Education Co-ops

What should children learn? How should they learn it?

These two questions have long been subjects of debate at both practical and philosophical levels. During the nineteenth century, many Western countries made education compulsory, and governments gained considerable control over the education that young people received. This shift in control from teachers and parents (and sometimes students) to the state raised another question: who should control the schools?

Education co-operatives have formed to give parents and teachers, and in some cases students, more control over education. Parent co-operatives are often founded by parents who want more involvement in their children’s education. Although education co-ops have formed at all levels, on this web page I focus on co-operatives that provide education to children and teenagers. Although co-operative preschools/nursery schools are the most prevalent form of co-operative schools, I do not consider them here (except when they overlap with primary school co-ops) because BCICS has a page on childcare co-ops [link to childcare page] that covers this topic.

The Overview of Education Co-operatives contains a brief description of different types of education co-operatives and where they can be found. The pages on Parent Co-operative Schools, Teacher Co-operative Schools, Multi-stakeholder Co-operative Schools, and Homeschool Co-operatives provide overviews of these different types of education co-operatives. The Discussion page discusses some issues that education co-operatives face.

Education co-operatives can be difficult to find on the Internet, so the page on Searching for Education Co-ops on the Internet provides some guidelines for such a search. The Post-Secondary Co-operative Links page contains a few links to pages I discovered on post-secondary co-operatives.