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The Village Project and Deliberative Democracy The Village program is a form of civic education that prepares children to be active, effective citizens. By working together to design, build and govern small societies pupils advance their civic knowledge and skills. Village offers an unparalleled way to integrate the teaching of communication skills, critical thinking, and work in groups into an education in deliberative democracy.
Many civic education program exist, but none give upper-middle school pupils the comprehensive training in deliberative democracy that The Village Project does. Democracy means much more than simply voting. It is relatively easy to give pupils the chance to vote in the classroom, say for example between two contesting propositions. More difficult, and we believe more important, is to teach students to formulate their own options, discuss and resolve them. At Village, rather than voting between a Plan A and a Plan B, the choices have to be formulated by the pupils themselves. A host of necessary communication, negotiation and critical thinking skills enter into this.
Debating and decision-making at Village are not simply empty exercises. The program is not a simulation, but is instead tied to a real miniature world, the peeps and their society, that all the participants develop an affective tie to and concrete interest in. The Village program is an exemplary example of an educational program in which living and learning are inseparable.
Under
the umbrella of teaching children civic competency in deliberative
democracies we have four primary goals. *
Village
teaches children effective communication. Children learn to back their
preferences and opinion with reasons. They improve their ability to
express their own ideas and also learn to consider fairly the ideas of
others which they might initially disagree with. *
Village
teaches children critical thinking.
Critical thinking at Village encompasses problem identification,
formulation and resolution. *
Village
teaches the civic values of tolerance as well as a concern for equality
and justice. There are many
school programs that emphasize rights and Village brings intellectually
challenging issues to the forefront by putting rights in direct dialogue
with democracy. For example,
can a town decide to force someone to relocate their house in the
interests, say, of urban design, or do that peep and person have a right
to live undisturbed where they have been living? * Village advances children's school subjects knowledge. Under the belief that no child lacking literacy in math, language, and science can be fully part of his or her society we emphasize the use and advancement of knowledge from school subjects through practice. This occurs, for example, in the architectural design of the miniature houses and the writing of a town newspaper
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© 1999-2010 The Village Project Inc.
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Last Updated September 17, 2010