Education for Democracy: reasons and strategies

Abstract

According to social scientists Herfried Münkler in Germany and Colin Crouch in England, major developments in Western industrial societies — individualism, increasing social complexity, globalisation — present serious threats to basic requirements of stable societies and expose democracy to the corrosion of its socio‐moral resources such as social trust and civic commitment to the public good. In order to grow and to flourish, the competences and capabilities that constitute these resources require systematic cultivation through educational processes.The school is the only institution that can provide the appropriate experience of a democratic life to all members of society. At present, however, schools are generally far from this goal.This article describes strategies for providing the experience of schools as democratic lifeworlds from an early age: classroom councils as tools for democratic self government and sites for sociomoral learning; projects of service learning in the community which can be successfully organized by these councils; and early experiences of civic engagement in community contexts as part of democratic classroom practice.