My daughter was at a Democratic school in Israel last year, and things did not work out for us quite well for us.
One problem I see that they don't like to discipline any wrongdoings, the proper way for that is for the collective to decide at the 'commission for discipline''; my daughter was in constant terror of being referred to the 'discipline commission'; kids who where more violent generally ignored this threat, as a result there are few means of handling/discipline real offenders. In a way the result that stronger and more rowdy kids are favored and so they tend to impose their will on others.
Another problem is that somehow humans always build hierarchies, so there is no such thing as a egalitarian society, even in grade A. So unconstrained 'Bullying
Betty' again tends to get her will against all others; now if her parent is a teacher in the institution than that will somehow get 'bullying Betty' another head start; In our place I could discern several hierarchies, somehow at the center there always were the kids whose parents worked at the institution.
Also kids tend to compare themselves to others, even if there are no grades they will create their own distinctions;
Now another major problem is that still kids will have to get some input from grown ups; the requirement to learn how to read and write will put you in front of a teacher; the teacher in our case would have to handle a loud class where every pupil would be on a different level ( they can walk out of classes ), I think the teacher in our case was not up to the task; now of course the results were blamed on our daughter; interestingly once she got out of the institution my daughter started to learn well.
So for me, as for other similar cases at our school the bright idea did not work out; We put our daughter into a general school, and she was thankful for the change, she does not look back;
I would say that the ideal of democratic schools is similar to the ideal of Communism: the ideal sounds great, but the implementation always turns the idea into shit.
One problem I see that they don't like to discipline any wrongdoings, the proper way for that is for the collective to decide at the 'commission for discipline''; my daughter was in constant terror of being referred to the 'discipline commission'; kids who where more violent generally ignored this threat, as a result there are few means of handling/discipline real offenders. In a way the result that stronger and more rowdy kids are favored and so they tend to impose their will on others.
Another problem is that somehow humans always build hierarchies, so there is no such thing as a egalitarian society, even in grade A. So unconstrained 'Bullying Betty' again tends to get her will against all others; now if her parent is a teacher in the institution than that will somehow get 'bullying Betty' another head start; In our place I could discern several hierarchies, somehow at the center there always were the kids whose parents worked at the institution.
Also kids tend to compare themselves to others, even if there are no grades they will create their own distinctions;
Now another major problem is that still kids will have to get some input from grown ups; the requirement to learn how to read and write will put you in front of a teacher; the teacher in our case would have to handle a loud class where every pupil would be on a different level ( they can walk out of classes ), I think the teacher in our case was not up to the task; now of course the results were blamed on our daughter; interestingly once she got out of the institution my daughter started to learn well.
So for me, as for other similar cases at our school the bright idea did not work out; We put our daughter into a general school, and she was thankful for the change, she does not look back;
I would say that the ideal of democratic schools is similar to the ideal of Communism: the ideal sounds great, but the implementation always turns the idea into shit.