Our ways of living together, communicating, and learning shape social life and our responses to problems such as economic injustice, racism, or climate change. That insight led John Dewey to identify democracy and its engine, democratic education, as the best means for assembling the knowledge necessary to address complex challenges and to ensure that we can live amicably with one another. This article proposes an ecosystem metaphor for democratic education, one that emphasizes the relations between communities and schooling. It calls for a renewed sense of community as curriculum and lays out four major ways in which that can occur. It also discusses contemporary difficulties for democracy and democratic education.