When a democratic school is created, the authority is given to founders. Once school starts, the authority looks like is also given to students; they’re an important part of the School Meetings. However, in this model, the adults still seem to have a great power in that teachers still need to maintain their founding spirit and what they do affects students’ developing the sense of value.
We had a question about whether schools of progressive education have structure or not. Sagofsky insists the importance of having a structure for the school in order to maintain democracy. Democracy in the end is not people having freedom for whatever they do. In order to maintain democracy, people’s rights and dignity of life, system/structure is needed.
One example I saw is the judicial system. Because a school is a type of community, the problems between people will occur. By letting students have the power to participate in the system, students will learn what it is like to protect freedom of every member in the community and to maintain for the common good. I felt that this school is very like a real society, but the unit is very small and it’s at school; therefore, they can learn ‘democracy’ by experiencing and participating in a system in society.
This reading and some other readings in the past made me think about student-centeredness. I believe that it’s not about students having control over everything. Rather, everyone in the school system keeps in mind the purpose of education is for children’s happiness and fulfills whatever they are accountable for. In the SSU retreat that I participated in this year, we discussed ‘shared governance.’ According to the article, “’shared’ governance has come to connote two complementary and sometimes overlapping concepts: giving various groups of people a share in key decision-making process, often through elected representation; and allowing certain groups to exercise primary responsibility for specific areas of decision making.” Therefore, I felt that in student-centered schools can still have (should have?) power dynamics and structure.
Exactly What Is ‘Shared Governance’?
http://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/
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