The need for passenger transportation is widely recognized by rural communities. Shrinking federal funding has led many communities and human service agencies to experiment with innovative approaches to provide transportation services. One such approach is the use of cooperative organizations to provide needed services. A study conducted by the…

Blacks have spent much time and energy "filling other people's pockets" (as Margaret Walker has said) but have not addressed the needs of their own community. Black communities are in a state of deterioration for which the treatment must be self-help. In this paper the example of an unhealthy organism is used as a metaphor for prescribing a cure…

Empowering grassroots efforts in literacy is paramount in the literacy education movement. Six issues face literacy work, research, and policy in the United States today: (1) although there are many exciting and innovative literacy projects being conducted, their lessons are unexamined and they are not part of a larger organizing strategy; (2)…

Although education, as an activity mandated, sponsored, and supervised by the capitalist state, is as much an apparatus of the state as any other state agency, it is far more democratic, open to change and innovation, and subject to potential community control than any other state apparatus. To understand education's function in a capitalist…

A vast number of different types of citizens' groups participate in the educational process with differing degrees of involvement. Besides school-oriented groups, there are child advocacy and neighborhood associations, other citizens groups that have broad concerns but are in part interested in schools, and the advisory committees created by legal…

This paper presents personal reflections on factors in the preservation and stabilization of North American indigenous languages. All indigenous languages in North America are in danger of being lost. Linguistic and cultural minority communities must control the institutions that affect their lives if there is to be significant and sustainable…

Since its beginnings in 1970, a field-based teacher education program aimed at preparing certificated Alaska native teachers has graduated 80 teachers. Until then, the University of Alaska's teacher training program had been a traditional campus-based program aimed primarily at preparing teachers for urban schools, with no course that reflected…

Examines the relationship between centralization and public education. Suggests that compulsory schooling is key to the increasingly centralized and "managed" nature of society and that the nationalization of schooling has undermined individual rights to liberty and democracy. Advocates that communities be responsible for their children and for…

This paper examines ongoing changes related to appropriate methods and practices in Aboriginal educational research, including community control of research based on the principle of self-determination. This assertion of control includes the redefinition of relationships in the research process; appropriate initiation of research projects;…

This paper examines the determinants of systemic education reform in the American states. Socioeconomic, political, and cultural variables are all found to affect the level of systemic education policy in each state. Unlike many studies of policy determinants, urbanization is negatively associated with this particular policy. The political factors…

Majority control of schooling undercuts the freedoms of expression and belief which are central to the First Amendment and to the political health of our society. In education, First Amendment rights can only be guaranteed insofar as choice is actually available to dissenting families. However, battles over public orthodoxy are observable in…

Change in rural schools is difficult to achieve because the diversity of these schools does not allow for one set implementation program. Small rural schools are an integral part of the rural community, and as such are as different as the part of the country where they are located. Change in rural areas is unsuccessful due to: the amount of…

Public discussion of American education centers on crisis and decline. In response to these sentiments, citizens are fast abandoning all forms of local control over schools. Schools are controlled by increasingly distant experts. Some people think that this new direction is necessary because the schools have failed academically. On the contrary,…

Four sets of variables are likely to influence the nature of rural education by the year 2030. The first trend characterizes the mass production model of education and calls for increased specialization. This trend is likely to be replaced by a broader, more integrated one in which the interrelationships between content areas will be more evident…

To examine the influence of Western perspectives on indigenous language teaching, a two-dimensional framework of approaches to language teaching is presented. A horizontal continuum concerning the nature of language ranges between form and function, and a vertical continuum concerning the nature of language learning ranges between construction and…