Demokracija i odgoj (Povijesno-problemski pristup)
Democracy and Education (A Historico-Problematical Approach)

Summary/Abstract: This study of the relationship between democracy and education applies a historical-problematic approach to the relationship between democracy and education. It describes and critically assesses the ideas of Plato and of Aristotle about this problem, then the ideas on education in harmony with human nature, further Hegel's notion of education as a process o f the conforming of individuals to the idea of the objective spirit (the state), as well as the doctrine o f J. Dewey on democracy and democratic education as a process o f free exchange o f experience within a communicative social and pedagogically structured relationship between people and learners It is demonstrated that, from a methodological perspective. Plato was the first to establish a paradigm, that still successfully functions, for the solution of the relationship between society and education, lie focused the problem in the relationship between the social set-up, the natural inclinations of individuals, the choice of u profession, and education. He saw education primarily as a function of the selection and the preparation o f people for the exercising of a profession that suits the individual's natural inclination and, on this basis, to the organization o f existing and of ideally imagined society based on a distinction between ranks. Methodologically Plato perceived and stated the problem adequately, but he made a mistake in taking for his unit for analysis class (or rank) and not he individual, as well as in understanding the individual as a being defined by a single function and not as a multivalent one. It can be said without any doubt that all the mentioned authors of theories about the relationship o f society and education, thought o f education as a social factor which has to meet the requirements of human nature and to respect all the natural differences between people, i. e. the incommensurable individuality of each person. Not all, of course, succeeded in this, and some event went to extremes. The fundamental problem in the relationship between democracy and education seems to be in the emancipation o f education as an activity and the development of individuality and the many sidedness of the human personality as an end in itself and not as a means to something else that stands outside or above man. The way to education as a human activity which is an end in itself will however be neither short nor easy. Yet it is necessary to engage oneself for such a concept of education and to find within existing class relationships optimal ways for its implementation.

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