Cooperative experiences in schools : a review of the scoops project

Abstract

Secondary school students coming from various schools in Detroit, USA, have a fairly good idea of the concepts which govern a cooperative. Since 1983, these students have learnt about cooperatives through the conventional lessons of maths, english and social studies. They have learnt how cooperatives in the USA have been responsible for the provision of a variety of services, ranging from the supply of electricity to the far-flung cabins of the State of Michigan to the organised production of agricultural products, some of which have successfully found their way to supermarket shelves all over the world. But knowledge is not the be-all and end-all of education. These students have gone one critical step further. They have applied what is otherwise factual, historical information to the setting up of their own cooperatives at school. A case in point is the lackson-in-Action Cooperative set up by the Jackson High School students. Its social objective is to provide a group of needy families in their neighbourhood with food items at a price cheaper than if these households had to purchase the desired goods separately, on an individual basis. One morning, Wayne Steyer, their english teacher, divided the class into two groups. One group moved out into the corridor to discuss the possible byelaws that should govern their cooperative. The rest of the class discussed the kind of food items that the cooperative could and should buy. An hour later, Grace Watson, the social studies teacher, led a discussion on how members of the cooperative could carry out a survey on the range and diversity of food consumption in their particular neighbourhood. During a later maths lesson, a costing exercise on canned tuna fish was undertaken. Its purpose? To establish the amount of tins that had to be bought in order to supply these efficiently to the coop's clients at a cheaper retail price.