Sacred Acorns

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There are times that I stumble upon an activity at the Hudson Valley Sudbury School that make my jaw drop in awe of the brilliance of children: their creativity, their simplicity, and their ingenuity. Coming upon The Sacred Acorn Civilization was one of those moments. I stood at the edge of our natural play-scape wide-eyed as I surveyed several young barefoot boys busily collecting acorns, carefully balancing bark, and finding perfect natural tools to build a civilization. Set amongst several stumps on a gradual hill, were intricate acorn and stick sculptures – balconies, huts, stone paths, and walls, all perfectly set in miniature style. It was beautiful. And it was clear these boys had been there for hours, not only by the exacting work they had done, but also by the dirt between their toes, the seats of their pants, and the expressions of their faces – calm and focused. The language they were using sounded to be a different dialect, familiar yet foreign.

Finally I was able to catch my breath. “What are you doing?” I asked. The response comes matter-of-factly: “We are currently mucking acorns. That’s taking the inside out. And then we put them in the Muck Store. You can smash them with rocks or hard sticks to get the goop out. We call it “mucking.” We try to smash them between two rocks so it doesn’t destroy the stumps. The lighter the goop the better it is. We use the muck as a building material, to keep things together.” With that they went back to work, gathering, crushing and balancing, young primitive workers using natural materials to create a culture.

 am not sure why I was surprised to come across this bustling civilization as it seems to be something each generation of children create at here at school. The first HVSS civilization popped up in 2005 and took over the majority of the playing field. Several kids had their own “worlds” built from rocks, dirt, sticks, moss, flowers, and acorns. In the center of the field there was a circular general store where items were available for trade or purchase. Hours were dedicated to perfecting homes and working out the delicate balance of trading.

The following year the back hill was home to a new miniature world. Two boys around the age of 10 began this new rendition and the general ideas were the same. They were quite literally the kings of the hill, decreeing trading values and where homes could be built. But after discovering a large shiny rock at the edge of the woods a 6 year old was able to “buy” the entire hillside from them and the power was re-distributed. The kids involved in these first two renditions have either graduated or are on the verge of doing so and the details of these games are but distant memories.

In 2008 a new set of children went back to their roots and collected acorns, mashed them up and made hand cream out of them. They sold the cream to others in the school. They also made cities, houses, and bowls from the acorn shells and little cities out of acorns and sticks. One participant looked back, “we had little jobs, you could crack the nuts with a flat rock or chop them if you could find a sharp stick. We would also use a round rock and stick like a mortar and pestle, adding a little bit of water and mushed up flowers.”

After a significant rainfall in 2011, the back gravel path was turned into a study of irrigation. A young girl made intricate paths in the stone, routing and rerouting the water. She created these streams, damns, and collection pools while barefoot, grounded by the earth, just like our ancestors.

Here we are in 2015, an age of technology and consumerism, and a new round of children have their toes in the dirt, discovering for themselves how we as a society began, by making tools, building with what is naturally available, creating commerce out of acorns, and teaching their elders to reconnect with the beauty of the world around us.

Why is this universal? Why do we, as a society, without being trained, without being taught, always come back to the most basic constructs of life? It becomes clear how innate it is to collaborate in the art of foraging, designing, and building. Their ingenuity when it comes to the creation of tools is both resourceful and creative. And there they sit, in a sustained and focused activity, perfecting the balance of bark and rock to create a balcony. They may have iPods sticking out of the back pocket of their Gap jeans, but these kids are connected to their roots, not indirectly, by lecture or assignment, but directly, by sensory experience and imagination, because they have the time and space to connect to the natural world and let the simplicity of life shine through.

To What Will They Return?

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The best thing about working “in education” is, undoubtedly, the summer. Oh wait, I mean the kids – the best thing is the kids. Wellllll, no – sorry! – it’s the summer, as much as I do love the kids (at least when I’m not responsible for the choices they make, the lessons they learn, the things they say, and the thoughts they think!) For me, having this uninterrupted time to immerse myself in interests and friends old and new, deepen my connection to my home, neighborhood, and region, travel, keep hours regular or irregular, and be with family, is a treasure I guard most jealously; it is a great, fatty, nourishing privilege. For me, just as it is for many children, summer is the Land of Space and Time Enough, which really is the only land fit for human habitation. Each year, I have the space and time to connect with what’s really happening in my inner life; I can let the changes which constantly brew there wash over me. I can, like the flora, exult in a state of robust health and growth. Having significant time in which to direct my own activity makes me feel very, very rich indeed, and in possession of myself, or, to put it slightly differently, free.

Everyone deserves the degree of balance which working in education can afford, but unfortunately few careers offer it (even though there is ample evidence to suggest the world is rich enough to offer it to everyone). However, those in the partner-career to education – namely, children – may also easily integrate this gift into their lives. It is hard to ignore the deluge of data, and the subsequent media coverage, showing the extensive benefits for kids of having mostly “free” summers unfettered by adult-initiated and regulated activity: kids deepen friendships and develop emotional intelligence, work creatively with their imagination, broaden and deepen their knowledge base, learn new skills, stay physically fit, and bolster their executive functions. They are afforded the opportunity to grow at their own pace and focus intuitively on the tasks they ought to. Free from harassment, they are able to absorb and integrate the changes in their internal lives. And, oh yeah, they seem to enjoy it. A lot.

They are afforded the opportunity to grow at their own pace and focus intuitively on the tasks they ought to. Free from harassment, they are able to absorb and integrate the changes in their internal lives.

The heavy-scheduling and “helicopter-parenting” of Americans has provoked this counter-trend of “throw-back” summers. And surely it’s a good thing, but – to what do kids return when summer is over? An outdated model of education firmly based on instruction and authority which does not recognize their sovereignty and intelligence? For most of them, well, yes.

Of course, our students do not return to any such thing. Here, we can think of summer as a time to “go out in the field,” a time for independent study, if you will, and the school year is a time to “come back in,” a time to be immersed in equitable community and collective activity. We secure for our students the continued responsibility and freedom of a “free” summer. The rule remains basically the same: each kid directs their own activity, unmolested by any adult’s agenda. The difference is that here everyone has to be cognizant of directing their activity within a community of 80 or so other free people, and doing that well requires a lot of reflection and care. The resources are also different. In returning here from the summer, our students exchange mobility for those 80 people, along with all the riches of their minds and spirits. Many of our students exchange the impressionism of following whims for the realism of collaborative projects. And they exchange their status as a subject in a home for status as a legislator, judge, and executive in a democratic community (during the school day). One resource which remains constant for our students from summer to school year is constant access to the outdoors; that, also, is not withdrawn here. Personally, that fact alone might be enough to convince me to enroll my children at a school.

So, I’m really grateful that the “free” summer trend is growing, and I appreciate it as an integral part of a “Sudbury” childhood. It is my hope that families will continue to embrace it, and also ask themselves more and more earnestly, “but to what will they return when the summer is over? What would a school which builds on this look like?” Enjoy the rest of your summer. Store up that D. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone real soon.

Commencement Speech 2015

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[Ed. Kiran specifically requested to be “roasted” by Matthew.]

I am really honored and flattered to be asked to speak again this year.  It’s always a pleasure for me to fabricate heady rhetoric. So, thanks guys.  But actually, you know, after they asked me to speak, I went to them – maybe it was just Kiran, and I asked him who he would really like to speak, and he said Steve Buscemi, of course.  I found Mr. Buscemi on americanspeakers.com and there was a form to request him as a speaker – the lowest fee you could offer was $5,000, so I offered that and added a note that really I was really only offering $250.  We didn’t get a response.  So you’re stuck with me.  

So, when I was working on this yesterday at school one of our youngest students approached me and asked if he could help, and I accepted the offer, and I’m going to begin with his contribution:

“Here ye, here ye, I am a pirate.  You will be missed.  Maybe see you on a visiting week.”

Alright.  Here we are: you’re about to graduate.  Though, it’s a little weird to even call it “graduation” here, isn’t it?  Because – as we all know – at this school the curriculum is responsibility and the method is freedom, and so the content of what a student actually does here – what they “work on” – is different for each one; and ultimately, the curriculum is just their own person, their own genius.  

So – what does it mean to graduate here?  The transcripts we give you say that really only you can tell us.  When I was thinking about this I was reminded of a passage from the prologue to East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which I read over and over again in high school.  (I have done some slight editing to bring Mr. Steinbeck up to date politically.)  Goes like this:  A [person], after [they] have brushed off the dust and chips of [their] life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”

This event is not quite as dramatic as end-of-life reflection, but here too, we are really only left with hard, clean questions, and you are the only ones who can really answer them: Did you complete the tasks you needed to? Are you satisfied with what you have done?  To what degree, in what arenas, did you do well–or ill?

So of course, at the majority of schools, the most important element on  this day is receiving a credential which shows that the recipient is capable and willing to meet sets of standards and complete set upon set of nested tasks – I’m not saying that’s bad.  Or good.  But this ceremony, I am happy to say, really has nothing to do with any credential.  We are going to perform the traditional ritual after I’m done droning on and on – you will walk across the stage, and I will speak your name and hand you something.  But there was nothing in particular you had to do to earn this experience, and therefore it’s not really a credential, which is good, because really, how much sense can we make of awarding one here? At this school that takes life itself as its curriculum?  Where we know very well that ultimately there is no credential; everyone is qualified to lead a beautiful life.  We are all qualified from birth to live a life that is good for us.

You’re already doing it.  You know that.  And you’ll keep doing it.  You’ll do better and better at it.  If you take my advice.  But – I want you to know something: there is no point in life when “you have made it.”  There is no perfected person; there is no finished product. I mean, you probably already know that, too, right – you guys all have parents.  But it is a relief to realize: the field is wide open, and you are allowed to make mistakes, because there is hardly anything else you can make on this strange planet.  And also, realizing this, you can laugh at yourself as you journey through life deeper and deeper into your own idiocy.  Try to get at least one really good laugh at your expense every year. 

But somehow, despite our absurd limitations, we all have it in us to live the life we need to live.  What I want to say about it is that – if we’re actually going to do it – we each need do it for ourselves, but it’s something we do together.  We each need to figure out how we want to live, but we figure that out through contact, connection, friction, and, intimacy with other people.  Each of us has a unique way of being in the world, and being called into it, what I would like to call a “genius,” but our genius flourishes in relationship with other people.  

We all have our own tiny lives, and our own extremely limited perspective on ourselves and the world.  We need each other to see and experience more broadly and deeply; to get where we need to go.  So I encourage you, as you go forth from here to explore our strange world, to invest your time and energy and love in people.  Find people you admire – the ones you think really look like they know what they’re doing, and follow them around.  Get with them.  Find the ones who challenge you to think differently, the ones who are brave enough to be honest with you and call you out on your shit.  We all have shit, ok?  Pardon me for swearing.  These people are out there and – they could look or sound like anything – they could be from any demographic – so please be alert and don’t let yourself think, “I associate with this kind of person, but not this kind;” find the people.  Keep finding them.  Value them.  Take good, good care of them.  Do stuff with them.  And for heaven’s sake, ask them for help.  Don’t hesitate asking – we all need help or one sort or another, all the time.  We need to ask each other.  

And approach people, to whatever degree you are able at any given moment, without prejudice.   There’s an aphorism I like: “Not-knowing is most intimate.” “Not-knowing” here does not mean mindlessness or blankness or darkness – it doesn’t mean, like, forgetting people’s names or not knowing your own address (like Kiran) or anything like that. It means openness, curiosity, awareness, and attention.  It actually means knowing that life, and people, are dynamic.  As soon as you label people in any way you have made them static – it’s almost a form of violence – and when we do it we have become, in a profound sense, dishonest.  Adrienne Rich has said a lot of great things about this.  Like,  

The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities.

Don’t be a liar; you won’t get what you need.  Stay open to the possibilities. Respect people by allowing them to always be new.  I promise you very good things will happen (I’m only doing solid guarantees this year).  Or Nina will refund your tuition (our counsel wanted me to be sure to say that that isn’t a legally binding statement, just to be clear – it’s only rhetoric).

Let yourself be new, too.  Kiran, if you do this, you really might make something of yourself someday (there’s at least a chance).  Take this posture of unknowing into the rest of your life.  Always be ready for new truth, and be willing to change accordingly. That’s called humility, and it is the secret of alchemy.  Get intimate with it.  You won’t regret it.  I promise.

“Not-knowing is most intimate,” and, really, there’s nothing better than intimacy.  It is the source of all our nourishment.

There’s something else I don’t want you to know, either.  I’m going to tell a little story to illustrate – just one story and then I’ll…give up, ok?  This one is from China, and it’s an oldie.

Mrs. Sei’s horse

Mrs. Sei had a tiny farm in a small, poor village in China.  She owned a horse and was therefore one of the wealthiest members of the village.  Her neighbors used to come to her and tell her how lucky she was to have that horse because could plow much more field and have a larger crop and take better care of her family than most people in the village.  Mrs. Sei was a very wise woman so she would never say anything back.  She’d just nod her head or shrug her shoulders.  One day, the horse ran away.  All the neighbors came and told Mrs. Sei how unlucky she was, and Mrs. Sei shrugged her shoulders and nodded her head.  But – the next week, the horse returned, and a second horse was following.  Now Mrs. Sei had two horses! And-the second horse was bigger and stronger than the first!  You can guess how the neighbors reacted – so lucky! Mr.s Sei nodded.  The next week Mrs. Sei’s son was plowing the field with the second horse.  The second horse kicked Mrs. Sei’s son in the knee and broke it badly.  The neighbors rushed over and said, “how unlucky Mrs. Sei was to have that second horse – her son would never have been injured if she hadn’t have got it! Mrs. Sei shrugged her shoulders.  War erupted in the province and the lords began conscripting all the young men to fight.  Since Mrs. Sei’s son had a broken knee, he didn’t have to go into battle.  The neighbors came again and told Mrs. Sei how lucky she was.  This story has no end – it continues to this day.

So – I’m going to swear again: shit happens.  Forest Gump said that, for heaven’s sake.  There’s all kinds of spot-on spiffy sayings about this: life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.  That’s John Lennon.  “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. That’s Woody Allen.  It goes on and on.  What I don’t want you to “know” is what’s necessarily good or bad. Your life is an unfolding.  Don’t get too caught up on the particulars of circumstance.  The truth is we will never know how things will turn out.  It’s certainly appropriate and good to have emotional responses to life.  Just don’t cling to that.  Find a way to move through it.  Stay as present, and as open as you can, and in that intimacy you’ll find what you need to.

I’ve borrowed a lot from the far east for this talk, so I figured I might as well conclude with just a little more plagiarism. At the ceremony in which a novice Zen monk becomes a priest, the monk gives a little talk and then at the end says something like, “may there be enough rain in the heavens to wash my words from your ears.”

So.  I’m done.  Wash your ears out, guys, and keep them as clean and fresh as you can.

OK, congratulations, let’s do the dance.

Learning to Unplug from the Cultural Grid

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A Fragment of a Sudbury Parent’s Journey

The day we offered the option to homeschool to our children will be etched in my mind forever. Not because it felt so radical (which it did), not because it scared the pants off me to think of the responsibility (which it did), and not because they were excited to “get out of school” (though they were), but because of this surprise experience: an actual felt sense of wholeness and enormous love came like a substantive wind of God through the living room where we were talking with our children. It was so startling and palpable, that I nearly gasped at the “third” entity that had graced the group of us so suddenly. Later, and in private, I asked my husband if he had felt this sensation as I had. He nodded and agreed he felt something like a delivery of love and wholeness as well. And suddenly, we were a family again. No longer were we squashed and pushed around by always trying to meet the demands of the system.

Having rarely been set free from this in my life, I was completely amazed at the feeling of connection that came back to our family, reminding me of the earlier years when both my children were still un-indoctrinated with a “have-to-now,” life style.

When my eldest daughter, then nearly eleven, was given the option (which she took wholeheartedly) to homeschool, she stopped giving me her forehead (face tilted down) as her kiss goodnight. Instead she started turning her full face to me with outstretched arms and kissing me right back! Whoa. That was a big shift. It appeared to me that previously, like a prisoner, she had to keep her feelings of release at bay each evening because I, her prison guard, would be insisting she return to the same grim environment the following Monday. She could not allow herself real relaxation, because then she would have to go through the painful experience of re-detaching and dissociating each morning and each Sunday to return to the environment imprisoning her. I believe that this generation has consciousness that makes participation in social structures where people “lord over” them very difficult. Perhaps there is a “new human” evolving, for whom attachments must include a respect for them as whole, intelligent, and integrated beings.

Upon entering the doors at the Sudbury School for the open house, I noticed that there was no one available to engage my expectations for the usual handshakes and prepared introductions. Instead, warm but non-intrusive faces said hello, spaciously waiting for a hint of what we needed as visitors. It also felt like no one owned the building, space, or school, but instead expected that you should fill it as you like, not with “egoic mentalizations” that reflect the proscribed culture and conditioning we are accustomed to. At once I felt that I had to allow myself more space. A short while later, I had the recognition that all that hand shaking and greeting I am accustomed to is actually a kind of “sell.” “Sell” is the norm of the culture I was brought up in. In my family and community and schooling, you sell yourself by becoming articulate, learning how and who to hang with and when to drop names and by adorning proper handshaking. This way you will let people know you belong to the “right” club, or are cut from a certain cloth. Hence, it was an old and recognized structure in me that felt the respectful peace and non-pressured atmosphere at Sudbury as a discord. But as I challenged my usual internal frame, I also experienced it as hugely relaxing and pleasurable. Here there was no one imposing their will on another. After a while of exploring the physical space and finding their own way around, the group assembled to answer questions for the visitors. Again there was a deep peaceful space that was palpable as I calmed my “ready to step-up and fill the void self” back down again. Instead, I was able to notice what I can only describe as the roominess to be.

I was silent on the way home. My husband had that knowing look on his face. A look that said, “Ah. I get this and it is right!” (Sometimes I hate the certitude my husband’s radar for “right,” holds for him. It meant a new challenge to my poor over-socialized self.) Not long after, when both kids had been at Sudbury for a few weeks, he articulated what he felt so strongly was fundamentally “right” about Sudbury versus the experience of public schooling as we had experienced it: “They are getting to be themselves, and find themselves BEFORE they have to edit themselves.” What a beautifully simple way to say this. To become a self, before editing a self.

Editing the self is most evident in the nature of how the psyche develops. When we are asked to evaluate and reflect on every minute detail of everything we do, we are in fact fragmenting our children’s sense of self, and overdeveloping the super-ego interfering with states of flow, integrity, happiness and pleasure. It interferes with our wholeness and ease of being. I believe that compulsory schooling has become synonymous with ‘disempowerment,” “being kept down,” (perhaps “being kept,” period) and more poignantly, with disembodiment, dissociation and dispiritedness.

More than any other setting I can think of, schools in the 21st century are places that reify the concept of not accepting children as they are. Instead, the entire process is designed to get children to become what is pre-conceived/pre-imaged for them. To become the paper-doll who will wear the social fabric that was pre-cut for them, before they were born: this is the antithesis of the Buddhist proscription, “show me your face before your mother was born.” In other words, the less you are imposed upon, the greater the true-self development. The greater the true-self, the greater the embodiment, the wholeness and ultimately the moral integrity, that informs intelligence.

Today, I am elated by the turnaround I see in my children. They have become loving, non-fighting, brightened, engaged, natural, creative, relaxed beings. They are talking about their decisions, and how they make them. Their self-reflection is now a natural, rather than contrived, outcome of being respected and trusted. They, and we, are now living in a cohesive family flow that is in deep contrast to what we lived for 8 years as we dutifully repeated our own upbringing: we went to work, they went to school and in that process we became detached, to keep them marching with the “machine.” During our public school experience, all the pieces seemed to fit together, yet neither the beings nor the family felt whole: love and attunement degraded to depression. This depression was, I believe, a result of not activating our own autonomy and instead allowing ourselves to be identified with the role of the aggressor. We had become like the school and like the Gestapo; a top-down structure. In our role as gatekeepers for our children’s activities from dawn to dusk, I had to detach from my own natural flow and so did our children. It is well documented that relaxed attachments with one’s significant others (“teachers,” too), is critical to psychological wellness, self-regulation and to generating an authentic self, capable of passionate engagement from the inside out.

We must consider de-institutionalizing systems so our people and our planet can stop being a self-destructive force. Let each man thrive in unity, so all fragmentation and duality of mind and being, can recede to the annals of history. Sudbury does truly offer a ray of hope not only for an education for the “new human,” but also for a new humanity at large.

Ah! Unplugged and self-respected, at last!

Clued In: Behind the Scenes of the Theater Co-op’s Performance

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I have been working in theater for the past 12 years (directing for 9), and in that time I have worked with numerous groups of peers and students of all ages. During those experiences a few habits of each group emerged that made the rehearsal process challenging. Yet, with the students at HVSS the challenges never matched normal group tendencies.

Earlier this year we took a vote in the theater co-op for which play we wanted to perform; each had it’s own challenges in terms of sets to build, characters to perform and staging to memorize. Clue was chosen by a landslide, I knew it was going to be one of the most complex shows I had ever worked on. The number of scene changes and props alone were impossible to keep track of, not to mention the fact that most of the actors are on stage 90 percent of the time and Mr. Wadesworth alone has nearly 400 lines.

But we forged ahead, step by step, and I found that even with this challenging piece, many of the normal challenges for this age range of students were not appearing. This group of students was responsible for themselves, got to rehearsal on time, and wanted to be there, putting in the work. They were happy to be playing characters and saying their lines. Because doing this show is part of their school work, during school hours, we could rehearse when they were fresh and full of energy.

We moved through the rehearsals more swiftly than I anticipated, which left us with time to play and explore character work (another place I have previously noticed challenges with most students – willingness to try something new). With a few rare exceptions, the cast was always ready to try whatever new game and voice or movement I asked of them, making for a more dynamic and energetic show. They were so open to play and explore that all I had to do was suggest a path and they would run down it full speed. I was able to conduct rehearsals the same way I do with college students. I often forgot I was working with kids who would be in middle school. I treated them and asked of them the same focus I would from a professional environment.

In fact, this is a show I would have been hesitant about doing with adults because of the complicated transitions, important comedic timing and stamina to be on stage for so long. Yet this group of what would be middle-schoolers (plus a 6 year old) pulled it off beautifully. I could not be more impressed.

An Educated Person

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Education is a misunderstood term. It is often confused with related concepts such as knowledge and school. Education sometimes happens at school (and sometimes doesn’t), and knowledge can be a sign of an education, but neither are education itself. Simply put, education is the willingness and ability to learn for the sake of learning. The truly educated person learns constantly without supervision or external reward. To truly define what education is, we must first look at what it is not.

People generally think of school when education is brought up. School can be more than learning skills, memorizing facts, and putting them down on paper hoping to be rewarded with a good grade. The intended purpose of school is to teach students to think critically, which is something it often accomplishes. However, school is not education itself; it is a medium for students to reach their goal of being educated. School traditionally attempts to do this by setting up a course of external rewards for students to attain, each supposedly bringing the student closer to being truly educated. College is seen as the final goal for high school students.

College represents the ultimate form of education, and graduating from college is when people are certified as educated. It is not that simple. After college, an infinite amount of learning can be accomplished. School is like a trail to follow in a deep forest, giving students a taste of knowledge. However, to truly learn, people have to do it themselves. Educated people should develop a habit of constant learning without structure and reward.

An educated person in some people’s eyes is someone who knows a lot, someone who has retained a large amount of information, someone who can state facts without having to look them up. Broad knowledge can be valuable, but this is not an educated person. This is a knowledgeable person. To be educated is not about how much someone knows. It is about how someone can use what that person knows to enhance their learning experience. Knowing all the facts in the world won’t make a person educated unless that person can use those ideas for the sake of gaining more knowledge. On the other hand if someone is full of ideas but lacks the knowledge to put them to use, their creativity is void. It takes both creativity and knowledge to make a truly educated person.

Being an educated person is to view the world as your playground. It is to think with an open mind and to never be limited to what one has been taught as truth. It is to blur the line between work and play and to learn not just because one is told to. An educated person is someone who learns for fun and recognizes that there is no end to learning, no final certification. This skill could have been gained through any number of means, but when someone has it, it is apparent. Any person can become educated; it simply takes the will to learn for the sake of learning and living.

Back to Joy

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On Wednesday the third, the first day of the school year, the kids came streaming off the buses and nearly broke down the doors, even though they were unlocked.  I myself had just set my personal record for my bicycle commute (still though, the rest of the staff were already there when I arrived).  Kids were hoping out of cars all morning and racing towards the building like it was made out of gingerbread, or as if it were some kind of supercharged happy-magnet.  Everyone was eager to trade the decadence of summer for the nourishing thrill of getting the band back together, reuniting the clans, and returning to work on the ten thousand projects of making a life.  And of course everyone was off to work immediately – no need to ever wait around here.  

This school exists to secure students’ right to self-determination in their education (not to “grant” or “allow” those rights).  In doing so, the school renounces subjugation and takes a clear stand for trusting people – including children – to live their own lives with equal rights and access.  What happens next is remarkable, and elegantly logical.  “What I see happening here,” said one parent walking through the building last week, “is real human interaction.”  I see it too: all day long all over campus there are groups of students and staff sorting things out, solving problems, building and dissecting worlds, and laughing and laughing and laughing a lot, which brings me directly to what is probably the most important thing to know about our school: it is fundamentally a joyful place.  Not that anyone walks around the place with rictus grins plastered firmly in place.  We argue and bicker, relationships form and dissolve, people fall down; everyday someone’s crying.  But the dominant mode of being here – the baseline that most people return to – is joy, or one of its many corollaries. 

Near the end of last year, a woman called the school just to say she thinks that “what [we’re] doing is harmful to children.”  She said that children, left to their own devices, don’t challenge themselves and wind up as lazy, useless parasites.  I told her I disagreed and invited her to send me an email if she wanted to talk about it any further (she didn’t).  I mention this because it’s a common criticism, and and I’d like to address it in this “back to school” post, because the truth about it has been all too evident during the first days of school, as new Sudbury students and old have dropped right in to the struggle to figure out the best way to live.  Challenge is ultimately unavoidable.  Growing up is necessarily a challenge, and as the dictum of the organic universe “grow or ossify” tells us, growing up never stops (hopefully); there is never any finished product or perfect person.  By securing the right of freedom for our students, we strip away all the extra (and often irrelevant) challenges students at traditional schools face, which allows our students to invest their energy in engaging the vast project of growing up human, and of negotiating freedom within the context of a community.  It also allows them to ignore challenges that have no meaning for them and pursue the ones they are drawn to for whatever reason.   So, caller, I can’t apologize for our students’ freedom, but I can assure you that it does not free them from facing challenge.  What it does is prepare the ground for real human interaction, and it is that joyful ground from which ascents are launched and challenges are undertaken.

Last week I was in the art room with a few younger students and one of them offered this: “I like art.  I like it because there aren’t any rules, it’s all up to you, it’s not like minecraft (even though I like that too) where you have to follow different kinds of rules that keep you from making what you really want to make.  In art, there are endless possibilities…” Indeed.  Welcome back to school, everyone.  Welcome back to endless possibilities and endless challenges; welcome back to this joyful place.

It’s Up to You

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I’m really honored to be invited by our five graduates to speak here at their ceremony.

I’ll begin with a quote from a science writer, Elizabeth Kolbert:

“Zalasiewicz is convinced that even a moderately competent stratigrapher will, at the distance of a hundred million years or so, be able to tell that something extraordinary happened at the moment in time that counts for us as today. This is the case even though a hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man—the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories—will be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper.” (The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert)

Well. That puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

The point, though, is not merely that everything people ever build will be crushed into dust, but, despite that, it will be obvious from looking at that dust that something extraordinary happened during the time it wasn’t dust.  The “something extraordinary” that the stratigrapher Zalasiewicz is referring to as happening today is not your graduation.  Sorry, I mean, congratulations and everything, but it’s something else – anyone want to guess?

According to the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the professional organization in charge of defining earth’s time scale, we are officially in the Holocene epoch, which began 11,700 years ago following the last major ice age.

But many scientists of various disciplines say that label is outdated.  They argue for “Anthropocene” — from anthropo, for “man,” — because human civilization is causing mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluting the oceans and altering the atmosphere, among other indelible impacts.  In other words, the impact of civilization on the planet has been so profound that it warrants the declaration of a new geological epoch.

Zalasiewicz is referring specifically to a great extinction – affecting flora and fauna from all corners of the earth including in the lakes, rivers, and oceans.  Headed for extinction in the near future are 40% of all amphibians, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, a sixth of all birds, untold thousands of species of plant.”  There is a complex network of causality at work, and we are at its center.  What we do affects the world; we’re doing this.  Some examples: Frogs, one of the most ubiquitous creatures of the rainforests, are disappearing, victimized by a fungus spread by human beings.  Coral reefs, aside from being transcendently beautiful and the largest living structures on the planet, support thousands of species of flora and fauna; within 50 years every single reef on the planet will be dead or dying due to ocean acidification caused by the profligate burning of fossil fuels.  

Right here where we sit – the Hudson Valley – is the epicenter of a thoroughgoing dying off of bats.  Bats, whose position in the food chain is so crucial to so many ecosystems.  They’re also dying from a fungus brought to us by human travelers.  

There have been five other major extinction events in the last 430 million years.  The most famous of course is the last one, when an asteroid hit near the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and a lot else besides.  This time, though, as one scientist puts it, we are the asteroid.  And we’re imperiling ourselves, too.  But why am I talking about this right now?  

A couple weeks ago Chet was designing a new bumper sticker in the office.  A few staff and students were throwing around ideas for a catchy slogan that would entice people to look up the school on their smartphone while they swerved around the streets of Kingston.  Finally Garret suggested the phrase, “Kids Are People Too.”  Everyone was like, yeahhh, that’s it, that’s the one.  That’s awesome.  That’s what we’re about: Kids are people too.  That insight is the starting point of this school. Our structure, our ways of doing things, our reams of protocols and policies and procedures all attempt to follow out the implications of that insight;  kids (and teenagers) are full-blooded human beings, complete as they are, even if less experienced than adults.  And so they ought to be responsible for making decisions about how to spend their time, and they ought to be welcome to take part in legislating, interpreting, and enforcing the rules of their community.  If we want responsible adults,  we ought to refrain from denying kids responsibility.

Schools always have these buzzwords – you know, these lists of words – at the middle school I taught at in MS the second year the principal came up with a list I think it was “four Rs” – I think it was four of them, and responsibility was one of them, but what was meant by it was, “do what you’re told,” and we’ll call you responsible.   And that way of thinking about responsibility is common, and it’s given the word “responsibility” a kind of dour, soggy, burdensome weight.   I mean it’s just no fun, I have to be responsible;  I have to do what I’m told.  And it’s one of our buzzwords, too, but I think we have a better definition here – our definition is something more like, “it’s up to you.”

It’s up to you.

And that is very much not dour or soggy – it’s glorious.  Claiming responsibility for your own life, for your own community, for your world is glorious.  “I am responsible!” That’s heart; that’s love. Something extraordinary is happening today, and we need responsible people.

So I want to give you some advice too – I get to do that, right, as a speaker here today?  I get to tell you what I think you should do?  The first thing I want to tell you is be confident; it helps.  If you’re not confident, pretend.  It works.  Cultivate it.  Remind yourself – Look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I am a goddam hot-blooded human being and I am confident.”  Give it a try.  And, you know, confidence doesn’t mean arrogance, or yelling or in your face, or extroverted; you can be quiet and confident.  You also don’t have to be sure you’re going to succeed at whatever you’re doing to be confident; you just have to know that whatever happens, you’re going to keep going.

You will need moments of confidence to follow my second piece of advice, because it’s risky and dangerous: don’t do what other people tell you to do. Except for me. I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t a lot of good advice out there.  But my advice is to think for yourself. And when you’re thinking clearly and carefully, oftentimes you will do what you’ve been told to do, because you’ll understand it and choose it yourself.  Mindlessly doing something other than what you’re told is equally destructive as mindlessly doing what you’re told.   So what I mean is don’t just passively adopt the dominant narratives of society; don’t passively do what you’re told.  Thinking is not easy.  It’s hard, slow work, and there are powerful forces all around us trying to keep us from really doing it.  It’s easy to allow your mind to run on autopilot, isn’t it?  It’s easy to just be absorbed into your internal monologue, isn’t it?  It’s easy to be passive.  But you can choose to think deliberately, and you can choose what to think about; I encourage you to think about the world, think carefully about why it is the way it is.  And about why your life is like it is.  Read about it.   Ask lots of questions about it.  Investigate it.  Seek out the guidance and good thinking of others, especially that which contradicts and undermines your own opinions, beliefs, and ideas.  And talk about it, and don’t be afraid to speak with conviction.  If you’re wrong, you can correct yourself later (and you should).  

A man said, “Look. This is your world! You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited it; you inherited these eyes; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look – look further.” (Chogyam Trugpa)

Is anyone familiar with Indra’s Net?  It’s an image from Indian culture of the world as a net, crafted by the god Indra.  At each knot in the net there is a multifaceted jewel, and each jewel represents one thing, and each thing throughout space and time, including people, and including ideas, including each datum that is true, is included.  When you inspect any of the jewels very, very carefully, what you find is the reflection of every other jewel in the web.  Each one implies every other; each one is composed of nothing else besides the others.  And that also means that if any jewel somehow might be changed, every other jewel changes too, even if imperceptibly.  

What you do is important; it changes the world.

Something extraordinary is happening today.  You are graduating; you have been “prepared gradually; arranged, tempered, modified to a certain degree” (definition of “graduate” from Websters 1913).  You’ve done this yourself, and with the help of many others.   And it’s important.  What you do -the decisions you make – matter, even if you’d rather that they didn’t.  That’s another lesson that spending time at a school like this – where we’re all in it together – makes easier to learn.

So.  A great extinction is underway; the world warms inexorably; the oceans acidify; Welcome to the Anthropocene.  Soon Homo Sapiens will be the last living species of great ape, and we will face unprecedented challenges.  But listen to the message that the French general Ferdinand Foch sent to his superior during the First Battle of the Marne in World War I, he wrote, “My centre is giving way, my right side is in retreat. Situation: excellent. J’attaque!” I am glad the five of you are graduating.  The world needs a great community of people who are liable to respond to the situations before them, to address what needs attention, and to find joy in the hard work of creation rather than in personal worlds of pleasure and comfort, and I believe the five of you are on that path. It is a good day to graduate; it is an exciting time to be alive.  You have lived differently here at this school; take it with you.  We need to find different ways of living.  We must.  So let’s do it; let’s keep doing it; let’s do it together.  

Congratulations, and feel free to call me if you ever need to make bail.

Why So Many Song About Rainbow

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[Ed. The title is a literal translation from American Sign Language]

Perhaps it’s because rainbows operate in our psychology as a symbol of plenitude, especially for children, most of whom spend a great deal of their time under strict surveillance in secure pens called “schools,” which is ominously defined in Meriam-Webster’s online dictionary as “an institution for the teaching of children.”  Rainbow-land is where we will finally be free to do as we please and be respected as complete human beings.  But more on rainbows later.

At HVSS students are already free to do as they please – most of the time.   They do have serious social work to do, too.  Everyone has to take their turn serving on the Judicial Committee, for example, which occasionally becomes difficult, because investigations are quite thoroughgoing, and it can even become tedious, because they can take considerable time and sometimes backtracking and reworking.  But it is real work with real flesh-and-blood importance, because the freedoms and rights of School Meeting Members are at stake, so it’s always important to proceed with patience and attention.  Then there is School Meeting, where discussions sometimes extend beyond anyone’s reasonable predictions, but coming to the best decision we can – and honoring everyone’s right to fully participate – is always worth the extra time.  Of course, HVSS is not at all dominated by intricate judicial investigation and laborious democratic process.  Most of the time people are doing other things, and especially for younger students, a lot of the time that’s playing.  But the play and the hard work of democratic process are not separate activities here; they support and inform each other.

A few weeks ago School Meeting was particularly fraught, filled with passionate debate and procedural frustration.  I am the secretary, so it is my honor to type and post the minutes immediately following each meeting, and I usually have a couple other administrative tasks to take care of quickly before the end of the day.  After the meeting in question, though, I felt rather burnt out, and instead of retiring directly to the office I stepped outside into the sunlight, where something was happening.  Within the space of several seconds I found myself ensconced in a snow turret in the midst of a furious battle, anxiously shooting foam arrows at an approaching  Viking force, comprised mostly of students who had been in School Meeting seconds before. They were huddled together and advancing slowly, shields held together wall-like in the Tortoise Formation made famous by Roman Legions.  Two or three allies stood to my right, brandishing swords and whispering things like, “they’re going to overrun us,” nervously.  And overrun us they did, and as I desperately tried to notch one last arrow I was felled by a sword blow to the thigh and then, writhing on the snow, I gritted my teeth and waited for the final blow.  And then, moments later, I was heading back inside to complete my tasks, only now – my cheeks rosy and my heart light – I whistled while I worked.

Everyone knows that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but it’s worth thinking about how deep that dullness really goes; it’s far beyond a dour countenance.  Jack also won’t work nearly as well if he does not play.  And generally a group won’t work as well as a team if they don’t also play together.  And how are solid relationships formed? How do acquaintances often become friends, at any age? By laughing and playing together.

Here’s an example of how expertly play and serious consideration are woven together by students at HVSS:  for maybe two weeks now, the American Sign Language class has left a song chorus written on the blackboard in the JC Room.  It is “translated” so that it can be signed in ASL, and it reads,

Why so many song about rainbow
And other side what there
We see rainbow
But only illusion

For a few of us, this has become a little joke.  When we run into each other around school we might ask – quite seriously –  “why so many song about rainbow?”  or we might sneak up behind one another and whisper, “only illusion.” The verse is still there, untouched, above the JC table.  

One day last week, JC was dispatching with business with its ordinary care and efficiency, despite being interrupted by tours and playing host to multiple visiting observers.  At some point in our second hour one member had to use the office telephone.  There was still a lot of work to do, and the rest of us decided to discontinue our work and take an in-room break until we could function as a complete body again.  After 30 seconds of relative silence, one of the members, looking up at the blackboard, sang in an exaggerated falsetto, “Whyyy…sooo…many song…about raaiiinbowww…?”  We all giggled, and then he continued, “And-other-side-what-there?”  Another member or two joined in to sing the last two lines, and then – I’m not sure quite how – an a capella jam session broke loose.  There was beat-boxing, operatic bel canto, harmonizing, polyphony, and a sort of monastic chanting (“rainbow-rainbow-rainbow”), all at once, and – somehow – it sounded great.  There was a lot of laughter too, of course.  We continued, organizing ourselves variously, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who began to wish that our missing member never returned.  When she did, though, we reentered our work renewed.

Serving on JC can be exhausting, as it was on that day, but it’s vitally important, especially because it seems that it’s usually the process of JC itself – rather than, say, serving a sentence – that motivates transgressors to reflect.  Facing a panel of peers concerned with what’s happening at school and charged with investigating whether you’ve done something that might violate someone’s freedom, and being given careful due process by that panel, is very powerful.  Despite the difficulties, we’re able to do it well because at HVSS, while working on justice keeps us reflective and morally aware, play keeps us fresh, lively, and in tune with one another.

 

The Growth of a Sudbury School

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While we have not yet started to make a big deal of it (yet – just wait), we are fast approaching the 10th anniversary of the first day of school in our building on Zena Road.   Between now and June 14th, I will be writing some blogs that will provide some history of the school.  In this first installment, I will discuss the school’s enrollment.  This particular topic is in the forefront in my mind because we are starting to face one those good news/bad news situations.  The good news is that we have the highest enrollment since the very beginning of the school.  The bad news is that is looks like we will have to start thinking seriously about how we handle a waiting list.

For those who don’t know some of the details of the early years, I will provide a bit of history before I get to the topic of enrollment.  My wife Lisa and I started to talk about starting a Sudbury school in late summer of 2001.  Once we decided that we were going to make it happen, we started talking to our friends about the idea.  Most of them, while wishing us well, did not want to get involved in the project.  Three other couples, however, did like the idea of the school and joined us in the effort to build it.  We had weekly meetings at our house and eventually went public with the idea.  There was a nice article written in the Woodstock Times along with a full page advertisement.  This generated enough interest that our first information meeting at the Woodstock Town Hall was standing room only.  Clearly there was dissatisfaction with the existing educational options!  Once everyone understood what we were attempting to build, most of the people in attendance decided that this was not the type of education for them.  Some, however, loved the idea and joined our founding group.

During the initial founding period, Lisa noticed that there was a large parcel of land for sale on Zena Road.  The location was perfect for a school – easily accessible and in a beautiful setting.  At the time, property values in Woodstock were still depressed so we were able to purchase the land for a very reasonable amount.  We now had the location for the school.  There was only one problem – we would need a significant amount of time to build the school building and we felt that it was important to keep the momentum going and start the school as soon as possible.  So we started to look for place that we could rent for a couple years while the building was designed, approved by the town planning board and then built.

We settled on a commercial property on Basin Road (just the other side of Route 28 from the current school location).  We contracted with the owner and in the late summer of 2002, we had a place to open the school.

As mentioned earlier, there appeared to be a huge pent up demand for some type of alternate education in the Woodstock area.  We were inundated with phone calls and emails asking about the school.  Most of these were very positive, but it was clear that there was limited understanding about how the school would actually operate.  Try as we might to paint the picture, it is really impossible to communicate what a Sudbury school looks like to someone who has never experienced a democratically operated school with no set curriculum and where the students are free to associate with whom they choose.  This pent up demand resulted in us opening the first year at Basin Road with a total enrollment of 62 students.  Within a week, we had 67 students.  Unfortunately, shortly after we opened, we were informed by the local building inspector that the building that we were renting did not meet the criteria necessary for a school.  We made the very painful decision to close the school and focus our energy on getting the Zena Road building built.

The process of building the Zena Road building took approximately 18 months.  As anyone who has ever attempted to build a 5,000 sq. ft. building that meets the construction requirements for a school on a rocky, forested lot in a town with a reputation for making it difficult to do new construction knows, this was amazingly quick.  As we got near the end of the construction the remaining founding group had a decision to make.  It looked like we would get the Certificate of Occupancy in mid-June.  Should we start the school for the last week or two of the school year or wait until the fall?  We decided that we would open the school – even if it was only for two weeks – so that the parents and students who had stuck with us through the process would have something.  So, on June 14th, 2004 I picked up the Certificate of Occupancy from the town building department and we opened the doors.

When we opened on June 14th, 2004 we started with around 25 students.  What happened to the other 42 who used to be enrolled?  Most of them had found other places to go to school in the time that we closed and were satisfied enough with those places that they did not want to come back to HVSS.  More significantly, however, we had a much better idea of how to describe the school and the community had a much better idea of what we meant when we said, “no curriculum”.  Whereas before, people didn’t really believe that we really meant no curriculum, they now knew that we were serious about it.

In the beginning of the school’s history at Zena Road, it became clear to the staff that there were two types of students who enrolled at the school.  There was the group of students and parents who really understood (or understood enough) about the school to make an informed decision that this was the type of school that they wanted.  There was also the group of students who were simply escaping their previous school or educational environment.  For this group of students, it was not about “coming to” HVSS, it was about “not going to” someplace else.  These “escapee” students would almost never continue to stay enrolled.  They were “one and done” students.  This resulted in a huge year-to-year turnover.  A typical school year would start with 35 students and end with 45 to 50 students.  The “one and done” students would not re-enroll and the next year we would be back to around 35 students.

In an attempt to limit the number of “one and done” students, the staff worked to develop ways to communicate how the school operated.  This effort started to pay off roughly 3 to 4 years ago.  At this point the year-to-year retention rate[1], started to change from roughly 75% to greater than 90%.  This increase in retention rate then started to have an impact on the school’s enrollment.  A couple days ago, Shelley told me that we had reached an enrollment of 62 students.  As of this writing, she also has 6 enrollment interviews scheduled.  It appears as if, 10 years after we re-started the school at 84 Zena Road, we are close to matching the enrollment that we had in the heady first days on Basin Road.

There is a huge difference, however, between now and then.  Now, we have students and parents who “get” the school and who understand that it is about freedom with responsibility instead of freedom from responsibility.  Now, we have two staff members with 10 years of experience, one with 6 years of experience, one with almost 3 years, and two new staff members who have fit seamlessly into the school and who are already making huge contributions to the school.  Then, we had 6 staff members who were trying to figure out how to create a culture they had never experienced.  Now, we have a group of parents who are dedicated and devoted to helping the school through fundraising and through building a community among the parents.

Ten years ago, when we opened the doors, I don’t think any of us could have predicted what would happen.  If asked, then, whether we thought we would still be in existence ten year later, I don’t know what the answer would have been.  Looking 10 years into the future, I see some enormous challenges ahead.  I take personal comfort, however, that at the start of this next 10 year period we have a great group of students, staff and parents.  I know that working together we will be able to successfully face any challenges that we encounter along the way.

 

[1] We define year-to-year retention rate as the number of students who re-enroll in September divided by the number of students able to re-enroll.  Students who move out of the area or who graduate are not counted.