The intersections between education and democracy have been known, at least since Dewey, not only because education is the anticipation of life (in a democracy), but also because education is - as Dewey himself (1916) emphasized - life itself. This presentation uses my own experience of 'growing up during a revolution' as a starting point for reflecting on the relationship between school, politics and democracy. I will illustrate this reflection with examples from the research we have conducted with children, young people and their teachers on the place of politics and political education in schools.
While the revolution of April 25, 1974 resulted in an upsurge of democratic living, both inside and outside schools, educational policies maintained considerable ambivalence about the place of political education. This ambivalence, visible to this day, is deeply anchored in a vision of children and young people as 'citizens-in-the-making', for whom politics (or life, for that matter) is too complex to understand - a vision that captures their existence as political beings and denies their presence in 'our (common) world'.
Decades of research support the idea that power imbalances and inequalities mark the daily existence of children and young people at school. Politics is present in school life, whether it is acknowledged or denied - school education is an unavoidable political experience. Schools are places where we learn about justice, injustice, submission, defiance, confrontation, dialogue, taking the floor, looking the other way, being soft and being hard. This centrality may help explain why school still stands out in the voices of young people as their place of choice for political education, a place of trust in an increasingly polarized and contested world.
As far as I can see, the contemporary risks to democracy demand a return to educational theory and research. Educational theory and research can support an education that fosters, for all children and young people, the complexity of cognitive processes, the recognition and acceptance of emotions and the ability to interact and dialogue with other people who are inevitably different. As I believe (firmly) that there is still a revolution to be made and that hope is a powerful political emotion, I will reflect on the 'what ifs' of this return.
BIO
Isabel Menezes is a Professor of Education Sciences at the University of Porto, part of the OEI Chair of Global Citizenship Education. She has a PhD in Psychology and a habilitation in Education Sciences. Her research deals with the civic and political participation of children, young people and adults, with a particular interest in groups at risk of exclusion. The main goal is to explore if and how formal and non-formal education (including artistic) experiences can generate more complex ways of relationship with the political. She coordinated several funded inter/national research projects and is currently the Director of the CIIE - Centre for Research and Intervention in Education. Her publications can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Isabel_Menezes or https://up-pt.academia.edu/IsabelMenezes