The student's position in the democratic classroom

The democratic classroom should be understood as a place where a total development of the student's personality is achieved, a place where the processes of humanization, personalization and socialization are taking place. The student is the first and the basic factor in the tuition because of which the tuition it's organized. The student, as a basic factor of the tuition, incorporates its individual, psychophysical, intellectual, socio-cohesive and structural development. The active participation of the student in all the stages of the tuition has crucial importance, because without that, the tuition can't be even imagined. Because of that, the student in the tuition should be treated as a subject who learns, earns its knowledge, creates, develops and improves. Very important is the moment of training the student for learning, which understands teacher's flexibility, tolerance for the student's actions and his way of thinking in accordance to his mistakes and omissions. The prime aim of the tuition should be a complete development of the student who as a person has its own abilities, its own tempo of progress, its own work style, its access to cognition, interests, wishes, emotions etc. The democratic classroom also promotes the student's critical thinking, which means to be curious, to study ideas, to set aims, to use researches, to look for alternatives, to take a responsibility, rationally to defend someone's belief, to be open toward new ideas. That is why every school's responsibility should be the immediate activities during the educational process, which would prepare the student for the challenges of today's and tomorrow's development in a democratic society. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved