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Democratic Education is a worldwide movement towards greater decision-making power for students in the running of their own schools. There is no generally agreed definition of the term, but at the IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) in 2005^[1] the participants agreed on the following statement: 

“We believe that, in any educational setting, young people have the right:

to decide individually how, when, what, where and with whom they learn
to have an equal share in the decision-making as to how their organisations – in particular their schools – are run, and which rules and sanctions, if any, are necessary.”

IDEN, the International Democratic Education Network, is open to any school that upholds such ideals as these:

respect and trust for children
equality of status of children and adults
shared responsibility
freedom of choice of activity
democratic governance by children and staff together, without reference to any supposedly superior guide or system

This list is taken from the IDEN website, where there are other attempts at a definition of the term.

The European Democratic Education Community offers a briefer statement:

"There are two pillars of democratic education:

self-determined learning
a learning community based on equality and mutual respect."

History

John Locke

John Locke, the English philosopher, published Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1693. In describing the teaching of children, he declares, “None of the things they are to learn, should ever be made a burthen to them, or impos'd on them as a task. Whatever is so propos'd, presently becomes irksome; the mind takes an aversion to it, though before it were a thing of delight or indifferency. Let a child but be order'd to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has or has not a mind to it; let this be but requir'd of him as a duty, wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and see whether he will not soon be weary of any play at this rate.”^[2] Locke gives one reason for punishing a child – “But yet there is one, and but one fault, for which, I think, children should be beaten, and that is, obstinacy or rebellion. And in this too, I would have it order’d so, if it can be, that the shame of the whipping, and not the pain, should be the greatest part of the punishment.” ^[3]) Otherwise, he believes it should be avoided as far as possible. “Beating them, and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments,” he says. “are not the discipline fit to be used in the education of those we would have wise, good, and ingenuous men; and therefore very rarely to be apply’d, and that only in great occasions, and cases of extremity.”^[4]). There are other comments relevant to the development of democratic education, for instance, “Few years require but few laws,”^[5] “It will perhaps be wonder’d, that I mention reasoning with children; and yet I cannot but think that the true way of dealing with them. They understand it as early as they do language; and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures, sooner than is imagin’d,”^[6] and “A father will do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding.”^[7]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book of advice on education, Émile,was first published in 1762. Émile, the imaginary pupil he uses for illustration, was only to learn what he could appreciate as useful^[8] He was to enjoy his lessons, and learn to rely on his own judgement and experience. “The tutor must not lay down precepts, he must let them be discovered,”^[9] wrote Rousseau, and urged him not make Émile learn science, but let him discover it^[10] He also said that we should not substitute books for personal experience because this does not teach us to reason; it teaches us to use other people’s reasoning; it teaches us to believe a great deal but never to know anything.^[11] Rousseau, however, also advises a tutor to “Use force with children, and reason with men,”^[12] and insists that although Émile must do whatever he wants, his tutor must make sure that he only wants to do what the tutor wants him to do.^[13]

Leo Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana

Locke and Rousseau were concerned only with the education of the children of the wealthy, but Leo Tolstoy set up a school for peasant children. This was on his own estate at Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, in the late 19th century. He tells us that the school evolved freely from principles introduced by teachers and pupils; that in spite of the preponderating influence of the teacher, the pupil had always had the right not to come to school, or, having come, not to listen to the teacher, and that the teacher had the right not to admit a pupil, and was able to use all the influence he could muster to win over the community, where the children were always in the majority.^[14] Tolstoy insisted that only in the absence of force and compulsion could natural relations be maintained between teacher and pupils. The teacher defined the limits of freedom in the classroom by his knowledge and capacity to manage. And the pupils, Tolstoy wrote, should be treated as reasoning and reasonable beings; only then would they find out that order was essential and that self-government was necessary to preserve it. If pupils were really interested in what was being taught, he declared, disorder would rarely occur, and when it did, the interested students would compel the disorderly ones to pay attention. “When Tolstoy purposely left the room in the middle of a lesson to test the behaviour of his students, they did not break into an uproar as he had observed was the case in similar circumstances in classrooms he visited abroad. When he left, the students were enjoying complete freedom, and hence they behaved as though he were still in the room. They corrected or praised each other's work, and some-times they grew entirely quiet. Such results, he explained, were natural in a school where the pupils were not obliged to attend, to remain, or to pay attention.”^[15]

Janusz Korczak

In 1912 Janusz Korczak founded Dom Sierot, the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, which was run on democratic lines until 1940, when he accompanied all his charges to the gas-chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp ^[16]. In the orphanage he formed a kind of republic for children with its own parliament and court.^[17] The school parliament established a list of punishments, going from 100 (the mildest) to 1000 (expulsion from the orphanage). In the first two years there was only one person sentenced to number 1000, and otherwise only two as severely sentenced as number 600, which merely entailed a public admission on the noticeboard. Korczak wrote, “The judges are children themselves, and they know how difficult it is never to do anything wrong, and they also know that everyone can become better, as long as he wants to and seriously tries.”^[18] Korczak’s influence is spread by associations in many different countries, for instance Poland^[19], Canada ^[20], and the Netherlands^[21].

Summerhill

The oldest democratic school that still exists is Summerhill , currently based in Suffolk, England but founded in Germany in 1921. A boarding school for children up to the age of 16, it became notorious for voluntary class attendance, nude bathing and permitting smoking; its effective self-government by a weekly school meeting of staff and students was largely ignored. A. S. Neill, its Scottish founder, wrote many influential books, including The Problem Child (1926). The Problem Parent (1932), That Dreadful School (1937) and Hearts Not Heads in the School (1945) , all published by Herbert Jenkins, and Summerhill, a Radical Approach to Child-rearing (1960) published by Hart Publishing. He also gave the inspiration for many modern democratic schools, for instance Tamariki School, in New Zealand, founded in 1967, and Kinokuni, a children’s village in Japan, founded in 1992.

Dartington Hall School

Dartington Hall School, another progressive boarding school in the UK, which ran from 1926 – 1987, was founded with negative principles. It was to have “no corporal punishment, indeed no punishment at all; no prefects; no uniforms; no Officers’ Training Corps; no segregation of the sexes; no compulsory games, compulsory religion or compulsory anything else, no more Latin, no more Greek; no competition; no jingoism.”^[22] W. B. Curry was headmaster of the school from 1931-1957, and wrote two books about it, The School, published by The Bodley Head in 1934 and Education for Sanity, published by Heinemann in 1947. It was characterised by a generally voluntary formal academic programme which students could join into as they wished, school meetings which had various degrees of power at different periods of its history^[23] and a relationship between staff and students that served as an inspiration for Sands School, founded in 1987 immediately the Dartington school closed. “At Dartington adults did not seem to have to maintain any kind of superior position towards children or amongst themselves. Nor did they indulge in the kind of chumminess and selfdissonant behaviour which actually implies a condescension towards children. Adults treated children with genuine courtesy. They treated them as other people.”^[24]

Sudbury Valley School

Sudbury Valley School, a democratic school founded in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968, has been the model for dozens of Sudbury schools around the world. “Sudbury Valley School is a place where people decide for themselves how to spend their days. Here, students of all ages determine what they will do, as well as when, how, and where they will do it. This freedom is at the heart of the school; it belongs to the students as their right, not to be violated^[25].” “The school is governed on the model of a traditional New England Town Meeting. The business of the school is managed by the weekly School Meeting, at which each student and staff member has one vote. Rules of behavior, use of facilities, expenditures, staff hiring, and all the routines of running an institution are determined by debate and vote at the School Meeting.”^[26]  Daniel Greenberg (educator), one of the founders of the school, has written many books about it.^[27]

The Pesta

The de:Pesta founded in Ecuador by de:Rebeca Wild and de:Mauricio Wild in 1977, started as a nursery school based largely on Montessori principles. It grew to a primary school in 1979 and added a secondary department ten years later. Families moved from Europe to Ecuador so their children could attend the school, and it eventually had almost 200 pupils. It was a day school with no fixed lessons, depending on a prepared environment to stimulate children’s learning^[28]. Rebeca Wild’s books ^[29], have had wide influence. Many Wild schools, as they are called, have been founded in Europe, particularly in Austria ^[30]

The Democratic School of Hadera

The Democratic School of Hadera, founded by Yaacov Hecht in Israel in 1987, has much in common with Sudbury Valley, but differs in two important respects: it is supported by public funds, unlike Sudbury, which charges fees^[31], and it offers a varied timetable of lessons and activities^[32], whereas Sudbury has no such arrangement. “There are no bells at Sudbury Valley. No ‘periods’. The time spent on any activity evolves from within each participant^[33].” The first IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) was held at Hadera in 1993 ^[34], and there are now more than twenty democratic schools in Israel ^[35]. Yaacov Hecht also founded IDE, the Institute for Democratic Education, in Tel Aviv, and is developing the concept of Education Cities ^[36].

AERO

[http:www.educationrevoluton.org/about-aero/ AERO], the Alternative Education Resource Organization, was launched by Jerry Mintz in the USA in 1989. It now has 500 members and lists 12,000 alternatives on its website, not all of them democratic. There are annual AERO conferences and weekly news bulletins.

International groupings

The number of democratic schools around the world continues to grow, and since 1993 there has been an annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC), held in a different country each year. In 2008, the first EUDEC (European Democratic Education Conference) was held in Leipzig , Germany and let to the founding of the European Democratic Education Community. In 2012 the AAPAE , (Australasian Association for Progressive and Alternative Education) changed its name to ADEC, The Australasian Democratic Education Community.

^ Berlin IDEC
^ Locke, John (1692) Some Thoughts Concerning Education, para 73.1.
^ ibid, para 78
^ ibid, para 52
^ Ibid, para 65
^ Ibid, para 81
^ Ibid, para 95
^ Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1904), Emile ou l’éducation, Garnier Frères, Paris, p 197: “. . si nous trouvons que ce travail n’est bon à rien, nous ne le reprendrons plus.”
^ Ibid p 22 “Il ne doit pas donner des préceptes, il doit les faire trouver.”
^ Ibid, p 173: “Qu’il n’apprenne pas la science, qu’il l’invente”
^ Ibid, p 121 “Substituer des livres à tout cela, ce n’est pas nous apprendre a nous servir de la raison d’autrui; c’est nous apprendre à beaucoup croire, et à ne jamais rien savoir
^ Ibid, p. 74 “Employez la force avec les enfants et la raison avec les hommes”
^ Ibid. p 114: “Sans doute il ne doit faire que ce qu’il veut, mais il ne doit vouloir que ce que vous voulez qu’il fasse.”
^ Tolstoy, Leo, in The School at Yasnaya Polyana in Tolstoy on Education , translated by Leo Wiener (1967), University of Chicago Press, p 233
^ http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/smmnsej/tolstoy/chap4.htm.
^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Korczak.html
^ Korczak, Janusz (1991), Von Kindern und anderen Vorbildern, Güterslohe Verlagshaus (translated from the Polish), p.78
^ Korczak, Janusz (1979) Von Kindern und anderen Vorbildern, Güterslohe Verlagshaus, pp 82-83
^ http://www.pskorczak.org.pl
^ http://www.januszkorczak.ca
^ http://www.korczak.nl
^ Young, Michael (1982), The Elmhirsts of Dartington, Routledge and Kegan Paul, p. 131
^ Gribble, David (1987) ed. That’s All, Folks, Dartington Hall School Remembered, reminiscences and reflections of former pupils, West Aish Publishing, ISBN 0951273507
^ Smith, Jenifer (1989) An Exploration of Teaching in Action, University of Southampton Department of Education
^ http://www.sudval.com
^ http://www.sudval.com/01_abou_05.html
^ Greenberg, Daniel, The Sudbury Valley School Experience (1985), Free at Last (1987), Legacy of Trust (1992), Kingdom of Childhood (1994) (with Mimsy Sadofsky, with interviews by Hanna Greenberg) and The Pursuit of Happiness (2005), (with Mimsy Sadofsky and Jason Lempka), all published by the Sudbury Valley School Press
^ Gribble, David (1998) Real Education: Varieties of Freedom Libertarian Education, ISBN 0951399756, pp131-145
^ Erziehung zum Sein; Erfahrungsbericht über einer aktiven Schule (Education for Being, Report on Experience in an Active School) Arbor Verlag (1986) and Sein zum Erziehen: Mit Kindern leben lernen (Being for Education: Learning to Live with Children) Arbor Verlag (1990),
^ www.unsereschulen.at
^ http://www.sudval.com/03_admi_01.html
^ Hecht, Yaacov (2010) Democratic Education: A beginning of a Story, Innovation Culture, ISBN 978 097452529751995. pp 57-68
^ Greenberg, Daniel (1987), Free at Last, Sudbury Valley School Press, p 87
^ http://www.idenetwork.org
^ http://www.educationrevolution.org/blog/list-of-democratic-schools/
^ http://education-cities.com/

Variety

Democratic education comes in many different forms. These are some of the areas in which democratic schools differ.

Curriculum

Sudbury schools have no timetable, on the grounds that forcing children to learn a fixed curriculum interferes with their natural desire to learn what interests them. Most other democratic schools offer voluntary courses, and many, such as Summerhill in the UK and the Kapriole in Freiburg, Germany, help interested students to prepare for national examinations so they gain qualifications for further study or future employment.

Administrative structure

Most democratic schools have weekly meetings open to all students and staff, where everyone present has an equal vote. Some, such as the SchülerInnenschule in Vienna, also involve parents. The power of these school meetings usually covers anything from the appointment or dismissal of staff and the creation or annulment of rules to general expenditure and the structure of the school day. At some schools all students are expected to attend these meetings, at others they are voluntary.^[1] The main school meeting may also set up sub-committees to deal with particular issues, such as the Justice Committees found in all Sudbury schools, which deal with breaches of the school laws.

Rules and punishments

Sudbury Valley has a thick book of rules and a Justice Committee which may deal out punishments. Sands School started with only two rules (no drugs and no alcohol), and no punishments.

Finance

Many democratic schools depend on fees paid by parents, but some are supported by charitable foundations, such as Moo Baan Dek, a children’s village in Thailand for three hundred abused, orphaned or abandoned children, and Butterflies, an organisation for street and working children in New Delhi. Others, such as Windsor House School, in Canada, and all the Israeli democratic schools, are publicly funded.

Size

In the state of Tamil Nadu in India, every primary school now uses ABL (Activity Based Learning), a system derived from Montessori methods. That means that 37,500 schools, 120,000 teachers and five million schoolchildren are now involved ^[2]. In Lesotho there is only one democratic place of education, Seliba sa Boithutu, which can accommodate up to 100 students at any one time. Many democratic schools around the world are even smaller. ^[3]

Age Range

Age mixing is a deliberate policy in some democratic schools and many include very young children, the most extreme being Lumiar in Brazil, which gives its age range as 0 – 14. A few only cater for older students, for instance Nuestra Escuela] in Puerto Rico, which takes students from 13 – 21 or Autorska Szkola Samorozwoju ASSA in Poland, which takes students aged 16 or over.

Location

Tokyo Shure is in premises built for offices. Booroobin is in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, north of Brisbane in Australia. The Butterflies organisation for street and working children in New Delhi has no classrooms: children who want to learn come to street educators at agreed meeting-points around the city.

Theory

There is no unified body of literature that spans multiple disciplines in academia on the subject of democratic education. However, there are a variety of spheres of theory that address various elements of democratic education. The goals of democratic education vary according to the participants, the location, and access to resources. Because of this, there is no one widely agreed upon definition.^[1]

Political

As a curricular, administrative and social operation within schools, democratic education is essentially concerned with equipping people to make "real choices about fundamental aspects of their lives"^[2] and happens within and for democracy.^[3] It "is a process where teachers and students work collaboratively to reconstruct curriculum to include everyone."^[4] In at least one conception, democratic education teaches students "to participate in consciously reproducing their society, and conscious social reproduction."^[5] This role necessitates democratic education happening in a variety of settings and being taught by a variety of people, including "parents, teachers, public officials, and ordinary citizens." Because of this "democratic education begins not only with children who are to be taught but also with citizens who are to be their teachers."^[6] Another definition is noted for its controversy because it views democractic education as "an education that democratizes learning itself."^[7]

There are a variety of components involved in democratic education. One author identifies those elements as being a problem-solving curriculum, inclusivity and rights, equal participation in decision-making, and equal encouragement for success.^[4] The Institute for Democratic Education identifies the principles of democratic education as,

The interaction between democratic philosophy and education,
Pluralistic education,
School administration by means of democratic procedures,
Education based on respect for human rights,
Dialogic evaluation,
Dialogic relationships, and
Critical social thinking.^[8]

The "strongest, political rationale" for democratic education is that it teaches "the virtues of democratic deliberation for the sake of future citizenship."^[9] This type of education is often alluded to in the deliberative democracy literature as fulfilling the necessary and fundamental social and institutional changes necessary to develop a democracy that involves intensive participation in group decision making, negotiation, and social life of consequence.

The type of political socialization that takes place in democratic schools is strongly related to deliberative democracy theory. Claus Offe and Ulrich Preuss, two theorists of the political culture of deliberative democracies argue that in its cultural production deliberative democracy requires “an open-ended and continuous learning process in which the roles of both ‘teacher’ and ‘curriculum’ are missing. In other words, what is to be learned is a matter that we must settle in the process of learning itself."^[10]

The political culture of a deliberative democracy and its institutions, they argue, would facilitate more “dialogical forms of making one’s voice heard” which would “be achieved within a framework of liberty, within which paternalism is replaced by autonomously adopted self-paternalism, and technocratic elitism by the competent and self-conscious judgment of citizens."^[11]

Edward Portis offers a critique of what he terms ‘democratic education’ but his use of this term can be better understood as civic education. Portis contends, as many democratic education practitioners and theorists would, that a compulsory curriculum that claims to imbue in its students ‘democratic virtues’ actually does exactly the opposite. Portis argues that because politics and popular rule is rooted in the public deliberation of competing ideas and conceptions of social life, to pretend that certain values can be taught in the traditional sense—through mass compulsory education—subverts the democratic nature of the process. There is no such thing as a ‘proper’ education for democracy in this sense.^[12]

Democratic education theorists of the sort whose work underpin democratic schools, rather than those who analyze something akin to civic education (see Gutmann, et al.) would fundamentally agree that democratic values cannot be taught in the traditional sense. If children are to ever learn how to be citizens of a democracy, they must participate in a democracy (see Greenberg 1992).^[13] This argument conforms to the cognition-in-context research by Lave below.

In addition, this argument converges with various literatures concerning student voice, youth participation and other elements of youth empowerment.^[14]^[15]

Cognitive

The 'practice theory' movement came at a time when there was also a renewed interest in child development and a refining of the theories of Jean Piaget, the foundational child psychologist. Although it is adduced that Piaget was mistaken. The experience of Sudbury model schools showing that a great variety can be found in the minds of children, against Piaget's theory of universal steps in comprehension and general patterns in the acquisition of knowledge: "No two kids ever take the same path. Few are remotely similar. Each child is so unique, so exceptional."^[16]

Jean Lave was one of the first and most prominent social anthropologists to discuss cognition within the context of cultural settings presenting a firm argument against the functionalist psychology that many educationalists refer to implicitly. For Lave, learning is a process ungone by an actor within a specific context. The skills or knowledge learned in one process are not generalizable nor reliably transferred to other areas of human action. Her primary focus was on mathematics in context and mathematics education.

The broader implications reached by Lave and others who specialize in Situated learning are that beyond the argument that certain knowledge is necessary to be a member of society (a Durkheimian argument), knowledge learned in the context of a school is not reliably transferable to other contexts of practice.

Economic

Beyond the explicitly political implications, economic implications of democratic education converge with the emerging consensus on 21st century business and management priorities including increased collaboration, decentralized organization, and radical creativity.^[17]

Scholars

Joseph Agassi - Israeli philosopher and proponent of democracy
Michael Apple - Social scientist, democratic education scholar, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Pierre Bourdieu - Anthropologist, social theorist, College de France
Émile Durkheim - Sociologist, functionalist education theorist
George Dennison - American writer, author
John Dewey - Social scientist, progressive education theorist, University of Chicago
Michel Foucault - Post-modern philosopher, University of California, Berkeley
Peter Gray - Psychologist, democratic education scholar, Boston College
Amy Gutmann - Political scientist, democratic education scholar, President of the University of Pennsylvania
Daniel A. Greenberg - One of the founders of the Sudbury Valley School.
John Holt - Critic of conventional education and proponent of home-schooling
Homer Lane - Democratic education pioneer, founder of the Ford Republic (1907-12) and the Little Commonwealth (1913-17)
A.S. Neill - Democratic education pioneer, founder of the Summerhill School
Claus Offe - Political Scientist, theorist of deliberative democratic culture, Hertie School of Governance
Karl Popper - Philosopher at the London School of Economics
Bertrand Russell - Philosopher, author of "On Education" and founder of Beacon House School

References

^ Williams-Boyd, P. (2003) Middle Grades Education: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. p 296.
^ Blacker, D.J. (2007) Democratic Education Stretched Thin: How Complexity Challenges a Liberal Ideal. SUNY Press. p 126.
^ Bridges, D. (1997) Education, Autonomy and Democratic Citizenship: Philosophy in a Changing World. Routledge. p 76.
^ ^a ^b English, L.D. (2002) Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. p 21.
^ Gutmann, A. (1987) Democratic Education. Princeton University Press. p 321.
^ Gutmann, A. (1987) p 99.
^ Gould, E. (2003) The University in a Corporate Culture. Yale University Press. p 224.
^ "Course for consultants on democratic processes", Institute for Democratic Education. Retrieved 1/13/09.
^ Curren, R. (2007) Philosophy of Education: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing. p 163.
^ Offe, Claus and Ulrich Preuss. “Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources” “Political Theory Today.” David Held, ed. Cambridge: Polity, 1991, 168.
^ Offe, Claus and Ulrich Preuss. “Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources” “Political Theory Today.” David Held, ed. Cambridge: Polity, 1991, 170-1.
^ Portis, E. (2003) "Democratic Education and Political Participation," Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA. Retrieved 1/15/09.
^ Greenberg, D. (1992), Education in America - A View from Sudbury Valley, "Democracy Must be Experienced to be Learned." Retrieved August 13, 2010.
^ Mendel-Reyes, M. (1998) "A Pedagogy for Citizenship: Service Learning and Democratic Education," New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 73, pp 31 - 38.
^ Sehr, D.T. (1997) Education for Public Democracy. SUNY Press. p 178.
^ Greenberg, D. (1987) "Learning," Free at Last — The Sudbury Valley School. Retrieved August 13, 2010.
^ Harvard Business Review, (http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hamel/2009/02/25_stretch_goals_for_managemen.html)

@@ Line 110: / Line 110: @@
 In addition, this argument converges with various literatures concerning [[student voice]], [[youth participation]] and other elements of [[youth empowerment]].<ref>Mendel-Reyes, M. (1998) "A Pedagogy for Citizenship: Service Learning and Democratic Education," ''New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 73'', pp 31 - 38.</ref><ref>Sehr, D.T. (1997) ''Education for Public Democracy.'' [[SUNY Press]]. p 178.</ref>
-=== Cultural ===
-One of the first theorists and practitioners of democratic education was the novelist [[Leo Tolstoy]] who founded a school for peasant children in Russia.
-The most prominent theorist to voice what has become a common justification for uniform, mass-education and critiqued Tolstoy’s philosophy, was [[Émile Durkheim]] in his lectures at the Sorbonne in 1902-03. Durkheim was the father of modern [[sociology]] and developed the sociological/anthropological school of [[Structural functionalism|Functionalism]]. These lectures have since been published under the title ''Moral Education''.
-Durkheim argued that the transition from primitive to modern societies occurred in part as ‘elders’ made a conscious decision to transmit what were deemed the most essential elements of their culture to the following generations. In ''Moral Education'', Durkheim makes the case for an education system that preserves social solidarity by instilling three principles of ‘secular morality’ in children: what he terms a spirit of discipline, attachment to social groups, and self-determination. In the process of arguing how to instill these principles, he makes an extended argument on how [[punishment]] should be used in the schools. In this section, Durkheim described Tolstoy’s theory as an example of a philosophy of education that doesn’t seem to use punishment as a mechanism of cultural solidarity formation and transmission:
-:''According to Tolstoy, the model of ideal education is that which occurs when people go on their own initiative to discover things in museums, libraries, laboratories, meetings, public lectures, or simply talk with wise men. In all these cases, there is no constraint exercised; yet do we not learn in this way? Why can’t the child enjoy the same liberty? It is then only a matter of putting at his disposal that knowledge deemed useful to him; but we must simply offer it to him without forcing him to absorb it. If such knowledge is truly useful to him, he will feel its necessity and come to seek it himself. This is why punishment is unknown at the school of Iasnaia Poliana. Children come when they wish, learn what they wish, work as they wish.''<ref>Durkheim, E. (2002). ''Moral Education''. New York: Dover, p.178.</ref>
-He then argues that, in fact, punishment is found even in this type of system through subtle mechanisms of social behavior. It should not surprise any students of Durkheim to see how he argues for a social/cultural rather than an individual/rational explanation for punishment and self-regulation:
-:''If the child misbehaves by destroying his playthings…the misbehavior is not that he has thoughtlessly and rather stupidly denied himself a way of entertaining himself; rather, it consists in his being insensitive to the general rule that prohibits useless destruction… Only disapproval can warn him that not only was the conduct nonsensical but that it was bad conduct violating a rule that should be obeyed. The true sanction, like the true natural consequence, is blame.''<ref>Durkheim, E. (2002). ''Moral Education''. New York: Dover, p.179-180.</ref>
-Durkheim touches on a point later made by democratic education writer [[George Dennison]] in ''The Lives of Children'': much social regulation that exists in free society takes place in the course of maintaining our relationships with each other. Our desire to cultivate friendships, engender respect, and maintain what Dennison terms ‘natural authority’ encourages us to act in socially acceptable ways (i.e. culturally informed practices of fairness, honesty, congeniality, etc.):
-:''The children will feel closer to the adults, more secure, more assured of concern and individual care. Too, their self-interest will lead them into positive relations with the natural authority of adults, and this is much to be desired, for natural authority is a far cry from authority that is merely arbitrary. Its attributes are obvious: adults are larger, are experienced, possess more words, have entered into prior agreements among themselves. When all this takes on a positive instead of a merely negative character, the children see the adults as protectors and as sources of certitude, approval, novelty, skills. In the fact that adults have entered into prior agreements, children intuit a seriousness and a web of relations in the life that surrounds them. If it is a bit mysterious, it is also impressive and somewhat attractive; they see it quite correctly as the way of the world, and they are not indifferent to its benefits and demands.<ref>Dennison, G. (1999). ''The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School''. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 24-5.</ref>
-Durkheim, however, uses this point in the service of an argument for [[social fact]]s to be communicated through the authority of teachers in traditional formal schools rather than through the ‘natural’ social relations of democratic life. In fact, he continues his argument on the role of punishment, even the history of [[corporal punishment]], by demonstrating that it is the product of modern mass-education systems.
-Punishment has not always been utilized to ‘teach’ the right ways of being a member of society. In fact Durkheim cites a number of ethnographies of various hunter-gatherer groups in demonstrating that ‘primitive’ societies in fact effectively socialized their children without the use of punishment in formal education systems. This evidence has since been confirmed and expanded.<ref>Gray, P., & Ogas, J. (1999). ''Summary of results of a survey on hunter-gatherer children’s play''. Unpublished manuscript, Boston College.</ref><ref>Gray, P. Nature’s powerful tutors: The educative functions of free play and exploration. ''Eye on Psi Chi'', 12 (#1), 18-21. 2007. <http://www.psichi.org/Pubs/Articles/Article_645.aspx></ref>
-Durkheim’s ultimate point is that modern societies are so complex—so much more complex than primitive hunter-gatherer societies—and the roles individuals must fill in society are so varied that formal mass-education is necessary to instill social solidarity and what he terms ‘secular morality’.
-:''True education begins only when the moral and intellectual culture acquired by man has become complex and plays too important a part in the whole of the common life to leave its transmission from one generation to the next to the hazards of circumstance. Hence, the elders feel the need to intervene, to bring about themselves the transmission of culture by epitomizing their experiences and deliberately passing on ideas, sentiments, and knowledge from their minds to those of the young.''
-The dawn of civilization coincided with the dawn of a self-conscious reproduction of social values deemed necessary or essential for social solidarity:
-:''In a word, civilization has necessarily somewhat darkened the child’s life, rather than drawing him spontaneously to instruction as Tolstoy claimed. If, further, one reflects that at this point in history violence was common, that it did not seem to affront anyone’s conscience, and that it alone had the necessary efficacy for influencing rougher natures, then one can easily explain how the beginnings of culture were signaled by the appearance of corporeal punishment''.
-[[Michel Foucault]] took up the issue of corporeal punishment in his famous works on ‘total institutions.’ In ''[[Discipline and Punish]]'', focusing primarily on prisons but including modern schools, Foucault described the transformation of violence since the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] from a public spectacle to something much more subtle and insidious. Foucault argues that modern schools are used to transmit ideas to the young by claiming a privileged position to declare what is true, normal, and healthy. Rather than resorting to the violence that Durkheim detailed since the dawn of modern mass-education, Foucault argues that [[corporeal punishment]] has simply been replaced by forces much more difficult to notice than the force of blows and the whip of belts.<ref>Foucault, M. (1991). ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison''. New York: Random House</ref>
-[[Democratic schools]] attempt to avoid any form of overt or covert enculturation outside the democratic process. Recognizing that one's 'natural authority' in the eyes of children is ultimately dependent on one's authenticity, teachers at democratic schools avoid tricks and enticements to induce any learning that isn't requested or desired. The only [[socialization]] that takes place explicitly is that recognized by the process of democratic deliberation. The fact that a group of individuals—students and staff—must live, learn, and work together in the same space requires a system of governance. That system, as is the case in most countries and communities that respect principles of human equality, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness, is a form of [[direct democracy]].
 === Cognitive ===