A term unfamiliar to others demands an
explanation. And, that is so with “Democratic Education” as it is
a model of formal learning known to only a few, unfortunately in my
opinion. This blog entry re-writes, edits and re-posts much earlier
ones to provide a general explanation of the concept in one post.
Defining Democratic Education:
Democratic Education rests on its
conviction of children as owners of their own course of learning and
as full participants in their school governance.
Democratic Education sees children's
native curiosity as a powerful learning driver making unnecessary any
adult coercion to engage learning activities. It also fully
acknowledges the draw of childern's different talents to pursue
different aspects of knowledge. Through their native inclinations,
then, children within a Democratic Education school self-select what
is learned, when what is chosen is learned and the depth, scope and
duration of leaning. This intrinsic motivated self-directed
engagement in the accumulation of knowledge ultimately leads
Democratic Education to an individualized and emergent rather than a
uniform and mandated course of study over a term and over a school
residency.
Additionally, Democratic Education
views children as principal stake holders in school governance. It
places its school governance in the immediate learning community
where adults and children have equal voices and equal community
decision-making powers on all issues open to community decision.
Through democratic participatory practices the learning community
self-governs its school.
Yaacov Hecht
(http://www.yaacovhecht.com/)
developed the principles of Democratic Education in the mid-1980’s
and in 1987, in Hadera, Israel, he founded the first Democratic
Education school. To spread the word and to advocate for this model
of formal learning he founded the Institute for Democratic Education
(http://www.democratic.co.il/en/).
A brief history of Democratic Education
in the U.S. starts with Francisco
Ferrer, as my friend and colleague, Cooper
Zale, maintains: “The ideas of ‘non-coercive’ and ‘learner-led’
schools have roots in the educational philosophy of Spanish educator
Francisco
Ferrer (1859-1909)…” (if still available see
“What is a Democratic-Free School?”,
http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/category/our-ongoing-strategy-for-learning/)
Ferrer looked to develop children’s
knowledge and skills according to each student’s abilities rather
than through drilled instruction and uniform lessons. He opposed
religious and nationalistic indoctrination, but frequently
instructors in Ferrer schools would instill values of liberty,
equality, and social justice into students, and Ferrer’s textbooks
had a general anti-statist, anti-capitalist, and anti-militarist
line. He was a firm believer in what today is called life long
learning which impelled him to institute adult classes at his
schools.
Ferrer’s ideas in the U.S. sparked
the Modern School Movement which established a handful of schools
beginning in 1910. The small number of Modern Schools shrunk as the
founders either died or moved on with most closing during the 1920’s.
The Ferrer Modern School in Piscataway, NJ, was the longest lasting,
not closing until 1953. (http://themodernschools.wordpress.com/)
The Modern School Movement was a
reaction in education to the moves by the American industrialists of
the Guided Age to concentrate power, to be authoritarian bosses in
their factory fiefdoms. But, as history rolled on, the Modern School
Movement dissipated and disappeared leaving reaction to authoritarian
social and economic structures for another time. Then in the
fullness of another time there came to the surface another group of
folks reacting in the same vein to a similar creeping
authoritarianism. And in the arena of formal learning they
discovered their own path to rebellion, to restructuring the
education process: They found A.S. Neill and his Summerhill school.
From Mary Leue, founder of The Free
School in Albany, NY, to Daniel Greenburg, founder of Sudbury Valley
School in Massachusetts and to many other Americans in the 1960’s,
there was a flat out rebellion against the authoritarian,
conventional school. Like the progressive educators of John Dewey’s
time, the rebels were looking to structure schooling as a mirror
opposite. Thus, the confluence of vectors in time and in culture
landed Alexander Sutherland Neill and his book,
Summerhill:
A Radical Approach to Child Rearing on an
American shore prepared to take from it everything fitting their
rebellion. And so, regardless of Neill’s insistence that day
schools could not be free schools at all, the Americans of the 1960’s
founded free day schools.
These “free schoolers” latched
tightly to the freedom in Neill’s notion that
freedom to choose means doing what you want to do, so long
as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of others. They as well
focused on Neill’s idea that freedom to choose that which affects
the child individually, that which is of interest, of passion, of
felt need, is essential for only under this kind of freedom can the
child grow in his/her natural way.
Under their rebellious zeal to
construct a mirror opposite of the authoritarian, conventional
school, free schoolers fixated on elevating child impulse over
self-regulation, in my view, and, thus, confused and excused license
for freedom. Free Schooling includes self-selected learning and
community self-governance, of course, but it extends far greater
sufferance to child impulse than the preponderance of other
Democratic Education schools ever have to date.
Hecht, not a free schooler, but like
many before credits Neill and Summerhill with opening his mind to
children’s intrinsic motivated self-selection of learning. What
Hecht saw when he visited Summerhill school during the 1980’s were the
youngsters’ ability to choose what to learn and when to learn what
was chosen to be learned and the school’s policy of non-compulsory
instructional attendance. He saw that even
conventional learning happens well when children decide for
themselves to, in my words, freely accept the conditions of inclusion
in such instruction.
What Hecht also found was the control
over the relationship life of the school being vested in a school
community governance structure using a democratic process. Neill’s
contention was that only in a residential school, where there is a
social life, can there be a self-governance of relationships applied.
Day schools, Neill insists in his book, have no equivalent to
residential life and therefore have nothing over which to govern.
Neill did not consider what in this country is called “student
life”-clubs, intramural sports, school socials, etc.- embodying the
spectrum of living necessary for community self-governance and thus,
student governments, which are everywhere here tasked with governing
student life incapable of governing interpersonal relationships
within a school. Yet, Hecht took away an appreciation of the power
of a school community to regulate relations within it.
Thus was formed the foundations of
Democratic Education where the unique biology, unique gifts, of each
child act as fundamental drivers of individual education without
adult coercion visited upon youngsters, where students decide the
course of their learning, and where all in the learning community
fully participate in the governance of the relationships within the
community.
There are different ways by which to be
a Democratic Education school. Sudbury Valley School in Framingham,
MA, (www.sudval.org/)
represents the “free school” end of the spectrum where what
students want to know is totally up to the them and where school
policy and administrative governance is largely controlled by
students. Summerhill School in Leiston, England,
(www.summerhillschool.co.uk/)
holds a middle ground with a conventional curriculum and
administrative governance retained by the community adults, but with
its social life governed by the learning community as a whole and
with non-compulsory class attendance. Lehman Alternative Community
School in Ithaca, NY, a public school, (www.icsd.k12.ny.us/lacs)
offers a mostly
traditional discipline curriculum but with a community shared policy
and administrative governance.
The Democratic Education Learning
System:
Regardless of where on the spectrum of
Democratic Education a specific learning community is, there are
common qualities marking the learning system as Democratic.
The Democratic Education learning
system is driven by the individual social, emotional and cognitive
needs of the students as manifested and understood by them, not by an
interpretation of them by the adults in the school. Indeed, in
Democratic Education schools the child is the
definer of his and her own need and
the
decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need. This goes
counter to the traditional school adult over child relation where the
adult is the one to define child need and is the decision
maker on how to meet the interpreted need with the result that
a Democratic Education school would look quite different in four critical ways from what
people have come to expect in schools.
First, Democratic Education
individualizes knowledge acquisition and use, that is, learning would
be intrinsically self-directed. Children possess different
neurological constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments,
learning and communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive
and social development. These natural inclinations and individual
differences drive differentiated information seeking, acquisition and
use yielding quality differentiated outcomes over the course of a
term and over a school residency. An authentic intrinsic
self-directed system would put in the way of children the widest
possible range of subject matter and let the children’s natural
inclinations and differences drive what is learned, when it is
learned and the depth, scope and duration of leaning. The course of
study over an entire residency, then, emerges unique to every child
as each engages learning through his and her talents, passions and
interests.
However, unlike the Sudbury Valley free
school model of intrinsic self-directed learning which removes the
adult from almost all of the child’s decisions, the more prevalent
Democratic Education intrinsic self-directed learning fully
acknowledges the need for a mentoring relationship of adult to child.
All students need the support of deep mentoring relationships with
those thoroughly versed in the social-emotional and cognitive styles
of the school’s population, and in the negotiation among student
native inclinations, intrinsically motivated self-direction and
credentialing decisions to assist students in maneuvering through the
channels of the academy and to help them help themselves to work
through their natural inclinations, individual differences and
intrinsic motivation to achieve healthy personal growth and schooling
success. Here, an adult mentor and a youngster enter a
process mutually respectful of the wisdom of each to attain a common
understanding of and an agreement on learning goals and the action
steps required to reach those goals. The agreements on what is
undertaken to be learned and when and how learning is to happen is
known as a “negotiated curriculum”. Mentoring also includes a
mentor working with children on social-emotional, psycho-dynamic and
learning deficit issues.
Second, in-school engagement within a
negotiated and an intrinsic self-selected curriculum during a
Democratic Education school day would be through the student choice
of one or more of three ways: through independent, individual or
small group engagement with the materials and activities open to
students; through self-selected small, whole group adult facilitated
topic study or activity; and/or through self-initiated one-to-one
instruction either with another student or with an adult. However,
since the community as a whole has the responsibility of structuring
learning, it can, as in Lehman Alternative Community School, agree on
conventional whole group classrooms and a more conventional looking
class schedule. Still, in the authentically child-decision-centered
learning environment of a Democratic Education school the initiation
of learning engagement, including instruction, is up to the child's
felt need to connect with the knowledge, the materials, the
activities, the adults and the classmates, rather than the fully
adult initiated whole group classroom process of the traditional
taking all decisions away from the youngster.
Third, the adults in the room of a
child-decision-centered environment of a Democratic Education school
have an additional role beyond being facilitators and mentors in
intrinsic self-directed study: They are to model passionate life
long learning and the meanings of collaborative work, goal setting,
task acceptance and completion by undertaking learning activities of
interest to the adult, inviting youngsters as helpers, as
apprentices, in what is being done rather than as “students”
being told what to do, and to in equal measure with the children of
the learning community maintain behavioral norms according to both
individual child and whole community needs through The Democratic
Process, peer mediation, Non-Violent Communication
(http://www.cnvc.org/) and
LEAP pocess(http://leapinstitute.org/).
And fourth, Democratic Education
schools are self-governing, like Summerhill. As A.S. Neill states:
“Summerhill is a self-governing school, democratic in form.
Everything connected with social, or group life…is settled by vote
at the Saturday General School Meeting. Each member of the teaching
staff and each child, regardless of his age, has one vote…Our
democracy makes laws…The function of Summerhill self-government is
not only to make laws but to discuss social features of the community
as well. (Alexander Sutherland Neill, Summerhill:
A Radical Approach to Child Rearing,
New York: Hart Pub. Co., 1960, pp 45-47.)
In Democratic schools the community
comes together in regular meetings of the whole to decide all issues.
Adults and children have equal rights to speak and to persuade within
community forums. Each has a single vote on questions up for
community decision. The community can decide policies on such as
curriculum and assessment, projects and assignments, advancement and
graduation requirements, ceremonies, expectant behaviors consistent
and inconsistent with the norms of the school as well as the means by
which inconsistent behaviors are resolved.
Democratic Education Curriculum and
Assessment:
Democratic Education resets the
conventional schooling structure and the relationships of adult to
curriculum, child to curriculum and adult to child. Democratic
Education insists on students taking responsibility for their
education choices by self-selecting what is learned, when learning
happens and the depth, scope and duration of leaning.
In the conventional structure what is
learned, the curriculum, is broken down into compartmentalized
disciplines which are further broken down into subjects which
themselves are divided into units which again are divided into
smaller accumulations of specific facts and concepts available for
the learner to take up into ready recall memory.
A basic outline of disciplines is as
follows:
-English Language
Arts
-Mathematics
-Social Studies
-Sciences
-Arts (a sort of
catch all for everything not included above)
The sociology of knowledge as
discipline division is an inheritance of the expansion in knowledge
from the late Middle Age European Classical grammar school trivium
and the university quadrivium. Indeed, the growth in the complexity
of the sociology of knowledge under the agency of print dramatically
increased information circulation, popular understanding and
intellectual discovery requiring ever more differentiation of
knowledge into distinct disciplines which were taken by generations
of school folks as the basis for general study, preparing the young
for a world where such knowledge was supposedly required.
The more conventional academic end of
the Democratic Education spectrum honors this history by providing
standard discipline study. But the more free school parts of the
spectrum act on their understanding of the contemporary knowledge
society.
Indeed, with the growth and societal
saturation of electronic information technologies, three distinct
effects are recognized: 1) that the pace of information production
exploded to the point where it is no longer possible, even if it were
in times past, to hold the resulting amounts of information in
memory; 2) that the need to hold vast amounts of information in human
memory has been eliminated as information is now stored in immediate
access, digital memory; and 3) that the connectivity of digital media
has broken down discipline barriers to recombine specialized
knowledge at intersecting points.
Thus, it makes far more sense today for
school folks, especially at the free school end of the Democratic
Education spectrum, to make available learning experiences whereby
children can master learning rather than to master content, and what
content is offered can take full notice of the recombination of
specialized knowledge.
Leaning to learn in a
child-decision-centered environment of a Democratic Education school
is to provide a wide range of opportunities for children to engage
using their native instincts and individual differences, their
intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, to slowly gain skills as they
test hunches/hypotheses, as they explore, discover and unfold, as
they bring to consciousness through meta-cognitive development the
mindfulness necessary for intentional learning decision making.
Such a process would begin with the
readiness to acquire learning skills as the objective of an early
childhood program while the acquisition of learning skills would be
the focus of the elementary. The mastery of learning would be the
province of a secondary education.
Taking full notice of the recombination
of specialized knowledge is to provide an integrated,
interdisciplinary thematic curriculum which at the macro-level can be
ordered through Curriculum Strands, such as:
-The Life Cycle in the Natural
World
-Communication Between Individuals
and Within Groups
-Identity Within Groups and
Institutions
-The Nature of Time and Space
-Our Response to the Aesthetic
-Our Relationship to Nature
-Our Role as Producers and
Consumers
-Our Efforts to Live with Purpose.
Broken down into theme categories the
curriculum strand of The Life Cycle in the Natural World, for
instance, might include Ecology. And the category Ecology itself can
be broken down into themes such as: Geography-life’s web of place
and climate, and their affects on the development of plants, animals
and people; Change-evolution and extinction, natural and man-made;
Conservation-soil, air, water, energy; Micro and Macro
Environments-explorations of the smallest and the largest ecosystems.
The curriculum strands and their theme categories and individual
themes constitute the structural framework of the intentional
learning community’s curriculum which the school constructors and
governors are obliged to populate richly with resources and
activities in order to provide the knowledge sets open to intrinsic
self-directed and negotiated learning.
The curriculum strands, as suggested
above, would supply the knowledge categories youngsters engage in the
abstract and in the experiential. So, as a further example, within
the curriculum strand of Our Relationship to Nature might be the
theme category of Bugs and Other Creepy Crawly Creatures-explorations
into insects and the role they play in ecosystems-whereby
those exploring the theme could select a few square feet of
property, describe the micro-ecosystem there, observe and note over a
certain period all insects in the air column over the property, the
creepy crawlers on and around the ground and under the surface to
approximately 18 inches. Then they would investigate to uncover the
roles within that micro-ecosystem the creepy crawlers and flying
insects have. Having noted the findings, a report in a medium of
choice would be produced and presented. And on to the next theme,
the next inquiry and on the education in this manner goes.
Democratic Education leans heavily on
what is generally called “authentic assessment” of student
learning progress: Thus, Descriptive Process evaluates behavior (see
http://cdi.uvm.edu/resources/ProspectDescriptiveProcessesRevEd.pdf);
Performance Assessment evaluates academics (see
http://www.performanceassessment.org/).
Ultimately, the methods of assessing student progress in behavioral
and academic growth are a school community decision. However, the
individualized nature of Democratic Education so heavily favors
evaluation such as Descriptive Process and Performance Assessment as
to nearly eliminate conventional testing regimes.
Summary:
Democratic Education:
-has the
mission to cultivate in all its youngsters a solid psychological
foundation for future growth and a cognitive dexterity for life long
adaptability to life’s challenges;
-by its twin pillars of
Mindfulness and Empowerment supports a consistent personal
responsibility response to the learning environment rather than
through compliance demanded of children by the adults in the class
rooms;
-develops the healthy, happy
growth in self-awareness, self-regulation and self-actualization so
in this century and beyond citizens can leverage these qualities in
which ever way they discern is in their best interest and in the best
interest of family, community, country and civilization;
-realigns relationship of adult to
child from adult over child to an adult and child in partnership
respecting the wisdom each possesses;
- recognizes individual social,
emotional and cognitive needs of youngsters as manifested and
self-identified by them, not by an interpretation of them by the
adults in the class rooms, indeed, where the child is the
definer of his and her own need and
the
decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need, and where, through
a deep mentoring relationship, the child will be helped to help
him-herself to satisfy the full range of need;
-alters the relationship of adult
to curriculum and child to curriculum where what is learned, when
learning happens and the depth, scope and duration of leaning is both
child intrinsically self-directed and adult-child negotiated;
-fully acknowledges learning as
being a child decision driven through an individual’s neurological
constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments, learning and
communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive and social
development individualizing curricula and yielding quality
differentiated outcomes;
-greatly elevates the mastery of
learning over the mastery of content, and what content is offered
takes full notice of the recombining of specialized knowledge through
an integrated, interdisciplinary, thematic curriculum;
-uses authentic assessment such as
Descriptive Process and Performance Assessment evaluating student
progress in behavioral and academic growth;
-institutes school community
self-governance.
