What the Jane Addams School for Democracy Built on Saint Paul’s West Side

On Saint Paul’s West Side, the Jane Addams School for Democracy created a setting where recent immigrants and college students could learn with and from one another. Based at Baker Center, the organization centered its work on democracy, citizenship and an approach to education intended to put democratic principles into practice.

Its central structure was a series of learning circles. Rather than organizing the program solely around conventional classroom instruction, the school used cultural exchange as a way for participants to share experiences and develop knowledge together. Each circle corresponded to a major language other than English spoken by participants.

As the program developed, it included four learning circles: East African, Hmong, Spanish and a circle for children. The arrangement reflected the range of communities connected to the school while giving the program a practical framework for language and citizenship work. The school’s focus was not limited to formal instruction; it also addressed issues affecting participants’ lives through public work initiatives.

Those initiatives included neighborhood art and theater, extending the school’s activities into the wider community. In that sense, the program linked education with participation in neighborhood life. Its work treated citizenship as something connected not only to learning about civic systems, but also to relationships, cultural exchange and shared projects.

The Jane Addams School was administered by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship. In 2009, that center moved to Augsburg College and was renamed the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship. The school’s program closed in December 2016.

Although it is no longer operating, the school remains part of Saint Paul’s local history of community-based education. Its model brought together people at different stages of civic and educational experience and organized that exchange around languages, culture and public participation. For the West Side, the program’s significance lies in how it connected immigrant communities, students and neighborhood projects in one place.

The school’s history also offers a way to understand civic education beyond a single curriculum or institution. Its learning circles, cultural exchanges and public work initiatives formed a network of activities rooted in the experiences of participants. That structure made Baker Center a site where language learning, citizenship and community expression could overlap, even though the program itself has now ended.

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