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.

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!

Sudbury and the Fear of Falling Behind

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Not long ago a parent told me that her son had “never been happier” since he enrolled earlier this spring.  And indeed, that very morning I had seen him running across the back hill with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back; it was like a scene from Free Willy.  His parent told me that, while his former school had stretched itself to make things work for him, he remained miserable there.  His needs, for space and time and companionship, were not being met.  I hear it a lot: it was like trying to fit the old round peg into the unforgiving square hole, but here, at last, there was no hole to conform to.  Out the window at this moment I can see three little bands of kids wandering the grounds, gesticulating excitedly, creating worlds beyond my kin.  One of them has green hair and no shirt.  One of them is carrying a bag by a strap around his forehead.  And one of them is being led by another…on a leash.  It’s so easy to forget that homo sapiens have developed a complex set of needs – and the skills to meet them – over 200,000 years of evolution, and they are embedded in us like algorithms that find expression one way or another.  We need to explore our identities and forge them in the context of intense social interaction in order to be successful, healthy, and happy.  Welcome to our “school.”

But something downright insidious has been popping up a lot around here lately.  It’s that old shade of capitalism’s angst – a 20th century zombie staggering relentlessly into the 21st – the fear of “falling behind.”  At our school, a sanctuary in a world which works relentlessly to colonize places, bodies, and minds, it manifests as the fear of “being stupid,” or, “dumb.”  Compulsory universal schooling has such a hold on us that even parents bold enough to send their kids to HVSS sometimes worry about academic achievement – and the kids do, too.  But the idea that everyone should be instructed in a uniform curriculum of academic minutiae, or even study academics at all, is a yarn spun by the past.  Even the belief that it’s necessary to study academics in order to attend college is no longer tethered to reality.  It’s the fakest news this side of Trump Tower, and there’s no more reason to worry about it than about Vladimir Putin influencing your choice of breakfast cereal.  Kids here do not “fall behind,” they attend to their real needs and learn how to thrive.  They are not pushed, pushed, pushed to do and be things opposed to their reality.  So I would suggest that the kids crammed into classrooms are the ones missing out, and anyway, as my grandmother used to say, “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”  

It’s become cliche to critique the current system of education by comparing it to a “factory model” and describe it as an artifact of the industrial age.  While it seems obvious that the traditional model – classrooms, desks, chairs, teachers, students, textbooks, bells, etc. – is outmoded, this narrative is really just a caricature that serves more as a rhetorical device to shape the future of education rather than as the true story of its complex history (and as a fan of history, I have noted many times how, the more I read about a particular era, the less confident I am that I can explain its basis).  To me, though, the interesting aspect of the “factory model” narrative is the broad implication of it, which is that school is designed to meet the needs of society – to maintain cultural stability and eternal economic growth – rather than the needs of real people, and what’s more, the societal needs it serves have already been left in the dustpan of history.  This appears to me to be mostly true.  Neither we nor the system needs us to study academics any longer, or to learn the lessons of traditional school.

One thing our model maximizes is flexibility, and in a world which is changing at an exponential rate, flexibility is an inherent good.  As society and technology change, certain of our needs change too.  But our model also maximizes opportunities to develop timeless skills – the ones that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.  Take for example this quote from Wes’s thesis:

“Sudbury has equipped me with a lot. I can talk and think in the realest way there is. I can make choices about what I want, choose things that I will work incredibly hard for, stick with those things, and succeed at them. I can lead and listen and I work well with others. I am not afraid of a challenge and I have the strength and problem-solving to overcome what’s in my way. I feel prepared to go on to college and both have a great time and succeed at what I hope to do there, which is figure out what’s next. I am looking forward to finding out what that will be, and navigating that path once I do. I think what Sudbury has given me, in the simplest terms, is to be prepared to always make the next choice and then the next one and every one after that.”

Wes has learned how to function interdependently – that is, to listen, speak articulately, reflect, evaluate options, and make decisions.  And when he needed to write a thesis, he figured out how to write a damn good one.  Thank goodness he wasn’t distracted by minutiae and the judgements of random adults while he was in high school.  There may be holes in his academic knowledge when he goes to Sarah Lawrence next fall (and there are absolutely no holes in our academic knowledge, having attended traditional school, isn’t that right dear reader), but he’s become such a solid person that any challenge posed by that deficit will be trivial to him.  Unfortunately, many students coming out of traditional model schools can’t say the same, and in fact there is a mental-health epidemic well underway on our college campuses.  

And then there’s the simple truth that none of us remembers most of the academic knowledge we learned in school.  My wife studied advanced mathematics in high school, but yesterday in the car she whipped out her smartphone to compute 14 x 3.  14 x 3?! And you know what? It didn’t matter – she got the information she needed.  Dare I say it, I doubt it will be necessary to even know how to read or write a few generations from now (sue me!)  There’s so much to learn, so much we have to know and be able to do to be a successful adult, and the traditional domain of schools is a tiny and mostly irrelevant sliver of it.  The world races madly along, increasing production to meet the manufactured needs of the economy, afraid to “fall behind;” thank goodness again that we have this sanctuary where we can work to meet our own authentic needs together.

What are They Doing?

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Well it’s the first warm day of March, and most people here are outside, climbing trees and rolling in the mud, building sandcastles and playing street hockey.  I just played a game a student created called, “Sharktooth.”  I lost.  I was also, for a time, the overburdened father of two very demanding young girls, busily making dinners to order (why do I let them get away with that?!)  while attempting to regulate their screen-time (the “screen” was a slab of bluestone) and mediate their conflicts (you’d have to be a saint to do this well, I assured myself). I had to quit that game after less than an hour.  People sometimes complain about “kids these days” preferring the virtual world to the outdoors, but I don’t think it’s true; when all the obstacles – obstacles that adults have created –  are removed,  they go outside.  A lot, and really in all weather, not only when it’s nice.  But the spirit today is more celebratory than usual.

So what else do “kids these days” do when the typical yoke of post-industrial childhood is lifted?  Well, it’s always different –  freedom tends to variety – but I’ll tell you some of what I’ve seen today. This morning in the office a student came bursting in explain to anyone who would listen that she had, unexpectedly, been moved to undertake the writing of a memoir; her friends had encouraged her, expressing fascination with her life.  She said she was surprised, because all of a sudden, filed with purpose, she felt she was a writer, and what’s more, she was getting some clarity about certain elements of her life.  There was another student in the office sharing the news of the impending birth of her brother, talking excitedly about her hopes.  Later, in the kitchen, there was a group of girls making and sharing lunch.  I was on tapping away on my screen (work-related, ok?) and they told me to put it away and “go outside,” so I did, deciding that was probably a good idea.  On my way out the front door I passed a teenager leading a crying six-year-old with a barely-scraped knee to the nurse’s office.  “He doesn’t need medical attention,” I said with the cold, calculating logic of a robot.  The older student rolled his eyes and whispered, “It’ll make him feel better, Matthew.”  Right.  I went outside and walked over to the stage.  There was a group of 8-11 year-old boys crowded around a tire swing, taking turns winding it up as far as they could and riding out the spin.  It was going crazy fast.  But some guys didn’t want it wound too far so they wouldn’t go too fast, and at first there were mutterings about “backing out,” that sort of thing, until the most adventurous guy out there, yelled, “Hey! Everyone responds to G-Forces differently! No one should be pressured to experience more “G’s” than they want!” and that fixed ‘em.  Meanwhile, there was one student sort of prowling around looking for people to mess with.  Everywhere he went he was leaving howling kids in his wake, “leave us alone!!!”  I was about to talk to the guy to see what was up when one of our oldest students came striding out of the building and right up to him and said, “what’s up?”  I’ll have lunch, I thought.  

So, our students are taking care of each other, putting their ideas into practice, getting into and out of quarrels, and having fun together, but what’s the point – what are they preparing for (assuming a school is at least on one level a place of preparation)?  They’re preparing for the new economy of the Creative Age.

As Thomas Friedman points out in this pithy piece in the New York Times,

Software has started writing poetry, sports stories and business news. IBM’s Watson is co-writing pop hits. Uber has begun deploying self-driving taxis on real city streets and, last month, Amazon delivered its first package by drone to a customer in rural England.

The robots are here, folks.  Already, not only manual labor is being mechanized, but mental labor as well. Even AI Dr’s which have all the medical knowledge ever created at their fingertips (“buttontips?”) may not be too far off. Friedman goes on:

In short: If machines can compete with people in thinking, what makes us humans unique? And what will enable us to continue to create social and economic value? The answer, said Seidman [author of the book How: Why How we do Anything Means Everything] is the one thing machines will never have:“a heart.”

Therefore, Seidman added, our highest self-conception needs to be redefined from “I think, therefore I am” to “I care, therefore I am; I hope, therefore I am; I imagine, therefore I am. I am ethical, therefore I am. I have a purpose, therefore I am. I pause and reflect, therefore I am.”

Our economy has moved from “jobs of the hands” to “jobs of the head,” and we’re on our way to “jobs of the heart.” Our students are free to study or engage whatever sets of knowledge and skills they want to, and the school does not privilege or value any one above the any other, but whatever choices they make, they’re learning their own hearts. They may roll in real mud and climb real trees – or maybe not – but everyone here ends up rolling in the mud of life, and climbing the trees of emotion. They learn to navigate the forest.  It can be messy, like birth and death and family and culture and- well, you get the point. But our students learn to make a life, and, in the rapidly advancing future, that means a living, too.

Math

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I’ve worked at Sudbury for five years now and this fifth year is my nerdy dream-come-true. As a Sudbury staff member, we follow the students’ lead and engage in the activities they choose to pursue. Sometimes our personal passions are shared by students and we can engage in those activities together, and other times we might be waiting around for a long, long while for something we love to catch on. Well, I love evaluating algebraic expressions, playing with geometric shapes, and puzzling out information about movement and time, and lucky for me this year I get to teach about these concepts every day of the week!

In this glorious, mixed-age environment, with students moving freely throughout the building, popping their heads into side rooms, engaging in constant conversation, and organizing around their interests, fads can spread rapidly here. Rainbow-colored hair, D&D, improv games, Ga Ga Ball, Geometry Dash, Heelys…the list goes on. I’d like to think of math as “the new Heelys”. Or maybe Heelys are the new math. Either way, the number of students engaged in some sort of formal mathematics study has doubled over the last few months, and I’m loving it.

This all began at the beginning of the school year when a 13-year-old came to me to ask for help preparing for college admission. She dreams of attending NYU for dance and performing arts, and learned from their website that competitive applicants have high SAT scores and must demonstrate proficiency with a range of math skills and concepts. And so the classes began. Our “Do Not Disturb – Math in Progress” sign got some attention, word travelled, and soon others were asking about what we were working on and if they could join in, too. A second class was added for a different group of friends that wanted to work collaboratively. A handful of other students met with me once or twice and then set out on their own or in pairs to pursue the subject independently. At this point in the year, I’ve had about twenty-five students ask for math support in one way or another, and I know that other staff (and students, too) have offered formal math resources to even more students.

The funny thing is though, although this is the first year that formal math study has taken off since I’ve been here, the students I’m working with already know a tremendous amount about the subject. Within a handful of weeks, the students have been at or above public school “grade level” in math, even though this is their first math class ever. So how do we explain that? I started asking around to find out how students learned what they know:

  • “School store – I go in and buy things every day.”
  • “I learned math in the school store when I was getting mentored to become a cashier.”
  • “An older student taught me. They wanted to try teaching math, so they sat me down and I learned how to multiply.”
  • “My mom wanted me to memorize the times tables so she put a big chart up in my room, but I thought, ‘Well that’s pointless. Why memorize it if it’s right there in front of me?’ But I learned what I need to know just by looking things up when I need it and that’s given me the skills I need for everyday stuff.”

But most Sudbury students can’t tell you how they learned math. In fact, many of them wouldn’t say they know any math at all until you press them:

  • “I dunno, I just learned it. It’s like walking. No one taught me exactly, I just tried at it and one day I was walking. One day I just knew how to work with numbers.”
  • “I don’t know any math… well yeah, I can do basic things like buy things in the school store.”
  • “I can’t do math really… oh, well yeah when I bake stuff in the kitchen.”
  • “I don’t really do any math…sure, that’s true. I do math with Magic [Magic the Gathering card game].”

The truth is, math is everywhere. We consider it a fundamental skill for successful adulthood because we use it all the time, in all sorts of ways; for students living their big, full, diverse lives here at school, they encounter these real-world mathematical applications at every turn. Baking in the kitchen, making change in the School Store, counting in a board game, making calculations for a video game or card game, taking measurements for a sewing project, constructing a structure in the playground… the list goes on. Even pursuits that use no math skills directly seem to be helping students in their math studies. One student active in the Theater Co-op had half of her multiplication facts memorized overnight, after significant practice memorizing lines for school plays. Another student who spends a tremendous amount of time making three-dimensional art in the art room was especially quick at looking at two-dimensional representations of 3-D objects and calculating volume and surface area.

Sometimes parents worry about how their kid is going to learn math if they’re never forced to take a course. It seems to me that students will have a hard time avoiding learning math if they are also, as they are at Sudbury, given ample space and support to pursue their passions within a dynamic community of learners. Parents aren’t the only one with this concern though. While students experience the unique challenges and joys of self-directed learning, they are aware that just down the road and all across the nation, others their age are sitting in rows being drilled in arithmetic and algebra and geometry and a range of other subjects. And Sudbury students want to know how they measure up. For many of the students seeking my assistance in math this year, the first thing they’ll say is that they want to make sure they can hack it, and that they aren’t “falling behind” their public school peers.

“I practiced some algebra a little bit at the beginning of the year for a few weeks. I realized it wasn’t actually that hard, I got bored, and I stopped doing it.”

For some students, the reassurance that they can learn the material when they try is enough and after a few sessions they move on to something else. For other students, they find they genuinely enjoy mathematical problem-solving and concepts and continue their study week after week, moving far beyond the public school expectations for students their age. So maybe we’ll continue on to calculus, or maybe a new fad will sweep through and it’ll be on to the next thing. Meanwhile, I’ll savor the moment and who knows, maybe their next passion will be long-distance bicycle touring and I’ll find my bliss again.

Apprentice Learning

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Apprentice Style Learning at HVSS

One of the most effective ways of learning a new skill is through an apprenticeship.  This style of learning is essential to a Sudbury model school and is practiced naturally all day, every day.  This blog entry gives a couple examples of this style of learning in action.

In love with The Law

This year our Law Clerk is Eli, a 14 year old lifelong Sudburian.  “I’m interested in the whole field of law,” Eli says, “but mostly in criminal defense.  I want to see systems work… I like it when there are well defined processes to follow.”

A couple weeks ago Eli shadowed a Public Defender in New Paltz.  “Andy explained that defense attorneys don’t defend people; they defend people’s rights, which is a good way to think about it,” Eli says.  He was invited to sit in the witness chair while plea bargains were worked out, and he was allowed to attend private meetings with clients.  “It was very interesting because it’s a thing that normally you don’t get to see if you’re anyone other than the defender.  I also got to watch them test out a new device they have for people on probation.  It’s a little hand-held device the probationer breathes into once a day, and it has facial recognition software so it will catch it if it’s not the right person doing the test.  They also have one that straps onto an ankle and the second you consume any alcohol it sends a signal to the courthouse…The courthouse was full.  Most of the cases were DUIs and drug use.”  As Law Clerk, Eli has been working on clarifying the procedures of JC and the trial process; it’s been stressful, but rewarding.  He’s looking forward to setting up a schedule to shadow Andy regularly.

]It Takes a Lot to Run a Store

We have a small school store at HVSS which sells snacks and other sundries.  Last week two of our youngest students – Mae, age 5, and Macey, also 5, decided to begin the difficult process of becoming certified to run the store.  They took to the task eagerly, mentored by Shelley and Vanessa.  They have been working on looking up prices, counting money, and carefully filling out the store ledger.  They have practice sheets, and have been asking students and staff to pretend to buy things so they can fill them out.  How long will it take to gain full certification? “Probably a long, long time,” says Mae, “we have to learn more about money and writing first…and we really need to work on drawing our ‘2s.’”  What does Macey think the pair need to focus on next? “Practicing money, and doing the numbers.”  And where does their motivation come from?  Macey says,”it’s fun,” and Mae adds,  “we don’t want to bother people to open the store for us – we want to do it ourselves,” 

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.

Uncommon Core

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One of the biggest ongoing stories in education today is the debate over the Common Core, a set of K-12 standards dictating what students should learn and which has been adopted by 45 states.  Objections to the rollout of the Common Core have been numerous and vocal, but one in particular was highlighted for me at our Gift Sale on Saturday: having a “common” curriculum built around intensive testing is an attack on creativity.  That is, by working to ensure that students’ minds are not on “the wrong path“, the Common Core actively seeks to thwart their creative potential.  It does seem inevitable that we would end up with a Common Core, given the history of our education system, which was powerfully influenced by the Prussian military machine that was so good at efficiently turning out effective and cooperative soldiers.   Many people have anecdotal evidence, and now there have been recent studies that show that teachers already overwhelmingly discriminate against creative students.  This is not a knock on teachers, either – the system compels them to act this way, and many of them find brilliant ways of subverting it.  Not surprising, then, that the system seeks to further standardize itself.  It is an irony, though (maybe someone can explain it to me?), because business leaders today increasingly claim they want to hire creative people with fresh ideas and problem-solving skills.  The anti-creativity effects go beyond making a living, though, because creativity is also essential to making a life – it’s skill that goes far beyond the arts, which it’s relegated to in common discourse.  Perhaps fear of uncertainty is what’s driving a lot of decisions about our education system.  We want to ensure “success,” and so new and creative ideas, which are inherently uncertain, and difficult to measure, are banished.  At HVSS, we offer a kind of Uncommon Core: an opportunity for creativity to flourish.  It’s going on all the time at school, but Saturday offered a clear look at it because the full trajectory of some projects became visible.

The seventh annual HVSS Gift Sale was a success in many ways.  The school was filled with beautiful hand-made crafts, there was a good turnout, scores of gifts were bought for People’s Place of Kingston, and the Sale was anchored by six student vendors, the youngest of whom is five years old.  All the student vendors went through a multi-step process to develop their products, design logos, price items, and display them in a professional manner.  They made hundreds of dollars and donated 10% to the school.  All of their own accord, of course.  Their products were unique, too – duct tape bow ties, heart-shaped rainbow crayons, “Brutal Bookmarks,” etc. I got a tiny stuffed ghost and a brochure describing how to properly feed, love, and put it to sleep.  I couldn’t decide which Brutal Bookmark to get, so I got two.  I want to be totally clear about this: I didn’t buy these things out of sentimentality or affection.  I wanted them, because they were high quality, charming, and creative.  Many shoppers at the Sale remarked on the student vendors’ confidence, poise, and professionalism.  One of the student vendors said, “just wait until next year when we’re more experienced!”

It’s probably fair to say that we all want certainty to one degree or another, in one arena of our lives or another (or in all of them).  When I describe Sudbury to people, they always want to know if it really works, do the kids go to college, where do they end up.  They want some degree of certainty.  Look, I get it, and those are certainly important questions.  But I also think that an offer of certainty can never be made, and that the quest for certainty – as embodied by our national education crisis, inhibits the lifeblood of our children.  I have no idea what our students will become, or how they will develop.  But I know that here they have the time and the freedom to create themselves, and I believe in them.  If you do want some proof, though, come to next year’s gift sale – our students will be even more experienced by then.