Dai Ying

According to James Beane, democracy is an idea about how people

might live together. At the core are two related principles: (1) that
people are have a fundamental right to human dignity and (2) that
people have a responsibility to care about the common good and the
dignity and welfare of others.
Democracy is also about values like justice and equity. Human
dignity and the common good are not only part of how democracy
happens, but also what it strives for. The decision itself must serve the
purposes and values of a democracy and the democratic way of life. It
must respect human dignity, honor individual rights, and provide for
the common good.
According to James Beane, teaching the democratic way means
both thinking and acting democratically. The two go together and
mean little apart from each other. What matters in democratic
classrooms is that teachers and students have a mutual understanding
of democracy as an idea and a sense of satisfaction that the everyday
life of the classroom fits that understanding as much as possible, in
that moment, democracy really does come to life in the school.
According to James Beane, teaching the democratic way means
involving young people in decision making whenever possible and to
what ever degree possible. Giving students a voice in this way, no
matter how restricted the teacher may feel by various mandates is a
step in the democratic direction.
The purpose of involving students in planning is not to trick them into
thinking that our ideas are theirs or to subtly lead them to the plan we
already had in mind. The purpose of involving students in planning is to
help them learn the democratic way. Whether their ideas match ours is
not the point.
According to James Beane, teaching the democratic way demands
that content be drawn from more than the usual academic sources that
content be drawn from more than the usual academic sources (namely,
textbooks) or sources that present only one cultural view. The
democratic right to have a voice and the related responsibility to hear
many voices require that teachers and students draw content not only
from the traditional disciplines of knowledge but also from their own
personal knowledge, popular culture, and current media. They are
obligated to seek ideas and viewpoints of diverse cultures.

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According to James Beane, the matter of collaborative planning is

not really about the feelings of the teacher. The teacher must make
many decisions aloe regarding the safety and well being of students.
Collaborative planning is about the right and responsibility of young
people to learn the democratic way and the obligation of the teacher to
help them do so.
According to James Beane, the democratic way of living is an active
one as people search for informed opinion, analyze situations, express
viewpoints, create solutions, offer recommendations and take direct
action. We should seek different viewpoints from a variety of sources
and helping young people to become increasingly adept as critical
consumers of information. Teaching the democratic way involves look
for ways to engage young people in more complex projects by which
they not only experience a sense of altruism but also learn how to act
on problems and concerns. The way that collaborative learning.
According to James Beane, by teaching and learning the democratic
way means that students must also play a crucial role with regard to
their own work, young people also deserve and benefit from
opportunities to become more skilled in making judgments about their
own efforts, teachers make every effort to engage students in
reflection and self- evaluation through discussions, conferences and
other means. Teaching the democratic way means framing these kinds
of activities in terms of the right to participate in evaluation rather than
as a clever device for forcing students who have bot completed their
work to publicly admit it.
According to James Beane, it is the teachers job to help young
people think more deeply, more broadly, and more critically. Their work
involves thinking, problem solving, researching, evaluating, and other
complex activities. Teachers should be certain that crucial questions
are raised, persistent problems recognized, an array of sources
consulted, and information and skills applied.
According to James Beane, when we teach the democratic way, we
make the students self-worth a central concern of classroom life.
Young people are real people living real lives in the real world. The role
of student is only one of many they play. To respect the dignity of
young people means taking them seriously as whole human beings,
not just as students.
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According to James Beane, two social dimensions of democracy,

one is the common good; the other is individual needs, interests, and
concerns that people bring to the community. In teaching the
democratic way, the purpose is to enrich the community by building on
the diversity of the group and by learning from, working with, and
helping one another, involves helping young people come to know and
appreciate the diversity within their classroom community; involves
recognizing and drawing on diverse cultures; introducing popular
culture into the classroom, making space for students to bring issues
and meanings from contemporary media and entertainment to the
classroom.
According to James Beane, a democratic culture is a culture of
inquiry in which good questions are more important than easy
answers, and where figuring things out is more important than simply
accumulating information.
The culture of inquiry in a democratic classroom, framed by questions
and fed by wide-ranging information, eventually leads to questions of
equity and justice.
According to James Beane, standards are supposed to be broad,
and involve thinking and application, not just longer lists of facts and
skills. Assessments were supposed to be multiple, authentic, and
mostly local, not standardized and high-stakes. Teachers were
supposed to have wide latitude in determining methods, not get
perspective orders for sequencing content and test-prepping students.
The push was to have strengthened our public schools.