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Educational Commons in Theory and Practice pp 209–229Cite as

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Educating the Commons Through Cooperatively Run Schools

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Abstract

In this chapter, I am chiefly interested in articulating a theoretical claim that cooperatively run schools can educate the commons causally and reproductively. Cooperatively run schools educate the commons because going to school at a cooperative can cause commons to come about by reproducing the kinds of knowledge and skills necessary to maintain an existing commons. I will make this case by completing the theoretical background already begun in this introduction, then narrating the “educational genesis” of one of the world’s best-known large-scale industrial cooperatives: the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Spain. After narrating that educational genesis as a kind of founding myth, I claim that cooperatively run schools can teach the commons and lay out a brief set of considerations for how to apply this strategy in the United States in the early twenty-first century.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. West Chester University of Pennsylvania, West Chester, PA, USA

    David I. Backer

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  1. David I. Backer
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Correspondence to David I. Backer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Alexander J. Means

  2. DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, USA

    Derek R. Ford

  3. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Graham B. Slater

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Backer, D.I. (2017). Educating the Commons Through Cooperatively Run Schools. In: Means, A.J., Ford, D.R., Slater, G.B. (eds) Educational Commons in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58641-4_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58641-4_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58640-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58641-4

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