Classical (direct) democracy

Contemporary (representative) democracy

View of democracy

Grounded in a way of life in which all can develop their qualities and capacities. It envisages a society that itself is intrinsically educative and in which political socialization is a distinctively educative process. Democracy is a moral ideal requiring expanding opportunities for direct participation.

Results from, and reflects, the political requirements of a modern market economy. Democracy is a way of choosing political leaders involving, for example, regular elections, representative government and an independent judiciary.

The primary aim of education

To initiate individuals into the values, attitudes and modes of behaviour appropriate to active participation in democratic institutions.

To offer a minority an education appropriate to future political leaders; the majority an education fitted to their primary social role as producers, workers and consumers.

Curriculum content

There is a focus on liberal education, a curriculum which fosters forms of critical and explanatory knowledge that allow people to interrogate social norms and to reflect critically on dominant institutions and practices.

Mass education will focus on the world of work and upon those attitudes and skills, and that knowledge that have some market value.

Typical educational processes

Participatory practices that cultivate the skills and attitudes that democratic deliberation require.

Pedagogical relationships will tend to be authoritarian and competition will, as in society generally, play an essential role.

School organization

Schools are viewed as communities in which the problems of communal life are resolved through collective deliberation and a shared concern for the common good.

Schools are organized around a pyramidal structure with the head at its apex.