Democratic education
In describing the teaching of children, he declares, None of the things they are to learn, should ever be made a burthen to them, or impos'd on them as a task.
Rather than traditional top-down instruction, teachers served as guides and facilitators, encouraging students to engage in collaborative projects and group decision-making.
The school organized learning around practical activities like cooking, carpentry, and gardening, which fostered cooperation and shared responsibility.
While Bourdon's Societe d'emulation was quickly closed due to the conservative reactionary period,[15] the George Junior Republic still exists today (albeit with a different concept)[16] and started the successful tradition of democratic education in children's republics and Democratic Schools.
[18] In 1912, Janusz Korczak founded Dom Sierot, the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, which was run on democratic lines.
In 1940 Dom Sierot was forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto and in 1942 Korczak accompanied all his charges to the gas-chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp.
[19][20][21] Korczak published many books, had a radio program,[22] where he talked with children and garnered considerable press attention with his partly democratically run orphanage Dom Sierot.
Its concept is based on the Quaker principle of consensus decision making, meaning that children and teachers have an equal say in most affairs concerning the daily school life.
[27][28] The Werkplaats student Gerard Endenburg further developed the consensus culture and created the model of sociocracy,[29] which was later implemented in so-called sociocratic schools, predominantly in the Netherlands.
They combine radical freedom of learning with (almost) equal participation of teachers and pupils in all matters of everyday school life.
[40] Other examples include the democratic and self-managed Bachilleratos Populares high schools for youths and adults, which have emerged in connection with occupied factories and social cooperatives in Argentina.
[41] The “Schule für Erwachsenenbildung” in Berlin (Germany) is a democratically run upper secondary school for adults preparing for the German A-levels.
[45][46] The collective decision making can cover anything from small matters to the appointment or dismissal of staff and the creation or annulment of rules, or to general expenditure and the structure of the day.
However, there are theories of democratic education from the following perspectives: Jean Lave was one of the first and most prominent social anthropologists to discuss cognition within the context of cultural settings presenting a firm argument against the functionalist psychology that many educationalists refer to implicitly.
They understand it as early as they do language; and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures, sooner than is imagin'd,"[51] Rousseau disagreed: "Use force with children and reasoning with men.
"[52] Humans are innately curious, and democratic education supports the belief that the drive to learn is sufficiently strong to motivate children to become effective adults.
[54] A disadvantage of teenagers being responsible for their own education is that "young brains have both fast-growing synapses and sections that remain unconnected.
[58] According to George Dennison, democratic environments are social regulators: Our desire to cultivate friendships, engender respect, and maintain what George Dennison terms 'natural authority' encourages us to act in socially acceptable ways (i.e. culturally informed practices of fairness, honesty, congeniality, etc.).
"[60] Émile Durkheim argues that the transition from primitive to modern societies occurred in part as elders made a conscious decision to transmit what were deemed the most essential elements of their culture to the following generations.
"[64] The political culture of a deliberative democracy and its institutions, they argue, would facilitate more "dialogical forms of making one's voice heard" which would "be achieved within a framework of liberty, within which paternalism is replaced by autonomously adopted self-paternalism, and technocratic elitism by the competent and self-conscious judgment of citizens.
"[65] As a curricular, administrative and social operation within schools, democratic education is essentially concerned with equipping people to make "real choices about fundamental aspects of their lives"[66] and happens within and for democracy.
Another common belief, which supports the practice of compulsory classes in civic education, is that passing on democratic values requires an imposed structure.
If learners are to "develop a democracy," some scholars have argued, they must be provided the tools for transforming the non-democratic aspects of a society.
Democracy in this sense involves not just "participation in decision making," a vision ascribed especially to Dewey, but the ability to confront power with solidarity.
[79][80] Core features of democratic education align with the emerging consensus on 21st century business and management priorities.
[87][88] Allen Koshewa[89] conducted research that highlighted the tensions between democratic education and the role of teacher control, showing that children in a fifth grade classroom tried to usurp democratic practices by using undue influence to sway others, much as representative democracies often fail to focus on the common good or protect minority interests.
He found that class meetings, service education, saturation in the arts, and an emphasis on interpersonal caring helped overcome some of these challenges.
Others, such as children's author Judy Blume, have spoken out against censorship as antagonistic to democratic education,[93] while the school reform movement, which gained traction under the federal initiative 'No Child Left Behind' and later under 'Race to the Top' and the Common Core Standards movement, emphasise strict control over curriculum.
[98] Arnold wrote that "the spirit of democracy" is part of "human nature itself", which engages in "the effort to affirm one's own essence...to develop one's own existence fully and freely.
This offer was discussed and agreed at a formal school meeting which had been hastily convened in the courtroom from a quorum of pupils and teachers who were present in court.
