
Make School a Democracy - credo
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/make-school-a-democracy.html
======
briandear
Of course in China and Korea, schools are run like dictatorships and the
students there outperform most of the world. The type of school isn't the
issue, it's the involvement of the parents. Try this self governing concept at
some inner city school where being "smart" is considered "acting white." The
problem with schools is sometimes structural, but nearly always cultural. Look
at achievement levels of first gen Asian American student whose parents often
arrived in the U.S. not speaking a word of English and with just the clothes
on their back. Also compare DC schools that spend almost $30k per year per
student and yet DC schools aren't even in the same universe as Sidwell Friends
where tuition is $35k per year. How is Sidwell able to be an ultra elite
school providing top notch education while DC schools spend just $5k less and
are models of failure? My point is that money and new styles of doing things
doesn't compensate for disengaged parents and certain cultures that don't
value education as highly.

~~~
jsnk
US ranks number 1 among OECD nations in annual expenditure per student by
educational institutions, and yet they produce one of the least educated
students in OECD nations. Why is this the case? If funding is the problem as
"experts" say it is, why is it that countries that spend fractions of what US
spends yield better students?

It seems like you are right. It's just another year, another scheme to ask for
more money in education.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Politics, lack of trust in teachers and standarized tests, which tend to
average-out everyone - i.e. they bring everyone up to a mediocre level, at the
cost of eliminating those actually good at something.

~~~
saraid216
Did you mean to have a comma in between "teachers" and "and"? I'm having
trouble interpreting your comment.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes. I meant (lack of trust in teachers) and (standarized tests).

------
AndrewKemendo
Every decade or so someone comes along and makes a "new kind of school" based
around the concept of self-directed, community supported learning [1] and
thinks it's new.

Montessori[2] wrote the book on this approach, has been around a long time and
has been rigorously studied in practice.

This is not a novel concept. What we need to be doing is getting away from the
hierarchical institutional model for governance which drives most schools into
being either pre-jail or pre-industry subsidized holding pens for children
while adults go do "real work."

Making schooling "democratic" while the rest of a nation remains un-democratic
is like pissing in the ocean.

[1]Summerhill, Waldorf etc...
[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education)

~~~
saraid216
> Making schooling "democratic" while the rest of a nation remains un-
> democratic is like pissing in the ocean.

Not a bad idea, because it does no actual harm, and at the very least,
relieves pressure on your bladder?

~~~
MarkPNeyer
pissing in the ocean is wonderful.

the sense of community, your body leaving you to rejoin the great beyond. the
barrier between self and other is always murky - and taking a piss in the
ocean brings that murkiness right up to the front of your awareness.

10/10

------
politician
"Poor children in developing nations often drop out after a year or two
because their families don’t see the relevance of the education they’re
getting. These youngsters are more likely to stay in school than their
counterparts in conventional schools."

Reaffirming that success in school is largely due to parental support --
including approval of the methods.

It seems that these children are being provided education packaged in such a
way that their presumably under-educated parents will accept in order to
maximize parental involvement which maximizes positive outcomes -- a fantastic
application of creative eduction: teach the parents and the children.

I wonder if children attending schools where the majority of their classmates'
parents have an education at the 90th percentile have the best outcomes.
That's the promise of private schools for the children of the ultra-wealthy,
right?

~~~
badsock
The thing I don't like about the parental support argument is that I don't see
it offering any avenues for improvement.

I have a hard time believing that these massive multi-billion dollar
organizations full of trained professionals apparently can't have any impact
on outcomes because it's pre-determined before the students step into the
classroom.

~~~
sopooneo
There are various studies that show inner-city kids do much better when they
attend various full time summer education programs. I have a strong feeling
the benefit is not what these programs provide, but what they prevent: time
spent in dysfunctional neighborhoods and households.

This is just a thought on why multi-billion dollar organizations might run
into decreasing marginal return on education dollars spent to help the
children uneducated families.

------
miles
For a school that has been operating as a real democracy since the 1960's,
check out Sudbury Valley:
[http://www.sudval.com/01_abou_05.html](http://www.sudval.com/01_abou_05.html)

~~~
nevinera
There are dozens of 'democratic schools' (many of which do self-describe as
'sudbury' schools) operating -
[http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.org/](http://sudburyschoolofatlanta.org/) is
the one near me.

------
aaron695
> A 1992 World Bank evaluation of Colombia’s schools concluded that poor
> youngsters educated this way — learning by doing, rather than being
> endlessly drilled for national exams — generally outperformed their better-
> off peers in traditional schools.

Given learning by 'doing' is known to be worse I wonder if they have hit some
sort of local maxima.

~~~
atallcostsky
"Given learning by 'doing' is known to be worse I wonder if they have hit some
sort of local maxima."

I'm curious - would you be able to expand on this? I find that I prefer
learning by doing projects, building, etc as opposed to reading/problem
sets/etc. Has there been research to compare the two approaches?

~~~
aaron695
I tend to think learning by doings main issue is it wastes time.

If as an adult you don't have a lot to learn doing is fun so why not. But if
you want to train hard, back to boring.

There's different research out there, basically the doing side was introduced
without research hence the scramble to work out the better method.

I think it is compounded by the fact experimental schools often do better,
since they are putting in effort. A known performance enhancer.

[http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/08/21/math-wars-rote-
memor...](http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/08/21/math-wars-rote-memorization-
plays-crucial-role-in-teaching-students-how-to-solve-complex-calculations-
study-says/)

->

[http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n9/abs/nn.3788.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n9/abs/nn.3788.html)

------
Guthur
This sounds more like a cooperative than democracy.

Democracy: A system of government in which power is vested in the people, who
rule either directly or through freely elected representatives.

Cooperative: 1\. working or acting together willingly for a common purpose or
benefit. 2\. demonstrating a willingness to cooperate :

~~~
saraid216
1) You copied the wrong definition for cooperative.

It's "a farm, business, or other organization that is owned and run jointly by
its members, who share the profits or benefits."

2) The article mentions John Dewey, but doesn't really get into who he is. I
strongly recommend reading his book, "Democracy and Education".

As a taste:

"A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space
of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has
to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of
others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking
down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men
from perceiving the full import of their activity."

[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-
new2?id=DewDemo....](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-
new2?id=DewDemo.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=7&division=div1)

~~~
Guthur
I left the farm/business one out intentionally because I thought it might
bring some confusion.

I still stand by my point; cooperative is a much less ambiguous term for this,
and I think what John Dewey describes is one as well.

Words are important and taken on face value people may extrapolate that it's
the government type, democracy, that will bring better education. When in my
opinion it's a cooperative environment, peer review, meaningful engagement and
a sense of ownership.

Edit: For me a democratic schooling would be voting for the teacher you would
like to have; which will be the popularity contest most such competitions
devolve to.

~~~
saraid216
> Words are important and taken on face value people may extrapolate that it's
> the government type, democracy, that will bring better education. When in my
> opinion it's a cooperative environment, peer review, meaningful engagement
> and a sense of ownership.

The problem here, I think, is that the notion of democracy is largely
misunderstood. Many people are afraid of the term because it's been abused so
badly.

Your description of a "cooperative" isn't any different from a democracy. So
the issue isn't which word is better. It's whether you want to improve all of
society or just schools.

> Edit: For me a democratic schooling would be voting for the teacher you
> would like to have; which will be the popularity contest most such
> competitions devolve to.

I think that's a massive conflation of "democracy" with "election". There's a
school near where I live where the teachers pitch classes and the students
vote on which ones are offered for the quarter (might have the interval
wrong). This is democratic to me.

------
ygmelnikova
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the
average voter." \- Winston Churchill

~~~
chimeracoder
For what it's worth, that's not actually Churchill, though it's frequently
attributed to him[0].

Nevertheless, it's an appropriate remark.

[0]
[https://richardlangworth.com/democracy](https://richardlangworth.com/democracy)

