The Challenge of SDE: Our Arrogance and our Wisdom

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I grew up at the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham Massachusetts (1985-97). It is one of the oldest and best known democratic schools in the world. This experience provided me not only the happiest childhood I could imagine, it also gave me an unshakable confidence in the ability of children to educate themselves and create meaningful and fulfilling adult lives for themselves. Sometimes I wish I could magically impart this confidence to parents who want to be able to trust the process more and to give their kids more freedom. I wish they could see that their kids are no different than all the kids I have known, both from my years at Sudbury Valley and my time as a staff at the Macomber Center, who have boldly and successfully tread this path.

The path of self-directed education is extremely challenging for parents because it triggers our strongest fears. There is nothing scarier than the idea that we might be failing to prepare our children for a happy life. And yet the desire for our children to be happy is what brings us to this challenging, sometimes slightly terrifying path in the first place. This leaves us in a state of limbo with one foot on the path and one foot off, not wanting to turn back and put our kids in conventional school but not quite ready to take the leap, not ready to put our kids completely in control of their own education. This can be a confusing, anxiety-producing, and conflict-ridden place to be, not only for us but for our kids, as well.

I fully respect the diverse spectrum of approaches within the wide world of self-directed education. I know there are parents out there who prefer an eclectic blend of some required activities and some time for free exploration. But for those parents who feel that the key to their children thriving is to be found in the direction of giving your child more trust and freedom, even if it means more pushback from friends and family, I want to encourage you to trust your instinct and to take that leap.

Embarking fully on the path of self-directed education requires a radical shift away from our usual way of viewing children. We have been taught to see children as bereft, in need of adult intervention of some kind. If that intervention is not carried out by teachers in school, or at home through formal learning activities, then maybe it just consists more in the gentle and wise guidance of children in a positive direction, towards experiences that will optimize their growth and development and away from the harmful influences of the dominant culture. But self-directed education challenges us to turn this view of children around.

We can learn to see our children as already rich in everything they need. My own kids, for example, who are ages 6 and 8, (and this could be said of many other self-directed children) know about things that I don’t even know to ask about. More importantly, they intuitively understand things about the world we are living in today that I will never understand. And they certainly know things about themselves that I will never know. When we pay attention and develop an appreciation of their knowledge, their understanding, and their wisdom, it is humbling and it can counteract our habitual, anxious tendency to constantly guide, advise and direct their lives. After all, their understanding of themselves, the world around them, and their place in it is going to be far more important to their lives than anything we can give them. So we should try, as much as possible, to get out of their way and let them figure out who they are, what they want, and how they will go about getting it. When they are treated with respect, trust, and non-judgemental care, we can be sure that they will ask for our help when it is needed.

The insistence that we must impart our hard-won wisdom by continuously advising, guiding and directing them is not wise; it’s arrogant. If we want them to benefit from our wisdom then we can try tapping into the wisdom that recognizes their wisdom. We can trust that they are making their own good use of our example, our experience, and our knowledge. Sometimes they ask for it, but mostly they absorb it in ways that we are not aware of, and in ways that they are not even aware of. Growing up at Sudbury Valley, I was deeply influenced by certain adults in my life. Seeing how they viewed the world and how they approached life had a profound effect on me, partly because it was never imposed on me. They simply lived their lives, treated us with respect, and trusted us to live our own lives.

If we can learn to see our children more clearly for who they are, free from our fear-based projections, we will recognize their capacity to live their own lives, make their own choices and deepen their own wisdom. If we really look, really pay attention, we will eventually see that they are experts in the area of their own lives, and in a much better position to direct their lives than we are. But we may have to take a few breaths, step back and watch. Maybe for a long time.

Emily Orr’s Thesis

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The last eleven years.

For the last decade and one year, I’ve been watching students grow up, and have been surrounded by people who have watched me develop over the years.  It’s something I’m so used to. From the day I sat down for my enrollment interview, something felt instantly normal and right. There is something incredibly exciting about the fact that this is what the last eleven years behind me has lead up to.  I initially thought before I sat down to write this that I should probably have a solid idea of what I want out of life first, but I’ve come to realize I can’t precisely know just yet. I need room to explore more before I can pinpoint anything, and I am excited to go out into the world and see what it has to offer me, and what I can make out of it.  I’ve come to the point where I’m ready to explain through words who I’ve become, and who I want to be. What I do know is what I’m passionate about now, and that I’ve attained the skills I need to pursue those passions.  The ability to practice with motivation, to do things on my own, to know my limits while pushing to exceed them, and advocating for my needs or others needs.  Curiosity, problem solving, adaptability, independance, strength, understanding and acceptance of imperfection; These are just some of the skills I have worked to develop and will hold forever.

The beginning.

Learning to adapt, to socialize, and to problem solve.

I came to Sudbury fresh out of Kindergarten, and had to adapt to differences like choosing when I could play outside or when I could eat lunch. Simple concepts like these were my first taste of freedom in an institution. I instantly familiarized myself with my surroundings: finding a group of like minded individuals, memorizing all of the pathways in the woods, and encountering laws by breaking them.  Growing up being surrounded by people voicing their opinions, I was constantly and gradually learning how much my thoughts matter.  My foundation started mainly with playing in the woods with friends, and figuring out how to resolve social conflicts we had by ourselves or through JC.  One thing that was a huge difference in environment I had to get used to was the age mixing. I showed up and there were older kids literally everywhere. One of them popped their head into my enrollment interview.  I can definitely see now how daunting that can seem to a six year old coming from Kindergarten, but like everything else, I adapted. I remember some of them would talk to my friends and me, help us out with things, and it didn’t feel as though they were more important than us.  They soon just became people to me.

Along with collecting and trading littlest pet shops, I remember that everyday I would get lost with my friends in imagination games where we would think on the spot and confront problems while having the best time.  It seemed like time was sped up and I was able to flourish in my own world. I never wanted to leave when my Dad would pick me up, just like when at a friends house. Being young at Sudbury felt like an ongoing playdate with your best friend.

Discovery.

Overcoming obstacles, imperfection, and pursuing passions.

There have most definitely been times when I’ve questioned my education.  There’ve been times where I thought I haven’t been pushed hard enough in terms of learning.  Hitting the wall is something a lot of Sudbury students experience. Around this time period of pre/early teens, I would question everything I was doing, and everything I wasn’t learning.  I wondered if it was wrong to not have classes to complain to people about having to take, and not having to stress over grades and exams. I thought that not having those things other kids had must mean no one is pushing me to learn, therefor how will I be educated. Then I realized that fear was a good thing, and it was exactly what I needed.  I needed to question what I was doing, debate leaving, and hit the wall. Those moments of doubt pushed me to reflect, and build self awareness. As I explored new interests and tried new things, I worked towards goals at my own pace, asked for help, and grew to trust that I was doing what I needed to do. Around this same time period of pre/early teens, I wanted classes and assignments, and worked with my friends and myself to make them happen.  I remember the first class I collectively set up was a Spanish class with a student parent, and the list went on from there. I started participating in setting up classes, and had a strong desire to get a taste of as much as I could. I started Acting at the age of twelve, and surly fell in love with it as it became one of my biggest passions. When I was fourteen I wanted to take a biology class which I ended up studying for two years, which led me to want to take the biology regents test to see if I could meet the equivalent standards of a public high school student, and I did.  Not because I thought I had to, but because I was curious. Some classes I would stick with, and others I would attend for a day and decide it wasn’t for me. I took on positions in the community such as School Meeting Chair, JC Clerk and participated in different cooperatives. Having the ability to decide for myself what my priorities were from a young age allowed me to to find what I’m truly passionate about.

As I was growing and despite everything new I was trying, I still had occasional doubts.  In the 2017-2018 school year and up until early this year, I thought that I should wait another year to graduate.  I spent a lot of time going over the pros and cons of staying another year. One of the main points of this internal debate with myself was: Do I represent my idea of the perfect sudbury graduate? Someone who is ready to enter adulthood with self assurance and confidence, and who knows exactly how to voice their opinions with no insecurity.  I’ve struggled with the fact that I’m not fully that person. A part of me was putting pressure on myself to be that person; a person who has no self doubt, but that was unrealistic. What is the definition of perfect?  Can any person or concept ever reach the point of being “as good as it can possibly be”?  And the final question: Am I my own idea of the perfect Sudbury graduate? My answer is no, because there is no such thing.  Instead of embracing who I am right now, I thought I needed to reach the extent of my personal growth before I could make a true statement on why I’m ready to leave.  After a long period of questions and doubts, I concluded that I’ve reached the point of awareness in myself that I need to take the next step. I finally trust that I know what I want right now, I can reflect on all the parts of me that I’ve built from the start to the present, and see myself a year from now in a new environment.  My confidence has been growing with me through every step of the way, and it will continue to in every direction I go. Right now I’m happy with all the skills I have to grow and function independently in the world, and I believe in who I am today. Because today I am independent, strong, and imperfect.

A Sudbury Lifer.

Curiosity, understanding, and independence.

Something I’m excited to continue to do outside of Sudbury is experiencing different fields of work and study, while continuing to feed into the pursuits that I know and love.  In my future, I want to act in films, and be apart of the art of storytelling. That’s been one of my dreams for a long time, and I’ve gotten to discover and explore that dream through the plays I’ve been in at Sudbury and being a huge movie enthusiast.  Videography and film in general is an art that helps people through storytelling, compassion, and being able to relate to a story. It’s an art form I hope to be apart of. I love it with all of my heart, and I think I realized just how much meaning and happiness it gives me in my role in Sudbury’s production of Rabbit Hole.  During that rehearsal process, I learned how to connect with a character more than I knew possible.  One of the exercises we did for character development was writing a collection of past journal entries as your character during significantly important time periods of their life, and I really surprised myself with just how close I got myself to the role.  I played a mother named Becca who was grieving the loss of her child, and I was nervous going into such a serious role. I really wanted to tell her story in a way that did it justice and left an impression on the audience, so I tried really hard and dug deep to find personal connections I had with her character and I did.  That show was the eye opening experience that showed me how powerful theater and performance is, and that show will always mean so much more than a production to me. It was therapeutic in a way. I’ve gotten the opportunity to learn extremely valuable skills and be in a handful of other shows that I now have under my belt, and this year I’ve co-written a show with one of my closest friends that we’re directing ourselves.

In the spring semester of 2018, I took an art history course at Bard college through the high school bridge program. I was working probably the hardest I’ve ever worked to prove myself in a classroom full of actual college students, and very rarely shared with anyone the fact that I was a sixteen year old bridge student.  Throughout that course, I communicated with my two professors all the time, approaching them with a little too many questions in person and over email. I asked for help with the work I was doing from people around me at school and at home, and I definitely met my standards of succeeding in a college environment. I knew my ability to go beyond my own expectations and be truly absorbed in whatever I was focusing on. I was challenged academically, and on a class field trip to New York City where I got lost in the Met for a couple hours.  Though I was scared, had no idea how big the Met actually was, and called my parents a number of times, I knew how to be independant and on my own. I asked people for directions, roamed the exhibits, and did research on the paper I was writing. I was exercising the independence I’ve grown up with, which I’m going to need in the world ahead. After spending time with myself, I found a classmate I recognized, roamed central park, and had the best time.

Having grown up with the fundamentals of trust and self responsibility, I have a clear understanding of people’s choices.  From having witnessed and lived it, I understand that education comes in many different forms for every single individual. There should be more trust in people’s choices for education, and I think that believing that you have to follow a certain plan and structure to be successful in life is unrealistic and restrictive in a way, especially in this day and age in society.  Life is emphatically unpredictable, and things will be thrown at you along the way, so it’s hard to know the right answer for heading towards the future.  Being at Sudbury, I’ve gotten to see everywhere how different everyone’s learning experiences are. I’ve noticed how nobody learns in the same ways, or pursues all the same interests.  Knowing that I could ask every student what they do in a day and what their interests are and get completely different answers, I’m very aware that there is a different path and way of going about learning for everyone and they’re all equally important and should be seen as such.

Along with everything else that came natural to me through growing up at Sudbury, I learned to be a role model.  I’ve grown up alongside older students my whole life at sudbury, and that’s allowed me to understand how important it is to be a strong and kind figure for younger students.  A huge part of being a Sudbury student is being open and respectful of everyone around you no matter the age. You can learn valuable things from people who are older than you, or something just as valuable from someone ten years younger, and I’ve gained that awareness naturally.

The end.

Self identity, and the world ahead.

Yes, acting has stuck with me for years and will continue to, but there are so many other fields of study I’m curious to pursue.  Next year I’m planning on taking core classes full time at Dutchess community college, while also taking up their drama courses. My main focus next year will be to get a foundation in a college environment, discover new interests, attain credits and solidify what I want my major to be if I stick with my plan to transfer to a four year.  At this time in my life I’m starting to get new ideas that I want to grab onto as much as I can. Ideas of what I want to do that’s new, the possibilities for the future, and what I can work towards.

The outside world is filled with obstacles on concentration and creativity, and that’s something I’ve already practiced from the start to the finish in my education.  It’s human nature to want to expand whether that’s through curiosity, exploration, or working towards a goal in mind, and there isn’t a right or a wrong way to do it. I’ve had to push myself creatively because of the fact that I was thrown into my education with simple tools to build and shape my own knowledge, and I have taught myself not only how to learn, but how to be curious.  I know that my specific experience in the department of learning will be a part of me in whatever I choose to do outside of my school, and so will everyone and everything that’s inspired me to explore. I am in no way done developing as a person in this world, and in no way will I ever be finished learning. In who I am and whoever I become, the last eleven years will always be in my roots.  I know that my skills in independence, self-awareness, acceptance, and problem solving will help me continue to grow. I’ve accepted myself, and I’m happy with being perfectly imperfect.

Wasting (Almost) Everyone’s Time Teaching Lots of Math

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This week our blog is featuring guest author Wes Beach. Wes is a writer, speaker, and the director of an unusual high school that supports kids who want and need something other than entrapment in a conventional high school.  Follow him on FB and @BeachHighSchool, and find Beach High School at http://beachhigh.education/ .

A number of claims are made about the value of everyone learning algebra, geometry and more, but I don’t think any of them stand up to scrutiny.

Before I get argumentative, I want to say very clearly and with conviction that math is a powerful tool and a beautiful subject for many people. Some people have a passion for math, and I respect and admire this. Other people need to complete math courses to reach their goals; this is, of course, sensible. It’s just that math isn’t for everyone; lots of it are not needed in most people’s day-to-day lives.

I often hear, In today’s technical world, success at work requires knowing math. I once asked a telephone repair person who was fixing the phone in my office if he had enjoyed high school. Yes, he did, he said. Did you take algebra and geometry? I asked. Yes, I did, he said. Do you use it in your work? No, I don’t, he said.

I asked a former student who is now a nurse if she thought the high school math she learned was necessary in her work. Yes, she said. How long would it have taken you to learn just what you actually use? I asked. A few hours, she replied.

I suspect that most of my readers can’t remember the last time in their adult lives that they factored a trinomial or wrote down anything that involved imaginary numbers.

It is necessary to know math to appreciate many aspects of our world. I drive over the Golden Gate Bridge on occasion and appreciate and marvel at it every time. I can do this without having been trained as an engineer. When I get to my destination I can enjoy a glass of wine even though I don’t know a lot about winemaking. I can call home on my cell phone, but I can’t explain its inner workings in any detail. Yes, math was fundamental in developing many of the devices, products, and structures we use and appreciate, but it isn’t necessary for most people to know that math.

Learning math means learning logical thinking. I’m pretty sure many people who have passing or even high grades for high school (or college) math classes on their transcripts went through the motions and didn’t understand the material in any deep way. I once had this conversation with a high school student who was close to graduation and had already been accepted at the college of his choice: Wes, he said, there will be math classes required at college. Do you think I’ll have to understand it, or will I be able to just keep doing it?

Those who assert that math does teach logical thinking assume that a math-savvy person transfers his skills in thinking to other areas of his life. In spite of looking for it, I haven’t been able to find any convincing evidence that this is true. If the aim is to teach critical thinking, why start with math and depend on later transfer? Why not infuse high school classes in many subjects with lessons in critical thinking about problems of immediate and real concern?

Logical thinking isn’t the only way to process thoughts. Madeline, one of my former students, made this clear to me. She said that she thinks in big-picture ways, and she easily grasps ideas like the ones expressed in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. This big-picture way of seeing the world is both a strength and a weakness. Madeline quickly grasps large ideas, but she has trouble paying attention to details. She told me, “Math . . . is a subject that I am not extremely strong in, because it is so literal and exact.”

I am a literal, linear, exacting thinker. This mode of thought also has its weaknesses as well as strengths. I learned math easily (and have forgotten a great deal of it), but a lot of poetry is beyond me because it can’t be taken literally.

Math is required for college admission. This is often true, unfortunately. But one BHS graduate gained admission to Columbia after no time in high school and a year of classes as a nonmatriculated student at UC Berkeley, where he just took just one course in math, a refresher class in algebra and trigonometry. I often wonder what there was in his head to refresh.

Arguments, in some ways parallel and in other ways different, can be made with regard to other traditional subjects, but here I can’t dissect the entire traditional high school curriculum. Suffice it to say that I see no reason why a fixed set of subjects, chosen by people distant in time and place, should be useful for every single person of high school age. Many of my graduates were when I met them, or have become, professional dancers, athletes, photographers, musicians, actors, and so on through a wide range of vocations. One of the reasons they became my students was that they couldn’t focus on their interests and talents in a conventional high school.

Let’s Talk About Screens; “Screen Time” and Self-Directed Education

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There is an ongoing cultural debate about “screen time” and its effects on well-being. Most of the evidence is theoretical or anecdotal; there are no large-scale studies, meta-analyses, or longitudinal studies involving children and touchscreens. The debate is often confounded by the breadth of activity included in the term, “screen time.” This article won’t take a position on whether screen use is inherently good or bad, or on whether “over-use” even exists; instead, it describes how the Self-Directed Education (SDE) environments mitigate the potential of over-use and its associated suite of problems, while also creating a productive space for the “screen time” debate to unfold.

Screen Use in Self-Directed Education Spaces

As noted, in most SDE environments, there are no restrictions on how much students can use their screens. Upon receipt of this knowledge, some people assume the student body at a school like ours – the Hudson Valley Sudbury School – must be a zombie horde of proto-cyborgs: incontinent, drooling, and endlessly gazing into their glowing, jewel-like screens. But the truth is even more startling: screen use at our school is moderate.

It seems fair to suggest that insofar as people are turning towards their screens more and more, they may be attempting to meet basic psychological needs, such as the three proposed by Self-Determination Theory:

  1. Competence (seek to control the outcome and experience mastery),
  2. Relatedness (will to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others), and
  3. Autonomy (desire to be causal agents of one’s own life).

Self-Directed Education environments create conditions which may satisfy these needs, thereby negating the need to “escape” into a screen. They do so in the following ways:

  1. They allow students to choose from a theoretically unlimited list of activities, as opposed to the strictly limited options available in traditional schooling environments. This condition increases the odds of each student finding something they might learn to do master. Since students are free to move at their own pace, to experiment, and to work privately or with the company and instruction of others, they are less likely to be discouraged by failure and more likely to attain competence over a broad range of skills.
  2. They tend to feel more familial than institutional. “Screen time” is usually intensely social and offers lots of occasions for connection, both online and with friends at school. The freedom to choose companions, and to spend as much time as wanted with those companions, provides opportunities to develop deep and meaningful connections.
  3. If nothing else, SDE offers the chance to be the causal agent of one’s own life; full autonomy is central to the very definition of the concept of SDE.

One ability which is particularly relevant to screen over-use is self-regulation, which overlaps the first and third psychological need above. Self-regulation requires competence over a variety of skills, including lay-psychology, introspection, willpower, prioritization, and planning. SDE provides spaces for young people to begin mastering these skills – and in SDE environments they tend to do so in earnest, because they are responsible for themselves, and they know it.

Young people appreciate being trusted with the responsibility, just as adults take it for granted, and they feel that it’s right that they should be, and they rise to that occasion. It’s not that young people in SDE environments are self-disciplined ascetics – self-mastery is a lengthy and lofty project, just ask your local wisdom tradition – but they do tend to be “advanced” in this area, especially after a few years. If you ask around at our school, many teenagers will tell you things like, “I don’t use instagram at school; it’s not what I’m here for,” or, “I don’t bring my tablet to school so I can focus on my friendships.”

The bottom line is that “over-use” is less likely to occur at our school, and that when it does occur anyway, it is less likely to persist, and that when it does persist anyway, the environment is supportive of the phenomena running its course in a healthy manner.

Solving the (Potential) Problem

The focus of this section is the Sudbury model, and Hudson Valley School in particular, because that’s what I know first-hand, but much here will also be true for other SDE spaces. The Sudbury model provides a hopeful platform for working towards reasonable solutions to any problems posed by screen-use. By utilizing a democratic governance structure and – even more importantly – by building a “democratic ethos,” Sudbury facilitates productive communication.

Recently, France passed a national law prohibiting public school students from bringing their phones to school in order to intercept what administrators and teachers saw as a slew of problems phones were causing in their schools. But prohibition has a poor track record; it’s riddled with psychological hazards, and it subverts the need for autonomy and debilitates communication by setting up an antagonistic dynamic between those with power and those without. Sudbury schools, by contrast, are direct democracies, and there is no authority separate from and above the student body. This simple yet astounding circumstance sets everyone at ease from the get-go. The ethos of the school is likewise democratic, in the best sense: staff and students regard each other as fundamentally equal, and the right to be and to express oneself is universally respected. There’s something like a vibrational field of equality which protects the school culture; it’s not that there aren’t differences among us, or that power is never abused; it’s that we respect each other’s autonomy. An equivalent ethos – and therefore arena for conversation – can be found in many other SDE spaces, including those which do not operate as direct democracies.

Taken together, our structure and ethos facilitate clear and honest communication; because there isn’t a power differential between any two parties – and the threat of patronizing regulation or prohibition is absent – real, vital conversations can unfurl. Students and staff alike relax and talk without fear of retaliation. It’s like your friend who’s a good listener and doesn’t judge you: you talk to them, and the conversations are enormously helpful in processing your experience and moving forward. Contrast this to conversations you have with that friend (or family member) who moralizes, jumps to conclusions, and gives unsolicited advice (usually along the lines of, “you should be more like me,”): you avoid talking to them, and when they do get their hooks into you, you resent them and their message; it’s counterproductive.

Many SDE spaces, including Sudbury Schools, have formal platforms for communication as well. At a recent meeting here at HVSS a group of teenagers actually brought up the issue of “screen overuse” in our wider society, and asked for discussion on how we might proactively address it at school. Prohibition theoretically possible, but impossible to imagine: if anyone formally proposed it, every School Meeting Member would show up with their pitchforks and torches, ready to defend their freedom. So the meeting was creative, and several promising ideas were proposed, including the creation of a “scree-free” zone in the building, a petition which willing parties could sign, agreeing to put their screens down during certain times, and the organization of more school-wide activities. Discussions like these usually don’t lead to the adoption of any new policy or law, but they do affect the school culture, and our culture is more important than our legal structure anyway, because it’s more influential on students’ experience at school.

The fact is screens are not going anywhere, and no doubt more are on the way. To the extent that their use may include hazards, the best safeguards against them are found in free and equal spaces such as those created by SDE: 1. The opportunity to live a rich life which satisfies our needs, and 2. A space to grapple with the issues in a supportive community of productive communication which sharpens minds, challenges assumptions, and lends courage. SDE environments are thus well positioned to navigate the the incoming tide of screens, as well as other approaching oceans.

The Psychological Ecology of Sudbury

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Faulty Assumptions

When I tell people about how Hudson Valley Sudbury School (HVSS) works, they sometimes ask if it’s like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. They imagine a vicious world of savage children struggling for supremacy, gnawing on limbs, and skewering random stuff with sharpened sticks.  They even bring up anecdotes from their own experience to suggest that we should expect brutality to rein under the conditions we maintain at our school; they’ll say something like, “in my high school, if the teacher ever stepped out of the classroom, even for a second, a fight would break out.”  I understand – I’ve even worked in a school where that was indeed the case. If not a fight, something transgressive would happen – a champion would emerge from the rows of desks to make some raucous gesture of contempt for authority, to the hoots and applause of classmates.  And when we attempted to have unstructured time, like a recess, there was almost always an actual fistfight. At that school, the adults micromanaged the students as much as possible. The more control a teacher was able to exert over students, the more highly that teacher was regarded; power, and the control it afforded, was the highest good.  The most effective teachers were known for directing students with military precision, drilling them in posture and guidelines which sharply restricted how they could move their bodies, even while seated, and where they could direct their gaze at any particular moment. In such an excruciating and oppressive environment, tense but utterly boring, people find ways to rebel – not because they can’t handle freedom maturely when they find or steal a moment of it, but because they are deprived of it.  Their “transgressions” are hardly evidence of immaturity; they are, rather, evidence of an unhealthy ecology of relationships. The boys in Lord of the Flies were cultivated within a culture of mistrust and assimilated into a brutal hierarchy at their mid-20th century English boarding school.  Left to their own devices, they recreated the ecology of their native psychological habitat. Lord of the Flies is not a cautionary tale about freedom; it’s a cautionary tale about oppression.

The Psychological Ecology of Trust

In enrollment interviews at HVSS, parents sometimes ask about safety, like, how can the young people here be safe if adults are not necessarily monitoring them?  I love this question, because it invites me to explain the mechanism on which our school is built: trust. Everyone tends to understand the emphasis we place on autonomy, because the concept is so firmly rooted in the value-system of the western world.  But the active effect of trust in Self-Directed Education (SDE) programs is more obscure.  I like to point out the window at the little groups and singles, meandering about outdoors.  I say, they are actually safer because we are not supervising them.  They know they’re responsible for their own safety and behavior, so they take care of themselves, and each other.  Sometimes overzealously: there was a time kids would come zooming in to grab a staff member or the nurse anytime someone stubbed their toe.  They’ve relaxed, but they still comfort each other when they skin knees and walk each other to the nurse’s office or fetch her when necessary.  And when someone is taking a risk which others judge a step too far – climbing up to the swaying top of a white pine, for example, you can be sure someone will be standing at the bottom of that tree, checking in.

We all appreciate, so much, being trusted, and young people are no different.  They know very well that they deserve to be trusted and are worthy of it, so they’re delighted when it’s extended to them.  They take it seriously, and comport themselves differently than when they are unsupervised and mistrusted.  In other words, becoming ensconced in trusting relationships engenders trustworthy behavior, creating a psychological ecology in our community which would be unrecognizable to the boys from Lord of the Flies.

Expectations vs. Trust

Here’s something I can agree on with educators everywhere, including the most systematic micromanagers: expectations are powerful influencers of human behavior.  Everyone within a community is intricately and extensively interconnected, and our attitudes towards each other inevitably have their effect.  The more power an individual has, the more potent their expectations. This is fundamentally an ecological insight: it recognizes the extensive interconnectivity and interdependence between people, and between organisms and their environment.

Expectations seek to actively control the behavior of others.  Trust, on the other hand, is a kind of vote of confidence; it conveys a firm belief in the reliability, basic goodness, and ultimate success of the individual.  Like expectations, trust harnesses the interconnectedness of the community, but in doing so it bolsters rather than infringes on autonomy.

As much as we focus on the individual in discussing our school, the group ecology plays a vital role in the experience of each student.  The trust of the community (including parents) is an integral component of our program; it is what we do with the facts of our interconnectedness and interdependence.  We are not a loose federation of individuals which passively supports autonomy by neglect, ignoring our interdependence – we are a community which actively supports each other via trust and trustworthy behavior.

Self-Directed Education works because kids are capable, but also because trust is powerful.  Our students know it is their prerogative to direct their own lives; they know that their parents, and the staff of the school, trust them to do this.  And this trust is abiding. We know that every student will make mistakes, just as we continue to make them. This trust is not a contract, to be withdrawn upon failure.  It’s an impressive message for our young people, and for each other as adults working in SDE spaces, and a serum of strength, affirmation, and encouragement for all of us as we navigate and master the challenges of being free together.

But what about academics!?

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This is part 2 of the 3 part blog: Special Snowflake Syndrome and Other Good Questions.

But what about academics!?

The whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no use, or else he would lack information lifelong. -William Morris, News from Nowhere, 1890(!)

Indeed, what about them!? Formal academic study constitutes perhaps 5% of the total activities of our students; Horace Mann would have a conniption fit, but – he’s dead! The way I see it, the reason academics plays such a peripheral role (and why that is totally acceptable to us) in our program is threefold:

1. Kids learn the “basics” without academic instruction

Learning to read in the abstract, without intrinsic motivation, is difficult; it takes several years to get most students to do it in traditional school environments. In fact, deep and substantial learning of anything absent of such motivation is, perhaps, impossible. But kids are motivated to have fun, connect, and explore, and meaningfully engaging virtually any activity requires, at some point anyway, literacy, so our students learn to read directly from the material from which they want to get information. Some learn because they are fanatical about Minecraft and need to communicate with other players and understand instructions. Some learn because they want to text with their family and friends on their smartphone. Others learn because reading is a gateway to story as well as enormous amounts of information, and they want it. Either way, kids are usually able to accomplish basic literacy if adults simply provide a text-rich environment, stay out the way, and answer questions and provide requested assistance in a straightforward manner.

Our students learn the basics of arithmetic because…well, they have to, in order to get what they want, just like with reading. And they’re inundated with it, too. If you stop to consider, every day is chock full of numerical transactions and evaluations, so the ability to do simple calculations is critical. An example from school of an explicit and practical use of math is our little store, which is enormously popular. Many students adore the chance to be a cashier, but they have to be able to make change and keep the books, and a more formal study of basic arithmetic often begins right there. Another example from school is baking, always popular; try to follow a recipe without a basic understanding of numbers, and you’ll end up with hardtack – if you’re lucky (we have shelves stocked with it in the basement, if you’re hungry). When our students choose to go beyond the simple arithmetic of everyday life, they do so with ease, as evidenced by the five young teens who took up formal study of math for the first time last year and scored highly on the state Regents Algebra Examination in the spring.

Really, the traditional “basics” don’t deserve to be included in the category of “academics” at all. Rather, they are prerequisites for academic study, and as such they belong in the category of “basic skills”, like chewing, walking, and talking.

2. Academic instruction is inappropriate for kids

Whaaaaaat?! He’s wacky, bonkers, off his rocker, a total schmlocker, a fool, a neophyte, a chryptootyte, a shananaginagain (sorry, I’ve been reading Roald Dahl to my daughter)! Ok, ok, I don’t mean it entirely. But – they certainly aren’t central to the healthy development of children. The general arc of our student population goes something like this: our “elementary” kids play pretty much all day every day, which, from the school’s perspective, is exactly what they should be doing. Peter Gray, a Boston College psychologist and expert on evolutionary psychology, offers a clear explanation of exactly why in his book, Free to Learn,

“In free play, children learn to make their own decisions, solve their own problems, create and abide by the rules, get along with others as equals rather than as obedient or rebellious subordinates. In vigorous outdoor play, children deliberately dose themselves with moderate amounts of fear – as they swing, slide, or twirl on playground equipment…and thereby learn how to control not only their bodies, but also their fear. In social play children learn how to negotiate with others, how to please others, and how to modulate and overcome the anger that can arise from conflicts.”

Kids are learning important things all the time in their apparently frivolous games and interactions. In fact, this is how education worked for hundreds of thousands of years; it suits us, biologically and psychologically. We don’t actually need adults to induce us by carrot and stick to learn, nor do we need an academic environment to cultivate our intelligence; it’s what we do, without necessarily “trying” or being aware of the process, throughout childhood, and hopefully adulthood, too.

As students here transition to the “middle school” years, most of them devote their time to more intensive socializing, forging their social identities and working through the attendant issues, and when they reach what is typically the “high school” years, then, having been built up by all those years of play and socializing, they tend to develop a genuine interest in the world beyond them and their peer group. It’s at this time that most of them undertake more rigorous courses of academic study, to consider what will come after their time here, and to prepare for it.

The school does value academic skills, just not any more than all the other skills necessary to being a competent person. That’s why our program is designed to foster a state – that of independence – rather than any particular skill set. Even if we could somehow coax students into learning the things we (in our infinite wisdom) deem valuable, the notion of coaxation itself implies dependence, and thus contradicts what we understand to be the aim of education. Ultimately, in order to be successful, materially, psychologically, and spiritually, it is necessary to take ownership of one’s life, to move with confidence, and to speak with conviction. The school offers as its piece-de-resistance an opportunity to master this infinitely valuable set of “basics.”

3. Kids don’t care about the future

Most of our students are not interested in preparing for their adulthood; they want to engage their lives right now, and live it up, dude! Sometimes doing so includes some academic study, but more often it doesn’t. Either way, good for them! Anyway, the healthy development of children is grounded in their enjoyment and appreciation of the experience of being alive. When kids attend to the present, as they are want to do, the future takes care of itself .

The traditional model of schooling postulates a dreamy kind of goal drifting around somewhere in the future. Arriving at this destination, however, is always deferred. School, then college, then (often) a series of dreary jobs, and the accumulation of things – and debts – always onward, (apparently) towards that place where you may rest and relax and be satisfied and live your good life. We spent so much of our childhood preparing for the future that it’s difficult to switch gears and enjoy our lives right now. This is not an argument for hedonism, but it is an argument for supporting kids in maintaining their basic present-moment orientation.

The point of our program is not that it accomplishes the same goals as traditional school, or that it does so better, or that it does so but without causing the (troublingly ubiquitous) harms commonly attributed to the traditional system. The point is that is accomplishes different, more sincere, and worthier goals. At the risk of sounding like a beady-eyed well-fed electoral candidate, I’ll say that it consummates that most beautiful dream of our marvelous republic: that people should be free to choose their own values and to pursue them on their own terms. At the risk of sounding like Eckhart Tolle, I’ll say that it promotes living in the present moment (by allowing kids, who do that so well, to continue doing it). And at the risk of sounding like John Dewey, I’ll say that it allows students to learn how to make a life, rather than (merely) a living. But- proud of sounding like a lazy fart, I’ll say that what it really does is nothing at all. It simply exists, thereby protecting kids’ right to just be kids. Doing this is inevitably disappointing for the eager interventionist in all of us, and it can test our patience, but- well, we manage 🙂

A Fish out of the Hudson – A Sudbury Student goes to India

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You can imagine my excitement when I was invited to speak at The Association of Internation Schools of India (TAISI), the education conference for private schools of India taking place in Goa.

I would get to go to a country halfway across the world on a continent I’d never been to.

I would get to share my views at a conference in a country that’s known to have rigorous views on education.

I was in Germany when I got the invitation email at 1 am. I texted my mom immediately and resisted the urge to wake my brother up and tell him. I was thrilled! I started thinking about what I was going to say. What the goal for my talk would be. I knew I wanted my audience to see my school like I see it. I also wanted them to see there is more than one effective form of education.

But first, they had to understand my school, and I mean completely get what it’s like to be a student at a Sudbury School. I didn’t want to pretend that Sudbury was like a traditional school or try and defend it. I wanted to be real about my experience here and I wanted them to get it.

So, in my talk I wanted to explain how Sudbury is not a school about just academics. Kids here learn how to evaluate themselves, how to set their own goals, and how to be independent. I wanted to talk about how “learning” looks different for every kid here, and how that’s ok. I wanted to show them how our democracy works, how we vote on everything, how the student majority rules, no principal, no veto power. I wanted to tell them how it felt being School Meeting Chair at the age of eleven, what was frustrating and hard, and how it really forced me to understand how democracy works. I wanted to convince them that trust is the most important part of any school. I really believed that I wasn’t just representing what a Sudbury School is; I was representing students everywhere. I had to show that kids have valuable input when talking about education.

I wanted to sound confident, knowledgeable, and natural. To get to this point, I practiced like crazy. I gave my talk to anybody that would listen and when nobody would listen, I gave it to the mirror. Seriously, my friends started being able to recite not only what I was saying but the tone of voice I said it in. I mouthed it silently when it was slow at my job (I actually got into some kind of awkward situations because of that). I whispered it on the plane to India when I couldn’t sleep. I even tried recording myself, but ended up only being able to listen to it for about 10 seconds. I thought about what word to emphasize in every sentence.

So finally, we get on the plane to India! At one point, I look behind me nervously thinking that I’ve lost my cell phone. My eye meets a chatty Indian woman with bright orange hair, who starts setting me up with her grandsons. She starts telling me how gorgeous they are and how their mother is Italian and they are both in law school etc, etc. I was definitely flattered, but – no thank you.

Fifteen very long hours later, we landed in Mumbai. As we drove away from the airport and towards south Bombay, I was mesmerised by just how different it was from Kingston — there were auto rickshaws and two wheelers weaving (kind of like playing Grand Theft Auto) in between traffic. There were slums and multistory buildings right next to each other; dogs, cats, and of course, the occasional cow, the endless broken symphony of car horns, and then the bright colors that seem to shout out to you.

When we got to Goa I was tired, hungry, and just really gross. At this point, we had been traveling for forty eight hours and I was stressed. The cab ride from the train station to the hotel was about an hour and it was all winding roads with what felt like a speed bump every five hundred feet. The houses were so colorful and pretty, the environment was tropical and I swear to god we saw a group of palm trees that looked exactly like the cover of Where the Wild Things Are. My mom kept trying to chat but I was not in the mood (sorry mom!). I just wanted to get to this hotel.

When we finally got there, my panic was temporarily delayed by the ridiculous lavishness of the hotel. I mean, it felt like we were in a movie– it was huge and right on the beach. When we first went in, they gave us a cold towel. Then someone came out and handed us a rose, then a necklace. We were laughing so hard because it felt like a culture shock within culture shock.

I was really excited to get to the conference so I got down there as soon as I could and immediately felt like a fish out of water. There I was in jeans and a t-shirt, the youngest person in a room filled with professionally dressed educators and principals. I didn’t know anyone and I was worried no one would take me seriously. I didn’t even know how to check in!

I found Jeff, the staff member from my school who was also speaking at the conference, and he helped me sign in. I got this cool name tag that said “speaker” on it and I started to feel a little more comfortable, so I talked to some people about Sudbury but the conference was pretty much over for the day. Then Raghava, the curator of our session, showed up and soon after, so did all the other panelists. We all proceeded to a rehearsal.

The first speaker to rehearse was Deepak Ramola who is the founder of Project Fuel. He goes around learning life lessons from all sorts of people and then turns them into curriculum. He was super nice and and a great speaker. He sounded so natural and conversational and was actually interesting. He had obviously put a ton of effort into his talk and I was like, “Damn! I wanna sound like that.”

Then went Babar Ali, who was one of the only kids in his village to go to school. When he was nine, he would go after school and teach the other kids what he had learned that day. At the age of sixteen, he was named the youngest school headmaster in the world by the BBC. He now has over five hundred students between two schools, both of which are completely free. All of the teachers are former students. Recently, Babar was offered a full scholarship at a prestigious university in the United States and turned it down because he knew his students would suffer without him. He was really shy, but he talked to me a little and showed me the text book where one of the chapters was about him. It was like the sweetest humble brag I’d ever heard. Throughout the whole rehearsal he seemed really tired and looked like he was about to fall asleep and I was like, “Me too, Babar”.

Kalyan Akkipeddi, who is the founder of Protovillage, talked about his village which is the prototype for a sustainable village in rural india. He bought 5 acres of land and he, his family and 12 other families built (and are building) the village. They harvested 200,000 gallons of rainwater and started a seed bank for the other villages. His point was to show surrounding villages how to be interdependent within the village. During his talk I was just like, “Oh, my god!” Everything they did was so inspiring.

Then followed Saba Ghole, who after graduating from MIT, started a maker school in Cambridge, MA where instead of classes, they have studios where the kids have projects they work on like designing things for wheelchairs or bio clothing. She was really nice and even laughed at a silly joke I made, so I liked her even more.

On the morning of my talk, I arrived at the venue early enough. There was someone speaking before our session. His slides were full of boring statistics, graphs, and more graphs. He talked about how much more money there was to make in the International School business in India. I was just thinking the whole time, “Wow! This is the exact opposite of our panel.” His talk was followed by some great talks by my fellow panelists. After Jeff’s talk someone asked a question about Sudbury. Something about how they had had trouble with how little structure they had in college and how much worse off they would’ve been in a school like Sudbury. That question completely freaked me out and I figured that they already hated us, so I went to the bathroom and frantically practiced one more time. I was determined to change their minds!

Finally, I gave my talk, just as I had practiced it: clear, slow and articulate.

After my talk, to my surprise, everyone wanted to talk to me. One woman even told me I was inspirational. Someone else said I was a great speaker. One person even wanted me to speak at his conference! And there was this one very earnest woman who looked me in the eye and asked, “Amelia, how can I make my kids self driven?” (I bet she didn’t even see the irony in that)! Someone else said they were questioning everything, not only as a teacher but as a parent. And then, the guy who had asked Jeff that question, came up to me and I was like “ok, here we go”, but to my surprise, he only wanted to know more. “What do younger kids care about in school meeting? What motions do they make? How do they vote on things like staff salary?”

It seemed as though everyone really understood Sudbury. I was honestly so proud of myself. Earlier, I said my goals were to show that there was more than one effective form of education, and that kids do have valuable input to add. I felt like I had done that and that felt really rewarding.

All of this attention went straight to my head and I was like, “I can’t talk about Sudbury any longer, I must go for a swim!” So I did.

There was a wine and cheese social that night and everyone there was trying to talk to us! This stern looking headmaster came over and was like, “I wanna be part of the cool people conversation” or something like that while I thought to myself, “Ah, so this is what being famous is like.” Again, straight to my head.

Afterwards when everything started to calm down, I started to realize how important it is for schools like ours to go out and be a part of the larger education world. We can’t just stay in our bubble. I saw the need for student perspective. I realized that nothing is going to change without it. I had just done one of the scariest, yet most rewarding, things in my life and it was over and that sucked but all I could think about was how lucky I was to have wormed my way into this group of people. I can’t wait to do it again!

It Feels Good

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Yesterday was the second day of school at The Hudson Valley Sudbury School. For me it was an emotional start to the year. My youngest is now officially enrolled as a fresh five year old, and two of my oldest graduated last year leaving me to start the year without them. It’s been bittersweet. I know that they were ready to leave.  One is at Sarah Lawrence College, not too far from home so I can still lay eyes on him every so often. I look forward to watching him grow, I eagerly await the stories of his classes, his adventures and what it’s like to be a Sudbury grad, and of course to watch him serve as an alumni at various school events. The other has flown across the world to conquer the professional video game stage, signed as a well-paid, pro player on a team in Asia. He’s on a team that is navigating having players who speak 4 different languages; he’s training, he’s greeting fans, he’s keeping color-coded spreadsheets about technical play – the opportunity of a lifetime. They are both exactly where they should be, and they have taken these steps with a grounded confidence that makes me proud. And I’m doing what I can to miss them in a positive way.

My five year old has taken to the school with gusto. He wakes up early so he can take the school bus (even though I go in two hours later) and makes sure to check if I will be leaving later than the bus. He comes home exhausted after hours of make believe games, of running hard. He’s excited to tell me how he beat a new level in a game he’s been playing, bought something from the school store or was the first on his team to be ready for End of Day Cleaning. His confidence and independence are soaring. While I miss having my baby at home, attached to me, it is blaringly obvious how happy and ready he is to be there. He has also been a walking reminder of what my 17 year old was like when he enrolled just shy of 5. It’s a changing of guards as his graduation means we no longer have any students from when we first opened.

So many things have changed within these walls and on this campus since the day we opened 14 years ago. With the exception of two staff the entire student and staff body is different. The building has been painted, there is an incredible playground, a garden, and an entirely new building has sprouted up. The processes, for the most part feel well oiled and there is solid history behind law decisions and culture. It feels secure and grounded. It feels good.

Now, feeling that the school is stable, that the ship is in good hands, I can look toward the future. We have some exciting projects in the works: we’re looking at ways to build a strong endowment, maybe even so strong we could run the budget off the interest, and we’re thinking about ways to support the Sudbury philosophy worldwide – sending ambassadors out to help startup groups, etc. – we’re thinking a bit outside these walls. It also feels good.

Yesterday, as I sat on the swings and looked around the campus I was struck by how many things had changed and at the same time everything is the same. I watched a group of boys climb high into the trees, a couple of young girls walking arm in arm chatting, 3 young boys were playing hard in the sandbox – leaping from the boulder while battling imaginary bad guys, a group of teens were talking in the garden, surrounded by fresh veggies and flowers…. They were all so happy to be back at school. And I could feel it from the swings as I surveyed the campus. So I hopped up and took an hour finding each person in attendance, and I asked them one question and wrote down their unfiltered answers. It confirmed my beliefs. I am so grateful to be part of a school where feeling “good”, “great”, “awesome” or “serene” is at the forefront of their minds.

  • Their answers to “How does it feel to be back? (and for the new members of the community – “How does it feel to be here?”)
  • It so serene, cool and chill. Weird, but cool chill. I’ve never been so relaxed in a school setting before. It’s weird to get used to.
  • It’s like family
  • Liberating
  • It feels really good. I feel more grounded. I missed all the people more than I thought I would. It feels great to be back with people who feel the same way as I do.
  • Cool
  • Good, good, great!
  • Amazing
  • Good
  • Feels pretty good
  • Fine, great, it’s nice to be back
  • Good!
  • I like it!!
  • Weird
  • Good
  • Thumps up
  • Little bored
  • Good
  • It’s good
  • Pretty good, better than my last school!
  • Yeah, it’s gooood
  • Good
  • Why did it start so late??
  • Oh yeah, it’s great!
  • I had a great summer but it’s good…so what are you doing?
  • Good
  • Good, I mean, you can’t top good!
  • Welcome. And I’m not alone all the time, my life is back on track!
  • Energizing
  • Same old same old – I’ve got this one (pointing at a friend) and this one (pointing at another friend)
  • Pretty good, bored, a bit stressful
  • I never left, but for the most part it’s absolutely wonderful to have all the kids and commotion back. I like having kids back even if it’s harder to get work done.
  • It feels pretty good, but surreal not having the people who left.
  • It feels real great.
  • Good, I’m bored at home
  • LIT
  • Really awesome, best day. I’m really so happy. I’m glad to have some time away from my family and to be with my friends.
  • Awesome la vista, awesome ba bista
  • Awesome, awesome, for real!
  • Good, great
  • Great
  • Amazing, really! I missed my friends
  • It’s the cat’s pajamas to be back
  • Good
  • Meh
  • It’s good, I like it
  • It feels amazing, like I never left
  • I missed school
  • A hearty 7 out of 10
  • Cool
  • Good!
  • It feels like chocolate pudding
  • Hopeful
  • Invigorating – there are so many opportunities
  • Good
  • Good, I’m excited to have something to do
  • Great
  • Feels like a reset on my brain, a nice exhale, first stretch of the morning, first sip of coffee all at once, all day long.
  • Pretty good
  • Radical
  • Feels kind of like…something
  • Pretty fantastic
  • It feels like Christmas morning, lots of anticipation, bubbling excitement and surrounded by family

Welcome Back to Choice

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That school bell’s ringin’! Giddap! Whoa! Welcome back, everyone.

As I write this, the rest of the staff are scurrying around, collating files, scrubbin’ tiles, and wrastlin’ crocodiles, puttin in dat elbow grease, while I tap away on my keyboard, 33 tabs open in chrome, planning next summer.  Just kidding – I’m working harder than anyone else, I’m sure you’ll agree.  I happen to be drinking coffee, too, and for some reason today my coffee tastes like grilled cheese, and strangely enough, I love it.  I’m just slurpin’ it down.  Go figure.

I’d like to congratulate our students, and their parents, for making the bold decision to be a part of our school.  Surely it would (at least appear to) be safer to sign up for the traditional program and march off down the corridors, backpack stuffed with the good stuff.  My daughter is nearly five, and I feel the pull myself, so my congratulations are quite sincere; I know it isn’t always an easy choice, but I think it is a decision well made.

My final adventure of the summer was a trip to the Maine Primitive Skills School for a five day immersion program.  I built and slept in a debris hut, wove cordage from plant fibers, made friction fire, and skinned and roasted a chipmunk (I didn’t eat it though, smelling it was way more than enough, I needed to shower and brush my teeth like six times immediately afterwards but you know: baby steps).  You gotta get your kicks somehow right?  I went for the skills, but I was startled by how emotional the experience became for me.  The instructor emphasized that the most important aspect of survival – far and away – is attitude.  In survival situations (particularly in real ones, not merely when you’re “playing survival” like we were), circumstances can deteriorate rapidly and it can be extraordinarily difficult to meet basic needs.  It’s quite easy to panic, become angry, exceedingly anxious, impatient, depressed, and then, well, die – even when there are accessible pathways to survival.  But if you can remember yourself and choose a positive mindset, your chances of survival (or at least a dignified death) increase dramatically.  

We all know very well that attitude is important to outcomes, that it shapes the meaning of our experience, and that it’s possible to change it if we need to, but these truisms were illuminated and refreshed for me by the unnerving – if contrived – context of primitive skills training.  I made it my practice to continually check my attitude and adjust as needed.  The skills themselves are important, but they came more easily, and I could use them to greater effect, when I approached them with patience and gratitude.  The lesson was an old one made new: there is always choice, whether we recognize it or not, and if we don’t, or if we don’t exercise it, the choice will be made for us by impersonal and often brutal forces.

When I think about what is most important to me for the education of my own children, it’s intimate knowledge of this principle of choice.  An understanding of the possibilities it offers, and the ability to access them, is not only the basis of imagination (and therefore innovation), but also positive behavior (self-discipline), and – most importantly – it makes you secretly (“spiritually”) invincible, because you always get to choose how you respond, internally and externally, to circumstances. I’m not making a metaphysical claim about free will or anything like that – I barely care – I’m talking about plain psychological truth.  

Given that’s what I want my kids to know about, I want their educators to use pedagogy which emphasizes the truth of choice with enthusiasm, clarity, and consistency.  I want them to become familiar with the process of choice, and I want them to practice it, become strong and confident with it.  I see it as the Master Skill which will ensure a Good life for them however fickle fortune (or the economy) may be.

Of course, choice is the raison d’etre of our school.  We do choice like google does search.  Our students have to grapple with the reality of choice the entire time they’re here.  Our model fits the human condition like a glove, it fits our psychology like the Greek pantheon, it’s the local organic option – what the body really wants, what the genome craves.  Even our digimodern lives are really just extended survival trips, and there will be hard times and close calls for all, guaranteed.  As a parent, sometimes I suffer miserably reflecting on this hard, clean truth, but it always clarifies for me what I want my kids to know, and where I want them to go to school.

Welcome back all you brave, creative, thoughtful people, to our sweet, bold little school, where the kids are free to learn and struggle and practice being a human being and the printer is always out of toner and the coffee tastes like grilled cheese maybe because some kid used your mug to eat mac’n’cheese and you like it like that.  Welcome back to this real place.  Welcome back to choice.  

Alumni Interview with Colin Thrapp

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What have you been up to since graduation?

Well during my last year at school I worked at Outdated Cafe in Kingston one day per week.  I started there doing prep work – chopping vegetables, etc.  After graduation, I jumped right into working full-time as a dishwasher at Outdated, which I did for about six months, before moving on to being a prep cook for 8 months and then finally I was a head cook for the rest of my time there.  The experience showed me that I did really want to be a cook, although I wanted to work somewhere I could prepare food that was a little nicer, and I wanted to learn about meat (and Outdated is a vegetarian cafe).   I wanted broader knowledge of food, so one day I went across the street to the world-class butchery there, Fleishers, and asked the manager Bryan, “what’s the best way to learn how to butcher?” and he said, “Do you want a job?”  I knew immediately that I would quit my job at Outdated and start up at Fleishers.  I worked there for 9 months, and I learned more than I even knew existed, from working with the meat to learning about the animals themselves, what it means for animals to be healthy and happy, what the exact opposite means, and the difference in the quality of the meat.  Occasionally, we would get our meat in  “primals” which are essentially quarters of animals to butcher, 150 lb pieces of meat that we would take down, or more often Fleishers main butchery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, would send us “sub-primals,” which is essentially each muscle, where you might have the shoulder clod which is the ranch steak, or the London Broil, and we would break that down into steaks.

Before I even started working at Fleishers, I had bought a plane ticket to Norway, because I have Norwiegan blood and I wanted to go explore the country.  So really right after I started at Fleishers I took the trip, and while I was in Oslo I bought a plane ticket to Copenhagen on a whim, and went for one night and ate at a restaurant called Ante.  I met the cook and he asked me to come stag (apprentice) with him.  So I planned to go back after getting more experience at Fleishers.  When I did, this cook was at a new restaurant called Bror, and I started an apprenticeship there – the two head chefs had both been sue-chefs at Noma, which was the number one restaurant in the world for three consecutive years, so there was a lot to learn from them.  The biggest benefit for my career of the whole experience was networking – I have a job opportunity coming up at a restaurant in NYC which is a two Michelin star place called Momofuku ko, which is huge, and the opportunity opened up to me through connections I made in Copenhagen.  I’m glad I’m taking this route rather than say going to the Culinary Institute of America, because knowing the people I do seems way more valuable than a degree, which is really expensive anyway. Also, right now Noma now has a pop-up restaurant in Tulum, Mexico, which I’m going to visit at end of month.

What is your ambition?

In some ways it’s too early – I do have a fantasy of owning a restaurant but I know it’s really too early to clearly perceive what my ultimate goal should be – I’m still a beginner, so I’m still exploring.

What was your time at HVSS like?

I was four when the school was founded and spent a lot of time here that year, and then continued through until I graduated when I was 16, so I was here for around 11 or 12 years.  I spent maybe all my time as a younger student playing.  Later I had some more focused interests – I made movies for a while, and then got into photography and graphic design, I still do some 3-D art, not as much as I might like to do.  And close to the end of my time at school I started to get interested in cooking.

Did you ever study any academics at school?

No.

Are there any moments when you feel like your lack of academic training betrays you?

Uh…not really.  Although when I was in Copenhagen I was in a bar and doing a trivia competition, and I didn’t know some history facts, but it’s not as though that made me feel like my life was falling apart or anything, and actually my teammates (who had been through traditional school) didn’t either.

How did you learn how to read and write?

I don’t know, I think it just kind of happened.  When my brother was four he somehow started reading books, and I saw that, and figured I wanted to read books too.  I’m sure my parents helped me, I don’t have much memory of it.  For writing, it was more self-taught, mostly at school because that’s where I spent most of my time.  I don’t remember specifically how it happened – I think it was gradual, you have to write, it’s a necessity, so you figure it out.

Do you feel like you gained any skills at school that are serving you right now?

Definitely yes, although it’s always hard to know what’s happening because of having gone to HVSS or just because of who I am but if I had to guess what I got here, it’s being able to adapt to different situations quickly, socialize, not have a fear of talking to older people, and also not to have a fear or disdain of younger people trying to do amazing things.  Some people I’ve met in the restaurant industry do sort of look down on younger people in the industry and maybe distrust them, but I’m open to working with younger people and supporting them to get involved with things and succeed.

Note: Good news! Since we did this interview with Colin, he has been hired by Momofuku Ko and moved to NYC.