A Civic Leap: Schools as Practice Fields for Democracy, by Will Gowen

Democracy. For most of us it’s something that happens to us, not with us. We vote, maybe. We protest, write a letter, show up to a council meeting once. But it’s rarely something lived. And for many of us, we’ve stopped imagining what it could actually be.

What if that changed? And what if schools, traditionally not a democratic space at all, became the living experiments democracy actually needs right now?

We’ve complained about decisions made without us. We’ve watched institutions that were supposed to serve us feel distant and unresponsive. What most of us have never done is live inside a system where our voice genuinely shaped something that mattered… where we worked through real disagreement and still made a decision together… where we felt what it actually means when power is honestly shared.

Schools might be exactly the place to build that.

The Gap

Here’s the contradiction most schools are living. Many say they value student agency, teacher voice, shared leadership, belonging. Most educators I know mean those things genuinely. And then those same schools run on structures built for a different era: decisions made at the top, teachers told what to implement, students managed rather than trusted, families informed rather than involved. The values say one thing. How the school actually runs says another. And the people who feel that gap most sharply are usually the ones who’ve had the least power to begin with.

The most powerful thing a school can do for democracy right now isn’t a better curriculum or learning program. It’s becoming a democratic organization itself. By democracy I don’t mean a procedure. I mean genuine shared power, built into how a place actually runs. It’s participatory governance. Rule by the people, in practice. The school itself becomes the democracy.

This Isn’t New

This isn’t new. Summerhill has been running in England since 1921. The Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap in the Netherlands since 1926. In postwar London, St George-in-the-East showed this was possible inside a state secondary school. In Colombia, Escuela Nueva built democratic student governance into public rural schools in 1975. Mission Hill School ran as a teacher-governed democratic public school in Boston for 25 years. And there’s more, much more. Schools have been living and experimenting with democratic practice for many years worldwide, with real successes, real failures, and hard-won wisdom in between. There’s much to learn from all of it.

This isn’t a civics unit or a student council. It’s the actual structure of the school. Who has a real say over the schedule, assessment practices, school policy, how conflict gets handled, what the community actually values. When students and teachers have genuine authority over the decisions that shape their daily lives, something shifts. And it requires a different kind of leadership than most schools have, and a different kind than most preparation programs train for.

If we want schools where young people experience genuine democratic participation, the adults have to be living it too. Otherwise what gets taught every day, through how decisions get made and who gets heard, is that democracy is something you study. Not something you do.

What It Actually Looks Like

So what does this actually look like?

It depends. And how it takes shape in each place is shaped by relationships, school culture, community history, legal structures, labor agreements, government policy, board requirements, the funding model. Democratic practice has to be designed within the real constraints of each community. That’s not a barrier. That’s what makes it real.

It doesn’t mean chaos. It doesn’t mean every decision requires everyone’s sign-off. It means designing intentionally for who has real say over what. And the design alone isn’t enough. The structures have to be held by real relationships, by trust built over time, by a culture where people actually feel safe enough to show up honestly. That’s the work underneath the work. It’s slower, less visible, and just as necessary.

The entry point is different for every school. A principal who starts asking which decisions actually need to come through them, and hands others back to the people closest to the work, is doing this. A staff that rebuilds its meetings so real decisions happen there, not just updates, is doing this. A school where students help shape the rules, the culture, and how conflict gets resolved is doing this. And yes, there are schools where students and teachers govern together as genuine equals. These aren’t different philosophies. They’re different places on the same path toward closing the gap between what a school says it believes about democracy and how it actually runs day to day.

This also means looking honestly at the governance layers above the school. Boards, directors, governing bodies of all kinds hold real power over the institutions they oversee. And most of them are not democratic either. In a moment of intense complexity, no single board, no matter how well-intentioned, has all the answers. The case for distributed power and genuine community voice doesn’t stop at the classroom or the staffroom. It goes all the way up.

We’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t. Democratic schools closed by board decisions made without community voice. Innovative programs dismantled by governance structures that never bought in. The fragility of democratic practice inside an institution isn’t just about internal culture. It’s about whether the power above it is aligned. Boards that operate without transparency, without genuine representation of the communities they serve, become the ceiling that everything below them hits.

What Becomes Possible

And when the whole institution is oriented toward genuine participation… from the board to the classroom… something real becomes possible for the young people inside it.

When students experience and participate in democratic processes in real and consistent ways, they’re developing something you can’t get from a textbook. How to listen across difference. How to navigate real conflict without it becoming destruction. How to take responsibility for a decision made collectively. How to speak in a room where their voice actually counts. They’re also learning something harder to name: how to be in genuine community with people who see the world differently, and to build something real together anyway. These aren’t soft skills. They’re the capacities a functioning democracy actually requires from its citizens. And they’re built through practice, not instruction. In a world where artificial intelligence is reshaping what human skills are worth, these capacities matter more than ever. AI can process information, generate content, and automate decisions faster than any classroom can teach. What it cannot do is help young people navigate real disagreement, exercise genuine judgment in community, or build trust across difference. Those are human capacities. Discernment, collaboration, the ability to work through complexity and keep moving… students who practice democracy are being prepared for exactly the world they’re about to inherit.

There’s another reason this matters. We’re living through a moment of intense complexity, fragmentation, and pressure on institutions of all kinds. Schools that genuinely distribute decision-making are also schools that can actually adapt. When the people closest to a problem have real authority to respond to it, the school moves faster and smarter than one waiting for direction from the top. That’s collective intelligence in practice. The evidence for what becomes possible, in teacher retention, in student development, in institutions that hold together under pressure, is there for anyone who looks.

This is a provocation as much as it is a proposal. We’re living through a moment where what democracy actually means is very much up for grabs. We worry about it, argue about it, mourn it. And, unfortunately, most of us have never practiced it in a room that mattered to us. Schools are not separate from this question. They’re right in the middle of it… and they might be exactly where something real gets built. Because when we design schools to genuinely distribute power, we’re not just improving governance. We’re interrupting the patterns that have always decided whose voice counts and whose doesn’t. And students who grow up inside schools practicing democracy don’t just learn democratic skills. They develop a democratic identity. They begin to see themselves as people who have a say, who can shape something, who belong in rooms where decisions get made. That’s not a small thing. This might be the next civic step worth taking: not waiting for the system to change, but building something real inside the places we already have. The time to experiment is now.

The Field and the Work Ahead

The field is growing. You can witness this work occurring internationally through recent films like School Circles, which follows six schools in the Netherlands where students, staff, and parents make real collective decisions together through sociocratic governance, and the QUEST film documenting Suvemäe in Tallinn, Estonia, where a democratic branch lives inside a public school. There are annual events like Student Power Summit built around genuine student agency and the many democratic schools already living this in different ways through the European Democratic Education Community and Teacher-Powered Schools networks… and the conversation is growing. The 2024 open-access book Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments documents experiments across the US, India, Mexico and beyond. Yet many of these remarkable experiments are happening in isolation, without the connection and support that would help them go further. The field is alive but still finding itself.

And there’s room for more. More connection between experiments. More support for schools in the messy middle of transformation. More leadership development for people learning to genuinely share power. More of the connective tissue that lets this field grow together rather than in isolation.

I’ve been experimenting with democratic practices in schools for over ten years, in public and private spaces, with success and failure and most of all with passion. I’m building toward something larger… spotlighting what’s working, connecting experiments across contexts, and helping grow the support infrastructure this field needs. I also offer direct support to schools ready to do this work now: coaching, facilitation, training, and longer-term partnership through Be More Collaborative.

If you’re doing this work somewhere, I want to know about it. If you’re a field builder, a democratic experimenter, a school leader trying to close the gap between values and structure… let’s connect. If you want to collaborate, build, or just think alongside someone genuinely in this, reach out.

This is worth investing in. Not as a program or an add-on, but as the foundation for everything else you’re trying to build. Schools that are genuinely power-full and leader-full work better for everyone inside them… and become the democratic experiments we need in this moment.

About the Author

Will Gowen is a consultant, facilitator, trainer, and longtime educator. He partners with schools and educational organizations to develop and improve collaborative governance through training, coaching, and ongoing support. Find out about his work at Bemorecollaborative.com