Democratic education in Summer Schools of Rosa Sensat’s Association (1966-2008)

Abstract

Democracy and participation have constituted relevant issues in the teaching provided at the Summer Schools of Rosa Sensat, who has tried to be aware to what happened and is still happening in the social, political and economic spheres, and who has conceived the school as a space with clear ideological, plural, open and tolerant connotations with the different ways of thinking and living. From this perspective, the article analyses the discourses and practices related to democracy in forty-three editions of the Summer Schools of Rosa Sensat’s Association (1966-2008) and contextualises its contribution to the Catalan democratic school. We start the article with a theoretical and conceptual analysis of the terms democracy and participation in relation to school to proceed with the historical review of the Summer Schools of Rosa Sensat’s Association since 1966. The article provides key interpretations, which justify that the defence of a democratic school from participating teachers has remained during the three analysed periods: the first one from 1966 to 1980, the second one from 1981 to 1994 and the third one from 1995 to 2008. The mobilisations and measures of participating teachers developed in the political, social and economic context of each period have led the way towards democratic school.

Key words: democratic school, summer schools, democratic education, democracy, participation, Rosa Sensat Teachers Association.