A Note on Community Education

A busking violinist, cap of dimes at his feet, was playing in a New York gutter, when someone asked him how to get to Carnegie Hall. ’Practice, son,’ he answered resignedly, still fiddling, ’jest practice.’ As we struggle toward that Carnegie Hall of community development - a reformed social and economic context, replete with participation - it is perhaps the task of education to provide the skills (through, as it were, constant ’practice’) rather than to specify the direction (in answer, as it were, to the inquiry about how to get there). Many months of connection with CDPs, and other like-minded ventures, including a two-year educational consultancy for the Home Office, during which I visited several CDP areas and met many of the personnel, convinces me that some community developers have not yet drawn that distinction.