Michigan State University Extension
Diversity and Pluralism - 11120074
12/95/
ERIC TITLE NUMBER: ED150254 AUTHOR: Gordon, Edmund G.
TITLE: Urban Education: Its Conceptual and Functional
Domains.
YEAR PUBLISHED: 1975
NOTE: 38 p.; Not available in hard copy due to print
quality of the original document
ABSTRACT: Because of the heavy concentration of low ethnic
status minorities dwelling in cities, urban education has
been equated with the problems of low status persons.
However, there are problems that are peculiar to education
as it is influenced by urban development that go beyond the
problems of special ethnic, low status minority groups. The
problems and opportunities of urban education, then, are
not simply those related to education in the cities and
directed toward minorities, but increasingly, the field of
education must be defined as including education for an
urban nation.
One of the issues that has surfaced in this movement toward
"urbanicity" is that of interactions endemic to urban
communities. The great concentration of people, resources,
etc., provides for kinds of interactions which form the
core of the developmental process in man. Another issue
that can be added is that of critical mass, i.e., the mass
of human, technological, monetary, and value resources in
cities. Identifying the level of magnitude of the mass
necessary to particular processes and the ways in which
that mass may be manipulated to produce effective services
is another critical concern for an urban nation. Another
issue is that of adaptation, the capacity to adapt and
readapt and use one's self in creative ways in response to
a variety of inputs. There are central features of
urbanicity which have particular implications for
education. They are: (1) the diversity of human
characteristics, (2) the pluralism characteristic of urban
society in which many values exist simultaneously, (3)
mobility, or the capacity of society to put people in a
variety of settings, and the requirements of those settings
to which people make their adaptations, (4)social
immobility, and (5) bureaucratic rigidity. In conclusion,
what happens in education over the next few years may be
more greatly influenced by things that happen in our own
particular setting (for example, manipulating and using the
political economy in the society), than the things that are
done in education itself. (Author/AM)
KEY DESCRIPTORS: Educational-Needs; Educational-Policy;
Ethnic-Groups; Ethnicity-; Minority-Groups
KEY DESCRIPTORS: *Conceptual-Schemes; *Cultural-Pluralism;
*Educational-Planning; *Environmental-Influences; *State-of
the-Art-Reviews; *Urban-Education; *Urban-Problems
This is an ERIC database document. ERIC is the National
Education Information Network for providing ready access to
the literature of education - descriptions of exemplary
programs, research and development efforts, and related
information that can be used in developing more effective
educational programs. The ERIC database is currently
available on CD-ROM in the main library (ground floor of
the West Wing) at Michigan State University.To locate ERIC
documents in the library: identify the first line of each
record (i.e., the field ERIC TITLE NUMBER). ED following
ERIC TITLE NUMBER indicates an ERIC document, an
unpublished research study.
Most of these items are available in the Micrforms Library,
located on the 3rd floor of the West Wing. All you need is
the six digit ED number.
If EJ follows ERIC TITLE NUMBER the item is a journal
article. The complete journal name islisted after the code
JOURNAL.
To find the call number and location of a journal you may
use the printed JOURNALS INDEXED IN C.I.J.E. located at the
ERIC CD-ROM workstation and at the Cosial Sciences and
Humanities/GovernmentDocuments Reference Desk. You may also
type the journal name, without the dashes "-" , into a
MAGIC terminal.
This information is for educational purposes only. References
to commercial products or trade names does not imply
endorsement by MSU Extension or bias against those not
mentioned. This information becomes public property upon
publication and may be printed verbatim with credit to MSU
Extension. Reprinting cannot be used to endorse or advertise
a commercial product or company.
This file was generated from data base DP on 06/25/02.
Data base DP was last revised on 12/95/ .
For more information about this data base or its contents please contact
cook@msue.msu.edu . Please read our
disclaimer for important
information about using our site.