"Because Democracy Is Difficult and Dangerous" is an excerpt from "Woke Is Not Enough: School Reform for Leaders with Justice in Mind" (2022). Each chapter of the book focuses on a domain of school reform relevant to school leadership today: racial justice, democratic governance, restorative justice, student activism, and…

This article is an inquiry into the work of educators at the James Baldwin School (JBS), a New York City public school with an explicit commitment to democracy in its mission and core values. The author was founding principal at JBS for the first six years, has stayed in touch, and recently went back to talk with faculty about how their work has…

When school communities are troubled by violence, or threats of violence, at the hands of young people, educators have an opportunity to learn about aggression and adolescent identity development. A disturbing threat incident provides the point of departure for this principal's reflection on how high school curriculum can better meet the identity…

John Dewey was inspired by what he termed "the miracle of shared experience and shared communication." His faith in the power of individuals working in democratic association also included warnings of a darker side, the "monstrosities" that individuals can become when they live and work in isolation from others. In this…

Given the way that student, teacher, principal, and school testing and accountability measures are currently leaning, it is understandable why a child's moral development sometimes gets less attention than her aptitude in algebra. Yet even with nearly all major accountability incentives heaped upon the tests in math and English, there are still…

In this essay, a high school principal reflects on the time a student took him to the Fairness Committee, a democratic structure for behavioral interventions. By mobilizing this process, the student affirmed his commitment to the school's core values, as well as his commitment to his own education. School structures for the development of…

Exile has its place. As an age-old human response to conflict, its potential value to the healthy maturation of students and the school community should not be discounted. Exile or ostracism goes by various names in school. Students are told: Move your desk. Leave the classroom and wait in the hall. Go to the office. Go to detention. You're…

American educators are expected to be partners in the rearing of our children, with crucial roles in children's intellectual and moral development both. We therefore must find thoughtfully balanced ways of assessing school performance and engineering school reform. In this essay, a high school principal reflects on recent accountability reforms in…

For millions of years, human beings evolved and then lived in small social groupings that were intergenerational, with simple divisions of labor, oriented to common tasks and values. It was a limited existence in many ways, but there was community and continuity. And now, very suddenly in evolutionary time, we have built the teeming cities and…

We live among an extraordinary mass of data and measurement--connected to a vast, disjointed, yet interconnected body of standards and expectation. There is danger here, for children and for all of us. We risk becoming confused about what standards are most important, what we should aspire to be, and thus what and who we are. In addition to this…

Adolescent willing and desiring is pervasive in mainstream American culture. The result is that America's youth is drowning in itself, in the immaturity, impulsiveness, and pastlessness of our dominant culture. Listening to the voices of youth caught in this crisis, and drawing from the observations of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Erikson, Baldwin,…