Sudbury
I’ve been aware of the Sudbury Valley School for a while, and I’m naturally attracted to this sort of democratic, find-your-own-path, kind of institution. Think about your high school education, and ask yourself if you know why you learned the things you did, and how well they served you in college, and how well that whole experience serves you now. The concept that people don’t all need to learn the same things and that our own impulses and desires are a perfectly good guide to what we should learn, as long as we are well-supported in that endeavor, seems a totally foreign one. But I can’t exactly figure out what’s so wrong with it, except that it’s wildly different from what people are used to. Every time I think about it, I have a vision of working at a school like that. What I didn’t realize is that there are other schools using this model, including a couple here in the Bay Area.
A short clip from Voices from the New American Schoolhouse has been making the rounds, and watching it reminded me of the possibilities for different types of schools. I’d love to experience something like this, to see what it’s like when kids are choosing everything for themselves. Last year I visited a very traditional private school with a relaxed policy about students coming and going from class, and it had an entirely different feeling on campus. It was like that little choice given to students made them into far more serious and responsible. I’m curious about the range of different models between traditional and Sudbury, and what tradeoffs there are.
