Democratic schools are often accused of being elitist, available only to a privileged few. It’s something I’ve heard again and again, in Israel as well as in Europe. This argument is mostly flat out wrong. Sometimes it’s good old circular logic: the Israeli Ministry of Education used the elitism charge for years as a reason not to give my school funding (which it is entitled to by law), because the school charges tuition. The main reason to charge tuition was, of course, that the school had to fund its operations without government assistance. But there is some truth in saying that democratic schools’ students are privileged. Read the rest of this entry »
Privileged? Yeah.
27 02 2010Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Democratic Education, Education, Sudbury Jerusalem, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Thoughts
[Video/TED] Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system
22 02 2010I found this new TED Talk video by Philip K. Howard (a lawyer) about simplifying U.S. law pretty interesting. It was particularly interesting that he highlights trust as essential for the rule of law; Sudbury schools have always been based, amongst other things, on trust and on the rule of law. It’s nice to see the connection acknowledged.
About this talk
The land of the free has become a legal minefield, says Philip K. Howard — especially for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What’s the answer? A lawyer himself, Howard has four propositions for simplifying US law.
From TED.com. link
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Tags: Democracy, Democratic Education, Government, Liberty, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Links
Lisa Lyons: What I’ve Learned at Sudbury Schools (a staff retirement letter)
28 09 2009I’d like to share this excellent retirement letter by Lisa Lyons, who worked at Evergreen Sudbury School in Maine and Fairhaven School in Maryland.
Below is the full text of the letter, forwarded to me by my mother in PDF form (link to PDF):
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Tags: Democratic Education, Education, Life, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Uncategorized
On addictive games (Kids Don’t “Need Structure”, Part 4)
19 09 2009The two most common activities in a Sudbury schools are talk and free play. Conversation and free play are great things for children to engage in. These are universal human activities that people everywhere engage in readily whenever they can. It comes as no surprise that children choose to pursue them in an environment like Sudbury schools where no academic structure is imposed on their time.
I refer the interested reader to other sources regarding conversation and free play; you may find these at the bottom of this post, under Further reading.
To close this series of posts about children and academic structures, I will now turn to one other type of activity: video games. On occasion, I have heard the peculiar claim that, “okay, people seek novelty, but video games are addictive! Like heroin! They ruin everything and take away children’s freedom!”
In my experience, as much as video games may seem to engage people, a game can only retain its charm for so long, just like any other activity. People get sick of bad games because they get annoying after a while; people get sick of good games when they have mastered them to the point that the challenge is gone.
In all my years of gaming and involvement in the gaming community, I have not met many “game addicts”. However, those few I have met have always had real-life issues to run away from. It may be trouble at home, or it may be depression, but it seems the root of this obsessive behavior is the need to escape from something more serious. This becomes almost painfully obvious when you get over any prejudice you may have regading the nature of video games. Some people point at games in blame in these cases, but clearly the games are symptom, not cause. Even if a vicious circle is involved, I have not known people to truly spend too much time on games unless they need to escape from something else.
Still, one type of game is increasingly implicated in those cases where someone gets “addicted” to gaming, and I would like to say some words in defense of these games: multi-player games. Multi-player games have risen to prominence in the past decade thanks to rapidly improving Internet infrastructures that now allow people around the world to play together in real time. Games usually fall out of favor after a year or two, but in 2009 there are a few conspicuous games from the late 90’s that are still being played. The two most notable are Starcraft and Counter-Strike, and the primary reason they are still played is their excellent multi-player experience. Multi-player games can offer something off-line games cannot – a built-in social aspect.
The most successful and long-lasting multi-player games are either games that have effectively become competitive sports, or they are “MMOGs” – Massively Multi-player Online Games. The former are games like Starcraft, which has become a virtual sport which aspiring players train for regularly, hoping to succeed at tournaments with real cash prizes. Counter-Strike, a team-based game, is played by teams of friends (“clans”) who play together regularly and are more or less equivalent to soccer or basketball teams. MMOGs, such as mega-hit World of Warcraft, on the other hand, engage players with intricately-designed virtual worlds that offer not only challenges but masses of other players, as well as means – and excuses – to interact with them regularly.
In both cases, these games are so exceptionally successful because of the social aspect – rather than isolating players, they bring them together. If a player abandons the game, they abandon their friends, and this makes it much harder to leave these games behind. Much of the gaming and communicating takes place in the privacy of one’s home, but it is common for Counter-Strike clans and their World of Warcraft equivalents, guilds, to meet up, face-to-face, to play together on a local network or simply to hang out. These games forge connections between people, united by a common interest, giving rise to friendships and in some cases relationships – even marriages. Such a game may hold a person’s attention for a surprisingly long time on their own, but sooner or later the virtual experience tends to escalate. More often, they are interwoven from the very start, helped by the online communities where players meet to discuss the games they play. In fact, the players who spend the most time on their games are the ones most likely to make friends with other gamers, perhaps because they spend more time with the games, or because they need new social connections the most. Games can enable these players to find other like-minded people, and in the long run may do more good than harm, eventually giving players a reason to go out after all.
If you believe that children do indeed need structure, I would like to hear from you in the comments: What kind of structure do children need? Do all children need it? If not, which kinds of children do, and why? In particular, do you see video games as an especially disturbing activity? And finally, I would really like to hear from you what you are afraid may happen to a child who attends a school like mine – what could go wrong without adult structure and guidance?
Further reading
- Peter Gray at Psychology Today has posted extensively on the subject of free play, for instance in this series: link.
- “We were a small group of people bouncing ideas off each other” – the experience of a Sudbury Valley School graduate who played a lot and never took a class. (From Kingdom of Childhood)
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I wrote a piece published in unerzogen magazine in 2008 (link [English, PDF]), where I argued that free and open communication enables school democracy and free learning, and that these also reinforce the freedom of communication in return.
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If you are concerned about video games, I have a book recommendation for you: Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make-Believe Violence, by Gerard Jones. I found it exceptionally informative and interesting.
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Tags: Consumption, Democratic Education, Education, Sudbury schooling, Video Games
Categories : Thoughts
Kids don’t “need structure”, part 2
17 05 2009In the previous part of this post, I introduced an argument often heard when discussing Sudbury schools: “Some children need structure!”; in this series of posts – originally just one post which couldn’t stop writing itself – I am exploring this argument and explaining why I disagree with it (even though I accept that it is true). In this part, I will explain my protest to the argument as it is used to justify adults introducing academic structures into democratic schools – “children need structure” in the sense that some children are unhappy, or experience hardship, when lacking academic guidance (..and thus we must provide them with some). It’s a long one, but I could not cut it down any shorter.
It is a fact that some young people experience difficulty when not provided with an extrinsic academic structure. This is true, I cannot argue otherwise, so strictly speaking, those making the argument are right. Of course, applying this only to “some” severely limits the extent to which this fact alone should affect our actions. But even if we were to believe that these “some” who have this difficulty are a significant proportion of children, I do not think people are born this way. When you observe a young child in free play, it is clear they have no “need” of extrinsic structure in this sense – they are perfectly engaged and happy without any adults’ intervention. You see the same with the younger students in a Sudbury school, the ones who have never gone to a traditional school – these children have no problem finding use for their time and are often surprised when the school day is over because they have been happily busy in self-directed activity and didn’t expect it to abruptly come to an end because some clock struck 3.
But if this argument doesn’t apply to the youngest children (presumably the least experienced and skilled), which children does it apply to? In my experience, the best match is those who have spent a few years in a traditional school and have gotten used to receiving a full program of instruction from adults. I have compared the situation with substance dependency – structure is like heroin or nicotine, there are individuals who need it, and the need is real – but it is not inborn. It is the result of habit, or conditioning – although a psychological habit is certainly not the same as a physical addiction. This really makes sense; after having their school time tightly managed for a few years, it is easy to understand why they are used to having structure, why they struggle to cope when nobody provides them with classes – they are in the habit of consuming structures, classes and content, and not at all in the habit of creating them.
But is it really the right answer to just make it easy and decide on a curriculum for them? Are these students, who have essentially forgotten how to manage their own time, best off if their time is managed for them, to a degree? It’s pretty clear to me that the answer is no. If we do this, where will it end? When people turn 18 or 19 – depending on where they live – they are considered adults and soon stop going to school. Suddenly, they are confronted with a lot of choices. Even for students used to academic freedom, the variety variety of choices faced by a new high-school graduate can be very difficult to deal with.
In Israel, where mandatory military service usually postpones this confrontation until the age of 20 or 21, it is stereotypically common for a young adult to go spend a few months – or a couple of years – somewhere in southern Asia, “clearing their head” (usually with the help of intoxicants) and figuring things out. In Germany, where this is less of a present issue, I know several people who, after completing high-school (or Germany’s civilian service, or the shorter military service), chose their university major almost at random because they had no clue what they wanted to study. It seems a kind of folk stereotype here, echoed by many in my environment in university, that many become teachers because all they ever knew is school and they rather go back there as teachers than try something new. The common thread is young people who find themselves suddenly faced with more choice than they know what to do with it. This looks to me like a natural consequence of a system that does not give young people an opportunity to confront the real variety of choices typical to “real life”, putting people on railroad tracks with a promise of eventual success and teaching them that they need these rails in order to find their way. Of course there are also high-school graduates everywhere who know exactly what they want to do – but in many places, this is the exception rather than the rule. Yet somehow, amongst fresh Sudbury graduates, it is cluelessness that seems the exception, and motivation the norm. This appears to be affected by the system, not only by the individuals going through it.
I’ll be the first to admit my plans were flawed when I got up and moved to Germany right after my civilian service, but even I certainly had plans and ambitions. I know that so far, each and every one of the other Sudbury Jerusalem graduates has had a clear idea of what they want to do when they graduated. Some of these plans change, for many of them it is still far too soon to tell, but what is clear is that these are people who can deal with a bit of choice. And this when all of the graduates of Sudbury Jerusalem so far (including myself) have been people who had already spent most or all of elementary school (if not middle school) in a conventional school, before arriving at the Sudbury school. We all came in used to a lot of structure, and we all had to deal with not having that any more. We each dealt with it in different ways. At the end, we were all okay with not having extrinsic structure handed to us. For me, this is an ongoing process that I am still not entirely done with (a fact I only understood about a year and a half after graduation.) But I imagine it would have been a great deal harder to deal with if I hadn’t had those four years of Sudbury Jerusalem where I had to create structures in my life rather than only consume them. This is something each of us has to go through and figure out sooner or later. Feeding children artificial structures when they could be working out their own is a tremendous disservice to them and to society.
In the next installment of this series, I will discuss a version of this argument often presented by proponents of traditional schooling who believe imposing extrinsic structure is necessary for a person to succeed.
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Tags: Consumption, Democratic Education, Education, Liberty, Sudbury Jerusalem, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Thoughts
Kids don’t “need structure”
6 05 2009Martin Roberts, a colleague on EUDEC Council, brought up an argument yesterday that you often get when talking about Sudbury schools. “Why not offer classes? Some children need structure.” (These are not exactly his words, but this is the argument in a more general sense.) I replied to Martin directly, but because of how common this line of reasoning is, I would like to discuss it more extensively. In this series of posts (originally a single post that got out of hand) I will explore this issue from a few angles and hopefully provide you with something interesting to read, if nothing more.
First, let us clarify what the “kids need structure” argument actually means – after all, it does not refer to children creating structures to meet their own needs on their own terms. No, what the argument actually says is that children are not all capable of getting everything they need independently and some of them need adults to provide them with an extrinsic academic structure.1
Before I explain why I disagree so strongly with it, I will point out an unpleasant implication of this claim that seems problematic to me: when making this argument, Martin implies – although I am sure this is not his intention – that children are not capable of managing their own lives. Moreover, I am willing to bet that Martin, like most people, would never make this claim about adults. If you, dear reader, happen to be an adult currently in the workforce, can you imagine making this claim about your colleagues? Or your friends? I assume most people will answer with a “no”.2 So without meaning to, Martin is not treating the vague age-group called “children” with the same respect as he would afford to fellow adults. This does not mean the claim is false – in fact, as we will see, I think it is true and disagree nonetheless. But equal respect for people, regardless of age, is not only an essential requirement for democratic education, but a necessary step for society to make as a whole. It makes very little sense to disrespect people because of their age and leads to the ridiculous situation where everyone is disrespected for no good reason sooner or later. But I digress.
Let us turn to the argument itself: “[some] children … need adults to provide them with an extrinsic academic structure”. Before I start to address it I would ask what “need” really means here. Surely it is not used in the same sense as “children need a regular intake of oxygen, water and food” – no child ever died from lack of an academic framework. Rather, what is intended is “need” in the sense that some children are unhappy, or experience hardship, when lacking academic guidance (this is the sense Martin meant this is). It is true that some young people have a very hard time when they aren’t prescribed academic structures by adults, a matter which I will return to in the next post. The final possible intention I can see for this claim, which is not the intention in Martin’s case, is that some children “need” a framework of instruction in order to grow up to be successful adults. This is an important interpretation, because people outside of democratic education very often claim this when defending the practices of traditional education.
In the next post, I will address Martin’s sense of this argument, that it is difficult for some students to deal with a lack of instructional framework. In the posts following that I will examine the last sense of this argument and go in more detail into how this claim ties in with video games (which so many people view as dangerous for children, especially when no structure deprives them of the chance to play them.) I have already written much of this text, so these posts will be more frequent than I have otherwise been posting.
1A similar argument is that children are not capable of controlling their diet in a healthy way and need adults to dictate when, what and how much they eat. When a teacher says “kids need structure” this is usually not what they are referring to.
2The exception is totalitarians, who explicitly believe human beings need to be led by a charismatic male who tells them what to do. I will not bother arguing against that kind of claptrap here.
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Tags: Democratic Education, Education, Liberty, Video Games
Categories : Thoughts
Peter Gray: Social Play and the Genesis of Democracy
13 03 2009I’m back sooner than expected and will resume posting about democracy soon. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the latest post over at Peter Gray’s excellent Freedom to Learn blog, in which Peter discusses how free social play lends itself to the development of a sense of democracy in children:
Children cannot acquire democratic values through activities run autocratically by adults. They can and do, however, experience and acquire such values in free play with other children. That is a setting where they are treated as equals, where they must have a say in what goes on, and where they must respect the rights of others if they wish to be included.
Link: Social Play and the Genesis of Democracy
P.S.
The rest of the blog is well-worth reading as well!
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Tags: Blogosphere, Democracy, Democratic Education, Education, Politics, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Links
Democracy, Part 2: Structure
26 02 2009Contrary to popular imagination, democratic schools have a whole lot of structure. Democracy is meaningless without decision-making, and democratic decision-making is impossible without structure. Democracy is in a constant struggle with arbitrariness, the force democracy originally arose to negate1. Codifying the ways decisions are made and the scope of the decisions can be a certain safety against arbitrariness. The creation of procedures and structures in a democracy allows a system to arise which, to a certain degree, runs on its own. Democracy still requires constant vigil in defense both of its structures and of its spirit (the concepts discussed in Part 1 of this series), but procedures allow the democratic community to agree on a certain course of action without the constant need to discuss how things are done – or the danger that arbitrary decisions will be made ad hoc, without clear direction from the community. Indeed, rules and regulations may seem imposing, even frightening, and some find them strange in places where such emphasis is placed on freedom, but still they are as necessary a component of democracy as are the meetings and votes that put these in place.
For a community to make decisions, the individuals that form the community have to know how decisions are made. They must know that certain kinds of decisions can only be made in a democratic meeting. They also have to know that the meeting takes place in a certain time, in a certain place, and in a certain way; if anyone can just throw together a meeting at any time, the meeting quickly loses its legitimacy.
A democracy creates procedures for everything. The more important or common an issue, the more detailed the procedures that cover it. These procedures tend to grow organically over time, growing to cover and fill every loophole and conflict as it comes up. After just four years of operation, for instance, Sudbury Jerusalem had a Lawbook almost 50 pages long, with no less than 8 pages devoted to the Judicial Committee (JC), the body that oversees the execution of School Law (or the consequences of failure to comply with it.)
These regulations serve to protect the individual – the community gives the Judicial Committee a lot of power, with huge potential to disrupt people’s lives and freedoms; the procedures governing JC’s decisions limit it and make it clear what it can and cannot do. The procedures also dictate precisely how decisions are made – they say in what way cases are handled, what steps are taken and in which order, and who must or may be present for every one of them. The tendency is to leave as little as possible up to the JC’s own discretion; JC is merely a servant of the system, individuals doing their duty (in rotation) to apply fair judgment to the cases brought before them. The meetings are structured – the procedures are set down in School Law, all that’s left to the Committee is to follow the rules, examine the cases, and produce decisions.
This system also supports an atmosphere of pleasant ease; visitors and newcomers are often surprised at how structured JC is, but also at how everyone seems very peaceful about it, even the accused. I found JC very pleasant and used to gladly sit by as an observer and watch cases when I had some free time. My guess is that it makes people comfortable to know that there are rules, that these rules work, and that all they have to do is simply follow them. Of course, in a Sudbury school the same people can also propose, amend or repeal the rules, making it easier to accept them2.
Interestingly, Sudbury Jerusalem’s central decision-maker – School Meeting (SM) – has never been quite as structured as the Judicial Committee. School Meeting is the only institution that existed in the school a priori, and perhaps for this reason, custom has had a far bigger role in SM than in the other institutions SM has created over the years. SM has always been run based on a modified, simplified version of Robert’s Rules of Order, although remarkably the rules have been passed down from one chair to another, rather than codified in rules or bylaws. Robert’s Rule necessitate a chair that runs meetings, makes note of members who want to talk and gives them the floor, as well as maintaining order by giving warnings to members who cause disturbance. So in this sense, it has always been run in a very structured way. But in comparison with the JC’s detailed procedures, SM seems somewhat unorganized. Tellingly, the same Lawbook with 8 pages about JC had just 3 pages devoted to SM.
Still, SM has a certain order in which things are done. For instance, second readings of proposals are handled before first readings, in order to make sure no flood of new proposals could push back the older proposals indefinitely, preventing the Meeting from ever making any final decision. But even such order as is maintained is seen more as tradition, or at least as more mutable, than the parallel order in JC. SM often decides to handle a certain matter out of turn because it is urgent. JC could never get away with rearranging the stages of its investigation.
The differences in the forms the procedures take in these two institutions reflects the different needs that they serve, as well as their different sources of legitimacy. School Meeting is the school community’s tool for democratic decision-making; it embodies the community and allows it to make decisions as a whole. Its legitimacy is direct – everyone who wants to take part is allowed to, the entire community controls it and agrees to accept its decisions because each and every one of them can affect these decisions. So changing the order in which decisions are made, although it sometimes has great effect on matters of importance, is something SM can do as it sees fit; there is no need for extra supervision or control because the decision is open to everyone. At the same time, a certain order is needed during meetings, to give each member a fair chance to speak and be heard; if everyone can speak whenever they want, the loudest will be the only ones heard, if any.
The Judicial Committee, on the other hand, is legitimized indirectly, by decision of School Meeting – it is one step removed from that direct legitimacy enjoyed by the authorized assembly where all can take part. The Committee has few members and one cannot simply come in and take part in the discussion. There are good reasons for this – the Committee is supposed to be efficient and fair – but it means that JC may sometimes be seen as a closed group. SM gives this group authority, but not unconditionally; there is a clear limit to what the Committee may decide, and clear procedures for exactly how it may be decided. In a sense, this is an assurance to the school community that SM is still in control, because its decisions about School Law determine the course that JC may take. In a way, this is the same in all school institutions and offices apart from School Meeting.
I hope this brief discussion provides some insight into the interaction between democracy and structure. In the coming three weeks I will be away, working, and when I return I will doubtless be swamped. But sooner or later, I will continue writing these posts about democracy.
1The Greek and Roman democracies of classic antiquity were instated after kings and tyrants were done away with, and designed to make the arbitrary authority of a king impossible. The authority previously held by the king was divided amongst multiple magistrates, serving in rotation, making it impossible for any single individual to hold too much power for too long. The younger Roman system evolved and was manipulated over time to create a tyrannical empire; the Greek system largely survived until the Roman empire conquered the Greek city-states.
2It is easy to accept rules that you proposed, but people tend to also respect rules they don’t entirely agree with. One reason is that after participating in School Meeting for a while, you get used to experiencing rules from both sides – as proponent and as opponent; you grow to accept the fact that School Meeting can make decisions you disagree with, and the feeling that you are part of School Meeting helps as well. Another reason is simply that the school community respects the rules by consensus, and operates the Judicial Committee to enforce them – those who fail to comply must face the consequences. It also helps that most rules are grounded in common sense.
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Tags: Democracy, Democratic Education, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Thoughts
The Importance of Being Bored
6 02 2009People often ask why Sudbury schools can’t “just offer a few classes for anybody who is interested”. In reply I would answer, “why bother?” – if somebody is truly interested they can always start a class. Investing school resources – staff time is one of the school’s most precious – in offering classes “just in case” could be a terrible waste – what if nobody is interested? But there is another reason why these schools don’t bother. This reason is that Sudbury schools value boredom.
Boredom has gotten a bad rep. “Mom! I’m bored!” has become a battle-cry to sow fear in the heart of the mightiest of mothers. There are entire industries designed to provide parents and children with antidotes for boredom. But boredom isn’t such a bad thing. Boredom is the feeling of not being highly motivated. It is an unpleasant feeling which propels you to engage in high-motivation activity, if only to escape the boredom. There is nothing quite as satisfying as engaging in activities towards which you are highly motivated. How can a feeling pushing us towards such a state of being possibly be a bad thing?
In Sudbury schools, it has been observed that boredom plays a significant role. Because students are allowed to do whatever they want and nobody tries to cure them of their boredom, they often find themselves in a strange situation. They have all these options around them, people playing, painting, talking, studying (or teaching), reading (or writing), listening to music (or making their own) – so many things they could take part in, yet they are not satisfied. They find that despite everything going on, they are bored. But this boredom tells you something – it tells you they are not engaged in highly motivated activity; they have not found something that inspires in them a state of high motivation. If there is something in the school they could find that kind of enthusiasm towards, they have not found it yet.
People cope with boredom in different ways. One way is to find something to do – not necessarily something great that you’re highly motivated to do, just any old thing. People doing this “peck around”, trying all kinds of different activities, (established classes and other regular activities are especially popular, because they’re already there). But they keep pecking around, rarely sticking with the same thing for long, because none of these things dispels the boredom – none of these inspires enough keen interest and motivation to make them want to keep at it. Another thing people do is sit around and whine about how bored they are; others will try and interest them in new activities – or get annoyed, and tell them to be quiet. And some people might just talk to others about their boredom. Whether with staff or fellow students, conversation can often inspire all kinds of new ideas. At the very least, conversation keeps you busy while you’re bored.
Eventually, whatever you choose to do with your boredom, it propels you to find an activity interesting enough for you to really get into it and forget about your boredom. Sometimes people find something like this amongst the activities they “peck” at; sometimes they figure it out in conversation with a friend; often, it suddenly occurs to you after weeks of boredom (it might have even been right under your nose the whole time!) Sometimes it’s a sport, sometimes it’s a game, sometimes it’s a series or genre of literature, sometimes it’s a science. It can literally be anything a person might care to do. They will pursue their new-found interest as if obsessed, often spending days on end just doing that one thing. In a Sudbury school, there are very few mandatory activities to interrupt these pursuits.
The thing is that this process is cyclical – you may find something really interesting, but that’s no guarantee that you’ll never be bored again. Boredom is a natural part of living and learning. Usually, when someone finds something they really like, they’ll be happily busy for a few hours, days or weeks. If they’re lucky, it will last for months. In some cases it might even last years (this kind of thing can become a dream job). But often as not, people get bored again, sooner or later. They may have ready every single history book they could get their hands on, or they played enough soccer to last them a life time. Maybe they discovered that that really tough video game is much easier to beat once you really apply yourself to it, or they realized that they want to do more than just work in a pet store. And then the boredom kicks in – and moves them to find something else that can really motivate them.
I believe that one can only find motivation and keen interest in things which one considers valuable, or potentially valuable, for oneself. Sudbury schools don’t claim to know better than the student what is good for them. Instead they say “it’s up to you to figure out what is good for you, what is important to you – and it’s up to you to go and get those things!” People routinely become excited and motivated about things they identify as important or useful – whether consciously, or unconsciously. Kids discovering reading and writing (if they haven’t been forced to learn these elsewhere) are often amazingly enthusiastic about it. They just gobble up all the reading they can get their hands on, or scribble out all the writing that they can. Sure, this might not happen precisely at the age of 6 – I started at 4, my brother at 8 – but it does happen eventually, and many kids get extraordinarily excited about this amazing ability to interact with written words. The same can often be observed in somebody acquiring a new language, learning about numbers and arithmetic, learning to sketch or paint – learning almost anything, really. It is precisely the fact that Sudbury schools do not try and cut off the search for an interesting new thing, whether by coercing students to do things or by “just offering something that might be nice”, that allows students to explore themselves and the world around them in search of something interesting – something that may be valuable for them. And without boredom to propel this search, many people would just have to settle for less, stop exploring, and possibly end up doing things they really don’t care about.
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Tags: Boredom, Democratic Education, Learning, Sudbury schooling
Categories : Thoughts
Economic collapse good for educational innovation?
13 01 2009John Robb over at Global Guerrillas put up a brief about education in the context of our very uncertain future:
[T]here is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree. Since nearly all of the value of an education has been extracted by the producer, to the detriment of the customer, this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade.
Robb concludes that the Internet will become a major platform for higher education, serving to reduce costs on both ends and providing broader access to high-quality education. This makes a lot of sense, but it leaves me wondering what will happen with school-level education.
The school systems in most industrialized Western countries are incredibly inefficient both financially and socially. Sudbury schools are significantly more cost-effective, not spending money on anything the school community does not accutely need, and relying on a tendency to attract creative people and/or solutions. This may prove to be an adaptive advantage in the long run, especially in financially troubled times, but many Sudbury schools struggle to get new students in these times due to their tendency to take tuition. For some schools (Sudbury Jerusalem, for instance) the reason is a lack of government support. For other schools (Sudbury Valley School) it might be a matter of principle.
Allow me to speculate for a moment… Several governments are apparently trying to solve the crisis by paying failing companies truckloads of taxpayer cash, absurd as this may be. If instead the focus would shift to optimizing government and state systems for maximum efficiency at minimum cost, we might see a shift towards educational innovation as different models compete to best serve troubled economies (this would require governments ceasing to so strongly favor a single school system, supporting none or all more or less equally). If, however, the status quo in education persists, schools that require tuition may see a marked decline in enrollment, leading to at least a temporary strengthening of state-supported school systems. It remains to be seen how the schools will cope with such a situation. If nothing else, rigid curriculum-based education will quickly show its inadequacy in dealing with a reality that changes too fast for any predictions to adequately inform the creation of curricula.
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Tags: Democratic Education, Economics, Education, Sudbury schooling, Technology
Categories : Thoughts
