Democracy an idea and an ideal. Breaking down the walls Erasmus Project

Project Title

Democracy an idea and an ideal. Breaking down the walls

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

Our project ‘Democracy: idea and ideal’ (Demid) emerged from recent phenomena (e.g. street protests, citizen’s initiatives, increased populism, …) all criticizing our contemporary liberal democracy and tending to move society towards a more autocratic way of governance.
Populism seems to have most impact as shown by being chosen as the Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year in 2017. Caused by economic uncertainties, political decay and sense of loss of identity, populist parties claim to meet contemporary anxieties by building physical and mental walls to protect the endangered national identity.

Demid wants students on the one hand to examine roots and legitimacy of these anxieties and the impact of the solutions proposed by these recent phenomena on young adults and on the other hand to develop up-to-date tools (wikis, You Tube videos, memes, …) to encourage participation into and create a broader support for liberal democracy by using 21st century social media.

The project Demid is run on the basis of curricula criteria of the participating schools involving each year 10 teachers and 75 students between 16 and 18 year.
The project is coached by two teachers per country, 10 in total.
Each year, 6 students from each country attend a conference during which they debate on a chosen sub-topic ( first year = democracy and populism, second year = the influence of social media and fake news on democracy) and participate in workshops to help them develop social media.
We schedule four meetings per year.
In September, the teachers from all countries will meet to discuss and to stipulate and coordinate the first phase which takes place within each school. The main subjects of this meeting are the cross-curricular cooperation in the schools between social sciences and languages on the issue of democracy and participation and to calibrate the workshops on debating.
After studying and discussing the issues related data among students within each school, an abstract is written at the end of the first term. In this way we obtain five abstracts from the five different countries.
Early January the teachers from all countries meet again to distil new research questions from the abstracts, and decide which will be up for discussions during the meeting with the pupils from the various countries and which workshops will be given.
This student meeting is scheduled in Spring. The program consists of substantive moments and creative processing. At the end students fill in a survey to assess both methodology and results of the past year.
Before the end of the school year there is the ultimate teacher meeting to analyse and discuss the students surveys and give recommendations toward the following year.

The final result of the Demid project will be digital materials (such as wikis, You Tube videos, memes and a webpage), a booklet (including all the abstracts, a canon for a respectful communication policy on social media, guidelines and recommendations to increase the democratic content of our political structures and of our schools and associations) and in each school a democracy graffiti wall.

We want to disseminate the results through the press, through formal contacts with local politicians and through discussion in the various bodies of the school and school community.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 95751 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sint-Lodewijkscollege & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Stichting Voortgezet Onderwijs Regio Schijndel
• Lincoln Christ’s Hospital School
• Staedtisches Gymnasium Waldstraße Hattingen
• I.E.S. PINTOR ANTONIO LÓPEZ