To combat, or resist, "the desertification of public spheres and the rise of fascism", writes Henry Giroux, requires a critical pedagogy centred on the meanings and practices of democracy's words.
For more, read here: https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-critical-pedagogy-of-democracy-in-dark-times/
This point brings to mind a preliminary finding which deserves to be deepened, I think, in more significant research projects which is that most people, even those trained in political science, cannot define more than a few types of democracy. As I've written elsewhere, it is in my experience more common to find people who are aware of theoretical physics than democratic theory.
Further, if you were to ask these very same people to explain how they can evoke, or practice, the few types of democracy that they know of, this poses a formidable challenge as the idea is often far removed from their everyday experiences.
There is a dynamic of double damnation here. The first damnation is ignorance of democracy's tremendous diversity of ideas and practices. And the second is one's incapacity to see those ideas realized. Giroux is correct: the majority of people are, quite literally, structured out of both knowing and practising multiple types of democracy (usually any type beyond voting, protesting and petitioning). Our societies and the political institutions that are built on them are foundationally anti-democratic.
How do you propose we rally against this?
To my mind, I ran into a lovely concept from Estonia called the "Night University" which is, as far as I understand it, an evening school for children. But what, I am wondering, would happen if we established a "Night University of/for Democracy" to co-create information on various types of democracy and how to practice them in one's life?
What do you think of these questions?
https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-critical-pedagogy-of-democracy-in-dark-times/
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