Homeschooling families are all too familiar with this question. I remember growing up as a homeschooler and hearing people express their grave concerns about how we would ever function in society. “They really should be in school—to be socialized.” And then as an adult, unschooling our own children, I remember hearing this question and being defensive about it. For a while, I’d point to all the social activities the kids were involved in, like play dates and church activities and field trips. But then as I continued to read and reflect more about the social institution of traditional schooling, I stopped being defensive. It suddenly became easy to answer the question.

Yes, what about socialization? What kind of socialization do I want for my kids? Do I want them to be imprisoned in classrooms segregated by age? Do I want their lives to be driven by bells? Do I want them to grow up in a social atmosphere in which kids are pitted against adults—a breeding ground for resentment, suspicion, and bad attitudes on either side? No, I’ll spare my kids that sort of “socialization,” thank you very much. It’s too disconnected from the real world. Or maybe it’s all too connected—connected to the dreary lives that people willingly choose, in jobs they hate, serving people they despise. Do I want my kids to learn that it has to be that way? No, thank you. You can keep your “socialization.”

That was my attitude. It was a bit harsh and unrefined and certainly not the whole truth, although I still think there is truth to it. In recent years, we discovered Sudbury schooling and our minds opened to further possibilities and definitions for “socialization.” Merriam-Webster defines “socialize” as:

to make social; especially : to fit or train for a social environment

When we learned about the social environment of Sudbury schools, loosely characterized as “unschooling schools,” we started to see some value over and above what unschooling had to offer. And it almost entirely had to do with the social environment. I still didn’t like the term “socialization,” because it brought up for me what most people are referring to—school-ization. But now we were thinking about it in a new way. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s go back to some basics.

Attachment is foundational

Growing up is about becoming independent. When we’re born, we’re totally dependent on our parents, especially our mothers. We’re not only physically dependent on them, but emotionally too. The quality of our attachment to our parents is crucially important for establishing security and a sense of well-being in life. That sense of security leads into self-confidence later in life. Over and over again, attachment parenting has shown that—far from kids becoming overly dependent on their parents, they establish such a sense of security that, when they get older, they feel emboldened to take things on by themselves. They somehow internalize the sense of security they got from the close bonds they had with their parents so that even when they ostensibly break those bonds, they continue to carry that sense of security with them into adulthood.

And I honestly think that will be true regardless of what schooling environment kids find themselves in (traditional, unschooling, or otherwise). By the time they go to school, it’s relatively late in life. They’ve had a chance to either develop strong bonds with their parents and that attendant sense of security, or not. (Maybe I should spend more energy evangelizing attachment parenting rather than educational alternatives, but I digress…) Even so, people are resilient, amazing creatures. We’re always adapting to our environment, learning new things, refining our model of the world, and growing. The longer I’ve reflected on this, the more laid back I’ve gotten about schooling choices. “Huh?” you may ask. “What about all the rhetoric on this blog?” Well, it’s true, I do want to jar people into thinking about this stuff. It is important. But ultimately, except in the worst of situations, kids are not going to be destroyed. There are plenty of happy kids in public schools. They’re learning to cope and make sense of their world just as much as anyone else.

Parents have choices

So… where am I going with all this? It’s here: It was from a place of freedom and choice that we decided to send our kids to a Sudbury school. We started off with the assumption that, no matter what schooling environment we put our kids in, they would not self-destruct. We trusted them to not do that. Having achieved that sense of clearing, we then felt the freedom to let go of our dyed-in-the-wool unschooling philosophy just enough to allow for a different kind of experience—at least to try it out. And we haven’t been disappointed. Nor have the kids. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still be attending. (And who knows, they may still decide to go down a different path one of these years.)

Trust is contextual

Is sending your kids to a Sudbury school an indication that you don’t trust them to thrive at home? Have you then failed at trusting your kids? This is a trap. I could just as easily apply that logic to traditional schooling. Is pulling your kids out of public school an indication that you don’t trust them to thrive at school? The point is that trust is contextual. Trust as a value in and of itself is a bit misguided. We need to be specific about who and what we’re trusting. Otherwise, we can hoodwink ourselves into thinking that making any choice for change indicates we’ve somehow failed at “trusting.” Can you think of any examples of people or situations you do not trust? Or that you should not trust? Does that mean you’re not good at trusting? More to the point, can you think of two good, trustworthy things and yet choose one over the other?

For my family, unschooling and Sudbury schooling were those two good things. We’d be happy doing either. But we saw even more value in Sudbury than in unschooling.

The positive side of socialization

In particular, we saw that, by separating from their parents for a period of time each day, our kids would learn a measure of independence they would not gain—or not gain as effectively—without doing so. This was not easy. We had to let go of being aware of what they were doing all the time. We enjoyed the privilege that unschooling parents have: experiencing and sharing in practically all their growth experiences. That was hard to let go of. But we could see—and were convinced by everything we learned from others who had gone before us—that there was gold in them thar hills.

To be around your parents constantly, even as you grow beyond 4, 6, 10, 13 years old is to miss out on the opportunity to experience early on what it’s like to participate in a larger community as an individual without the safety net of having your parents nearby. Parents, regardless of parenting style, have an immense power over their kids. We see many parents abuse this power. We also see parents take this power very seriously, doing everything they can to ensure that their influence on their kids will be a good one. Yet if your parents are never far from your side, you are missing out on the opportunity—I know this is a statement of the obvious—to experience yourself outside that context.

We were impressed by the kids we saw in videos like Voices from the New American Schoolhouse. We were impressed by how articulate and thoughtful these kids were, by how considerate they were of other people in their environment, and by how much they valued respect and responsibility. And, yes, we made value judgments. We were making judgments about what we valued for our kids; among those values was the desire for our kids to have the experience of making their own value judgments and decisions about what to do with their time in contexts unmonitored by their parents. We saw that by sending our kids to a Sudbury school, they would be free—even more free than as unschoolers—to grow into the contours of their unique potential.

And of course, it’s not just separation from parents that is valuable. It’s the participation in a wider community—larger than one’s own family, sharing space and resources, learning to respect other people, learning responsibility, learning how one’s own actions affect others, whether positively or negatively. It’s about broadening your social awareness and deepening your social skills by participating in a wider community.

We also saw that we could do this without giving up family togetherness and cohesion. We still have mornings and afternoons and weekends to do stuff together, to enjoy each other’s presence, to love each other and grow closer together. And we are rejuvenated when we reunite. It’s a win/win solution that works well for our family.

Does Sudbury schooling then differ in philosophy from unschooling? There’s no doubt about it. Are there commonalities? Yes, definitely. Are you as parents free to make choices in what to suggest for your kids? This article is an attempt to consciously and honestly influence you to answer “yes.” But that too is your choice.

We love unschooling, but we love Sudbury schooling (specifically The Trillium School) even more.

There are definitely benefits that are unique to unschooling, as opposed to Sudbury schooling. When compared to Sudbury schooling, unschooling affords:

• More family scheduling freedom
• More time with one or both parents

Many unschooling parents won’t be willing to let go of these benefits of unschooling. And I totally respect that choice. My point in “Unschooling vs. Sudbury schooling” was to compare and contrast two wonderful alternatives, not necessarily pit them against each other.

But there was one phrase in my last post that hit a nerve, despite my intention to write objectively. Regarding what Sudbury schooling offers in differentiation to unschooling: “For a significant period of time each day…[kids] pursue their interests in a context that’s free from any form of (subtle or overt) parental influence.” I think it’s possible to read that as a factual statement without the connotation that being with parents is bad. Consider this: I wrote it, and I think parental influence is a good thing. Let me repeat: yes, I want to influence my kids—by my example and whatever wisdom I can share with them while they’re living with me. (No, I don’t want to control their choices. I trust that they are learning to make authentic choices on their own, that they will learn what they need to learn, and that they’ll grow into wonderful adult human beings.) By the way, please substitute a different word for “influence” if it inherently brings up negative connotations.

Nevertheless, it did hit a nerve. In “The Dark Side of Influence,” Wendy Priesnitz criticizes Sudbury schools as being based on “faux-democracy” and “substituting adult’s choices for children’s choices.”

The idea is noble: to help the kids make a commitment, to foster cooperation and relationships, and to help them learn about consequences. But, in short, it’s about adults enforcing something on kids because it’s assumed they won’t learn the stuff on their own, that they don’t know what’s in their own best interest, that we have to make them do stuff “for their own good.”

This is a mischaracterization of Sudbury schooling. They won’t learn what stuff on their own? Adults enforce what exactly? What are kids made to do “for their own good”? The only evidence she cites is the attendance policy. The one concrete thing that students are supposedly “coerced” to do is attend school. Yet here is the extent of the “coercion”: If you want to be here, you have to be here. If you stop attending, you may lose the privilege of attending. We ask you to be here for, say, 5 hours per day. Do you want to make that commitment? (It’s up to you.)

There are good reasons for requiring this commitment, not the least of which is cohesiveness and continuity of the community. Regardless of the reasons, this is definitely an adjustment for families that aren’t used to it. It’s an adjustment for both the parents and the kids. But they are entirely free to opt out (as my son did). Oftentimes, it’s the kids (especially when they’re older) that find out about their local Sudbury school and convince their parents to make the commitment that they’re so ready to make.

Note: In practice, attendance, while taken seriously, is flexible, provided that everyone is communicating. Policies will vary from school to school, but one family at Trillium is on a two-week vacation right now. They let the school know, and everyone was totally cool with it.

Ultimately, I get the feeling from Wendy that she thinks that Sudbury schooling represents a fake form of trust. But which requires greater trust? Keeping your kids in your care all day, where you know what they’re doing and who they’re with at all times? Or sending them to a place where they are afforded the same sort of freedom but without you there to watch? Whether or not this is valuable is another question. We’re not having a “parental trust contest,” I hope. I’d rather focus on what’s best for particular families and particular kids. Sudbury has a lot to offer that unschooling doesn’t, and vice versa.

So let me try again, using different words:

• Fact: Sudbury students are separated from their parents for a significant period of time each school day.
• Fact: Sudbury schools tend to be significantly larger and more diverse than individual families. As such, community agreements are made using a formal democratic process.

Please consider that, by pointing out these rather obvious distinctions, I am not attacking unschooling. What I’m trying to do is this: help parents think through what their options are, comparing and contrasting different aspects of each approach.

And I still haven’t even gotten to the benefits that I see as unique to Sudbury schooling. In other words, why might an unschooling family consider Sudbury schooling to be a desirable choice (as we did)? That will have to come in another post.

Similarities

Both unschooling and Sudbury schooling value the concept of self-directed education. Proponents of both share common insights and make some of the same challenges to traditional schooling:

• People are born learners. Children are trusted to have the desire and ability to engage in—and learn how to operate effectively in—their world.
• Coercion creates resistance. Forcing people to learn something tends to spoil it for them. It becomes something they have to do, not something they might choose to be interested in. Force takes away that possibility of choosing. Done systematically, you can spoil a whole range of subjects. Consequently, force in the form of required curricula is eschewed.
• Conversely, people learn best when they’re interested in what they’re learning. A high value is placed on what children are interested in. Supportive energy is directed to helping them succeed in the goals they choose for themselves.
• People are different. They have different interests, aspirations, and passions. Consequently, children aren’t expected to learn the same things as everyone else.
• People grow at different paces. Consequently, children aren’t expected to, for example, learn to read at a specific, pre-determined age.

Differences

Despite all the similarities, I can think of two ways in which Sudbury schooling differs fundamentally from unschooling:

• Kids at a Sudbury school are regularly separated from their parents for a significant period of time each day. They pursue their interests in a context that’s free from any form of (subtle or overt) parental influence.
• The social structure of a school is necessarily different than the social structure of a family. Sudbury schools are run democratically, where School Meeting is the single authority within the school.

The aspects of separation from parents and formalized democratic process make Sudbury schooling look quite different from unschooling, as it turns out.

I think I’ll explore what’s significant about these differences in a future article.

I quickly point out that I know little about the Sudbury approach so please forgive me for feeling like your answer is incomplete.

I think you’re right. There’s more that should be said about this.

“Sudbury students, by necessity, learn self-regulation, because no one else is there to regulate them…”

That’s it? Taken out of context, that sounds like great potential for chaos. If there is no one there to regulate them, is there someone there to teach them how to regulate themselves? Does anyone there give them guidance? Kids don’t often have the same value system.

Each school has an implicit shared value system as reflected by their community agreements. All school members are held accountable to keeping those agreements. The Judicial Committee (JC) is essential in this regard. It provides a structure for the school to compassionately address complaints one member may have against another. The reality is that chaos does not reign at Sudbury schools. Stated more positively, the reality is that Sudbury schools are phenomenal examples of people being civil and respectful to each other. I think one of the key reasons for this is that there’s no one to rebel against. There’s no “us vs. them” mentality. There’s only “us.”

Chaos sometimes erupts in traditional schools because of an underlying pent-up urge to break out of all the externally imposed controls. When there are so many people (kids) controlled by so few (adults), there’s an imbalance in the system. Remove that imbalance and there’s nothing to drive an eruption, or to cause chaos to ensue. To assume otherwise is to assume that kids are chaotic by nature and that, if kept unchecked, kids will—I don’t know—self-destruct? Proponents of the Sudbury approach don’t share that assumption. And many, many years of experience haven’t given them any reason to think otherwise.

I’ve always felt that teaching kids self-discipline and respect for others should begin at home and be supplemented by the school. The two efforts should be complementary.

I agree that respect is learned (or not) both at home and at school. But the question should be: How is respect for others best learned? Should it be taught from without? Modeled by example? Coerced by threat of punishment? If a child acts “respectful” simply in order to avoid punishment, how genuine is that respect? Do we care if it’s genuine? Or is the respect afforded someone potentially related to the respect they will in turn afford others?

In this case, if the effort at home is lacking, it sounds like there isn’t a back-up plan at school.

On the contrary, respect for others is supremely valued by and foundational to the Sudbury school model. Kids find that they are respected as first-class people at school, even if they are used to being treated as second-class citizens elsewhere, whether at home or at their previous school. Once this realization sinks in, a wonderful thing happens. They stop fighting against the world. They start to lay down the defenses they’ve built up over the years. And they find a place from which to reach out to others in a loving way. Respect for others as human beings, regardless of differences in age or otherwise, is foundational. But it’s only the beginning.

Here’s a compelling vision. Wouldn’t it be great if we no longer had to ask the question, “How do we teach kids respect?” The Sudbury approach and others like it envision a world in which respect is part of the air kids breathe.

What is self-discipline? Merriam-Webster defines it as “correction or regulation of oneself for the sake of improvement.” How does one learn to regulate oneself? I’m in my 30s, and I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question. I run my own business from home, and I’d be lying if I told you it hasn’t been a challenge figuring out how to consistently correct and regulate my own behavior. The Internet is a carrier of so many distractions, and my job involves being on the computer for most of the day. It does take real discipline—and the development of new habits—to resist those distractions and make myself focus on what it is I want to be accomplishing.

One of the chief things I’ve learned is that I need help from other people. I need a support network. In fact, I recently discovered that daily accountability is what really works for me. I have a call with an accountability partner every morning to review yesterday’s wins and challenges and to communicate my goals for today. This has been immensely powerful for me. Just that little bit of support has made it much easier to discipline myself and relax into the schedule I’ve laid out for myself on any given day.

I thrive on structure, but I don’t have a boss telling me what to do and when to do it. Instead, I’ve had to create my own structures, by seeking out help from other people. That alone has been immensely empowering—knowing that I can evaluate my own weaknesses and accordingly seek out the help I need from others. I’ve learned to regulate myself using whatever means I can.

Faced with gobs of time by myself, I am forced to consider what is important to me. If I care about something enough, I will figure out what I need to do to make it happen. I’ve gone through periods of discontent and boredom, passing the time, trying to figure out what I want and what works for me. At various times I’ve been tempted to go back to a “normal” job, where someone is there to tell me what to do all the time. But then I realize the deception. In my line of work (and in most people’s these days), it’s never that simple. You still have to figure out how to manage your time, boss or no boss. And I remember all the freedoms I’d be giving up if I were to do that. So I re-focus and find the resources to make it work.

This is similar to the plight of a Sudbury school student—with the major difference being that Sudbury students already dwell in a richly supportive and stimulating community of people. (I’ve already confessed my envy over that.) But the gobs-of-time component is the same. Time is the clay of life, and it’s their responsibility to figure out what they want to sculpt. Structures and support are available, but the onus is on them to request help in creating them. Sudbury students learn that if they want something to happen, they’re the ones who are going to have to make it happen.

Sudbury students, by necessity, learn self-regulation, because no one else is there to regulate them—except insofar as they are held accountable to keeping community agreements, i.e. rules. The Judicial Committee (JC) is the school structure to ensure that all people (staff or students) are held accountable for keeping community agreements. (You can read more about JC here.)

In a traditional school, discipline is externally imposed. Students learn to do as they are told. They are taken to account for deviating from their prescribed activity. Figuring out what to do with their time is not something that students in a traditional school have to worry about (at least during school hours). These decisions are made for them anew every day. Of course, there are certain freedoms, and learning definitely takes place. Students learn how to cope with externally imposed schedules, and they learn to make choices about what attitudes they want to bring to school. But it’s a narrow form of freedom and it doesn’t require the kind of decision-making that Sudbury students are, in effect, forced to engage in.

When I think of the Sudbury school experience, I think of it as a crucible for learning. Without handholding, without smothering, students are forced to look within for the power they need to find their place in the world. That’s hard work. What results from that hard work? As an adult who has been engaging in that kind of hard work, I can say that it has deepened my understanding of what’s important to me, and it has increased my ability to regulate myself—to discipline myself—toward achieving goals that align with my highest values. Sudbury students are given the opportunity to learn this early on.

I noticed that right now on the Sudbury Valley School website that Dan Greenberg is going to be giving a talk in March, called “Sudbury Valley – the easiest school? Or the hardest?” I think I know what his answer is going to be.

I was homeschooled from 3rd to 9th grade. (I’ve related some of my highschool experiences already.) I’ve always been proud of the education of my youth. My mom was truly a pioneer in education. Whereas now there are homeschoolers everywhere, very few people were doing it when I was a child. My mom and a small group of other parents had convictions about education and the sort of environment they wanted to raise their kids in—and they did something about it. They pulled their kids out of school and taught them at home. I have fond memories of homeschooling and the freedom it afforded us. We could go skiing on Mondays when the slopes were clear. We could go on impromptu outings and field trips to the Science Center or play dates with our fellow homeschoolers. This experience had a definite impact on the choices I planned to make as a parent.

For one thing, I had experience with alternatives. Many people grow up without ever considering educational alternatives, but for my family, it was totally normal to do so. Just the fact that we did this—even if the education my kids are receiving today looks very different from the education I received as a child (“traditional” school-at-home)—the fact that I had this experience made it that much easier for my wife and I to consider educational alternatives for our own children from the get-go.

Since I was so fond of my own homeschooling experience, I grew up thinking I would probably do the same for my own children. When Sammy reached preschool age, we took the opportunity to enroll him at the budding preschool at our church in Seattle. We had a generally positive experience there with both him and Morgan, who attended for a couple of years also. But as they continued to grow, I continued to do research and reflection on what I wanted for my kids and whether what they were doing (preschool) was what I really wanted.

One of the things that bothered me about preschool was how set up it was for kids to please the teachers. Don’t get me wrong. The teachers were very nice and loving to the children, and the kids did love to please them. But something seemed strange and fake about this to me. I had always tried to have genuine conversations with my kids, assuming they were smart and could understand what I was saying. I would also try to speak to them as if to another adult, at least insofar as respect and honesty are concerned. I wanted to afford my kids as much respect as any other human being, and be honest with them as I would with any other adult. In other words, I wouldn’t act fake just to make them feel a certain way or get a certain response out of them. But at preschool, some of the interactions I saw—when dropping off and picking up my kids—seemed very fake to me. Teachers would act so over-the-top happy about seeing my kids arrive or tell them how cute they were. Etc. The thing that bothered me the most was how much my daughter Morgan ate it up. I didn’t like witnessing her so easily manipulated by their well-intentioned, but nonetheless manipulative, overtures.

After our Kindergarten run-in, we decided to start “unschooling” both our kids. We had been reading a few books here and there. Lisa had read The Unschooling Handbook, and I was starting to read some of John Holt’s books, including How Children Fail, which was very powerful and made me re-think so much of what I thought I knew about education. That book really got my wheels turning. I even thought I might start blogging about it (resulting in this false start)—so many were the insights and aha moments that were stimulated by reading that book. My library copy was full of little strips of paper used as bookmarks on every few pages with my responses to all the thought-provoking stuff I read in Holt’s book.

Another author that influenced me greatly was John Taylor Gatto, particularly Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and a couple of other books he wrote. I’m a sucker for impassioned rhetoric, and he had me nodding my head vigorously right off the bat. We continued to go through a phase of reading all we could about education and parenting, including other authors, such as Alfie Kohn’s exhaustively researched Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Also, Scott Noelle’s “Daily Groove” continues to be a thought-provoking resource full of helpful parenting ideas. We also attended the LIFE is Good unschooling conference a couple of years in a row and very much enjoyed ourselves there.

But we had a spur in our boot that made us want to keep looking, perhaps even beyond unschooling. Despite our misgivings, Morgan did love the social atmosphere that preschool provided. And I did see some benefit in their spending time apart from their parents on a regular basis. We had heard something about an “unschooling school” in Bothell, WA. I looked it up and read all the great essays on The Clearwater School website. I was quite inspired by what I saw. In fact, whereas I assumed Morgan would love it, I saw even more potential for how it could help my oldest, Samuel (then 6) grow through interaction with a wider variety of people, away from his parents.

So I made some more trips to the library and came home with books like Free at Last, Legacy of Trust, The Pursuit of Happiness, and Reflections on the Sudbury School Concept. These all came straight from Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968 and the original source of inspiration for the 30+ Sudbury schools around the world. (You can get all of these books and many more at their online bookstore.) I very much enjoyed Daniel Greenberg’s scholarly look at education and what it means. Also, as one of the founders of Sudbury Valley, he had lots of stories to tell about their experiences. I was inspired—even more inspired than what I had discovered about the “unschooling” approach to education.

In fact, I was so inspired that I became a little jealous of kids who get to go to a Sudbury school, despite the fondness for my own schooling that I mentioned above. In the summer of 2007, I even started Googling for what that might look like. What would Sudbury schooling for adults look like? I searched for “synthetic village” and didn’t find much. But then one day I stumbled onto to the Clearwater Commons website, a co-housing project that some of the Clearwater School people are working on. It was then that I discovered the term “co-housing” and “intentional community” and was only a few clicks away to finding the house that we were to buy only a few months later, in Indianola, WA, home of both Wise Acres (where we now live) and The Trillium School (where my kids go to school).

Last summer, I had a chance to attend a staff conference at the Sudbury Valley School campus, and I’ve continued to be nothing but inspired by what I’ve seen. One of the most inspiring things I’ve witnessed is how dedicated the founders of various Sudbury schools are. The strength of both their intellect and their commitment is astounding. I’ve never been so exhausted after a conference. The discourse went from morning til night. I thought some of the technology conferences I’ve attended were pretty intense, but they were nothing compared to this one.

I remain fond of homeschooling, and unschooling in particular. But the Sudbury model is what inspires me. In a future article, I’ll look at some of the distinctions between unschooling and Sudbury schooling.

Another Trillium parent alerted me to a recent New York Times op-ed piece by Susan Engel, entitled “Playing to Learn.” It contains a lot of good insights. If I cherry-pick a bit, I can make it sound like she’s arguing for the Sudbury model. And in some ways, she is (even if she doesn’t realize it).

[E]ducators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does.

This is a big one. How many of you parents have ever noticed your child pick up a skill (such as reading) seemingly overnight? What if I told you this is how things usually happen? In other words, we can’t see the learning. It happens under our noses. One of my favorite quotes from Voices from the New American Schoolhouse, a documentary about Fairhaven School, is this: “Learning is what happens when you’re doing something else.” (Check out the YouTube trailer for a sampling.)

And conversation is one of the main things that happens in a Sudbury school. Why? Because that’s what people do, it’s what they thrive on and learn from and grow from. So it sounds like Engel could be arguing for the Sudbury approach.

She also writes:

What they [students] shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.

This will resonate with a lot of people who are looking beyond traditional education. People (including kids) learn through experiences that matter to them. Knowledge is best retained when it’s relevant and has some practical application or at least some inherent meaning for the student. To demonstrate this, all you have to do is ponder this question: How much do you remember from your least favorite subjects in high school?

And:

Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.

Once again, play is huge at Sudbury schools. Why? Because play is huge for children. It’s amazing to witness, on those days that I’ve volunteered at The Trillium School, the complex, drawn-out games and types of play that kids will invent when they’re given a chance. They’re constantly figuring out the world around them, in concert and camaraderie with their friends. There’s no stopping them.

To me, and to Sudbury proponents everywhere, these insights clearly support the Sudbury approach to education. In a nutshell, kids are great at learning. They want to learn, and will learn. They’ll pursue what they’re interested in, which—convenience of all conveniences—turns out to be exactly what they’ll be best at learning too. Among the most important things Sudbury students learn is self-efficacy, a knowledge that they can learn, which serves them well in just about anything they choose to pursue later on, whether it be in college or not.

Ultimately, Engel is not arguing for the Sudbury approach. She’s looking for a new kind of classroom, and she has particular ideas about how to prescribe the children’s use of time:

In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.

So it’s an incremental step toward what her insights ultimately point toward: an environment where children truly are free to explore what interests them without external prescriptions. The Sudbury model is based on several principles that go beyond what she suggests. I’ve listed some of these below, along with the methodological consequence of each:

• Principle: Each person’s education is their own responsibility.
• Methodology: Teacher-directed learning only ever happens at a student’s specific request.

• Principle: Children learn best in interaction with people of all different ages.
• Methodology: Students are not segregated by age. Think “one-room schoolhouse.”

• Principle: People are different and shouldn’t be expected to learn the same things, or at the same time.
• Methodology: There is no required curriculum in a Sudbury school.

I heartily welcome Engel’s op-ed. It’s great to see more awareness of and attention paid to the fundamental problems of traditional schooling. Her prescriptions ultimately don’t go far enough; the logical consequences of her insights, and of the science that she alludes to, ultimately point to something that looks more like a Sudbury school. But it’s definitely a start.

Second, reflection on parenting makes me a better parent. When I have time to reflect on parenting, especially in a public context, it makes me feel that much more accountable for being a good parent.

Third, I want to encourage parents and help them become better at what they do. I want to help them question their own assumptions, and to make choices consciously. In this respect, I see this blog as making a modest contribution to humanity.

Fourth, I want to draw more attention to the Sudbury approach to education. Among alternative educational models, most people have heard of Montessori, and many have heard of Waldorf, but few have heard of Sudbury. I want more people to find out about what a wonderful option Sudbury schools are. I want to see more schools founded and more schools flourishing.

Finally, I want to see my kids’ own school, The Trillium School, continue to succeed. I want my kids to have this option for the full length of their school-age years. This blog will help existing parents of Trillium to stay stimulated and on board. And, by helping spread the word about educational alternatives, it may indirectly draw more local parents into considering Trillium.

Whatever your interest in reading this blog, thank you. Now that I’ve shared why I’m writing this blog, would you be willing to leave a comment, sharing why you’re reading it?

This article seems to address my question (in an unexpected way!): “Ages Four and Up” by Daniel Greenberg, from Child Rearing. In the first paragraph, he writes:

By age four or thereabouts, human beings have a fully developed communication system which, for all intents and purposes, makes them mature persons. They are capable of expressing themselves, of understanding what’s said to them, and of structuring continuous thought; and they are capable of doing things with their environment. You could ask whether a person age four and up belongs at all in a book on child rearing, because I don’t consider someone over that age to be a child.

I probably wouldn’t go that far, but Greenberg’s assertion is worth considering. Especially when you consider how many people can go through life without seeming to mature. People don’t always act more mature the older they get. How wise and/or useful is it to declare exactly at what age a child becomes an adult? Reality doesn’t fit so nicely into such categories, whether you draw the line at 4 or 18.

On reflection, I realized that independence isn’t something we give children. It’s something they learn, regardless of what school they do or don’t attend. At a Sudbury school, kids are given the chance to develop that independence on their own schedule. The “methodology” in effect is to give them freedom externally (within a safe and caring environment), but the outcome is that they gradually develop their own internal sense of independence. So the progression is gradual, but the methodology doesn’t presume or attempt to control that progression. It just removes as many roadblocks as possible.

In contrast, the traditional schooling approach seems to encourage dependence, by filling students’ lives with activities coming from external sources (assignments, grades, schedules, etc.). Only when students are finally done with that mountain of assigned work (around age 18) do they get the freedom to start developing their own sense of independence, figuring out what they want to do with their lives, etc. Sudbury students, on the other hand, have been figuring this out all along. If their lives are full, it’s because they’ve been filling them.

What is surprising about our schools today is that they have reached full industrialization just at a time when factory work, as it was once known, is becoming as obsolete as the farmer with a horse-pulled plow.

Our schools, then, are out of synch with the larger society and represent our past rather than our future…[T]he discrepancy is particularly great today because of the knowledge explosion and the technological revolutions that occur with machine-gun rapidity. Children do poorly in school today, in part at least, because they sense the lag between what and how they are learning in school and what is happening in the rest of the world.

Consider that the above was written in 1981, long before the advent of Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

He then goes on to describe in painful detail how schools are becoming more standardized and education is becoming more product-ized. In a section called “Assembly Line Learning”, he describes the relentless pursuit to quantify children and their achievements via increasingly burdensome standardized testing.

Schools in ostrich-like fashion, are responding to the challenge of poor school performance by regression. “Back to basics.” Back to old methods and old materials. Back to a factory emphasis on worker (teacher) productivity and quality control (pupil competency) that is at odds with the major thrust of modern industry. What the traditional factory ignored and what modern industry recognizes is that the worker is not a robot, that he or she needs motivation, challenge, a sense of involvement, recognition, and some input in the system. Modern industry looks at the worker as a person, while schools, particularly those that use teacher-proof curricula do not.

Consider that the above was written in 1981, long before “No Child Left Behind”.

This all seems more true today then when Elkind wrote it. Schools are still moving backwards, and knowledge & technology are growing even faster. Do you really want to put your kids on a boat that’s sailing backwards, and anxiously hurry them along while you’re at it?

His conclusion is both gratifying and perplexing:

If we have to see our schools as factories, then we should learn from our modern-day factory experience. Hurrying workers and threatening them do not work. Treating them as human beings who want to take pride in their work, who don’t want to be confined to the same routine, and who want the opportunity to express their opinions and to have those opinions taken seriously does work…Democracy is the balance between total control and total freedom, and what we need in education, as in industry, is true democracy. Only when the values upon which this country was founded begin to permeate our educational and industrial plants will we begin to realize our full human and production potentials.

His call for democracy in education is gratifying for parents of kids at a Sudbury school. But I’m perplexed by how one would go about implementing democracy in a school run as a factory. The analogy between treating students well and treating factory workers well breaks down. Factory workers are not themselves the product being shuffled down the assembly line, whereas in schools, that’s exactly what students are. Thus a more appropriate analogy would have the widgets and cranks themselves being treated as human beings and given a say in their future, which of course is nonsense. I think the first step is to do away with the factory model. Stop treating students (i.e. people) as products, constantly assessing and assuring their “quality”.

As a culture we have a death-grip on our belief that kids must be taught x, y, and z or we’re all doomed. Those industrialists did a good job of selling their agenda to the masses! I am sure more and more people will decide to give up on compulsory education, and Sudbury and unschooling will eventually meet with less objection, we just have to be patient and let the outcomes speak for themselves. My oldest is 16, has been at the Hudson Valley Sudbury School for 7 years, and was unschooled previously. He’s never had to study or take tests. He decided he wanted to be a lifeguard for summer employment, took the course and passed all the tests easily! He did it all without reminders or help. He just recently got a 100 on his driver’s permit test after studying on his own for that. No one has ever “taught” him how to read or do arithmetic or how to study for a test, and he is competent in all those things, and is a whiz on computers – especially with Photoshop. All this without formal instruction – entirely by his own motivation and effort. He has demonstrated that he can learn whatever he wants to learn, whether it is on his own or by seeking assistance. We have been underestimating our children in this society for so long that we no longer trust in what is, in fact, natural – kids naturally want to learn and to challenge themselves, unless it has been trained out of them.

What could be more valuable than being able to learn whatever you need to learn whenever you need to learn it? That’s a skill worth taking into adulthood and doesn’t correspond to any particular subject that can be taught. If kids can develop their innate ability to learn and carry it into whatever area interests them, they’ll develop self-efficacy. In other words, they’ll have the general knowledge about themselves that “I can do it”, or “I can figure out what help I need to get it done”. How can you teach that? It has to be learned by experience.

Nina’s story is so typical of kids that are allowed to go all the way through a Sudbury school experience. The school that started it all, Sudbury Valley School, has published extensive information about their alumni. Two books in particular are worth reading if you’re at all concerned about what becomes of students who spend their childhood at a Sudbury school. See the “What becomes of students” page on the SVS website if you’re interested in reading these. One is called The Pursuit of Happiness: The Lives of Sudbury Valley Alumni (2005), and the other is Legacy of Trust: Life After the Sudbury Valley School Experience (1992). If you like quantitative data, you’ll like Pursuit of Happiness, but if you’d rather hear more from the alumni themselves (in the form of essays), read Legacy of Trust, even though it’s a bit older.

Before I knew it, I was expounding on the wonders of a Sudbury education, what a gift it is to children, how amazingly well-adjusted Sudbury school students are, how in touch graduates are with who they are and what they want, how they learn responsibility by being given responsibility, how they respect others and are themselves respected. At each stage, I expected him to say, “That sounds nice, but what about ____?” For example, when I told him that each student has a vote that’s equal to any staff member’s and that staff are voted in (and out)—when I told him that, like most people, he was astounded. But unlike most people, he didn’t get stuck there. He just wanted to hear more. So I kept going.

By the time we reached the airport, I was already flying high. How big a difference it makes when people respond with open minds! When sharing something you’re passionate about doesn’t turn into a big, adversarial debate! I don’t know what this man will do with the information. I don’t know if he’ll be pulling his daughter out of school anytime soon. But I definitely felt his sincere appreciation for all the new information I was telling him. “God bless you. You’ve taught me a big thing today.” And I in turn was very thankful for his expression of gratitude and the jolt of energy it gave me. Who would have thought a taxi ride could be so refreshing?

The Trillium School is awarding two full-tuition scholarships for the remainder of the 2009-2010 school year to eligible prospective students. Two winners will be chosen by a lottery in each of two categories, one winner in each category: ages 5 to 10, and ages 11 to 16.

My kids don’t qualify, because they’re already students, but if you happen to know someone who would benefit from free tuition at The Trillium School, please pass the word onto them. The real kicker is the application deadline: November 30th, 2009.

Now, when we envision our dream jobs, we’re imagining someone who reaps huge rewards as a result of her insight. Or someone who has control over what he does all day, creating products or services that he’s actually proud of. It certainly involves having authority over your time and your effort and having input into what you do.

I take heart that my kids are learning these skills and practices early on at our local Sudbury school. They are learning how to make decisions about:

• what to do with their time, and
• issues that impact their community

That’s because they’re given the power and responsibility to make both kinds of decisions.

As we move further into an unstable age, students with traditional educational experiences will be at a disadvantage. They will have had little experience making meaningful decisions. They’ve never been given the opportunity to make decisions in a democratic context. And they’ve been allowed very few decisions about what to do with their time. Teachers and government agencies make those decisions for them. They will have to wait until they are out of school before they can start learning those skills by experience.

On innate curiosity and survival in the 21st century:

Every child has a deep drive to become a highly functioning member of the adult society into which he or she was born. That’s what survival is about in today’s terms. And curiosity is the tool that guarantees survival.

On how traditional schooling messes things up:

All children have done a great deal of exploration on their own before they begin in school. They’re channeled into specific curricula usually once they’re part of a school setting. With enough exposure to learning things in the way that other people have chosen, with enough time learning what other people have chosen for that person—at the time that others find it important—most students lose touch with their own curiosity. Most children become less effective learners each year that they spend being taught by others.

On the importance of conversation (a.k.a. talking) to a person’s development:

It’s not only the way we are exposed to new ideas and to find ways to refine them and to make them more sensible and strong. It’s the way to get into another person’s head; it’s the only way to really get into another person’s head and incorporate what they think into what you think. And we engage in it for long periods of time, every single day of our lives.

What that should mean for our approach to education:

Children should be in situations for most of their waking hours in which there are opportunities for real and intense exchange of ideas through talking. To have conversation restricted thwarts their education.

On the importance of play:

The other major area of learning for people is through play. Play is following a path of action or thought freely…We each have our favorite kinds of play. And often when we think about it, the kinds of things that are our favorite kind of play are the things that restore our spirits, the things we return to when we need a lift. Play is vitally important to creativity. If one cannot be free to follow new paths, one can’t accomplish much….Not only do you accomplish things while you’re playing, you reinforce the knowledge that you’re someone who can always accomplish more, who can push your own boundaries. Through play, you get in touch with yourself as a creative human being. Through play, your horizons expand constantly. There’s nothing more important, from the earliest age on.

Schools (including Sudbury schools) did not invent these “methods of education”—play and talking. They’re natural and automatic and they work extremely well. The genius of a Sudbury school, in my mind, is the acknowledgment of these realities and the creation of a structure in which they can both flourish freely. Of course, there’s more to it than that, and Mimsy goes into these as well, such as the nature of participatory democracy, how School Meeting functions, how discipline is handled through Judicial Committee, etc. Some essential ingredients that go into creating the structure in which play and talking and thus learning can flourish: respect for people of all ages, freedom to pursue one’s interests, and responsibility to create and uphold agreements in one’s community.

But my biggest takeaway is Mimsy’s affirmation of what I’ve been learning over and over again. Two “secret” ingredients of any person’s education, regardless of what school they go to, are play and talking. The Sudbury approach is to let kids go as deep as they want in both areas. The traditional schooling approach is to drastically restrict both and then replace them with time spent doing something else. Relative merits of “something else” can be discussed, but that’s telling it like it is.