DEMOCRACY IN ACTION EDUCATING STUDENTS TO THINK, CREATE, INITIATE
by Lisa Marshall
Is a more democratic model of schooling the answer to today’s education crisis?
York, and he paints a picture that would seem like a dream to many conventional middle schoolers—and a nightmare to their administrators. There were no tests, no homework and almost no schedules. On a typical day, students of all
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ages would scatter around the refur- bished inner-city tenement at will, some spontaneously engaging in a game of Dungeons and Dragons in one room, while others planned a trip to Puerto Rico, learned Spanish from a fellow student, or designed a literary magazine on the computer. At weekly, democratic, all-school meetings, they voted on everything from what option- al classes the school should offer to what color to paint the walls; not once were they asked to fill in small circles with a number 2 pencil to prove they were learning something. “We were, at a very young age, in control of our education,” recalls Graves, a remarkably astute 23-year- old who now lives in Oregon and works as an event planner. “I had to figure out what I liked, what my passions were, and how to access in- formation in a variety of ways. I had to interact with adults in a real way—not just as authority figures. I had to learn how to learn.” To many, the notion of a school without schedules where kids and
10 Tucson
sk Isaac Graves what sev- enth grade was like at The Free School in Albany, New
adults have equal say and “test” is almost a dirty word seems utterly unworkable in our present society, where education funding is increas- ingly tied to student aca- demic performance. But 40 years after the birth of The Free School, and the 1960s “democratic education” movement that inspired it, the nearly defunct philosophy appears to be making a comeback. In May, a group of
educators founded the Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA), which, through town meet- ings, social networking and online education, aims to help teachers infuse more student choice into what they see as an autocratic K-12 public school system. Meanwhile, new, pri- vate democratic schools have opened in Seattle, Portland, Denver, New York City and elsewhere, bringing the number to 85, according to the non- profit Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO). In all, its online directory has swelled to 12,000 op- tions, including those affiliated with Montessori, Waldorf, Democratic and other methods which, while they dif- fer in curriculum, all share a dedica- tion to a learner-centered approach. By contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the
Students practice hands-on learning outside of classroom walls.
number of kids en- rolled in an assigned public school dipped from 80 percent in 1993 to 73 percent in 2007. “We are at a cru- cial point,” says Jerry Mintz, who founded AERO in 1989. “Every- body knows there is something wrong with the current educational system, and people are now starting to realize they have choices.”
Old Factory Model of Schooling When parents step into
photo courtesy of IDEA
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