Democratic+Education

=Definition= Democratic Education/Demokatische Bildung is a way to organise schools and learning in a democratic way, meaning that the student has the right to participate in decisions. There are broader definitions, where the student merely has the right to leave a class if he/she feels like it, and wider definitions, where there is no prepared curriculum at all and students have to organise everything on their own (school only provides facilities and staff).

The EUDEC (europoean democratic education community/conference) has the following, narrow definition. A school is democratic if it can answer all of these questions with 'yes':
 * Do students have free choice of whether or not to participate in scholastic and other activities?
 * Can students easily initiate and suggest scholastic and other activities?
 * Can students offer, lead and run scholastic and other activities?
 * Can students ‘vote’ on the school’s rules?
 * Can students ‘vote’ on the consequences of breaking rules?
 * Can students and staff equally participate in the decision making process (in reference to school meeting)?
 * Can students be involved in the hiring and firing process?

=List of Democratic Schools= The most prominent of all are Summerhill (UK) and Sudbury Valley School (USA). Israel has a very strong tradition of democratic education.

AERO Affiliates (worldwide map): [] AERO Members (worldwide): [] EUDEC Members (Europe map): [] UK democratic education (UK map) [] another map http://map.reevo.org/?l=en_US

=Events=
 * 1) EUDEC conference
 * 2) IDEC conference

=Democratic Universities, higher education= overview on AERO (US-based website): [] [] [] and https://www.facebook.com/TheKnowmads here is a video: media type="custom" key="24715688"

=Teacher Training in Democratic Education= There is a 4year programme at IDE in Israel where you can study to become a democratic educator, sounds impressive and has a lot to do with first finding out who you are and then looking into what you can offer to students. =Research= IDE Institute for democratic education, Israel.

=Videos= also see the page people that inspire media type="custom" key="25537540"