Talk:Democratic education

Merge from Democratic school
It looks like there's a significant overlap, since all democratic schools are forms of democratic education. -- Explodicle (T/C) 15:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The two articles form a parent/child relationship between topics. There is a clear need for differentiation between the two. • Freechild   'sup?   03:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * In that case, can't we just make a Democratic school section within Democratic education? They're both very short articles, and someone interested in one would likely be interested in both. -- Explodicle (T/C) 20:44, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Democratic education is a broad theory about education and learning, and this article can be greatly expanded. The democratic schools article, while being one approach toward democratic ed, can also be greatly expanded, such that two separate articles seems to make the most sense. --Dana.Bennis (talk) 17:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, I took down the merge templates. Good luck with the expansion effort! -- Explodicle (T/C) 17:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Collapsed Theory w/ Rationale & Goals + Criticism
I merged these three sections together for two primary reasons: a) Theory and Rationale & Goals didn't seem significantly distinct to justify two sections. They both included theories justifying democratic education and practice including theoretical assumptions and goals; and b) I read the article in the Criticism section and it was actually a bit more nuanced than the description indicated. I expanded the argument made by the author and included it in the Political Theory section. I didn't delete any information, only rearranged it and expanded it.

That said, there needs to be a Criticism section in the future with more substantial arguments from those who do not accept the assumptions of constructivist learning theorists, democracy theorists, non-compulsory education theorists, and democratic education theorists generally. I will do my best, but I will need help. Thanks. Maguire09 (talk) 19:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd love to help with much of this site, including the criticism section (e.g. E.D. Hirsch, Ravitch, even someone like Alfie Kohn who is against the idea of excessive freedom.). Though the description of democratic education itself can also be expanded, especially adding a history section and expanding the practice section. --Dana.Bennis

Democratic Education and Democratic Schools
I'm concerned that this article too narrowly defines democratic education as that form of education practiced in democratic schools. As someone else mentioned in the discussion section of the Democratic School article, democratic education seems to me to be broader than this. Democratic education could rather be defined as education based on the same democratic values we practice as a democratic society. Therefore the heading of democratic education would pertain to various approaches and settings that bring in the values of engagement, participation, and self-determination to the learning process. Democratic schools a la Summerhill and Sudbury Valley would then be one way in which to practice democratic education, as would schools that may not be as "pure" in their freedom for students but still have significant choice and participatory decision-making, as well as teachers who are in conventional settings and bring in some choice and shared decision-making, and even non-profit and community-based education programs that value the input and participation of young people in their learning and decision-making.

Does this make sense? Could it lead to a more nuanced and scholarly article? --Dana.Bennis —Preceding undated comment added 18:40, 18 October 2009 (UTC).

I strongly agree with these comments. I have been working on the current article and have found that I would like to see it completely rewritten. For example, this is my suggestion for the first paragraph:

Democratic education is a worldwide movement towards greater involvement of school students in the running of their own schools. There is no generally agreed definition of the term, but at the Berlin IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) in 2005 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.

I am a newcomer to Wikipedia and would like some advice as to whether I should simply replace the current short paragraph with my own version and see what happens, or whether I should first wait for advice. Elbbirg (talk) 07:55, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello people. If nobody disagrees untill next week, I will write a Wikipedia article for 'Democratic Schools'. So we can later rewrite the 'Democratic education' article. As I see democratic schools as well as other editors here as one (important) part of democratic education, I think it is logic to make this page the overview site. Of course mentioning Democratic schools, but not as specific as right now. --Tiganitis (talk) 12:05, 6 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Dear @jeromeenriquez ,
 * I linked you here so for you to see the motivation of my "Democratic School" article. Altiflash (talk) 21:20, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jeromeenriquez Altiflash (talk) 21:21, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Schools should be democratic, not education
Sudbury schools contend that values, social justice and democracy included, must be learned through experience as Aristotle said: "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." They adduce that for this purpose schools must encourage ethical behavior and personal responsibility. In order to achieve these goals schools must allow students the three great freedoms—freedom of choice, freedom of action and freedom to bear the results of action—that constitute personal responsibility.


 * see also: Sudbury Valley School: Educational philosophy (search: responsibility/responsible)


 * References


 * --94.230.84.196 (talk) 21:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

New version of history
My alterations to the first paragraph of the entry on Democratic Education seem to have been either approved or unnoticed, so I would like to suggest a heavily revised and enlarged version of the history section. Would it be in order to replace the current history section with something like this? Elbbirg (talk) 09:32, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

John Locke
John Locke, the English philosopher, published Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1692. Section 73, paragraph 1 first sets out and then justifies one of the main principles of democratic education: “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. ” Although Locke writes a good deal about punishment, he believes it should be avoided as far as possible, and there are other comments that might well be part of a democratic school prospectus, for instance, “Few years require but few laws,” , “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,” 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.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel, Émile,was first published in 1762. It describes the supposedly ideal education of a young aristocrat, and includes many ideas that are still fundamental to the concept of democratic education. Émile, for instance, was only to learn what he could appreciate as useful. 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,” wrote Rousseau, and urged him not make Émile learn science, but let him discover it. 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, however, disqualifies himself as a democratic educator by advising the tutor to “Use force with children, and reason with men,” and wanting Émile to become quiet, resigned, docile and obedient.

Leo Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana
The first major writer with practical experience of democratic education was Leo Tolstoy who set up a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia in the late 19th century. He said that the school evolved freely from principles introduced by teachers and pupils. 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. 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. “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.” 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.

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 Treblinka. In the orphanage he formed a kind of republic for children with its own parliament, court, and a newspaper. 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.”

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 several influential books and he 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. Summerhill, which has seldom had more than seventy pupils at any one time, has had disproportionate influence.

Dartington Hall School
Dartington Hall School, another progressive boarding school in the UK, which ran from 1926 – 1987, had 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, and a relationship between staff and students that served as an inspiration for Sands School, which was founded immediately the Dartington school closed. Dartington in its heyday had over 300 students, aged between 3 and 18. Sands has a building that can only hold 70, but all are aged between 11 and 17.

Sudbury Valley School
Sudbury Valley School, a democratic school founded in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968, continues to be the model imitated by dozens of Sudbury schools around the world. Sudbury schools have no lessons, because young people learn more effectively when they are free to follow up their own interests, but there is a firm structure of rules, with a school meeting for general issues and a justice committee to deal with breaches of the school laws and decide on punishments. Daniel Greenberg (educator), one of the founders, has written many books about the school

The Pesta
The founded in Ecuador by  and  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. Rebeca Wild’s books, have had wide influence. Many Wild schools, as they were called, were founded in Europe, particularly in Austria.

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 a state school, unlike Sudbury, which charges fees, and it offers a rich timetable of lessons and activities.

International groupings
The number of democratic schools around the world has continued to grow, and since 1993 there has been an annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC), held in a different country each year. In 2010, the first EUDEC (European Democratic Education Conference) was held in Leipzig, Germany.

Response to Elbbirg's proposed additions
Since you asked, Elbbirg, here's my quick overview. I have no specific expertise in the field.

When you write that John Locke's work "justifies one of the main principles of democratic education", you need to cite a reliable secondary source that says that. When you say that Rousseau's novel "describes the supposedly ideal education of a young aristocrat, and includes many ideas that are still fundamental to the concept of democratic education" you need to cite a reliable secondary source that says that. When you say that Tolstoy was the "first major writer with practical experience of democratic education", you need to cite a reliable secondary source that says that. The quotes in the Tolstoy section (and any other quotes) MUST be referenced immediately after the close quotes. The section on Korczak should describe his impact on democratic education, based on what reliable secondary sources say. The section on Dartigan is unreferenced and doesn't say what the impact of the school has been more broadly. Reference 11 should be broken into several specific references to specific works, and references shouldn't say "among others". If the others are important, cite them. The section on the The Democratic School of Hadera is unreferenced.

As written, the section looks a lot like original research which is not appropriate for Wikipedia. Every claim which could conceivably be questioned or challenged by someone ought to be referenced to a reliable secondary source that supports that claim. We summarize what the reliable sources say about a topic instead of advancing our own personal understanding of the topic. Clearly, your own personal knowledge of the topic can inform and guide your search for the reliable sources, but verifiability is an essential Wikipedia policy, and citing reliable, independent secondary sources is the best way to ensure verifiability.  Cullen 328  Let's discuss it  17:45, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Revised version of new proposal for history, trying to meet Cullen's high standards
Here is a new version of my history proposal, with which I would like to replace the current version. Perhaps I should list the differences with the current article. I have added paragraphs about John Locke, Janusz Korczak, Dartington Hall School, The Pesta, the Democratic School of Hadera, AERO and International groupings. I have omitted the paragraph on John Dewey, who does not seem to me to have been a democratic educator, and very much shortened the paragraph about Summerhill, which consisted largely of an account of the school's victory over the government inspectors. There are other smaller alterations here and there. I am new to wikipedia, but unless there are negative comments here, what I would like to do is to replace the old version of the history with this new one, and wait to see whether there will be fresh improvements made. Does this seem appropriate? Elbbirg (talk) 12:01, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

John Locke
John Locke, the English philosopher, published Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1692. 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.” Although Locke writes a good deal about punishment, he believes it should be avoided as far as possible, and there are other comments relevant to the development of democratic education, for instance, “Few years require but few laws,” “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,” 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.”

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 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,” wrote Rousseau, and urged him not make Émile learn science, but let him discover it 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, however, also advises a tutor to “Use force with children, and reason with men,” 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.

Leo Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana
Leo Tolstoy set up a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia in the late 19th century. He said that the school evolved freely from principles introduced by teachers and pupils. 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. 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. 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.” http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/smmnsej/tolstoy/chap4.htm.

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. In the orphanage he formed a kind of republic for children with its own parliament and court. 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.” Korczak’s influence is spread by associations in many different countries, for instance Poland, Canada , and the Netherlands.

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.” 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 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.”

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 .” “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.” Daniel Greenberg (educator), one of the founders of the school, has written many books about it.

The Pesta
The founded in Ecuador by {{Ill|de|Rebeca Wild |Rebeca]] and {{Ill|de|Mauricio Wild|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. Rebeca Wild’s books, have had wide influence. Many Wild schools, as they are called, have been founded in Europe, particularly in Austria

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, and it offers a varied timetable of lessons and activities , 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 .” The first IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) was held at Hadera in 1993, and there are now more than twenty democratic schools in Israel. Yaacov Hecht also founded IDE, the Institute for Democratic Education, in Tel Aviv, and is developing the concept of Education Cities.

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 2010, the first EUDEC (European Democratic Education Conference) was held in Leipzig, Germany. In 2012 the AAPAE, (Australasian Association for Progressive and Alternative Education) changed its name to ADEC, The Australasian Democratic Education Community.

Very challenged page
This page is about democratic schools, not democratic education. It features little of the actually practices, instead placing individual circumstances before characteristics or activities. I have made some WP:BOLD edits, but much needs to be done here to move this from a vanity page for a few organizations towards a comprehensive, encyclopedic article about the topic. • Freechild talk 12:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Restoring Old Content
Which old content should be restored? (an infobox went up Oct 28, 2012 saying some old content might need restoring)

Here are the major deletions (at least 100 characters) in the 2 years before the infobox went up. All are from Aug, 2012 to Oct, 2012.

History
 * material deleted Oct 26, 2012, some reincorporated May 26, 2013 Throughme (talk) 22:50, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * sections shrunk on locke, tolstoy, rousseau, dom sierot
 * my opinion: add back the anti-democratic parts of locke, rousseau. add something (e.g. locke) about how kids flourish when spoken to intelligently. could add back Tolstoy's opinion that self-governance lets kids discover for themselves the necessity for governance
 * I looked again at Locke, Tolstoy and Rousseau. Rousseau is so not democratic: Yes he believed in discovery rather than lesson, but he instructed the tutor to "let him always think he is master while you are really master." p94 of Emile. Locke says to not let kids be obstinate or rebellious, but you can't be a pain in democratic schools, so it's not a criticism of democratic schools. I did add back his quote about kids being able to reason, and countered it with Rousseau's view that you can't reason with kids. Looking again at Tolstoy, enough is in the article as is. Throughme (talk) 22:50, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Culture theory
 * deleted Sept 4, 2012, distilled and reincorporated May 26, 2013 Throughme (talk) 20:41, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * long, rambling entry about Durkheim
 * in a nutshell (if i got it right): societies can get so complex that culture won't be transmitted unless elders compel the next generation
 * my opinion: a brief version could be included, with a counterargument that just because freedom isn't perfect it doesn't mean that compulsion is better (could find a David Friedman quote)

Learning about ethics & democracy by doing (actually titled Schools Should be Democratic, Not Education)
 * deleted Aug 16, 2012, Aristotle quote restored in a reference May 26, 2013 Throughme (talk) 20:50, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * references Dan Greenberg and Aristotle
 * this might already be sufficiently covered in the section on Civic Education
 * my opinion: the references could be added to the section on Civic Education

Practice (pedagogy and governance)
 * deleted Aug 16, 2012, part about play reincorporated May 26, 2013 Throughme (talk) 21:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * pedagogy: much of it is specific to kids who have self-determination within a fully democratically-run community
 * governance: much of it is specific to Sudbury schools
 * my opinion: the part about play could be included somewhere. is it generally true that little kids play a lot in democratic schools? could add a theory of play

History
 * material deleted Aug 9, 2012, some reincorporated on or in the weeks before May 26, 2013 Throughme (talk) 23:14, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Dewey removed, also Albany Free School, details about Summerhill's court case
 * my opinion: put back Dewey. Include Summerhill's court case in a new section on legal cases (include Boorobin getting shut down, and the current Dutch cases). Could mention Albany Free School in a new subsection of the Variation section, on economic variation (sliding scale down to zero?) or psychological variation (Reichian psychology, cf Sudbury Valley's attempt to not get into psychology)
 * Dewey is back, in the section Education in a Democracy. Summerhill's court case is back, in the section Legal Issues. Albany Free School's sliding scale is referenced in section Variation - Finance. Other things I considered adding I don't see reliable sources for. Throughme (talk) 23:14, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Throughme (talk) 01:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

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Link to Conflict resulution
In the section "Conflict resolution Within the purview of democratic values, there is wide scope for how conflicts are resolved. There may be a formal system, with due process and the rule of law.[31] There may be rules but no punishments.[32]" reference 32 is a wikilink to Sands School. The reason for this link is unclear because conflict resolution is not mentioned there. The reference should be replaced.--Eduevokrit (talk) 09:22, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

New article Democratic school
By following the discussion about the merge between Democratic Education and Democratic School I came to the conclusion to write the new article Democratic School. You can find it here in my Sandbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Democratic_schools

I added some parts of the "Democratic Education" article and adopted the table of content of the already existing "Democartic School" article in German. My plan is now to erase the specific parts here in this article that are already used in the new article and create links between the two articles. How is your opinion about this approach? --Altiflash (talk) 08:25, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I pinged you here, because you took part in the discussion before.


 * I moved your new section to the proper place at the bottom of earlier sections. Also, before pinging editors, check that activity status. Dana and Elbbirg have not edited in years. David notMD (talk) 11:43, 12 September 2021 (UTC)