Edited by Linda F. Nathan, Jonathan F. Mendonca, and Gustavo Rojas Ayala
This open access book explores democratic schools and learning environments globally. The book focuses on a newly developed framework for democratic education. The authors describe existing schools and concept schools—those that are ideas but not in operation. The first section includes the editors’ own journeys. Pillar 1 includes schools that emphasize the open flow of ideas and choices, regardless of their popularity. Pillar 2 maintains that it is impossible to have a high quality education that ignores equity. Chapters explore how many diverse ‘marginalized’ communities experience education and some innovations that hold great promise for inclusion. Pillar 3 provides examples of schools where active engagement, consensus and compromise support the ‘common good.’ Pillar 4 investigates schools which organize students, parents, social institutions and the larger community collaboratively to achieve its goals and to solve theirs and society’s most urgent challenges.
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Testimonials:
Schools should be vibrant examples of the societies we aspire to become. This book is a required read for those eager to figure out the what, the how, and the dilemmas of turning schools into places where young people learn, think and act in the ways required to ensure that the world that’s coming is substantively better than the one we’re leaving behind.
—Santiago Rincón-Gallardo, and author of Liberating Learning: Educational Change as Social Movement
I was delighted to see in this book a myriad of examples of schools, groups and communities around the world that, like Escuela Nueva, are finding ways to prepare children and youth to learn and practice democracy as a fundamental and integral part of their experience in school. This work is crucial if education is to become an effective vehicle to create a better world.
—Vicky Colbert, Founder and Executive Director of Fundación Escuela Nueva
At a time when democracy is under attack across the globe it is important to consider how education can be used as a resource to revive and preserve it. Building Democratic Schools is an essential guide that can be used by educators to understand how this is being done right now, in several schools throughout the world. Written by the educators who have committed themselves to this important work, through these chapters we gain insights into how democratic educational practice can nurture democratic values and behavior among students. For those who seek to learn from the experiences and insights of educators who model what they believe, this book will be a source of inspiration.
—Pedro A. Noguera, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Education, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies