How Should Schools Help Teach Democracy?
Today Deborah Meier and Joe Nathan discuss how schools can teach students about democracy. Deborah begins and Joe responds.
Dear Joe,
As I've noted many times elsewhere, democracy is hard to define for good reasons. Its definition is, at its best, so deeply contextual and never a fixed, "there, that's it." Furthermore, it's not particularly natural, I'd guess. No more than any other form of governance. It might even be that it's particularly unnatural, though that's hard—if not pointless — for us to decide.
It's always a weighing of one democratic principle against another. Have I a "right" to over-rule because I know better? Never? Sometimes? If I'm older and wiser, more expert, have knowledge that I haven't time to impart — then do I say "just do what you're told?"
Surely we've all been in circumstances where we've used one of these excuses. And, where we still feel we were right to do so. And what made it possible of course, was that we had the power to do so.
Ultimately democracy has to do with the distribution of power, and each of its most honored attributes rhetorically presumes an equality of power that does not exist. And probably can or should never — or should never. Some of us are physically stronger, which sometimes is the deciding factor. Some more persuasive, more charismatic. Others have knowledge that is deliberately not available to all, resources that make them more persuasive, or access to forms of force that can overwhelm those that do not have such access.
And on and on. At a crucial moment in the third year of Central Park East, I fell back on my unequal power in a crisis to save the school. But doesn't every dictator use that in his (her?) defense.
When the teacher walks into the room — as I discovered as a substitute teacher — she either does or doesn't bring with her an aura of power. Every motion, tone of voice, gesture, choice of language reinforces or undermines her impact on those in front of her who could, if they "dared", make her authority disappear in a second. Alas, I was mostly a failure with students over the age of 9 or 10! Schools are precarious organization that we all feel, uneasily, could at any moment break down if we are not alert to using our unequal power wisely.
Of course that also means that schools are by nature very poor places for honestly demystifying power that is at the heart of the democracy project. If the students glimpsed the magician in the Wizard of Oz as Dorothy did — in the flesh — authority would collapse. It's as though the one thing a How Should Schools Help Teach Democracy? - Bridging Differences - Education Week: