Introduction to The Directory of Democratic Education

by Dana Bennis & Isaac Graves

Democratic education begins with freedom and respect for young people. There has
been a surge of interest in this education approach since the 1990s, leading to the
creation of new democratic schools throughout the world. As of the publication of this
directory, there are over 200 known democratic schools, resource centers, and
programs located in 29 countries involving an estimated 15,000 students. These
numbers will only increase as we progress further into the information age of the 21st
century and beyond, as more and more people realize the deep significance of basing
education on freedom, respect, and self-determination. This directory is an attempt to
catalogue the schools, colleges, programs, cooperatives, resource centers, and
organizations world-wide that are dedicated to the practice of democratic education.

What is democratic education?

The personalized and dynamic nature of democratic education makes it difficult to
define. There is no accepted definition of what exactly democratic education means
(and, in our opinion, we hope no authority ever presumes to claim an exact definition).
However, it might help to provide a brief description of what it is not as well as varying
perspectives on what it is. Democratic education, as we see it and in the context of this
directory, does not refer to an authoritarian approach involving a hierarchical structure
and pre-determined course-work designed to create citizens of a democracy. Such an
interpretation is taken by, among others, University of Pennsylvania President Amy
Gutmann in her book entitled Democratic Education (1999). While Gutmann uses the
term democratic education to describe the end goal of a mostly pre-planned,
authoritarian form of schooling, we believe that democracy and freedom ought to be
both the end result of education as well as the means through which education takes
place.

What does this mean in practice? To start with the simplest description, the Israelibased Institute for Democratic Education describes two core elements of a democratic
school: 1. adhering to human rights within the school framework, and 2. operating
school life on the basis of democratic procedures (Institute for Democratic Education,
2006, 1). Describing these democratic procedures a little further, Sudbury Valley
School, one of the oldest running democratic schools in the United States, mentions

the following three characteristics: individual rights, political democracy, and equal
opportunity (The Crisis in American Education, 1970). Matt Hern, director of the Purple
Thistle Centre, an alternative to school project in Vancouver, British Columbia,
described nine characteristics of democratic schools in his book Field Day: noncompulsory academics, democratic self-government, self-regulation, non-graded
evaluations, non-compulsory attendance, focus on emotional/social development, nonhierarchy of activities, broad interpretations of learning, and the importance of play (pp.
177-178).

Every staff member, student, parent, and supporter of democratic education might
have a different definition. For the purpose of clarifying the content of this directory, we
offer an inexact synthesis of the varying descriptions for this approach:

Democratic education is an educational approach grounded in respect for human rights

and a broad interpretation of learning, in which young people have the freedom to
organize their daily activities, and in which there is equality and democratic decisionmaking among young people and adults.