homer Lane, A. S. Neill and David Wills necessarily and joyfully form part of the

intellectual preface of this essay. The main reasons for drawing on examples from publicly

funded traditions of radical education have to do partly with the need to reclaim and

reaffirm the very existence of those traditions, not only because not to do so is tantamount

to a betrayal of humanity’s Promethean spirit. It is also because, as Russell Jacoby so

acutely observes, ‘society has lost its memory, and with it, its mind. The inability or refusal

to think back takes its toll in the inability to think’ (Jacoby 1997:3–4). Other reasons for

examining two participatory practices from publicly funded schools in some detail have to

do with the need to affirm that, in Terry Wrigley’s resonant phrase, ‘Another School is

possible’ (Wrigley 2006) within the public sector of schooling as well as within the radical

traditions of private education. It is the power of presence, the irrefutability of lived reality

that gives the lie to the familiar fabrications of ‘there is no alternative’. When we actually

1 I dedicate this paper to the late Tony Weaver, friend, conscientious objector, founder member of theCommittee of 100, anarchist, one time Editor of New Era, and quiet, patient pioneer of radical education.

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encounter radical alternatives it is in large part their brute reality, their enacted denial of

injustice and inhumanity and their capacity to live out a more fulfilling, more generous

view of human flourishing that in turn moves us to think and act differently.

Lastly, a word about form, about the underpinning conception of philosophy (Fielding

2000) that animates this exploration of school Meetings as archetypal participatory dem-

ocratic practice. Drawing on the radical work of John Macmurray, arguably one of the

most important neglected philosophers of the twentieth century English speaking world,

this paper’s presumptions are, firstly, that philosophy is not primarily concerned with

knowledge, but rather with wisdom; secondly, that the testing ground for philosophy is

human action; and, thirdly, that philosophy is likely to be a subversive activity since, ‘Real

thought on fundamental issues has usually proved dangerous, if not in the long run at least

in the medium issue’(Macmurray 1932:335). Fourthly, and finally, ‘philosophical knowl-

edge is necessarily partisan and propagandist and the greater the truth of a philosophy the

more partisan and propagandist it is’ (Macmurray 1935:39). Philosophy ‘is not and cannot

be’ neutral in the social struggle: ‘To hold a certain philosophical belief is to chose a side

in the social process’ (Macmurray 1935:40).

Mindful of these four orientations and also of Macmurray’s observation that ‘it often

happens that abstractions of theory conceal the possibilities of practice.’ (Macmurray

1943:37), I examine in some detail school Meetings at two different schools covering a

range of ages, epochs and circumstances. The first concerns Epping House School, a

primary/elementary residential school for what were then known as ‘maladjusted’ children.

Set in rural Hertfordshire in England, under the leadership of Howard Case between

January 1958 and April 1974 it became the most radical publicly funded special school of

its generation. The second example concerns the work of the Harvard University psy-

chologist Lawrence Kohlberg and his colleagues and the development of the Just Com-

munity School project with a range of radical secondary schools in the USA between the

early 1970s and the late 1980s.

In both of these cases I focus on the development of the school Meeting as a pre-

eminently important communal practice and in describing their intentions, enacted realities

and emergent dilemmas seek to develop a richly textured understanding of two different,

but interrelated aspects of their praxis. The first of these concerns the kinds of organisa-

tional structures, practices, and cultures that seemed to play an important role in their

successful operation and development. The second is more explicitly philosophical and

arises directly from the different phenomenological strands weaving their way through the

texture of Meeting practices. Here I return once more to the work of John Macmurray and

seek to tease out key issues at the interface between political philosophy and the philo-

sophical anthropology of personhood: in sum, are school Meetings best understood as

predominantly political or communal phenomena? In gesturing at the philosophical

groundwork of a satisfactory answer I reclaim the undeservedly neglected notion of

democratic fellowship.

Democracy as Shared Responsibility: Howard Case and Epping House School

Situated just south of the county town of Hertford in England, Epping House started life as

a conventional school for maladjusted boys: ‘a high standard of good behaviour was

expected, whose infringements were treated by, among other things, the cane. Academic

achievement was the classroom goal, and each Sunday the boys attended the local church’

(Purdy 1965:10).

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In the years under Howard Case’s leadership it eventually became a mixed school and

one of the most radical publicly funded primary schools for children between the ages of

five and twelve England has ever seen, whether for ‘mainstream’ or disadvantaged young

people. Although a state school, its traditions in Case’s time drew strongly on the twin

strands of radical progressivism most powerfully exemplified by A. S. Neill’s ‘Summer-

hill’ and, within the special school sector, by the work of David Wills, both of whom were

hugely influenced by the controversial pioneer, Home Lane. An enormously charismatic, if

flawed, figure Lane was someone of whom Neill remarked in his review of Wills’s

biography, ‘To me Lane’s greatest gift to humanity was his demonstration of self-

government’ (Neill 1964:21). Case was a friend of Neill’s, sent his children to Summerhill,

and was for many years the editor of the Summerhill journal Id.

Epping House usually housed 35 to 40 students and 10 adult residential staff, 6 of whom

were teachers. In order to understand the nature of Case’s achievement it is worth saying a

little more about the children who attended the school. Case himself describes maladjusted

children as ‘those whose life forces … have been dammed up, wounded and distorted …Not those who are organically defective, dull or lifeless, or who have poor mental health

and physical equipment, but those who have not been able to stand the strain of existence

with their roots out of the soil … often resulting in anti-social behaviour, bed-wetting or

asthma.’ When encountering adults some of the children typically ‘explode into licence

and looseness, like besotted revellers. Some then regain their balance, others go over the

edge … then begin to live’ (Case 1966:132).

Whilst the typical reaction of adult society is to respond with ‘verbal or physical battery,

disguised as increased concern or redoubled rejection’ (Case 1966:132) Case argued that

the first duty of the therapeutic institution was to refrain from any form of punishment and

instead help the children to understand that the adults were on their side. A key element in

helping staff to respond appropriately was the weekly staff meeting which not only dis-

cussed each of the children in turn and when necessary, ‘but which inevitably uncovers the

reality about ourselves’ (Case 1966:133). It also operated as a pre and post Meeting group

and, most important of all, as the guardian of the philosophical basis on which the school’s

aspirations and practices rested (Case 1978:121) In doing so it not only retained the

integrity of its ideals, it also renewed and developed them for old and new staff: ‘Both the

staff and children’s meetings were vehicles for perpetuating the tradition and ensuring the

continuity’ (Case 1978:126). Occasionally children were invited to certain discussions if

they particularly related to them, but this was exceptional rather than commonplace.

The Daily Meeting

The daily school Meeting was the central feature of community life. When writing about it

in 1966, Case tells us that it had been going for 8 years and its established traditions meant

that children conducted it, with very few refusing an offer to do so. As he observed two

years later, in part through the emergence of the role of ‘writer’ which I return to in more

detail below, ‘over half the school (were able to) chair a meeting efficiently’ (BBC TV

1968:14). Indeed, as he remarked in his subsequent book, with the development of the

Meeting tradition ‘at one stage, we achieved a position where any child, wishing to do so,

was given an opportunity to chair the meeting’, a circumstance which, he adds, ‘took a

very long time’ (Case 1978:60). It is also important to note in passing that this egalitarian

commitment went hand in hand with qualitative development: children tended to ‘chair a

meeting better than most adults even on occasions when numbers were doubled, as they

sometimes were on student visits’ (Case 1978:60).

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Typically the whole school sat in a circle with staff sitting with their group. This was

not just an organisational convenience. Its tactile emphasis had substantial philosophical

and experiential significance that connected strongly with Case’s view of the emotional

and inter-personal needs of the children in the school’s care. ‘Great value was placed on

intimate contact with individual adults’ during the course of the Meeting, something which

may have in part prompted Case’s friend Geoffrey Sheridan’s description of the Meeting as

‘a complaints department, trade union, students council, group therapy and ‘‘love-in’’

rolled into one’ (Sheridan 1970:9). The young person chairing the meeting sat at a table at

some point in the circle. Trainee chairpersons were given the opportunity to chair the

meeting for a little while before the experienced child chair took over.

The meetings normally lasted about an hour and usually took the following form. The

agreed Agenda, which covered ‘the business of daily social living’ (Case 1966:133), was

preceded by a cultural activity of some kind such as a piece of music, a play, a talk, or an

exhibition of work chosen by staff or children (Case 1966:133–134). Sometimes there was

a particular edge or link in the expressive opening phase of the Meetings, e.g. ‘A song

could begin a lengthy debate if it raised some provocative point’ (Case 1978:63).

This was followed by announcements about the arrival of letters and other activities of

the day. The order of items on the Agenda was crucial. The constraining items, such as the

Stop or Veto List (see below) were dealt with first. Then came the negotiation of activities

that staff were able to offer in the afternoon and evening, after the 11.00 a.m.–12.30 p.m.

class groups which the school expected the children to attend and which they, by and large,

they accepted as part of their social obligation. Children were free to choose which

activities they wished to take part in, or to offer activities of their own, or do nothing at all,

a proviso Case insists ‘is the most important of all, for a denial of this denies to the child

the chance to stand and stare and wait for the welling up of energy’ (Case 1966:134).

Then came the allocation of voluntary communal work such as sweeping and cleaning

and looking after the dogs and cats that had an important role to play in the emotional

reparation and development of many of the children at the school. Jobs were allocated on a

weekly basis, checked by members of staff and, depending on their satisfactory accom-

plishment, given a ‘wage’—really an increase in basic pocket money—which had a

communal as well as a monetary significance. It was as much a way of demonstrating

maturity to one’s peers and the school as a whole. In Case’s view, ‘The child must be

offered the satisfaction of making a contribution to the community, of taking responsibility

for a small area of community life, and of doing a job which is within one’s capacity, well’

(Case 1966:136).

Once clear about communal obligations, choices about afternoon and evening activ-

ities were made. There then followed a brief review of the previous day’s jobs and lists

were made about who wished to watch television in the evening. Announcements and

reminders about future events preceded an interlude for songs. Then came the letters and

debate/question time in which day-to-day issues were raised by children and staff. These,

together with Notes of Application with regard to the Veto and Privileges Lists were

often ‘the kernel of the Meeting’ (Purdy 1965:12).The Meeting closed with Any Other

Business.

The Veto/Stop List and Privileges List were important, not least because they contained

individual requests for social approval of pursuits which required a degree of personal and

interpersonal maturity. The Veto List contained the names of children who had misused an

amenity of the school, e.g. selfish or anti-social uses of the swings or ropes, and were thus

forbidden to use them thereafter. In order to be taken off the Veto List a child had to apply

in writing to the Meeting and the Meeting discussed and voted on his or her case. Likewise


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with the Privilege List which was made up of the school amenities reserved for children

who could be relied upon to use them responsibly. For example, a privilege might entail the

possession of a penknife, access to the sitting room or reading room, the right to go up to

the bedrooms during the day without first seeking permission from staff.

The collation of minutes of the Meeting was aided by the overt encouragement of the

making of notes and by the emotional commitment of all concerned. Not only did ‘the

collation of minutes became a co-operative affair, for the adult responsible often referred to

the children who had notes’; recall also had its roots in felt engagement: ‘Deep attachment

to the meeting was evidenced by the way in which almost all children remembered meeting

decisions’ (Case 1978:59).

In addition to the chairperson, the other key office in the conduct of the meetings was

the ‘writer’, whose task was not to write minutes, but to record on a wall board the names

and order of people wishing to speak, thus taking the pressure of remembering many names

and sequences off the chairperson. Interestingly, Case even goes so far as to suggest that

‘The writer probably had a more powerful position in the meeting than the chairman, for he

was expected to show greater impartiality’ (Case 1978:61). Certainly, the emergence of the

role of writer held ‘the secret of a well conducted children’s meeting’ (Case 1966:133).

The Role of Adults

Two other roles were important for the success of the meeting, one involving adults, the

other involving young people. Whilst the meetings were chaired by children, one of the

senior adults in the school accepted a special responsibility for supporting its democratic

vitality, a role which in Case’s view required an ‘artistry’ of engagement within which

they ‘neither dictate, dominate or withdraw’ (Case 1966:133), or, as he later put it,

‘where adults were alert, clarifying issues, and trying to get at the sense or nonsense in a

debate, then the children followed’ (Case 1978:73). It is noteworthy that Vincent

Rosewell, the not-always-sympathetic presenter of the 1967 BBC TV programme about

the school, confessed, perhaps somewhat ambiguously, to the lead contributor, Dr Edna

Oakeshott from London University’s Institute of Education, that ‘The part I liked best

was the meeting. The way the adults intervened at appropriate moments’ (BBC TV

1968:16).

Mixed Age Peer Engagement

The other special role, whilst less consciously understood and enacted, was no less

effective or important and was deliberately fostered by Case and his staff. It involved the

more experienced children who had come through the Epping House system and who by

virtue of their maturity and age provided examples of tolerance, of resistance to ‘hateful or

shallow comment’, of ‘hard hitting examples without fear!’ (Case 1966:133) and of how

‘to give and accept criticism in friendship, one of the most difficult achievements for any

human being’ (Case 1978:74).

This is not to say that the younger children were cowed or alienated, either by adults or

their older, sometimes more mature, peers. Some welcomed the ‘hate-free’ direction of the

dialogue; others ‘gained confidence in the opportunity and growing ability to express their

individual feelings’; and ‘others again, surprised themselves that they could express

anything at all’ (Case 1966:133). The commitment to a mutually conditioning freedom,

equality and care for each other ensured that ‘All thrive in the life giving experience of

being taken seriously by all, whatever they say or how they say it—or shout it, freed from

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the deprecatory and destroying taunts of adults’(Case 1966:133), a comment echoed a year

later in Case’s BBC TV interview when he insisted that ‘The Meeting is one of the

foremost means of giving the child freedom to develop’ (BBC TV 1968:13).

I wonder if any society whose aim it is to produce a maturing membership can

function without a meeting.

Case’s comment about the tight link between freedom and community, like so many

others that weave their way through descriptions of Epping House, highlights and reaffirms

the central importance of the Meeting in the life of the community. What is so striking is

the living symbiosis of practical necessity and philosophical energy. At its best it was

undoubtedly seen by Howard Case as central to the kind of education, to the kind of human

flourishing he was trying to encourage. In one of the key chapters of his book in which he

reflects on the many detailed examples of community meetings he pauses thus

I wonder if any society whose aim it is to produce a maturing membership can

function without a meeting. The whole character of our community was noticeably

different, I believe, because of it; there was the feeling as verbalised by one child to

another in confidence, but overheard: ‘We run this place.’ In this remark, there was

no feeling of: ‘We run it against the adults or without adults.’ ‘We’ meant ‘all of us.’

(Case 1978:71)

This is not to say Case took easily or lightly to the development of Meetings at Epping

House. Later in the same chapter, having acknowledged his debts to Homer Lane and A.

S. Neill, he recalls being fearful of starting a Meeting and Neill saying to him, ‘Get started

and the rest will come.’

The rest did come until its implications were as deep as life itself. The meeting

brought increased awareness to each person as an individual and a social being; it

encouraged a serious attitude to life; it confirmed to the children that they were taken

seriously by adults; it established a harmony between adult and child which formed

the basis of all other relationships throughout the day. Though the responsibilities of

adults towards children and the areas of adult control were clearly delineated, the

conventional concept of adult wisdom and morality gave way to collective inspi-

ration, gained in the concerted seeking and questioning … questionings which had

but one end in view: the greater happiness and maturation of each individual (Case

1978:81)

From Self-Government to Shared Responsibility

Rejecting the notion of ‘self government by children’ as ridiculous on the grounds that he

‘could not see why any community that relied heavily on adults should be run by children’

(Case 1978:71) he opts instead for ‘shared responsibility’, most prominently developed by

David Wills (1948, 1966, 1970) in which, whilst the vast majority of decisions were indeed

shared, adults retained control over a small number of key decisions, usually to do with

matters of safety or health. Meetings were about the exercise of reasoned consent through

the development of ‘a fully participating community where each experienced the right to

help, according to ability, in framing the laws or day to day arrangements’ (Case 1978:71);

a just community that encouraged ‘the right to fullest self-realisation but not at the expense

of others and the right of the community to restrain those who wished to destroy its

institutions’ (Case 1978:71).


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Boundaries were clear. Case and most senior staff retained the right of veto via the staff

meeting or alone, though, in actual fact, there were very few occasions on which it was

seen to be necessary. When they did occur they were clear and respectful both in the

decision made and the manner of its articulation as, for example, when Case vetoed the

climbing of a particularly high cedar tree on grounds of safety. When staff meetings made

decisions unconnected with the community Meeting they were always announced for

discussion in the latter. For Howard Case, ‘freedom was not a question of just getting rid of

the old authoritarianism and removing all restrictions but that of acquiring a new authority

based upon human need—an authority which aroused no feeling of repression’ (Case

1978:59–60). Again and again he comes back both to the love and respect that shapes the

nature and proper response to what he sees as that need and to the mutuality of the learning

involved. Thus he recalls that ‘Children had their own ways of expressing their points of

view, not always logical and immediately intelligible to the adults but sometimes put with

great potency, showing much greater insight and these were the occasions when we adults

felt enriched and invigorated by thoughts and feelings which we ourselves had not initi-

ated’ (Case 1978:72). It was this deep, educative reciprocity of openness, insight, action

and being in the world; this inclusive communal honouring of diversity, difference and

delight that enabled and ennobled uniqueness as a relational accomplishment; this vibrant

sense of authentic existential engagement that went some way to supporting Case’s claim

that Epping House was ‘a vital, truly democratic community’ (Case 1966:133).

Taking Participatory Democracy Seriously: The Just Community School Movement

The Just Community School movement began in the 1970s and flourished vibrantly in

secondary/high schools, mainly in the USA, for about 15 years and also in Germany from

the mid 1980s until the present day (see Oser et al. 2008). It was primarily concerned to

understand and develop the moral education of young people and it soon became clear that

in order to do so it needed to engage, both practically and theoretically, with the allied

fields of social and political enquiry. Its founder and leading figure was Lawrence Kohl-

berg whose six stage typology of moral development was central to the movement’s

aspirations and achievements. Kohlberg’s early reflections on the inadequacy of discussion

as a tool of moral development sum up much of what lay behind his deep commitment to

participatory democracy and social justice:

Moral discussion classes are limited, not because they do not focus on moral

behavior, but because they have only a limited relation to the ‘‘real life’’ of the school

and the child … Education for justice requires making schools more just and

encouraging students to take an active role in making the school more just. …Ultimately, … a complete approach to moral education means full student partici-

pation in a school in which justice is a living matter. (Kohlberg 1971:82)

Indeed, as he affirmed nearly 10 years later, the more advanced fifth and sixth stages of

moral development ‘cannot take place except in and through experiences of participation’

and that ‘Education by, and for, participation is not simply a concern for ‘‘citizenship

education’’, it is a concern for human development education’ (Kohlberg 1980:34).

Kohlberg’s views about moral and wider human flourishing lie firmly within partici-

patory, rather than representative traditions of democracy. His presumption is that ‘the

educational aim of full individual human development can be reached only through an

education for full participation in society or in a human community’ (Kohlberg 1980:34).

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Furthermore, he saw it as the school’s duty to provide appropriate contexts for and

experience of full participation. Why? Because representative democracy privileges those

who are already politically mature. Unless young people experience participatory

engagement in a rich way at school, when they leave they are likely to avoid opportunities

for participation and public responsibility, not seek them.

How might the school go about this? Kohlberg offers two complementary responses.

The positive answer is clear and unswerving.

The most basic way in which the high school can promote experiences of civic

participation is to govern itself through a process of participatory democracy. … The

only way school can help graduating students become persons who can make society

a just community is to let them try experimentally to make the school themselves.

(Kohlberg 1980:35)

His companion, negative ‘even more compelling’ argument is that ‘bureaucratic-

authoritarian high school governance actually teaches alienation and ignorance about

democratic society’ (Kohlberg 1980:35–36).

Given the marked absence of schools within the public sector run as participatory

democracies and the difficulties of setting up radical democratic schools from scratch, the

Just Community School project went for a school-within-a-school model, involving small

numbers of volunteer staff (four to five) from social studies, language arts/English and

mathematics departments and between 70 and 100 students in grades 9–12.

Justice and Community

Before setting out the organisational structure of the Just Community Schools at the heart

of which lay the weekly Community or ‘Town’ Meeting, it is important to say a little more

about the theoretical and practical weight born by the twin notions of community and

justice within the project. As we have already seen, Kohlberg’s concerns were not just with

moral and civic education, but with human development education i.e. education which

enables people to flourish as creative human beings in and through just and caring com-

munities. Democratic processes are not enough. As some of Kohlberg’s colleagues pointed

out, ‘a group can democratically arrive at unjust decisions’ (Reimer and Power 1980:305).

Dominantly procedural forms of democracy can, for example, be racist or amoral and

flawed in a number of other problematic respects. Kohlberg’s response was to foreground

the discussion of moral issues and arrival at just decisions, in part through a valorisation of

the notion of community. For Kohlberg, one of the most prominent threats to democracy in

the USA at the time was what he called ‘the death called privatism … the ideology of

‘‘look out for number one’’ (Kohlberg 1980:29, 30). On the one hand his antipathy towards

this attitude and what he sometimes called a do-your-own-thing libertarianism and, on the

other hand, his qualified admiration for aspects of the Israeli kibbutzim movement led him

to emphasise certain ‘master virtues of community’, i.e. ‘caring, trust, collective respon-

sibility, and participation’ which were seen as ‘indispensable for the common life …(Power et al. 1989:138). In committing to these virtues pragmatic associations of indi-

viduals became communities in which members ‘not only pursue personal educational

goals but value their common life as an end in itself.’ (Power et al. 1989:140).

A school’s ‘moral atmosphere’ became a key component of Kohlberg’s research and

development of the Just Community School approach. Here norms of community, e.g. to

do with ideal relationships, caring for others, trustworthiness, taking responsibility for the

collective’s welfare, come into their own. Indeed, in Reimer and Power’s view, when


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community members ‘are acting on some shared sense of ‘‘what would be best for the

community’’ they are taking the community as their end and are using the democratic

process to bring that idea of community into existence’ (Reimer and Power 1980:307).

This formed a particularly important part of Kohlberg’s own involvement with Scarsdale

Alternative School where the research team

suggested that teachers very explicitly appeal to a developing sense of community

and to the need for the individual student to have defined obligations to the com-

munity, rather than leaving a sense of community to spontaneous good fellowship.

(Kohlberg 1980:47)

This is not, of course, to say that disagreements and differences were always overcome.

Thus, in one of the pioneer schools ‘the (social) patterns that stood in the way were the

student’s tendencies to affiliate by subgroup, to segregate along racial lines, and to use

drugs as a means of mixing’ (Reimer and Power 1980:319). However, it did mean that the

difficulties and challenges that always arise in any human community were faced and

tackled within the context of shared responsibility and common aspiration.

Within Just Community schools the relationship between community and democracy

was, thus, not just complex; it was one of reciprocity and necessity. In the running of

Community Meetings, it often expressed itself through the dialectic of democratically

agreed norms of order, e.g. to do with cutting classes, stealing, drugs, and emergent norms

of community outlined above.

The evolution of the former allows for the smooth organizational functioning of the

school; the evolution of the latter allows for a sense of community to emerge in the

school. They both evolve through the democratic process – through discussions of

how the school should be run and how the members should act in relation to one

another and the group as a whole. (Reimer and Power 1980:309)

Learning from Past Mistakes

Even if Kohlberg was right in insisting that ‘The only way school can help graduating

students become persons who can make society a just community is to let them try

experimentally to make the school themselves’ (Kohlberg 1980:35) there still remains the

key question about how one might usefully set about doing this. Part of his response was,

of course, to utilise his theories of moral growth in developing new pedagogies and new

decision-making practices within Just Community Schools and in doing so address what

one of his collaborators, Elsa Wasserman, saw as the three major causes of failure amongst

so many of his precursors who had tried to develop democratic school governance. These

were, firstly, that participatory democracy was not seen as a central educational goal and,

secondly, that it was invariably boring for students who were much more inclined to

engage with issues of morality and fairness, rather than complex matters of administration

and academic course development, often expressed in abstract, jargon-ridden language.

Thirdly, it sometimes failed because it was very difficult indeed to make policy in large

meetings: ‘Experience suggested that the community needed to be small enough so that all

members could have direct access to participation in community meetings.’ (Wasserman

1980:268).

The fact that the Just Community Schools had deliberately small staff/student popu-

lations was important for these kinds of reason. However, if smallness is necessary, it is

certainly not a sufficient condition for active participation of adults and young people, even

132 M. Fielding

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on a one-person-one-vote basis. Whilst each of the participating schools responded to the

participatory challenge according to their own contexts and circumstances over time a

number of patterns emerged.

Making the Meeting Work

Firstly, Small Groups of students and staff, usually with an upper limit of fifteen, met to

discuss issues of concern and aspiration. The ones that cropped up most frequently and led

to the most successful moral and political engagement had to do with cutting (missing)

classes, drug taking, stealing, disruptive behaviour, assessment and grading. Small group

engagement of this kind led to more thoughtful, more engaging Community Meetings and,

in Wasserman’s view, ‘were essential for the creation of a viable governance structure and

for an increased sense of community’ (Wasserman 1980:271).

Secondly, in some cases there were Advisor Groups. These comprised a member of

teaching staff who had a general guidance and counselling remit. In some instances stu-

dents were taught peer counselling skills. Whereas the main purpose of the Small Group

was to address community concerns, the prime function of the Advisor Group was to offer

support with personal and academic matters.

Thirdly, there was usually some form of Agenda Committee comprising one of the Just

Community School research team, some members of staff and interested students that

received issues from the small groups. Sometimes the Committee acted as a precursor to

Small Group discussion that engaged in the experiential and intellectual groundwork of the

Community Meeting. Sometimes it just received the views of the various groups and made

agenda decisions on the basis of what it heard. At its best, its reactive and proactive

response to Small Groups was informed by meta-level thinking that reviewed the pre-

ceding community meeting, analysed the current functioning of the school from a theo-

retical point of view, suggested new ways of addressing emerging problems, developed

staff skills, planned the coming community meeting and clarified staff’s understanding of

the moral issues the community was facing.

The Community Meeting and Its Companion Committees

At the weekly, or bi-weekly, Community Meeting each Small Group rep would present the

group’s position on the issue in hand and a general discussion would ensue, often with

Small Groups defending or advocating their own positions. Chairing of the meeting varied,

but the norm seemed to be that students, either on their own or in pairs, undertook this role.

On one celebrated occasion at the beginning of the project a member of staff chaired what

turned out to be a chaotic meeting. As a result the Meeting agreed to instigate a ‘democracy

class’ in which students were trained to chair the meetings and develop sound procedures

(Wasserman 1980:270). Decisions were made on the basis of one-person-one-vote. In

cases where feelings ran high decisions were often preceded by ‘straw votes’ to clarify

levels of agreement and whether or not further discussion was needed.

In order to deal with emerging issues to do with the enforcement of school rules for

students and staff a Discipline or Fairness Committee was formed. Usually they contained

one, randomly selected student from each Advisor Group. Participation was obligatory on

much the same basis as jury service. Decisions of the Discipline Committee could be

appealed in Community Meetings and a number of sources refer to the fact that many of

the ‘more fruitful community meetings dealt with appeals that resulted in reconsideration

of rules based on substantive issues of fairness.’ (Wasserman 1980:271).


123

There were also Ad Hoc Committees, such as the hiring committees at School-Within-

A-School, Brookline that had twenty volunteers, with students outnumbering staff by three

to one and worked ‘long and systematically through the spring semester in interviewing

prospective candidates for the positions of co-ordinator/counsellor and social studies tea-

cher’ (Mosher 1980:283).

The Role of Adults

One of the inevitable issues to emerge within the project had to do with the role of adults

within Community Meetings. Adults clearly had a key role in Kohlberg’s six-stage

developmental pedagogy, as, indeed, did the students themselves. Enabling and inviting

more sophisticated and more profound moral thinking and behaviour was, after all, the

raison d’etre of the whole project. There was strong recognition that Just Community

School approaches were properly and inevitably hard work for all concerned and that, as a

consequence, adults had particular responsibilities to provide scaffolding and support

within the developing mutualities of democratic community. As Joseph Reimer and Clark

Power put it, the Just Community project ‘is not to be a utopia set up by adults for

adolescents, but a shared democratic process of community building’ (Reimer and Power

1980:305). Similarly, Kohlberg himself disapproved of what he saw as the ‘romantic

Summerhill alternative school conception of power to the people—the idea that adoles-

cents were basically capable of responsibility and self-governance if only given the

chance’ (Kohlberg 1980:38) because his experience told him that, whilst it sometimes

worked with affluent alternative schools, it tended not to work with schools in more

disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

The differences of emphasis that emerged within the Just Community project centred

round whether or not adults within the schools took on an advocacy or an advisory role.

Kohlberg took the former stand arguing that teachers can and should legitimately

‘advocate for the same reasons that they hope the students will advocate. They advocate

in the name of making the [school] more just or fair and more of a community. They

hope, and have found, that if they advocate in this manner, so will many students’

(Kohlberg 1980:42).

Interestingly, in their overview of the work of Just Community Schools in the USA and

Germany over a number of decades, Oser et al. (2008) indicate that the facilitator/advocate

debate recurred every few years, largely at the instigation of students who were uneasy

about the power of teachers within Community Meetings and elsewhere. This is not

necessarily seen as a bad thing for at least two reasons: firstly, because it triggered stu-

dents’ thinking about their own place and power within the community and, secondly,

because it ‘provided opportunities for new students to think about roles, power and rela-

tionships and for older students and teachers to further refine their views’ (Oser et al.

2008:404).

The role of adults is inevitably and properly a recurring issue with any approach to

democratic schooling, particularly within participatory traditions. This applies both at a

procedural level, e.g. in Meetings and other learning contexts, and at meta levels of

organisational philosophy. Thus Oser et al. point out that it is very rare for schools to allow

students to share in decisions about the content of curriculum and argue that ‘What is

important for creating a genuine school-based democracy is that both the real limits and the

real power of the community are known and that the members come to a shared under-

standing of the underlying rationale’ (Oser et al. 2008:405).

134 M. Fielding

123

Key Issues

The key organisational and cultural issues raised by the development of participatory

practices in the two case studies presented are best understood, firstly, within the context of

the radical traditions which they exemplify and to which they both contribute. Secondly,

these radical traditions are likewise hugely influenced in their enactment, if not their

aspirations, by wider economic, political and historical macro-contexts that are dominant at

particular times, in large part because what counts as ‘education’ and ‘schooling’ tends to

change accordingly. Whilst it is only possible to hint at these traditions and contexts here

they nonetheless form the intellectual backdrop of the brief discussion that follows.

Organisational Forms and Opportunities

Despite their quite different circumstances and host communities the pioneering work at

Epping House School and in the Just Community School movement does seem to throw up

a number of issues pertinent to a deeper understanding and development of school

Meetings. Some of these have to do with the importance of companion organisational

forms and opportunities that ensure that the Meeting itself is not an exotic or marginal

event to which only a few are able or motivated to contribute. It seems clear, for example,

that small group contexts which give opportunities and provide skills to enable each

student to name and explore matters of felt importance are essential to active participation

in Meetings. The nature of the groups will vary—they may be pastoral or more holistic in

orientation; they may be curricular, integrated or cross-curricular, or, ideally, an articu-

lation of a co-constructed or negotiated pattern of learning. There should also be a

deliberate enabling of informal associations and groupings that express particular identities

and commitments. As Tony Weaver has argued and Howard Case demonstrated above,

there also needs to be (a) an insistent place both for physical work as an indicative token of

communal obligation and a source of individual self-esteem and (b) a place for the arts as a

means of cultural engagement with matters of meaning and purpose for ‘Without a dis-

covery of the means of spontaneous expression a community runs the danger of being

tyrannical or coercive’ (Weaver 1989:83).

This multiplicity of provision needs to be complemented by a similarly eclectic range of

staff groups and opportunities and also by an agenda group whose remit concerns, not just

the preoccupations and imperatives of the moment, but also a strong, persistent link to

larger matters of overall philosophy that justify and energise the Meeting as the supreme

organisational expression of the educational purposes and aspirations of the school as a

democratic community. A companion generic point, whilst not in itself a discrete organ-

isational feature, is nonetheless organisational in nature. It is not only that organisational

form must follow wider human purposes, but that if the nature of those purposes has to do

with a view of human flourishing that sees freedom as the raison d’etre of communal

engagement then, the form of organisational features such as the Meeting will differ

according to need and circumstance. Thus, reflecting on the dangers of imposing an

external model of a Meeting, David Wills suggests ‘There is more educative value in

devising a way of living together than there is in operating it, and where shared respon-

sibility is real, the system will change from time to time. … A lively dynamic system of

shared responsibility will have repeated failures, and will from time to time scrap all its

rules and start again from scratch.’ (Wills 1966:27).

Lastly, the dialogic imperative influencing each of these forms needs to be mirrored at

the macro level of the school as a whole: if a school exceeds a certain size its needs to be


123

broken down into smaller sub-schools or schools-within-schools that provide the most

compelling organisational articulation of participatory democracy currently available to us.

Whilst by no means a guarantor of engagement and a rich, multi-facetted encounter with

others as persons, not just as bearers of rights and diverse perspectives, smallness seems to

bear out the truth of guild socialist and communitarian anarchist traditions as a necessary

condition of meaningful participation.

Relationships and Organisational Culture

Other emerging issues have less to do with organisational forms and opportunities than

they have to do with the values and assumptions about the larger intentions of democratic

living and learning as expressed in the day-to-day relationships and organisational culture

of the school. The basic assumptions about the purposes of education and their practical

realisation in the lived realities of daily life in the school presume a hinterland of cultural

beliefs and aspirations that enable Meetings to flourish as expressions of communal hope

and shared responsibility. Prominent amongst these are the centrality of enabling and

ennobling relationships which exhibit, not only a reciprocal orientation to students and

teachers as persons, but also an insistent affirmation of possibility which, for example,

denies the legitimacy of ‘ability’ labelling and seeks positive alternatives to the predations

of competition and other cultural practices that confine expectation within the frameworks

of zero-sum or segregationist mentalities.

The nature of the issues discussed in Meetings must vibrantly reflect the concerns and

aspirations of young people, not just the adults. Likewise the manner of discussion and the

chairing of the Meeting itself must, without condescension or trivialisation, be mindful of

the ethics of care and be presumptive and actively supportive of youthful capability, not

only to achieve what in conventional schools is routinely assumed to be beyond both their

powers and their legitimate sphere of interest. Meetings must also come of age by passing

Wills’ test of authenticity: ‘no system of Shared Responsibility becomes dynamic and real

until a complaint has been brought against an adult and he has bowed to the will of the

community, whether or not he admits himself to be at fault’ (Wills 1966:28). Often this

requires courage, both of young people and adults, and can be fostered by mixed age

engagement amongst students, blurred staff/student roles, the development of joint enquiry

into matters of communal importance, and a culture of ‘radical collegiality’ (Fielding

1999).

Two other contrasting but integrally related issues deserve special recognition. One

concerns the role of particular students and the other the role of adults as agents of

community integrity and democratic progress. The first issue foregrounds the special

importance and creative possibility afforded by the development of a ‘parrhesiastic’ role,

one that unwaveringly speaks truth to power, especially amongst the students. Inspired by

Foucault’s 1983 lectures on ‘Discourse and Truth’ (Foucault 2001) this argues not just for

isolated, opportunistic student challenges of the kind Wills sees as essential in establishing

the credibility of Shared Responsibility; it also argues for the cultural articulation and

legitimation of a courageous, challenging role as part of how Meetings and, indeed, other

aspects of the life of the school, are conducted.

The second issue concerns the role of adults, particularly with regard to their varied

location along the advisor/facilitator continuum which proved such a key issue within the

Just Community Schools movement. Much of what is at stake here was also taken up

within the earlier radical tradition to which Howard Case and David Wills belonged and

frequently emerged in the disputes about whether or not one advocated ‘self-government’

136 M. Fielding

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whose extreme variant and unconvincing caricature was supposed to be the irresponsible

off-loading of adult responsibility onto the shoulders of the child. This was contrasted with

Wills’ notion of ‘shared responsibility’ where, as the term suggests and we have seen in the

Epping House case study above, responsibility was significantly shared between adults and

young people ‘all with an equal voice, and all equally subject to the will of the community’

(Wills 1966:27), but with certain adults openly reserving the right and the particular

responsibility to retain an operational veto on matters, often to do with health and safety or,

for example, the final say in the appointment of new staff.

The Pre-eminence of Purposes

Whilst all of these issues to do with the structural and cultural dimensions of schools who

locate themselves with participatory traditions of democracy are interdependently impor-

tant, they cannot satisfactorily be pursued here. There is, however, one other key matter

which requires further, albeit brief, exploration. The first and most important question to

ask of Meetings has to do, not with organisational features and behaviours, but rather with

educational purposes. What is striking here is the way both case study examples see

Meetings not solely or primarily as political processes. Whilst they are clearly political in

form and, to a significant degree, in intention they are emphatically more-than-political and

as such they raise a number of important philosophical issues at the intersections between

social and political philosophy and philosophical anthropology.

Thus, with Just Community Schools there was a triple commitment to justice, to

democracy as a way of living, and to community as the precondition and telos of both.

Justice was seen as a key motivational dynamic and power relations an inevitable and

necessary feature of daily encounter and future possibility. Because the project was located

within participatory rather the representative traditions of politics, democracy was not seen

primarily as a collective technology. Whether or not it enabled and encouraged justice

depended both upon the degree to which the dispositions and relations of those involved

were informed by a particular understanding of community or what I shall later call

‘democratic fellowship’.

In the case of Epping House School the fundamental intentions were even more overtly

concerned with the interpersonal conditions of human flourishing. Implicitly explaining the

title of his book Case recounts a conversation in a Meeting in which he asked ‘What

responsibility have we as adults which you children cannot have?’ Anthea replied in a

flash: ‘Loving us’ (Case 1978). This therapeutic relational rationale, this deeply held view

about a particular way of being in the world was one of the archetypical orientations of the

radical special education movement from Homer Lane onwards, reaching its apogee in the

work of his biographer David Wills. Wills’ insisted that his own pioneering of the Meeting

and the development of ‘shared responsibility’ over many years with different groups of

‘wild, neglected, undisciplined, over-disciplined and ‘‘dis-social’’ children’ had its justi-

fication not as ‘an efficient method of governing (a school), but because of its therapeutic

value. … Shared responsibility is a corollary of the primary instrument which is the effort

to make children feel they are loved’ (Wills 1948:79). Democratic community, with the

daily Meeting at its centre, is important because its explicitly egalitarian form enables a

deep and demonstrable reciprocity, thereby providing both existential and practical testi-

mony of the need for and presence of love. Indeed, for some key figures in the radical

tradition of special education, the main virtue of the Meeting with its egalitarian openness

and mutuality had less to do with the procedural exploration of individual and collective

intention than its capacity to enable us to engage the person behind the persona, to help us


123

to ‘re-see’ each other, to unsettle presumption and so reaffirm freedom, equality and

fellowship as the centripetal, reciprocally conditioning values of democratic community.

Thus, for George Lyward, one of the iconic figures of the early post-war movement, ‘living

together is so much more than a business of producing law and order and anticipating

virtues inherent in political democracy … It is as recurring opportunities of breaking up the

institutional soil that ‘‘self-government’’ should chiefly be welcomed and emulated’

(Lyward 1948:94).

Democratic Fellowship

Among the most significant philosophical issues raised by the two case studies of school

Meetings are those which have to do, not only with the nature of democratic politics and

the different traditions through which its aspirations and actualities are expressed, but also

with the nature of political life itself and how it is most fruitfully understood in relation to

companion areas of human experience.

My own view is that some of the most insightful work in this domain is to be found in

anarchist (e.g. Peter Kropotkin), guild socialist (e.g. G. D. H. Cole) and ethical socialist

(e.g. R. H. Tawney) traditions of politics and within the broader personalist traditions of

philosophical thought. Arguably the most creative and compelling philosophical explo-

ration of these matters is to be found in the work of John Macmurray, particularly in

Conditions of Freedom (1950) and, pre-eminently, in his ground-breaking 1953–1954

Gifford Lectures subsequently published as The Self as Agent (Macmurray 1957) and

Persons in Relation (Macmurray 1961). Here Macmurray articulates a relational, agentic

view of the self whose basic dynamic is expressed in what he came to call ‘the form of the

personal’. This personalist philosophical anthropology provides a creative basis for

understanding the interplay between the instrumental or functional relations typical of

society and the personal or heterocentric, caring relations typical of community. It is by

working through and coming to more fully understand the nature and consequences of their

relational interdependence that the possibilities of human flourishing are enhanced or

diminished.

Whilst a fully articulated exploration of the implications of such a view for a radical

democratic politics of education is not something that can be undertaken here (see Fielding

2007 for a fuller exposition of Macmurray’s philosophy and its relation to education),

nonetheless, in closing this paper, it is possible to get a feel for the spirit and direction of

the argument by looking briefly at the notion of democratic fellowship. In Macmurray’s

view fellowship is the point of politics. For him, politics ‘has significance only through the

human fellowship which it makes possible; and by this its validity and its success must be

judged’ (Macmurray 1950:69–70). Furthermore, a second, companion argument insists that

democratic fellowship is not just the point of politics, but the precondition of democracy’s

daily development and future flourishing: ‘the extent and quality of such political freedom

as we can achieve depends in the last resort upon the extent and quality of the fellowship

which is available to sustain it’ (Macmurray 1950:69). Human fellowship is at once the

precursor to and hope of democratic politics which is both its agent and an important site of

its prefigurative enactment. ‘The democratic slogan—liberty, equality fraternity—

embodies correctly the principles of human fellowship. To achieve freedom and equality is

to create friendship, to constitute community between men (sic)’ (Macmurray

1950:74–75). Many of the achievements of Howard Case and his colleagues and students

at Epping House School and of Lawrence Kohlberg and his collaborators in the Just

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Community School movement can be better understood and more fully realised by their

successors if we attend more deliberately and more energetically to the nature of demo-

cratic fellowship and the conditions of its realisation, not just in schools, but in the societies

within which they do their daily work.2

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whole school meetings and the development of radical democratic community

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