Schools are a reflection of the society in which they are situated. The reverse is also true: society reflects the kind and quality of its schools. This book examines this relationship by looking at democratic learning environments across the globe in radically different settings.

As of 2020, nearly 90% of the world’s population has completed primary schooling (Statista Research Department, 2022). The past century, particularly the last two decades, has witnessed a proliferation of schools and learning environments across the globe. Education is considered to be both a “right” and “duty” of citizens in most countries. Globally, many citizens expect governments to ensure access to basic education (right of citizens) and citizens of most countries are mandated by law to attain education up to a certain level (duty of citizens) (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, n.d.). Arguably, education is seen as a fundamental human right. In order to thriveFootnote 1 in society, to achieve well-being and one’s potential, education is a key ingredient (Elvin, 1966). Moreover, education is often described as an indispensable ingredient for the social and economic prosperity to which most societies aspire (ibid.). All these factors explain why more children and youth attend school than ever before. Globally, there are over 1.3 billion school-aged children attending schools (Statista, 2022). This number is roughly equal to one-fifth of the world’s population, and thus has enormous potential to determine the social, economic, and cultural parameters of growth and development in our societies.

The massive growth of literacy rates over the past two centuries from a mere 12% in the 1800s to currently over 85% reflects the power of education systems to equip individuals with basic tools to develop their full potential. With aspirations to build stronger economies and more democratic societies, the second half of the twentieth century saw literacy and math skills become a global priority. However, the issue of quality remains hotly debated, especially when addressing the dynamic needs of digital economies and the quest for social and economic equity. The World Bank has highlighted that even though access to education has significantly increased in most countries, being in school does not imply that children are learning what they need to in order to thrive in the twenty-first century (The World Bank, 2019). Hundreds of millions of children are unable to perform simple reading, comprehension, and mathematical tasks expected of their grade level and 90% of children in “low income” countries are anticipated to graduate without the skills required to thrive in the twenty-first century (Winthrop & McGivney, 2015).

The challenge today may be less about access and more about how we learn and what we learn. Furthermore, the skills of critical thinking, self-directed learning, collaboration, and effective communication—tenets of deeper learning—remain woefully under-developed. This results in negative economic and social consequences for individuals and societies. The recent report by UNESCO’s International Commission, “Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education (2021),” recognizes the power of education to reimagine why, how, what, where, and when we learn. It calls for educators and governments across the world to commit to an education that is “grounded in human rights and based on principles of non-discrimination, social justice, respect for life, human dignity, and cultural diversity.”

In the context of this book, this means a renewed focus on democratic schooling and learning environments. Here, the word “democratic” does not refer to “big D” Democracy in a parliamentary or governmental context. We are using the word “democratic” to describe a culture that views young people, teachers, families, and communities as key decision-makers in how schools contribute to fulfilling the goal of improving communities and addressing seemingly intractable challenges.

However, we recognize that the democratic vision is not always put into practice because we’ve never agreed on the purpose of education. Scholars and students, alike, wrestle with the goals of education: economic and social mobility, the importance of developing a participatory citizenry, learning to read, getting along with those different from you, finding hope, and more recently connecting with nature and the environment all compete as valid reasons to be educated. These varied goals also reflect disagreements about how to measure educational success or achievement. This is reflected in the current focus on high-stakes testing. For example, some believe that standardized tests are the only genuine measure of quality (Rothstein et al., 2008). This has often resulted in schools being places of reproduction and control in order to guarantee optimal learning (Giroux, 2020). Teachers and children are told what to do, what to learn, and even how to act.

Many of the authors included in this book maintain that education should be a liberatory experience (Love, 2019). Powerful learning occurs through debate and disagreement. Young people are encouraged to be self-directed. The teacher is seen as a coach not as a sage on the stage. Learning is co-constructed by teachers and students. Power and control is distributed throughout the institution. Schools pay attention to equity and the voices and needs of all members of the community.

This book identifies and showcases schools and educational programs across the world that have been designed and implemented with the aim of creating spaces where students can learn rigorously, express themselves, and participate in building the society that they desire. We hope to inspire a movement of educators and school designers who will create more democratic schools and programs. Our aim is to provide a global perspective that can deepen our understanding of how we can continue to grapple with our uncertain future and, at the same time, propose solutions to current threats. Our authors are passionate educators, writing about what they have experienced and what they aspire to do, always in the hope of inspiring others.

The Global Need for Democratic Education

Today, our world confronts many evolving humanitarian challenges, and empowering all students to contribute their perspectives to solutions is a shared global goal. The scale and global nature of these challenges have created an urgent need for open communication, cooperation, equity, freedom, renewed community relationships, and a commitment to a common good. These are the cornerstones of a democratic education. The common good creates a shared experience in which all benefit according to their need, often referred to as equity. Schools can contribute to the common good by becoming places where students, teachers, and families develop the tools and capacities to positively engage in shaping the society to which they belong. We know that people have more access to knowledge and tools than ever before and yet, as the UNESCO Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (2021) report reminds us, a “more peaceful, just and sustainable future” is still elusive. Schools and society need to re-write their “social contract,” advancing the common good (International Commission on the Futures of Education, 2021). Drawing inspiration from the report and from the experiences of co-authors from sixteen different countries, this book aims to empower fellow educators, as well as leaders from the public and the private sectors, to reimagine possibilities.

Why This Book?

This book reflects the increasing demand for schools to better prepare children for the twenty-first century. Assuming there exists one K–12 educational institution for every one thousand people globally, educators will require the resources to (re)design seven million schools.Footnote 2

Just as our authors come from a wide range of backgrounds, so do our three co-editors. Linda has been teaching a course called Building Democratic Schools at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since 2000. She also founded and led three different democratic schools in Boston, MA. In the fall semester of 2021 Linda received a note in her inbox from two students who stated, “There are so many of us from the Global South, and we need better schools—particularly schools that reflect democratic practices.” That was how she met Gustavo and Jonathan, two graduate students, both in their final semester working toward their Masters in International Education Policy at Harvard. Jonathan and Gustavo had experience working with large-scale education systems and schools as well as leading civil society organizations in India and Latin America, respectively. They knew the challenges involved in driving change in schools. And so, the idea for this book was born. The three editors came together with the sole purpose of creating a book highlighting the stories, experiences, and obstacles of pursuing globally democratic schools that would spearhead a movement.

Our Approach: What Constitutes a Democratic Learning Environment?

As we began our deliberations about this book, we focused our discussions on what constituted a “democratic” learning environment. We also reflected on how the concept of “democracy” can differ due to culture, political governance, gender, available resources, and philosophical queries related to individual and collective freedom. We discussed how in the Western world, freedom is often associated with individual liberty. In non-Western societies, freedom is a more collective endeavor.

As these tensions and questions emerged, we reached out to educators who might be interested in collectively creating a book about democratic schools. We invited over seventy educators, students, and leaders from eighteen countries to contribute their personal descriptions of the schools they have taught in, attended, designed, and led and the need for democratic schooling in their context. Once a large number of them said yes, we asked authors to respond to two questions: “What does a democratic learning environment mean to you/in your context? And, why do you consider your school a democratic school?” From the initial group of proposals, we received over thirty draft essays from a broad range of leaders. In addition to providing some context on the state of education in their country, these authors describe the initial motivations and missions that fueled the creation of their schools or organizations. They also reflect on the most relevant design decisions they made over the course of their involvement in their projects and share both the impact of these decisions and the lessons learned. Some authors participated with chapters about concept schools—schools that are still an idea and not yet built. All co-authors have participated as peer reviewers and thought partners with their colleagues by providing feedback to at least one other chapter. In addition, we engaged a few authors as our consultants to validate both the introductory and the final chapter of the book. The process of creating the book has been an opportunity to live by democratic values: we engaged the community of co-authors in several discussions and decisions.

John Dewey, an early philosopher of democratic schooling, centered the following in his work: democracy is how much people have in common, interact, honor differences, learn from listening, and find agreement (Dewey, 1916). Nearly a hundred years later, New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the 2022 Harvard University graduation, attended by Linda, Gustavo, and Jonathan, stated how in her experience leading a country, “We are richer for our differences and poorer for our divisions.” The schools, districts, and models outlined in this book demonstrate what happens when the conditions for a democratic conversation about designing schools and learning environments that include the voices of young people are created. For a year, we studied these experiences, learned together, critiqued one another’s ideas, and listened to our students. Through all this work, we built a framework to think, reflect, and write about democratic education. A contribution stemming from our aspiration to celebrate diversity as a way to search for and build a “common ground” big enough to fit students from Egypt and from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Emergent Framework for Democratic Learning Environments

As our editorial discussions became progressively more centered on the contribution of our co-authors, we deepened our understanding of the tensions and challenges that emerge when promoting democratic education. Furthermore, as we explored the diversity of experiences from the book’s co-authors, we realized we needed an overarching structure in which to ground the content included in the book. We wanted the chapters to “speak” to one another with some more coherence. With this in mind, we offered all co-authors a set of four central questions and a framework to guide their thinking and writing as they further developed their chapters. The questions were rooted in our years of work and experience, readings, research, and explorations as educators, as well as the courses that Linda had taught and Jonathan and Gustavo had taken.

Book’s Central Questions

  1. 1.

    What does democratic schooling mean in various global contexts?

  2. 2.

    How do schools actualize liberty, equity, community, and collaboration in their local contexts?

  3. 3.

    How do schools manage and evolve to meet the moment; reflect the voice, values, and goals of their communities; and draw on community resources and funds of knowledge?

  4. 4.

    How does democratic schooling prepare students for an unpredictable future?

The questions also helped us define an emergent framework for democratic learning environments. We concluded that these pillars need to be present to consider a school or program “democratic.” We also believe that the presence of this framework is a contribution to solving the debate of what constitutes “good” schools. The framework is not meant to be used in a linear fashion; rather, it is offered as an opportunity to explore and gather some consensus on key attributes for living and breathing the values inherent in democratic learning environments. As we continued with this project, these questions and the four pillars of the framework also became the tool we used to review our own work and to provide feedback to one another.

Emergent Framework for Democratic Schools

  1. 1.

    Democratic education emphasizes the open flow of ideas and choices, regardless of their popularity. Students and teachers have the space to express themselves without limiting the rights of others. Democratic learning environments create safe and empowering spaces to enable all voices and perspectives to be heard.

  2. 2.

    Democratic education is a high-quality equitable education and is accessible to and inclusive of all people. Democratic learning environments are rigorous, identity affirming, and culturally inclusive. These environments have an intentional focus on issues of equity and hold students to high expectations while respecting students’ intersectional identities and varied cultural values and beliefs.

  3. 3.

    Democratic education contributes to the “common good” through active engagement, consensus, and compromise. Democratic learning environments enable critical and compassionate dialogue, active listening, and reflection toward the advancement of society. Students and teachers develop the ability to communicate, debate, and synthesize multiple points of view to make decisions. The respect and protection of each other’s humanity and dignity is ever-present in support of a more just society.

  4. 4.

    Democratic schools organize students, parents, social institutions, and the larger community collaboratively to achieve its goals and to solve theirs and society’s most urgent challenges. Democracies are collective projects. Collective decision-making structures, practices, and policies must be maintained over time and updated when needed. Democratic learning environments continually welcome and value all voices and reflect on process and outcomes, considering the challenges of our times and our unpredictable future.

A Roadmap to Explore This Book

As we began to review the proposed chapters, the framework and its corresponding pillars served as an overarching structure to edit individual chapters and categorize them thematically. Needless to say, no co-author wrote their chapters aiming at prioritizing one pillar over another. In fact, readers will probably identify many of the four pillars present in the chapters. We hope this editorial decision facilitates how readers interact and engage with the content of this large book and provides a coherent experience.

Pillar 1: Democratic Education Emphasizes the Open Flow of Ideas and Choices, Regardless of Their Popularity

Including every voice means providing ongoing opportunities to genuinely consider diverse voices, within boundaries of mutual respect and organizational coherence. This is illustrated in the chapter by Trinidad Aguilar, Bárbara Elmúdesi, and Rolf Hitschfeld, especially in how they describe the implementation of strategies such as dialogue circles and spaces for students to self-govern aspects of the daily activities in Kopernikus School (Chile). Many times, creating spaces for the open flow of ideas ends up leading communities to the realization that they are affected by systemic oppressions. In response, Kassandra Infante M.Ed. and Dr. Marianela Rivera claim that individuals and communities need to learn to transform into activists, an effort they have experienced through the HomePlace Collective in Lawrence, Massachusetts (USA). We also describe attempts to create spaces to build a democratic education in ways that are mindful of cultural and even spiritual differences, creating interesting opportunities to explore unsolved tensions and dilemmas. This happens in Fatima Aizaz’s concept school (Pakistan), where she addresses ideas that are not commonly seen together such as the development of soul and academic growth. Similarly, Malak Arafa has designed a Community School intended to be Egypt’s first socioeconomically integrated, bilingual school. Demetrius Fuller presents the HOMies, a novel framework that uses arts as a pathway for intellectual development and social justice, while Elizabeth Micci describes a concept school that uses theater as a model for an entire school (USA). Eric Gonzalez-Payne (Bali) founded The Empathy School, which aptly focuses on socio-emotional learning and the role of empathy. Adam Aronson (USA) describes his founding work with a group of young people whom many school systems have left behind. Etai Bar-Hanan shares his experiences as an educator and suggests, perhaps paradoxically, that national service in the military might be a democratizing force in Israel. Manami Okuda offers a critical reflection about Japan’s traditional education system and Mo Kwok (Hong Kong) explores an alternative to over-academic mass education in China.

Pillar 2: Democratic Education Is a High-Quality Equitable Education and Is Accessible to and Inclusive of All People

It’s impossible to have a high-quality education that ignores equity. When those that are most marginalized do not have access to inclusive education all of us suffer. The need to foster systems that nurture all learners is well addressed in Abbie Cohen’s chapter about community schools in the state of California (USA). This chapter offers readers a glimpse of a large-scale attempt to offer all students an inclusive and high-quality experience. The issues of equity and inclusion are also addressed in the chapter by Franco Mosso Cobián (Peru), which tells the story of a program aimed at developing leadership skills in high schoolers from rural and highly marginalized communities. Urvashi Sahni writes about how Prerna Girls School—managed by Study Hall Foundation in India—encourages young girls to prepare for and overcome the plethora of social discriminations they are likely to face in their community. Michael Lipset and Tony Simmons (USA) write a compelling chapter that describes the story of the High School for Recording Arts, a public charter school that has been working to re-engage out-of-school youth through the recording arts, hip-hop since 1998. Hannah Kehn (USA) writes with one of her recent graduates about the role of civic education and the arts. Shannon Norquist chronicles her journey (USA) in a school where one teacher is essentially the teacher for fifteen students. Carolyn Shadid Lewis writes with her young daughter about their experiences at Mission Hill School (USA) and Deborah Meier, school founder, writes the introduction. Finally, Dr. Deborah Lang Froggatt (USA) writes about the democratizing role of libraries and information literacy in schools.

Pillar 3: Democratic Education Contributes to the “common good” Through Active Engagement, Consensus, and Compromise

This pillar includes an array of schools where teachers and young people are—or aspire to be—key decision-makers about aspects of their schooling that directly affect them and their learning experiences. These aspirations, with its setbacks and challenges, are described by Jeff Petty’s experience as principal of Highline Big Picture High School (USA). We also make the case that democratic learning environments embrace participatory processes to make curricular decisions about what students should learn and how. This is the case with the chapter by Carla Varas Flores and Francisco Madrid Vergara, where they explain how Escuela Ciudad de Berlin (Chile) opened spaces for teachers, students, and families to determine the extracurricular offerings and to support relevant changes in their school’s learning evaluation strategy. Similarly, Mirko Chardin (USA) documents the process of developing shared values with all stakeholders in a newly opened middle school. Isaiah Hawkins also explores the role that music and music education play in his thinking about a democratic model for musical instruction (USA). Margaret Cioffi explores the Walkabout concept and how active engagement can change the course of young people’s trajectories (USA). Luis Miguel Hadzich Girola (Peru) chronicles the possibilities for nomad technology-based learning units along the Peruvian Amazon, while Simon Murray gives us insights about the role of schooling in the recently independent Seychelles during the 1970s. Grace Greenwald (Alaska) invites us to learn about a post-secondary learning environment, where storytelling and narrative are central components, especially for the Tlingit community. Lydia Cao’s story about BirdHouse (England), a program providing families services to improve home-schooling, offers a more micro-view and personal way to respond to the demands of greater learning, greater inclusion, and the common good.

Pilar 4: Democratic Schools Organize Students, Parents, Social Institutions, and the Larger Community Collaboratively to Achieve Its Goals and to Solve Theirs and Society’s Most Urgent Challenges

We believe that by advancing examples of global democratic education we can begin to find solutions to some of the world’s most intractable issues and also to communities’ daily challenges. Schools alone can’t solve the climate crisis, but young people attending schools that offer a curriculum and a pedagogy that intentionally builds on this challenge can make a difference, one community at a time. This is what readers will find in the chapters that share stories of schools deeply rooted in environmental and scientific education. Ariel Arguedas, Colleen Fugate, and Patricia Vázquez describe the Emiliano Zapata School in Las Placitas (Mexico), while Cicy Po writes about Baxter Academy (Maine, USA) and Buffy Cushman-Patz details the founding of the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability (SEEQS) in Honolulu, Hawaii. In this pillar we see the critical role that arts and creativity can play in schools and in society. Kaitlin Pomerantz (USA) explores issues of sustainability in a new course she has developed that examines the role of matter in art education. Kim Berman’s chapter documents the role arts learning spaces provided to South Africa’s quest for democracy and social justice, a critical dimension to our understanding about how we can embrace debate rather than deny differences in perspective and opinion. Ángela Ibañez and Marcial Huneeus (Chile) have turned schoolyards into learning environments with play at the center. Siamack Zahedi (India) describes the role that professional development has played in developing a school that seeks to play an empowering role in its community. Maw Maw Khaing (Myanmar) details the founding of a school where choice and agency still have a role, even during a pandemic and a violent coup. Prezmek Stolarski (Poland) writes about the role of schools and teachers in the midst of war and its consequences. The young people described in these chapters, and the communities they belong to, hold the answers, perhaps still undiscovered, to addressing many of the forces currently crippling our planet. Young people deserve schools that can help them create a better society. This conviction is also at the core of a chapter written by high school students (USA), in which they share their experience opening relevant processes like teacher feedback systems to students.

Conclusion

We know what good schooling (and learning and teaching) looks like, but schooling has become more synonymous today with containment, rule following, checking boxes, and doing homework. In a moment when COVID-19 consumed us, we thought schools might follow a different path. Most have not. A few have. We want to bring attention to those schools and learn from them.

Throughout the next pages of this book authors, many of whom are school leaders and founders, probe different aspects of our emergent framework, mindful of the fact that many of the historical debates about the intersection between democracy and schooling are still unresolved and nested in layers of social and cultural meaning.

We have included chapters that might offer a politically opposing view regarding the role of states, markets, individuals, and communities that are creating democratic learning spaces. Our hope is to preserve an open space to exchange ideas and views in a democratic way.

In order to expand the scope and reach of this dialogue, we decided to publish this book as an open access publication available to everybody without any cost. Hopefully, this decision is also seen as in keeping with our book’s democratic ethos.

The concluding chapter brings us back to our central questions and framework. It offers some key takeaways that we believe might help educators, leaders, and policymakers who want to engage in the democratization of their schools. We close with some new questions and tensions to explore through collective inquiry and dialogue.

The goal of this book is much like the course that Linda teaches that led to this project: to create a learning environment where everyone can feel and experience democracy through their direct work and participation. With that in mind, we hope you read the chapters with our questions as a guide. Importantly, we want you to learn, reflect, and imagine new possibilities to build democratic schools within your own community.