The Future of Education

Empirical observations from the Interdemocracy pilot, based on structured observation protocols across multiple regional classrooms, tentatively challenge prevailing assumptions about democratic deliberation in educational settings. The pilot was implemented within the framework of the EU Horizon-funded project Saufex. Contrary to expectations, adolescents demonstrate a substantial capacity for autonomous, first-person “belief-speaking” (Hansen-Staszyński) as an autopoietic form of self-organized meaning production within structured interactional constraints when procedural safeguards protect epistemic symmetry. The primary obstacle to authentic deliberation does not lie with participants, but with teachers acting as facilitators, whose institutional roles are structurally aligned with intervention, correction, and epistemic authority. Teachers operate within an intervention-first logic in which professional responsibility is tied to guiding and normalizing student cognition. Even when instructed to remain neutral, they tend to reintroduce hierarchy through subtle forms of influence: selective reinforcement, premature clarification, asymmetrical rule enforcement, and nudging toward convergence. These interventions are rarely experienced as exercises of power; rather, they are perceived as benevolent support. This dynamic is reinforced by naive realism (the tacit assumption that one’s interpretations correspond to objective reality), leading to a misclassification in which teacher-speaking functions as “fact-speaking” and student-speaking as “belief-speaking” (Hansen-Staszyński). By contrast, observation-first roles, such as those of school psychologists or pedagogists, were found in earlier pilots to be structurally compatible with autonomy-preserving deliberation. Their professional mandate legitimizes epistemic delay, ambiguity tolerance, and the suspension of judgment. As a result, they are better equipped to maintain neutrality without disengagement and to protect the integrity of belief-speaking. The facilitator role thus emerges as a high-risk epistemic position requiring explicit role transformation, structural safeguards, and ethical discipline. Neutrality cannot be secured by procedure alone; a procedure-only approach risks producing performative cognitive emptiness. Rather, neutrality depends on sustained epistemic restraint and disciplined openness to participants’ expressions without converting exposure into control. The findings imply that democratic facilitation within hierarchical institutions demands not merely skills training, but a reconfiguration of role identity and institutional expectations.

[1] Hansen-Staszyński, O. (2025) Specialist module: Two perceptions of honesty – Lewandowsky. Saufex.