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How Does This Not Blow Your Mind?

mittermayr 13y ago
would be interesting to hear more about those who actually go there, the reasoning of their parents, whether they assembly otherwise to study a 'sort of' curriculum and so forth... these quick snapshot paragraphs are a great teaser but naturally too light-weight in detail, would love to see a longer article on it.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  There's a lot of literature out there from the founders of the school. Generally speaking they do engage in a lot of self-directed learning, but I think if you walked around the school you would not say that they were spending their time engaged in learning the way most of us think about it. I'll be writing more about it. This was meant as a teaser, but I don't mean to leave it there. As I spend more time at the school I'll have more observations to share.
jackmaney 13y ago
Interesting...of the Sudbury Valley students who do go on to college, how do they fare in college against their peers?
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  I haven't yet seen any studies showing specific comparisons, but they seem to do well, enjoy college, and graduate. Again the point is not that Sudbury Valley does significantly better at preparing students for college/jobs but that it clearly is not doing a poor job of this, which I think is a significant observation given how different the environment is.
com2kid 13y ago
I am willing to bet that the parents of children at this school are educated (likely have college degrees) and have a strong focus on education. Some students do well in structured environments, some do really well in unstructured environments, there is no one right solution for everybody. Claiming that any one technique works for all demonstrates a lack of empathy for how others think and learn. I know that for me, I received failing grades in the few classes I took that were unstructured. Heck the same applied for online classes. Trivial material, but lack of forced time to participate (e.g. go to a classroom and listen to a lecture) means I would just give up on the class and not do anything.
- icegreentea 13y ago
  It's a private school. Tuition is 8k per year. This places the families and students who may attend in a specific socio-economic situation already.
  - fforw 13y ago
    So it would kind of be more meaningful to not compare to the national average but to private schools targeting the same socio-economic situations, but with a traditional curriculum.
    - irrationaljared 13y ago
      The stats on other schools in MA with a similar socioeconomic average are around 70% - 90% going on to college: http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32 http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32 Again the point is not to show that Sudbury Valley is better, but rather just that the complete lack of curriculum is clearly not producing horrible results.
      - com2kid 13y ago
        Thank you for this! 82% is right in the middle. Children who have been raised to value learning will, in all likelihood, value learning. This is not a surprise! I would also be curious to see the breakdown of what fields those students go into. Some people are capable of self-learning in certain fields where as others are not. A great example of this is math, we all have heard stories (or know the person, or are the person!) of someone who can learn math on their own straight from a text book. Then there are others who learn best from an interactive discussion about math with a teacher. And then there are those who learn best about math from a discussion within a peer group! If you look at our current teaching system, it tries to target all three learning styles to varying degrees. Hearing stories about some wonder-kid in 7th grade who taught himself everything up to calculus in a single summer by reading on his own doesn't really help the discussion around setting national educational policy, because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier. Writing is similar. Having an instructor guide students in areas to learn can be very valuable. Left to their own devices and being told to just write poems for a few hours a day for some length of time, I am betting most students wouldn't stumble upon haiku(s?) on their own!
mikemoka 13y ago
it would be interesting to know what they do there,I think that they probably don't party 24/7 there
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  Generally speaking they seem to do similar activities to what I do on the weekends, with my free time. I might read a book, play a video game, learn something new, visit with friends, etc. That roughly describes what I've seen from them in the time I've spent at a Sudbury Valley school in the Bay Area.
twelvechairs 13y ago
> The fact is that roughly 82% of Sudbury students go on to college compared to 63% of public school students nationwide. The comparison of a private school in Massachusetts (Sudbury) with public schools nationwide is poor. And this is the single statistic on which the thrust of the article is based.
- everettForth 13y ago
  The one in Massachusetts is the original Sudbury school. Families literally move across the country to enroll their children at that school, so I'd say it's a pretty special case.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  I mentioned in the blog post that it is an apples to oranges comparison for a lot of reasons. The point is that clearly the complete lack of curriculum is not placing these students at any significant disadvantage. That alone I think it a mind-blowing idea given how radically different the educational environment is compared to traditional schools.
tthomas48 13y ago
Actually for a school that self-selects students and is a private education those college continuation rates aren't so hot.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  Sudbury Valley does not self-select students. It is a private school, but if you can afford the relatively low tuition ($9k a year) and want to go there you can. There is no selection process other than making sure the family is on board with the educational philosophy.
  - chockablock 13y ago
    I think you've just described what 'self-selection' is: the school is not selective, but the students who choose to attend the school may not be representative of the general population
    - irrationaljared 13y ago
      I agree. The students at Sudbury Valley and the families are not representative. That said, there is no application process outside of making sure you want to be there and your family is on board. They are not filtering out lower-performing students at all. But it is certainly possible that this model would fail miserably when applied more generally. I don't think that can be the null hypothesis, though...
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  That's not the point.
_red 13y ago
The thing that blows my mind is how so many accept industrialized schooling methods as some sort of long-term facet of humanity. The truth is its been around for about 100 years give or take. It was instituted by the large monopolist who bribed politicians to force tax-payers to subsidize their worker training. The purpose is not to create "intelligent, creative thinkers" - its purpose is to create obedient factory workers who can place the round peg in the round hole.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
It does not blow my mind. Not one bit. I've posted various comments before where I detailed the fallacies and fundamental issues (some deliberately implanted from the beginning, others mutating later on) with the compulsory schooling system and how the classroom model is ineffectual. Remember: education != schooling. Never forget that. This is one of the most common misconceptions of our time. What does blows my mind is just how thoroughly the masses have accepted public school curricula as the only true and legitimate form of education. People like you blow my mind. I don't mean to be smug or arrogant, I'm glad you're awakening. Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor. Here are some books to read: John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down, Weapons of Mass Instruction and The Underground History of American Education. Charlotte Iserbyt: the deliberate dumbing down of america. Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society. John Holt: Anything at all, but particularly How Children Fail and How Children Learn. ---------- Besides Sudsbury schools, there's several other alternative school models: anarchistic free schools and democratic schools. Look those up, as well. Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning. Yet schooling has killed the will to autodidact for many people, or has delegitimized it in favor of formal schooling and credentials.
- peteforde 13y ago
  It pains me that you do sound smug, arrogant and also patronizing because you're bang on in your analysis. Please, I'm basically begging you: don't adopt an obnoxious stance when you're arguing an important point. Not because you're wrong, but because you're mostly right.
  - jonahx 13y ago
    This comment should be in permanent red bold type on the hacker news compose reply screen.
    - bdg 13y ago
beachstartup 13y ago
> The fact is that roughly 82% of Sudbury students go on to college compared to 63% of public school students nationwide. this doesn't blow my mind at all. that means a 5th of the students aren't going on to college. i'm pretty sure your standard, stereotypical east coast prep school named after a dead white guy could beat that number easily. and as long as your metric for success is acceptance into college, that's probably going to be true.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  I probably shouldn't have included that stat. The point was not to say that Sudbury Valley was sending 100% of their grads to MIT or something, but rather to note that I think people would predict far lower numbers of college-going graduates if they tried to predict the outcomes of a school that had not requirements and no curriculum at all...
istorical 13y ago
Montessori schools are somewhat of a middle ground between what this article describes and traditional school. I was in public Montessori schools from preschool through 8th grade. We had scheduled lectures for maybe two hours a day and the rest of the school day was spent working on whatever project or assignment you wanted to. Due dates were due dates and this type of schooling encouraged individual agency and personal responsibility. If you wanted to you could sit around and talk to your friends all day and not work on / learn anything, but if you didn't complete all of your work before deadline you faced consequences. But "homework" was just whatever you wanted or needed to work on at home to meet deadlines. You can't imagine how shocked I was in when I entered a traditional American high school and felt like a prisoner. Not allowed to speak or socialize (unless to ask a question of the instructor), move out of my seat, or do what I wanted. Just frozen in a chair listening to a teacher speak for hours on end. I was always the student who would raise their hand to ask a question, answer the teacher's question, or give my opinion because I was starving for any form of social interaction during classes. That anyone has the capacity to see a traditional western high school as anything BUT prison daycare is what shocks me. It speaks to the ability of normalization to blind us to extreme circumstances. Capitalism and the tragedy of the commons are the sole reason that our education system is so lecture-based, non-interactive, socially suffocating, creativity-draining, and non-personalized. Why would we spend more money, human capital, and time on improving the education system when it doesn't directly increase the GDP? What market force pushes us to improve education? What shareholder will benefit? This is the failure of a political and economic system that places too little emphasis on improving the public good.
- jetako 13y ago
  Distributed fairly evenly from K to 12, I enjoyed a handful of passionate teachers that conducted class in a more Montessori fashion, all at public schools. At the very least, they permitted me to guide my own curriculum. My CAD/CAM teacher permitted me to spend an entire semester messing around with Photoshop. He would simply check in on me once a week. Without question, the skills I learned in those months got me my first industry job 3 years later. The vast majority of my teachers followed the mediocre status quo that you describe, but there certainly was no mandate to teach that way. I know the problem is far more complex than individual teacher engagement, but that's what it boils down to. Anything that can be done to inspire teachers and keep them happy (better pay wouldn't hurt) should have a positive effect on education. The teachers that had the best impact on me cared the most about teaching, simple as that.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
It's not surprising at all, it's a facet of a world system that is no longer relevant. But look at other things such as labor laws and unions, if you propose changing them people will yell at you because of the perception that they benefit workers. The same way that schools benefit students. But neither is true. Unions are exclusionary of entry level workers, they benefit people who already have good jobs and training often to the detriment of workers who don't. And laws which force employers to provide benefits to "full time workers" generally just encourage businesses to keep some workers part time, forcing those people to work multiple jobs to earn more money. Similarly, an excess of business regulation tends to force small companies out of business and promotes the creation of large corporations (due to economies of scale with respect to regulatory compliance). These effects are probably not intended but that's rather irrelevant when they are still happening. I bring these up because they are more controversial than the idea that institutionalized public schooling in the "prussian" model is harmful. It's difficult to overcome ingrained biases and prejudices. If you find it troublesome to consider the idea that unions aren't an unalloyed good then you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people have a hard time reconsidering the value of the current educational system.
Havoc 13y ago
Implement it in a ghetto, achieve similar similar stats and then it'll blow my mind. I went to a [non US] high end private school & learned pretty quickly that education is a matter of "you get what you pay for". Perhaps its country specific, but locally the private schools crush the public ones into fine dust. Plus (local) private schools tend to attract the kids of the elite...which comes with some seriously high caliber connections.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  That would be more mind-blowing, I agree, but that's an enormously high bar that no one is achieving. Sudbury Valley is a private school, but it is much less expensive ($8k vs $25k+) than many other private schools and does not attract only elite students. In fact many students turn to Sudbury Valley after struggling with public schools or even being expelled from public schools. Unlike most private schools Sudbury Valley will accept all students as long as they want to be there and agree with the educational philosophy (e.g. adults will not force your student to do anything)...
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
The purpose of modern school system is to prepare children to be good factory workers. Long work day, doing what you're told, sitting still and being a good little worker.
- aquadrop 13y ago
  In that case it failed miserably.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    What makes you say that?
alan_cx 13y ago
I have 6 kids. One, my 10 yo daughter is mostly at home due to long term illness. School attendance, 10%, ish. In education tests, she is in the top 10%. My conclusion? Kids learn. Its what they do. No, Im not sure what the point of school is, except as a babysitting service for working parents. IMHO, its just an imposition of authority and structure on kids, so that adults can more easily do as told in.... authority and structure. Or some such snarky anti-society as we have it now thing. You know... I do wish we could start again with a blank sheet of paper.
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
Children with high IQs don't need to be railroaded, news at 11.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable to assume that these students have any higher IQs than the neighboring public schools. I have not found any evidence to suggest that.
Mithaldu 13y ago
> I would expect people to have more questions and want to learn more... There is no need for that since most people with an interest in the topic and the general techie-community type of intellect will be able to answer almost any possible interesting question on the topic for themselves and even quickly disprove your claims without needing any further information besides what you provided. The very first wrong thing is your conclusion, quote: > these students go on to have success in college and jobs So far you've only shown college enrollment, which has nothing to do with success in or after college, as it is, looking at the entire USA, completely a matter of cashflow. Further, your claim that there is no disadvantage is disproved by yourself when you state a data point that puts the "success" of that school below what would be expected from a private school. In other words, to answer your titular question of: > How Does This Not Blow Your Mind? It doesn't because we don't possess your biases and do not easily delude ourselves into your conclusions. Next time you try to prove something, please bring along actual numbers and comparisons.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  Ok, so would you predict that most of those who get accepted to college flunk out or are unable to get jobs? I can certainly appreciate that this might not actually be "mind-blowing", but personally I think even the college-acceptance rates are a surprising result.
  - Mithaldu 13y ago
    My prediction does not matter. The point is that you claim they are successful past college entrance (without qualifying in relation to what they are so) without providing ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. Furthermore you just now conflated "acceptance" with merely "going on to" college and in the process ignored the number of those who didn't even try to get in and also ignored the simple fact that getting into a college (ANY COLLEGE) in the USA has literally nothing to do with student ability.
    - irrationaljared 13y ago
      I apologize. I don't have specific stats to share on the college success. The books published by the school have a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the students having success in college. They don't seem to have universal success or significantly greater success then their peers from other schools, but they do seem to be able to handle and graduate from college and have gone on to a wide-range of jobs. I should not have simplified the argument to claim that they have universal success.
genofon 13y ago
I really hate titles that don't say anything about the topic, sadly they are more and more frequent on HN, I now stopped reading or upvoting those posts and I hope more people will do the same to these attention seekers
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  I am sorry about that.
  - Mithaldu 13y ago
    Sorry enough to change the title?
    - irrationaljared 13y ago
      What do you think the title should be?
      - Mithaldu 13y ago
        It needs to mention two important facts: 1. the students are self-guided 2. you have built a theory based on your observations I'd suggest, for example: "How is your mind not blown by students who seem to succeed through self-guidance?"
        irrationaljared 13y ago
        I've thought about it a bit. I realize the title is annoying on Hacker News, but I think the title is ok within the general context of my blog for those who read it regularly. I'll think about another title, and I'm sorry (sort-of as I've enjoyed the debate here) for the sensationalist title on Hacker News, but I don't think it's a huge deal outside of this specific context...
matthewmacleod 13y ago
It doesn't blow my mind, and this article doesn't really scratch the surface. First off, this is a private school. Right off the bat, we'd expect their educational achievement to be higher, simply down to social class, which is directly correlated. So we can establish that educational attainment at this school is in line with other private schools. This being the case, the conclusion we can draw from this school is: "children with middle-class parents who are involved in their education can achieve better outcomes than the public school average when they attend well-funded private schools, even with an alternative educational model." Phrased like that, if's pretty obvious. The Sudbury model is also not the claimed "educational environment where the students can do what ever they want, when ever they want all day long" - that's a bit of a misrepresentation. It's an educational environment where children are provided the tools and support to plan their own education, and are required to be involved in that process. I absolutely, thoroughly believe that the Sudbury model is an excellent approach to providing a much more well-rounded education for children. However, it requires lots of funding, excellent educators, and is arguably not any more suitable for every child than the current flawed system is. Formal education and curricula are something I found exceptionally useful as a child, though I of course recognise the limitations there, and I'm pretty envious of the Sudbury model. But I wonder if a more general-purpose model may be effective. I attended a state comprehensive school in the UK, but had a couple of excellent teachers who were happy to provide materials and support for additional or alternative self-directed learning in areas where it was obvious I was bored or disinterested. That worked really well, and I can totally see that a basic curriculum and standardised attainment, combined with flexible opportunities for students who want to take more control of their learning, could be very effective. Of course, all of this relies of excellent, well-paid educators. And sometimes these can be hard to come by.
- irrationaljared 13y ago
  Just want to point out a few things: 1) There are no requirements for students to be "involved in the process of planning their own education". They are only required to be attend school a certain number of hours per year (I'm not sure the exact number), and serve time on the judicial committee. There are no requirements at all around any educational goals. 2) Sudbury Valley School operates on less money per-pupil than neighboring public schools. 3) The only requirement for adults who work as staff members is that they are capable of treating students as equals.
krsunny 13y ago
Why on earth would I read this article if I am going into it with my mind pre-blown???
6d0debc071 13y ago
It doesn't surprise me. If you assume that the school system doesn't exist. And I asked you how you think people learn best and to design a system around it, this is not how you'd do it. Several major points spring to mind: 1) Learning - once you're done with route-memorisation nonsense - is the process of discovering that what you assumed was wrong or incomplete. What's standardised testing? The punishment of being wrong or giving an answer that's more or less complete than the tester wanted. It's hardly surprising that a culture that grows around punishing failure would be hostile to learning. There's research backing that up. We know that people who are rewarded for finding out that they're wrong, over time, start to dramatically outperform people who are rewarded for finding out that they're right. The former group continually seek to find out that they're wrong, which they can only do by pushing the boundaries, the latter group largely stick to what they already know. 2) Effort can only take you so far in anything. This is a common enough theme here that can probably stand without support. No-one wants to hire someone who doesn't like the job, we expect them to do everything half-arsed. It's not going to be magically different for education. So, what are the odds that someone's going to be deeply interested in everything? I've never met such a person. I've met people who are happy enough to listen but they don't go off and learn about the subject on their own afterwards. What's even the expected return on making everyone learn everything? We need a few generalists, granted, but we'll get a few generalists anyway from people who are interested in multiple subjects. Someone who doesn't enjoy maths, what's the point of making them learn trig, or linear algebra? What's the point in making someone who wants to be a Scientist take art? Can it even be said to be learning if they're just doing it because they have to? Skills that aren't practised wither. I've met people who got quite reasonable GCSE results, at some point they were able to do the things in the subjects they got, and can't even work out a percentage anymore. Give them a basic grounding; add up, divide, work out a percentage; and the rest? Not their problem. They're not going to learn it properly in the first place and it's questionable how much use they'd have out of it if they did. The vast majority of the time spent on someone's education is just pointless filler subjects that do little more than punish someone with boredom and failure. Offering no economic or cultural benefit in return. Just try having a discussion with someone about the underlying causes of the Opium Wars, or the Boer Wars, or ask them why World War 1 started, or... Then try having a discussion with them about the religious practices of Buddhists, or Jews. There's a very limited set of living knowledge in most people - far beneath that which you'd expect just going off of exam results and taught subjects. The two should approach each other, and it seems to me the logical way to do this is to reduce taught knowledge unless an economic or cultural case can be made for attempting to run things in the other direction. 3) This ties into 2 but is a little different: We have utterly no respect for diversity. The downside of having a standardised grade system is that there's a cutoff point where investing more in a student stops being worthwhile. You have a student getting a B, do you focus on getting them up to an A or do you focus on getting the D student up to a C so that they count in your students getting A-C stats? You have a student getting an A, do you work to further engage them or do they just cease to be worth your time? It makes far more sense, under that incentive system, to focus that effort on the people who are under-performing - and who will probably not retain and go on to use the knowledge. The consequence of having a set test is you have teaching set to the test. You have a space of things that you expect people to know, and they may fill it to various degrees but at the end of the day if you take a group of people that achieved good results, they're all going to know more or less the same stuff. Strength in groups comes from diversity, new ways of looking at things, new questions, different answers. Over specialisation creates weaknesses - cultural blind-spots. If you know the same as me, then I don't need you as anything more than something to carry out my orders. You make me stronger only in so far as you're an instrument of my will. There's no point having a discussion with you, because you'd only be able to tell me what I already know. Of course we all go on to live very different lives, so this effect becomes less pronounced with age. Nonetheless, it's a major screw up. 4) A lot of your success in the current education system seems to hinge on your ability to visualise yourself enjoying future rewards and the reinforcement you get at home. There seem likely to be differences in people's brains in terms of how well they can be motivated by the potential of future rewards and lots of people have really shitty home lives. Ideally the reinforcement would take place in the classroom as per 1. ------------------------------- So, let's wool-gather a bit: In really broad strokes, what qualities would we like an education system to have? Help every child achieve their own strengths. Things that are immediately rewarding, preferably in the social sense. Things that allow people to experience environmental mastery. Some structure for people who lack the ability to self motivate. So: No set classes that someone has to be in. No set subjects beyond the very basics. Optional projects (preferably group projects) rather than tests. How might that look? A child goes into school and is presented with a number of groups that are running around projects at the time. Want to try building a robot? They try putting a robot together, discover they need to understand more about maths, go see the maths teacher. They need to learn more about programming, go see the programming teacher. They need to learn about machining, they go see the design teacher. And there's a teacher overseeing the project, sharing in their success, urging them on. Under that sort of system teachers become more coaches and advisers than they are the current lecturers and punishers. Or - a child can go into school and opt for more or less the current set up. The maths teacher isn't going to be advising all the time after all. There'd be more time to focus on those children who want more guidance in their education... though to a certain extent the requirements of projects would impose structure in the knowledge that people were obliged to seek out. (I'm honestly not sure this is good for people, you will have to self-direct when you get out of education, but I'm not sure enough to head it off completely and I don't see a point in ruling it out - you could adjust the system later if it turned out to be a poor use of resources / those people were massively disadvantaged.) ... Objections? But where will the money come from? It's actually not clear to me that this would be more expensive than the current system. Resources are currently pretty cheap, infrastructure for making things for projects is a one time cost that when you average it out's going to be pretty much negligible. It's not clear you'd need to employ more teachers. But what about bad teachers? Well, they're a problem that the current system shares too. They're just more readily apparent in this system. Which is good. Hire, train and fire - if someone's not living up to expectations - should be a fairly quick cycle. What you're essentially saying when you're worried about the quality of teachers under such a system is that a child is going to run into the limitations of what the teacher knows, or that the teacher's not going to be bothered to spend time on them. Which is either fantastic or extremely worrying, but in any case is a clear signal in a way that waiting until they get their GCSE results isn't. But if people don't take tests how do we assess them for work? Well, look, two years out the gate it doesn't make a dang bit of difference for most things that you might want to do what your education was. I'm a Philosopher by education. I've worked in public policy research, sales, programming.... What's important is what jobs you've had and how well you've done them. Education should be approached in the same way. What did you do and how well did you do it? Write about your education on your CV as if it were another job and list your achievements. Not only is it less perverse for you it tells the person reading the thing a lot more about you. Fifteen years of work should not be summed up as 'GCSEs including English A, Science A and Maths A.' But that's how I see it on a lot of CVs. # Mind you, I'm not saying that a system you made up would look like this. There are probably a number of ways it could go, and a number of flaws that would need tuning. I'm just saying that if you start off thinking about how you'd teach people I end up in dramatically different places to the current school system - and consequently I'm not surprised in the least to learn that the school in OP's link doesn't seem to be doing any worse than comparable schools in the area. When you start looking at the paths not taken, it's like that for a lot of things.
elwell 13y ago
I was in a similar program in 7th and 8th grade; self-assessments, no-grades, frequent field-trips... I think I was in the 18% that it didn't work for though...

would be interesting to hear more about those who actually go there, the reasoning of their parents, whether they assembly otherwise to study a 'sort of' curriculum and so forth... these quick snapshot paragraphs are a great teaser but naturally too light-weight in detail, would love to see a longer article on it.

irrationaljared 13y ago
There's a lot of literature out there from the founders of the school. Generally speaking they do engage in a lot of self-directed learning, but I think if you walked around the school you would not say that they were spending their time engaged in learning the way most of us think about it. I'll be writing more about it. This was meant as a teaser, but I don't mean to leave it there. As I spend more time at the school I'll have more observations to share.

jackmaney 13y ago

Interesting...of the Sudbury Valley students who do go on to college, how do they fare in college against their peers?

irrationaljared 13y ago
I haven't yet seen any studies showing specific comparisons, but they seem to do well, enjoy college, and graduate. Again the point is not that Sudbury Valley does significantly better at preparing students for college/jobs but that it clearly is not doing a poor job of this, which I think is a significant observation given how different the environment is.

com2kid 13y ago

I am willing to bet that the parents of children at this school are educated (likely have college degrees) and have a strong focus on education. Some students do well in structured environments, some do really well in unstructured environments, there is no one right solution for everybody. Claiming that any one technique works for all demonstrates a lack of empathy for how others think and learn. I know that for me, I received failing grades in the few classes I took that were unstructured. Heck the same applied for online classes. Trivial material, but lack of forced time to participate (e.g. go to a classroom and listen to a lecture) means I would just give up on the class and not do anything.

icegreentea 13y ago
It's a private school. Tuition is 8k per year. This places the families and students who may attend in a specific socio-economic situation already.
- fforw 13y ago
  So it would kind of be more meaningful to not compare to the national average but to private schools targeting the same socio-economic situations, but with a traditional curriculum.
  - irrationaljared 13y ago
    The stats on other schools in MA with a similar socioeconomic average are around 70% - 90% going on to college: http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32 http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32 Again the point is not to show that Sudbury Valley is better, but rather just that the complete lack of curriculum is clearly not producing horrible results.
    - com2kid 13y ago
      Thank you for this! 82% is right in the middle. Children who have been raised to value learning will, in all likelihood, value learning. This is not a surprise! I would also be curious to see the breakdown of what fields those students go into. Some people are capable of self-learning in certain fields where as others are not. A great example of this is math, we all have heard stories (or know the person, or are the person!) of someone who can learn math on their own straight from a text book. Then there are others who learn best from an interactive discussion about math with a teacher. And then there are those who learn best about math from a discussion within a peer group! If you look at our current teaching system, it tries to target all three learning styles to varying degrees. Hearing stories about some wonder-kid in 7th grade who taught himself everything up to calculus in a single summer by reading on his own doesn't really help the discussion around setting national educational policy, because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier. Writing is similar. Having an instructor guide students in areas to learn can be very valuable. Left to their own devices and being told to just write poems for a few hours a day for some length of time, I am betting most students wouldn't stumble upon haiku(s?) on their own!

mikemoka 13y ago

it would be interesting to know what they do there,I think that they probably don't party 24/7 there

irrationaljared 13y ago
Generally speaking they seem to do similar activities to what I do on the weekends, with my free time. I might read a book, play a video game, learn something new, visit with friends, etc. That roughly describes what I've seen from them in the time I've spent at a Sudbury Valley school in the Bay Area.

twelvechairs 13y ago

> The fact is that roughly 82% of Sudbury students go on to college compared to 63% of public school students nationwide. The comparison of a private school in Massachusetts (Sudbury) with public schools nationwide is poor. And this is the single statistic on which the thrust of the article is based.

everettForth 13y ago
The one in Massachusetts is the original Sudbury school. Families literally move across the country to enroll their children at that school, so I'd say it's a pretty special case.
irrationaljared 13y ago
I mentioned in the blog post that it is an apples to oranges comparison for a lot of reasons. The point is that clearly the complete lack of curriculum is not placing these students at any significant disadvantage. That alone I think it a mind-blowing idea given how radically different the educational environment is compared to traditional schools.

tthomas48 13y ago

Actually for a school that self-selects students and is a private education those college continuation rates aren't so hot.

irrationaljared 13y ago
Sudbury Valley does not self-select students. It is a private school, but if you can afford the relatively low tuition ($9k a year) and want to go there you can. There is no selection process other than making sure the family is on board with the educational philosophy.
- chockablock 13y ago
  I think you've just described what 'self-selection' is: the school is not selective, but the students who choose to attend the school may not be representative of the general population
  - irrationaljared 13y ago
    I agree. The students at Sudbury Valley and the families are not representative. That said, there is no application process outside of making sure you want to be there and your family is on board. They are not filtering out lower-performing students at all. But it is certainly possible that this model would fail miserably when applied more generally. I don't think that can be the null hypothesis, though...
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
That's not the point.

_red 13y ago

The thing that blows my mind is how so many accept industrialized schooling methods as some sort of long-term facet of humanity. The truth is its been around for about 100 years give or take. It was instituted by the large monopolist who bribed politicians to force tax-payers to subsidize their worker training. The purpose is not to create "intelligent, creative thinkers" - its purpose is to create obedient factory workers who can place the round peg in the round hole.

deleted 13y ago

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vezzy-fnord 13y ago

It does not blow my mind. Not one bit. I've posted various comments before where I detailed the fallacies and fundamental issues (some deliberately implanted from the beginning, others mutating later on) with the compulsory schooling system and how the classroom model is ineffectual. Remember: education != schooling. Never forget that. This is one of the most common misconceptions of our time. What does blows my mind is just how thoroughly the masses have accepted public school curricula as the only true and legitimate form of education. People like you blow my mind. I don't mean to be smug or arrogant, I'm glad you're awakening. Fact of the matter is compulsory schooling originated to instill obedience in the context of the Prussian militarist regime, later becoming adopted by industrial moguls in the USA during the late 19th century, due to the necessity of cheap and easily disposable labor. Here are some books to read: John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down, Weapons of Mass Instruction and The Underground History of American Education. Charlotte Iserbyt: the deliberate dumbing down of america. Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society. John Holt: Anything at all, but particularly How Children Fail and How Children Learn. ---------- Besides Sudsbury schools, there's several other alternative school models: anarchistic free schools and democratic schools. Look those up, as well. Ultimately, what people need to realize is that autodidacticism is the most efficient form of learning. Yet schooling has killed the will to autodidact for many people, or has delegitimized it in favor of formal schooling and credentials.

peteforde 13y ago
It pains me that you do sound smug, arrogant and also patronizing because you're bang on in your analysis. Please, I'm basically begging you: don't adopt an obnoxious stance when you're arguing an important point. Not because you're wrong, but because you're mostly right.
- jonahx 13y ago
  This comment should be in permanent red bold type on the hacker news compose reply screen.
  - bdg 13y ago

beachstartup 13y ago

> The fact is that roughly 82% of Sudbury students go on to college compared to 63% of public school students nationwide. this doesn't blow my mind at all. that means a 5th of the students aren't going on to college. i'm pretty sure your standard, stereotypical east coast prep school named after a dead white guy could beat that number easily. and as long as your metric for success is acceptance into college, that's probably going to be true.

irrationaljared 13y ago
I probably shouldn't have included that stat. The point was not to say that Sudbury Valley was sending 100% of their grads to MIT or something, but rather to note that I think people would predict far lower numbers of college-going graduates if they tried to predict the outcomes of a school that had not requirements and no curriculum at all...

istorical 13y ago

Montessori schools are somewhat of a middle ground between what this article describes and traditional school. I was in public Montessori schools from preschool through 8th grade. We had scheduled lectures for maybe two hours a day and the rest of the school day was spent working on whatever project or assignment you wanted to. Due dates were due dates and this type of schooling encouraged individual agency and personal responsibility. If you wanted to you could sit around and talk to your friends all day and not work on / learn anything, but if you didn't complete all of your work before deadline you faced consequences. But "homework" was just whatever you wanted or needed to work on at home to meet deadlines. You can't imagine how shocked I was in when I entered a traditional American high school and felt like a prisoner. Not allowed to speak or socialize (unless to ask a question of the instructor), move out of my seat, or do what I wanted. Just frozen in a chair listening to a teacher speak for hours on end. I was always the student who would raise their hand to ask a question, answer the teacher's question, or give my opinion because I was starving for any form of social interaction during classes. That anyone has the capacity to see a traditional western high school as anything BUT prison daycare is what shocks me. It speaks to the ability of normalization to blind us to extreme circumstances. Capitalism and the tragedy of the commons are the sole reason that our education system is so lecture-based, non-interactive, socially suffocating, creativity-draining, and non-personalized. Why would we spend more money, human capital, and time on improving the education system when it doesn't directly increase the GDP? What market force pushes us to improve education? What shareholder will benefit? This is the failure of a political and economic system that places too little emphasis on improving the public good.

jetako 13y ago
Distributed fairly evenly from K to 12, I enjoyed a handful of passionate teachers that conducted class in a more Montessori fashion, all at public schools. At the very least, they permitted me to guide my own curriculum. My CAD/CAM teacher permitted me to spend an entire semester messing around with Photoshop. He would simply check in on me once a week. Without question, the skills I learned in those months got me my first industry job 3 years later. The vast majority of my teachers followed the mediocre status quo that you describe, but there certainly was no mandate to teach that way. I know the problem is far more complex than individual teacher engagement, but that's what it boils down to. Anything that can be done to inspire teachers and keep them happy (better pay wouldn't hurt) should have a positive effect on education. The teachers that had the best impact on me cared the most about teaching, simple as that.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

It's not surprising at all, it's a facet of a world system that is no longer relevant. But look at other things such as labor laws and unions, if you propose changing them people will yell at you because of the perception that they benefit workers. The same way that schools benefit students. But neither is true. Unions are exclusionary of entry level workers, they benefit people who already have good jobs and training often to the detriment of workers who don't. And laws which force employers to provide benefits to "full time workers" generally just encourage businesses to keep some workers part time, forcing those people to work multiple jobs to earn more money. Similarly, an excess of business regulation tends to force small companies out of business and promotes the creation of large corporations (due to economies of scale with respect to regulatory compliance). These effects are probably not intended but that's rather irrelevant when they are still happening. I bring these up because they are more controversial than the idea that institutionalized public schooling in the "prussian" model is harmful. It's difficult to overcome ingrained biases and prejudices. If you find it troublesome to consider the idea that unions aren't an unalloyed good then you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people have a hard time reconsidering the value of the current educational system.

Havoc 13y ago

Implement it in a ghetto, achieve similar similar stats and then it'll blow my mind. I went to a [non US] high end private school & learned pretty quickly that education is a matter of "you get what you pay for". Perhaps its country specific, but locally the private schools crush the public ones into fine dust. Plus (local) private schools tend to attract the kids of the elite...which comes with some seriously high caliber connections.

irrationaljared 13y ago
That would be more mind-blowing, I agree, but that's an enormously high bar that no one is achieving. Sudbury Valley is a private school, but it is much less expensive ($8k vs $25k+) than many other private schools and does not attract only elite students. In fact many students turn to Sudbury Valley after struggling with public schools or even being expelled from public schools. Unlike most private schools Sudbury Valley will accept all students as long as they want to be there and agree with the educational philosophy (e.g. adults will not force your student to do anything)...

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

The purpose of modern school system is to prepare children to be good factory workers. Long work day, doing what you're told, sitting still and being a good little worker.

aquadrop 13y ago
In that case it failed miserably.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  What makes you say that?

alan_cx 13y ago

I have 6 kids. One, my 10 yo daughter is mostly at home due to long term illness. School attendance, 10%, ish. In education tests, she is in the top 10%. My conclusion? Kids learn. Its what they do. No, Im not sure what the point of school is, except as a babysitting service for working parents. IMHO, its just an imposition of authority and structure on kids, so that adults can more easily do as told in.... authority and structure. Or some such snarky anti-society as we have it now thing. You know... I do wish we could start again with a blank sheet of paper.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

Children with high IQs don't need to be railroaded, news at 11.

irrationaljared 13y ago
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that these students have any higher IQs than the neighboring public schools. I have not found any evidence to suggest that.

Mithaldu 13y ago

> I would expect people to have more questions and want to learn more... There is no need for that since most people with an interest in the topic and the general techie-community type of intellect will be able to answer almost any possible interesting question on the topic for themselves and even quickly disprove your claims without needing any further information besides what you provided. The very first wrong thing is your conclusion, quote: > these students go on to have success in college and jobs So far you've only shown college enrollment, which has nothing to do with success in or after college, as it is, looking at the entire USA, completely a matter of cashflow. Further, your claim that there is no disadvantage is disproved by yourself when you state a data point that puts the "success" of that school below what would be expected from a private school. In other words, to answer your titular question of: > How Does This Not Blow Your Mind? It doesn't because we don't possess your biases and do not easily delude ourselves into your conclusions. Next time you try to prove something, please bring along actual numbers and comparisons.

irrationaljared 13y ago
Ok, so would you predict that most of those who get accepted to college flunk out or are unable to get jobs? I can certainly appreciate that this might not actually be "mind-blowing", but personally I think even the college-acceptance rates are a surprising result.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  My prediction does not matter. The point is that you claim they are successful past college entrance (without qualifying in relation to what they are so) without providing ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. Furthermore you just now conflated "acceptance" with merely "going on to" college and in the process ignored the number of those who didn't even try to get in and also ignored the simple fact that getting into a college (ANY COLLEGE) in the USA has literally nothing to do with student ability.
  - irrationaljared 13y ago
    I apologize. I don't have specific stats to share on the college success. The books published by the school have a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the students having success in college. They don't seem to have universal success or significantly greater success then their peers from other schools, but they do seem to be able to handle and graduate from college and have gone on to a wide-range of jobs. I should not have simplified the argument to claim that they have universal success.

genofon 13y ago

I really hate titles that don't say anything about the topic, sadly they are more and more frequent on HN, I now stopped reading or upvoting those posts and I hope more people will do the same to these attention seekers

irrationaljared 13y ago
I am sorry about that.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  Sorry enough to change the title?
  - irrationaljared 13y ago
    What do you think the title should be?
    - Mithaldu 13y ago
      It needs to mention two important facts: 1. the students are self-guided 2. you have built a theory based on your observations I'd suggest, for example: "How is your mind not blown by students who seem to succeed through self-guidance?"
      - irrationaljared 13y ago
        I've thought about it a bit. I realize the title is annoying on Hacker News, but I think the title is ok within the general context of my blog for those who read it regularly. I'll think about another title, and I'm sorry (sort-of as I've enjoyed the debate here) for the sensationalist title on Hacker News, but I don't think it's a huge deal outside of this specific context...

matthewmacleod 13y ago

It doesn't blow my mind, and this article doesn't really scratch the surface. First off, this is a private school. Right off the bat, we'd expect their educational achievement to be higher, simply down to social class, which is directly correlated. So we can establish that educational attainment at this school is in line with other private schools. This being the case, the conclusion we can draw from this school is: "children with middle-class parents who are involved in their education can achieve better outcomes than the public school average when they attend well-funded private schools, even with an alternative educational model." Phrased like that, if's pretty obvious. The Sudbury model is also not the claimed "educational environment where the students can do what ever they want, when ever they want all day long" - that's a bit of a misrepresentation. It's an educational environment where children are provided the tools and support to plan their own education, and are required to be involved in that process. I absolutely, thoroughly believe that the Sudbury model is an excellent approach to providing a much more well-rounded education for children. However, it requires lots of funding, excellent educators, and is arguably not any more suitable for every child than the current flawed system is. Formal education and curricula are something I found exceptionally useful as a child, though I of course recognise the limitations there, and I'm pretty envious of the Sudbury model. But I wonder if a more general-purpose model may be effective. I attended a state comprehensive school in the UK, but had a couple of excellent teachers who were happy to provide materials and support for additional or alternative self-directed learning in areas where it was obvious I was bored or disinterested. That worked really well, and I can totally see that a basic curriculum and standardised attainment, combined with flexible opportunities for students who want to take more control of their learning, could be very effective. Of course, all of this relies of excellent, well-paid educators. And sometimes these can be hard to come by.

irrationaljared 13y ago
Just want to point out a few things: 1) There are no requirements for students to be "involved in the process of planning their own education". They are only required to be attend school a certain number of hours per year (I'm not sure the exact number), and serve time on the judicial committee. There are no requirements at all around any educational goals. 2) Sudbury Valley School operates on less money per-pupil than neighboring public schools. 3) The only requirement for adults who work as staff members is that they are capable of treating students as equals.

krsunny 13y ago

Why on earth would I read this article if I am going into it with my mind pre-blown???

6d0debc071 13y ago

It doesn't surprise me. If you assume that the school system doesn't exist. And I asked you how you think people learn best and to design a system around it, this is not how you'd do it. Several major points spring to mind: 1) Learning - once you're done with route-memorisation nonsense - is the process of discovering that what you assumed was wrong or incomplete. What's standardised testing? The punishment of being wrong or giving an answer that's more or less complete than the tester wanted. It's hardly surprising that a culture that grows around punishing failure would be hostile to learning. There's research backing that up. We know that people who are rewarded for finding out that they're wrong, over time, start to dramatically outperform people who are rewarded for finding out that they're right. The former group continually seek to find out that they're wrong, which they can only do by pushing the boundaries, the latter group largely stick to what they already know. 2) Effort can only take you so far in anything. This is a common enough theme here that can probably stand without support. No-one wants to hire someone who doesn't like the job, we expect them to do everything half-arsed. It's not going to be magically different for education. So, what are the odds that someone's going to be deeply interested in everything? I've never met such a person. I've met people who are happy enough to listen but they don't go off and learn about the subject on their own afterwards. What's even the expected return on making everyone learn everything? We need a few generalists, granted, but we'll get a few generalists anyway from people who are interested in multiple subjects. Someone who doesn't enjoy maths, what's the point of making them learn trig, or linear algebra? What's the point in making someone who wants to be a Scientist take art? Can it even be said to be learning if they're just doing it because they have to? Skills that aren't practised wither. I've met people who got quite reasonable GCSE results, at some point they were able to do the things in the subjects they got, and can't even work out a percentage anymore. Give them a basic grounding; add up, divide, work out a percentage; and the rest? Not their problem. They're not going to learn it properly in the first place and it's questionable how much use they'd have out of it if they did. The vast majority of the time spent on someone's education is just pointless filler subjects that do little more than punish someone with boredom and failure. Offering no economic or cultural benefit in return. Just try having a discussion with someone about the underlying causes of the Opium Wars, or the Boer Wars, or ask them why World War 1 started, or... Then try having a discussion with them about the religious practices of Buddhists, or Jews. There's a very limited set of living knowledge in most people - far beneath that which you'd expect just going off of exam results and taught subjects. The two should approach each other, and it seems to me the logical way to do this is to reduce taught knowledge unless an economic or cultural case can be made for attempting to run things in the other direction. 3) This ties into 2 but is a little different: We have utterly no respect for diversity. The downside of having a standardised grade system is that there's a cutoff point where investing more in a student stops being worthwhile. You have a student getting a B, do you focus on getting them up to an A or do you focus on getting the D student up to a C so that they count in your students getting A-C stats? You have a student getting an A, do you work to further engage them or do they just cease to be worth your time? It makes far more sense, under that incentive system, to focus that effort on the people who are under-performing - and who will probably not retain and go on to use the knowledge. The consequence of having a set test is you have teaching set to the test. You have a space of things that you expect people to know, and they may fill it to various degrees but at the end of the day if you take a group of people that achieved good results, they're all going to know more or less the same stuff. Strength in groups comes from diversity, new ways of looking at things, new questions, different answers. Over specialisation creates weaknesses - cultural blind-spots. If you know the same as me, then I don't need you as anything more than something to carry out my orders. You make me stronger only in so far as you're an instrument of my will. There's no point having a discussion with you, because you'd only be able to tell me what I already know. Of course we all go on to live very different lives, so this effect becomes less pronounced with age. Nonetheless, it's a major screw up. 4) A lot of your success in the current education system seems to hinge on your ability to visualise yourself enjoying future rewards and the reinforcement you get at home. There seem likely to be differences in people's brains in terms of how well they can be motivated by the potential of future rewards and lots of people have really shitty home lives. Ideally the reinforcement would take place in the classroom as per 1. ------------------------------- So, let's wool-gather a bit: In really broad strokes, what qualities would we like an education system to have? Help every child achieve their own strengths. Things that are immediately rewarding, preferably in the social sense. Things that allow people to experience environmental mastery. Some structure for people who lack the ability to self motivate. So: No set classes that someone has to be in. No set subjects beyond the very basics. Optional projects (preferably group projects) rather than tests. How might that look? A child goes into school and is presented with a number of groups that are running around projects at the time. Want to try building a robot? They try putting a robot together, discover they need to understand more about maths, go see the maths teacher. They need to learn more about programming, go see the programming teacher. They need to learn about machining, they go see the design teacher. And there's a teacher overseeing the project, sharing in their success, urging them on. Under that sort of system teachers become more coaches and advisers than they are the current lecturers and punishers. Or - a child can go into school and opt for more or less the current set up. The maths teacher isn't going to be advising all the time after all. There'd be more time to focus on those children who want more guidance in their education... though to a certain extent the requirements of projects would impose structure in the knowledge that people were obliged to seek out. (I'm honestly not sure this is good for people, you will have to self-direct when you get out of education, but I'm not sure enough to head it off completely and I don't see a point in ruling it out - you could adjust the system later if it turned out to be a poor use of resources / those people were massively disadvantaged.) ... Objections? But where will the money come from? It's actually not clear to me that this would be more expensive than the current system. Resources are currently pretty cheap, infrastructure for making things for projects is a one time cost that when you average it out's going to be pretty much negligible. It's not clear you'd need to employ more teachers. But what about bad teachers? Well, they're a problem that the current system shares too. They're just more readily apparent in this system. Which is good. Hire, train and fire - if someone's not living up to expectations - should be a fairly quick cycle. What you're essentially saying when you're worried about the quality of teachers under such a system is that a child is going to run into the limitations of what the teacher knows, or that the teacher's not going to be bothered to spend time on them. Which is either fantastic or extremely worrying, but in any case is a clear signal in a way that waiting until they get their GCSE results isn't. But if people don't take tests how do we assess them for work? Well, look, two years out the gate it doesn't make a dang bit of difference for most things that you might want to do what your education was. I'm a Philosopher by education. I've worked in public policy research, sales, programming.... What's important is what jobs you've had and how well you've done them. Education should be approached in the same way. What did you do and how well did you do it? Write about your education on your CV as if it were another job and list your achievements. Not only is it less perverse for you it tells the person reading the thing a lot more about you. Fifteen years of work should not be summed up as 'GCSEs including English A, Science A and Maths A.' But that's how I see it on a lot of CVs. # Mind you, I'm not saying that a system you made up would look like this. There are probably a number of ways it could go, and a number of flaws that would need tuning. I'm just saying that if you start off thinking about how you'd teach people I end up in dramatically different places to the current school system - and consequently I'm not surprised in the least to learn that the school in OP's link doesn't seem to be doing any worse than comparable schools in the area. When you start looking at the paths not taken, it's like that for a lot of things.

elwell 13y ago

I was in a similar program in 7th and 8th grade; self-assessments, no-grades, frequent field-trips... I think I was in the 18% that it didn't work for though...