ABSTRACT
A democratic society grows from the roots of a democratic school system. If a society wants to make itself free, it gives more freedom to schools. Variability and diversity within education are necessary if choice is to be exercised. Alternatives within the system of education such as state-owned, nonstate-owned and home schooling provide for competition in the educational system. Education begins to address the holistic world, its global problems, and ranks the priority of human values higher than class and group interests. A child-centred school should also provide possibilities for children with special needs to be mainstreamed and integrated into the normal life of children and, further on, into the normal life of the society. Humanization of education is seen as filling the spiritual vacuum caused by the collapse of old ideological dogmas, as an instrument to form a new social ideology, capable of changing mental stereotypes of our society.
