Uncommon Core

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

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

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

Chase and Pursuit

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How and Why Laws are Created – or Not – at HVSS

Recently, a staff member made a motion to put a defunct law called “Chase and Pursuit,” which forbids indoors chase games, back onto the books.  It passed to Second Reading, which means that it can be made into official school law at the following meeting.  But this law proved to be controversial, and the debate that followed revealed how in a democratic community even a seemingly simple proposition involves a complex web of implications.  In a small direct democracy, different perspectives inform and balance each other; it’s harder to get things done than in autocratic systems, but what’s done generally has more consideration behind it.

The Chase and Pursuit law was rescinded last year because there are other indoor laws which cover the parts of chase games that are disruptive: there is a noise ordinance, a law against moving fast, and another against being rowdy. The staff member who sponsored the motion to reinstate the law argued that there are activities happening on a regular basis which do not violate any of those laws but which should not be allowed.  I thought of times I’ve been working in the office and students sneak in and try to hide underneath my desk, or giant games of hide-and-seek spanning the building, and although they aren’t necessarily loud, fast, or rowdy, they are disruptive to people trying to focus on their own activities.  

Two older students attended the meeting to debate the law.  They argued that this law would complicate an already crowded law book; if there was a game of tag in the building, for example, would the players be charged with rowdy play, moving fast, being disruptively noisy, and chase and pursuit, making four charges for one event?  Wouldn’t that be a messy overcharge?  They asked where the line would be drawn between a chase game and simply “looking for someone,” or following someone who is leading you to a destination.  They suggested that the law would allow for people to be charged for harmless activities.  The rule’s sponsor responded that nobody would bother to write up harmless activities, but the students weren’t satisfied by that, arguing that such activity should not be technically illegal, even if it would be allowed.  

A second staff member spoke on behalf of reinstating the law, saying that it can be difficult to have a quiet focused group activity when chase games – even quiet ones – are going on.  Sometimes people playing hide-and-seek want to look in a room where a group is working, for example.

Another Staff Member chimed in, saying that she likes “a little chaos” in the building – it’s fun.  She argued that groups who are engaged in quiet focused activities are disturbed more often by random people barging into the room and for no other reason than to see what’s happening, and suggested that we turn our attention to addressing that issue.

When it came time to vote I abstained.  I wasn’t sure what my opinion was, and I left it to the people who were feeling passionate.  I was more interested by how any discussion of laws and procedures at Sudbury connects to the wider culture of the school and brings up essential questions: what kind of culture do we want to create at the school?  How much regulation is too much or too little? How can we prevent one individual’s freedom from disturbing another’s?  The motion to reinstate the Chase and Pursuit Law failed; the School Meeting decided to err on the side of legal simplicity, individual freedom, and fun.  The bill’s sponsor smiled concession, and we proceeded to the next order of business.

Open Letter (rant) to Those Who Advocate the Tough Love of Traditional Schools

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One criticism of the Sudbury model that comes up again and again is that it fails to “prepare kids for the ‘Real World’” because Sudbury provides too ideal an environment. Sudbury spoils them by daring to respect children and teenagers as full-blooded human beings. In contrast, the Real World is anti-human and is going to disrespect, subjugate, and crush them as soon as it gets its hooks into them. This means that schools should crush children a bit now to get them ready; the traditional system, with its plainly authoritarian structure, outdated and strange curriculum, and narrow agenda is actually a good thing! Not because it is actually good, but because it will thicken our kids’ skin, get them used to the way things really are out there, and teach ‘em some tough lessons about life! Here’s an example I saw recently, from a comment made on The Sudbury Valley School’s November 4 blog post:

“I think that when people reference the “real world” they may be talking about HOW it is, rather than WHAT it is. You can teach children all kinds of things, but if they go out into the world expecting fairness, or that people will respect them, they will have a rude wake up call. Bullies, unfair teachers, and having to do things I didn’t want to do taught me that in the real world you don’t always get to do what you want, life isn’t always fair, and people can (and WILL) be jerks. How are you preparing them for the parts of life that are NOT fun and creative?”

In this post, I’d like to discus this criticism. If you believe that kids need to learn “tough lessons” from the strictures of traditional school, please respond in the comments sections below; I’d like to hear a little more about what you’re thinking.

I’ll begin working under the assumption that the criticism – essentially that the Real World is crappy and an important function of traditional schools is to get kids get accustomed to how crappy it is because the sooner is gets crappy the better prepared they’ll be – is, indeed, true. But is that really what we want for our children? I would rather my daughter grow up at Sudbury and then be battered around and bewildered a bit more than average (again, assuming your argument is true) as she emerges into the Real World, because she might have a sense that things could – and should – be better, and that’s important, that vision of a better world, that striving to grow and change; I think we need to have that. I do not wish for my child that she merely be comfortable – a good Egyptian clinging to her place in the pyramid; I wish for her to be bold enough to be fully herself, even if that’s hard, and even if it hurts sometimes. So, even granting the premises of the argument, I dismiss the conclusion.

But I dismiss the premises, too. There’s lots of evidence to suggest that the preparation for the parts of life that are NOT fun and creative can actually be fun and creative (think tiger cubs learning to hunt). Not only that, but in my experience onerous tasks themselves can become fun and creative through focus, discipline, and imagination.

This is not the industrial age (it has been noted that our traditional schools are modeled on factories); this is the twenty first century, which has been widely hailed as the century of creativity, innovation, and originality. Are there people to tell us what to be and what to do with our lives in the real Real World, particularly in the emerging, uncertain, and new Real World? Or do we have to decide ourself? In traditional schools, adults tell kids what to do, and if kids do it they get stamps of approval. Succeeding in school is as simple as following directions. That’s like the real world? As far as I can tell, we have to figure out how to make a living, how to build a life that is authentic and meaningful.

So which is more Real – having authorities telling us what to do, and what success is, and how to achieve it for the first 18 years of our life, or being responsible from the beginning (because everyone is responsible at the end)?

The Individual in Community at Sudbury

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Last week we had a trial that raised some interesting questions about the age-old problem of individual rights vs. community – an intense philosophical, political, and metaphysical problem that still vexes human society and makes the news every day.

In a certain respect, Sudbury is an experiment in finding the balance between individual and community; individuals have freedom, but that freedom is limited by the freedom of others.  Sudbury thus hangs – like the rest of nature – in a delicate balance, and that balance is protected by our justice system.

Here’s what happened: the Judicial Committee needed a replacement member, and the next student on the list was asked to serve.  He was in the middle of something and initially refused.  This is a clear violation of the JC policies; service is not optional.  After a minute or so of haggling, though, he consented, and reported to the JC room in an angry huff.  He stormed in, did not answer a friendly greeting, plopped into a seat, and glared.  He did not vote on the first item that came up, and when he was asked if “this is the way it’s going to be,” he responded, “yeah, I’m pissed off.” JC then decided to replace him.  Later, he was charged with violating JC rules and procedures, essentially because he disrupted their process and ultimately refused to participate.  He plead Not Guilty.

At trial, I was the prosecutor.  The case looked simple: there were clear violations of JC policies, and I laid these out for the jury, adding that the defendant was not charged for his feelings, but for allowing his anger to disrupt the processes of JC.  But the defendant insisted that he was being persecuted for merely being angry, that he didn’t waste significant time, and that he would have cooled off if given the chance.  He rhetorically asked if a School Meeting Member would be charged if they were overcome with sadness – or another emotion – and thus unable to serve.  My response was that the defendant was angry about having to perform his community duty, which led him to shirk it, and that the disruption was significant enough for JC to write him up for it.  If, at the time he was asked to serve, he was very angry about something else, perhaps things would have been handled differently (although legally they shouldn’t be).  I wish I had added that we need to be able to regulate our emotions at least to the degree that we may avoid trampling on other individuals or the community.

The jury returned the surprising verdict of Not Guilty, swayed by the idea that the defendant should not be convicted because he was temporarily compelled by emotion and should have been allowed a chance to self-regulate.  I think they got this one wrong.  The defendant’s anger at having to perform a community duty caused him to neglect that duty; if the community tolerates that, then it is elevating the individual above the community in a potentially dangerous way, supporting an ideology in which community duties are onerous and/or unimportant.  In reality the needs of individuals and the needs of the community are not so distinct, and personal freedom is supported by the structures of the community.  Without JC, we would not have Sudbury.

I somewhat sympathize with the jury though, because we had indeed stumbled into the complex territory of determining under what circumstances we may legitimately excuse a SM Member from performing community duties.  I appreciate that in their hesitancy – in their doubt, which they considered reasonable – they chose Not Guilty, and I also appreciate that they were able to do that despite being told by an adult prosecutor that the opposite was correct.  After the verdict, I talked to a couple jurors, and they had interesting questions on their minds about the limits and exceptions to mandatory JC duty: what if I am having a profoundly miserable day, week, month – may I be excused?  What if I have a cognitive difference significant enough to make my participation a burden to the process of the JC – may I be excused? What if the Red Sox have just won the World Series and I have been thrust me into ecstatic rapture – may I be excused?  What if I have just reached a critical step in a chemistry experiment that cannot wait or my data will be spoiled – may I be excused? The policies state that JC is a mandatory community duty, but it’s not clear to me that all these cases would be handled the same way.  Perhaps the answer to all the above questions should be “No.”  What do you think?

It seems that the staff who know about the trial are in unanimous disagreement with the jury.  But I wouldn’t have it any other way; our students learn by making real decisions that actually affect people, not by responding to theoretical prompts that we cook up for them (and have nothing real at stake).  I wouldn’t want to attempt to assert some kind of adult authority and overrule the decision.  Doing so would not only subjugate our students, it would relieve them of responsibility – they would no longer have to think and act on difficult matters together, and they could passively rely on adults to make decisions for them (and then blame those same adults for making the decisions without full understanding of the situation!)

Closing thought: It seemed to me that – despite winning – the defendant himself changed his mind somewhat over the course of the trial, and I doubt very much that he will ever behave that way again.

My Depression

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Seventh grade was when my depression began.

Now before anyone asks, nothing triggered this. I just started feeling like crap in seventh grade, despite my loving family, amazing friends, stable household, good grades, and basically perfect life. There was the exhaustion, and then the sadness. The sadness had no source. There was no reason for it, but it was there. It was like incredibly distracting background music, turned up a little too loud. At first I tried to get rid of it, but when I realized I couldn’t do that, I turned the volume up, grabbed a blanket, and just let it surround me. I could still have happy moments, at times. I still laughed at jokes. I still smiled at things. But the sadness was still there, waiting, and it absolutely hated being ignored. I went through life with lead weights on my ankles, my head, and the corners of my mouth. 
 
Weekends with friends were life-saving. Because I couldn’t tell my blood family what I was going through, my other family, my friends, saved me. I would show them my broken heart, and they would kiss it and put band-aids on it and keep it beating until I could see them again. I would spend hours collapsed on them, and they would rub my cut-up arms and kiss my forehead and charge my failing batteries enough to keep going for another week or so. 
 
I held onto moments with the people I cared about and little things I would find when with them–a rock in the shape of a heart, an old rusty nail on the side of a path, little objects that I wouldn’t let anyone touch and would cling to when I felt lost.
 
I needed help, but was too scared to ask for it. This went on for a few years. But then my parents found out. I forget how. It may have been my sister, or it may have been that I forgot to cover up my arms with bracelets one day, but either way they sent me to group therapy. It was good to talk to the other girls, and it was good to let it out, vent a little, relax for an hour and a half every Tuesday night. 
 
But my brain was still messed up. They put me on Zoloft, after some persuading from my concerned sister, and I think it helped for a few months before my body got used to it. Then it stopped working, so one day, I took myself off of it. If you’ve ever read about or gone through Zoloft withdrawal, you know that it’s hell.
 
By eleventh grade, my grades dropped into the 40s and my parents grounded me. I wasn’t allowed to phone anyone, see anyone, or go online until my grades improved and my room got cleaned. 
 
Neither one happened. 
 
After a few months, my parents realized that grounding me was making it worse. I got new medication. They sat me down and asked me if I would like to try out a private school. A Sudbury school. A non-stressful, no curriculum, democratic school that lets its students choose how they spend their days, learning through everyday experiences and play. 
 
They told me I could visit the school and check it out, and I started sobbing. I didn’t see any way out before that. I had been planning to be dead before senior year, and this school was my miracle.
 
I’ve been going to Sudbury for around three months now, and it has changed my life. The doubts I had about the philosophy of the school dissolve with each 9-year old poet, each 6-year old who answers the phone, “Hello, Hudson Valley Sudbury School, how may I help you?”, with each child who knows more about friendship and morals and honesty and communication than half of the adults I know. This school, this crazy, radical, insane school, has saved my life. It has taught me to hold on to inspiration, to find new reasons to live every second, to be different and odd and inspirational and ferociously passionate. 
 
Every once in a while, for a few days, I get bogged down again. I sit down and feel like living is impossible, like I can’t possible keep going, like the world is fading to grey again. Depression will come back, smiling and spreading itself through my bloodstream, turning my bones to lead and asking, “Did you forget about me?”
 
But it knows better than to stay, and I know better than to let it. Because no, I didn’t forget. And I’m not cured. But I hold the chains now, the whip, whatever metaphorical leash I need to keep it down. I’m in control now.
 
What I’ve realized is that I was never weak. Throughout those five years of not being able to do anything and wanting to give up entirely, I was not weak. I was beaten, bruised, bloody, but I was alive. I am alive.
 
I am alive.
This article first appeared in the Good Life Youth Journal.  A free journal written by young people for young-minded people.

The Qualities of a Sudbury Education

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Last year I spent my afternoons tutoring students who came to me mostly from high-powered traditional private schools. I didn’t do much during sessions; I spoke casually with the students, commiserated, encouraged, laughed, asked occasional questions, and tried to stay out of their way as they navigated the difficulties of compulsory performance. But the students, their parents, and the owner of the company all thought I was doing a lot, and they happily bestowed upon me the credit for improvements in the students’ work and were delighted that the students actually enjoyed coming to tutoring after a full day of slogging through school. I admired and liked the owner of the company – my boss – and over the course of the year I described to him in detail the Sudbury philosophy and what I had been seeing at HVSS during my internship. He was interested, and understood and approved to an extent, but he did have a concern: “Matthew,” he told me, “you are an excellent teacher. You need to be working with kids and teaching them; I don’t want you to throw that away.” I was taken aback; alas, had I failed in my explanations of Sudbury?

There is a lot of play at Sudbury, and it could be said that play has a sacred place in the Sudbury philosophy because it is so often what kids want to do and what kids learn the most from doing. But it seems that in the process of learning the philosophy people often lose sight of the essential qualities of Sudbury education – freedom, trust, and responsibility, and come to believe that Sudbury only values play, or eschews other pursuits. But in the first instance – and in the last – Sudbury by definition does not approve of play or anything else over and above traditional academic pursuits, which have enormous value for me, personally. But any pursuit has little value outside the context of freedom, trust, and responsibility, and that’s the point.

One day at school a couple weeks ago I spent the morning quietly reading books about sticks, streams, and bunnies with a five year old girl. We paused to examine the illustrations, to read the expressions on the faces of the characters, and to guess at what else they might do in their imaginary lives. We talked about how lovely it might feel to just be a stick floating down a stream. Then, she was done, ready to move on. We walked down to the art room where an older girl taught us both how to make a potholder using a simple loom, which appealed to me because I’ve had it in the back of my head for years that I’d like to weave (now I have an extra potholder, too). Later in the afternoon I sat down with a teenager who was here on his visiting week. He had asked me to help him design a course of study focusing on human suffering and its causes, how chronically ill people are viewed in a society which privileges health, man’s pursuit of meaning despite suffering, and the roots of philosophy. We were beginning with Plato’s classic Meno. We each took roles in the dialogue and read aloud, pausing frequently to dissect Plato’s meaning and appreciate Socrates’ wit. At one point a group of younger kids came in to try to get the visiting student to come outside and play. “I need a little more of this, first,” he told them.

In the Meno, Socrates hypothesizes that knowledge lies latent within the hearts and minds of human beings, and we have only to “recollect” it. For Socrates, knowledge is found only by those who seek it honestly and diligently. When education is compulsory, so much of the work of the educator is figuring out how to get her students motivated. Games, rewards, punishments, and the passion of the teacher for the subject are all considered tools to achieve this. But these things very often fail, and in the process they debase students, telling them there is something essentially wrong with them (since they need to be compelled). For me, my own private play and imaginings have been the lodestar which has guided my investigation of life. Imagination has given me access to a wider scope of human activity than my tiny life could ever allow. When I am in a sword fight at Sudbury, I imagine that the swords are real. It takes concentration, but when it is done well – when the imagination is employed vigorously to polish the scene until it becomes real – the thoughts, emotions, and sensations of it spring to life – and later, questions, and the drive to investigate, and grow.

The next time I talk to my former boss at the tutoring company, I’ll tell him that I do get to “work with and teach students. I’d like to explain that freedom for students does not mean that formal learning does not happen at Sudbury; it means that when it does, there is a better chance for it to be authentic, because the student has chosen to engage in it – and meaningful, because it arises directly out of the student’s life – and fruitful, too, because students here come so often from the fecund fields of imaginative play.

Plato is rich and difficult; we moved slowly. We read a little more, spoke softly, laughed, concluded. Outside our window the group of kids ran by shrieking, pursued by goblins. The student got up and went out into the air and the sun, to play.

Right to Remain Silent Law?

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I am a new staff member here at Hudson Valley Sudbury School.  I moved from Massachusetts with my wife Ana and our baby Susannah to be a part of this place, and this post is meant to offer some insight into why we would do that.  

Last Friday evening my friend Douglas called me up to ask how it was going.  We’ve both taught in public schools, and one way we liked to describe the atmosphere in those schools was “tense boredom.”  In was tense because we were charged with ensuring that at all times our students were behaving according to enthusiastically precise guidelines; it was our job to contain and restrain the tremendous youthful energy before us, to make sure that it was pipelined into “productive work,” and that there were no leaks in the piping.  It was boring because a room full of otherwise creative and fun kids stripped of their rights to move, interact, create, and do much of anything is…boring, and sad too.  I took a minute to think before declaring to Douglas that at HVSS the atmosphere is the opposite: it is “relaxed engagement.”  I am relaxed, I explained, because at HVSS I am permitted to respect children and teenagers; I don’t have to exercise arbitrary authoritative power over them, and no one is exercising it over me, either.  I am engaged because when people are not under the yoke of arbitrary authoritative power they do a lot interesting things.  I am engaged because I am eager to learn – I have a new job, and I want to do it well.  I am engaged because in a small democratic community each person has the responsibility of making sure the school is operating in a just, respectful way.  The system here is alive and dynamic – all policies and laws can be changed by School Meeting, and that’s engaging.

Last week a student made a motion to put a new law into the books which stated that a School Meeting Member shall not be compelled to testify in the Judicial Council, a committee of students and staff who investigate complaints about law violations.  He was upset that he had been “forced to tattletale” on a friend because, at JC, as in our country’s Judicial System, a witness must testify; if you have evidence, you have to provide it (with some exceptions, of course).  He submitted his motion to be put on the School Meeting Agenda and started whipping up support.  He debated in the hallways.  He convinced and cajoled and wrangled: “so, have you heard about the “Right to Remain Silent Law?”  Then, at School Meeting he stood and spoke ardently and articulately, urging us to support his motion.  His case, essentially, was that witnesses should be allowed to decide for themselves the right course of action to take in testifying or not, that allowing them the choice was a manifestation of respect, that if this school is truly based on responsibility and trust then individual liberties – even liberties which may extend beyond what our wider society allows – should be steadfastly defended.  The counter-argument was made by students and staff, my self among the detractors: being forced to decide whether or not to testify puts witnesses in the difficult position of weighing the pros and cons of saying what they know vs. remaining silent to protect friends, which is unfair both to them and to any victims of rule violations.  There was a crowd on hand to witness and participate in the debate, and when it came to a vote it failed by a wide margin.  The student who sponsored the motion called the decision a “travesty” and a “violation of human rights” and left the meeting.  

I thought School Meeting made the right decision, but I’m not as sure now as I was when I voted.  Later that evening, washing dishes, I wondered if he was right after all – if, in a community built on trust and respect and which is bold enough to actually explore and live the implications of those values, it is indeed wrong to compel witnesses to testify.  For now, I still think we got it right, but I also think there’s more thinking to do.

In the traditional schools that my friend Douglas and I taught in, “respect” meant being obsequious and “responsibility” meant doing what you’re told.  At HVSS, “respect” and “responsibility” are living, dynamic aspects of human relationships, and our work at school is an ongoing investigation into them.  There are no authorities on the subject, just an open community of learners refining their thinking day by day.  We have the luxury of having sloughed off the burden of high-stakes testing and a model based on authority and instruction, and goodness let me tell you that’s relaxing.  We are free to work on more important things, to explore together what it means to respect and trust each other, and that kind of human-based work is – by definition – engaging.  It’s good to be here.

What Difference Does A Sudbury Education Make

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At our March informational meeting, a skeptical father asked me a very straight-forward question. He explained that after reading about the graduates of Sudbury Valley School he was convinced that this kind of education did not harm kids in their future academic pursuits and careers. But if it didn’t make any difference one way or the other, why send a kid to a Sudbury-model school? That question stayed with me for several days. It had been such a great opportunity to explain why this form of education is so important and I had somehow not risen to the occasion. I’d like now to answer him again, this time with the luxury of a little more forethought.

If academic skills and measurably “successful” careers were everything in life, I would, indeed, wonder whether this skeptical father had a point. But life is vastly more rich and complex than G.P.A.’s and salary levels. In fact, the really important things in life are immeasurable by any “objective” standard. So logical reasoning and intuitive understanding will have to suffice in what I’m about to argue. And perhaps, at a future get-together, we can lure a Sudbury Valley graduate or two to come serve as specimens or case studies to support (or contradict) what I contend.

Kids who are told what to do and how to do it, day in and day out; kids who are seldom allowed to make mistakes; kids who are kept busy in prescheduled activities from dawn to dusk; kids who are labeled in negative ways if they don’t keep perfect pace with the “average”; kids who are taught to prove everything they learn, and to let someone else decide whether they’ve learned it. These kids are bound to be different from kids who are allowed to take risks and fail sometimes, and then have the chance to try again; kids who are allowed to decide what they are interested in; to figure out how to make it happen; to find people they want to do it with; to decide for themselves when they’ve accomplished what they want to accomplish; and to generally run their own lives within a community in which they have a say. They will be very different. Just exactly how will depend a lot on the individual. It is safe to say, though, that certain characteristics or attitudes are learned in a Sudbury-model environment, especially by kids who spend several years there.

I see clearly six qualities (and many other related ones that I wish I had space to discuss) which Sudbury model schools have a much greater chance of fostering than traditional schools. Identifying these is clearly an oversimplification of a complex process, so please bear with these categories.

  • Self-respect. Students gain self-respect through a combination of having the time to really learn to know themselves and to trust their own judgment about their lives. Self-respect is also a direct by-product of being treated with respect. This quality serves to enrich their lives by allowing them, for example, to approach a college admissions officer aggressively or speak forcefully in a public hearing and also to sustain the reservoir of self-love which is necessary to be caring and respectful to others.
  • Self-motivation. When kids do what they care about, they really care about what they are do. Little kids never need to “learn” this skill. Its as natural as breathing. But older students often need time to rediscover intrinsic motivation. Students who were “unsuccessful” in traditional schools are burned out. Students who were “successful” are addicted to the extrinsic rewards they received for being a “good student.” When people are self-motivated, they can take the risks that make life worth living — starting their own businesses, pursuing goals that stretch their hearts and minds. They prefer activity to passivity. They are interested in finding out what makes other people tick.
  • Persistence. Watch a kid learning how to walk if you want to see persistence — two steps, fall, struggle back up, three more steps, fall, back up… Relentlessly pursuing a goal takes uninterrupted time and concentration. At Sudbury schools, students can spend weeks or months focused on a single subject. Musicians improvise for hours at a time. A group of youngsters builds onto the same block city for days on end. No clean up bell rings, no lunch period interrupts, no one is permitted to disturb another’s activity. In traditional schools, a change of subject or class every forty minutes or so is devastating to one’s ability to persist. Being required to do tasks one has no interest in is a lesson in energy conservation — do only as much as you have to to get by. No one needs to be told what persistence does for a person in the workplace. It could also be the difference between the appeal of watching a series of 30 minute TV shows (whatever happens to be on that night), and the attraction of digging into a book on a subject one cares about.
  • Personal Responsibility. Responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin. If kids are not allowed to make real decisions about their own lives, they cannot learn personal responsibility. If Johnny’s fish die because he forgets to feed them, or Susie is fired from her job because she keeps coming late, an invaluable lesson in responsibility has taken place. Our tendency in this culture is to protect our children, from the dangers of high climbing, from the cold weather they’ll be exposed to if they forget a coat, from the mistakes they could make in preparing for college. Our protectiveness continually reminds them that they are not responsible for themselves, that they don’t have to be because someone else is. When responsible students grow up, they don’t make excuses for their behavior. They know they are in charge of their own lives. They are not victims, unwilling participants. They choose their path prepared to follow through, and prepared to accept responsibility if they fail.
  • Creativity. Creativity at Sudbury model schools is exercised in every facet of school life. Students at Fairhaven School will by necessity rely on their own creativity for everything from building a bridge over the stream to raising money for a camcorder to proposing an appropriate J.C. consequence for spitball warfare. A great deal of lip service is given to the importance of creativity these days. And rightly so. The twenty-first century will be brimming with challenges which old solutions will not satisfy. The job skills required of twenty-first century workers will be so different from those of our generation that our human creativity and flexibility will be a fundamental requirement for survival.
  • Competence. This characteristic of people from Sudbury model schools might not be quite fair. It is really a combination of self-confidence, creativity, and persistence. But over time, people who are continually using their hearts, hands, and heads to pursue their own goals get pretty good at it. Being able to teach oneself something is a skill — it gets better with practice. Sudbury students pursuing a piece of knowledge ask questions of everyone they think can help, they search the internet, they read, they fiddle and doodle and think, they try and fail and try again … They get to know their own best way of grasping information or skills. They know how to pace themselves and when they’ve learned enough.

So, if we put all these qualities or characteristics together, we can imagine, for example, a Sudbury-educated car mechanic. He has the self-respect to know he can tackle a tough job and to treat his customers with dignity, the responsibility to do his job right, the motivation to keep up in his field, the creativity to think through a tricky engine problem and try new angles, the persistence to work at it until he’s got it right, and the competence to know how to access help when he needs it, to ask the right questions, and to apply them. He goes home to live a life where he’s curious about the world around him, he is caring and respectful in his relationships with family and friends, and takes responsibility for his own actions at home and in the larger community… Am I going too far here? Maybe. But Fairhaven School will do a better job at preserving and encouraging these qualities in its students than any traditional school. And the experience of being in a community where these qualities are truly valued will enrich the lives of Fairhaven students long after they’ve left the school.

Lessons of a Sudbury Education

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As we sit in our school’s main lounge, trying to write about the underlying lessons of a Sudbury education, we often find ourselves “off task.” We are watching the bustling activity around us…Jeff, a staff member, and Sonya, a 14-year-old student, are working on math problems in order to move her closer to her goal of becoming a vet. (She’s contacted Cornell University to find the best method of getting into their program.) Cody, age 11, and Madison, 15, are reading medicine cards for all who walk by. Eli, 5, and Kiran, 6, are comparing new Magic Cards and talking about the mysterious gum switcher—the spearmint and cinnamon gum from the School Store have seemingly switched bottles. The Judicial Committee members file into the JC room to start the daily session but Natasha, 15, one of our JC clerks, has to find a replacement for the 5- to 9-year old representative to the JC who is out sick. Success—Sophie, age 8, is filling in. Lisa, a staff member, and David, age 16, are discussing whether or not putting “spring water” on a bottled water label ensures you aren’t getting someone’s random tap water. A man drives up attempting to deliver food to the Zena Elementary School, a public school down the road. While only a few miles away, the Zena Elementary School couldn’t be more different then The Hudson Valley Sudbury School on Zena Road.

It struck us that we weren’t off task as our minds wandered. It makes perfect sense to explain our philosophy from the perspective of the students. Only through our students’ experiences are we truly able to give justice to a discription of the Sudbury education. To understand the Sudbury education you must first erase any preconceptions and conditioning you have about education. A Sudbury education is very different from any other type of education provided by either public schools or private schools. You have to be open to challenging your beliefs and trusting the fundamental principles of life.

Sudbury schools operate with no mandated or pre-determined curriculum. Students are responsible for every aspect of their education. This means that all day, every day students are free to decide how to spend their time and, in turn, the directions that their education and lives take. One of our parents termed this “Student Motivated Learning.” The Sudbury philosophy acknowledges that people learn best when the motivation comes from within instead of from an external source, be it a parent, teacher or national curriculum.

Sudbury schools are run by a participatory democracy. Each student and each staff has equal representation and an equal vote in the weekly School Meeting. This meeting makes all of the day-to-day decisions necessary to run the school; it is chaired by a student and is run similar to a town hall meeting. There is no principal, no higher authority, and no veto power.

Given that there is no mandated curriculum, it is hard to pinpoint what each student learns. They learn whatever they consider important enough to learn—reading, writing and basic math, but equally important, they might learn painting, physics, skateboarding, sewing, cooking, carpentry, Chinese—the list is infinite. Students learn important lessons just by being a member of the culture of a Sudbury school. John Taylor Gatto, who was twice named NYS teacher of the year, wrote a scathing rebuke of the public school system’s form of compulsory education in his essay “The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher.” Mr. Gatto describes the underlying or hidden lessons taught by the culture of compulsory education—lessons such as “stay in the class where you belong,” “you can only learn through an outside agent,” “you are subject to a chain of command,” “your self-respect should depend on an observer’s measure of your worth,” and “you are always under surveillance.” The “hidden” lessons are those that aren’t explicitly taught—no one stands up in front of the students and says, “you are subject to a chain of command.” The lessons are simply part of the culture, and to be successful in the culture the students have to conform to the cultural rules. Those students who don’t conform are labeled “trouble makers,” or even given a medical diagnosis of ADHD and prescribed medicine to numb them enough that they won’t disrupt the culture.

A Sudbury school also has lessons that are taught by its culture, however these are very different lessons than those taught by a compulsory educational culture. As we struggled to write this, we asked some of our students “what is it like to be a student in a Sudbury school?” Here are their responses:

Monty, age 8, who was in the kitchen in an intense version of his block men game said: “When my mom sent me to school in California, I didn’t like it so much. I was a prisoner. They wouldn’t let me free. I always had to do math, which wasn’t fun for me. There wasn’t any space to do things I wanted to do. Until I got to this school and it is great. Yes, good times.” Katya, age 7, who was restricted to the art room all day for being annoying, said “You don’t have people telling you how to live your life, you get to LIVE YOUR LIFE.”

Monty and Katya have flourished in the freedom that is fundamental to the Sudbury culture. Students are not told where they have to be, what they have to do, who they have to listen to or what they have to learn. Each student pursues his or her own independent path. Because no two people are exactly alike, no two students take the same path of learning. Some students spend their entire energy on music, some on art, some on math or physics. More important than anything they choose to do with their freedom is that they have the freedom. The most obvious lessons underlying freedom are independence and trust. By allowing our students the freedom to decide what to do, we communicate to them that they are independent beings with independent needs, goals, desires. We are also saying to them that we trust them to exercise this freedom. The underlying lessons will always be more important than how or whether they learned the quadratic equation. This freedom, therefore, is guarded with the utmost respect.

The brilliance of Sudbury schools is that responsibility is on an equal footing with freedom. Eli, age 5, who was playing Magic Cards with an older student said “The best thing about this school is you learn not to do bad things, like not to litter.” Responsibility and freedom intersect in the Judicial Committee (JC). This body consists of 5 students and a staff member, with each age group represented. The JC has the responsibility of ensuring that the School Meeting’s laws and policies are followed. This body resolves issues through investigation, charges, and sentences. There are thorough reports, motions, and pleas. Students have responsibility to this body through membership, testimony, and honesty.

The underlying message of holding people responsible is that the culture believes they are capable— capable of taking care of themselves, of deciding their path, capable of being an integral and active part of a larger community and helping to shape that community. Sudbury schools have very high expectations of their students. It is not an easy place to be. There is room to make mistakes but everyone must take responsibility for their choices. Students are held responsible for every aspect of their education, behavior, interactions, and the community. They have freedom to do as they choose but also the responsibility to not impinge on the freedom of others.

With this responsibility comes respect that is unmeasured. With this freedom comes a natural sense of joy, friendship, conversation, and life.

Alexei, age 16, said “When you tell a kid they can do anything, but we’re trusting you to do the right thing, they — especially the younger kids — take it to heart. They like to push the boundaries. If there’s nothing to push against, they’ll settle down and do work.” But the work that Alexei is referring to doesn’t look like work. Eli, age 5, said “In other schools you have to work all day, here you get to play all day.” By play, he doesn’t mean “recess.” Recess is defined as “a suspension of business.” Sudbury schools do not consider play to be a suspension of business— they consider it part of the “business” of the school. The underlying lesson in dividing a student’s time between “learning” and “recess” is that learning is not fun and recess is fun, that play is not important but learning is important. Students at Sudbury schools don’t differentiate between work and play, learning and fun. They play anything and everything with passion and intensity. They work at play like musicians work at music, like doctors work at medicine, and they play at work like writers play with language and carpenters play with wood.

Students and staff play constantly and they play together. Just as the lines blur between work and play, the lines of age become non-existent. Age mixing is the Sudbury secret weapon. There is no separation or grouping by age, but instead there is a community of people with different skills and different interests. Fifteen-year-olds read to six-year-olds and seven-year-olds give skateboarding tips to sixteen-year-olds. The competition created by putting all kids of the same age together, only to compare themselves against one other, is transformed to friends helping each other move through life in a natural and supportive way. The staff’s role at a Sudbury school is multi-faceted: they complete the age continuum, they model responsible behavior, and they handle the administrative work of running the school. Staff members are friends and playmates, sounding boards, counselors, parental figures, and most importantly, they hold the space that allows for freedom, trust and responsibility to flourish in each and every student.

Students who come through a Sudbury education are independent. They are responsible for themselves and responsible for their community. They are passionate and articulate. Through their independence they know what they want to do with their lives and are focused on accomplishing their goals. Through the responsibility and trust given to them they are self confident and able to accomplish those goals. When a student applies to college, for a job, or even a relationship and shows this level of independence, responsibility and self-confidence, they have an outstanding chance of acceptance, a chance above those who are just taking the next step deemed important by society.

At a gathering last week, the parent of a potential student asked us “how do you know that students flourish at a Sudbury School?” We know it without assessments, or grades; without evaluations or testing. We know it because we see it every day. We see it in the 7-year-old girl who used to call her parents every hour on the hour and now only calls them once a day. We see it in the 6-year-old boy who never wanted to be separated from his mother and who now runs out of the car to come into the school and doesn’t want to leave at the end of the day. We see it in the teenagers who are taking responsibility in the community by running for clerkships and are eager to be role models for the younger students. We see it in comments like “I look forward to the weeks and not the weekends” or “I can sing out loudly, badly and not feel embarrassed,” and “so, if it snows and only one staff member can get to school, do we still have to have a snow day?” We see it in the 11-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy who volunteered to be on the suspension committee of a 12 year old, because they, too, have had anger management issues.

We see it in the writing of two of our teenagers the first being Sonya, age 14, who has waited two years to experience our solid environment in which to pick her bouquet:

“School is a field of flowers. In public school you are in that field being told which flowers are best to pick. There are the red math flowers and the blue science flowers. Sometimes you will be told to pick the green English’s or the purple Social Studies. Your teacher will walk with you and hold your hand showing you how to pick the flowers—what to do once you have it in your hand. They show you how to place it carefully in your bouquet of knowledge so it doesn’t fall out.

At Sudbury you are put in a field with the flowers everywhere. You aren’t told what to pick and when to pick it. You are given the open field to crawl around in. When you look and find the prettiest flower you might stop and look at it carefully. Noticing the veins that trickle down the sides. The petals open up for you. While you look at it you see the inside of it colored yellow, red, and orange. Carefully so that you don’t break the stalk, you pull it lightly from the ground and let it roll on your fingertips, slowly one way then the other. Then just as soon as you have looked at it, you know everything there is to know, you add it to your pile of flowers that you have in your hand. Some of the kids in the field have a lot of the red math flowers. Other kids have a lot of green English’s. But in the end every one has a beautiful bouquet to call theirs.”

And, we see it in Natasha, a 15-year-old who commutes weekly from New Jersey to be in our school.

“Whenever someone asks me how I like my new school I always respond: “I love it! It’s absolutely awesome!” because it’s the only way I could come close to expressing my overwhelming happiness at HVSS. Hudson Valley Sudbury School has essentially been the key to the door that has opened up into a whole new way of living. I can say, without hesitation, that this has been one of the most important and positive decisions I have ever made in my life, and there is no way I would regret it. I really can’t say enough about the difference a Sudbury education has made in my life. This past weekend I was at a party of my father’s where there were many members of my family and family friends that I haven’t seen for months. When they saw the 360-degree turnaround in my attitude they were astounded. I was the cheeriest and happiest they had every seen me, since I was a child. My attitude this weekend is no exception—I’m always in a positive mood. I’m no longer pessimistic, but rather optimistic and greet the world with interest, curiosity, happiness and peace.

Every day I grow more and more as an independent person and less and less of a programmed machine. Within the last two months I have more of a sense of what I would like to do in my adult life than I have had in the last 15 years. For the first time that I can remember, I have goals and motivation, too. My motivation comes from my desire to learn what I have interest in—namely politics, activism, law, foreign languages, history, philosophy, art and literature. Organizational, communication, and leadership skills are all skills that I am learning and refining in the environment that Sudbury School has provided me. HVSS is like a loving, democratic community of amazing and diverse people. It’s a place where anyone can and usually is your friend—both staff and other children half (or twice) your age. This is a place where there is truly liberty and justice for all!

Sudbury schools are completely democratic—demonstrated in the workings of the Judicial Committee and School Meeting. Everyone is an equal—no exceptions. I know this school isn’t for everyone, but I think it could be for most people if they were really willing to give it a try and were open to this completely different way of learning, they would be amazed and flourish in this environment. Never be afraid of change—you could travel down some amazing paths if you allow yourself.”

The Sudbury Model of Education

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The Responsibility Spectrum

 

The fundamental difference between a Sudbury school and any other type of school is the student’s level of responsibility. In a Sudbury school the students are solely responsible for their education, their learning methods, their evaluation and their environment.

In a public school, the state takes responsibility for most aspects of a student’s education including curriculum and evaluation. The student is left with little responsibility except to learn what is taught, how it is taught, in the environment in which it is taught and then to reiterate it back at evaluation time.

In a non-Sudbury private school, the school administrators take a larger role in determining a student’s curriculum than in a public school. In some private schools, the school takes responsibility for evaluation, while in others the school administers the state tests. In most private schools, as with public schools, a student has personal responsibility only for learning what someone else determines is important to learn, at a time they think it is important to learn it, in a way someone else has determined it should be taught, in an environment designed by someone else, and they must do this well enough to pass the evaluations written and graded by someone else.

In a home schooling environment, parents take most of the responsibility for the student’s education. In New York and many other states, however, the state still takes some responsibility for determining the home scholar’s curriculum and for evaluating the home scholar. Home scholar’s are required to take the state mandated tests, and home schooling parents are required to fill out and submit progress reports to the local school district four times a year. Like public schools and most private schools, the responsibility is not with the student.

These educational options describe a range of responsibility. This range of responsibility starts with the student and extends to the parents, the school, the community, the state government and the federal government. We refer to this as the Responsibility Spectrum. Educational options with a compulsory curriculum (e.g. most public schools) tend to be on one end of the spectrum. Private schools span a large portion of the spectrum, with the school’s specific educational philosophy determining exactly where it falls on the spectrum. Home schooling also spans a large portion of the spectrum, with the parent’s specific educational philosophy determining the student’s level of responsibility. A Sudbury school is the only educational option where all of the responsibility is with the student.

 

The Sudbury Philosophy

 

Sudbury school students have total control over what they learn, how they learn, their educational environment and how they are evaluated. They choose their curriculum. They choose their method of instruction. They choose, through a democratic process, how their environment operates. They choose with whom to interact. They choose if, how and when to be evaluated _ often they choose to evaluate themselves. This is radically different from any other form of education and this is what differentiates a Sudbury school.

Why does a Sudbury school give this level of responsibility to the student? It is because Sudbury educators believe that children are capable of assuming this level of responsibility. It is not a type of pedagogical tool used to motivate the students. The responsibility is real; the students absolutely have the ultimate say in their education. Giving real responsibility to the students allows them to gain experience making decisions and handling the consequences of their choices. In this way, the students gain experience and maturity.

Much of the current effort in education is spent attempting to motivate students to learn. A Sudbury school doesn’t spend any time attempting to motivate students; we believe that they are inherently motivated. We believe this because all the evidence of childhood development supports it. Anyone who has observed a baby attempting to take his or her first steps or learn to talk can clearly see this. They struggle and fail and continue to struggle and fail until they finally _ on their own _ get it right and start walking and talking. If not suppressed, this inherent motivation to grow and develop does not die when the child reaches school age.

 

 If not suppressed, this inherent motivation to grow and develop does not die when the child reaches school age.

 

External motivation is only necessary when someone else determines what the student should learn. When the students determine their own curriculum, external motivation is not necessary. Studies have shown that when people determine for themselves what to learn, they retain the subject significantly better than if someone else determines what they should learn.1

The general consensus in our society seems to be that if left to their own devices children would never learn anything. They must be told what is important to learn and when to learn it. At a Sudbury school, the staff and parents believe that the students are the ones to decide what is important for themselves to learn. They are the ones responsible for choosing their interests and, eventually, their life goals. There are a number of examples of this in a Sudbury school. One of the clearest examples is the case of a young girl who, in the judgment of the Sudbury school staff, had a tremendous writing talent. For years after the girl started at the Sudbury school, the staff thought that they should encourage the girl to focus on her writing skills. Instead the girl spent the time socializing with her peers. After a few years of writing little or nothing, the girl returned to writing and her writing ability had taken a significant leap forward in depth and the understanding of human emotions. It became clear to the staff that her years socializing were not “wasted”. They had been spent, consciously or unconsciously, learning about people. When the staff reflected on this, they realized that the girl had spent her time exactly the way she needed to spend it. If they had forced, or even subtly encouraged, her to spend her time writing, she would have probably improved the mechanics of her writing skill, but would have lost the depth and the feeling that her writing developed by being able to socialize with and understand other people.

No one at a Sudbury school will tell the students what they have to learn. No one will exert any pressure on a student to learn a subject. No one will even suggest that it would be a good idea that students learn a subject. The entire responsibility is left to the students; we refer to this as Student Initiated Learning. When students are left to decide for themselves what to do and what to learn, they spend much of their time socializing. Unlike compulsory curriculum schools, a Sudbury school believes the time spent socializing is invaluable to a student’s education and growth.

One of the common questions asked of Sudbury educators is, “what happens if a child doesn’t want to learn to read?” Our answer is that this just doesn’t happen. It is akin to asking, “what happens if a child doesn’t want to learn to talk?” In our society reading is an important communication tool. People are inherently motivated to expand their ability to communicate, and this inherent motivation will result in children learning to read. However, in a Sudbury school, reading is seldom “taught” in the way we think of reading being taught. No teacher stands in front of 5 and 6 year olds and breaks words into their phonetic elements. Instead, reading is part of the culture _ just as talking is part of the culture. Students learn to read, and largely teach themselves to read, because they want to be able to more fully participate in the world. The original Sudbury school, the Sudbury Valley School, has been in existence for 36 years. During this time, they have had thousands of students. No child has failed to learn to read in the school’s entire history, and yet they have never had a formal reading class. This same experience is seen in learning other “basics”, such as writing and math. The students learn them because they recognize that they need to learn them in order to survive and prosper in the culture.

Sudbury schools do not have formal evaluations of their students. There are no grades and there are no tests. We believe that the best person to evaluate a student’s progress is the student. Students know when they understand a subject or a skill and when they do not. Experience has shown that when a student self-evaluates, they have a much higher standard than when someone is evaluating them. They tend to measure themselves against perfection – not against “good enough”. Occasionally a student will ask for outside evaluation from either a staff member or another student. When they do this, they demand an honest critique. They are not interested in being lied to. They are striving for perfection and want to know if they have reached it.

In a Sudbury school, there is no separation by age. All of the students are free to mix with other students of any age. In a school with a compulsory curriculum it is necessary to separate students by ability so that they can all be instructed at the same time _ the easiest way to do this is to assume that children of the same age have the same abilities and interests. This can lead to some students becoming bored if the pace of instruction is too slow, and some students becoming stressed and eventually disenfranchised if the pace of instruction is too fast. In a Sudbury school, the students can pursue their education at their own pace so there is no reason to separate students by age.

Sudbury schools believe that there is a great advantage gained by being able to allow students of different ages to freely mix. In fact, age mixing has been called a Sudbury school’s “secret weapon”. There are emotional, social and educational advantages to allowing different ages to mix. Emotionally, older students can play the role of big brother or sister to the younger students. Younger students gain security and comfort in this relationship. Age mixing provides a safe environment for students to work on their social skills. Students that are not confident of their social skills can practice them and work to improve them by interacting with other students; whether older, younger or the same age. Students of all ages can look to more mature students or the staff as role models.

In Sudbury Schools, it is very common for students to learn from other students. Sometimes the teaching student is older than the learning student, sometimes the teacher is younger than the learner, and sometimes they are the same age. The only constant is that both the teacher and the learner improve their knowledge of the subject. One of the best ways to improve knowledge of a subject is to teach it to someone else.

In order for the students to be able to be totally responsible for their education, they must have _ or at least share _ the responsibility for creating their learning environment. This means that Sudbury schools are run as a participatory democracy. All of the students and staff (together known as the School Meeting) are part of the democracy and all of the students have an equal voice in discussions and an equal vote in decisions. In other words, a 5 year old student has the same voice and power in the school as a staff member. The staff have no veto power of decisions made by the School Meeting. The only limit placed on the School Meeting is that they cannot make a law that would violate local or state laws and they cannot make a rule that would put the school community at risk.

 

 In other words, a 5 year old student has the same voice and power in the school as a staff member. The staff have no veto power of decisions made by the School Meeting.

 

Through participation in the school’s democratic process, the students gain experience working with others to make decisions. They gain experience advocating their positions on important issues that effect their day-to-day life. They come to understand that their opinions matter and that they can have an effect on the larger community.

 

Day-to-Day Operation of a Sudbury School

 

Sudbury schools operate very differently than any other type of school. In order to create an environment where the students are responsible for their education, the structure of the school had to change. The most striking difference is that there are no “classrooms” and there are no “teachers” _ at least not in the traditional sense of the words. Students are free to determine how the spend their time each day, they are not limited to a classroom where an adult tells them what they have to learn. They might work on an art project, play sports, cook, dance, read, talk to other students or staff, build a fort, watch birds, do a science experiment, climb a tree, write a story, play a computer game, or work with an off-campus mentor. When students decide they want to learn something new, whether it is an academic subject or not, they either ask a staff member for help, ask another student, or simply learn it on their own.

Each week there is a meeting, the School Meeting, where most of the day-to-day issues of operating the school are discussed and voted on. The School Meeting is run like a New England Town Hall Meeting. The School Meeting is run by the School Meeting Chair and the minutes are taken by the School Meeting Secretary. In most cases, the School Meeting Chair and Secretary are students who have been elected by the other students and staff. An agenda is published prior to the meeting and all students and staff members are welcome to attend the School Meeting. All students and staff have an equal voice in the discussions and an equal vote on the decisions.

The School Meeting has the final authority over all matters of a Sudbury school’s operation with the only exceptions being the yearly budget, the staff pay scale, graduation requirements and the Open Campus policy. These issues are the responsibility of the Assembly. The Assembly is composed of the students, their parents or guardians and the staff and is also operated as a participatory democracy. The Assembly typically meets once a year to approve the following year’s budget. The Assembly gives parents an important voice in vital issues pertaining to the school.

One of the most important aspects of running any institution is enforcement of the institution’s rules. In a Sudbury school, the School Meeting is responsible for making and enforcing these rules. This responsibility is often delegated to a smaller group of students and staff known as the Judicial Committee or JC. In most Sudbury schools, the Judicial Committee is composed of two JC Clerks, 3-5 students from different age groups and one staff member. The JC Clerks are typically students and are elected by the School Meeting and usually serve for two months. It is their job to ensure that the JC runs smoothly. The students from the different age groups serve on a rotating basis _ similar to jury duty. The staff member is typically rotated on a daily basis.

When a student or staff member believes that a school rule has been violated, he or she fills out a JC complaint form. The complaint describes what happened, where and when it happened and any witnesses. The JC meets on a daily basis and reviews all of the current JC complaints. For each complaint, the JC investigates the incident, writes a report of their investigation and determines if any school rules have been violated. If they determine that a rule has been violated, they press charges against the person (student or staff member) who they believe violated the rule. The person can then plead guilty or innocent. If a guilty plea is entered, the JC determines the appropriate sentence for the violation. If an innocent plea is entered, a trial takes place. Just as in the School Meeting, each member of the JC has an equal voice and vote.

One of the most important responsibilities of the School Meeting is to determine the staff. This is done each year by voting on whether current staff members should be re-hired for the next year. It is a very radical idea that students are allowed to help determine the staff of a school, but it is a necessity if they are to be given true responsibility for their education. There is no such thing a partial responsibility. The students are either responsible or they are not. They are either trusted or they are not. If the students were not allowed to participate in the selection of the staff members, one of the most important aspects of the school’s environment and operation would be taken from them. The message would be that they are not trusted with the responsibility of making really important decisions.

 

It is a very radical idea that students are allowed to help determine the staff of a school, but it is a necessity if they are to be given true responsibility for their education. There is no such thing a partial responsibility.

 

If the staff members are not responsible for directing a student’s education what are they responsible for? What is the role of staff? At a Sudbury school, the staff members are responsible for the continuing operation of the school. The staff members are expected to be role models of responsible adult behavior. They are expected to offer their insights and experience to School Meeting discussions. They are expected to be available to the students when they ask for assistance and guidance. Most of all they are expected to help ensure the continued operation and success of the school by providing continuity in the school community and culture.

One of the most striking aspects of a Sudbury school is the relationship between the staff and the students. Sudbury school staff members have high expectations of the students. They expect them to be able to take responsibility. They interact with the students as if they were adults _ perhaps young and inexperienced adults, but adults none-the-less. They listen to the students.

At times, students in a Sudbury school will decide that they want to learn a subject or they will decide that they want to pursue an educational or career path. When they decide this, the staff is there to support their choice and to help them achieve their goals. This can be done by actively teaching a subject, recommending a book or other reference material, identifying an outside resource or setting up an internship. An example from our school is a student who is very clear that she wants to become a veterinarian. She approached the staff and asked what she would need to do in order to get into a good college as a pre-veterinarian major. The staff helped identify the subjects she would have to know. The staff also helped her set up a short program with a local veterinarian. During this program the student visited the veterinarian’s office during school hours. When the program was finished, the veterinarian was very positive about the experience and indicated that the student would be welcome to come back for an internship once she reached the legal age of employment. The key to all of this is that the student knows what she wants. The staff is there to support and to encourage her along her path, but not to determine her path.

 

Results of a Sudbury Education

 

Because the Sudbury Model of Education is so different from any other form of education, many people wonder about the results of a Sudbury education. Specifically, they wonder if Sudbury graduates will be able to get into college or if they will be able to handle the “real” world. In short, Sudbury graduates have historically done very well when applying for college. The Sudbury Valley School has done an extensive study of their former students2. The results of their study show that a large majority (87%) of the graduates continue on to some form of further education; 4-year college, community college, performing arts school, culinary institute, etc.

Unlike Compulsory Education schools, graduates of a Sudbury school do not get into a college based on their transcript and their extracurricular activities. Sudbury school graduates get into colleges because they tend to be very focused on their career choice. This results in college applications that stand out from the crowd. Sudbury student’s have had the time during their high school years to investigate different options and to discover what they are passionate about.

One of the most striking facts discovered in Sudbury Valley School’s study of their former students is that 42% of the students who responded to the survey are either self employed or involved in entrepreneurial situations.2 This is understandable given the educational philosophy of a Sudbury school. The students have been able to develop their interests and to develop their ability to take responsibility. Once accustomed to having responsibility, it is difficult to abdicate responsibility to someone else.

 

Conclusion

 

One of the common misconceptions about a Sudbury school is that it must be easy _ after all, the students are free to do what they want to do without a teacher telling them what to do. This could not be further from the truth. A Sudbury school is hard for exactly the same reason people think it is easy. With no one telling the students what to do, the students are left with no choice but to decide what to do on their own. This is much more difficult than simply following instructions.

Once people understand the Sudbury philosophy, they often ask “why doesn’t everyone send their children to a Sudbury school?” My answer is simply that many parents do not believe or trust that their children are motivated to learn. I cannot count the number of times that a parent has told me, “it sounds great, but my child would just play all day and never learn anything _ she needs to be pushed”. Out of politeness, I do not question this belief. In my mind however, my response is, “if your child is not motivated, she would still be lying in her crib, crying for food when she was hungry”. The child was motivated enough to learn how to walk, how to eat solid food, how to talk and many, many other skills. It would truly be easier for children to just lie in the crib and cry for food, but they choose to take the harder path of learning to move from babyhood to childhood. Likewise, children will choose to take the difficult and empowering path of moving from childhood to adulthood.

 

(Footnotes)

1 Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R. M. (2002). The paradox of achievement: The harder you push, the worse it gets. In J. Aronson (Ed.)

2 Greenberg, D., & and Sadofsky, M. Legacy of Trust: Life After the Sudbury Valley School Experience (1992) (Sudbury Valley School Press; Framingham, MA) pp. 249.