About IDEC
by David Gribble

David Gribble is author of Considering Children, A Really Good School, Real Education, That' All Folks, and others.
He taught at Dartington Hall School, founded Sands School in England
and has been involved with IDEC since it began in 1993.
http://www.davidgribble.co.uk/

IDEC stands for International Democratic Education Conference. It is not the name of an organisation or a group. What happens is that at each year's conference a school volunteers to run the conference for the next year. (In practice there has sometimes been delay in finding a volunteer, and for 2000 there had to be a choice made between several schools.) At intervals calls have been made for an official structure of some kind - another one came at Summerhill in 1999 - but in practice the autonomy of individual schools in arranging their own conferences has made for exciting variety.

Once representatives of a school have agreed to run a conference, everything is in their hands - dates, participants, cost, accommodation and style of conference. The length of the conferences has varied between two days for the first one to a fortnight in 1997. Students from both the host school and visiting schools have nearly always played a large part; the conference at Sands in 1997 and the Tokyo conference in 2000 were in fact run almost entirely by students. The longer conferences have included days of sight-seeing and varied social and cultural events. Sometimes there has been a full program of prepared talks and workshops, and sometimes the program has been entirely decided by the participants after they arrived; sometimes there has been a bit of both. Some conferences have been funded entirely by the host schools or by outside agencies, but some schools have had to charge a fee. All decisions about such matters are taken by the host school.

The first conference was in 1993, in Israel, at the Democratic School of Hadera. A few teachers and students from democratic schools found themselves at a large conference in Jerusalem, called "Education for Democracy in a Multi-cultural Society." The participants were mostly philosophers, professors and politicians, so the teachers and students hardly had any opportunity to contribute. A small group was invited to Hadera for two days after the big conference, and the discussions were so stimulating that it was agreed to meet annually.

For the first four years it was known as the Hadera Conference, and David Gribble sent out a newsletter two or three times a year. There were few contributors, and eventually it was abandoned. The hope was expressed that the internet could provide a substitute, and Jerry Mintz now offers an IDEC listserve (idec@edrev.org). [ed. note: For more information on the IDEC listserve, contact Jerry Mintz at JerryAERO@aol.com]

There are differing views as to the purpose of the IDECs. Some see them as an opportunity to discuss shared problems in a supportive atmosphere, where you know that other people share your values. Others hope to spread the idea of democratic education by inviting possible converts and attracting favorable publicity. Others see the conference as a means of bonding schools so that they can offer support in times of crisis, on the "united we stand, divided we fall" principle. Some see them as a way of improving the public perception of the host schools in their own countries. The purpose of any given conference is decided by the school that is organising it.

Relevant Links

IDEN

IDEN stands for International Democratic Education Network.
It is a network of schools, organisations and individuals all round the world that uphold such ideals as:

* respect and trust for children
* equality of status of children and adults
* shared responsibility
* freedom of choice of activity
* democratic governance by children and staff together, without reference to any supposedly superior guide or system.

Members are self-selected. Their names and addresses and a minimal description appear in a data-base on the web site, and they receive two or three newsletters a year, mainly giving information about recent and future IDECs.

http://www.idenetwork.org/index.htm

IDEC Wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Democratic_Education_Conference

The Online Directory of Democratic Education

Democratic education is an educational approach grounded in respect for human rights and a broad interpretation of learning, in which young people have the freedom to organize their daily activities, and in which there is equality and democratic decision-making among young people and adults.

This is a directory of schools, colleges, programs, cooperatives, resource centers, and organizations around the world that practice, identify with, and support these characteristics.

http://www.democraticeducation.com