Den vordende demokrat. En undersøgelse af skoleklassen som demokratisk lærested
(The Future Democrat. A Study of the Class as Democratic Schooling)

by Bo Jacobsen, Flemming Troels Jensen, Mikkel Bo Madsen, Marius Sylverstersen & Claude Vincent was published in May 2004.

165 p., DKK 198,00.
Order at Aarhus University Press: www.unipress.dk or +45 8942 5370
 

According to the wording in the current legislation on grade schools, the schools must prepare the students for participation, responsibility, rights and obligations in a society with freedom and democracy. Remarkably, the schools' compliance with these words has never been analyzed.

 

Based on a questionnaire survey among 4th to 9th grade students, the book analyzes the practical schooling in democracy. For example, the students' perception of whether they can "be themselves", whether they can speak freely and their sense of solidarity in the classroom and their participation in the group. The questionnaire is supplemented by observations of life in the classroom and interviews with students and teachers. Experiences with democracy are analytically divided into a liberal and a republican dimension of individual rights and participation in the group respectively. This division does not appear in the students' responses. Positive experiences with individual rights and positive experiences with participation go hand in hand. The book also describes the students' democratic experiences in specific contexts like the class room and the student council. It turns out that the level of participation in many classes is remarkably low, and somewhat surprisingly it turns out that the students' trust in the student council - which represents their most significant source of experiences with representative democracy - declines considerably as the students get older.

 

The overall message of the analyses is that there is room for improvement as far as giving the students practical experiences with democracy.

 

The data material covers approximately 4,500 students from 250 classes at 90 schools plus observations and interviews with 60 selected students and teachers.

 


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