Democratic Education

IDEC, the International Democratic Education Conference, described what it means to be a democratic school:

“A Democratic School is a school which is, in some capacity, self-governing, with each community member having influence on decisions and outcomes. A contrast might be made with more ‘autocratic’ school structures, in which power and authority are concentrated in the teachers and adult administrators. In democratic educational philosophy, students, including and especially children, are seen as active participants in their own learning and their environment. Each student’s voice is given weight in decision-making both personal — for instance, the direction of his or her own education — and communal — the rules and adjudications by which the school functions as a whole.” – Andy Holloway