What Are They Learning?

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What do kids learn at The Circle School? More than I can know or name, I’m sure. But what do we see them learning? Here’s what some of the staff have seen in recent months …

I have seen kids learn to value reading as a functional tool. They read the agenda for the School Meeting to determine whether or not to attend this week. They read about upcoming field trips and other events on the front door. When they serve on the JC they must read the complaints they are investigating. They read the muffin recipe, to divvy up the ingredients for various people to bring in. They read the school law book to determine what law was broken, so they can fill out a JC complaint.

I have seen kids learning to value writing as a functional tool. They discover that in order to be certified to use the telephone, they have to be able to write well enough to write down a message and have the certifier read it. They write letters to their favorite TV and movie stars. They must write down the bylaws of their corporations for approval by the School Meeting. They must compose clear and concise motions to be presented to either the School Meeting or the Assembly.

I have seen kids learn perseverance as they work on projects dear to their hearts, for hours at a time.

I have seen six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds learning basic math skills as they “play” a computer game, working together to solve 100 multiplication and division equations.

I have seen kids learn how to remind themselves that they must be someplace at a certain time. They independently and with no prompting by adults, gather their things at 3:15pm and sit on the front couches waiting for the bus.

I have seen kids learn how to devise systems to remind themselves to do their daily chores, and to check off their completed chore on the chore checklist. Their various systems have included signs at their cubbies reminding them or asking an adult to let them know when it is a certain time.

I have seen kids learn how to keep a clean and neat cubby, after being written up and having to appear before the JC one too many times for having a cubby that continually spilled its guts onto the floor.

I have seen kids learn problem solving skills, working with each other and adults to hammer out certification procedures for safe, proper use of the computers, the sewing equipment, the piano, and the upstairs.

I have seen kids learn how to enjoy being with an adult (formerly viewed as someone to avoid if possible). They discuss what they did on the weekend, the latest Star Trek show, last night’s political debate, a book they were currently reading, or how to compose a rule that would address all the issues involved in messes made at school by groups of kids working together around a table.

I have seen kids learn to transfer skills from one area to another. They write signs for the front door using printing skills they had been practicing from a calligraphy book. They use paper folding tricks, also learned from a book, to create their handmade Valentines or to design an individualized birthday page.

I have seen kids learn how to deal with difficult interpersonal situations, by refining problem solving skills and becoming more flexible. For example, what rules are necessary for this game to be pleasant enough for all who want to to play? Should there be different rules for different ages? For different skill levels? What is fair? What is not fair? What is safe? What is not safe and might invite intervention by an adult?

I have seen kids learn how to monitor their environment and say to each other, “It’s too noisy down here for us. Let’s go upstairs where it is quiet. ”

I have seen children learn to draw on community resources. A five-year old went with an adult to the library to find a recipe for pancakes and then to the grocery store to purchase ingredients to make them.

I have seen kids learn to control their natural inclination to move constantly, watching them attend a meeting of a corporation or a committee that really interests them -such as the ad hoc committee appointed by the School Meeting to recommend what to do about the television set at The Circle School.

I have seen kids learn to make mistakes, admit them, and make amends.

I have seen kids learn the value of advertising. They planned to make and sell food one day, but due to a lack of notification, very few customers had cash on hand and the food items didn’t sell as briskly as they had hoped.

I have seen kids learn how to do things they don’t want to do. They sit and wait and wait and wait through a boring School Meeting for the motion they want to vote on. They bite the bullet and clean up someone else’s mess because they want to use an area that has been closed because it was too messy.

I have seen kids learn how to write IOU’s so they can purchase a food item. I have also seen kids learn to remember to pay off their IOU’S, after being refused a subsequent loan.

I have seen kids learn that there are ways to learn, other than being taught by an adult. I watch them teach each other to throw a football, to multiply and divide, to knit, to write.

I have seen kids learn how to effectively run meetings. I watch them chair the School Meeting, attending to old business, new business, motions, discussions, points of order, votes, reports, and announcements. I watch them chair committee meetings, less formal perhaps, but still requiring orderly proceedings guided by an effective chairperson.

I have seen kids learn how to express themselves through painting, music, sewing, knitting, quilting, and dramatic play.

I have seen kids learn how to tune out distractions, intently reading a book on the couch while all around them others are talking.

I have seen kids learn to value themselves, as they see the adults around them honoring to the greatest extent possible their choices about how they spend their time and how, when, where, and what they choose to learn.

I have seen kids learn how to listen to themselves to discover what turns them on, what they are particularly drawn to and not drawn to, what they want to do next.

I have seen boys learning to knit -casting on, knitting, purling. And I have seen girls learning football -passing, catching, making downs.

I have seen kids of all ages learn to play physical games together -finding ways to avoid hurting younger kids while still challenging the older ones.

I have seen kids learn design skills. They create a design, then make a pattern from it, and then sew it into reality.

Kiran

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[Ed. Kiran graduated from HVSS in 2015.]

From the time he was an infant, my son Kiran (now age 6) has had issues around feeling safe. Cautious, perceptive, and highly sensitive to other people’s energies and emotional states by nature, he is generally slow to adapt to new people and situations. He has always shown an aversion to group activities, preferring the intimacy of one-on-one interactions with trusted individuals in familiar environments. Add to the mix his intense dislike of anything he perceives as compromising his sense of control over his own situation, and the result is a challenging child, to say the least. Monitoring his reactions to any given circumstance and making adjustments accordingly has long since become second nature to me. On more occasions that I care to remember, we have had to make a quick exit from social settings to avert a full-blown tantrum.

Since he started school at Sudbury, I’ve noticed a marked change in Kiran. Although he faced the first week of school with his usual resistance and apprehension, by the end of week two he was actually looking forward to school on most days. His behavior at the key transition times – drop-off and pick-up – has been a true barometer of the shift he’s undergone in the scant two months of school. Last week he announced that I don’t need to go inside with him anymore when I drop him off, and at pick-up the biggest challenge now is extracting him from whatever activity he’s engaged in when I arrive. Whereas at most social events – even ones including other children – Kiran would usually not let me out of his sight, often spending the entire time clutching my hand, at the recent Sudbury bonfire gathering I scarcely caught sight of him for most of the evening, and practically had to launch a search party to find him when it was time to go home. In fact, that particular event was the first time he had ever requested that we attend a social gathering on his own initiative!

So just what is it about life at Sudbury that has sparked these changes in Kiran? From my perspective, the Sudbury model perfectly addresses two of his biggest issues: feeling safe and feeling in control. At first blush it struck me as counter-intuitive that offering children the degree of freedom and autonomy they have at Sudbury could make them feel safe. But Kiran’s rapid adjustment to the school has completely convinced me otherwise. Being given such a high degree of independence with an equal measure of responsibility has done wonders for his self-confidence. The other factor that has been so positive for him is age-mixing. Kiran has always gravitated toward older children, often feeling more comfortable with them than with kids his own age. It has been truly heart-warming to see how helpful the older kids at Sudbury are with the younger ones, and how naturally kids of different ages interact with one another, as well as with the adults. Sudbury sometimes feels more like a tribal community than a school, and at this point in Kiran’s development, I can’t imagine a better place for him.

Back to Basics

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Why go to school?

For people who like to think through the important questions in life for themselves, Sudbury Valley stands as a challenge to the accepted answers.

Intellectual basics

The first phrase that pops into everyone’s mind is: “We go to school to learn.” That’s the intellectual goal. It comes before all the others. So much so, that “getting an education” has come to mean “learning” — a bit narrow, to be sure, but it gets the priorities clear.

Then why don’t people learn more in schools today? Why all the complaints? Why the seemingly limitless expenditures just to tread water, let alone to progress?

The answer is embarrassingly simple. Schools today are institutions in which “learning” is taken to mean “being taught.” You want people to learn? Teach them! You want them to learn more? Teach them more! And more! Work them harder. Drill them longer.

But learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you! That is true of everyone. It’s basic.

What makes people learn? Funny anyone should ask. Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle started his most important book with the universally accepted answer: “Human beings are naturally curious.” Descartes put it slightly differently, also at the beginning of his major work: “I think, therefore I am.” Learning, thinking, actively using your mind: it’s the essence of being human. It’s natural.

More so even than the great drives — hunger, thirst, sex. When you’re engrossed in something — the key word is “engrossed” — you forget about all the other drives until they overwhelm you. Even rats do that, as was shown a long time ago.

Who would think of forcing people to eat, or drink, or have sex? (Of course, I’m not talking about people who have a specific disability that affects their drives; nor is anything I am writing here about education meant to apply to people who have specific mental impairments, which may need to be dealt with in special, clinical ways.) No one sticks people’s faces in bowls of food, every hour on the hour, to be sure they’ll eat; no one closets people with mates, eight periods a day, to make sure they’ll couple.

Does that sound ridiculous? How much more ridiculous is it, then, to try to force people to do that which above all else comes most naturally to them! And everyone knows just how widespread this overpowering curiosity is. All books on childrearing go to great lengths to instruct parents on how to keep their little children out of things — especially once they are mobile. We don’t stand around pushing our one year olds to explore. On the contrary, we tear our hair out as they tear our house apart, we seek ways to harness them, imprison them in play pens. And the older they get, the more “mischief” they get into. Did you ever deal with a ten year old? A teenager?

People go to school to learn. To learn, they must be left alone and given time. When they need help, it should be given, if we want the learning to proceed at its own natural pace. But make no mistake: if a person is determined to learn, they will overcome every obstacle and learn in spite of everything. So you don’t have to help; help just makes the process a little quicker. Overcoming obstacles is one of the main activities of learning. It does no harm to leave a few.

But if you bother the person, if you insist the person stop his or her own natural learning and do instead what you want, between 9:00 AM and 9:50, and between 10:00 AM and 10:50 and so forth, not only won’t the person learn what s/he has a passion to learn, but s/he will also hate you, hate what you are forcing upon them, and lose all taste for learning, at least temporarily.

Every time you think of a class in one of those schools out there, just imagine the teacher was forcing spinach and milk and carrots and sprouts (all those good things) down each student’s throat with a giant ramrod.

Sudbury Valley leaves its students be. Period. No maybes. No exceptions. We help if we can when we are asked. We never get in the way. People come here primarily to learn. And that’s what they all do, every day, all day.

Vocational basics

The nitty-gritty of going to school always comes up next, after “learning.” When it comes right down to it, most people don’t really give a damn what or how much they or their children learn at school, as long as they are able to have a successful career; to get a good job. That means money, status, advancement. The better the job you get, the better was the school you went to.

That’s why Phillips Andover, or Harvard, rank so highly. Harvard grads start out way up the ladder in every profession. They are grateful, and when they grow up, they perpetuate this by bestowing the best they have to offer on the new Harvard grads they hire; and by giving big donations to Harvard. So it goes for Yale, Dartmouth and all the others.

So what kind of a school is most likely today, at the end of the twentieth century, to prepare a student best for a good career?

We don’t really have to struggle with the answer. Everyone is writing about it. This is the post industrial age. The age of information. The age of services. The age of imagination, creativity, and entrepreneurialism. The future belongs to people who can stretch their minds to handle, mold, shape, organize, play with new material, old material, new ideas, old ideas, new facts, old facts.

These kind of activities don’t take place in the average school even on an extra-curricular basis. Let alone all day.

At Sudbury Valley, these activities are, in a sense, the whole curriculum.

Does it sound far-fetched? Perhaps to an untrained ear. But history and experience are on our side. How else to explain that fact that all our graduates, barring none, who wish to go on to college and graduate school, always get in, usually to the schools of first choice? With no transcripts, no records, no reports, no oral or written school recommendations. What do college admissions officers see in these students? Why do they accept them; often, grab them? Why do these trained administrators, wallowing in ‘A’ averages, glowing letters from teachers, high SAT scores; why do they take Sudbury Valley grads?

Of course you know the answer, even if it is hard to admit; it runs so against the grain. These trained professionals saw in our students bright, alert, confident, creative spirits. The dream of every advanced school.

The record speaks for itself. Our students are in a huge array of professions (or schools, in the case of more recent graduates) and vocations. They are doctors, dancers, musicians, businessmen, artists, scientists, writers, auto mechanics, carpenters . . . No need to go on. You can meet them if you wish.

If a person came to me today and said, simply: “To what school should I send my child if I want to be assured that she will get the best opportunity for career advancement in the field of her choice?” I would answer without the least hesitation, “The best in the country for that purpose is Sudbury Valley.” Alas, at present it is the only type of school in the country that does the job, with an eye to the future.

As far as vocations are concerned, Sudbury Valley has encountered Future Shock head on and overcome it. No longer is there any need to be mired in the past.

Moral basics

Now we come to a touchy subject. Schools should produce good people. That’s as broad a platitude as mother and apple pie. Obviously, we don’t want schools to produce bad people.

How to produce good people? There’s the rub. I dare say no one really knows the answer, at least from what I see around me. But at least we know something about the subject. We know, and have (once again) known from ancient times, the absolutely essential ingredient for moral action; the ingredient without which action is at best amoral, at worst, immoral.

The ingredient is personal responsibility.

All ethical behavior presupposes it. To be ethical you must be capable of choosing a path and accepting full responsibility for the choice, and for the consequences. You cannot claim to be a passive instrument of fate, of God, of other men, of force majeure; such a claim instantly renders all distinctions between good and evil pointless and empty. The clay that has been fashioned into the most beautiful pot in the world can lay no claim to virtue.

Ethics begins from the proposition that a human being is responsible for his or her acts. This is a given. Schools cannot change this, or diminish it. Schools can, however, either acknowledge it or deny it.

Unfortunately, virtually all schools today choose in fact to deny that students are personally responsible for their acts, even while the leaders of these schools pay lip service to the concept. The denial is threefold: schools do not permit students to choose their course of action fully; they do not permit students to embark on the course, once chosen; and they do not permit students to suffer the consequences of the course, once taken. Freedom of choice, freedom of action, freedom to bear the results of action — these are the three great freedoms that constitute personal responsibility.

It is no news that schools restrict, as a matter of fundamental policy, the freedoms of choice and action. But does it surprise you that schools restrict freedom to bear the consequences of one’s actions? It shouldn’t. It has become a tenet of modern education that the psyche of a student suffers harm to the extent that it is buffeted by the twin evils of adversity and failure. “Success breeds success” is the password today; encouragement, letting a person down easy, avoiding disappointing setbacks, the list goes on.

Small wonder that our schools are not noted for their ethical training. They excuse their failure by saying that moral education belongs in the home. To be sure, it does. But does that exclude it from school?

Back to basics. At Sudbury Valley, the three freedoms flourish. The buck stops with each person. Responsibility is universal, ever present, real. If you have any doubts, come and look at the school. Watch the students in action. Study the judicial system. Attend a graduation, where a student must convince an assemblage of peers that s/he is ready to be responsible for himself or herself in the community at large, just as the person has been at school.

Does Sudbury Valley produce good people? I think it does. And bad people too. But the good and the bad have exercised personal responsibility for their actions at all times, and they realize that they are fully accountable for their deeds. That’s what sets Sudbury Valley apart.

Social basics

Some time ago it became fashionable to ask our schools to look after the social acclimatization of students. Teach them to get along. Rid our society of social misfits by nipping the problem in the bud, at school. Ambitious? Perhaps. But oh, how many people have struggled with reports from school about their own þ or their child’s þ social adaptations, or lack of them! Strange, isn’t it, how badly people sometimes screw up what they do? I mean, trying to socialize people is hard enough; but the schools seem almost methodically to have created ways of defeating this goal.

Take age segregation, for starters. What genius looked around and got the idea that it was meaningful to divide people sharply by age? Does such division take place naturally anywhere? In industry, do all twenty-one year old laborers work separately from twenty years olds or twenty-three year olds? In business, are there separate rooms for thirty year old executives and thirty-one year old executives? Do two year olds stay apart from one year olds and three year olds in the playgrounds? Where, where on earth was this idea conceived? Is anything more socially damaging than segregating children by year for fourteen — often eighteen — years.

Or take frequent segregation by sex, even in coed schools, for varieties of activities.

Or the vast chasm between children and adults, have you ever observed how universal it is for children not to look adults in the eye?

And now let’s peek into the social situation created for children within their own age group. If the schools make it almost impossible for a twelve year old to relate in a normal human fashion to eleven year olds, thirteen year olds, adults, etc., what about other twelve year olds?

No such luck. The primary, almost exclusive mode of relationship fostered by schools among children in the same class is competition! Cut-throat competition. The pecking order is the all-in-all. Who is better than whom, who smarter, faster, taller, handsomer and, of course, who is worse, stupider, slower, shorter, uglier.

If ever a system was designed effectively to produce competitive, obnoxious, insecure, paranoid, social misfits, the prevailing schools have managed it.

Back to basics

In the real world, the most important social attribute for a stable, healthy society is cooperation. In the real world, the most important form of competition is against oneself, against goals set for and by a person for that person’s own achievement. In the real world, interpersonal competition for its own sake is widely recognized as pointless and destructive þ yes, even in large corporations and in sports.

In the real world, and in Sudbury Valley, which is a school for the real world.

Political basics

We take it for granted that schools should foster good citizenship. Universal education in this country in particular always kept one eye sharply focused on the goal of making good Americans out of us all.

We all know what America stands for. The guiding principles were clearly laid down by our founding fathers, and steadily elaborated ever since.

This country is a democratic republic. No king, no royalty, no nobility, no inherent hierarchy, no dictator. A government of the people, by the people, for the people. In matters political, majority rule. No taxation without representation.

This country is a nation of laws. No arbitrary authority, no capricious government now giving, now taking. Due process.

This country is a people with rights. Inherent rights. Rights so dear to us that our forefathers refused to ratify the constitution without a Bill of Rights added in writing, immediately.

Knowing all this, we would expect þ nay, insist (one would think) þ that the schools, in training their students to contribute productively to the political stability and growth of America, would

  • be democratic and non-autocratic;
  • be governed by clear rules and due process;
  • be guardians of individual rights of students.

A student growing up in schools having these features would be ready to move right into society at large.

But the schools, in fact, are distinguished by the total absence of each of the three cardinal American values listed.

They are autocratic — all of them, even “progressive” schools.

They are lacking in clear guidelines and totally innocent of due process as it applies to alleged disrupters.

They do not recognize the rights of minors.

All except Sudbury Valley, which was founded on these three principles.

I think it is safe to say that the individual liberties so cherished by our ancestors and by each succeeding generation will never be really secure until our youth, throughout the crucial formative years of their minds and spirits, are nurtured in a school environment that embodies these basic American truths.

Back to basics

So you see, Sudbury Valley was started in 1968 by people who thought very hard about schools, about what schools should be and should do, about what education is all about in America today.

We went back to basics. And we stayed there. And we jealously guarded these basics against any attempts to compromise them. As we and our successors shall surely continue to stand guard.

Intellectual creativity, professional excellence, personal responsibility, social toleration, political liberty all these are the finest creations of the human spirit. They are delicate blossoms that require constant care.

All of us who are associated with Sudbury Valley are proud to contribute to this care.

Books by the Sudbury Valley Press ® are available from bookstore.sudburyvalley.org, by calling (508) 877-3030, or by sending a fax to (508) 788-0674. You may write to the Sudbury Valley School Press ® at The Sudbury Valley School Press, 2 Winch Street, Framingham, MA 01701. You can contact the school here

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