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Writer's pictureJoann Shen

Democratic Education 2.0: From Schools to the World


Speaker: Yaacov Hecht | Founder of Hadera Democratic School ;  Author of the “Democratic School”;  Founder of the first IDEC 


  • How to promote the concept of democratic education from Israel to the world?

  • What is the concept of Education for Democracy 2.0 and how is it being promoted globally?

  • How to develop students into active global citizens through educational innovation.





Many people often ask me, “Why do we use the term ‘democratic education’ in particular? Aren't all schools in a democratic society democratic schools?”


The reason why I have named the new education “democracy” is that I realized that the old school model was designed to adapt students to life in a non-democratic society more than a century ago, and thus was incapable of developing the skills needed for life in a modern democratic society.


The schools of the past trained students in the life skills needed to work in factories that required discipline and obedience. These skills are not conducive to a modern society that requires creativity and activism.


I realized that every country tries to prove its democracy, but there is a missing piece of the puzzle in democracies: democratic education.


Democracy Education is not an answer but a question that seeks to address the central question:


“In order to make the world a better place for everyone, in which direction should the future of democracy go? How should schooling be established?”



In order to transform the educational system into a democracy - it must stop preparing students to adapt to living in the collapsing pyramid of the old society and start preparing them to live and prepare for the new age of knowledge.


I expect that democratic schools in the future will be laboratories of social democracy!

The best way to realize this goal is to work in a networked mode. Just as the educational systems that prepared students for life in the industrial wave of the past were built in the “pyramid” paradigm to allow students to practice life in the world outside the walls of the school, new schools and new educational systems must adopt the network paradigm to prepare students for life in today's world and the future. We call this education - Education 2.0.




Transformation from Classroom to Learning Community (Democracy 2.0)


In the old pyramid classroom, the teacher's starting point was that the children came into the classroom hollow and empty, and the main question was what to fill them with and how to fill them. The online classroom has a new starting point, according to which they are on a quest to discover their own unique “color,” and so they come to the classroom with a rainbow of colors. When faced with this starting point, the classroom becomes a creative team, and teachers and students embark on a journey of discovery. On this journey, they work together to tackle challenges in various fields of knowledge that are relevant to the world we live in today.


In Classroom 2.0, the roles of teachers and students are changing.


  1. From the model of one teacher and a group of students, the classroom is transformed into a learning community where everyone is both teacher and student.

  2. Teams of students, teachers, and community experts work together to address common challenges in the classroom.

  3. The role of the teacher is to support the development of a learning and creative community in which the individual is appreciated and encouraged to find his/her “gift” and to see and help his/her classmates on their journey.

  4. Each student utilizes his/her vast resources to specialize in his/her area of strength.

  5. In Classroom 2.0, peer-assisted learning, the most profound type of learning, takes place. Peer-assisted learning utilizes students' different areas of strength.


There are several models of online learning. One of them is a unique model that we developed in Israel (by Education City) - Educational Teams (or Classroom 2.0). Educational teams work like a sports team and follow only two principles:


  1. Every Student is a Teacher - The teacher's new role as Education Team's Coach strives to help each student find his/her areas of strength. Students become “Young Teachers” in this area.

  2. There is a common, measurable challenge in the classroom - a challenge that may be academic, social, or community based. The innovation is that the challenge is shared by the whole class, rather than being an individual challenge. For example, in an academic challenge, the group's grade is the average of the individual grades of all participants in the group.



I think the future of PBL teaching should be more towards DBL (demacracy based learning), because project-based PBL is still a project for the school, but the future of the school should be for the students to learn the way of democratic operation in order to cope with the whole world!


I believe that democratic education can lead the world to peace!

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