ABSTRACT
This chapter examines structured approaches to learning democracy based on the ideas of Celestin Freinet. It focuses on ways in which students can experience democracy in action and examine curriculum strategies, such as project work, which are able to promote student participation. A co-operative class or school is a way of organising school life for its members, but it is also a mechanism for enabling enhanced learning experiences based on visits, projects or productions. Pedagogy needs to permit maximum freedom of expression and conscience. The exercise of the right of freedom of expression is at least partially dependent on access to information and ideas, including information from the mass media and from a diversity of national and international sources. Human rights instruments help to elaborate pedagogical principles by which the implementation of the school curriculum can become an education of democratically-minded citizens. The chapter concludes with an attempt to define some pedagogic principles based on human rights.
