ELT News Think Tank

Panelists: Chris | Marc | Curtis
Date: May 2004

Topic: "Do we need democracy in the classroom?"

Chris Hunt

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Democracy is nothing without respect, which is why the issue of community is important. The schools listed above have the advantage of being full-time. Time can be set aside for meetings. But at typical language schools students may only be attending once or twice a week. What can be done in such cases? One solution, as practised at the British Centres Kleva Kid school in Athens, Greece, is to give individual classes autonomy. Anyone, teacher or student can call a meeting inside a class if there is an issue to be addressed. An issue may be something like whether to hold a class inside or outside, or that the subject matter is boring, or indeed anything. The language used to discuss the issue is open – indeed one of the points of the process is building community by seeking to understand each other.

Another way I have been attempting to introduce democracy into children's classes, here in Japan, is by using questionnaires. First I created worksheets that required students to match English and Japanese phrases. I then gave the students a questionnaire using the same phrases. For the following month each student was asked to select one preferred learning focus (reading, writing, speaking or listening) and one topic from a list of five. From the results I created a pie chart that indicated the ratio of topics chosen and the preferred learning focus. I used this as a basis for making lesson plans. I've just begun this process but so far after two months I've noticed a trend. Fourth to Sixth graders chose reading and writing as their preferred method of learning English. Junior High School students placed emphasis on speaking and listening. Whether this will continue or not remains to be seen.

Using questionnaires is a poor substitute for democracy but it is a start. I want to create methods that can be used by native English teachers with little Japanese language ability (such as myself). In my experience many children are not used to the idea of making choices. They are not used to the idea of taking responsibility for their actions and this has to be built gradually.

For me, freedom and democracy go together, and the concept that binds them together is the notion of licence. Licence occurs when an individual refuses to take responsibility for his or her own actions. Licence often interferes with the liberty of others. Choosing not to study is an individual's right but disrupting those who wish to study is an act of licence. This is something I have never tolerated and have been autocratic about. In the past I've removed students from a classroom because they disrupted the class. But ideally, I think I should have called a meeting and got the class to decide what action should have been taken. This is what I intend to do should the situation arise in the future.

I began with a quote from George Bernard Shaw. I'd like to end with two more, both from Man and Superman (1903):

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Is it so unreasonable to ask for more real democracy in schools, and for that matter, in life?

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Panelists: Chris | Marc | Curtis

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Chris Hunt, Wise Hat.
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