Democracy is learned by negotiating

Six decisions on one route

On the Rixdorf route the crew makes six team decisions. Before every vote, each child says one sentence about it. For some decisions the crew then votes, and the majority wins. For others it puts things in an order together.

At the Rixdorf forge the smith can only make one thing after another. The crew decides what the village needs first. There is no right or wrong. At the last station their choice comes back, and then the question is what Rixdorf needs today.

What children can learn by negotiating

Children aged 8 to 12 can experience in these moments that opinions are allowed to differ. They can practise giving reasons for a position and listening to the others. And they can find out that a decision holds better when everyone has been heard first.

Four principles from cultural education

In the KuBiDemo project (2023 to 2025), the Bundesakademie für Kulturelle Bildung Wolfenbüttel looked at how cultural education can strengthen democracy. Its publication 'Haltung als Prinzip' describes six principles. We recognise four of them in Localnauts. This mapping is our own; the publication does not mention Localnauts.

Democratic education processes are always embedded in space and time. (Haltung als Prinzip, p. 77, our translation)

The first principle is being rooted in place and time. The children stand at the places the story is about and meet the year 1737 there.

The second is multiple perspectives. Before every vote each child brings in their view, and at the forge no answer counts as the only right one. That way several angles on the same thing come together.

The third is experience and the body. The crew walks the route, looks for traces on site and solves tasks with voices and hands.

The fourth is community and participation. The crew plays together on one device, the Navigator and Chronicler roles move on at every station, and decisions are made together.

Picking it up in class

All team decisions are kept in the crew logbook. You can download or print it after the tour and look back on it with your class: how did we decide, and how might others have decided? The companion booklet Mission Control has more ideas for the follow-up.

Plan Localnauts for your group →