Walking the Democratic Talk: Introduction to a Special Issue on Collaborative Rule-Making As Preparation for Democratic Citizenship.

Abstract

In the first passage above, Dewey urges us to see that democracy is about a great deal more than political forms and Constitutional guarantees. Democracy, his quote suggests, is about concrete, everyday relationships and communities of interest and experience. The bedrock of democracy resides in how we live and work and talk together as much as it is in our Constitution and laws. It is embedded in and built upon how we develop and practice skills of making everyday decisions, communicating our interests and listening to others, and respecting differences of perspectives and peoples. From this point of view, on the whole, our schools and educational systems talk the talk of democracy, but, at best, they limp the walk. They teach about democracy - tracing the history of institutions, reviewing important constitutional provisions and how laws are made, discussing contemporary social issues, and the like (though probably less so these days with so much emphasis on state and federally mandated math and language tests). Schools seek to impart knowledge and inculcate values, but they provide little opportunity to practice actual skills, to learn through doing, or to engage in authentic work that would enhance one's ability to participate in the role of citizen in a democratic society. A number of large-scale studies based on extensive interviewing of students report that students had little or no opportunity for participation in the decision making process in schools (Center for Research in Education in American Liberties, 1970; Frymier, Bills, Russell & Finch, 1974; Kerr (2003); National Center for Educational Statistics (2001).As Pahl concludes after reviewing the research on democratic outcomes of classroom practices, Passive learning of content alone is not sufficient preparation for active participation in a democratic (1990, p. 254). It is little wonder then, that while there is much reason for pride and confidence in our democratic institutions, there is also considerable concern about their well-being. There are serious grounds for not taking for granted the health of these institutions, including low participation rates in elections, limited civic knowledge and awareness, heightened alienation and cynicism, loss of confidence in public officials and institutions, pockets of intolerance and bigotry, and high crime and incarceration rates (see, for example, Nie, et al., 1996; and Wright, 1976). The above-noted concerns regarding the adequacy of citizenship preparation and the vitality of our democratic institutions provide key components for this special issue of American Secondary Education. This journal issue seeks to address the intersection of two fundamental challenges for contemporary education and, indeed, our broader society - the challenges of social control and of democratic socialization. The social control challenge concerns how to establish and maintain order and discipline in our schools. The socialization challenge concerns how, at the same time, to prepare citizens to be effective participants in a democratic society. If the social control challenge is resolved in an authoritarian or antidemocratic way, at best it wastes an opportunity (a whole set of teachable moments) and at worst it undermines our chance to prepare students for active and effective roles as citizens in a democratic society. At the intersection of this dual challenge, we focus on the potential of what we refer to as Collaborative Rule-Making (CRM) for addressing both of these needs and concerns more effectively. The problem of order or social control is an issue with a long and respectable lineage in the social sciences whose roots can be traced back at least to Hobbes and Locke. How is society or any institution in society such as schools to motivate and coordinate the actions of diverse individuals? The principal ways of addressing this issue can be ranged along a continuum. At one end (presumably the right) would be approaches to maintaining compliance that might be called authoritarian and which rely on more centralized and extrinsic control mechanisms, such as rewards, punishments, threats, powerful authority figures, closed procedures that block change in established routine, and the imposition of decisions from above that allow little or no input from those governed including teachers as well as students. …