Democratic education is a type of formal education organized democratically, allowing students to manage their own learning and participate in the governance of their educational environment. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with students' voices equal to teachers'.
Democratic education must be distinguished from civic education. Although there are overlaps, civic education concerns the study of the theoretical, political, and practical aspects of (democratic) citizenship, as well as its rights and duties. In contrast, democratic education presupposes that the educational setting is organized democratically.
History The history of democratic education spans from at least the 17th century. While it is associated with many individuals, there has been no central figure, institution, or nation that advocated for democratic education.Provenzo, E.F. Jr. (ed) (2008) Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. p 238.
Theory In 1693, John Locke published Some Thoughts Concerning Education. 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.Locke, John (1692) Some Thoughts Concerning Education, para 73.1.
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.Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1904), Émile ou l'éducation, Garnier Frères, Paris, page 197: "… si nous trouvons que ce travail n'est bon à rien, nous ne le reprendrons plus." He was to enjoy his lessons and learn to rely on his own judgment and experience. "The tutor must not lay down precepts, he must let them be discovered",Rousseau 1904, page 22: "Il ne doit pas donner des préceptes, il doit les faire trouver." wrote Rousseau, and urged him not to make Émile learn science, but let him discover it.Rousseau 1904, page 173: "Qu'il n'apprenne pas la science, qu'il l'invente" 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.Rousseau 1904, page 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
John Dewey is considered one of the most influential American educationalists. He argued for progressive education, for an education to prepare for democracy, and founded the University of Chicago laboratory schools to test and evaluate his progressive education ideas in practice.
His views on education were influential in the emerging educational movement; they emphasized the importance of implementing democratic procedures in schools and the crucial role schools play in a democratic culture by educating citizens to maintain a healthy democracy. He tried out some of his ideas at his Chicago laboratory school.
Practice The Laboratory School (1896-1903), founded by John Dewey, implemented democratic practices through a highly participatory approach to education, where students were actively involved in planning their learning activities, setting goals, and evaluating their progress. Rather than traditional top-down instruction, teachers served as guides and facilitators, encouraging students to engage in collaborative projects and group decision-making. The school organized learning around practical activities such as cooking, carpentry, and gardening, fostering cooperation and shared responsibility. Regular community meetings included students in school decisions, while project-based learning encouraged students to work together to solve real-world problems. This approach created a miniature democratic community where students learned not just academic subjects, but also developed democratic habits through direct experience with collaborative problem-solving, shared decision-making, and social responsibility.
At least since the existence of democratic states in the modern era, educators, politicians, and activists have experimented with democratic environments for children in orphanages, children's republics, and schools.
Children's republics While educational ideas of the past were mostly directed to upper-class children, educationalists such as Léonard Bourdon and William George tried to provide educational opportunities for all, especially the lower classes. They aimed to protect and foster democratic and ethical values.
They organized children and young people in children's homes in a way that they were familiar with from their respective democratic states (France after the French Revolution and the USA). In other words, they applied democratic structures, creating a kind of small republic for children and teenagers. While Bourdon's Societe d'emulation was quickly closed due to the conservative reactionary period, the George Junior Republic still exists today (albeit with a different concept) and started the successful tradition of democratic education in children's republics and Democratic Schools.
Inside their institution, the children of George Junior Republic had almost the same rights as American citizens. They elected two chambers of Congress (the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate) and could earn money by working on the republic's land. Courts and police-like entities dealt with problems among the "citizens" and could even send them to their own prison.
Hundreds of junior republics were created in the US and other countries based on this model. At one of these offshoots, the Ford Republic, Homer Lane developed an educationally supported and in many ways milder model of the George Junior Republic. Homer Lane later brought this concept to England and influenced A. S. Neill and his Summerhill School.
In 1921, Summerhill was founded as a boarding school and the first school in which students and teachers had an equal vote in nearly all school matters.
In 1912, Janusz Korczak founded Dom Sierot, the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, which was run on democratic lines. In 1940, Dom Sierot was forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto and in 1942, Korczak accompanied all his charges to the gas-chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp.Korczak, Janusz (1991), Von Kindern und anderen Vorbildern, Güterslohe Verlagshaus (translated from the Polish), page 78.Korczak, Janusz (1979) Von Kindern und anderen Vorbildern, Güterslohe Verlagshaus, pages 82–83.
Korczak published many books, had a radio program, where he talked with children and garnered considerable press attention with his partly democratically run orphanage Dom Sierot. With his advocacy for children's rights pointing in the direction of democratic education, he influenced the children's rights movement and the public view of children, parenting and childcare.
Alternative Free Schools The definition and scope of schools self-classified as "free schools" and their associated movement were never clearly delineated, resulting in wide variation among schools.
As an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy emphasized the freedom and empowerment of the lower classes through education and the experience of self-organization and freedom at school. The first alternative free school in history was most likely his school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana (Russia).
At the beginning of the 20th century, the first wave of the progressive educational movement – influenced in part by earlier educational experiments and political philosophies, e.g., from Jean Jacques Rousseau and Pestalozzi – created a variety of concepts and schools in which students had significantly more autonomy in their education and daily lives than in traditional schools. Some of these schools invited children to take part in the decision-making process inside the school.
The school Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap was founded in 1926 in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, by Kees and Beatrice Boeke. Its concept is based on the Quaker principle of consensus decision-making, meaning that children and teachers have an equal say in most affairs concerning the daily school life. The Werkplaats student Gerard Endenburg further developed the consensus culture and created the model of sociocracy, which was later implemented in so-called sociocratic schools, predominantly in the Netherlands.
Francisco Ferrer founded the Barcelona Modern School based on anarchist values. It served as a role model for at least 100 anarchist free schools worldwide. Most of them were based in Spain, Latin America, and the US. Although many were closed in Spain owing to the defeat of the Spanish anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and in the US for other reasons, some of their students would later help establish alternative schools in the US during the 1960s Free School Movement. Francisco Ferrer influenced the still-existing school Paideia in Mérida (Spain). Paideia is an anarchist school that promotes student freedom inside the school, allows classrooms to decide for themselves what they want to learn, and lets students participate in the rule-making process.
A widespread movement of free schools developed in the 1960s, inspired by A. S. Neill's publications on his Summerhill School, George Dennison's publications on the progressive First Street School, and the general progressive climate of the 1970s. This movement was largely renounced during the conservative period of the 1980s.Although most alternative free schools would not describe themselves as Democratic Schools based on the definition of the term, many foster democratic student participation in the learning process and the running of the school. Other influential Democratic Schools are the Sudbury Valley School, with its many spin-off Sudbury Schools, and the Hadera Democratic School, which was the first school to use the term "Democratic School".
Democratic School Democratic Schools are a type of alternative free school that are much more delineated. They combine radical freedom of learning with (almost) equal participation of teachers and pupils in all matters of everyday school life.
Learning in a job environment
Agile learning generally refers to the transfer of agile methods of project work (deriving out of the Agile Manifesto 2001), to learning processes. It is mostly used in job context and originates from software development, but is also used in university and school contexts (so-called Agile Learning Center. Organizational hierarchies (unlike knowledge hierarchies) are rather low or non-existent, and decisions within the learning environment are often made collectively using the consent method.
Unschooling
Nowadays, a minority of children in the Western world are homeschooled. Among Western countries, the US most likely has the highest rate of homeschoolers. The researcher Peter Gray estimates that around 10% of so-called "unschoolers", students who are free to choose how and what they want to learn and who organize their lives and learning processes with their family and/or other unschoolers based on democratic principles [....unfinished sentence].
Universities and adult education programs