Mark Langdon[1]Lecturer/ Researcher in Community Education – School of Education and Social Sciences – University of the West of Scotland. & Mário Montez[2]Escola Superior de Educação/ Politécnico de Coimbra (Coimbra School of Education/ Polytechnic University of Coimbra).
Abstract:
In some countries, the existence of democracy seems taken for granted, like clean water flowing from a tap. This perspective obscures the reality that democracy, like clean water, is an endangered and crucial resource. As educators based in different countries, we share a mutual concern that both democracy and nature require transformative action to protect and regenerate the social and natural world. This need for urgent transformative change is wilfully ignored by the most powerful in our societies. Here we share part of our ongoing dialogue on how we create praxis between ourselves and our students in service of transformative change. We welcome your thoughts.
Keywords: Democracy; Praxis; Transformation; Education; Development; Pedagogy.
Introductions
We met in 2017, in Glasgow, and since then have entered an ongoing dialogue around our common interests relating to community education and development, informed by our previous involvement in participatory pedagogical processes, in Scotland and Portugal. We agreed that the need to enhance shared understanding of critical education towards a more sustainable and democratic society existed in both our practice contexts. We both felt that knowledge and practice relating to Development Education could be supported by connecting our students’ life and learning experience. This belief led us to hold a joint class online involving each other’s students, in 2023.
Portugal and Scotland share colonial pasts that underpin many areas of both countries’ social, cultural and political heritage, and, therefore, most of the population’s perspectives on Development issues, in relation to communities both local and global in nature.[3]We understand ’Development’ as a set of processes that empower groups within societies towards a positive transformation, in the attempt to achieve a desirable reality in which needs and … Continue a ler We are both products of this culture, as well, and we are aware of the privileges we enjoy as white men raised in Europe and working in academia. In our hearts and minds we seek to be part of a better society, and we work as part of the global struggle to fight the current injustices; to fix the future together. Nevertheless, our views and our words will never be entirely free of our sociocultural condition; the fact we write in English is an example of it.
In the 21st century there is a more positive link that can be made between the two countries, one which lies in a common desire to resist systems of oppression and champion the role of Education as a vital tool for emancipation and hope. Yet we wondered how strong is this desire and can it withstand the authoritarian forces that grow and threaten notions of democratic renewal and progress?
Conscientização, or in English “critical consciousness”, provides a strong contemporary link between educational practitioners in our countries (Freire, 1970). This link feels more important than ever in a time when ideologies of racism, patriarchy and militarisation are growing stronger across Europe due to the growing popularity of extreme right populist political parties (Transnational Institute, 2017).
The strain on democratic structures to effectively represent the views of the majority are evident in a range of settings. The people of Scotland, despite voting overwhelmingly to remain within the European Union, were required to leave because of the outcome of the UK Referendum. Despite the difficulties that democratic systems can present, there seem no viable alternative form of collective governance that offers support for the progressive realisation of human rights. In 2024, Portugal celebrated 50 years since the Carnation Revolution (BBC, 2024b) which ended a five-decade period of dictatorship. Despite this recent legacy, the far-right conservative parties associated with a turn to ‘illiberal democracy’ of the kind seen in Hungary and Austria are gaining support in certain areas of the country (Almedia & Roderiquez-Pose, 2024).
One of the greatest threats to democracy, but one often ignored, is the disengagement of the electorate. In both Portugal and Scotland (and commonly in Europe), it is the youngest and the poorest voters who disengage from mainstream politics, disillusioned by what they see as a dysfunctional system of governance. Ironically, opposite political sides call for “social change”, expecting different solutions and desiring different outcomes (Keane et al., 2016).
As educators committed to social and ecological justice, we seek to bring our diverse experience of democracy within Portugal and Scotland into our learning settings. In this process we also seek to engage with the experiences of our students and their communities. What does democracy mean to them, if anything? Do the ideas of critical global citizenship help to stimulate a dialectic relationship with democratic systems of life? If the present is broken, how do we fix the future together?
By sharing teaching materials and sources, and developing online links between our classes, we are creating spaces of democratic educational dialogue (Ledwith, 2019) that allow the voices of learners to link across boundaries and foster greater intercultural understanding.
Our article will lay out the motivations and theoretical frameworks underpinning our work and our plans for developing shared practice and linking with established networks such as Bridge 47 and Networking European Civic Education (NECE) (NECE, 2024) to build on ideas such as Democratic Well Being (Carnegie UK, 2022). Finally, we aim to contribute to answering the question: What role does community ‘Development’ Education offer in animating and nurturing new generations who are willing to continue the fight for democracy against the forces of oppression, and engage in sustainable democracies?
Diverse realities of democracy – A one-to-one dialogue on Portugal and Scotland’s past and present democratic issues
There is a large ‘open wide’ public library in Glasgow, where books, newspapers, people, coffee and food merge together. Somehow in this scenario, where it is hard to find someone, especially if you never saw that person before, Mário found Mark, and Mark found Mário. It was as if they previously met in another universe. The motive that took a common friend to arrange our meeting is the same motivation that keeps us together: Community Education and Development and dreams of better worlds.
Along came a quick tour to a local neighbourhood. Then, a step on an ancient Roman wall, which, as many other walls, was built to divide. On to a community climate action and a visit to a contemporary art centre home, to a cafe named after the Portuguese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, José Saramago. Then, follows a dialogue about Coimbra and the Epistemologies of the South with a young Italian curator. And so on, since 2017. It is easy to bring people together when they are moved by common utopias; to realise that “I am not alone”, as someone once said in an international youth training event.
In our discussions we also identified what seemed to be significant historical and political links and differences. Mário explained Portugal’s links to England[4]The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, or Aliança Luso-Inglesa was established in 1386, and it is still in force. The alliance has served both countries throughout History, leading to a military and … Continue a ler and the story behind the period of military dictatorship in the 20th century. Mark suggested that the United Kingdom didn’t have a dictatorship because it didn’t need it, because the elite was not at risk. In fact, the elite maintains their status-quo through political mechanisms of power, such as the House of Lords, a second unelected chamber of the Parliament that plays a crucial role in examining bills, questioning government action and investigating public policy. This chamber is composed of ‘hereditary peers’, those born into positions of wealth and power and people with successful careers in business, culture, science, and public service, amongst other areas, but also often those who have contributed generously to political party funds. A further example of this consolidation of power can also be seen in the fact that Scotland has one of the unequal levels of land ownership in Europe, with this situation seeing little improvement despite the ongoing rhetoric of the Scottish Parliament.
We believe that, in the 21st century, there are more positive links that can be made between the two countries and its people. Links which lie in a common desire to resist systems of oppression and champion the role of Education as a vital tool for emancipation and hope. Yet we ask ourselves how strong is this desire, and can it withstand the authoritarian forces that grow and threaten notions of democratic progress?
The Portuguese elections of 2024 had a high level of voter turnout with 66.2% of the electorate participating. The election was called due to the dissolution of the Parliament by the President of the Republic, after a series of awkward situations affecting the government. At stake for the left and centre democratic voters was the potential increase of electoral support for the far-right party. For the far right and many conservative voters was the opportunity to strengthen their representation in Parliament. The result was, indeed, an increase in votes for the far-right party, but also a near tie between the two major democratic parties. At the same time, left parties lost significant numbers of members in Parliament.
On the other side, the same year elections in the United Kingdom suffered the lowest voter turnout in a General Election since universal suffrage (IPPR, 2024). The low turnout, however, only tells half the story once you study the breakdown of who voted and who did not; the picture is even more worrying. In the words of the researchers, “Put simply, the ‘haves’ speak much louder than the ‘have-nots’ in British democracy. Those who stand to benefit most from democratic policymaking are those with the weakest voices in the room.” (IPPR, 2024, p. 5). Unfortunately, even amongst those concerned by these figures, the ‘solutions’ offered are often technocratic and seldom discuss the wider drivers of voter ‘apathy’. There is an argument to be made that disengagement from a broken electoral system is a rational, rather than an apathetic, reaction. Whatever the cause, the threat to functioning democracy is clear.
The European Parliamentary elections of 2024 had one of their highest turnouts, yet even this was only 50.74%. So, across Europe, it is clear democracy needs a significant health check before radical surgery becomes required (European Parliament, 2024). One final toxic ingredient in the mix is attitudes to so-called ‘illiberal democracies’, in countries such as Hungary and Belarus. The state of democracy research, published in December 2023, found that “47% of EU citizens surveyed reply being ‘very satisfied’ or ‘somewhat satisfied’ with the way democracy works in their country (against 31% ‘not very satisfied’ and 20% ‘not at all satisfied’). But at the country level, the proportion being satisfied ranges from 26% in Bulgaria to 79% in Denmark.” (European Parliament, 2023).
As educators committed to developing social, ecological justice and human rights, it is clear that current approaches to political literacy and democratic wellbeing are failing to keep pace with the negative impacts of dis- and misinformation fed by social media and other media outlets controlled by wealthy elites (UNEP, 2024).
Framework underpinning a pluriverse of ideas we wish to set up in the real world.
The framework that underpins our dialogues is a mass composed of readings from diverse ranges of literature. Frequently, we share integral texts and articles from academic journals, or fragments of our readings, online newspapers or websites, or recorded interviews. Some of these contributions were taken as inductors and stimuli for our dialogues. Here we share some of them.
Democracy as the milkman (or milk person)
One of the kick-offs for the present text was a quote from Robert Escarpit (French academic and journalist of the 20th century), by Manuel Castells, a Catalan sociologist, in an interview by Ana Sousa Dias, on the Portuguese national television broadcast, RTP: “Democracia es cuando llaman a la puerta a las cinco de la mañana, y piensas que es el lechero.” (Castells, 2004). Meaning: Democracy is when someone knocks at your door at five in the morning, and you think it’s the milkman.
This amazing literary image, created by someone who lived through World War II, gives us an idea that peace is one of the most important factors of democracy. However, we know that, in many cases, the appeal or the demand for democracy can be the starting point of war. Nevertheless, the idea of the milkman, in opposition to a soldier or a police officer coming to arrest us in the middle of the night, leads to the notion of democracy as a time of peace. But it also leads us to the reflection that we often take democracy, and peace, for granted. On the other hand, as the reality of milkmen (or maid or person) has become rare for younger generations, Democracy is at risk of being perceived as something idyllic, taken for granted, while at the same time disdained, as it is the person of a ‘milkman’. (Vegan protests aside, as our milk person is delivering oat milk). It doesn’t make a difference, once we have UHT or coconut milk that lasts for days, and supermarkets present us loads of different kinds and brands to choose from.
Portuguese students were questioned about this image. Many commented that it is hard to understand why the milkman would drop by so early, and all of them said that they had never seen one. However, a significant number of them live in rural areas, and said that they still get the bread at the door when they wake up, in a cloth bag that their parents or carers hang the night before going to bed. It would be an interesting challenge to ask students to imagine a day when they wake up and the bread is not there, nor in any other house in their neighbourhood. What do they think might have happened? Do the young students, in higher education, imagine a day when the sun rises without democracy and, for some pertinent reason, there is no bread in the morning hanging at their door?
We believe that Development Education in our contexts is a privileged position of learning where people can participate in experiences created by imagined situations, and potentially reflect and debate about them, looking at possible answers. Awareness of this fact is a key element of critical consciousness.
Democracy as water
People often use the expression that something is like water, when they refer to something essential for life on the planet, especially for human life. Indeed, humans need water to survive, and we are made of 75% water, according to specialists. In this sense it can also be said that, for the survival of social justice and human rights, democracy is as vital as water. Curiously, Mark found news about a Portuguese book written by two famous writers for youngsters, Ana Maria Magalhães and Isabel Alçada, in a Portuguese international book festival, where one of the authors said that “for young people today, democracy is as natural as turning on the tap and water coming out.” (Vlachou, 2023, p. 1).
Our reflection on this sentence has gone in several directions. From one side, it is clear (as water) that the writer was insinuating that, as we mentioned above, young people, or most people, in Portugal and Scotland take democracy for granted. On the other hand even though water is vital for our lives, millions of people are struggling every day for more than a drop of it. This means that, although democracy is vital and is related to notions of freedom and human rights, it can be scarce. And if it is scarce, there is a need to manage it. Which leads us to questioning: Who manages it? In a democratic sense, democracy is managed by every citizen, in different ways. However, when resources run out and become scarce, how can people who are disengaged from the processes and power be enabled to manage its conservation?
Water is the liquid state of H2O gas. We compared this image of democracy, so natural as water for youngsters, with Zigmunt Bauman’s idea of “liquid modernity” (2000). For Bauman, liquid modernity is the result of fleeting relationships, fragile commitments, consumption over everything. We came up with an image that democracy now is liquid because of the same liquid relationships, liquid political commitments, an evaporating sense of public trust. Water in any state is not easy to carry from one place to another, or to pass it on from hand to hand without it dripping or evaporating; it needs a vessel in which to be held safely. Without this it loses its mass, its quantity and quality, and may become unclean and infected. We live in an era of fast liquid wills, liquid aspirations, letting democracy drip and evaporate. Are we living in an era of democratic drought? If so, where are the democratic rainmakers of the future?
This is an interesting way to introduce students to a Development Education approach, giving them a chance to express their views and fears on the scarcity of democracy along with the scarcity of water that they often refer to in statements on climate change. It is a challenge to run during this school year, letting students explore topics such as this, using their daily tools such as smartphones and its incorporated cameras to express their ideas by registering images that they came across. All the while we know that each smart phone requires 13 tonnes of water to produce. Just like the threat to democracy, the reality of the scarcity and the value of water is something we choose to ignore because we can (Blue Green Tomorrow, 2024).
Bring students together – A Zoom joint class experience to open new windows for the future
In 2023, we ran a joint session for a dialogue around issues addressing Community Development Education. In November, we invited both our student’s groups for a joint class online, where Portuguese students of Socioeducative Animation (similar to Community Learning and Development) of the Higher School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra worked along with Scottish honours students of the BA in Community Education at the University of the West of Scotland. In a plenary part of the session, we introduced both groups and the main goals of the activity, and shared Portuguese and Scottish idiomatic expressions as an ice-breaking dynamic. In the second part, we distributed the big group into separate break-out rooms composed of students from each class. Students communicated in English, which restricted the range of expression of some of the Portuguese students, as well as other foreign students of the UWS class. The experience brought a focus to the issue of language as a factor of social exclusion, and raised the question: How and why were the groups by and large more familiar with English language than the Portuguese?
During the time they were in smaller groups, they were asked to take a card out of a pile of cards of the Earth4All Card Game (Earth4All, 2023)[5]Earth4All Printable Card Game is a product of Earth4All collective https://earth4all.life/who-we-are/. The Card Game and the Earth4All Card Game – Guide for Facilitators are available online: … Continue a ler, previously prepared (see Figure 1). Each card would raise a question or thought on some of the diverse issues that concern our life on the planet as a society and challenged participants to think of possible causes and solutions. Students from the different countries highlighted the same issues, such as poverty, climate change, lack of opportunities for young people, or unequal opportunities for women and ethnic minorities, crime, etc.
In the weeks and months after the session, conversations returned to this experience, signalling its potential for transformative learning to take place when educators create conditions of difference. The intercultural exchange experienced by the Portuguese students animated their learning process in the class of Social Analysis of Education. A similar impact was observed amongst a number of the students in the Community Development specialism class of honours students at the BA in Community Education at UWS.

Figure 1: Card game Earth4All.
As educators we know ‘the path is made by walking’. The question then arises: If we do not provide opportunities for intercultural conversations, how can we know what can be made possible through intercultural dialogues? And so, to imagine the steps to be taken to facilitate the next conversations for transformation.
This year, class schedules create a barrier, but we are looking at the use of shared video and texts to keep the conversation flowing (like water). We will learn to swim or float or find boats of inspiration in which we can sail to new shores of knowledge, waving at the dolphins of inspiration and the jellyfish of doubt along the way.
Mark’s Activism in Communities class creates videos for their assessments which, with the student’s permission, will be viewed (with Portuguese subtitles) by Mário’s students. Mário has students in evening classes who can share their perspectives with Mark’s students across a range of subjects. Always underpinning the discussions is the powerful current of democracy and democratic practice, which enables the flow of dialogue in the service of peace, love and understanding to continue to endure.
Questioning… and icebergs
The world’s largest iceberg, known as A23a, was in August 2024 unexpectedly captured by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), a wind-driven surface oceanic current encircling Antarctica and flowing from west to east, which moves a hundred times as much water around the world as all the Earth’s rivers combined, and is spinning on top of a huge rotating cylinder of water (BBC, 2024a). This is a phenomenon that oceanographers call a Taylor Column, and reminds us that, while we make plans, nature has its own agenda. In a world caught in the grip of a ‘polycrisis’, a new foresight report from the United Nations Environmental Panel (UNEP) offers useful perspectives on the need for “Unlearning: The process of letting go of outdated or inaccurate information, beliefs or behaviours in order to make room for new learning and growth” and “Exnovation: This concept refers to the process of actively discarding outdated, inefficient or harmful technologies, practices and norms, and that goes hand-in-hand with actively unlearning ingrained beliefs, attitudes or behaviours that may have underestimated transformative potential to advance sustainability.” (UNEP, 2023, p. iii).
As ‘Community’ Development Educators, we have the critical consciousness and the responsibility to encourage the knowledge of unlearning and exnovation, and the need to imagine and know the world as ‘otherwise’. It is clear that knowledge is not the saviour or life raft we might dream it to be. The more we have understood the threat and the cause of climate breakdown, the more ‘we’[6]Recognition here is needed that the ‘we’ in not universal. The cause of climate breakdown begins and is perpetuated by the richest and most powerful countries, corporations and individuals in the … Continue a ler have accelerated the destruction of our environment and the frequency of our wars and the size of our weapon arsenals, enrolling the lives of communities in slow violence (Nixon, 2011). The threat of nuclear oblivion has never truly receded and, despite the truly transformative work of bodies, such as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the stark reality is that global spending on nuclear weapons is estimated to have increased by 13% to a record $91.4bn, during 2023 (ICAN, 2023).
One contributory factor to this ‘wilful blindness’ (Bovensiepen & Pelkmans, 2020; Heffernan, 2011) by international governments and corporations, and the public ‘acceptance’ of the end of the world as unavoidable and inevitable, is the concept of habituation. In short, the notion of habituation means that human beings can be conditioned to accept conditions injurious to their health and wellbeing, to accept being lied to by politicians and billionaires if it happens often enough. By increments, the erosion of democracy and rights have been taken away where they existed and continued to be denied in many countries across the world (Brown, 2019).
As part of our journey together, Mário and Mark, Mark and Mário will continue to listen to the words of the late great Rosa Luxembourg (1871-1919): “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always proclaim loudly what is happening.” This is the least we owe to ourselves, our students and to future generations. It does not fix the broken present, but it can sustain our hope in the heart of the struggle. Watch this space.

References
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- Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Polity.
- Blue Green Tomorrow. (2024). Report: single smartphone requires 13 tonnes of water to produce. https://blueandgreentomorrow.com/environment/report-single-smartphone-requires-13-tonnes-of-water-to-produce/.
- Bovensiepen, J. and Pelkmans, M. (2020), Dynamics of wilful blindness: An Introduction, Critique of Anthropology 2020 40:4, 387-402.
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- Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). (2024). Half of Us: Turnout Patterns at the 2024 General Election. https://www.ippr.org/articles/half-of-us.
- International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). (2023). Global Nuclear Weapons Spending 2023. https://www.icanw.org/surge_2023_global_nuclear_weapons_spending?utm_campaign=press_release_spending_2023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ican.
- Keane, J., Milne, C., Webb, A., Bang, H., Loxton, J., Muller, J.W., Whitehead, L., Chou, M., Rowley, N., and Coleman, S. (2016). https://theconversation.com/we-the-people-the-charms-and-contradictions-of-populism-63769.
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1 | Lecturer/ Researcher in Community Education – School of Education and Social Sciences – University of the West of Scotland. |
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2 | Escola Superior de Educação/ Politécnico de Coimbra (Coimbra School of Education/ Polytechnic University of Coimbra). |
3 | We understand ’Development’ as a set of processes that empower groups within societies towards a positive transformation, in the attempt to achieve a desirable reality in which needs and potentialities inherent to social, cultural, educational, economic, spiritual and environmental phenomena are harmonized (Amaro,2017), as a result of collective action, solidarity and sustainable human actions anchored in shared knowledge and learning. Among the various understandings and concepts of ‘Development’, we highlight the importance of Sustainable Development and Human Development, as conceptualized by Mahbub ul Haq in “Reflections on Human Development” (1995). We also underline the importance of Development Education, in a plurality of ways. |
4 | The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, or Aliança Luso-Inglesa was established in 1386, and it is still in force. The alliance has served both countries throughout History, leading to a military and economic interdependence until nowadays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Portuguese_Alliance. |
5 | Earth4All Printable Card Game is a product of Earth4All collective https://earth4all.life/who-we-are/. The Card Game and the Earth4All Card Game – Guide for Facilitators are available online: https://earth4all.life/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/printable-card-game.pdf. https://earth4all.life/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/card-game-facilitation-guide.pdf. |
6 | Recognition here is needed that the ‘we’ in not universal. The cause of climate breakdown begins and is perpetuated by the richest and most powerful countries, corporations and individuals in the world, according to Climate Equality: A planet for the 99% | Oxfam International. |