Community Education provides local residents, community agencies, and institutions the opportunity to become active partners in addressing community concerns. Community Education is based on nine basic principles.
Local people are in the best position to identify community needs and wants. Parents, as children's first and most important teachers, have both a right and a responsibility to be involved in their children's education.
People are best served when their capacity to help themselves is encouraged and enhanced. When people assume ever-increasing responsibility for their own well-being, they acquire independence rather than dependence.
The identification, development and use of the leadership capacities of local citizens are prerequisites for on-going self-help and community improvement efforts.
Services, programs, events and other community involvement opportunities that are brought closest to where people live have the greatest potential for a high level of public participation. Whenever possible, these activities should be decentralized to locations of easy public access.
Organizations and agencies that operate for the public good can use their limited resources, meet their own goals, and better serve the public by establishing close working relationships with other organizations and agencies with related purposes.
The physical, financial and human resources of every community should be interconnected and used to their fullest if the diverse needs and interests of the community are to be met.
The segregation or isolation of people by age, income, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or other factors inhibits the full development of the community. Community programs, activities and services should involve the broadest possible cross section of area residents.
Public institutions have a responsibility to develop programs and services that respond to the continually changing needs and interests of their constituents.
Learning begins at birth and continues until death. Formal and informal learning opportunities should be available to residents of all ages in a wide variety of community settings.
These principles were developed by Larry Horyna, Utah State Department of Education, Salt Lake City, and Larry Decker, University of Virginia Mid-Atlantic Center for Community Education, Charlottesville.