Editor’s note: This commentary from James V. Shuls, dean of the College of Education at Southeastern University and a fellow at EdChoice, appeared Monday on RealClear Education.
Here is a mental exercise an education scholar once gave an audience: Imagine you were sitting in a classroom somewhere in the world and knew nothing about the language, the students’ appearance, or anything else that would help you establish where you were. How would you know whether you were in a democratic nation or a totalitarian one?
His answer: classroom practices and content should look different in a democratic nation.
Let’s take the exercise a step further. Imagine you were dropped into a nation that valued diversity, freedom of thought and religion, and the rights of the individual. How would you expect its educational system to look?
I suspect you’d find a wide variety of types of schools – Montessori and classical, STEM and the arts, religious and secular, and more. Further, students in those schools likely would be there by choice, not by residential assignment. In a society that embraces freedom, we could expect to see a system of education that maximizes educational pluralism and educational choice.
In short, it’s not just what goes on inside a classroom that should look different in a democracy, but the very educational system itself that should look different.
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