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Sudbury school

 
Wikipedia: Sudbury school
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Sudbury schools practice a form of democratic education in which students individually decide what to do with their time, and learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than adopting a descriptive educational syllabus or standardized instruction by classes following a prescriptive curriculum. Students are given complete responsibility for their own education and the school is run by a direct democracy in which students and staff are equals.[1]

The 'Sudbury' name refers to Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968 in Framingham, Massachusetts, the first school of this type; since 1991 more than three dozen Sudbury-type Schools have opened around the world.[2] These schools are not formally associated in any way, but are a loosely connected network that are mutually supportive of each other, operating as independent entities.[1]

Certain facets of the model separate it from other democratic schools and free schools, although there are evident similarities:

  • De-emphasis of classes: There is no curriculum or set of required courses, because there are no courses. Instead learner interest guides thing, with students studying what they want to study.[1] There are generally no classroms, just rooms where people choose to congreate.[3]
  • Age mixing: students are not separated into age-groups of any kind and allowed to mix freely, interacting with those younger and older than themselves; free age-mixing is emphasized as a powerful tool for learning and development in all ages.[4]
  • Autonomous democracy: Another prominent difference is the limitation — or total absence — of parental involvement in the administration of Sudbury schools; Sudbury schools are run by a democratic School Meeting where the students and staff participate exclusively and equally. The democratic School Meeting of a Sudbury school is also the sole authority on hiring and firing of staff — a facet that separates these schools from most others.[5]

Sudbury schools are based on the belief that no kind of curriculum is necessary to prepare a young person for adult life. Instead, these schools place emphasis on learning as a natural by-product of all human activity.[6]

More than three dozen Sudbury-type schools having since opened around the world.[2]

Contents

School democracy

All aspects of governing a Sudbury School are determined by the weekly School Meeting, modeled after the traditional New England town meeting.[7] School Meeting passes, amends and repeals school rules, manages the school's budget, and decides on hiring and firing of staff. Each individual present — whether student or staff — has exactly one vote, and most decisions are made by simple majority[1], with the vote of a child counting as much as an adult.[8]

School rules are normally compiled in a law book, updated repeatedly over time, which forms the school's code of law. Usually, there is a set procedure to handle complaints, and most of the schools follow guidelines that respect the idea of due process of law. There are usually rules requiring an investigation, a hearing, a trial, a sentence, and allowing for an appeal,[9] generally following the philosophy that students face the consequences of their own behavior.[10]

Learning

Sudbury schools are based on the belief that no kind of curriculum is necessary to prepare a young person for adult life. Instead, these schools place emphasis on learning as a natural by-product of all human activity.[6] Learning is self-initiated and self-motivated.[11] They rely on the free market of ideas, and free conversation and interplay of people, to provide sufficient exposure to any area that may prove relevant and interesting to the individual. Students of all ages mix together; older students learn from younger students as well as vice versa. Students of different ages often mentor each other in social skills.[12] The pervasiveness of play has led to a recurring observation by first-time visitors to a Sudbury school that the students appear to be in perpetual "recess".[6][13]

Implicitly and explicitly, students are given responsibility for their own education, meaning the only person designing what a student will learn is the student themselves or by the way of apprenticeship. As such, Sudbury schools do not compare or rank students — the system has no tests, evaluations, or transcripts.[14]

Daniel A. Greenberg

Daniel A. Greenberg (born c. 1934) is one of the founders of the Sudbury Valley School, has published several books on the Sudbury model of school organization,[15] and has been described by Sudbury Valley School trustee Peter Grey as the "principal philosopher" among its founders.[16] He is a former physics professor at Columbia University, and is described by Lois Holzman as the school's "chief 'philosophical writer'".[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Ellis, Arthur K. (2004). Exemplars of curriculum theory. Eye on Education. ISBN 1930556705. 
  2. ^ a b Marano, Hara Estroff (May-June 2006). "Class dismissed: it's every modern parent's worst nightmare--a school where kids can play all day. but no one takes the easy way out, and graduates seem to have a head start on the information age. Welcome to Sudbury valley". Psychology Today 39 (3): 94(7). 
  3. ^ Peramas, Mary (Winter 2007). "The Sudbury School and Influences of Psychoanalytic Theory on Student-Controlled Education". Essays in Education 19: 119(15). 
  4. ^ Gray, Peter. "Nature's Powerful Tutors; The Educative Functions of Free Play". The National Honor Society in Psychology. http://www.psichi.org/Pubs/Articles/Article_645.aspx. Retrieved 2009-07-25. 
  5. ^ Gross, Steven J. (2004). Promises Kept. United States: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. p. 140. ISBN 087120973X. "Based on this philosophy, the three teachers opened the Red Cedar School, allowing children to decide what they wanted to learn, then they wanted to learn it, and for how long they wanted to engage in it. In addition, the school did not discriminate between play and academic work, making students responsible for their choices. Community was established through a shared governance system in which students and adults considered the school's needs and how to meet them, including hiring decisions and need for revenue. There was also a student and staff council that established codes of behavior and met with students who violated them. Clearly, this kind of student-centered, democratic school endeavor was both bold and innovated. It was also remarkably different from any experiement that I had seen." 
  6. ^ a b c Holzman, Lois (1997). Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives To Current Education Models. United Kingdom: Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 97-99. ISBN 0805823573. 
  7. ^ "Students revel in free-for-all". Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Massachusetts). 1992-04-19. 
  8. ^ Rowe, Claudia (2002-02-20). "In Woodstock, a nonschool with nonteachers.(Hudson Valley Sudbury School, Woodstock, New York)". The New York Times. 
  9. ^ Feldman, Jay (2001), The Moral Behavior of Children and Adolescents at a Democratic School, Paper presented at 82nd American Educational Research Association Meeting, Seattle, http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/23/12/00.pdf 
  10. ^ Marano, Hara Estroff (2008). A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting. Random House. p. 237. ISBN 0767924037. 
  11. ^ Schugurensky, Daniel (2003). "Self-governed, Sudbury Valley School begins in Massachusetts in History of Education: Selected Moments of the 20th Century". Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/research/edu20/moments/1968sudbury.html. Retrieved 2009-08-31. 
  12. ^ Collins, Jeff. "The Sudbury Model of Education". Hudson Valley Sudbury School. http://www.lifeteaches.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=57. Retrieved 2009-02-28. "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."     
  13. ^ Gray, Peter (2008-09-09). "Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age: Part I--The Value of Play in the Zone of Proximal Development". http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200809/why-we-should-stop-segregating-children-age-part-i-the-value-play-in-the-z. Retrieved 2009-10-25. .
  14. ^ Wallace, Mike (2001-04-29). "60 Minutes". CBS News. 
  15. ^ Marano, Hara Estroff (2008). A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting. Random House. p. 232. ISBN 0767924037. 
  16. ^ Gray, Peter and David Chanoff (1986-02). "Democratic Schooling: What Happens to Young People Who Have Charge of Their Own Education?". American Journal of Education (The University of Chicago Press) 94 (2): 182-213. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1084948. "The principal philosopher among the group of parents and others who founded SVS was Daniel Greenberg, a wide-ranging scholar who had previously taught physics and the history of science at Columbia University.". 
  17. ^ Holzman, Lois (1997). Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives To Current Education Models. United Kingdom: Lawrence Erlbaum. p. 94. ISBN 0805823573. 

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