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Democratic partnerships involving universities, schools, and an array of neighborhood and commu- nity organizations are the most promising means of improving the lives of our nation’s young people and strengthening our communities.

1 University-school-community partnerships for youth development and democratic renewal

Ira Harkavy, Matthew Hartley

Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.

John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927)

Democracy has been given a mission to the world, and it is of no uncertain character. . . . I wish to show that the university is the prophet of this democracy, as well as its priest and its philosopher; that in other words, the university is the Messiah of the democracy, its to-be- expected deliverer.

William Rainey Harper, The University and Democracy (1899)

growing up in america’s cities is exceedingly and unnecessarily dif- ficult for too many children. School systems in major metropolitan

7 NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 122, SUMMER 2009 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.303

areas struggle to serve their needs. In our own city of Philadelphia, for example, only about 55 percent of the students entering ninth grade graduate from high school in four years. The infant mortality rate in Philadelphia rose 8 percent from 2004 to 2005, reaching 11.3 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, the highest level since 1999. In neighborhoods in West Philadelphia not far from where we work, infant mortality rates are 15 per 1,000 as compared to 5 per 1,000 in adjacent suburban counties. Yet despite these challenges, urban com- munities harbor rich resources that have the potential to make a pro- found difference in the lives of young people. As elsewhere, these communities are filled with parents who are deeply concerned about their children’s welfare and anxious to act on their behalf. Further- more, most cities contain a university, a hospital, or both. These “eds and meds” can play a critical role as anchor institutions, providing employment to many and serving as powerful collaborators in eco- nomic, educational and civic renewal efforts.1

Universities are well positioned to play a role in responding to the challenges facing our nation’s cities. Over half of all institutions of higher learning are located within or immediately outside urban areas.2 Universities are resource rich. In many cities, universities and hospitals are the largest private employers. According to a recent estimate, urban colleges and universities employ 3 million people, and fully two-thirds are administrative, clerical, or support staff.3 One study concluded, “Older core cities have a significant concentration of jobs in education and health services. . . . These industries account for over 20 percent of the jobs in the case study cities, compared to 15 percent of jobs nationally.”4 As such, they serve as anchor institutions that provide significant economic sta- bility to their local areas.5 This status also gives them considerable leverage in encouraging and participating in systemic reform.

The partnership imperative One strategy to marshal all of these potential resources is through university-school-community partnerships. Over the past two

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decades, many colleges and universities have been experiencing a renaissance in engagement activities.6 The ill-fated efforts at urban renewal in the 1960s, whose prime instrument was often a bull- dozer, have evolved into rich partnerships based on mutuality and reciprocity. Universities have increasingly come to recognize that their destinies are inextricably linked with their communities. Ernest Boyer, the highly influential former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, called for colleges and universities to link engagement activities with core academic functions such as teaching and research.7 He, and many others, argued that the doors of the ivory tower ought to be opened onto the wide avenues of the community—not merely because it is laudable but because it is a superior means of fulfilling the univer- sity’s mission of teaching and research.

Throughout the 1990s, in answer to this call, hundreds of uni- versities established offices or centers aimed at encouraging part- nerships with the community. Hundreds of thousands of college students participate in various community-based activities. How- ever, a significant challenge of this work has been moving beyond limited (and at times palliative) community involvement toward the establishment of deep, lasting, democratic, collaborative partner- ships aimed at addressing pressing real-world problems. It is these reciprocal and comprehensive university-community partnerships, and ones aimed particularly at youth development, that we are focus on in this volume.

The activities highlighted in the articles that follow are notable because they draw in multiple constituents from the community working in genuine collaboration with the university in demo- cratic partnerships. Furthermore, their outcomes extend far beyond the provision of services (though that is certainly an important con- cern). In a real sense, these partnerships aim at revitalizing com- munities. In our view, they exemplify democracy in action: people working together to change their communities and society for the better. Indeed, one of their defining characteristics is that they are intent on both solving community problems and building civic capacity.

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We believe these partnerships represent a radical departure from business as usual. Each of the initiatives presented in this volume faced significant challenges. In part, they struggled to overcome what Benjamin Franklin derisively called the “ancient Customs and Habi- tudes” of institutions of higher learning: a preference for the pro- duction and preservation of esoteric knowledge (and the status it conveys) over the pragmatic pursuit of a happier, healthier, and more democratic society.8 In this respect, these examples make a powerful case for an engaged, civic university that aims both to improve the quality of life for young people and to advance learning and research through serious, sustained, significant democratic partnerships.

Historical roots of democratic partnerships The presence of the schooling system in each of these accounts is telling and worth underscoring. We view schooling as the key strategic subsystem of modern societies. More than any other sub- system, it exerts the greatest influence on society as a whole. These accounts also underscore the pivotal role universities can play due to their enormous intellectual, economic, social, and human capital power when they partner with communities and their schools.

The notion of universities as embedded in and intimately con- nected to their communities has deep historic roots. The nation’s first university, the University of Pennsylvania, was founded by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, one of the largest and most important cities in the American colonies. In 1749, Franklin pub- lished a pamphlet, “Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensyl- vania [sic],” in which he articulated a vision of an institution predicated not on classical education for the elites but to serve all students of ability in the interest of fostering an “Inclination join’d with an Ability to serve mankind, one’s country, Friends and Fam- ily” [emphasis in the original].

This notion was echoed in the land grant movement in the nine- teenth century, which expanded the public system of higher edu- cation and directly tied its work to the betterment of society. We

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also see it at the dawn of the modern research university. William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago (1892–1906), argued that the university was the “prophet,” “the Messiah of the democracy,” and his vision conceived of communi- ties, schools, and universities as inextricably linked. In 1896, the year Dewey began the Laboratory School at Chicago, Harper pro- claimed his “desire to do for the Department of Pedagogy what has not been undertaken in any other institution.” When criticized by a university trustee for sponsoring a journal focused on pedagogy in precollegiate schools, Harper emphatically retorted, “As a uni- versity we are interested above all else in pedagogy.”9 He argued: “Through the school system every family in this entire broad land of ours is brought into touch with the university; for from it pro- ceeds the teachers or the teachers’ teachers.”10 Harper also believed that within local contexts, universities and schools and the com- munity had the capacity to work together for the betterment of society. So do we.

Characteristics of truly democratic partnerships Authentic, democratic partnerships have several key characteristics in common. In October 2004, one of us (Ira Harkavy) attended the third in a series of conferences sponsored by the Kellogg Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good, held at the Johnson Foundation’s Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wiscon- sin. The conference, “Higher Education Collaboratives for Com- munity Engagement and Improvement,” assigned participants to one of several working groups. The report of the faculty and researcher working group echoed many of the themes identified in this volume. Specifically, it identified democratic purpose, process, and product as crucial for successful university partnerships with schools and communities:

• Purpose. “It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself is not rightly placed,” Francis Bacon wrote in 1620. A

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successful partnership must be known for its democratic and civic purposes. This is in keeping with the democratic mission that served as the central animating force behind the develop- ment of the American research university. An abiding demo- cratic and civic purpose is the rightly placed goal if higher education is to truly contribute to the public good.

• Process. In accordance with the purpose, a successful partnership should be democratic, egalitarian, transparent, and collegial. Higher education institutions should go beyond a rhetoric of col- laboration and conscientiously work with communities, rejecting the unidirectional, top-down approaches that all too often have characterized university-community interaction. The higher edu- cation institution and the community, as well as members of both communities, should treat each other as ends in themselves rather than as means to an end. The relationship itself and welfare of the various partners should be the preeminent value, not devel- oping a specified program or completing a research project. These are the types of collaborations that tend to be significant, serious, and sustained, lead to a relationship of genuine respect and trust, and most benefit the partners and society.

• Product. A successful partnership strives to make a positive dif- ference for all partners. Contributing to the well-being of peo- ple in the community (both now and in the future) through structural community improvement (for example, effective pub- lic schools, neighborhood economic development, strong com- munity organizations) should be a central goal of a truly democratic partnership for the public good. Research, teaching, and service should also be strengthened as a result of a successful partnership. Indeed, working with the community to improve the quality of life in the community may be one of the best ways to improve the quality of life and learning within a higher edu- cation institution.11

For us and all of the article authors, democracy is the heart and soul of successful, significant, sustained university-school- community partnerships.

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The Penn approach Since the work at the University of Pennsylvania began over twenty-three years ago, we have devoted particular attention to developing mutually beneficial, mutually respectful democratic partnerships between Penn and schools and communities in West Philadelphia and Philadelphia. Over time, we have come to con- ceptualize the work of the Netter Center for Community Partner- ships, the organization that Ira Harkavy directs that develops and administers Penn’s school and community partnerships, to develop university-assisted community schools as an ongoing communal participatory action research project designed to contribute simul- taneously to the improvement of West Philadelphia and to the uni- versity’s relationship with West Philadelphia, as well as to the advancement of learning and knowledge.

As an institutional strategy, communal participatory action re- search differs significantly from traditional action research. Both research processes are directed toward problems in the real world, are concerned with application, and are participatory, but they dif- fer radically in the degrees to which they are continuous, com- prehensive, and beneficial to both the organization or community studied and the university. For example, traditional action research is exemplified in the efforts developed by the late William Foote Whyte, Davydd Greenwood, and their associates at Cornell Uni- versity in Ithaca, New York, to advance industrial democracy in the worker cooperatives of Mondragón, Spain. Its considerable empirical and theoretical significance notwithstanding, the research at Mondragón is not at all an institutional necessity for Cornell. By contrast, the University of Pennsylvania’s enlightened self-interest is directly tied to the success of its research efforts in West Philadelphia—hence, its emphasis on, and continuing sup- port for, communal participatory action research. In short, prox- imity to an easily accessible site and a focus on problems that are institutionally significant to the university encourage sustained, continuous research involvement. Put another way, strategic com- munity problem-solving research tends strongly to develop

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sustained, continuous research partnerships between a university and its local community.12

Given its fundamental democratic orientation, the Netter Cen- ter’s participatory action research project has worked toward higher levels of participation by community members in problem identi- fication and planning, as well as in implementation. This has not been easy to do. Based on decades of Penn’s destructive action and inaction involving the local community, university-community con- flicts take significant effort and time to reduce. The center’s work with university-assisted community schools has focused on health and nutrition, the environment, conflict resolution and peer medi- ation, community performance and visual arts, school and com- munity publications, technology, school-to-career programs, and reading improvement. Each of these projects almost inevitably varies in the extent to which it engages and empowers public school students, teachers, parents, and other community members in each stage of the research process. Although it has a long way to go before it actually achieves its goal, the center’s overall effort has been consciously democratic and participatory, with a goal of gen- uinely working with the community, not on or in the community.

As university-assisted community schools and related projects have grown and developed and as concrete positive outcomes for schools and neighborhoods have continued to occur, community trust and participation have increased. It would be terribly mis- leading, however, if we left the impression that town-gown collab- oration has completely—or even largely—replaced the town-gown conflicts that strongly characterized Penn-community relationships before 1985; it has not.

Since 1985, Penn’s engagement with West Philadelphia schools and neighborhoods has certainly come a long way. But Penn still has a far distance to travel before it radically changes its hierarchi- cal culture and structure and uses its enormous resources to help transform West Philadelphia into a democratic, cosmopolitan, neighborly community and a multidimensional asset for a major university. Stated directly, we do not think we have largely solved the problem of developing and implementing the practical means

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needed to realize Dewey’s theory of participatory democracy. We are well aware that we are a long way from having done so. But we have found that working with the community to solve strategic community-identified problems is a powerful means for advancing ongoing, increasingly democratic relationships between Penn and the schools and communities in West Philadelphia.

The major component of the neo-Deweyan strategy now being developed and slowly implemented by Penn focuses on developing university-assisted community schools designed to help educate, engage, activate, and serve all members of the community in which the school is located. The strategy assumes that community schools, like colleges and universities, can function as focal points to help create healthy urban environments and that both universi- ties and colleges function best in such environments. Somewhat more specifically, the strategy assumes that public schools, like col- leges and universities, can function as environment-changing insti- tutions and become strategic centers of broadly based partnerships that engage a wide variety of community organizations and insti- tutions. Since public schools belong to all members of the com- munity, they should serve all its members. (No implication is intended that public schools are the only community places where learning takes place; obviously, it also takes place in libraries, muse- ums, private schools, and other institutions. Ideally, all the learn- ing places in a community would collaborate.)

More than any other institution, we contend, public schools are particularly well suited to function as neighborhood hubs or cen- ters around which local partnerships can be generated and devel- oped. When they play that innovative role, schools function as community institutions par excellence. They then provide a decen- tralized, democratic, community-based response to rapidly chang- ing community problems. In the process, they help young people learn better, at increasingly higher levels, through action-oriented, collaborative, real-world problem solving.

For public schools to function as integrating community insti- tutions, however, local, state, and national governmental and non- governmental agencies must be effectively coordinated to help

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provide the resources community schools need in order to play the greatly expanded roles we envision in American society. How to conceive that organizational revolution, let alone implement it, poses extraordinarily complex intellectual and social problems. But as Dewey forcefully argued, working to solve complex, real-world problems is the best way to advance knowledge and learning, as well as the general capacity of individuals and institutions to advance knowledge and learning.

We therefore contend that American universities should give high priority—arguably their highest priority—to solving the prob- lems inherent in the organizational revolution we have sketched. If universities were to do so, they would demonstrate in concrete practice their self-professed theoretical ability to simultaneously advance knowledge, learning, and societal well-being. They would then satisfy the critical performance test proposed in 1994 by the president of the State University of New York at Buffalo, William R. Greiner: that “the great universities of the twenty-first century will be judged by their ability to help solve our most urgent social problems.”13

Since 1985, to increase Penn’s ability to help solve America’s most urgent social problems, we have worked to develop and implement the idea of university-assisted community schools. We emphasize university assisted because community schools require far more resources than traditional schools do and because we have become convinced that, in relative terms, universities constitute the strategic sources of broadly based, comprehensive, sustained sup- port for community schools.

The university-assisted community school idea we have been developing at Penn since 1985 essentially extends and updates Dewey’s theory that the neighborhood school can function as the core neighborhood institution—the core institution that provides comprehensive services, galvanizes other community institutions and groups, and helps solve the problems communities confront in a rapidly changing world. Dewey recognized that if the neighbor- hood school were to function as a genuine community center, it would require additional human resources and support. But to our

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knowledge, he never identified universities as the (or even a) key source of broadly based, sustained, comprehensive support for community schools.

It is critical to emphasize, however, that the university-assisted community schools now being developed at Penn have a long way to go before they can effectively mobilize the potentially powerful, untapped resources of their communities, and thereby enable chil- dren and families to function as community problem solvers, as well as deliverers and recipients of caring, compassionate, local ser- vices. Nonetheless, the work at Penn, as well as the impressive, comprehensive university-community-school partnerships and university-assisted community schools developed at Widener Uni- versity, the State University of New York at Buffalo, University of Dayton, and Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapo- lis are, we are convinced, indicators of the ongoing development of the engaged, democratic, civic university that advances learning as it works with its community to realize the democratic promise of America for all Americans, particularly its children and youth.

Notes 1. Harkavy, I., & Zuckerman, H. (1999). Eds and meds: Cities’ hidden assets.

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 2. Hahn, A., with Coonerty, C., & Peaslee, L. (2003). Colleges and univer-

sities as economic anchors: Profiles of promising practices. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University, Heller Graduate School of Social Policy and Management, Insti- tute for Sustainable Development/Center for Youth and Communities and POLICYLINK.

3. Hahn, with Coonerty & Peaslee. (2003). 4. Fox, R. K., & Trouhaft, S. (2006). Shared prosperity, stronger regions: An

agenda for rebuilding America’s older core cities. Oakland, CA: PolicyLink. 5. Harkavy & Zuckerman. (1999). 6. Hartley, M., & Hollander, E. (2005). The elusive ideal: Civic learning

and higher education. In S. Fuhrman & M. Lazerson (Eds.), Institutions of democracy: The public schools. New York: Oxford University Press.

7. Boyer, E. (1994, March 9). Creating the new American college. Chron- icle of Higher Education.

8. Best, J. H. (1962). Benjamin Franklin on education. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

9. R. McCaul, quoted in White, T. W. (1977). The study of education at the University of Chicago,1892–1958. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univer- sity of Chicago. p. 15.

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10. Harper, W. R. (1905). The university and democracy. In W. R. Harper (Ed.), The trend in higher education (pp. 1–343). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

11. Harkavy, I. (2005). Higher education collaboratives for community engagement and improvement: Faculty and researchers’ perspectives. In P. A. Pasque, R. E. Smerek, B. Dwyer, N. Bowman, & B. L. Mallory (Eds.), Higher education collaboratives for community engagement and improvement (pp. 22–23). Ann Arbor, MI: National Forum for Higher Education and the Public Good.

12. Benson, L., Harkavy, I., & Puckett, J. (2007). Dewey’s dream: Universities and democracy in an age of education reform. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

13. Greiner, W. R. (1994). In the total of all these acts: How can American universities address the urban agenda? Universities and Community Schools, 4(1–2), p. 12.

ira harkavy is associate vice president and director of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania.

matthew hartley is associate professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania.

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