In a family it is just about possible to reach an agreement that all the family members are happy with, with maybe five people. In a school there are hundreds of pupils to satisfy, and it becomes totally impractical. So their democratic model is no more than a method of deciding who is going to be coerced. It is not a way of finding real solutions.
What distinguishes families taking children seriously from those in which the parents favour coercion, and why compulsory school is necessarily coercive.
The idea that children’s lives are easier than adults’ is pure adult fantasy, as this teenager shows.
Creativity, knowledge, happiness, unhappiness and coercion: how we parents inadvertently kill our children’s creativity.
Sometimes you can explain in terms of your experience; but not when it comes to drinking bleach, presumably!
Explaining dangers is much safer than just forbidding access to them.
Getting children to ‘agree’ to TV limits is coercive, and pretending that it is non-coercive.