Educating a Democracy

31 Deborah Meier 2000 Educating a Democracy   Meier writes: "Our hope lies in schools that are more personal, compelling, and attractive than the internet or TV, where youngsters can keep company with interesting and powerful adults, who are in turn in alliance with the students’ families and local institutions. We need to surround kids with adults who know and care for our children, who have opinions and are accustomed to expressing them publicly, and who know how to reach reasonable collective decisions in the face of disagreement. That means increasing local decision-making, and simultaneously decreasing the size and bureaucratic complexity of schools. Correspondingly, the worst thing we can do is to turn teachers and schools into the vehicles for implementing externally-imposed standards." You can access the whole article at the Boston Review. Meier, D. (2000). Educating a democracy. The Boston Review (Feb./Mar. 2000). Retrieved from the Boston Review 5 Mar 2008. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR24.6/meier.html