ABSTRACT
Some years ago, I worked in a school in Latin America situated in a walled paradise ofleafy luxury with armed security guards separating it from the economically impoverished pueblo outside. Students were bussed in from affiuent suburbs. What signal does this give about the school? Certainly not one of relating to the local community - except in the very narrow sense of the cluster of grandiose mansions within the walled village. Such separation is far from unique. Mitchell (1989) points out that the architecture and location of schools often reveal their original attitude to the community. He states that many schools are like 'monasteries, mansions and prisons: institutions designed to keep safely separate the dedicated, the privileged or the vicious'. Now, writing this chapter in Oxford, I cannot help but match this view with the cloistered tradition of several of the older colleges that were constructed specifically to reinforce the separation of town and gown.
