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IDEC stands for International Democratic Education Conference. The first one was held in 1993, in Hadera, Israel. Yaacov Hecht, the founder of the Democratic School in Hadera, was asked by the Ministry of Education to gather together some leaders in alternative education from around the world.
And they came-
Danny Greenberg, of "Sudbury Valley"; David Greible, founder of the Sands School in England; Lotte Kreizler of Vienna, a teacher in an alternative school and a human rights activist; Jerry Mintz, director of an international information center for alternative education; and Fred Bay, head of the Bay Foundation.
It was an exciting, meaningful moment. People felt that they were not alone in their activity.
For three days they sat together (guests, school staff, parents and students) and discussed subjects that occupied them all – the conditions in alternative schools around the world, the role of international relations among the schools, and also internal issues such as the connection between boundaries and freedom and the place of parents in the school. This brief meeting created a dire need for more such meetings. They had a clear sense of how they could strengthen them all; and by the end of the Hadera conference a second conference was set, to be held at the Sands School in England one year later.
Over the years the conference developed characteristic patterns: it is a place for the meeting of staff members, students and parents of democratic schools with academics and policy makers in the field of democratic education and educational innovation from around the world. In addition, the conference combines discussions and lectures on democratic thought with the experience of life on an international campus, maintaining a framework of democratic life. Actually, the conference is usually divided into two parts – one is open to the general public and the other is for members of the Democratic Education community throughout the world – staff members, parents and students, who conduct an international campus where theoretical and practical activities go on in the framework of a democratic school.
IDEC today is one of the main conferences in the world for alternative education. It is conducted every year in a democratic school or other democratic organization throughout the world (as we give equal turns to all continents), which also determines the character of each conference. Till today the conference has taken place, among other places, in Israel, England, Austria, the Ukraine, Japan, New Zealand, the USA, India, Germany, Australia, Brazil and Canada.
The number of IDEC participants has grown from year to year, from some 40 participants in the first year to about 1600 in the ninth conference, held in Japan in 2000. Today representatives of some 30 countries and about 500 schools participate in IDEC.
