> Words are important and taken on face value people may extrapolate that it's the government type, democracy, that will bring better education. When in my opin

> Words are important and taken on face value people may extrapolate that it's the government type, democracy, that will bring better education. When in my opinion it's a cooperative environment, peer review, meaningful engagement and a sense of ownership. The problem here, I think, is that the notion of democracy is largely misunderstood. Many people are afraid of the term because it's been abused so badly. Your description of a "cooperative" isn't any different from a democracy. So the issue isn't which word is better. It's whether you want to improve all of society or just schools. > Edit: For me a democratic schooling would be voting for the teacher you would like to have; which will be the popularity contest most such competitions devolve to. I think that's a massive conflation of "democracy" with "election". There's a school near where I live where the teachers pitch classes and the students vote on which ones are offered for the quarter (might have the interval wrong). This is democratic to me.