ABSTRACT
In a school setting, democracy is problematic because there are compulsory school laws. This means that no matter how democratic a school is, an element of choice is absent; children are required to be in some kind of educational programme. Children who are part of a democratic school, and participate in a democratic meeting, have the chance to tap into a source of energy and creativity that is not accessed in an ordinary school. The prevalence of the notion exists in spite of modern research that continues to prove that the brain is aggressive and ready to learn, that children are natural scientists, observing and cataloguing and quickly understanding the world around them. In many ways the public school, or the educational bureaucracy, is like a giant balloon. There could be an innovation that begins at some point on the surface and starts pushing in and changing the shape of the balloon.
