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Democracy in Education
What does it mean to be a democratic learning community? In what ways do the structures of the high school develop in young people the habits of heart and mind that make democratic citizenship possible? It is more than just a social studies lesson; it is about the daily experience that students and staff share in school that models for young people the most important of all roles after school -- that of citizen.
Questions for this panel could be about school practices, student engagement, curriculum, and leadership.
| QUESTIONS with Answers |
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In a time when government support and legislation is requiring a One Size Fits All education system--in which instruction is largely determined by what will be on a high stakes test--how do educators instill in society an appreciation for democracy in education? How can we advocate and model the benefits of a democratic system when there is so much propaganda and administrative fiat against it?
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(Sorry if I cut off the rest of the answer, my computer likes to go places on its own.)
Anyway, I think the way we advocate and model this work is through the way we treat students on a daily basis. In our school while we have to insure that we attend to the state standards on which students are tested (and if they don't pass they don't get to graduate), we do not let those standards control our curriculum. Rather, we incorporate them, where they make sense, into what we have already established as being crucial to teach.
Further, we engage students in making decisions about the school, their work, and the standards to which they are held. We do this through providing students with multiple ways to take on assignments, engaging them in discussions about the assignments, and making sure that the work students do helps them develop the skills that democratic citizenship requires.
We also involve them in actual decision-making in the school. They handle all student affairs, they write the student handbook, they have an equal voice with teachers in the hiring of new staff. All of this can be done regardless of what tests, etc. students have to take.
Additonally, we have to find ways to provide students with the opportunities to exercise engaged and responsible citizenship in addition to or inspite of the current climate. Internships, portfolios that require a demonstration of citizen engagement, assignments or projects that engage students in the community. These are all doable in any school.
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What evidence do you have that subjects such as creative writing, visual art, and theatre help to foster thinking dispositions and critical habits of mind that are in turn essential to an understanding of democracy?
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It is not clear what you would count as "evidence" in this case. I can imagine subjects such as these being taught in a way that did not help foster the traits you mention; and the opposite happening in other classrooms. It all depends upon how the teacher engages students in critically appraising the work, choosing and embracing standards, and using the work to make sense of the world at large.
Of course, part of the problem is that there is no 'test' for democratic traits, there is only the life we lead.
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How does the developmental level of young people impact their ability to participate in democratic structures? Do different aged students need age appropriate democratic structures in their schools?
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One of the worst things we can do to students is expose them to any activity or material that is not developmentally appropriate. I have learned a great deal from my colleagues who work in the early childhood field about making sure instruction/activities fit the child and not the demands of the curriculum. My experience tells me that what we need to do in terms of democratic attributes is target the work so that it develops in students a sense of efficacy. That is, it does not make sense to have students try and deal with issues that are beyond their capacity as it will only engender cynicism--we tried that and it didn't work, why try again sort of thing. But students should be engaged in making sense of the immediate world around them and making a difference in that world so they see that democractic action is possible.
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How do you relate stimulation of pupils/students democracy on the one hand and authority of school norms and teachers on the other?
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I think you are asking a question that gets at the issue of what democracy is. People often confuse it with some notion of anarchy, that is, everyone simply gets their way. Others go the route of 'if I don't get my way, then it wasn't democratic'. But these are so far removed from any sense of democracy that we understand today.
I would suggest we think about this in two ways. First, the issue of power in a democracy will never be 'solved', it will just continue to be worked on. In a school it means that we engage students in decision making, real decision making, whenever and where ever we can. For me, as a principal, it means that I think about every important decision we make and see how many people can be involved in the decision. Also, it is about helping young people, and the adults in the school as well, figure out how to develop the skills to exercise power wisely, judiciously, and fairly. We simply have to keep working on these things every day in every thing we do...thus modeling the complex nature of a democracy to our students.
Second, power in a democracy is either positional or personal. Positional power is power that you have by virtue of a position (teacher, principal). Personal power is power that individuals grant to you because you have demonstrated that you are worthy of their trust. No doubt every social structure starts with positional power--the goal is to move to a broader sharing of personal power.
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I am very interested in the role of the media in promoting or not supporting schools/programs based on their conversations (or data even) from the so-called policy makers, or PR reps instead of getting to know the challenges of teaching and learning at the school level.
What do you think? Except for minor exceptions, I have found the media poorly informed about education, especially urban education.
This fact appears to affect the quality of education for poor urban kids.
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If you vist the website of The Forum for Education and Democracy, www.forumforeducation.org, you will find a link to an article entitled "How are the Kids" about how reporters are not doing their job in terms of education. You can find it on the Newsroom page and it points out exactly what you are saying. It is unfortunate that we have so little quality reporting about schools, but it also means we can influence that reporting by the stories we provide and our students' engagement with the media. In fact, this year we had one of our students interning with the local paper and whenever they missed an informative story about the school, we fed it to our intern.
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The Dream School, a reform initiative, being used by the San Francisco Unified School District to improve low-performing schools, requires reconstitution (re-assigning all teachers) of the teaching staff. Is there any evidence that reconstitution is an effective school reform initiative, and how can this be framed as democratic reform?
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I am not aware of any evidence that says school reconstitution is a successful tool. Clearly it is not democratic, if by that we mean that all of those who are effected by an intiative have a voice in creating it. More importantly, I wonder what the district calls a low-performing school and what they would see as a high performing school. That is, are we just talking about high test scores here or about the climate and engagement of students. There is so much talk these days about 'accountability', but we have to ask accountable to whom for what? American public education is accountable to an idea--the idea of democracy. Our task is to generate the type of individuals that can make democracy work. Reforms that overlook this central task of public schools are destined to be not only undemocratic, but probably of limited success as well.
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Our students are taking the issue of Democracy to heart. There is currently a movement gaining momentum. The student constitution and handbook are being revised/rewritten, a student member is being added to the school board. They are convinced that the discipline policy has been inconsistently enforced, and have proposed a student court to manage routine infractions. In trying to help them formulate a plan that will pass the board, we've found few readily available resources to create one (and fewer ASB constitutions). Any suggestions?
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That's great, I wonder how the momentum was started in your school and what grade levels we are talking about. I hope that there is engagement of the faculty and administration on this as well, sometimes we find we have more in common than we suspect, especially around discipline codes. As for student courts, I am not aware of much on them, though you might try resources like the First Amendment Schools project run by ASCD and The Freedom Forum. I have to admit that I am a bit reluctant on the idea of courts with kids, and choose to use mediation instead. Regardless, congratulations on your good work and best wishes for success in your efforts. Please congratulate your students for me.
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Apparently the websites I listed didn't come through so I'll try another way of listing them: democracymatters.org, freechild.org, project540.org, alternet.org (and then their inline youth newsletter - wiretap), yesmagazine.org, positivenewsus.org, and civworld.org - thought these might be help - Dave Lehman (are we not supposed to sign these?!)
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As always, Dave keeps us in touch with some of the best stuff. For those of you who don't know Dave, he was the leader of a great school in New York which was renamed in his honor after he retired. Thanks Dave.
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One would think that most school administrators would be believe in and strive to become a democratic school. That being said why do so many school leaders shy away from or drag their feet in the development of school decision making governance teams?
Your good friend, Oz!
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Before I answer this one, I have to note that it was sent in by Jim Osborn (aka Oz) from whom Federal Hocking learned a great deal about school organization when we visited the school he led 13 years ago! The answer to this question is a tough one. First, I think a leader has to be disposed to democracy in disposition and philosophy. I am afraid that this does not come naturally for many people and, further, that education administration programs do not always stress this. Second, democracy is often a messy and slow process. A process that at times requires you to admit you are wrong, to listen to opinions with which you may disagree, and sometimes lose a battle. It requires patience and belief in the wisdom of the group...again, something you have to believe in. Third, too often leaders of schools feel that since they are the ones that will be 'called on the carpet' if something fails then they have to be in charge. So, what to do? First, I would hope that more leadership programs would embrace democracy. Second, leaders have to realize that you do not lose power when you share it, you gain the power of the group. And finally, and this is big, it is important that leaders realize that it is only when they democratically share power that the group, the faculty and students, will move forward together. I am writing this after our portfolio day at Federal Hocking, a day when only our seniors attend and they present their work of the past four years. In every session I went to when kids were asked what they valued the most about FHHS it was the way in which they shared power, as one young woman put it 'we all have a voice here.' When that happens you stop struggling with kids (or staff) and you all join up in the common mission of the school.
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In the age of "no child left behind" thinking, how do we deal with the fact that not all children respond in the same way to (dis)organized education? If a bright youngster is turned off by waiting for others to "catch up" and we lose the one for the betterment of all, aren't we at risk of losing the 2% who might give us the creativity boost we say desperately need in U.S. to maintain our technological advancement? My question is, simply put, why is tracking wrong, i.e. why is it "undemocratic?" Why is OK to spend less time and money on the gifted while throwing money at special education to make sure that we do not lose the very bottom of the bell curve. I know it's not a popular, nor a particularly democratic sentiment, but why can't we do more for the bright kids who are surely going to be lost if we don't do something to keep them engaged?
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I am curious as to how you came up with only 2% of us being the creative ones in our culture, but put that aside for a moment. More importantly, I don't believe for a minute that 'mixed ability' classes have to turn off any student, it all depends upon how you teach it. For example, a teacher who knows how to differentiate instruction (plenty of this stuff offered by ASCD) can challenge all sorts of kids in one classroom. (By the way, no matter how you track them, you have different abilities in every room.)
My bigger concern with your question is the assumption behind it that some students are simply worth more than others. (Especially your rather unfortunate remark about 'throwing money' at special education.) I have two boys, one who put off learning to read until third grade but, due to the fact that he was never tracked and that teachers refused to give up on him, just recently graduated from college--a rather good one at that. The other, who finishes at my high school this year with a great grade point, terrific senior project and Graduation Portfolio, and scholarship offers from all over, still struggles with spelling. Again, teachers never tracked him, pushed him to overcome this difficulty, and he succeeded. My point is that every student has potential and tracking them masks that.
One last point--the data is rather clear that it is poor and minority students who lose out the most when we track. How can that be democratic?
Perhaps the place we might agree is that it only works to have mixed ability (or any ability grouping) when teachers are given the tools to make such classrooms work. What would be undemocratic would be to just throw kids into classes where there is only one means of instruction and insist that they all succeed.
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In our small elementary school we sometimes struggle with the tensions of representative vs participatory democracy. Our Intermediate (grades 5/6) teachers wanted to begin a student council this year as part of our study of the election process nationally. It proved a great teaching strategy since our students did an excellent job of moving through all of the processes of an election. But, not surprisingly, the popular students (usually also from homes with more financial and educational supports) were elected. I worry that our students who come from families typically marginalized by society will never have the opportunity to experience true leadership roles ( although we do set these up as opportunity presents through classroom work). I don't think those experiences which are short-lived and established only through teacher selection are the same as the experience of a student council. What do you think, and what have you seen in other schools?
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Great question. My students at FHHS solved this problem in a unique way, I thought. On one hand we have an elected student government, made up of kids from each class, each advisory, each club, heck, every possible group they can think of. By its nature, that is its size, it ends up being pretty diverse. Then we have the Student Trustees. This group is entrusted with carrying out the day to day job of student government...they are in charge of all student affairs, organize the meetings for council, approve all fundraisers and student club meetings, solict and choose students for staff interview committees, curriculum committees, etc. The Trustees are not elected, they are selected by the graduating senior trustees on the basis of an application process. And in the process they work to ensure diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, and socioeocnomic status. They did this to avoid precisely the problem you note, and it has worked. This dual process seems to make our school pretty representative in terms of leadership. I should say it also helps that we do not ability group in the school which I believe helps to develop in our students a commitment to equity and justice for all kids.
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George - Are you aware of the following websites that are excellent resources for youth involvement in democratic education and democratic action? - , , , (an online newsletter for youth involved in democratic activism) as well as two magazines that highlight these kinds of youth involvement in positive change in the world - YES at and POSITIVE NEWS US at - both publish things written by and/or about youth involvement in democratic projects. Lastly there also is Benjamin Barber's Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland with "CivWorld" which is more for college level democratic action and includes the 3rd annual "Interdependence Day 2005" event, this year in Paris, France 10-12 September?? I realize this is more of a list or resources than a true question!, I have three books to recommend to teachers if your interested. Anyway, thanks for hosting this panel.
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Thanks for the information!
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