96 PREPARATION OF SCHOOL LEADERS
namic nature of leading in the public schools and that democracy is a function of community
that recognizes the potential of all members and the necessity of valuing all voices.
Therein, those who work toward affecting democracy must constantly “reflect and be-
come consciously aware of the power struggles that further alienate the voices of the disad-
vantaged and oppressed.... [L]eaders in education must emulate those democratic principles
of emancipation and empowerment if democracy is to be truly embraced” (Lees, 1995, p.
223). Such a view of leadership is rooted “in the necessity of enhancing and ennobling the
meaning and purpose of public education by giving it a truly central place in the social life of
a nation” (Giroux, 1994, p. 38). A central challenge for democratic leaders is to come to terms
with society’s contradicting ideas of democracy, and specifically, the ideologically imposed
normativity that works against the very premise of democracy. “On one hand, society claims
an ideology for emancipation; on the other hand, society’s flawed structure builds dependen-
cies on a dominating power that further binds any human potential or growth” (Lees, 1995, p.
223). Democratic leaders must necessarily work to create schools as democratic cultures, as
“a public forum for addressing preferentially the needs of the poor, the dispossessed, and the
disenfranchised as part of a broader concern for improving the quality of civic life” (Giroux,
1994, p. 38).
DEWEY’S DEMOCRACY: AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER
In Democracy and Education, Dewey (1916a) identified the “widening of the area of
shared concerns, and the liberation of greater diversity of personal capacities” (p. 87) as hall-
marks of democracy. He noted that only after “greater individualization on one hand, and a
broader community of interest on the other have come into existence,” (p. 87), could these
characteristics be sustained by voluntary disposition and interest, which must be made possi-
ble by means of education. While Dewey’s ideas of democracy and education were never re-
alized during his lifetime and were often the focus of criticism during the progressive era, the
role of education in a democratic society has been a constant and central element of education
discourse. However, as Dewey stated, “the conception of education as a social process and
function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind” (1916a,
p. 97).
Democracy is not merely a belief in a form of government, as Dewey (1916a) argued.
Rather, the “foundation of democracy is faith in the capacities of human nature; a faith in hu-
man intelligence” (Dewey, 1937, p. 458). Democracy is belief in freedom, “the basic freedom
of mind and of whatever degree of freedom of action and experience is necessary to produce
freedom of intelligence” (p. 459). A democracy ensures freedom of “ expression, general dif-
fusion of knowledge, the marketplace of ideas, and open pursuit of truth so that citizens con-
tinuously educate themselves to participate, learn, and govern beyond the limited ideas of in-
dividuals” (Glickman, 2003, p. 274). As Dewey (1916a) stated, a democratic society “makes
provision for participation for the good of all its members on equal terms and which secures
flexible readjustment of its institutions through the interaction of the different forms of asso-
ciated life” (p. 105). Important to defining democracy is the caution posited by Scheurich
(2003). Proposing a definition of democracy, however historical or radical the definition,
and then proceeding to build a view of educational reform (or societal reform) on that
definition without taking serious and careful account of dominant social assumptions
and practices, is dangerously naïve (and by “dangerously naïve” I mean the naïveté it-
self is a social practice with dangerous effects). (p. 288)