The Community Course
Part 2 - Community Design
Part  1   2   3   4      Chapter 10  11  12  13  14

11. A Study of the Community

Correcting Community Ills
There may be some needs in the community so clear and so pressing that there is no doubt of the necessity for supplying them. Perhaps the milk supply is unsafe, or there may be some disreputable business undertaking in the town which should not be tolerated. Common sense may urge the correcting of such situations without any prolonged study of general community needs.

Learning about Community
Nevertheless, as a rule it is good policy to spend some time in learning about communities in general and about one’s own community before starting out on any general program of improvement.

The development of the community is not a short time undertaking such as might be brought about by one year's program of a Rotary Club or a League of Women Voters. A year's intensive study by such an organization may be a good way to dis­cover what the problem is and to develop ways of working with it. Community development, however, is a never ending job. It should have some of the time and atten­tion of all the people; and should be the chief interest, aside from home and making a living, of a few people who will qualify themselves to be leaders and the hardest and most consistent and persistent workers in that field. Without such leadership of a few people who will take the trouble to study and to understand the subject, and then to work at it, community development will be unbalanced and interrupted.

How to Study a Community
Because sociologists are inclined to take the attitude of experts, and to make studies, in many books and bulletins on community planning we find the advice to be: "First get an expert and have him or her make a study." Not only is such a course expensive, but it is of doubtful wisdom. It tends to make a community feel that what it needs is to have something done to it, rather than to work at its own problems. Unless some understanding of community issues exists in the community before the expert comes, he or she will take most of his or her knowledge away with him or her, and the community will be little better off.

Committing to Expertise
Community planning must be lived with and worked with by those who greatly care. Some one or more people must make it their chief avocational interest. When they have become well grounded in a general understanding of community life and problems they may well call in technical help, as in case of public health problems, or in financial management. An informal serious study by members of the community may be much more productive than a dramatic and expensive “survey.” At best the expert can be an indispensable guide to local people who are deeply concerned. At worst he can be an expensive nuisance.

Generally the best way to begin the study of a community is for a relatively small group of members of the community to make it a major social interest. In a Nevada town of about two thousand the Women's Twentieth Century Club undertook that service, and in the years which have followed that organization has been recognized as the leader and the best source of information and judgment in community affairs. In case no organization is inclined to take up the project, perhaps some one person who is deeply interested can find a few others sufficiently interested to unite with him in such a study.

Risks of Community Studies
In such a group, one track minds and people with social panaceas should be absent. Also, it may be fatal to such an undertaking if those engaged in a study have axes to grind. A community should beware of studies dominated by utility rep­resentatives or others who concerned to commit the community to their programs, or by representatives of certain religious organizations which hold that they alone have authoritative truth, or by representatives of political parties bent primarily on making converts. Such persons often are “available” and “ready to serve". Everyone engaged in such a study should be a sincere learner, not a person of fixed ideas determined to impose those ideas on others.

Beginning the Study
Suppose that some organization in the community, or some informal group of five or six, should undertake to begin the study of the home community. How should they begin? This syllabus, or the book Your Community, may be followed as a guide. A general idea of the nature, history, and significance of the small community will supply a background and a basis for judgment which knowledge of one's own community alone will not. A knowledge of communities of other times and places, and of the origins and background of present day customs and problems, is essential to an understanding of our own times and our own community. However, a historical study of communities and a study of one’s own community in some cases may well go along together. Alternate meetings or parts of each meeting of the study group might be given to such general and historical study as is covered in the first nine chapters of this syllabus, alternating with the study of one's own community, such as is outlined in this chapter and in succeeding chapters.

A Working Library
For an effective study of the community a small working library is highly desirable - almost imperative. Several able individuals have spent their working lives in an effort to understand small communities and their history and problems, and not to take advantage of the life work of such people will result in a great waste of time and effort.

For a few hundred dollars a small nucleus of a library can be secured. For an expenditure of a few hundred dollars or so a very helpful library on general community planning can be purchased. For less than a thousand dollars a very fine library on community development can be assembled, covering general community planning and also such subjects as local government, community economics, sanitation, parks, streets and public buildings, community health and hygiene, delinquency, education, music, recreation, other cultural interests, relations with other communities, and various other fields.

Historical Recommendations
For a group beginning the study of their community three books are recom­mended as the beginning of a library. Your Community, by Colcord, published by the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, should be owned and studied by each member of the group. It is an excellent guide to practical community planning but provides almost no historical background. Two other books will supply that larger view, The Rural Community, by E. Dwight Sanderson of Cornell University, published by Ginn and Company, Boston, is an excellent treatment of the history, the nature, and the significance of small communities, with discussions of their future possibilities. Rural Community Organization by Sanderson and Polson, Published by Wiley, New York, 441 pages, is perhaps the best book on that subject. Another excellent book is A Study of Rural Society, by Kolb and Brunner, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

One hesitates to mention specific books, for there are others that are excellent. Another remarkable collection of information and literature on rural society is A Source Book of Rural Sociology, by Sorokin, Galpin, and Zimmerman, three volumes, published by the University of Minnesota. These authors were three of the ablest men in the field, Still another good book, made up largely of descriptions of individual communities, is The Changing Community by Zimmerman, published by Harper and Bros, New York.

With this little nucleus of a library, or even with the first four books mentioned, a group of people in a small community will be equipped to approach its study intelligently. Other books are mentioned in the bibliography. As the study proceeds, books will be helpful which deal with special fields, such as recreation, music, or community economics.

Aims of Studying the Community
This preliminary study of the community should have two principle aims.

First, the members of the study group should become generally informed on their subject, so that they may continue to be a source of judgment and informa­tion. They should not get lost in detail. The careful study of detailed projects should be the work of individuals or of special committees, and will continue through the years.

Second, they should become acquainted with those persons in the community who could be added to their group, and with those who, after a study of general principles and methods, might prepare to assume leadership in particular phases of community life. Someone might be willing and able to prepare himself for a study of community music, to learn what other communities have done, and perhaps to develop leadership in community music. Others might be found who would be interested in vocational guidance, in local government, in community economics, in recreation, and in community health. Their detailed work might follow a general survey.

One of the principal undertakings of the preliminary study group might well be to become acquainted with the membership of every active public-interest organization in the community, and to find the person or persons in each organization who would be most effective as a member of a community council, such as is discussed hereafter. Having found such persons, effort should be made to interest them one by one in the general undertaking, and to get them to spend time in preparing for greater usefulness in the community. Such persons might read this syllabus, and one or two of the principal books on the subject, and should be asked to attend meetings of the study group.

The next step might well be the formation of a Community Council. This phase of community development is so important that a chapter is devoted to it.