Schools, families and communities can play a vital role in fostering children’s knowledge, competences, attitudes and values in democratic education. In this way, each citizen has the right to be:

• educated about democracy (to deeply understand what democracy is and what it requires from each citizen);
• educated for democracy (to learn how to participate and how to exercise his/her democratic rights);
• educated through democracy (in supportive democratic learning environments) (Gollob, Krapf, Ólafsdóttir, & Weidinger, 2010).

Democratic education is closely linked with human rights education, as human rights can be considered the base of a democratic society. Education for human rights enables children to know and responsibly uphold their own and other’s rights, to respect and appreciate differences between individuals and the uniqueness of each one, acting in ways that defend equity and promote human rights worldwide (Gollob, Krapf, Ólafsdóttir, & Weidinger, 2010). Although thinking about and acting upon human rights and democracy are part of an ongoing lifelong process, children are already aware of issues of justice from an early age.