Supplementary Education
Supplementary Education is defined as the formal and informal learning and developmental enrichment opportunities provided for students outside of school and beyond the regular school day or year. Some of these activities may occur inside the school building but are beyond those included in the formal curriculum of the school. After-school care is perhaps the most widespread form of supplementary education, but the notion of supplementary education also includes all of the special efforts that parents exert in support of the intellective and personal development of their children. These efforts may range from provisions for good health and nutrition to extensive travel and deliberate exposure to socialization to life in the academy, as well as to mediated exposure to selected aspects of both indigenous and hegemonic cultures. Many activities, considered routine in the settings in which they occur, are nonetheless thought to be implicitly and deliberately engaged in to ensure adequate intellective and personal development of young people. These routines include reading to and with one’s children, dinner table talk and inclusion in other family discussions of important issues; exposure to adult models of behaviors supportive of academic learning; active use of the library, museums, community and religious centers as sources of information; help seeking from appropriate sources; and investments in reference and other education materials (Bridglall, B.L. & Gordon, E.W. 2002).
A related term, comprehensive education, is increasingly referred to include the exploitation of the complementarities between the variety of opportunities for teaching and learning available in contrived and natural settings, i.e. the learning and teaching that occur in schools and the teaching and learning that occur out of schools. According to such authorities as John Dewey (1920), Lawrence Cremin (1975), Edmund Gordon (2005), Herve Varenne (2007), and Heather Weiss (2007) comprehensive and complementary approaches to education include all of the education relevant experiences and resources to which one is exposed in life – good health and nutrition, stimulating environments, talking and reading with children beginning at an early age, preschool education, family trips, museums, libraries, faith-based institutions, guidance and tutorial services, space and time to study, family and community expectations and support. The list is endless.
When one thinks of education comprehensively, one is concerned with the orchestrated relationships between these several educative experiences and opportunities. Whether called supplementary, complementary, or comprehensive, the idea is that these comprehensive and redundant resources be appropriately orchestrated to support the academic and personal development of young people. The Comprehensive Education and Family Resource Centers are intended to encourage, facilitate and guide parents and other interested adults in the identification and utilization of these quite varied opportunities and resources in support of the academic and personal development of young people.
The education achievement levels of an average black student whose parents hold college degrees or higher are equivalent to the levels of education achievement of white students whose parents graduated from high school. This is one of the problems that Dr. Edmund Gordon is trying to address in his works and efforts around comprehensive education, referred to in Gordon’s earlier writings as Supplementary Education. The construct of Supplementary Education maintains that in-school teaching and learning are as important as is the learning and teaching that occur out-of-school. However it is the complementarity between the two domains for learning that has been neglected. The Resource Centers are intended to better enable the coordination of these two domains under the guidance and orchestration of parents and other interested adults.
College education, increasingly, is required for meaningful participation in human affairs all over the world. Moreover, frequently public school settings struggle with vigorous curriculum demands and are not able to address the individual needs of their students. With this in mind we are trying to supplement students’ educational experience with out -of-school programs that will increase their intellective competence.