EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ACMAD A. TAULO

It is a consensus among political writers that the acquisition of literacy and education by the citizens is of primordial importance to the maintenance and continual improvement of democracy. Literacy would be more than as a foundation for democracy than other aspects of modernization bolstering the democratic system. Education, especially in developing countries, helps to break down traditionalism, and to develop new attitudes and values, such as openness to new experience and willingness to participate in community affairs.

The primary condition for democracy is accordingly the development among the citizens of a strong democratic community. The facilitating conditions therefore are civic education for democracy, moral leadership, and moral value. Civic education can be done through formal pedagogy in civics, history, and citizenship; private –sphere social activity; and participatory politics itself. Participants who are active in a local church, a municipal community board, national service corps, a grassroots-political organization, and a national referendum campaign are more likely than a church deacon or senator to perceive their activities as overlapping and mutually reinforcing.

A basic knowledge of the nation’s constitution and legal system, of its political history and institutions, and of its culture and political history is vital. There is a connection between knowledge and civic aptitude. The US system undertakes the procedural aspects of civic education through election laws, equal-time provisions for the media, and enforcement of the Bill of Rights; education on substantive issues is left largely in private hands. Political participation tends to lead to knowledge or quest for knowledge of the citizens’ rights and the law. It has been empirically demonstrated that if people are given some significant power they will quickly appreciate the need for knowledge.

Local public or small –scale private activity is valuable to civic education. It promotes affective links, measures of judgement and forms of public thinking. One direct political participation- activity that is explicitly publicis a completely successful form of civic education for democracy. Democracy is best taught by practicing it. Jean Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis Tocqueville pointed out that participation solves two problems: It could interest people in citizenship and it could educate them to prudent selfgovernment even when they compromised” an unfit multitude.” Tocqueville considers civic zeal “to be inseparable from the exercise of political right. The humblest individual who cooperates in the government of society acquires a certain degree of self respect. He is canvassed by a multitude of applicants, and in seeking to deceive him in a thousand ways they really enlighten him.” Once implanted, self respect is difficult to ‘use’ because self-respect entails a new way of seeing oneself and the world. A large number of people, through a gradual process of self-education that grew out of their cooperative effort, developed a new interpretation of their society and new political institutions to give interpretation of their society and new political institutions to give expression to their interpretations. The new ideas grew out of their new selfr espect .

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The author is SST I at Diosdado Macapagal Memorial High School,

Floridablanca