Democracy, Education, and Governance
A Developmental Conception
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Description
The restructuring of school governance, especially in urban school districts, is fundamental in current educational reform. This book provides a model of school governance based upon participatory democracy, derived from the "developmental" tradition in political theory. The result is a system of governance that is fundamentally integrated, in that it is simultaneously participative, communicative, associative, and nonviolent, as well as sensitive to the need for collective, democratic deliberation concerning community-wide interests. This model is critically compared to the bureaucratic model of school governance and current school-based management plans.
Dale T. Snauwaert is Assistant Professor at the College of Education, University of Missouri.
Reviews
"This book sparkles. It has fresh and important ideas. I would wish it a widespread readership. " — Anna Ochoa, Indiana University
"The main virtues of this book lie in the content even more than in the commendable style. Snauwaert picks a politically and educationally important topic: developmental conception of democracy. In fact, in this conception of democracy, the political and the educational are one and the same. He directly and cogently summarizes contributions of Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Dewey, and Gandhi to this tradition, and then connects this tradition to concrete historical educational conflict which gave rise to progressive reforms. The shortcomings of these reforms are used as warnings to us now—as things to avoid as we contemplate school restructuring. Snauwaert's design specifications for restructuring school governance are concrete and specific. " — Ralph C. Page, University of Illinois-Champaign