Education for Democratic Citizenship in the Caribbean: A Distance Education Course for Teachers
Thank you for your interest in the Education for Democratic Citizenship in the Caribbean online course. This site has been designed to provide further information on the course and details for applying.
COURSE GOAL
Teacher-participants will be able to explain the main tenets underlying the different forms of democracy and apply democratic values, principles and procedures to the classroom, school community, country and region.
Based on the course goal, the objectives of this course are:
- expose teacher-participants to the broad philosophical reasons why education in and understanding and practice of democracy are important to the 21st Century Caribbean.
- apply instructional strategies that can help teachers introduce democratic values and principals in their course curriculum.
- create a classroom environment that embraces democratic values and principles.
- evaluate the success of your democratic initiatives and curriculum changes.
COURSE INTRODUCTION
Why a Course on Education for Democracy
The early 21st Century finds the English-Speaking Caribbean at a crossroads in the development of its democracy. On one hand, the Caribbean boasts of a healthy tradition of adherence to the institutions, norms, and practices of liberal democracy. Thus, the region points to: its years of parliamentary practice since the advent of Universal Adult Suffrage in the mid-1940s and early 1950s; the relative absence of military coups d’état, political assassination and unconstitutional overthrow of governments, the existence of a free press, free association, free speech and the conduct of government on the basis of the rule of law as evidence of its adherence to liberal democratic practice.
On the other hand, there is a realisation that democracy is a lived reality, and its successes are not guaranteed by the presence of institutions and law, but by individual attitudes and behaviour and by cultural practices which shape human interrelationships. In addition, democracy is constantly evolving and it cannot be assumed that the practices and institutions which satisfied the democratic aspirations of a people in 1950 can still do so in the evolved global politico-economic landscape of the early 21st century. For instance, many of the institutions which satisfied the aspirations of representative democracy in an early era face challenges in meeting the demands for greater degrees of citizen participation in the present.
It is in this context that teacher trainees and current classroom teachers (from here on called teacher-participants) are being called upon to participate in a course which is designed to ensure that the classroom can become an early incubator for the cultivation of democratic cultural practices in and among the emerging generations of Caribbean citizens.