IDEC@EUDEC Report
July 13, 2011 at 12:40 am | Posted in AERO | Leave a commentby Jerry Mintz
AERO staff members are now at the International Democratic Education Conference in Devon, England. The IDEC has been an annual event since 1993. It is a gathering of students, teachers and parents from democratic schools all around the world. This event now has 500 participants from over 30 countries. Half of them are students! Today featured a full day of workshops and activities that was open to those outside the democratic education world. It ended with a massive birthday party for several democratic schools, including Summerhill School’s 90th.
The exchange of information is on many levels and will certainly lead to increasing numbers of democratic schools. For example, when the IDEC was held in Germany in 1995 there were no democratic schools there. But at this conference there are several democratic schools from Germany representing almost a third of the attendees. There are also large delegations from Korea, Netherlands, Ukraine, and Puerto Rico. The next IDEC will be hosted by Nuestra Escuela and the Alliance for Alternative Education in Puerto Rico next March. The IDEC is a long conference. Having started on July 5th it will go to the 14th! This is by design, so that the group can become a real community.
The only other conference we know of that is like this is the AERO conference which will be from August 4-7 in Portland, OR. So we’ll just have a few weeks to get ready for it after we return from England. It is still possible to register for the AERO conference and there are a few rooms left at the hotel where it is being held, at the conference rate. For more info go to: www.educationrevolution.org/conference.html
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