nous leadership, enabling the people of a community to help themselves to achieve a more satisfying life.

3. The development of a research design for the study to provide:

An accurate assessment of the social and personal needs of children and their families who live in Wilmington's changing neighborhoods;

A clear description of the processes used by school and community agencies and an assessment of their effectiveness;

An assessment of the effectiveness of the project in helping teachers, administrators, and community leaders in enabling children and their families to meet their human relations needs.

Basic Assumptions

1. The work of the school (curriculum) and the changes essential in the school community in its broader sense (community action) must be interrelated if the schools are to fulfill their obligations of developing a curriculum with "use value" in the child's living at home and in his community. A functional curriculum depends not only upon the school but also upon the family and the community. The influence of family and community impinge upon the school and become a force for failure or success of school attempts to provide for the child a good climate for educational growth. The schools cannot carry the responsibility alone, nor can any other single community agency.

2. Focus would be upon the following:

The needs of children, which are the motivating force in curriculum building (curriculum).

The needs of teachers, which underlie the research emphasis in the project (research).

The needs of parents, which shape the community action aspect of the project (community action).

Plan of Action

Procedures to be followed throughout the 3 years of study were developed under the direction of the consultant. These embraced six major steps:

1. Diagnosis

During the first year, diagnosis of children's human relations needs was to be emphasized through a study of—

Relationships in the family (child-child, parent-child, parent-parent. Indoctrination and the categories of relationships mentioned provides the dynamics for prejudice).

Relationships in communities (neighbors, families-agencies, families-institutions, families-community workers).

Relationships in play groups (child-child, groups standards, conflicts between groups standards and family standards).

Relationships in the American scene (relationships between individuals and American society).

A variety of instruments were to be used to discover children's perceptions of themselves and the world about them. These included:

Open-ended questions, such as "What do you like about your neighborhood?" "What would you like changed about your neighborhood?" to determine the children's perceptions of their neighborhood, homes and families, friends, and others.

Sociograms, reflecting children's work and play choices among other children.

Time budgets, providing some indication of how children spend their out-of-school time and with whom.

Autobiographies, providing insight into children's understanding of important events in their lives.

Children in the intermediate grade level would write their responses; primary grade children would draw pictures to be supplemented by explanatory comments dictated to the teachers.

2. Analysis of human relations needs

Children's responses would be analyzed by participants to detect possible clues to children's needs. It was recognized that such responses would provide clues only, for obviously they could not stand alone. They became more significant when related to other sources of information, such as school records, test scores, observations, conferences with parents and colleagues, and teacher judgment. Later, as teachers studied these data about their children, their competence in making judgments and in using information about children increased. 3. Relating findings to the curriculum

Throughout the first year, the activities related to the diagnosis and analysis of children's perceptions of their needs would be incorporated into curriculum planning.

Of significance in planning appropriate educational programs for children in every school are the following facts:

Each participating school, regardless of its general economic status, enrolls the children of families representing the substandard to average or aboveaverage income;

Each school's enrollment includes the children of families representing a vast range of values;

Each school's enrollment includes children representing the total range of human capacities, intellectual, emotional, and physical.

Each school's enrollment includes children who may be called the “advantaged," for economic poverty and its crippling influence upon children may be offset by parents whose love and care make it possible for a child to flourish and grow toward maturity in the context of genuine emotional security. To participants of the project, this is revealed continually. Ample evidence is found in what our economically deprived children say and do. When a child who looks at his degrading physical evironment can say, "I like my neighborhood because my neighbor takes me in when I am cold;" when a child can write, "I want to be a plumber but first I must get my schooling. My mother never had schooling and she says it is the most important thing a boy can have," teachers know that values to live by are rooted in people, not in material possessions. This is the hope that makes education focused on human relations skills, sensitivities, knowledge and information the potent force it can be.

4. Constructing teaching plans and curriculum materials

The major emphasis of the second year of study was to be on curriculum development, utilizing the findings obtained in the diagnostic and analytical steps of the first year and continuing to use the skills learned in diagnosis and analysis as a basis for curriculum building. 5. Trying out the plans

Throughout the third year of the study, curriculum materials would be developed by participants to be tried out, evaluated, and duplicated for others to try out, modify, adapt, and evaluate.

6. Evaluation

While evaluation is a continuous process throughout the study, emphasis during the third year of study would be upon evaluation and redevelopment of curriculum on the basis of strengths and needs determined throughout preceding years of the project.

Preparation for Cooperative Community Action

The two basic goals of the project were recognized from the inception, initiation, and planning as parallel goals of equal significance. During the first year, stimulation of interest on the part of lay citizens and representatives of other agencies in the city became the primary objective; organizing for school-community action, the second objective; and initiating community action, the third objective.

Moving into the Second Year of the Project

As the public elementary schools in Wilmington prepared for the second year of this study, the six original project schools volunteered

to continue their participation with an increased number of staff members entering the project. Six more schools entered the project, making a total of 12 of the 15 elementary schools in the city. Teacher participants increased from 60 the first year to 165 the second, thus including approximately 52 percent of the teaching staff.

While the constantly changing facets of life in the city make it difficult to categorize elementary school neighborhoods, nine of the schools which participated in 1960–61 may be identified loosely as representative of economically deprived school neighborhoods; three represent middle and upper-middle economic school neighborhoods. The first year of the project had focused on the learning of diagnostic techniques by the school staffs; the second year would feature the continued use of these techniques, while at the same time the findings would be providing the direction for curriculum development for human relations education.

Inservice Education for New Insights and New Skills

During the second year, it became essential that teachers understand something of the relationship between the achievement of goals in education for human understanding and the achievement of academic goals. Participants defined curriculum in human relations education as understanding oneself in relation to other people and to social institutions. Several important premises were established and clarified to guide efforts to assure these dual goals.

The premise that children learn better when they see a need to learn means that getting at children's felt needs through diagnostic techniques has use value for the teacher.

The premise that the child's motivation to learn acutely affects the quality of his learning means that when a child sees purpose in learning, his achievement in reading, arithmetic, social studies and other subjects can be expected to be greater than it might be otherwise.

The premise that a human-relations-focused curriculum is conducive to the development of human relations skill, sensitivities, knowledge, and appreciation means that we are concerned with helping children and their families achieve more satisfying school, family, and neighborhood life. Achievement of the usual academic skills becomes of greater significance than formerly, for competence in learning demands the ability to read, to use arithmetic, science, and the social sciences, art, and music; and to practice good psysical and mental health. There is no dichotomy between academic skills and human relations skills. They reinforce one another. Through inservice education in building experience units in which children might develop or extend concepts and generalizations related to human relations skills, sensitivities, and knowledge, the partici

pants developed many resource materials which were to be shared with others during the third year of the project.

The Community Organizes for Action

During the first year, efforts were geared to

Providing opportunities for school, agency, organization, and lay representatives to become acquainted and to establish the kind of rapport which would lead to sound working relationships;

Initiating school neighborhood action programs to be developed by professional leadership from schools and agencies as a means of discovering and developing indigenous leadership.

During the second year, these efforts began to pay off. Included among the achievements of cooperative school and agency leadership

were:

The establishment of Price Run Community Council;

The establishment of a plan whereby Block Blight, Inc., would offer assistance and guidance to home owners desiring to rehabilitate their property in the Williams School neighborhood;

The establishment of an interagency council for two schools. Of this council the principal writes:

Two schools have an interagency council which meets two or three times a year. This council is composed of agency representatives who serve our school community. The membership is composed of parents, ministers, PTA leaders, youth service leaders, and school personnel.

Problems dealt with are those directly concerning our small community. It is the philosophy of the group that no one agency is equipped to do all of the jobs needed to be done in our community; that if each agency shared a part of the bigger problem, we would be able to achieve a degree of accomplishment with serious problems.

During the past two years this group has assisted the school in many ways. Peoples Settlement cleared an area south of Fourth Street for the establishment of a playground in that area. Christian Community Center has provided the school with a free lunch donor and a used clothing outlet. The YMCA and the YWCA have established after-school clubs in our building.

Redevelopment officials kept us alert to the progress of the redevelopment program and the whereabouts of our parents and pupils involved in redevelopment.

This group is now interested in working with some of the hard-core cases that live in our community. Case conferencing has been suggested. We hope to arrange for one case conference before the close of school.

Agency officials have expressed satisfaction with the meetings that have been held. Personally speaking, I believe that we have done as much for interagency reiationships as for better school-community agency relations.