Western Liberal-Democratic Norms and Values: Why and How They Should Be Taught in Schools

In many Western liberal-democratic countries, there have been increasing efforts over recent decades to teach democratic norms and values in the primary and secondary school systems. However, there has been little agreement on how such democratic education can be effectively implemented. This article argues that an underlying core principle of Western liberal-democratic norms and values is what the economic historian Thomas Sowell calls the restricted vision—that is, the idea that decision making is best left in the hands of those who are directly impacted by these decisions, as opposed to concentrating decision-making power in a small group of “experts” (or even one person, as in dictatorships) with allegedly superior knowledge and skills. Next, it asserts that liberal-democratic countries can only flourish if the majority of their people internalize the conviction that liberal-democratic norms and values are superior to more power-centralizing (i.e., authoritarian) alternatives. It uses the Federal Republic of Germany as an example, where official federal guidelines for democracy education rightfully demand that students need to “live democracy” in everyday school life in order to internalize liberal-democratic values, but fail to sufficiently specify how this can be implemented in the classroom. In order to fill this implementation gap, this article finally argues that group analysis can help teachers learn how to more effectively involve students in dealing with serious conflicts and disagreements that occur in everyday school life. Only if students experience for themselves that their active involvement in dealing with conflicts leads to better results, will they internalize the conviction that Western liberal-democratic decision-making is superior to authoritarianism.