at a congregation is.

A congregation is an association of people who have joined together to pursue some shared vision of good human living. Given this, religious groups are (often) congregations, but not every congregation is a religious group. Can we create schools that are more congregational or guildlike in the public sector? I believe we can. We cannot, of course, have public schools whose shared educational project is religiously based, but we can permit more programmatic differentiation and more choice. We can have theme schools, schools within schools, small learning communities, democratic schools, schools that emphasize the life of the mind, and schools that celebrate diversity, to name a few.