A year closer to the grave?

Collisions in democratic education society

Authors

• Ari Sivenius Itä-Suomen yliopisto
• Päivi Armila Itä-Suomen yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.107863

Keywords:

adolescent, education policy, education society, democracy education

Abstract

The article is based on the question whether the demands of education society and the principles of democracy education meet each other when viewed from the perspective of an individual adolescent. The promises of democracy education that emphasize navigating in one’s life, equality, autonomy and communality can be questioned when attention is reversed to those whose experiences in responding to the demands of education society can be interpreted as collusions with pedagogical ideals. The empirical data of the article consist of follow-up interviews of three young people, at present 21 years old, who have been interviewed two times a year for a total of over five years. These cases are considered as examples of how responding to the necessities of education society can lead to apathy, aggression and exhaustion, for example when adolescents are forced to subject their own desires to the power of necessity, or when schooling becomes attendance to a training game that is empty in terms of content and participation in educational competition. These collisions can have fateful consequences to the life course.