Alternatives to Democracy & Educational Applications

Alternatives to Democracy & Educational Applications

1. Zapatista Democrary

   • Mexican Indigenous rebellion against the government to regain their rights to participate in the making of their communities, to converve their languages, and their lands.

2. Cosmopolitan Democracy

   • Global Governance "Of the People" "By the peope" and "For the People" This proposal is for a new politcal system that would co-exist with the nation-wide system.

3. Confucian Communitarian Democracy

   • The basis of this system starts with community values of family, respect for authority, filigence, consensus, education, order, and moral persuasion. This relies non a single system of ethics that must be acceptbed by all memebers of the comminuty. This does not allow people in society to have different or contradictory moral beliefs. It is authoritarian, hoever some argue is more harmonious versus legal structures.
     • This system could be represented in school by holding a responsability to provide "moral" education. Some examples of this are reglious-based education systems. They choose to teach a curriculum through the moral filter they value. Those who supoprt this model say that students are provided with models for which they can use to shape their own actions and futures.

4. Quadratic Voting

   • Voting is based on how much money you make, based on the following formula: If you want 1 vote (1x1=$1), two votes (2x2=$4), three votes (3x3=$9).
     • You can incorporate this into the classroom by having students earn money by doing jobs or things without being asked. Students can vote on what to do for free time on Friay witht he options listed. Students can inly buy votes with the money they made through the week.

5. Approval Voting

   • In a voting system, voters choose "yes" or "no" for each person that is on the ballot. This allows voters to support all the candidates they like. The candidate with the most votes is declared the winner.
     • This can be used in systems of education by eliminating the "spoiler effect" and providing students to have more options and fair vote for the delivery and content of their education. For contexts of schoool classrooms, students can vote for they would like to do for the following week from a list of options. They can do so by choosing from a variety of options.

6. Range Voting

   • In this system, voters score candidate from 0-9 or "no opinion". Scores are attached to each candidate for an overall average. The candiddate with the higherst overall average wins. This system of voting is used to determine the winner in the Olympics.
     • This could be used in an education system in higher systems of decision-making proceses. Fro example, school boards sometimes used a three-point scale to "support, remain "neutral" or be "opposed" to a proposed idea. Ballots are tallied equivalently to prode averaged approved voting for the general population.

7. Panarchy

   • This system allows citizens to belong and be represented by the politcal group of their choosing. One person can be conservative and pay taxes and have affairs run accordingly. Meanwhile, their neighbour can be a liberal. The interactions between memebers will be the same, but this would allow poeple to choose what regime they would like to belong rather than having imposed on them. This would be difficult to enact in reality since we live in a communal society and one cannot act freely without consequences affecting their neighbour and their belifs and values.
     • Some elements of Panarchy are expressed through inquiry-based education when students choose the topic for which they would like to study, regardless of what their neighbour would be choosing to learn or research. In action, students wuld have to choos ea governing system from the beginning of the year let's say, and then they would have to live with the chosen consequences or rewards they have agreed upon. Their peers do not have to agree or choose the same as others, but once the decisions or social contracts have been made with the teacher, they cannot be unchanged unless they have been proposed and discussed according to the values of their group.