Urban education

The research literature on urban education has tended to focus on the problems of low-status minority groups, the complexity of urban school systems, and the financing and governance of such systems. Given this focus, the deeper problems and the significant opportunities associated with the condition of urbanicity have not yet been properly explored. This condition has several prominent features: a high degree of diversity and heterogeneity, conflicting lifestyles of people who live in close proximity, cultural richness, a concentration of material resources, ease of communication, geographic mobility, and the coexistence of fluidity and rigidity in institutional and personal behavior. Through the mass media, the characteristics of urbanicity have become a familiar part of most people's lives, even those who do not live in cities. From the perspective of urbanicity, educators should be most concerned about how the concentration of people, resources, and sources of stimulation found in urban society leads to interactions that have great Potential for affecting human development.