The Community Context

Abstract

Schools exist in communities that differ greatly in their characteristics. The images conjured up by the communities surrounding a school in the center of Newark, New Jersey, the college town of Storrs, Connecticut, or a rural community such as Farmington, California, should be sufficient to convince the reader that this community context will likely have great influence on what goes on within schools. It will largely determine the social composition of the studentry, have much to do with the kind of faculty that is recruited and retained, and the resources that are available or spent on education, among other things. In addition, a long history of research in criminology documents variations in crime rates among communities and strong associations between community characteristics and crime or victimization rates (Block, 1979; Harries, 1976; Pope, 1978; Quetelet, 1842/1969; Shaw & McKay, 1969). Block, for example, reports strong correlations at the census-tract level between log robbery rates and percentage black (.51), percentage high school graduates (-.54), percentage of families at 75% of the poverty level or below (.46), and percentage female-headed families (.53). Researchers in the human ecological tradition (Bordua, 1958; Chilton, 1964; Chilton & Dussich, 1974; Gordon, 1967; Lander, 1954; Shaw, 1929; Shaw & McKay, 1969; White, 1932; Wilkes, 1967) and social geographers (Hadden & Borgatta, 1965; Harries, 1976; Jonassen & Peres, 1960; Smith, 1973) have adduced incontrovertable evidence that delinquency rates vary in regular ways across social areas, and theorists (Kobrin, 1959; Kvaraceus & Miller, 1959; Mays, 1954; Miller, 1958; Shaw, 1929) have suggested some mechanisms through which these variations across social areas may come about. This tradition in social research has been neglected in recent years. For this reason, and because ecological community variables are regarded as important exogenous or control variables in the search for school characteristics related to disorder, a short description of the findings and perspectives of earlier researchers may be useful to many readers.

If certain deplorable facts present themselves with an alarming regularity, to whom is blame to be ascribed? Ought charges of materialism be brought against him who points out that regularity? What I have read and heard on the subject of my work, proves to me that I have not carried conviction to every mind, and that I have frequently been judged with prejudice. Judgments upon books are formed with even more haste and levity than judgments upon men. Writings are talked of without being known; and people take up an opinion for or against, in consequence of decisions of which it would cost them some trouble to determine the source. These are evils which must be borne with patience, and the more so because they are common....

Could you possibly be afraid of applying the calculation of chances to moral phenomena, and of the afflicting consequences which may be inferred from that inquiry, when it is extended to crimes and to quarters the most disgraceful to society? “I should guard myself,” said a scientific friend whose philanthropic views I otherwise respect--“I should guard myself, had I arrived at the afflicting results of which you speak, against grieving others with the relation of them. Draw a veil over the hideous spectacle; and if you believe that you possess the truth, imitate with respect to it the sage circumspection of Fontenelle.”

—Quetelet (1842/1969, pp. vii–viii)