[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-593070-105":59,"doc-detail-593070-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","the-bright-future-of-democracy-is-in-education-brief-paper-on-education-and-democracy","The Bright Future of Democracy is in Education - Brief Paper on Education and Democracy","","The paper asks whether democracy has a bright future and argues that, through Prometheus, political communities can create better-managed shared life by providing education for all. It links democracy’s prospects to education and virtue, contending that pedagogy determines how closely a polity approaches an ideal form. It critiques simplistic equality, proposes opportunity based on education and wealth, and supports stability using historical analysis. The discussion also contrasts religion’s limited moral reach with the need for peaceful, education-centered alternatives to war and ignorance.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-bright-future-of-democracy-is-in-education-brief-paper-on-education-and-democracy/593070/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-bright-future-of-democracy-is-in-education-brief-paper-on-education-and-democracy/593070.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Aran","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-03","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":39},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is the central question of the paper?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The paper asks whether democracy has a bright future and argues in favor of an education-centered path to that future.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the author connect democracy with education?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Democracy requires education and virtue; in the author’s view, higher pedagogy brings polities closer to an ideal democracy.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why does the paper criticize treating people equally in everything?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Political “animals” are not equal in abilities, and systems that treat different levels of competence identically are described as having no future.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},593070,1792673044,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":39,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},137455076865,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","The Bright Future of Democracy is in Education  \n*  \nBy Gregory T. Papanikos  \nDoes democracy have a bright future? This brief paper addresses this question and argues, that, thanks to Prometheus, political “animals” can build a bettermanaged corral for their common living which includes a better provision of education for all “animals.” A historical analysis of the long past may be used to discern what lies ahead. Democracy requires education and virtue, or to put it in one word, it requires pedagogy. The higher the level of pedagogy, the closer apoliteia would come to an ideal democracy. Sometimes democracy is confused with equality in everything. Political “animals” are not equal, and political systems which treat people with different abilities equally have no future. An ideal society should discriminate according to levels of education obtained and the acquisition of material wealth. If the politeia is ideal, then each citizen has the same opportunity to become more educated and wealthier. In this free competition of being educated and the acquisition of individually made material wealth, ideal societies can flourish as Hesiod postulated in the 8th Century BCE and become stable despite Polybius’ predictions in the 2nd-1st Century BCE of the inevitable historical cyclicality of political systems.  \nKeywords: education, pedagogy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, ochlocracy, tyranny, ideal politeia, Polybius  \nIntroduction  \nThis paper is based on chapter ten of my book Ten Lessons of Democracy published in Greek (Papanikos, 2020a). Based on this book, I have also examined elsewhere the definition of democracy and discussed the five criteria which can be used to evaluate political systems (Papanikos, 2022a). The purpose of this paper is to briefly express some thoughts on the future of democracy.  \nDemocracy deals exclusively with political “animals.” Inside the corral there are many and different “animals”—the more the better for the politeia. It is unbelievable the surge of political “animals” in the thousands of years for which we can speculate about their numbers. In 2020, about 8 billion such “animals”were living on planet earth. So far, no other flock of such “animals” have been founded elsewhere in the universe. According to United Nations (UN) statistics, in 100 years’ time the planet will have 1010 political “animals.”1 Somehow these animals must be organized to live together peacefully. They will need education with virtue.  \n*  \nPresident, Athens Institute for Education and Research, Greece; Honorary Professor of Economics, University of Stirling, UK; and Professor, MLC Ljubljana, Slovenia.  \n1The latest UN projections can be downloaded here: [https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Stan](https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Stan)dard/Population/.  \n[https://doi.org/10.30958/aje.9-2-10](https://doi.org/10.30958/aje.9-2-10) doi=10.30958/aje.9-2-10  \nReligions teach virtue, but only to their own “animals.”2 They pray for their own flock only. Even worse, their fanatic followers, usually without any education at all, wish the opposite for the other faiths’ flock and in some not-so-few cases, they take matters (re: weapons) into their own hands and fight in the name of their own God to reduce the political “animals” of the other herds. This is not good for teaching morality and ethics. It seems that religions do not meet the herculean task of educating political “animals” to become better. There must be an alternative to war and ignorance. In Papanikos (2022a), I presented isopoliteia as one of the five criteria of democracy which is satisfied when all religions pray for all political“animals” of the world. This assumes that problems like military spending and fights over energy resources will be over3 and all disputes will be settled in a peaceful manner.4  \nThe question asked in this paper is what will be the destiny of these political animals? Are they going to live in a better world than their ancestors? What is t","cbCaioTfMzuF9e21","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaioTfMzuF9e21","pdf",405968,11,"English","# Introduction\n## Education, Virtue, and Pedagogy in Democracy\n## Equality vs. Unequal Competence\n## Historical Cycles and Political Stability\n## Religion, Conflict, and the Need for Peaceful Criteria\n## The Uncertain Destiny of Political “Animals”","[{\"question\":\"What is the central question of the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper asks whether democracy has a bright future and argues in favor of an education-centered path to that future.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author connect democracy with education?\",\"answer\":\"Democracy requires education and virtue; in the author’s view, higher pedagogy brings polities closer to an ideal democracy.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the paper criticize treating people equally in everything?\",\"answer\":\"Political “animals” are not equal in abilities, and systems that treat different levels of competence identically are described as having no future.\"}]","The Bright Future of Democracy is in Education - Brief Paper on Education and Democracy | PDF",1792076539,28]