As there is considerable interaction between the school and the community,
the role of the school in the community will play a decisive part in the success
or failure of education in general and vernacular education in particular.
Burns (1965) considers a school's responsibilities to be social, moral and pedagogic, and the success of an educational programme to be dependent
upon the school's ability to enter into the life of the community and identify
itself with the community's needs. The Eskimo programme in Alaska is a
positive example of this, where the children are highly motivated because of
high community involvement in the project (Trifonovitch, 1976). When,
however, the community is dissatisfied with the school, a programme can be
jeopardized as witnessed in NF where one reason for the parents in RisumLindholm
rejecting Frisian tuition was that they thought the school was not
educating their children properly (Walker, 1980b ).