Democratic Schools and Learning Environments: A Global Perspective

Speaker A: Sa.

Lydia Tsao: Welcome back to Silver Lining for learning. Today is episode 271. I'm Lydia Tsao from Oise University of Toronto, joined by my wonderful co host, Professor Chris De from Harvard University and Professor, uh, Punya Mishra from Arizona State University. I'm very excited about today's conversation because we're tackling a question that feels more urgent than ever. What does it take to build democratic schools and learning environments where young people learn not just to succeed individually, but also to participate, to listen and to shape the world around them? Uh, we're joined by three remarkable guests and my friends, um, uh, that I met back at Harvard Graduate school of education. Dr. Linda Nathan, Jonathan Mendonza and Gus Rojas Ayala, the co editors of an open access book. I have it right here. Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments, A Global Perspective. Um, in this book they covered 38 schools across 14 countries to illustrate what democratic education really looks like in practice. From Boston to Mumbai to Mexico City. I've also had the privilege to contribute one of the chapters. Um, a. Ah, very few brief words about our guests. Uh, Linda is a longtime Harvard educator and founding principal of the Boston Arts Academy. Jonathan co founded Human Studio, has worked with over 130,000 schools across India. And Gus leads a leadership consultancy spanning Mexico, Chile, Latin America, after heading one of Mexico's most influential education think tanks. So in this episode we dig into the framework they've developed on democratic education, the four pillars, plus a wonderful fifth pillar, uh, that they're calling Democratic resilience. And I can't wait to hear more about that. So without further ado, let's get into it. So, Linda, Jonathan and Gus, um, would you mind introducing yourself to our audience and also tell us the story story of three of you coming together to co edit this wonderful book.

Dr. Linda Nathan: M. I was going to take that one first.

Jonathan Mendonza: Yeah, we have to start with you, Linda.

Speaker A: All right.

Dr. Linda Nathan: And then you guys talk about how we came together. I think coming from you all, it's more interesting. So, um, deep in the pandemic, I met Jonathan and Gustavo online. Lydia, I think you may have been in that same batch. Right? Were you in their class or the class right after?

Lydia Tsao: Before.

Dr. Linda Nathan: Okay, so it's your fault that this happened then. Okay, so deep in the pandemic, I was in my whatever year of teaching a class that I've taught at Harvard for quite some time now. And I call the class Building Democratic Schools. And at some point I added and non profits because so many of my students were coming internationally and were more interested in how do you build education? Because building schools was becoming increasingly difficult. And the reason I came to teach that class at Harvard is because in Boston I've had the privilege of founding three different public schools. All that embody and reflect the principles that we're going to talk about, principles of democratic education. And I started that work as early as the early 80s. And I also had the chance to found, uh, four different nonprofits that, um, reflect the pillars that we're about to talk about. And I'll let Jonathan and Gustavo talk about how we met or how this book came about because we met.

Jonathan Mendonza: So go for it.

Speaker A: Good.

Gus Rojas Ayala: Um, well, it's very important to say that, um, besides all of these wonderful roles and accomplishments, Lindia is a fantastic educator herself. And Jonathan and I, we had the privilege of actually being her students. Um, I'm personally from Chile. Um, so the relationship between, uh, you know, citizenship and democracy is something I. I was born in the last five years of Chile's military, uh, military dictatorship. So growing up as a child, democracy was a big thing because you knew you could lose it.

Speaker F: Right.

Gus Rojas Ayala: And gaining it back was difficult. So this idea of how can different, um, parts of society and different stakeholders contribute to that was always really important for me and a major driver in my decision to become, uh, an educator myself. So when I found about Linda's class, it was very obvious for me that, um, I had to be a part of it. Right. Particularly because also like, uh, as an educator, you always dream of building your own ideal school. Right. Within your own ideal education system. Um, uh, so her class was a very transformative experience, not only because of the actual instructional experience, but because I met Jonathan and because I met Linda herself. So Jonathan was, um, a very important part in this book coming together because he was brave enough to actually say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, when. When I approached him to. To sort of explore how we could, um, not let go of the wonderful designs that we produced during the class. So that's how it all started. But I think it took Jonathan to actually believe that it was a good idea to write Linda as with it. So, Jonathan, why don't you take it?

Jonathan Mendonza: Uh, sure. Thanks for that. Um, you know, it was so interesting to see that there's this course on democratic schools and learning environments. And within the course, all of us were given a tremendous amount of autonomy to exercise within the class, like, um, truly embodying the values of what the course was. And you see people who've been privileged to have some of the, um, the most challenging and beautiful experiences that have brought them to a place like Harvard, still struggle to play with autonomy or to actually exercise their choices. And, um, ah, it was a deep realization at the time that these experiences are highly uncommon. We talk about it and we celebrate these values tremendously. So you couple that with the fact that, um, I was thinking of human studios and the fact that schools are going to encounter a lot of change, like the pandemic, the effect of climate change, the effect of technology on education, global instability on education. And the world is going to go through this moment where schools are ready to redesign. And it felt really important to have a good roadmap to redesign or it just felt like a really beautiful opportunity, uh, to provide schools with this, um, with a roadmap or a comparative study of so many other schools that have been able to create democratic learning environments. So that when we go through this global movement and like 7 million schools reconsider what they stand for, maybe this time there can be a little more choice, a little more autonomy, a little more open flow of ideas that enter the whole ecosystem. And, um, yeah, it seemed incredibly daunting to put together a book at first. And so we just started off with a call and said, hey, how does this idea sound? Um, we all three immediately jumped on it. Ah, our, uh, networks, especially Linda's, made it so easy to access such beautiful spaces of learning. And it just seemed to make sense that we put something like this together.

Dr. Linda Nathan: They make it sound easy. It took two years plus.

Lydia Tsao: Yes, I remember the editing process.

Jonathan Mendonza: Yes, you do.

Lydia Tsao: The review process was very well coordinated. So kudos to all of you. Um, so can you tell us a little bit about these fault, these pillars of democratic education, as well as a newly added pillar of democratic resilience? Just want to give a shot of this wonderful book again.

Dr. Linda Nathan: Yeah, I think I'll take that first. And then again, let Jonathan and Gustavo add in here. So, interestingly, with this book, we started with some questions that we wanted every author or group of authors to answer. And in a number of the chapters, students were also writing. And Lydia, yours was also a chapter that was deeply rooted, um, in making sure we had student voices. So we started with a series of questions, and then the questions really became one what we now call the pillars. And those pillars were kind of obvious after the fact that they were the very same pillars that I had introduced with my faculty at Boston Arts Academy there. We called them shared values. Um, and, uh, what emerged after chapter authors began using the first group of questions, we saw that folks were having A hard time kind of creating coherence with their chapters. And so we suggested this idea of these four pillars, and we said, maybe your chapter falls into one as opposed more into one, as opposed to the other. And always we were saying. Jonathan referenced the pillars a minute ago. This idea of agency, the idea of centering equity, the notion of what we call the common good and solving society's most urgent challenges. None of these ideas are new. These have been the pillars of democratic education for decades, if not a hundred years or more. Dewey talked about these kinds of ideas. Freire talked about these kinds of ideas. Septima Clark talked about these kinds of ideas. So they're not new. Um, we put them together in a format which we called pillars. And that's how people began to write. In order to answer the question about how the fifth pillar has emerged, um, that's been really, um, eye opening for me. So since the book with Jonathan and Gustavo, there was, um, almost an outcry from authors in the United States saying, wait a minute, Linda, where's the book that's specific to the United States and specific to a moment in time where we were able in the US to, um, found many, many schools based on these pillars. And this was a moment of time, um, in the late 80s, early 90s. And so with another graduate student, um, I am now editing a book about six schools in the US and as we did a different thing that if Jonathan and Gustavo and I could have, I think we would have, we interviewed all of the chapter authors of the sixth case studies afterwards to say, well, now you've explored these four pillars, is there anything missing? And no surprise, what emerged is the fifth pillar is about resistance. And I just thought that was so kind of perfect, because without resistance, how do you ever enact the first four pillars, especially given the times that we're living in right now? And so that notion and that understanding of power, that understanding of trust, shared purpose, um, and the importance of networks, boy, that has come out in this fifth pillar of resistance. So I'll be looking forward to us doing some more now with five pillars, not just four.

Lydia Tsao: Jonathan, Gus, feel free to jump in if you have things to add.

Jonathan Mendonza: Yeah, um, for sure. Uh, it was really interesting because we followed a democratic process to put the book together itself. Right. It was an open call to authors saying, would, um, you like to participate in something like this? And we thought, with great difficulty, we may stumble across 20 democratic schools. And I think we heard back from over 70. And then, uh, you know, through conversations, draft papers, things like that we were able to filter down onto, um, a few of those who were able to articulate their ideas in a way that others could actually learn from. Um, and what interestingly stood out is, like Linda mentioned, we didn't start off with the pillows. Right. We started off with questions. Um, the first draft of the essays helped us understand what is common between democratic schools. And that's why we keep referring to them as emergent pillows all throughout the book. Right. Um, because it did emerge from the study of so many schools. So we did. We wanted to say that, you know what, it is messy creating a democratic school. Uh, it is a little more difficult than the straightforward, linear, authoritarian school. But look at the amount of people that are out there doing it. It's not one or two examples. Here's casually 38. Right. And the list keeps on going on and on. Um, but it was. It was really beautiful to see the pillars emerge from these schools. Right. That even though these schools had never interacted with each other or spoken to each other, there was something common in this unsaid mission that they were all striving towards. And just like one of the pillars say that there is no democratic education without the notion of common good. And that common good could look so different in each one's case. But there is that notion and there's a mobilization of people, institutions, and everyone towards that cause. Right. Um, being extremely equitable and open to a flow of ideas in between.

Gus Rojas Ayala: Yeah. And, um. And I think that probably one of the things I love most about when this big moment, uh, for us as editors, when the framework emerged, was the fact that it highlighted two or three very important things across the whole book. One of them is creative tensions. Because we talk a lot about polarities. And if you look at the chapters, like, they always tried on, like, these horizons of possibility on the one hand, control on the one hand. On the one. On the other hand, freedom and autonomy. You know, like, uh, you. You have this underlying tensions and different authors and different, you know, projects behind those stories and the communities around them. Like, they all grappled with those tensions in a way that was so different and unique because it was context, you know, dependent. It was circumstance dependent. Of course, you have like, different geographies, different stories, different different cultures. And the framework was a, ah, very useful tool for us to sort of encompass all of those very diverse conversations into an artifact which is a book, a cultural artifact that makes sense put together. Um, but then I think that it also allowed, um, us to,

Speaker F: um, have

Gus Rojas Ayala: a sense of non prescriptory approach to how to talk about democratic education across contexts. You know, this idea of common good, you don't go and buy that on the supermarket. Right? So you don't, you don't get to purchase the conversation on democratic schools either. Uh, you have to build it. And I think that these four pillars were a very interesting tool for us to produce not only the book itself, but the actual conversation that the book uh, aim to spark internationally. And I think that's been one of the greatest contributions. And that probably explains why the book has been downloaded more than 230,000 times, uh, which is a very, very important part of the contribution we believe it makes.

Dr. Linda Nathan: Gustavo, I just want to mention something that occurred early days with the three of us. Um, we did make a commitment, even though I was the professor and they were the graduate students, that we would work as equals. And so, um, I think that, you know, for a lot of, A lot of people that can be daunting and confusing. And that was something, you know, I think we did pretty well on. And we also. And Lydia, I'm sure you remember some of this really encouraged the chapter authors. And 38 is a lot of people to co edit with one another. And we really wanted people to. And this is sort of uh, what Jonathan and Gustavo were both referencing because we wanted people across continents experiences to be able to learn from one another and to help one another get their ideas clearer. Um, and so that I think, um, that's a different way to. To go about um, the co editing process that you know, with that many chapters, we didn't feel that we could be. We knew we had to at some point be the last word. But we didn't want to be the last word without others really having an opportunity to weigh in. And I think, um, that's different. And the other thing that was different different was this idea of open access which I had never heard of. And Jonathan and Gustavo had. They were really insistent that in their contexts, if we were to do, if you will, just an academic hard copy book, no one in their countries would read it because it would be too expensive. And so this idea of um, the book being free, I think for us really reflects what we were trying to achieve. And lastly, I'll say, and I'm sure we'll dig into this a bit more. Even the language we used, designing democratic schools and learning environments, the word democratic that caused all sorts of angst depending on which country or continent you came from. And the three of us had to talk about that a lot. And the Reason we used the term learning environments was because some of our authors were writing from countries where the political system was anything but democratic. Um, so big D, now we were writing little D. And so they couldn't write about schools because they couldn't do schools. They could, given the politics, they could only do learning environments. And so I think opening up to that and also to what we called concept schools. And these were some of my graduate students that had ideas that have yet to be put into place. And those were really important decisions because, as Jonathan said at the opening, we wanted to make sure those concepts were out there somehow. So that people in countries that would say, I can't start a democratic school could read a concept and could say, oh, but I could start this learning environment, and I could start with these pillars and not get into trouble, if you will, politically. So I think those compromises, and we really approached this, I think, in a good way with a lack of rigidity. Because had we been rigid and said, it's gotta be this and it's gotta be that, I think we would have had a much less, um, influential book.

Lydia Tsao: Kunia, go ahead. Sure.

Speaker F: So I have so many questions, but before we do that, Gustavo, can you do me a favor? Can you go to your settings on zoom to the audio and just raise your output a little bit? You're coming in a little lower, if you don't mind. It'll take a second. Um, I have just so many questions. Firstly about the model you guys followed. Um, I just want to quick comment before I jump into the questions. Um, I can't think of a more important topic today, uh, for us to talk about. Um, one of the things that we've talked a little bit on the show, but I've been thinking a lot about is how fragile our systems are. You think of. I mean, I'm originally from India, and one of the things that we often talk with some of my friends there is that how difficult it has been for, uh, a country which is 75 years independent to build institutions that last, um, beyond the individual who came in and built something amazing. And once they leave, how does that institution survive and keep to its values and so on? And it's really hard. And I think the last few years, let's say the last eight, ten years, um, in this country have shown the fragility of the institutions which are 250 years old, um, the importance of the work that you're doing. I just want to highlight that and underscore that. And thank you for doing that. The question That I have and I think from our audience, these are the principles that you talk about. Uh, some of the things that we've been talking about exist in the sense of abstraction. We can all, in some ways buy into all of these. But how this plays out in a particular instance of context is, I think, something that would be, I think it would be helpful to me and I think to our audience as well. So what I would love for each of you is if one example, um, ideally from across the globe, and Lydia, I know you have a chapter in this as well, so would love for you to join in as well. So if each of you to share one that stands out, that captures those core values. Because I think through these four, we will get a sense of the diversity of what a democratic school or democratic learning, um, environment means. And that there is this core set of ideas. The way I think about, there's a core set of ideas and we are shining light on it from different directions. And you get different kinds of shadows, and the shadows are sort of capturing each of them when you take them together, give you a sense of that central complex object. It's like a multi MRI kind of a thing. Anyway, I'm blabbering what I'd love to hear from each of you is one or two briefly examples where these ideas got instantiated in sort of a powerful way. And I'll just let you guys, um, you know the book, you know the examples, and let you guys take it from there. Whoever wants to go first.

Gus Rojas Ayala: Maybe I can go first because I would love to actually refer to one of the chapters which is all about learning environments. Uh, it's about transforming the idea of school recess and school backyards into the idea of learning landscapes. Uh, I'm not sure about the chapter's number, but this is the chapter wrote by Patio Vivo, which is a non profit organization from Chile. Um, and what these guys find, what they discovered was that traditionally in schools in Chile, and mainly across Latin America, um, school yards are or used to be a very, you know, rectangular square kind of space which often, um, sort of shaped interactions in a way that was not, uh, aiming at students developing agency, autonomy, freedom, and that was not too democratic itself. Pretty much what, what, what the traditional schoolyard looks like in, in, in Chile you have a football, a soccer field, you know, and you have boys playing football. And then you have like people walking or doing, you know, things around that perimeter. Um, so through architecture, through actually. Thank you, Linda. That's chapter 35 in our book. So through architecture, through design through uh, a kind of physicality, uh, physical transformation of the space, uh, they have been able to develop this notion of school yards and also the recess itself becoming a powerful and transformative experience that they have named, uh, learning landscapes. Um, the chapter includes a very interesting graph which is how the interactions change, like the physical interactions. And the physical use of space changes when you actually build it purposefully, um, so that it becomes a democratic, a more democratic space. So you see more uh, appearance of random patterns. They have this very interesting heat maps of how are students making use of that space. And um, once you transform the traditional football, uh, field into a learning environment, kind of backyard, then you offer alternatives for more integration for students with more diverse interests to actually engage in that space and to learn uh, some skills that are essential for the democratic way of life. Because when you don't have that predetermined outcome, which is all we can do is play soccer or else, then they have to learn how to negotiate. They have to learn how to agree on things and how to disagree on things and how to take turns and how to wait for the next uh, recess, uh, for your own agenda to actually be uh, to be the priority. So all of these things, uh, elaborate so much on the initial skills that we as citizens need in a healthy democratic society to be able to learn how to live together. So I just love that chapter so much because first of all it highlighted this idea of it's not all about schools, it's also about uh, learning possibilities beyond the traditional classroom. Because I think that it highlights the idea of how education actually offers a space where these more civic uh, skills can be learned in a way that is also very democratic itself.

Speaker F: Thank you. That's a great example. I remember schools in India as well. You have a cricket field, you have a soccer field, there's some, usually boys running in that space and then everybody else at the margin. So thank you for that. Anybody else?

Jonathan Mendonza: Yeah, it's uh, just so hard to pick one given the absolute beauty across all of these schools. But my personal favorite is Coco. It's a concept school and it's a nomadic learning experience. Right. So over here you have a bunch of uh, uh, indigenous communities that live along the Amazonian river. And this school is nomadic, right? So it floats down the Amazonian river, pops uh, up almost like uh, uh, you know, pop up to each of these communities, engages in deep project based learning and allows information to flow from one community to another. And I thought what's more democratic than a school responding to the place where the People are from rather than people coming to the school. Right. And we have such rigid notions of what a school is. Right. The physicality of it we spend. I'm a civil engineer, right. And I started off my career in construction. So I know that the school building is the most expensive thing that you ever do in a school. And children can't wait to get out of that building. Right. And go out on the soccer field like Gustavo spoke about. So it almost doesn't make sense, okay. To, um, restrict the way that we imagine school to be contained into this particular box or space.

Speaker A: Right.

Jonathan Mendonza: Another thing really interesting about this chapter is many indigenous perspectives talk about how learning cannot be isolated from experience. It is incredibly relational and highly place based. Right. And the moment we ask, um, you know, the children of farmers to leave their farm and come to school, we're automatically creating a synthetic learning environment. Right. And, uh, we then wonder why people struggle with the sensitivity to apply their learnings to the real world context. Right. And this just meets people in the real world context. So that absolutely stood out to me the most. But there's such a plethora, right. Because every school offers something completely different. Like the school in Egypt talks about how it's important to get people from different socioeconomic backgrounds into the same school, into the same learning environment. Uh, and walks you through the journey of two separate children who attend that school who would have just never understood the other aspect of life had they not been together. Right. So, um, I mean these, these are just a few to start off with, but we'll, uh. Yeah. Let the other examples emerge through the conversation.

Speaker F: Thank you.

Dr. Linda Nathan: So one nonprofit that we profiled in the book, um, was about. It was the story of Artist Proof Studio, um, in Johannesburg, South Africa. It's written by Kim Berman, who's herself done a lot of writing, but it's a, ah, uh, we were really happy that she joined us in this effort because she was called back to South Africa. She is South African, but she was here in, um, the United States when M. Mandela was elected. And her chapter is about printmaking and how printmaking is a form of agency, that voice. And the story of that studio, which is a learning environment, not a accredited school for young people ages 17 to about 20 something. Um, how those young people, through learning, the craft, the skill, the artistry of printmaking, are able to tell a very, very powerful story that is their narrative, not the narrative of other people. And so I think it's an unusual short chapter that really privileges the role of art making in these democratic Principles. And another chapter that's equally unusual was written by a librarian, uh, Deborah Lang Froggatt, that talks about libraries, school libraries as places to really think about and practice these principles. And she really makes a very cogent argument about literacy, libraries and learning, what democratic practices are all about. Um, and then one more I'll just name because I want to drop something in the chat for your listeners to look at was by Hannah Keane called Let the Light in. And it was really the story of founding a democratic school in Far Rockaway, Queens. And she co wrote it with a student and the way the two of them spoke to these emergent principles. The reason I mention Hannah's um, chapter is she was so taken by the work we were all collectively doing that she's put together a democratic learning environment observational tool so that other practitioners can use this tool that comes from the pillars and begin to say, am I doing these things in my school or my learning environment? How might I begin to self assess where I am on this journey? And we're really eager to hear from people, which is why I want to share it out. Um, how people are feeling about the, you know, is this the right tool? Does this work for people? It doesn't have the fulfiller yet. Um, so I'll make a copy of it and drop it in the chat in a second and then Lydia, you should definitely talk about your chapter which was also really different.

Lydia Tsao: Yeah, thank you. And uh, one thing like from contributing this book and also peer reviewing other authors chapters, one takeaway for me, big takeaway for me in this book is that uh, this book start to democratize what counts as a school, really expand the notion of what, what is a school? Because school, the, the, the traditional notion is quite daunting. It's like this brick mortar expensive institution that you need like heavy investment in, you know. Um, but one thing I've learned from this school is like it doesn't have to be that way. There is uh, this, I think 1. One of the reason I'm so excited, eager to invite all of you today is I feel um, the example of the schools, schools or learning environment exemplify in your book is also close aligned with the episode what we've witnessed in Silver Lining for Learning and we call them like these pockets of innovation where people are cultivating this environment. It might not be in a brick and mortar environment, but a school really, it doesn't live in a building and live within a community, uh, within a community. It live within these relationship people are intentionally fostering and this value of people upholding. So that's one big takeaway for me. So about my chapter. So I wrote about, uh, a homeschool co op, meaning families come together to create a learning environment for their kids during the pandemic. Um, so again, it's not a traditional brick and mortar school. Actually, our school rotate in different houses. Um, so these kids will go to another kid's, um, house and they will learn there at that day. And in terms of who is the educator, in our case during this time, it was the parents who, who are educator. And one of the, um, uh, mission for Birdhouse, that's the name of our co op, is we are trying to empower parents to be this great educator for their kids, um, and really expand the notion of who can be an educator. And we really believe committed parents, when they come together as a community, they can foster a great learning environment for these children. And we also want to expand on this notion of success, what is worth of learning. So we know in traditional schools, um, learning is very cognitively heavy. Uh, it's about scoring well on a test. It's about being able to really internalize a lot of concept and being able to present that, um, in any kinds of assessment. We really want to expand the notion of what is really worth learning, um, at the school environment that is beyond that, just cognitive aspects of learning, but also really intentionally include these, uh, effective dimensions, relationships among children and healthy eating, uh, habits. And we really have children to cook together in that home environment to foster that sense of community. And um, we also include like, intentional space for kids to play together and build friendship. So we think all of these are so, all worthy of learning but often overlooked in traditional brick and mortar schools. So that's the story of, uh, um, my chapter, Birdhouse Co Op. Um, so thank you for this opportunity to talk about that.

Speaker F: Thank you all. And I could. I know Chris has been waiting very patiently. Uh, but one comment that I sent to Lydia on the back channel, I said, I think we can start reaching out to some of the people who have written chapters for your books to be guests on our show. Because. Because I think that would be fantastic to get examples, we did a similar thing with India where I reached out to six different organizations and had them two at a time. Uh, because again, you want to get that diversity of perspectives and approaches. So thank you for that, Chris. Please, uh, go ahead.

Speaker A: Well, I agree with you that these chapters are a great source of potential episodes for Silver Lining for Learning. So I want to go back to a theme that came up early in our dialogue today. I forget who said it, but you talked about the fact that when students and teachers and parents have the opportunity for agency and autonomy and freedom, sometimes they struggle to take advantage of it or even understand what it means. And that's very much in accord with my own experience as a university professor across really four different universities, but most recently at Harvard, um, where you have people who are certainly smart and many of them are certainly privileged, but those don't necessarily correlate with the ability to assume agency, to uh, feel a sense of autonomy and to be free in your, uh, ideas about what a learning environment could be like. And I think that often, um, people have invisible walls in their mind that come out of tacit assumptions that not only the school system, but the culture and the society have programmed into them that constrain their ability to think creatively. I and other faculty in the ed school at Harvard have, uh, run workshops where we say, you know, let's just really throw away all the barriers and imagine what education might be like 10 years from now. And invariably most of the imaginings are just kind of sprinkling a little fairy dust on top of the industrial era model of the school. And I think that's part of the issue here, is that in, in an industrial process, the assembly line doesn't get a vote. Right? The items on the assembly line don't have any autonomy or freedom or agency. They're just there to be processed. And I think that, that even in our, uh, more progressive schools that aren't democratic, that there is this sense that you're being processed and that people smarter than you are are telling you what to do and how to do it. And that, uh, that's, that's okay. That's how you get smart. So from, from my perspective, this is not so much about knowledge and skills because people with very little sense of autonomy and agency can have fabulous knowledge and skills. It's about beliefs and dispositions. It's about having a growth mindset. It's about moving beyond stereotype thread. It's beyond having initiative and resilience, as you point out. And um, so I'm, I'm curious, um, when you, when you hit a, the opportunity, um, for a democratic school to emerge, but it's, it's kind of struggling to break the shell. You know, the baby bird is having trouble breaking the shell and spreading its wings. Uh, do you have, do you have strategies that you try to use or ways that you try to encourage people?

Dr. Linda Nathan: I'm, um, sure we can go ahead Jonathan, and follow you guys.

Jonathan Mendonza: Yeah. So particularly beautiful, uh, point. Right. This is the number one question that people have when they hear about democratic schools. Um, and I think the, the first thing to point out is that democratic, um, schooling, um, as the book points out, is a spectrum. Right? And um, at one end you have total freedom, but the outcomes of that system is completely different from the outcomes where you have more structured freedoms, which is again completely different from uh, the space where students are given minor amounts of choice. Um, so, yeah, apart from it being a spectrum, um, there's a very interesting question that I grappled with, uh, for a year while writing this book is what happens when people, um, we don't think are capable of making decisions, are given the chance to make those decisions. And I stumble upon this beautiful book, Accelerating India's Development, which um, speaks about how India is one of the very few countries who from day one of independence had universal adult franchise, everyone in the country could vote, and uh, did not have a incredibly scaled, quote unquote, conventional education system. Right. And there was a lot of criticism about this and uh, there still is about how India's economy could have been different, etc. Etc. But one thing that's not up for debate is that whenever India had to make a decision, they made the humanitarian decision. For instance, um, we have midday meals spread across the country when the GDP per capita is ah, significantly lower than other countries who decided to have food stamps on midday meals. I think when the US decided to uh, put out food stamps, the GDP per capita was nearly 17 times that of when uh, India decided to do it. Right. And it comes back to that. But decisions will be taken. They may not always be decisions that we like. They may also not always lead to um, outcomes that we expect in the short term. But in the long term, collectively when people are involved in decision making, it's usually the more humanitarian decisions that get made down that process. Um, I think, uh, it's the skill of the educator and the person putting the school together to also know when or in which domains total autonomy should be given and what is an obligation that the learning environment also has to its stakeholders that uh, that are showing up over there in order to guarantee learning outcomes. Right. And um, so I believe they call that designing for flexibility to a certain extent. Right? To say, okay, we're going to try this out. If people cannot, uh, and we're not moving towards the learning outcome, are we ready to drop that or are we ready to change that? And if not, then perhaps this is not a place where we pretend to give people autonomy. Right. But rather just have that conversation with them and say, hey, you know, your best interest is that hard. And for that reason, you may not, you might not like this, but it's something that we all need to do in order to build basic skills, like paying attention in a boring conversation. Right.

Gus Rojas Ayala: Um, Nina, you want to go next?

Dr. Linda Nathan: Sure. Um, I really appreciate, Chris, your framing. And I just want to mention something that Gustavo and I experienced, particularly in the Chilean context. The book is not trying to have democratic schools. Equal freedom. Those two things are not the same. So we are not talking about free schools. There's nothing. No. I think Lydia's chapter is probably the most, if you will, extreme in terms of that. But we. The notion of. I just want to make sure our listeners understand this notion of free schools was not what we were trying to do because that has a whole sort of literature. And as Gustavo and I experienced when we talked to some Chilean, um, educators at the national level, they were like, no, we don't want to do free schools. And we were like, no, no, no, it's not the same. So I just want to make sure we get our language on that.

Speaker A: Right.

Dr. Linda Nathan: Um, but I think, Chris, when you started talking about the Harvard students who I share with you, one of the things that I know well in the US is the public education system, because I spent almost 40 years as a public school teacher and a public school principal. And what we did in the US with the advent of no Child Left Behind. So that particular legislation slammed the door on innovation in the United States. And when I was talking earlier about, we had this brief period, and those are the cases that I'm looking at in the next book, which is going to be called Democratic Schools Matter. We picked six schools that emerged right before nclb. So they've had a long history or right at nclb and they couldn't yet be destroyed by no Child Left Behind. So many people talk about that legislation as a very progressive legislation that it opened up, it really centered equity, thought about funding, and all of that may be true. Uh, and those are potentially very important things. But it also did one thing which dramatically changed US Education. Probably brought us closer to India, actually, which was a single high stakes test. This notion that 12 years of schooling, 13 really would end with one or two or three or four or five single tests was going to now determine what success in US Schools look like. And that has so dramatically stopped the flow of innovation of democratic thinking. Because everything then is about getting through the narrowest eye of the needle. Sadly, wonderful as our Harvard students are, most of them have come through that system. They get to graduate school at Harvard, at least in my class, and they got to unlearn a whole lot about what success looks like. Because in my class, now that we're back in real time, we spend quite a bit of time with them thinking about, how are you going to exhibit your knowledge? How are you going to share this with other people? What's it going to look like? And they're like, you mean I have to literally build and collaborate and demonstrate it's not just a test or a paper? And I'm like, yeah, because actually in the real world, it's not a test or just a paper. It's all about those C skills of collaboration and communication. So I do a lot of happily reteaching that. But I do think as we think about education globally, and if we end up thinking that what constitutes success in education is a score on a test, we are so sadly misguided and we won't get the kind of citizens that are fragile democracies really need. And that's why I think folks like Lydia were really interested in studying homeschool, which is absolutely rejected. That notion of one test measures my worth. But I think, um, universities play a huge role in keeping, um, ideas very limited. Because if the only way to get into university, the top ones, let's say, is through a test, um, we're going to have really, um, poor, uh, students. Because we all on this show know that, you know, learning can be measured in lots of different ways. And, you know, that that is something we need to privilege.

Speaker A: So,

Gus Rojas Ayala: and building on this notion of, um, having one single, um, result, one single number, like becoming the most important thing for an education system, I think that talks a lot about a very important part of the debate, which is the social function we actually hold schools accountable to. So not a single decision is random. Right? It all corresponds to a certain kind of vision, to a certain kind of values, to a certain kind of worldview. Um, and you can look at, you know, schools as a system to keep society under control. You can look at schools as a device to pursue economic prosperity. There are so many, like, philosophical views around, um, what schools can actually do and should do for a society. I think that a very important part of that conversation is the tension between conservation and innovation. The idea that people are often held by their own beliefs and attitudes, uh, and how that shapes the way we think and the way we act and the way we are actually able to bring forth something new that is often determined by those two forces. Uh, and I believe a very important component in getting our ideas straight around that is the idea of common good. Actually a very important, and I would say even fundamental democratic belief, which is we as a people are able to come up with the best possible answer in order to protect common good. Uh, sometimes protecting the common good actually means being very good at realizing what are, uh, components of our way of life together as a society that we must protect, that we must. Uh, you know, conservation in a. In a good, positive way can actually be. Can, uh, also be a driver of good for society. But then, of course, um, this notion of what else do we need because the world changes and. Right. Uh, this world was this work and the book was edited prior to all of the AI Upheaval of the last years. And that is such a transformative force right now. And it should force us not only to talk about what new things, attitudes, skills do we need to build, but also what do we want to create, uh, you know, keep and hold on to. Uh, and sometimes that has to do with values, sometimes that has to do with, like, cultural heritage and so on. But right now, particularly, uh, thinking about this amazing framing, uh, that you just posed, Professor Didi, I think the word agency, uh, matters so much, right? Because AI gives us now a set of tools that completely transformate the economy around building, around, creating value. So right now, individuals can pretty much outsize organizations. When it comes, uh, to the terms of the impact of what you're actually designing, the impact of what you're actually building. Uh, I think that that conversation around beliefs and attitudes towards the possibility of freedom, it's more important than ever. And it is a very important part of the conversation which should be taking place in schools right now. But it's intimately connected to the fundamental beliefs about what we believe schools should do for a society. And that's deeply philosophical. It's not only political, but it's philosophical. And it requires us to have, um, a set of guiding values. Uh, I could think of the four democratic pillars from our book as very important or interesting, you know, um, avenues to hold that conversation collectively. Because, thinking democratically, it should not be decided by elites. It should be decided collectively.

Jonathan Mendonza: Just to add to that and get super specific with some examples. Right? Um, for. For instance, children can really be involved in collaborative curriculum development. And we've seen this in a lot of places. For instance, um, um. A lot of schools that are introducing, uh, um. Ah, AI related courses for children, uh, need to speak to the children, given that these are, uh, uh, children who have a lot more exposure to such technology than teachers themselves in a number of instances. Right. Uh, dialogues, self governance, um, spaces, if not the whole, whole school at one end of the spectrum, then at least for a certain club or a newsletter or a podcast.

Speaker A: Right?

Jonathan Mendonza: But we need to have a lot more instances where children are exercising decision making, tolerance, things like that. And um, another example is, um, I know that a lot of schools have been talking about personalization, right? And these are not typically democratic schools that are talking about it. Because in a democratic school you don't need to do that. Um, in fact, I find it a little odd that school is a space that brings people together and then does not become the one that is suited to talk about, uh, a high degree of personalization. Right? Because then the signal that you're sending to children is that you could be learning better or more, quote, unquote, efficiently on your own. But you know what? You're stuck with a bunch of students. Instead, we need to flip the argument to say, what is it that we can learn as a class, as a school that is impossible for us to learn as an individual?

Speaker A: Right?

Jonathan Mendonza: And I think when we look at it, uh, from a democratic lens, we find that things like opening up, um, decision making, at least in pockets, setting norms, what happens, what is the repercussions of breaking those norms when children take ownership of that? I think they respect that and actually, um, are, ah, a lot more keen on ensuring that the rules that they set are, uh, enforced than the ones that we set.

Dr. Linda Nathan: And we should just mention chapter 39 in our book, the last chapter, which was written by only students called Good Trouble Report. Really models what Jonathan was just talking

Speaker A: about

Lydia Tsao: this hour always fly by so quickly. I cannot believe this.

Speaker F: I cannot believe it's an hour.

Lydia Tsao: Yeah, it's been an hour. And this is just, ah, a little taster to our audience about this notion of democratic schools. And we look forward to inviting some of the authors of this book to come to our show in the future. Uh, and thank you again to all our wonderful guests. Um, Punya, would you like to introduce the next show?

Speaker F: Absolutely. And again, thank you, uh, to the three of you for joining us today. Um, yeah, I can't wait to reach out to the others, uh, in your book to get some episodes going. But I think specifically the diversity of things that you talked about, I think that's really important. Um, I think, Lydia, you made the point, or somebody made the point that we have a certain vision of what a school looks like. And I think that it doesn't have to be that way. Right? I mean, there are many, many ways that we can think about it. And I think it's important to see models off, and that's great. Um, next week, um, we are going to focus on ourselves. We are going to, uh, talk about silver lining for learning. Suzy, um, Gronset from the University of Houston, and Kelly Davis, one of our grad students, actually, uh, in one of the doctoral seminars they were teaching, used this tool that we had developed that captured sort of six years of silver lining for learning to identify, uh, episodes that their doctoral students or master students in their program could analyze and get deeper into. Uh, so we will, um, be talking with. Susie will be joining us along with, um, let's see, um, Paulo Escovel, Garrett Ward, and Vidya Menon, who were students in the class to hear from them what they found in their analysis of silver lining for learning. So really looking forward to that conversation. Um, and again, thank you very much, uh, for joining us today. The episode will be live hopefully later today on YouTube and the podcast, or at least by tomorrow. So thank you very much. Have a great weekend, and we'll keep in touch.

Speaker A: Sa.