Deborah Meier is a visionary teacher, author, and founder of successful small schools in New York City and Boston. Harry Boyte, senior scholar at Augsburg College, is founder of the youth civic empowerment initiative Public Achievement and a leader in the movement to democratize higher education. This blog is no longer being updated.
Teaching
Opinion
Democracy Schools and the Tradition of 'Making Democracy'
This blog argues that the "democracy schools" which Deborah Meier founded and helped to catalyze elsewhere hold many lessons for revitalizing the American tradition of democracy as something we make through public work. This tradition has never been more important to recall, as a resource for pushing back against widespread fear-mongering.
Teaching
Opinion
Learning to Respect Other Points of View
Compromise is essential for democratic schools, which need to teach faculty, parents, and students to respect each other without burning out.
Teaching
Opinion
An Alternative to Growing Violence and Division
This blog responds to Deborah Meier's questions about creating a movement for democratic change in education. Boyte argues that "free spaces" where citizen-centered politics can be taught, learned, and practiced offer hope - through a citizen-led alternative to growing violence and fragmentation.
Teaching
Opinion
What Will It Take to Build a Democratic Movement?
What I want to encourage is for every community to discuss what they want for themselves, their neighbors, and the world that schools might be the appropriate vehicle for.
Teaching
Opinion
The Purpose of Education and the Meaning of Democracy
In this continuing dialogue with Deborah Meier, Harry Boyte argues that democracy in education will continue to be marginal -- and structural ideas will have little purchase - unless we have a robust discussion about "what is democracy?" He points to the recent conversation between President Obama and the writer Marilynne Robinson, as well as the narrow view of education in the recent Republican debate.
Teaching
Opinion
The Challenges of Large-Scale Action for Democratic School Change
How can we create schools with more autonomy and communities that challenge the norms that are counterproductive to democracy?
Teaching
Opinion
How Cultural Organizing Can Promote Democracy in Schools
In this blog, Harry Boyte agrees with Deborah Meier that "choice" is not the same as democracy. He argues for a citizen politics of plurality, cooperation, equality, respect for people's potential, and recognition of a public realm, different than private life, and proposes that spreading such politics requires "cultural organizing."
Teaching
Opinion
School Choice Is Not Always Democratic
School choice, rather than being democratic, often creates communities separate from the ones we actually live and vote in.
Teaching
Opinion
A 'Copernican Revolution' for Large-Scale School Change
Harry Boyte responds to Deborah Meier's story of large-scale school reform efforts which failed or were ignored by policy makers, by calling for a "Copernican Revolution" in how we think about politics.
Teaching
Opinion
Democracy 'Experiments': Alternatives to Traditional Schools
Experimental attempts at creating alternative—and more democratic—school systems have been largely rejected or ignored.
Teaching
Opinion
Expanding Democracy With Schools, Commonwealth, and Citizen Politics
In this continuing dialogue with Deborah Meier, Harry Boyte argues that conversation between democracy educators and democracy organizers creates ground for expanding democracy. In addition to the importance of the commonwealth, shared public resources, it highlights the need for citizen politics, not simply party politics.
Teaching
Opinion
Prioritizing Children in Public and Private Schools
Private schools do not "belong" to the people in the same way public schools do, as their measure of success is not accountability to the community but merely their ability to sustain themselves.
Teaching
Opinion
Democracy Schools: Lessons From Community Organizing
Continuing the discussion with Deborah Meier about what makes for "democracy schools," Harry Boyte proposes the central importance of "relational organizing," building human relationships, like Meier. This is a lesson learned by contemporary community organizing, contrasted with "mobilizing" approaches. He also highlights the important distinction between "public relationships" and "private relationships," developed in relational organizing, which he and his colleagues translate into school change.
Teaching
Opinion
Teacher Judgment vs. Family Authority
Deborah Meier argues that to promote democratic learning, teachers should mimic the family as a learning place more than parents should mimic school classrooms.