Democratic Schools Lessons from the Chalk Face

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The authors of this book wish to thank the thousands upon thousands of dedicated educators in schools throughout the world who daily demonstrate through their hard work and commitment what an education that is both critical and democratic can look like.

It has been over a decade since Democratic Schools first appeared. In that time it has done exactly what those of us who were involved in it had hoped. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book have found their way into the hands of current and future teachers, administrators, educational policy workers, community members, activists, and many other people. This has happened not only in the United States, but throughout the world. Democratic Schools has been translated into multiple languages with editions in Spain, Portugal, Japan, Brazil and other areas throughout Latin America, and now India. Other editions are in process as well. It has been used by committed educators, community groups, government officials, national teachers unions, NGOs, and others as a model of what needs to be done to improve schools in their nations and communities.

All of this is of course more than a little satisfying to us. Yet the widespread influence of a book like this speaks eloquently to matters of much greater significance. It speaks to the deep commitment of large groups of people throughout the world to build and defend an education that is worthy of its name rather than one that is reducible simply to the efficient production of scores on problematic standardized achievement tests. It speaks to the growing dissatisfaction on the part of educators in so many places with curricula that have little relationship with the cultures and lives of the students in our schools and to the communities of which they are a part. It speaks as well to an abiding belief that schools are not factories, that they must reflect what is best in all of us, and that they must embody not simply the rhetoric of democracy but its actual practice.

**Contents and Sample Pages**