International Democratic Education Conference IDEC@EUDEC 2025 Belgium

What is democratic education?

A democratic school is a learning environment, based on the following 2 pillars:

1. Children and young people have the right to make their own choices regarding learning and all other areas of daily life. In particular, they can individually decide what to do, when, where, how and with whom, as long as their decisions do not infringe on the freedom of others to do the same.
2. Children and young people have an equal share in decision-making about how their organizations – in particular their schools – are managed and what agreements are needed.

Democratic education is characterized by the following elements

• A community based in a culture of equality and shared responsibility. Respect breeds respect. Trust breeds trust. Compassion breeds compassion. Tolerance breeds tolerance. Listening breeds listening.
• Collective decision-making in which all members of the community, regardless of age or status, have an equal say in important decisions such as school rules, curricula, projects, hiring of staff and even budgetary matters.
• Self-directed discovery: The children and young people choose what they learn, when, how and with whom they learn it. Learning can take place inside or outside the classroom, through play or conventional study. The key is that learning follows students’ intrinsic motivation and pursues their interests.

Democratic schools are communities where Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children have the right to have a say in matters that concern them, is fully realized.

Democratic education provides an ideal breeding ground for developing critically thinking individuals who are collaborative problem solvers and creative flexible thinkers.

On the one hand, a truly democratic school fits the above description. On the other hand, there is a great diversity of democratic schools in the world regarding decision-making, conflict-resolution, governance structure, the cultural diversity in learning content and how this content is offered.

Want to know more? Check out the official EUDEC website.
 

About IDEC and EUDEC

IDEC stands for International Democratic Education Conference. Since 1993 there is every year an IDEC conference, where people from over the whole world come together to meet about Democratic Education.

EUDEC stands for European Democratic Education Community. It is a non-profit organization that promotes democratic education as a sensible educational model for all democratic states. Its members are individuals, schools and institutions throughout Europe with decades of experience in democratic education.

Since 2008 there is every year a EUDEC conference, where people who are active in the field of democratic education, or are interested to get to know more about it, meet, discuss ideas, work on projects, play and have fun together.

Please finde all informations about the conference here.