It’s Important to Know How to Fail

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At Hudson Valley Sudbury School, our “learning standards” are categorically different from the standards used at other schools; our goal is that students learn whatever is most salient for them to live a fulfilling life. Sometimes, what is most salient is a “life skill” like tying their shoes or remembering to eat lunch. Often, it is an interpersonal skill, like how to set a boundary in a relationship. Occasionally, it is an “academic skill” like performing the arithmetic needed to make change, or the more advanced math needed to do well on the SAT. Ultimately, for many students, it isn’t really a skill at all – it’s wisdom about how to be human, as exemplified in this reflection by one of our nine-year-olds who has grown up at the school. This is the kind of learning people tend to do when they are free, safe, and ensconced in a supportive community – the kind of learning we are fortunate enough to witness routinely at our school. 

“My flute teacher said that one thing he struggled with when learning the flute was trusting himself. But he learned that the more you persevere the more you trust yourself. 

I never even thought of that – trusting yourself. I only thought of it as something that you do to someone else, or someone else does to you. You can actually skip that whole factor – if you just don’t think about trusting yourself and you just do it. But when you fail I guess some people lose a lot of trust. 

Persevere – gain trust – persevere- gain trust – fail – lose trust – try again – persevere- gain trust. It’s an infinite loop. 

I am so used to failing in certain things, like in some games, that I know exactly what I need to do, I try again. And I don’t care if I fail, it’s normal, and I can always try again. Failure to me…instead of a little bit of sadness and anger…for me, it’s motivational. To help me move forward. Instead of holding me back.

Did you know that if you never lose you will never truly win? You have to take multiple attempts at at least one thing in order truly win – at anything. What happens is that..in all of it…there’s no…no way to win without losing. If you win every single time then it doesn’t feel good to win. It feels like a normal thing. And then when you don’t win you get extremely mad. 

It’s important to fail, and it’s important to know how to fail. And it’s important to not get mad at someone else when YOU fail. Because it’s not your fault, or their fault, or a game’s fault, it’s just life. If you blame someone else for your failure then nothing is gained, only stuff is lost, and you lose trust in yourself. If you look at failure as helping you, and healing you, instead of destroying you, then that is the key to actually winning. 

And this doesn’t just apply to games. It applies to everything, so many things: painting, building, reading, writing, sewing, acrobatics, friendship, crocheting, so, so, so many things.”

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.

Know Thyself – Know Thy Fun

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Early excuses. Toys and schools.

Looking through children’s toy catalogs I’m always struck by the language. Scattered throughout the pictures of all sorts of toys, plastic or wood, bright colors or neutral colors, puzzles, trucks, dolls or whatever, there are special snippets of language designed to tell me something important. But what are they telling me? Phrases like “kickstart your child’s play,” “support your child’s development,” and “piano keys that play music and encourage creativity.” They make me suspicious. The first sounds violent, the next obvious, and the last sounds absurd. Since when did piano keys not play music or discourage creativity? Phrases like “helps your baby develop from a crawler to a walker through adaptive technology” are possibly reassuring to those concerned their children might instead develop from a crawler to a swimmer, or perhaps an orthodontist. Phrases like “differentiate among colors and sizes” make me imagine my toddler sorting white and brown eggs into large, extra large and jumbo sizes in an egg factory. 

Looking through pamphlets for preschools I see more language that reminds me of the toy catalogs. I’m assured by more than one institution that sensory tables and their messy play “provide endless ways to develop and learn”. They stress that “play based learning” is a powerful method to absorb and process information and they hasten to add they also have formal instruction. As the children in question get older the language shifts more toward instruction. Similarly, the toy catalogs for older children focus more on the instruction and less on the play – and less on the fun.

But – toys are fun. People like to have fun. That’s sort of what fun is. And when someone tries to sell me toys with a long list of explanations and justifications for why these toys have value above and beyond being fun, well, I recognize these as excuses. The implication is that the fun is not the value and has to be excused with some other value, e.g., the lesson, the content, the learning, you know… the important stuff. “Yes, we made the toy fun but that was just to lure the child in. Please trust us that it’s really about important stuff.” I like the word “excuse” because it’s less polite than “justification” and it highlights, for me, the discomfort I have when I read the language and feel I’m being sold something. I especially like the word “excuse” because it’s uncomfortable enough to highlight some of my own excuses to myself.

Later excuses. My kids’ play.

I have a bunch of kids, my kids have a bunch of varied things they like to do, and I’ve noticed some consistent language used when others discuss some of those things. And some consistent excuses. 

One child showed an early love of art and a talent for it as well. She spent endless hours not “practicing” or “studying” or “learning” but just “arting” or doing whatever she felt like doing in the way of art. Most people would react to her and her art with questions about long term goals for her art, about “growing up to do art”, about “doing art to make money”, about a career as an artist, and especially about displaying her art, her skill, and herself to others. Art is a fairly respectable thing, but not like being a doctor you know, so it needs some excuses. “What are you going to do with your art?” That is, “since you clearly have this skill, how do you intend to make this a focus of the person you need to grow up to be?” Because knowing what you want to be when you grow up is one of the great excuses. This same person also is an insatiable reader, consuming written material and retaining it, faster than almost anyone I ever met. I have heard few people – but there have been a few – ask her to what greater purpose she was going to apply her reading. Reading is pretty darn respectable. It doesn’t need as many excuses.

Another child showed real enthusiasm and talent for chess. Chess is a game that gets a lot of respect. The strategy, analysis and problem solving skills required to master it are not questioned. Chess doesn’t need excuses. However, when his appetite for chess was sated and his hard focus on it waned then some minor excuses were needed to excuse the lack of interest. Tricky things these excuses. He also showed a lot of interest in some complicated card games, in particular Yu-Gi-Oh and later Magic The Gathering. These aren’t as respectable and need more excuses. Yu-Gi-Oh is a game that requires a lot of basic arithmetic and reading skills for the typical player age range, and I found myself mentioning these excuses often when describing this game. Math and reading are strong excuses and you get a lot of points if you can refer to them. The age range of Magic is older, so math and reading don’t cut it any more, but you can compete with others and talk about your performance and you can actually win money in some cases. And money is a great excuse. If you can tell grandparents that an activity involves math or reading or winning money then it makes everybody happy. And we quickly pick up the importance of making these excuses. On a trip to a surgeon, the surgeon asked him, “So, how’s school?” “Fine,” he responded. The surgeon followed up, “What are your plans?” and he replied, “Oh, real estate and law.” The surgeon nodded with a smile. I didn’t laugh. I knew he was interested in these areas, but plans? So, later I asked him how he had exactly those answers ready to say so smoothly. He replied, “That’s what they like to hear.” Real estate and law are great excuses.

And then there are some pernicious excuses, like The Great Play Excuse. This is a fairly enlightened excuse. It happens when someone is challenging a particular play activity, probably one that doesn’t have especially strong excuses in the opinion of the challenger, and you feel compelled to defend the play by saying something like, “It’s not that this particular activity is worthy, or that he or she will keep doing this forever, but they are practicing skills that will be applicable to other more worthy tasks in the future.” Everyone nods because this sounds very reasonable. And it is. And it’s also an excuse. Or The Talent Excuse, which I’ve used several times in my examples here without mentioning it explicitly, whereby you justify doing something just because you’re good at it. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that people are allowed to do things they’re lousy at. 

I want to stress that I don’t think these excuses are bad things. This is how we express value and justify our choices. And that’s great. I’m using this label “excuse” to sensitize myself to a whole class of language I use to imply what’s valuable without being explicit; to highlight my own conscious and unconscious actions that communicate to everyone else what my values are, but most especially to my children. Especially because it was the word “excuse” that triggered an epiphany for me about what I expect from my children and from Hudson Valley Sudbury School.

A big excuse. My kids’ school.

I’ve had, and have, a bunch of children in the Hudson Valley Sudbury School for some time now. And I’ve gone through multiple variations of how I talk to others about the school. I’ve worked through lots of thoughts about what I want from the school myself. I’m not one of the Sudbury parents who spends a lot of time doubting if Sudbury is a good choice. I’m straight up blunt that I’m a huge fan. 

Without getting preachy about Sudbury, I have to lay a foundation for my language. I did fairly well in public school. I aced almost everything, and went on to do well in higher education. But my single biggest characterization of my public school school experience was that it just wasted so much of my time. I met a few good teachers, was exposed to a few interesting topics I might otherwise not have been, but almost all of my formal school experience sucked up almost all of the time I was trying to spend on my own activities. Without a doubt, those activities, the ones I followed my nose to, proved to be the basis of my college and professional career, but I had to slog thru the swamp of the rest of it anyway. At least that’s how I look at it. Thus while Sudbury has many advantages, one outstanding factor is simply that the institution will waste as little of my children’s time as possible, and leave it for them, individually and collectively to decide what to do with the limited time they have. 

Sometimes in a discussion of HVSS I’m pressed to defend this or that aspect – “How will they ever learn math? How will they learn to read? How can they get exposed to enough stuff? Who’s going to direct them? How can you trust them? It must be chaos! Etc. Ad nauseum.” You know the list. It’s possible to defend each of these questions robustly, but the most particular and pernicious challenge goes something like, “What do mean they just get to run around having fun all the time? How is having fun going to relate to The Real World? When are they going to get down to the really important stuff?” You know, the stuff other than having fun. And so there is another excellent answer I learned. I would often reply, “My kids have just one job at that school and that is to figure out what they want to do.” They have plenty of time. They really only have to do that one thing and I’d be thrilled. Just figure out what you want to do. I point out that I have professionally interviewed some high scoring college graduates who didn’t have any idea what they wanted to do, nor even knew that they were allowed to want anything at all. These very smart people would sit across from me and answer questions like they were taking a quiz and never turn on, never engage. Their education never left them the time to get so bored that they had to dig themselves out of the boredom with the only tools they could actually call their own: their own desire. And I never hired any of those people because I knew they weren’t going to help me solve many problems that wouldn’t get solved without them. Expressed this way, many people understand this concern. Most parents have this vague nagging cloud hanging over them: “What will my kid do? Like, eventually.” And you know what? Almost always people are really impressed with this answer; with this excuse: You have to figure out what you want to do.

And that was my epiphany. Even when I was doing my best to leave my kids as free as I could to take away what they would from their experience in school, I was still defining the standard for that experience. And that’s OK. I’m a parent. We communicate standards, among other things. This most excellent excuse was my best response for almost ten years. But then I had a moment of clarity of what i wanted even more that they take away from the experience. I wanted them to have fun. But why?

My Current Excuse. Know Thyself.

Student performing in music video shot at HVSSIt’s lovely to find a thing that you like, something you like to do, someone you like to be, or someone you like to be with. But one day you’re going to wake up and the world won’t look the same, and food won’t taste the same, and your passions will have shifted while you were busy fulfilling them; even making the big bucks, or winning the big awards, or accomplishing whatever you had set out to accomplish. A day may come, will come, when you don’t know what you want. Many such days may occur. And that’s OK. You may be ten, fifteen, thirty, forty-five or seventy years old. You may have just scored a major victory in your field or you may have been depressingly unproductive lately. And then, things change. So what do you do? Well, what did you do the first time? What is your previous experience falling into a passion?

What’s fun? What feels good? What do you want to do? How do you know what you want to do? Do you recognize passion in yourself? How do you recognize passion? Maybe these seem like simple questions. Maybe they seem silly. More and more I think these are the most important questions one can examine. And more and more I’m interested in my children having the opportunity to answer this question.This one question is central to your existential definition. 

So what do you do? Well, hopefully you have some practice at sniffing around looking for some passion. Hopefully you have multiple experiences of what it’s like to be looking for an interest and randomly or purposely walking into one so that you have some practice in recognizing an interest when it appears. Hopefully you had some time to be with yourself as yourself had some experiences of joy and fun and passion. But let me stress, I’m not primarily concerned with which experiences my kids have or which thing they’ve landed on right now. I want my kids to have a chance to become sensitive to what it feels like to fall in love, to fall in love with yourself, to recognize a passion and take hold of it. A particular passion itself is not my hope for them. I want them to have the chance to learn something about recognizing mutual passion between themselves and the world when it comes along. I want them to learn self-awareness of desirable opportunity knocking on their door, and have some practice answering.

That’s my current excuse and I’m sticking with it for now. 

Happy, Healthy, Strong

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HVSS does not have an official mission statement; the closest we get is the text of our graduation process, which states that, in order to earn a Certificate of Graduation, a student must prove to a committee that s/he has gained the problem solving skills, adaptability, and abilities necessary to succeed in whatever they are going onto next. This is an imminently sensible goal, honoring as it does the natural richness of humanity by acknowledging that different people will want to live different kinds of lives, and they’ll have to do different things to prepare for it.

In this post, though, I would like to float another possibility for a mission statement (not for serious consideration, just to offer another way of thinking about HVSS): HVSS’ mission is to safeguard our students’ right to be happy, healthy, and strong, however they define those preeminent states of being in and for themselves. This might make more sense as a mission statement than the language in the Cert/Grad process, because the school’s role is to maintain the environment and manage resources; we don’t actually teach our students skill sets, problem-solving, or how to adapt to new circumstances. Acquiring those kinds of things is just what happy, healthy, strong people do.

This new mission statement occurred to me recently when I was looking around school and noticing just how — well, happy, healthy, and strong everybody looked. We often talk about how capable our students become, but usually in reference to the intangible skills they build while managing the responsibility of being a student here. We don’t talk much about how our school’s program actually supports our students’ health; maybe we just take it for granted.

So it was this beautiful, sunny, warm day, and nearly everyone was outside, where people should be, especially when it’s sunny and warm. I was thinking about how I needed to produce a blog post sometime soon or risk disappointing Vanessa, and I was witnessing an amazing variety of movement while I strolled around trying to come up with something new to point out to show what an amazing place this is. I saw students slacklining, using our obstacle course, working out with the gymnastic rings, brachiating on the swingset, dancing on our outdoor stage, stalking across the front lawn like animals (big cats?), playing basketball, sword-fighting, and riding bikes – all in the course of maybe three minutes. Our students, freed from the confines of rigid desks and boring playgrounds, and with unlimited access to the outdoors, move in incredible ways all the time, building their strength, developing balance and agility, and engaging their bodies in the ways they were meant to be engaged. A group of about ten younger students is also making regular trip to The Jungle, where they practice parkour and circus arts. There’s usually a rich layer of social context heaped on top of the movement here, too, whether it’s narrative, team dynamics, or artistic statement, and we usually focus on that layer when we talk about the benefits of all the action, but I’m more and more interested in what the movement itself is doing for our students. Even when they sit down here, they’re able to ditch the typical chair/table arrangement and opt for more natural positions. And this isn’t merely about being physically fit or even free and happy either: the human brain has actually developed to engage and control complex movement. Over 50% of the brain is dedicated to movement capacity. The changes in our postural style, and the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of some sectors of the population over the last 10,000 years has led to diminished emotional and imaginative capacities – it’s actually changed our feelings and thoughts. So by limiting the opportunity for movement in our educational system, we’re not doing kids any favors, and we’re not making anyone any smarter. Because we learn new movement via “mirror” neurons, it’s even true that the less movement we see in our environment, the less our brain is stimulated. Dr. John Ratey of Harvard Medical School says that body movement stimulation is also responsible for the maintenance of executive functions like sequencing, recalling memory, prioritization, and sustaining and inhibiting attention. It’s the twenty-first century; the brain and the body are one.

When some people come to our campus and find our building basically empty and our outdoor spaces bustling with activity, what they think they see is kids wasting their time. When I look around, what I see are young apes stimulating ancient patterns programed into their brains and becoming the robust, well-rounded organisms they were meant to be. So next time someone asks you if you’re worried that your kid isn’t learning their lessons as in a typical classroom, tell them, “no, they’re too busy becoming happy, healthy, and strong for that stuff.” And then go ask your kid to take you to the park and show you a move.

I am (not) Autism

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When I was 15, I dropped out of school. It was more of a passive decision than an active one. I just decided I was sick of sitting in a classroom for an hour learning facts that I either knew already or didn’t need to know at all. I didn’t announce to my mom “I’m going to drop out of school”. I just didn’t go. I refused to.

This wasn’t unusual for me. I always had a history of hating school, since I was bullied since first grade and the school did absolutely nothing to stop it. But with college looming on the horizon in several years, I think the school district (and my parents) finally decided to do something about it. The district organized several meetings with my parents, the school staff, and my teachers from the previous year. I was never at these meetings, nor was I invited. But every month or so, right on schedule, my mom would come home with printed information and brochures on faraway boarding schools that specialized in disabled children.

That first set of papers was also the first time I realized that the public school system didn’t see me as an individual. To them, I was a diagnosis.

I wasn’t Emma Elizabeth Boers, as it was printed on my birth certificate. I wasn’t a being of any sort.

I was Autism.

After a failed period of being homeschooled, my mom found the Hudson Valley Sudbury School online. We drove down an hour and a half to Woodstock to visit in the middle of a dreary December night. I knew after the informational meeting that this is where I wanted to go. I canceled my meeting with a Montessori school the next day, my mom paid the fee for the visiting week, and it was settled.

My first day, I moped around the halls feeling lonely. The school’s environment was so social, it was difficult for me to even try to fit in. What would they say if I talked out of turn or said something stupid? I didn’t understand how I would ever fit in. I walked into a room of gamers and thought it would be a good idea for me to bring a few video games the next day. And the next day, I suddenly became the game room’s favorite new student.

After a few long weeks of nothing but Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I was slowly becoming more social. I still didn’t understand what was and wasn’t appropriate to say or do, but I at least decided to speak up instead of being quiet and not talking to people. Slowly but surely, my social skills were improving far beyond what they ever were in public school. I was never afraid to talk to different people, new people, people I didn’t know. Bullying seemed almost nonexistent (though I had issues with a few students) and I felt like I was actually accepted by other beings for once in my life.

While at HVSS, I also decided to pursue my old interest in writing. I had written an (unpublished) novella at the age of 13, but stopped writing when I couldn’t get it published. It was bad, and I realized that, but I also felt like with classes and homework out of the way I had the strength to pursue something like that again. I started on the first draft of the novel Leech Child at HVSS, with the support and advice of the staff.

Near the end of my first year at HVSS I was sitting in the lounge, chatting with some of the other students, when the subject of mental disability came up. I offhandedly mentioned something about my autism, not even thinking about how people might respond.

“Oh, you have autism? Wow, I never would have guessed.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

The responses came one after the other, and even as the conversation moved on, I was shocked. Why weren’t they making fun of me? Isn’t it obvious I’m different?

I thought about it for a bit, and a realization came to me – Sudbury, as a whole, was different. The philosophy was obviously different than the compulsory schooling most kids were used to. The kids were nicer, funnier, and more social. The parents cared more about their children, and the staff didn’t take the job for any superficial reason – they loved kids, and they loved to teach them the way they were supposed to be taught.

We were different, and I loved it.

Several more years passed by, and my mom moved down to Woodstock so I could attend the school more easily. I learned to play Magic: the Gathering, hosted several games of Pokemon D&D, Espionage and Dokapon Kingdom, started school wide projects like making Shrinky Dinks for the craft fair, made Cheeze Whiz flavored gumdrops, and generally had an excellent time. Leech Child was coming along well and I even served on the Judicial Committee, something I thought I would have never been able to do.

At the end of what would be my last year at HVSS, I walked up in front of a whole crowd of people carrying a sheet of notebook paper, and I recited the speech I had written down. I was shaking, and my mouth seemed to move on its own, and I think I cried a bit at the end, but it was beautiful.

It’s been a bit more than six months since I left HVSS, if my memory is right. I’m not in college yet because I wanted some time off to pursue my interests – writing, art, and game development – but I’m hoping to go to Hudson Valley Community College in the fall, and I have little doubt that they’ll accept me. Leech Child is on its third or fourth revision, and I think it’s going well.

Probably the best side effect of HVSS for me was that I began to accept who I was. That I was a being, a person, a somebody. I wasn’t a diagnosis or a label. I could be whatever I wanted to be, within reason, and that was okay.

Today I’m going to announce that in the long run, I’m okay with who I am. Sometimes I might falter or lose faith in myself but for the most part, I appreciate the young adult I’m turning into.

I’m a writer. I’m genderqueer. I’m an artist. I’m a misanthrope. I’m geeky. I’m autistic. Some people know me as Emma, while others know me as Seika or Ness.

But none of these alone are really me.

Sudbury, both the philosophy and the community, helped me realize this. No being is a label, or even a collection of them. We are all a collection of unique experiences and stories, and we each have the potential to contribute something positive to this planet, no matter how small.

It’s okay to be YOU.

And so my story comes to an end. I am NOT Autism. I am Ness, and this is the beginning of a (hopefully) long list of contributions I will make to planet Earth:

Listen to your child. Do they enjoy school? If not, something is wrong. Learning should be an enlightening experience. It shouldn’t be a jail.

Your kid will tell you the truth. After all, kids are the most honest people on Earth.

Well, except for me. I’m a bit too brutally honest for my own good.

And I’m okay with that.

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!

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.

There and Back Again: through Sudbury’s doors

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I have recently become a volunteer and substitute staff member for HVSS. Since I’ve been at the school, memories that I had not thought of for many years have resurfaced.

When I was seven, I found myself at the Sudbury Valley School, in Framingham MA, and knew I had found the perfect school for me. I spent the next four years there. During my time there I was the free to play and be a kid. I played all day, everyday. I learned by asking others for help when I needed it, by being in a social environment with peers of all ages, by being hands-on in the art room, and by participating in a fully democratic society. Whenever I tried to force myself to learn something because my parents told me I had to, the attempt inevitability failed.

Now, fifteen years later I am witnessing kids going through that same process. While I watch and interact with students, moments come back to me. When I visited the Judicial Committee, I saw people serving their time. Some were focused, because they knew it was their responsibility, while others were wiggling to get free, so they could go play. I remembered my time, as a wiggling kid; when a big case came in I would stop wiggling and focus because I knew my vote might determine whether or not the case was referred to school meeting where the student might get suspended or expelled.  Another time was when my sister asked me to go easy on a friend of hers who had been written up.  When it came time to vote, I didn’t know what to do; help her friend or choose the punishment I thought most fitting? Serving on JC is where I started to learn wrong and right because it tested my morals at a young age. I cared because I had an equal share of power at a time where no where else in my life was that true. I took it seriously.

 

Serving on JC is where I started to learn wrong and right because it tested my morals at a young age. I cared because I had an equal share of power at a time where no where else in my life was that true. I took it seriously.

 

Being on the other side of this system is still surreal for me. I find myself more frequently interacting with students who are just a little older (12 and older) than I was when I left SVS. This might be because I knew a few of them from outside of school because they go to the summer camp I work for, but I think that there has to be more to it than that. When I look around, I notice that this group is interacting a lot with all the staff. This also brought some memories of my friends during my last year at the Sudbury Valley School. We were starting to grow apart – I was not interested is hanging out with the older kids; I still wanted to play make believe all day. As my friends sought out older friends, they also seemed to be taking a greater interest in the staff as well. As a group of younger students we normally only asked the staff for things if we had to (to certify us, to heat up lunches, and spell things), but as my friends grew tried of playing pretend they wanted to know more hard facts, and that is when they started to set up times to sit down and learn form the staff, or have meals and conversations with them. And, though the group at HVSS still plays all kinds of games to their hearts content, I am also seeing the eagerness for more knowledge emerge.

The best part of attending or working at Sudbury is the commitment to a project. When a student decides they want to do something, they’re all in. I remember wanting to perform, and for every talent show I would be in a dance (it was one of the few ongoing classes at SVS) or I would find Mark, the staff member in charge of the music room, and he would assemble a band and help me (and my friends) rehearse. And we would until we had it down. Currently, I’m working with the HVSS students on a play and they are, in true Sudbury fashion, committed and working hard nearly everyday. At first I was nervous because we had less time to put the show together then I would like, but they’re progressing swiftly because they want to be there and want to do the work.

It is different going to a new Sudbury School and being there as staff, but the more I think about it the more I think it is only because there are different people here. It’s the same model, but a different community, and it’s a diverse community. The variations in personalities surrounding you at HVSS are what really make it a wonderful place to be.

Sudbury and the Quarter-life Crisis

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Recently my wife’s best friend came up for a visit from The City.  At some point in one of our conversations, the three of us began smugly deriding middle-class college graduates in the 22-25 age bracket.  We agreed that, generally speaking, we find them to be tediously indecisive most of the time and exasperatingly poor decision-makers the rest of the time.  Many of them seem to have scant information but firm opinions.  They want to delay difficult and rewarding commitments (and to continue to have lots of fun all the time) yet they want to be taken seriously.  They spend a lot of time and energy comparing themselves to their peers.  They daydream of doing something wild and intense, like joining the Peace Corps, becoming a Zen monk, or sailing around the globe in a dinghy, and some of them eventually get around to doing it, too, usually without really knowing why.  I ended up taking a plunge like that myself, so you see, I speak of this because I know.  Perhaps what middle class youngsters really want is just to be free to explore our world and create our lives on our own terms, but by the time we are released from our schooling many of us are ill equipped to do that in a way that leads to a life we want to call our own.   No adult at my high school or college ever talked with me about it; instead I was always advised to “follow my passion,” all the while staying in school, and trusting the system. Now I wish I was advised to take my passion with me into a field where I could make a living. More significant than any explicit advise I received was the atmospheric sense – the social suggestion – that I was securely installed on some sort of track to a successful life, like a passenger riding on an autopilotically flown craft.  Well, it wasn’t true; it’s necessary to struggle to gain some self-knowledge, think carefully, make difficult decisions, and work hard to create your own life. 

So how does this story about the quarter-life crisis relate to HVSS? First, a disclaimer: this is a theoretical and anecdotal post.  As most of you know, I am a new staff member this year, and I don’t know many HVSS graduates personally.  The school is still so new there aren’t many graduate anyway.  But, I did recently catch up with HVSS’s first graduate, Alex Delia, now 26, to see what he’s up been up to lately, and I wasn’t disappointed, to say the least.  

Since graduating, Alex has started a successful recycling business – Mr. e-Waste, based in Hudson.  He says, “it was a crash course, really sink or swim kind of thing…and I’m swimming.”  When I spoke with Alex he was in Chicago at the airport, preparing to fly home from a business trip he spent working to identify oxidized metals in the waste-stream of a local company.  He thinks it could become a lucrative partnership.  He’s also trying to get Mr. e-Waste on autopilot so he can explore metal trading and recycling solutions.  Alex never attended a traditional school (though he has been inside of a few as a recycling contractor).  I asked him how – if at all – his Sudbury education was helping him succeed so impressively.  He didn’t mention any content he studied, or projects he worked on, or accolades he earned.  He said, “I learned how to be really present with myself, and therefore with others – to be open and receptive.  Basically, to communicate well.  I had a lot of opportunities to sit down with people, talk things over, and figure out how to work together to make things happen.”

 Alex said that things he has struggled with in the past – like reading and spelling, have become strengths as he has built his business over the last several years.  Alex didn’t go to college; he felt he had a choice in the matter, that he was independent – a free agent rather than “a slave.”  He says, “my own choices have covered me in a lot of paperwork, but that’s been fine, because I’ve chosen this, and I’m passionate about it.”  He’s entertaining the idea of going to college sometime soon and pointed out that -having waited – he thinks it will be more beneficial than if he had gone when he was 18.  If he does end up going now, he’ll study accounting, chemistry, and maybe engineering – skill sets that will help him continue to develop his business.  

Finally, I asked him for his take on the “quarter-life crisis.”  He paused, and then said, “well, if there is a quarter-life crisis for me, it’s figuring out how to make my business as beneficial to my community – and particularly the impoverished people within it – as possible.”

One way of thinking about Sudbury that I find helpful is to consider enrolling as beginning now.  At this point in history, life is extremely complex.  Waiting to plunge in – holding back from beginning until a quarter of life is in the books – can be a massive setback.  Allowing kids the responsibility to live their lives is scary, and it can be messy, but that’s why we call it education.