From tomorrow on there will be held an international conference on democratic education (Idec) in Berlin, which sounds quite interesting. In the past i have written two texts about how computer games can foster education (German: pdf) and how ‘proper’ education can be a tool for empowerment and participation of minority groups, especially migrants (pdf). I was reading a bit about critical pegagogy, in the sense of challenging dominant assumptions about power, wealth, culture, identity, etc in the classroom. One of the most influential contributors was Paulo Freire, who questioned what he called the ‘banking concept’, meaning that students were treated as accounts to be filled with knowledge, and the role allocation in the classroom, such as the teacher as the person who gives and the student as the person who receives.

When i readabout how those ‘flower-power-schools’ are organized and what it is like to be a student, it seems so radically new and different, yet the Summerhill School, the first democratic school, was founded in 1921 near Dresden. The founder A.S. Neill believed that “the function of a child is to live his own life - not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, not a life according to the purpose of an educator who thinks he knows best”. I think i can subscribe to that. I have attended regular schools and must say that my curiousness in terms of learning about the world was not really fostered. Instead school always seemed rather like work and chores but not curious play. My own interest was focused for a long time on a computer, which happened to be in my room at home and not in school. Yet, if i had gotten into contact with computers only in school, i’m not sure, whether i would have paid close attention to it.

It seems pretty logical. I have attended lectures on pedagogic psychology, where it is very clear that learning is far more fruitful, if it is intrinsically motivated. But this is where the problems arise, democratic schools putting such principles into practice have troubles qualifying as formal schools, since students can freely choose when to attend a course, a workshop, or a game. In fact, courses and workshops are only set up, if the pupils want to start one. The teachers are mere facilitators, instead of supervisors. But for the state education still happens only in conventional classroom settings.

Of course, Germany’s results in contemporary international analyses beg for critique and change, yet i don’t see this fundamental question mark behind what is and the exclamation mark behind what ought or at least could be. Even though the elections are coming up, the political tribune remains quite silent on these matters. The conference might give some inspiration, since it connects many international initiatives of democratic education performed in actual schools, not just in essays or blog entries…

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