Draws on an ethnographic study of Japanese middle schools and other data to analyze the Japanese educational concepts of "lifestyle guidance" and "group living," which promote students' egalitarian participation in the life of the school. Examines Japanese ideals of community and participation as the basis of an alternative…

Shares Evergreen State College's attempts to create and provide a teacher-preparation program that examines what it means to teach in a democratic, pluralistic society, presenting six provocative declaratives about democratic education that the program uses for its internal program discussions and explaining how the program contends with each…

Under traditional Confucianism, China's school system became authoritarian, rigid, and undemocratic. In recent decades, China had one national curriculum and one unified set of textbooks. Now, text publication is more varied, curriculum planning and writing is becoming more democratic, and Western ideas are incorporated to spur economic…

Instead of inviting public engagement, the current educational system reinforces a hierarchical, bureaucratic pattern that gives neither students nor parents an official voice. Today's parents are demanding, more market-oriented, and organizing on the Internet. Strategies for fully involving parents in improvements for the common good are…

Top issues in service learning research include how service learning enhances subject matter; defining expected outcomes; identifying the processes of effective service learning; faculty involvement; effect on educational institutions; institutional policies, practices supporting/enhancing service learning; nature of effective community…

Education's greatest threat is the death of dialectics. In Malaysia, government censorship thwarts debate; in America, corporate brainwashing achieves the same result. Consumers have embraced computer technology with too little public discourse. Infatuation with television (screen shadows) distracts people from the puppet master's motives and…

Faculties must pass through several stages when becoming learning organizations: the honeymoon, conflict, confusion, messy, scary, and mature-group stages. Mature school communities have learned to view power differently, make learning more meaningful for students, and model a just and democratic society. Consensus is the starting point. (MLH)

Efforts to desegregate schools since the 1954 "Brown" decision have only partly succeeded. Racial and economic segregation still limits minority and poor children's educational opportunities. A new educational civil rights movement must replace authoritarian, antidemocratic standards and tests with diverse schools, staff, pedagogies,…

Examines fundamental tensions between the individual and community as manifested in the philosophy and practice of three progressive New York City Schools. The historical case studies of private progressive education demonstrate a tension between liberal and communitarian dimensions of progressive education, a tension implicit in progressive…

Situates the experience of Porto Alegre in the larger political and educational context of Brazil; presents normative goals of the Citizen School and examines the mechanisms that helped forge these goals; describes and explains some elements of the institutional design of the Citizen School; evaluates potential problems of the project; offers some…

Describes Sudbury Valley School (Framingham, Massachusetts), established in 1965 as an alternative to public education. Discusses the educational philosophy of the democratic school, which stresses the importance of children being free and learning how to govern themselves; daily activities at the school; and how the school has achieved fiscal as…

In this article, the authors discuss how Louise Rosenblatt's work influenced many teachers' teaching and learning practices. Rosenblatt was known for helping readers find their rightful place in the act of reading. Louise argued in the 1930s (and steadfastly maintained until her recent death) that the act of reading was a dynamic transaction…

This article revisits the underlying principles of the citizenship curriculum in England to address reports of communication breakdowns between schools and students and to consider whether the curriculum can do anything other than prescribe what democratic participation should be. Although the focus is on the curriculum in England, it has…

This paper reports on the use of the "Index for Inclusion" in five socioeconomically different primary school contexts in Indonesia. The research was designed and developed through Australian and Indonesian teachers and teacher educators collaborative efforts over a year. The work took place during the post-Suharto reform period and…

The author's superintendency has been like a good marriage. Both she and the school community feel blessed to have had a true partnership built on mutually held beliefs and convictions, and to have had an opportunity to dream and make their dreams come true. Like most marriages, however, it has been a tremendous amount of work as they have…