A philosophical and historical review of the evolving and growing definition of democratic education through the writings of John Dewey, Nel Noddings, and Joyce Rothschild was accomplished in a literature review that included commentaries from the works of Jesse Goodman, John Goodlad, Amy Gutmann, Hugh Sockett, Kenneth Strike, and Maxine Greene, and others. The review of literature leads up the to the ethnographic case study of an alternative school that has been in existence for twenty-two years and is a member of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools. As an ethnographic work, I "write the culture" as I find it at Connectionist School with a special interest in the systemic, organic differences between their democratic organization and traditional bureaucratic public and private schools.

The study is a contribution to school reform efforts that are directed toward transformation of schools (Goodlad, 1990; Strike, 1993; Sockett, 1993) and emphasizes the need for a pervasive ethic of care (Noddings, 1984, 1992).