Democratic Education: Introduction
Democratic Education: Introduction
Need for democratic education
- The developed world largely believes in democracy as the preferred form of government.
- It makes sense to prefer democratic education, which produces citizens trained from a young age to be responsible and accountable.
Democratic schools
- Generally based on a notion of genuine participatory democracy, practiced everywhere throughout society, with all ages of people.
- Young people ought to have power (and responsibility) in the schools where they spend so much of their lives.
Democratic environment
When individuals are bound by limitations, expectations, or rules they had no part in establishing, they cannot be said to live in a democratic environment.
Dewey’s principle
All those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in producing and managing them.
Controversial status
The ideology of participatory democracy, especially when practiced in schools, is often considered dangerously radical by a vast majority of educators, policymakers, and parents.
Democratic education is the educational application of the political idea that those affected by an institution should share in producing and managing it. The article works through what this means in practice for schools, what kind of environment democratic education tries to create, and why the idea remains controversial even in societies that consider themselves democratic.
Why democratic schools
The argument for democratic education starts from a political observation. The developed world at large believes in democracy as the preferred form of government. Most modern countries, even those whose governments are imperfect, treat democracy as the standard against which they measure themselves. The default assumption is that democratic political institutions are better than autocratic ones, and that democratic life is what citizens should be able to take part in.
If democracy is the preferred form of government, then it makes sense to prefer a democratic education that produces citizens trained from a young age to be responsible and accountable participants in democratic life. A society that values democracy but trains its young in authoritarian schools is producing a contradiction: the schools are teaching, through their daily practice, attitudes and habits that work against the democratic life the society claims to want.
Democratic schools, in the strong sense, are based on a notion of genuine participatory democracy. The participation is not nominal; it is real. The democracy is practiced everywhere throughout the school, by all ages of people. Children are not training for democracy in some future adult life; they are practising democracy now, in the school setting they actually live in.
The conviction behind this is direct. Young people ought to have power, and responsibility, in the schools where they spend so much of their lives. The reasoning runs through both sides of the and. Young people have power in the school’s life in any case: the school cannot run without their participation, and the quality of their participation shapes everything. Better to recognise this power formally and give them the responsibility that comes with it. Power without responsibility produces disorder; responsibility without power produces resentment. Power with responsibility produces engaged citizens.
A democratic environment, on this view, has a specific feature. When individuals are bound by limitations, expectations, or rules they had no part in establishing, they cannot be said to live in a democratic environment. The standard is exacting. A school whose rules are set entirely by adults and imposed on students is not a democratic environment, however well-intentioned the rules. A democratic environment requires that the people who live in it have shared in making it what it is.
A society that values democracy but trains its young in authoritarian schools is producing a contradiction
The argument starts from a political observation: the developed world treats democracy as the preferred form of government. Schools that train young people in authoritarian habits work against the democratic life the society claims to want. Democratic schools are based on genuine participatory democracy, practiced everywhere by all ages. Young people ought to have power and responsibility in the schools where they spend so much of their lives. Power with responsibility produces engaged citizens; power without responsibility produces disorder; responsibility without power produces resentment.
Dewey’s principle
The deepest source of democratic education’s foundational principle is John Dewey, the philosopher whose work the guide covered in chapters 18 and 19. Dewey’s formulation, often quoted by democratic educators: all those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in producing and managing them.
The principle is general; the application to schools is specific. Students are affected by their schools in profound ways. The school shapes how they spend most of their waking hours for twelve years or more. It shapes who their friends are, what they learn, how they understand their own capacities, what choices they think are available to them as adults. Few institutions affect a person’s life as deeply as their school. By Dewey’s principle, students should therefore have a share in producing and managing the schools that affect them so deeply.
This is harder to accept than it sounds. The conventional view treats students as not yet competent to participate in the management of their schools. They are too young, too inexperienced, too immature. Adults must run the schools because students cannot. Democratic education rejects this view, at least in its strong form. Students may not be ready to run the school entirely on their own, but they are ready to share in producing and managing it in proportion to their developmental capacities. The shared role grows as the student grows; the principle of shared participation operates from the earliest age.
A complication: the principle of shared participation does not mean every decision is made by direct vote of all participants. Direct democracy at every decision would be impractical and would often produce poor decisions. Democratic education usually involves more subtle structures: student councils with real authority, classroom decisions made by genuine consensus, adult roles defined to support rather than override student participation, and clear processes for when adults exercise authority and when students do.
The ideology of participatory democracy, especially when practised in schools, is often considered dangerously radical by a vast majority of educators, policymakers, and parents. The judgement of dangerously radical is interesting. The same people who would defend democracy strongly in political contexts often resist democratic practices in their schools. The contradiction is part of what democratic educators try to expose and address.
All those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in producing and managing them
The principle is general; the school application is specific. Students are affected by their schools in profound ways: how they spend waking hours, who their friends are, what they learn, how they understand themselves. Few institutions affect a life as deeply as a school. By Dewey’s principle, students should share in producing and managing the schools that affect them. The application is harder than it sounds; the conventional view treats students as not yet competent, but the democratic-education position is that the share grows with developmental capacity from the earliest age.
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