ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on only one of several theoretical areas illuminated by the battle for Croxteth Comprehensive: the power relationships which exist between working-class communities and their schools. Theorizing the relationship of disadvantaged communities to their schools requires a theory of power. The power relations existing between schools and communities involve a number of levels or dimensions. Formal access, however, lies only at the surface of power relations between communities and schools. Sociologists have long been aware that informal processes play a crucial role in the politics of government and institutions. Educationalists who have noted the disjunction between school culture and the culture of working-class and ethnic minority groups have made different suggestions for alleviating the difficulties it causes. In England the idea of community education goes back at least as far as Henry Morris, who implemented a rural-based programme in Cambridgeshire during the post-World War I period.
