Democratic Schools
I just realized I do not have anything on my site yet about democratic schools, per se. I got an email from someone at AERO which prompted me to do a site search of my EQI site and this led to my realization.
For right now I will just say that I have been in lots of schools around the world and one of my conclusion is that the majority of them are more like dictatorships and totalitarianism regimes where the director or principal has almost unchallenged authority, and where democracy is just a word which is studied from textbooks but not put into practice.
While visiting schools in South America I began to understand why there have been so many dictatorships and military regimes there. My explanation, or one of the reasons at least, is that the schools teach children and teenagers to feel powerless. The teachers feel powerful only when they are giving orders to the students and exercising their ability to threaten, punish, judge, grade etc. But the teachers do not themselves have power to bring about changes in the school or the education system. The power is held by the directors and the state.
S. Hein
March 11, 2008
Links
AERO - Organization which supports democratic schools.
Here is a link to my pages on the Peruvian education system for more.