In our "Bridging Differences" conversation on Education Week, Deborah Meier raised the role of "structures" in a democratic way of life in her last blog. She brings to mind my discussions with students at Lonestar Community College in Houston last week.

In our "Bridging Differences" conversation on Education Week, Deborah Meier raised the role of "structures" in a democratic way of life in her last blog. She brings to mind my discussions with students at Lonestar Community College in Houston last week.

I've seen again and again how energized and hopeful people become when they come to see that they can actually make change and that democracy is an empowering way of life, not simply elections.

I've seen again and again how energized and hopeful people become when they come to see that they can actually make change and that democracy is an empowering way of life, not simply elections.

In our weekly conversation, Bridging Differences, on Education Week, Deborah Meier and I have been discussing and debating democracy and education. The issues emerged at the John Dewey Society conference in Washington earlier in April, where we both participated.

Leonard Waks, the JDS president who presided over the 100th anniversary of Dewey's classic Democracy and Education and edited the special issue of Educational Theory on the book and its impact, wrote to me that he sees our conversations as on the "cutting edge" of issues about democracy and education.

"Dewey says that the most important element of elections is that they encourage a richer communicative exchange among diverse groups," Len said, identifying Meier with the Dewey community. Len adds, "But Dewey does not have much to say about how that broadening and deepening of community is to be directly channeled into collective action, so the civic studies folk have much to contribute."

Len Waks wants to have "deep exploration of the issues" between Civic Studies and the Dewey community. I agree that this could be highly generative.

So here let me further develop the "Civic Studies" side (or at least the public work strand -- Civic Studies may be more diverse than the Dewey community). I call this strand the politics of co-creative agency.

Power, in its root meaning, does not mean "who decides what." The Spanish form, poder, gives a more accurate rendering. It means to be able, or can. Put differently, power is the capacity to act. I agree with Deb Meier that formal decision making structures are part of the picture. But the skills, capacities, and ways of thinking -- including what she calls "trust in one's own judgement in the face of authority" -- which generate such capacity are not "indirect" power, as she proposes in her last blog, "The Roles of Direct Versus Indirect Power in School Communities." That's like calling flesh and blood secondary in the body, while the skeleton is the "real thing."

I live part of the year in South Africa. My wife, Marie-Louise Ström, was a democracy educator across Africa for two decades. We often worked together in South Africa. South Africa is usually described as having "achieved democracy" in 1994 with the famous election that ended apartheid and elected Nelson Mandela.

The new government put in place all sorts of new participatory decision making structures, in local government, schools and the police. These have turned out to be hollow without independent centers of citizen power, people's power, where people develop skills, habits, confidence, and concepts of civic agency.

I've seen again and again how energized and hopeful people become when they come to see that they can actually make change and that democracy is an empowering way of life, not simply elections. They realize they don't have to wait for elected officials, or participate in formal structures to make change. A civic agency/public work approach reframes the 1994 election as a milestone but not achievement of "democracy." I've also seen how much the African National Congress claims to represent "democracy" because they have been elected.

In fact, Africa has rich, ancient traditions of what we call public work -- self-organized communal labors. These are crucial foundations for a democratic way of life that existed long before Europeans brought the term to the continent. But language makes a difference. Some post-colonial governments have taken them over -- arguing that formal elections are the substance of democracy.

Elites mobilize people on collective labor days, drawing on the language of tradition (as you point out, authoritarian regimes have their own version of collective labors), but changing the meaning. They displace agency into "elections."

For instance, one of Marie's long time colleagues in the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, Jacqueline Nzisabira, describes how, in her native Burundi, communal labors, known as ibikorwa rusangi, underwent radical change after independence. "When I was growing up collective work was used to cultivate land in Burundi," Nzisabira describes. "Such labors empowered people and created a stronger sense of community." In recent years, she observes, "There has been a tendency for the government to control the process. The work shifts meaning when it is state-directed, rather than coming from the community."

In "Constructive Politics as Public Work" (Political Theory 2011), I contrast many such examples of self-organizing collective labors which cultivate civic agency, with collective labors controlled by outside elites.

So I agree with Deborah Meier that decision making is an element of democracy, but the way decisions are made is only one piece. It can't be called "real" democracy. We need to emphasize people power, capacities for collective action.

There are many strategic implications, and I look forward to the discussions of these questions among Dewey and Civic Studies communities, and beyond.

I've seen again and again how energized and hopeful people become when they come to see that they can actually make change and that democracy is an empowering way of life, not simply elections.

In our Education Week blog, Deborah Meier and I have been discussing the meaning of "democracy," as well as public policies that might promote democracy schools. Public policy can be a rallying point, and a take-off for discussion and debate. It can be a foundation for coalition building. Advancing policies for democracy in schools can also raise public awareness of the purpose of education.

Definitions are more than semantics. What democracy means makes a lot of difference for strategy. What policies - and other things -- will advance democracy in schools, both as an idea and as a living practice, while also advancing democracy?

If we understand democracy as collective power to shape the world around us, we highlight democracy as something we co-create. Last fall The New York Review of Books reprinted a conversation that the novelist Marilynne Robinson had with president Obama in Iowa. She argued that democracy gained its tremendous appeal in American history from the idea that it was "something people collectively made." This rattled Obama. It seemed clear that he had never thought about democracy in this way.

The idea of democracy as something we make, something that we co-create, highlights the work of making democracy schools. Democracy understood as our collective work also highlights democracy schools' role in preparing people who will make democracy through their work. We should pay attention to all the co-workers in making democracy, whatever their particular roles in formal governance structures.

Last weekend I made this point about the meaning and the work of democracy in Washington, speaking to deans of colleges of education at the American Education Research Association, making a presentation with Margaret Finders, chair of the education department at Augsburg College to the John Dewey Society, and talking to participants at the Council of Foundations meeting. All three groups were meeting in DC.
The book by Melissa Bass, The Politics and Civics of National Service, was extremely useful (Brookings Institution 2013). Bass has an excellent treatment of democracy-building policies, policies that "empower, enlighten, and engage citizens..."

She analyzes three major national service programs in American history, the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s; Volunteers in Service to America, begun by the Kennedy administration in the 1960s; and AmeriCorps, Bill Clinton's signature service program which Barack Obama expanded.

All had similarities. "Service" meant making a contribution to the nation and to communities. All had cross-partisan support. All had educational elements. But they understood service quite differently. It made a difference.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, which involved over three million young men from 1933 to 1942 in conservation effort like planting trees (sometimes it was called the "tree army"), building shelters and roads in parks, and many other activities, had a strong emphasis on public work - collective work that was visible and helped to build the nation's commonwealth, the national park system. Partly because of the work focus the CCC had enormous visibility -- even now, far more Americans know about the CCC than VISTA or AmeriCorps. It had also impacts that the other two service programs, focused on civic virtue, didn't have.

The young men of the CCC developed great pride in their work. They also learned identities of citizens through their work. They were not volunteers or people taking an idealistic break from the rest of their lives. Clinton described AmeriCorps as "taking time out to serve." That citizen identity of the CCC expressed through work, in contrast, stayed with them into everyday work, which Nan Kari and I discovered when we interviewed many veterans of the CCC for our book, Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work.

The work focus of the CCC -- and other programs like the Works Progress Administration -- contributed to the sense that democracy was something people were making in the 1930s. The historian Lisabeth Cohen wrote a book, Making a New Deal, whose title conveys the point.

We need to emphasize policies and practices that advance the work of making and sustaining democracy schools and the larger democracy. We need initiatives, like a new version of Cooperative Education, which tie liberal arts and citizenship to work experiences and also prepare students for citizenship expressed through their work in the future.

Democracy's future depends on renewing the understanding that we make it.

We need to emphasize policies and practices that advance the work of making and sustaining democracy schools and the larger democracy. We need initiatives, like a new version of Cooperative Education, which tie liberal arts and citizenship to work experiences and also prepare students for citizenship expressed through their work in the future.