10 ms·

The school that hates rules

120 points by Thevet 12y ago

yonibot 12y ago
This article reads like an almost verbatim regurgitation of A. S. Neill's points in Summerhill, his excellent book on the school that he built and the "free school" system that he pioneered. Neill's belief in the inherent goodness of children and the power of freedom on their development resonated strongly with me. However, Summerhill was a unique book written by an eloquent man - almost a statement of philosophy, rather than a well-researched manual. Which is fine for a pioneer. Unfortunately this article does not add anything to the subject, and is really just a reiteration of arguments made half a century ago (without even quoting the original title).
com2kid 12y ago
To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take. Heck even back when I was in school, I barely did any homework or studied at all, I lived to go home and play video games every day. I was able to skim through because traditional school had such low expectations, but without proper studying I did not learn any of the material that I tested so well on. As a result I had to retake a lot of courses when I got to college. A much more authoritarian environment in school would have been good for me. Two periods free of distraction dedicated to studying (perhaps spread throughout the day) would have resulted in my learning a lot more. One saving grace might be if the majority of students who go to these schools have parents who expect excellence. In that case peer pressure will force many students to take the same lessons that other students are. I suspect that so long as the school sizes stay small that it will be possible for such forces to dominate. Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. (One can observe low literacy rates highly economically depressed areas already!) More fundamentally, sites/services like Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc, all directly tweak the pleasure center of our brain. By design users will not get bored of them. Yeah yeah half the users on HN will get bored of Snapchat/Facebook/Instagram, congrats, we aren't neurotypical, I don't get a spark of pleasure looking at pictures of people on some social network, but I sure as heck know others who can literally spend hours just browsing photo streams. TIL on Reddit however? Or heck just HN itself? Yup, very addictive. Learning new factoids feels good.
- g_delgado14 12y ago
  I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. And yes, ppl (especially young children) will get hooked - but when you're surrounded by eager peers who are exploring interesting things (perhaps one made a game on a RaspPi), the insatiable curiosity of a child will defeat the attractive nature of the soul sucking sites that you mentioned. I think the pressures placed on someone by social norms outweigh the influences these unproductive sites have, at least in the long run.
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    > I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. [..]
- malandrew 12y ago
  Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. Totally agree. However, while there were no hard numbers in the article, it seems to me that these places may be successful because of the high "teacher" to "student" ratio. It sounds like the adults are peers and are in sufficient numbers that the children encounter enough "mature peers" with a wealth of experience to share. If you think about it, school is ridiculously out of place relative to pretty much every other institution in the world. Where else can you go and be surrounded by 15 to 30 people all within +1 and -1 year of the same age. To me it's crazy to expect learning to come out of an environment where you have 15-30 or more people equally ignorant on a topic expected to learn socially. Basically, you have one individual (the teacher) and if you're lucky 1-2 precocious students, that have much of value to add to any discussion. Furthermore, such an environment doesn't really appeal well to human desires for competition and admiration since the only person with knowledge possesses oodles more knowledge than you. "I can be as good as that person at X" isn't a thought that enters your head and motivates you when the only person good at X is orders of magnitude better at X and has many many years experience at X. I definitely see value in an environment where those n years old can also expect to learn from those n plus 1 or more years older with experience to share. Take that environment where there is peer learning and peer sharing and introduce some "seeds of knowledge" (i.e. the adults with subject matter expertise) and you've got a promising recipe for success. The expectation that the "students" also teach each other is doubly reinforcing, since teaching is one of the best ways to better master a subject. It forces you to consider the knowledge of the pupil and find a way to express what you know in terms the pupils can understand.
johladam 12y ago
I'm interested in finding out how voting on rules and regulations does not cause passive-agressive behavior or jealousy. It appears, based on this brief article, that the school itself is basically a long-term babysitting service. I don't know many parents who would be able to spend $11,000 a year on schooling for their child, though it appears the school itself is targeted at those who don't want the teacher to make their child do any real work. Is the school not held to the same state-mandated curriculum as public schools? I could imagine that, as a student, I would never have accomplished anything within that environment.
- ghufran_syed 12y ago
  Is there any evidence that 'voting on rules and regulations' does in fact 'cause passive-aggressive behavior or jealousy'? If not, why would you assume so?
  - johladam 12y ago
    My assumption is that these students blame the others if things did not go as they had planned. For instance, the losing party in a vote would become aggressive towards the other and attempt to sabotage their projects. If you have never worked in a group where the people who do not get their way sabotage the group as a whole, I would consider you very lucky.
    - rjaco31 12y ago
      On the other hand, they are kids that are building their social models around those interactions, it might be very different from your usually company meeting.
    - jostylr 12y ago
      In the Sudbury School I work at, this does not happen. Occasionally there can be anger, but people get over it fairly quickly. It is not considered about winning or losing. It is a completely different frame of mind.
- jostylr 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alexland 12y ago
Am I old school for thinking that giving kids complete freedom isn't the best way to do things? I like a lot of the ideas being used at these schools, but as a kid I definitely didn't know what I wanted to do or learn most of the time, and having some guidance to show me different subjects was a huge help in nurturing curiosity and passion for them. Even now I prefer having someone with some experience helping me along when I learn a new skill/tool/language, so I can ask dumb questions and learn more efficiently.
- bandrami 12y ago
  My school as a kid was Montessori, not Sudbury, but a lot of the ideas are the same. Yes, I think you're old school for thinking that. Kids learned fine for tens of thousands of years by following adults around, watching what they did, and doing whatever they found interesting at the moment. The industrial-era "place the children in a big concrete box until they are ready to go to either a factory or jail" model is a dinosaur, and I really hope some kind of asteroid strikes it soon.
- spc476 12y ago
  Not "old school" but you have a different learning style than I do, as I prefer to puzzle things out on my own. It took me to my 30s to realize that not everyone wants to learn on their own (or are capable of doing so), even if I still don't understand why they can't learn on their own (the pivotal moment was when a friend complained she didn't know how to use Microsoft Word and wanted to take a class. I asked her why she couldn't just start using Word. I mean, it has a help system, there are books on using it. What's with the class? But that's her and her learning style. Like I said, I still don't quite grok it).
  - jostylr 12y ago
    I wish we could do counterfactual analysis. I would love to see if it was traditional education that led people to requiring a class to learn or if it is intrinsic. As a species, we certainly have strong mentoring needs for learning mastery. But that is quite different from requiring a class.
Dakuan 12y ago
Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebhmQ8555o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebhmQ8555o
DavidSJ 12y ago
Sudbury Valley has rules, as the article text even acknowledges. The difference is that the rules are designed to protect the rights of members of the community, not to tell students how to spend their day. Source: I went there.
- OmarIsmail 12y ago
  How did you like it? Would you send your own children there (if you have/had kids)?
  - DavidSJ 12y ago
    I only went at the age of 15, after dropping out of high school as a birthday present to myself and discovering the book Summerhill (about a similar school in England). It was probably the happiest time of my life, because it was the first time my school wasn't a prison and I had the freedom to pursue my curiosity. And I went to "good" schools before then. Where my kids go, when I have some, is their choice, but I'd certainly recommend something like this.
rubberbandage 12y ago
Most of my entire K–12 education was with a “Sudbury Model” school, The Red Cedar School in Vermont, of which my mother was a founding member. I grew up steeped in the intense and (frequently) heated discussions of educational practices, child development, roles of staff members, and constant explanations of the school’s philosophy to everyone that asked what grade I was in (there are no grades). I always love seeing these articles reach wider audiences—the schooling I had was very, very rare! The title grated on me a little—this, like most news articles about Sudbury Schools, ledes with some vague anti-authority/anarchy line. The only “rule” that the school might be considered hating is in the imperial sense (namely, the US education model that remains largely unchanged since the industrial revolution), but as to rules within the school, there are hundreds—all brought before committee, voted on, and enforced by students and staff alike, as in any full democracy. The depth of writing and research on this model of education and its successes (or failures) for students are way way too broad for this margin to contain. If you’re interested in some further reading, there’s a number of publications from former students and founders at http://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org http://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org , and a pretty good TL;DR on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School (check out the brevity of those sections!)
- DavidSJ 12y ago
  Didn't Red Cedar eventually decide to become a Montessori school? What happened with that?
  - rubberbandage 12y ago
    Hi David — I’m pretty sure I’ve met you in person at some point :-) Red Cedar decided to change just after I graduated in 2002, from a true Sudbury school to “heavily influenced by Sudbury philosophies”, dropping high school ages in the process. They’ve actually had great success since; ultimately the Sudbury Model was just too radical for the (very very low population) surrounding area, and the numbers of students were very few — my graduating class was me and one other! Their website is http://www.redcedarschool.com http://www.redcedarschool.com and you can see it’s still a long way from a typical school!
m-i-l 12y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486324 about similar schools in the UK in the 1970s. I believe the only one left in the UK is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School (founded in 1921).
geden 12y ago
Ok so this is basically the Summerhill school model. If I could chip in with a data point and my own point of view for the doubters... I visited Summerhill and spent a day there and attended one of their famous Meetings. I experienced it as an incredibly special place. The children I observed at Summerhill seemed to possess a remarkable clear and calm confidence way beyond their years. It was not a subtle thing. It affected how they moved and sat as well as how they expressed themselves verbally. I came to the conclusion that this was the result of feeling in control of their lives, having their own voice valued and being able to make their own mistakes in a safe environment. With self confidence anything is achievable. Self motivated learning is many times more potent than that imposed upon you. So the kids there that want to be rocket scientists study what they need to become rocket scientists. The ones that want to be carpenters study what they need to become carpenters. No more and no less study than necessary to persue their self determined destiny. I found that highly disconcerting at first. As someone who identified with high academic achievement, the idea that you would voluntarily not want to achieve A grades in all subjects seemed crazy. It was an unsettling moment when I walked away realising that I was the crazy one and had been suckered into the needlessly competitive system of academic achievement that succeeds by satisfying its own internal logic and dismissing other approaches. Left to their own devices and free of rules imposed on them, as opposed to those self determined, these humans decide that their own time should be mostly filled with... play and just enough study to fulfil what they feel drawn to as a purpose in life. Being given the time and space and quiet to be able to see what your purpose in life is is the greatest gift that any school can bestow on a child. Because when you have purpose, everything else falls into line behind it. A further note. These Meetings are not just pupils councils guided by adults - they are raw democracy. It's also where a lot of the learning happens I believe, which is probably why they form such a central part of the school. They teach rhetoric in the most hands on way imaginable. They teach morals. They teach you how to relate socially. And things like public speaking naturally fall out of the meeting process too. When it's easier to self teach than ever before I feel we need more schools like Summerhill and the poster's. Schools that allow us to read the 'what it is to be human' manual rather than the increasingly painfully outmoded systems we inherited from Victorians.
- cage433 12y ago
  I sent my three children to Summerhill - the youngest is still there. I think your impressions were correct - I certainly consider it to have been a great success. One of the kids was of an academic bent, she studied hard and now seems happily set on an academic career. The other two boys are obsessed with music, and got/are getting the minimum number of qualifications to allow them to go to music college. That seems to be a common pattern at the school - kids figure out what they want to do, the qualifications needed (if any) and get them. Of course, being teenagers, they're perfectly capable of screwing up - but I think, if anything, putting responsibility for their lives in their own hands makes that _less_ likely, rather than more. One other data point I have concerns bullying. On my first visit we attended one of the meetings where there was a case about some young boys, around 12, who had been picking on one of the kids. On older boy, maybe 14/15 at the time, tore into them. His outrage was something to behold. I remember thinking that if I was 12, and a teacher had disciplined me for bullying, my attitude would have been 'yeah whatever' - but to have an older boy do the same would certainly have had an effect. I'm lucky to have been able to afford this - if I couldn't I'd probably opt for unschooling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling. Having had experience of democratic education, I now view mainstream schools as as somewhat bizarre, unpleasant institutions, and certainly wouldn't want to send my kids to one.
jvvlimme 12y ago
I've read extensively about the Sudbury model and education in general when I wanted to find out why I didn't fare well in the classical educational system although I am of above average intelligence. While I don't think the Sudbury model is generally applicable (they have had their share of failed schools), it contains a lot more postives than classical education. The classical education system is the way it is for organisational reasons, not for any pedagogic reason: * There is sufficient scientific research that proves that teacher based education is highly inefficient. * The age based grouping of children is just plain stupid and has no merit whatsoever. A better way to group them, if you must group them, is on skill level. Grouping children of different ages has advantages for all of them: the younger ones get an attainable role model, the older ones learn a sense of responsibility. * Sitting still and being required to concentrate for an hour is something you cannot ask a child to do, especially the younger ones. They should be allowed to play and explore. They will learn a lot more than what a teacher can offer. * It’s a fantasy to believe that you learn much in school. The only thing you learn is to game the system: You learn to remember something long enough for a test or exam, and afterwards, you forget most. And I could go on and on about it.
- rjaco31 12y ago
  Those seem to be very fair points, but you didn't care to elaborate what are the implied negatives of the Sudbury system in your opinion?
Mimu 12y ago
This is interesting but the end of the article is weird to me. They expell every student that does not fit, so obviously their "idea" work. I mean if you remove every data that show failure, any idea will work. If anything it shows that every student is different and we probably can't find a single way to teach every one of them, which is again obvious and I believe well known by everyone, including the ones in charge of education / instruction (not sure wich word is right).
- jostylr 12y ago
  Nothing is a panacea. There will always be those who have trouble with whatever your approach is. The reason for expulsion is generally violence. We bent over backwards with one kid, but he was violent and neither he nor his parents showed any understanding that violence was a bad thing. Often the issue is actually with the parents. There are parents who simply think that violence and lying are okay for kids. And their influence will always dominate. The model for us seems to fit 95% of kids that come in.
KedarMhaswade 12y ago
We have previously discussed something similar [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631). The book, Free to Learn, by Peter Gray discusses the promise of democratic schools with a historical and social perspective. He even calls the Sudbury Valley schools "America's best kept secret". I attended the open house of the closest (around 50 miles from where I live in CA!) local Sudbury Valley School (called Diablo Valley School, DVS) a few months ago. We, of course, went there with the kids. After coming back home, I asked the kids which school they would rather attend -- their present school or this one and they had no doubt in their mind that they wanted to attend the DVS. But for some reason, I am not able to make the switch to the idea that the democratic schools are the way to go, although Dan Greenberg (the founder of SVS, back in 1968 in Framingham, MA) has been running this 'experiment' for past 46 years. Maybe, as a parent, I feel overly responsible for my kids and insist that I know more about them than they do. And we know, as Kahneman (Thinking fast and slow) and others have repeated shown, how little we know. It's a sad impasse.
madengr 12y ago
My 7 yo would play minecraft all day
- jostylr 12y ago
  Probably. But the kid would socialize while doing so, learn the skills of mastery, and basically learn how to manage their time in a fulfilling way. Kids at Sudbury schools often do spend a great deal of time on the computers, but that is rarely, if ever, the only thing they do. What they are learning to do is how to incorporate computers into daily life, mastering the machine.
  - madengr 12y ago
    Probably true. I spent hours at a time on my C64, so I don't see my progeny being any different.
- rubberbandage 12y ago
  in the process learning about architecture, collaboration, resource management, economies of scale, and oh yeah, the ability to create a full Turing machine… if this comment was supposed to be disparaging, you’d need a different example ;-)
Lancey 12y ago
I think that having a student operated discipline system might be getting dangerously close to the same groupthink cultures we see online, even on HN. Ultimately I think that while a unified community like this has its place, it tends to push people towards agreeing with the group for sake of social acceptance rather than what's actually good for the community.
- jostylr 12y ago
  I work at a Sudbury School and my experience does not support this. My take on this is that we have a community rooted in a fundamental acceptance of people that tolerates disagreements. Different attitudes and views are welcomed. Thus groupthink is generally avoided. We often have split votes in the voting process and no one ever shuns someone for how they vote on an issue. Actually, no one really shuns anyone though, of course, they are not all friends.
basseq 12y ago
Meanwhile, in the DC Metro Area, parents are being charged with neglect for letting their 6- and 10-year old children walk home alone. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-coupl...
protonfish 12y ago
The most interesting thing about Sudbury schools to me is not about finding better techniques for teaching but as a sort of control to test the question "Are current educational techniques better than letting the kids do whatever they want?" If traditional schools were effective, one would expect significant evidence of this when compared to Sudbury schools. That evidence clearly does not exist.
charlesholbrow 12y ago
Wow, my school on Hacker News. I went to Sudbury Valley School from when I was 13-18. The school is not without its problems, but I'm really grateful I got to go. For me it was an opportunity to focus on the important things -- communication, identity, relationships, sexuality -- The things that a more traditional education is likely to try to distract you from. It was difficult to make the transition back in to the traditional education system, but I'm finishing my Master's and I'm about to start my PhD (Both at MIT) so it can totally be done!
- jostylr 12y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you found difficult as you went to college? How long did it take you to be comfortable with it? And what did you end up studying?
  - charlesholbrow 12y ago
    It was basically the Math that was difficult -- Like most SVS students I didn't spend time on academic subjects. So I was 5 years behind when I started the college application process. I spent a year at community college to learn most of the basics that I had missed. I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to get into a college, or find a half decent job that I worked REALLY hard to catch up. My undergrad degree was in Music/Sound Technology, but the Music Program at UMass Lowell where I went is quite technical, and actually prepared me pretty well for the job market (unlike most Undergrad Music Programs IMO). I spent ~ 5 years working in video games, research, and web development before starting at the MIT Media Lab where I am now. I really like to code, so I've been doing that the entire time. How long did it take for me to feel comfortable? Still hasn't happened. I have gotten more comfortable with being uncomfortable though :P
jostylr 12y ago
It is said elsewhere, but the title is very objectionable. If anything, Sudbury schools care more about rules because they are meaningful rules that are created by the community to keep the community functioning smoothly. One can say it is a school that hates top-down authority and their rules, but not rules in and of themselves. How would that even make sense for a democracy to hate the laws they themselves make?
fibbery 12y ago
When I read things like this, I have to wonder how much socioeconomic statics affects the outcome. They do acknowledge at the end of the article that this is a private school, and that they intend to bring more lower income children into the school under scholarships. But this model seems to require children who are already above average in intelligence, drive, emotional adjustment, etc. so the disadvantaged students who make it in will already be exceptions. I would be interested in whether this environment would be better or worse for a typical public school student (after a period of adjustment).
platz 12y ago
prior art: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/brooklyn-free-school-_n_2214263.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/brooklyn-free-schoo...
fiatjaf 12y ago
"Democratic", really? How would you define "democracy"? "Free" is not a synonym of "democratic", it's quite the contrary.

120 points by Thevet 12y ago

This article reads like an almost verbatim regurgitation of A. S. Neill's points in Summerhill, his excellent book on the school that he built and the "free school" system that he pioneered. Neill's belief in the inherent goodness of children and the power of freedom on their development resonated strongly with me. However, Summerhill was a unique book written by an eloquent man - almost a statement of philosophy, rather than a well-researched manual. Which is fine for a pioneer. Unfortunately this article does not add anything to the subject, and is really just a reiteration of arguments made half a century ago (without even quoting the original title).

com2kid 12y ago

To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take. Heck even back when I was in school, I barely did any homework or studied at all, I lived to go home and play video games every day. I was able to skim through because traditional school had such low expectations, but without proper studying I did not learn any of the material that I tested so well on. As a result I had to retake a lot of courses when I got to college. A much more authoritarian environment in school would have been good for me. Two periods free of distraction dedicated to studying (perhaps spread throughout the day) would have resulted in my learning a lot more. One saving grace might be if the majority of students who go to these schools have parents who expect excellence. In that case peer pressure will force many students to take the same lessons that other students are. I suspect that so long as the school sizes stay small that it will be possible for such forces to dominate. Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. (One can observe low literacy rates highly economically depressed areas already!) More fundamentally, sites/services like Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc, all directly tweak the pleasure center of our brain. By design users will not get bored of them. Yeah yeah half the users on HN will get bored of Snapchat/Facebook/Instagram, congrats, we aren't neurotypical, I don't get a spark of pleasure looking at pictures of people on some social network, but I sure as heck know others who can literally spend hours just browsing photo streams. TIL on Reddit however? Or heck just HN itself? Yup, very addictive. Learning new factoids feels good.

g_delgado14 12y ago
I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. And yes, ppl (especially young children) will get hooked - but when you're surrounded by eager peers who are exploring interesting things (perhaps one made a game on a RaspPi), the insatiable curiosity of a child will defeat the attractive nature of the soul sucking sites that you mentioned. I think the pressures placed on someone by social norms outweigh the influences these unproductive sites have, at least in the long run.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  > I disagree on the addictive nature of sites like Reddit, FB, etc. Yes, they are addictive. [..]
malandrew 12y ago
Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students who are even literate. Totally agree. However, while there were no hard numbers in the article, it seems to me that these places may be successful because of the high "teacher" to "student" ratio. It sounds like the adults are peers and are in sufficient numbers that the children encounter enough "mature peers" with a wealth of experience to share. If you think about it, school is ridiculously out of place relative to pretty much every other institution in the world. Where else can you go and be surrounded by 15 to 30 people all within +1 and -1 year of the same age. To me it's crazy to expect learning to come out of an environment where you have 15-30 or more people equally ignorant on a topic expected to learn socially. Basically, you have one individual (the teacher) and if you're lucky 1-2 precocious students, that have much of value to add to any discussion. Furthermore, such an environment doesn't really appeal well to human desires for competition and admiration since the only person with knowledge possesses oodles more knowledge than you. "I can be as good as that person at X" isn't a thought that enters your head and motivates you when the only person good at X is orders of magnitude better at X and has many many years experience at X. I definitely see value in an environment where those n years old can also expect to learn from those n plus 1 or more years older with experience to share. Take that environment where there is peer learning and peer sharing and introduce some "seeds of knowledge" (i.e. the adults with subject matter expertise) and you've got a promising recipe for success. The expectation that the "students" also teach each other is doubly reinforcing, since teaching is one of the best ways to better master a subject. It forces you to consider the knowledge of the pupil and find a way to express what you know in terms the pupils can understand.

johladam 12y ago

I'm interested in finding out how voting on rules and regulations does not cause passive-agressive behavior or jealousy. It appears, based on this brief article, that the school itself is basically a long-term babysitting service. I don't know many parents who would be able to spend $11,000 a year on schooling for their child, though it appears the school itself is targeted at those who don't want the teacher to make their child do any real work. Is the school not held to the same state-mandated curriculum as public schools? I could imagine that, as a student, I would never have accomplished anything within that environment.

ghufran_syed 12y ago
Is there any evidence that 'voting on rules and regulations' does in fact 'cause passive-aggressive behavior or jealousy'? If not, why would you assume so?
- johladam 12y ago
  My assumption is that these students blame the others if things did not go as they had planned. For instance, the losing party in a vote would become aggressive towards the other and attempt to sabotage their projects. If you have never worked in a group where the people who do not get their way sabotage the group as a whole, I would consider you very lucky.
  - rjaco31 12y ago
    On the other hand, they are kids that are building their social models around those interactions, it might be very different from your usually company meeting.
  - jostylr 12y ago
    In the Sudbury School I work at, this does not happen. Occasionally there can be anger, but people get over it fairly quickly. It is not considered about winning or losing. It is a completely different frame of mind.
jostylr 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

alexland 12y ago

Am I old school for thinking that giving kids complete freedom isn't the best way to do things? I like a lot of the ideas being used at these schools, but as a kid I definitely didn't know what I wanted to do or learn most of the time, and having some guidance to show me different subjects was a huge help in nurturing curiosity and passion for them. Even now I prefer having someone with some experience helping me along when I learn a new skill/tool/language, so I can ask dumb questions and learn more efficiently.

bandrami 12y ago
My school as a kid was Montessori, not Sudbury, but a lot of the ideas are the same. Yes, I think you're old school for thinking that. Kids learned fine for tens of thousands of years by following adults around, watching what they did, and doing whatever they found interesting at the moment. The industrial-era "place the children in a big concrete box until they are ready to go to either a factory or jail" model is a dinosaur, and I really hope some kind of asteroid strikes it soon.
spc476 12y ago
Not "old school" but you have a different learning style than I do, as I prefer to puzzle things out on my own. It took me to my 30s to realize that not everyone wants to learn on their own (or are capable of doing so), even if I still don't understand why they can't learn on their own (the pivotal moment was when a friend complained she didn't know how to use Microsoft Word and wanted to take a class. I asked her why she couldn't just start using Word. I mean, it has a help system, there are books on using it. What's with the class? But that's her and her learning style. Like I said, I still don't quite grok it).
- jostylr 12y ago
  I wish we could do counterfactual analysis. I would love to see if it was traditional education that led people to requiring a class to learn or if it is intrinsic. As a species, we certainly have strong mentoring needs for learning mastery. But that is quite different from requiring a class.

Dakuan 12y ago

Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebhmQ8555o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebhmQ8555o

DavidSJ 12y ago

Sudbury Valley has rules, as the article text even acknowledges. The difference is that the rules are designed to protect the rights of members of the community, not to tell students how to spend their day. Source: I went there.

OmarIsmail 12y ago
How did you like it? Would you send your own children there (if you have/had kids)?
- DavidSJ 12y ago
  I only went at the age of 15, after dropping out of high school as a birthday present to myself and discovering the book Summerhill (about a similar school in England). It was probably the happiest time of my life, because it was the first time my school wasn't a prison and I had the freedom to pursue my curiosity. And I went to "good" schools before then. Where my kids go, when I have some, is their choice, but I'd certainly recommend something like this.

rubberbandage 12y ago

Most of my entire K–12 education was with a “Sudbury Model” school, The Red Cedar School in Vermont, of which my mother was a founding member. I grew up steeped in the intense and (frequently) heated discussions of educational practices, child development, roles of staff members, and constant explanations of the school’s philosophy to everyone that asked what grade I was in (there are no grades). I always love seeing these articles reach wider audiences—the schooling I had was very, very rare! The title grated on me a little—this, like most news articles about Sudbury Schools, ledes with some vague anti-authority/anarchy line. The only “rule” that the school might be considered hating is in the imperial sense (namely, the US education model that remains largely unchanged since the industrial revolution), but as to rules within the school, there are hundreds—all brought before committee, voted on, and enforced by students and staff alike, as in any full democracy. The depth of writing and research on this model of education and its successes (or failures) for students are way way too broad for this margin to contain. If you’re interested in some further reading, there’s a number of publications from former students and founders at http://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org http://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org , and a pretty good TL;DR on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School (check out the brevity of those sections!)

DavidSJ 12y ago
Didn't Red Cedar eventually decide to become a Montessori school? What happened with that?
- rubberbandage 12y ago
  Hi David — I’m pretty sure I’ve met you in person at some point :-) Red Cedar decided to change just after I graduated in 2002, from a true Sudbury school to “heavily influenced by Sudbury philosophies”, dropping high school ages in the process. They’ve actually had great success since; ultimately the Sudbury Model was just too radical for the (very very low population) surrounding area, and the numbers of students were very few — my graduating class was me and one other! Their website is http://www.redcedarschool.com http://www.redcedarschool.com and you can see it’s still a long way from a typical school!

m-i-l 12y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486324 about similar schools in the UK in the 1970s. I believe the only one left in the UK is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School (founded in 1921).

geden 12y ago

Ok so this is basically the Summerhill school model. If I could chip in with a data point and my own point of view for the doubters... I visited Summerhill and spent a day there and attended one of their famous Meetings. I experienced it as an incredibly special place. The children I observed at Summerhill seemed to possess a remarkable clear and calm confidence way beyond their years. It was not a subtle thing. It affected how they moved and sat as well as how they expressed themselves verbally. I came to the conclusion that this was the result of feeling in control of their lives, having their own voice valued and being able to make their own mistakes in a safe environment. With self confidence anything is achievable. Self motivated learning is many times more potent than that imposed upon you. So the kids there that want to be rocket scientists study what they need to become rocket scientists. The ones that want to be carpenters study what they need to become carpenters. No more and no less study than necessary to persue their self determined destiny. I found that highly disconcerting at first. As someone who identified with high academic achievement, the idea that you would voluntarily not want to achieve A grades in all subjects seemed crazy. It was an unsettling moment when I walked away realising that I was the crazy one and had been suckered into the needlessly competitive system of academic achievement that succeeds by satisfying its own internal logic and dismissing other approaches. Left to their own devices and free of rules imposed on them, as opposed to those self determined, these humans decide that their own time should be mostly filled with... play and just enough study to fulfil what they feel drawn to as a purpose in life. Being given the time and space and quiet to be able to see what your purpose in life is is the greatest gift that any school can bestow on a child. Because when you have purpose, everything else falls into line behind it. A further note. These Meetings are not just pupils councils guided by adults - they are raw democracy. It's also where a lot of the learning happens I believe, which is probably why they form such a central part of the school. They teach rhetoric in the most hands on way imaginable. They teach morals. They teach you how to relate socially. And things like public speaking naturally fall out of the meeting process too. When it's easier to self teach than ever before I feel we need more schools like Summerhill and the poster's. Schools that allow us to read the 'what it is to be human' manual rather than the increasingly painfully outmoded systems we inherited from Victorians.

cage433 12y ago
I sent my three children to Summerhill - the youngest is still there. I think your impressions were correct - I certainly consider it to have been a great success. One of the kids was of an academic bent, she studied hard and now seems happily set on an academic career. The other two boys are obsessed with music, and got/are getting the minimum number of qualifications to allow them to go to music college. That seems to be a common pattern at the school - kids figure out what they want to do, the qualifications needed (if any) and get them. Of course, being teenagers, they're perfectly capable of screwing up - but I think, if anything, putting responsibility for their lives in their own hands makes that _less_ likely, rather than more. One other data point I have concerns bullying. On my first visit we attended one of the meetings where there was a case about some young boys, around 12, who had been picking on one of the kids. On older boy, maybe 14/15 at the time, tore into them. His outrage was something to behold. I remember thinking that if I was 12, and a teacher had disciplined me for bullying, my attitude would have been 'yeah whatever' - but to have an older boy do the same would certainly have had an effect. I'm lucky to have been able to afford this - if I couldn't I'd probably opt for unschooling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling. Having had experience of democratic education, I now view mainstream schools as as somewhat bizarre, unpleasant institutions, and certainly wouldn't want to send my kids to one.

jvvlimme 12y ago

I've read extensively about the Sudbury model and education in general when I wanted to find out why I didn't fare well in the classical educational system although I am of above average intelligence. While I don't think the Sudbury model is generally applicable (they have had their share of failed schools), it contains a lot more postives than classical education. The classical education system is the way it is for organisational reasons, not for any pedagogic reason: * There is sufficient scientific research that proves that teacher based education is highly inefficient. * The age based grouping of children is just plain stupid and has no merit whatsoever. A better way to group them, if you must group them, is on skill level. Grouping children of different ages has advantages for all of them: the younger ones get an attainable role model, the older ones learn a sense of responsibility. * Sitting still and being required to concentrate for an hour is something you cannot ask a child to do, especially the younger ones. They should be allowed to play and explore. They will learn a lot more than what a teacher can offer. * It’s a fantasy to believe that you learn much in school. The only thing you learn is to game the system: You learn to remember something long enough for a test or exam, and afterwards, you forget most. And I could go on and on about it.

rjaco31 12y ago
Those seem to be very fair points, but you didn't care to elaborate what are the implied negatives of the Sudbury system in your opinion?

Mimu 12y ago

This is interesting but the end of the article is weird to me. They expell every student that does not fit, so obviously their "idea" work. I mean if you remove every data that show failure, any idea will work. If anything it shows that every student is different and we probably can't find a single way to teach every one of them, which is again obvious and I believe well known by everyone, including the ones in charge of education / instruction (not sure wich word is right).

jostylr 12y ago
Nothing is a panacea. There will always be those who have trouble with whatever your approach is. The reason for expulsion is generally violence. We bent over backwards with one kid, but he was violent and neither he nor his parents showed any understanding that violence was a bad thing. Often the issue is actually with the parents. There are parents who simply think that violence and lying are okay for kids. And their influence will always dominate. The model for us seems to fit 95% of kids that come in.

KedarMhaswade 12y ago

We have previously discussed something similar [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631). The book, Free to Learn, by Peter Gray discusses the promise of democratic schools with a historical and social perspective. He even calls the Sudbury Valley schools "America's best kept secret". I attended the open house of the closest (around 50 miles from where I live in CA!) local Sudbury Valley School (called Diablo Valley School, DVS) a few months ago. We, of course, went there with the kids. After coming back home, I asked the kids which school they would rather attend -- their present school or this one and they had no doubt in their mind that they wanted to attend the DVS. But for some reason, I am not able to make the switch to the idea that the democratic schools are the way to go, although Dan Greenberg (the founder of SVS, back in 1968 in Framingham, MA) has been running this 'experiment' for past 46 years. Maybe, as a parent, I feel overly responsible for my kids and insist that I know more about them than they do. And we know, as Kahneman (Thinking fast and slow) and others have repeated shown, how little we know. It's a sad impasse.

madengr 12y ago

My 7 yo would play minecraft all day

jostylr 12y ago
Probably. But the kid would socialize while doing so, learn the skills of mastery, and basically learn how to manage their time in a fulfilling way. Kids at Sudbury schools often do spend a great deal of time on the computers, but that is rarely, if ever, the only thing they do. What they are learning to do is how to incorporate computers into daily life, mastering the machine.
- madengr 12y ago
  Probably true. I spent hours at a time on my C64, so I don't see my progeny being any different.
rubberbandage 12y ago
in the process learning about architecture, collaboration, resource management, economies of scale, and oh yeah, the ability to create a full Turing machine… if this comment was supposed to be disparaging, you’d need a different example ;-)

Lancey 12y ago

I think that having a student operated discipline system might be getting dangerously close to the same groupthink cultures we see online, even on HN. Ultimately I think that while a unified community like this has its place, it tends to push people towards agreeing with the group for sake of social acceptance rather than what's actually good for the community.

jostylr 12y ago
I work at a Sudbury School and my experience does not support this. My take on this is that we have a community rooted in a fundamental acceptance of people that tolerates disagreements. Different attitudes and views are welcomed. Thus groupthink is generally avoided. We often have split votes in the voting process and no one ever shuns someone for how they vote on an issue. Actually, no one really shuns anyone though, of course, they are not all friends.

basseq 12y ago

Meanwhile, in the DC Metro Area, parents are being charged with neglect for letting their 6- and 10-year old children walk home alone. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-coupl...

protonfish 12y ago

The most interesting thing about Sudbury schools to me is not about finding better techniques for teaching but as a sort of control to test the question "Are current educational techniques better than letting the kids do whatever they want?" If traditional schools were effective, one would expect significant evidence of this when compared to Sudbury schools. That evidence clearly does not exist.

charlesholbrow 12y ago

Wow, my school on Hacker News. I went to Sudbury Valley School from when I was 13-18. The school is not without its problems, but I'm really grateful I got to go. For me it was an opportunity to focus on the important things -- communication, identity, relationships, sexuality -- The things that a more traditional education is likely to try to distract you from. It was difficult to make the transition back in to the traditional education system, but I'm finishing my Master's and I'm about to start my PhD (Both at MIT) so it can totally be done!

jostylr 12y ago
Can you elaborate on what you found difficult as you went to college? How long did it take you to be comfortable with it? And what did you end up studying?
- charlesholbrow 12y ago
  It was basically the Math that was difficult -- Like most SVS students I didn't spend time on academic subjects. So I was 5 years behind when I started the college application process. I spent a year at community college to learn most of the basics that I had missed. I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to get into a college, or find a half decent job that I worked REALLY hard to catch up. My undergrad degree was in Music/Sound Technology, but the Music Program at UMass Lowell where I went is quite technical, and actually prepared me pretty well for the job market (unlike most Undergrad Music Programs IMO). I spent ~ 5 years working in video games, research, and web development before starting at the MIT Media Lab where I am now. I really like to code, so I've been doing that the entire time. How long did it take for me to feel comfortable? Still hasn't happened. I have gotten more comfortable with being uncomfortable though :P

jostylr 12y ago

It is said elsewhere, but the title is very objectionable. If anything, Sudbury schools care more about rules because they are meaningful rules that are created by the community to keep the community functioning smoothly. One can say it is a school that hates top-down authority and their rules, but not rules in and of themselves. How would that even make sense for a democracy to hate the laws they themselves make?

fibbery 12y ago

When I read things like this, I have to wonder how much socioeconomic statics affects the outcome. They do acknowledge at the end of the article that this is a private school, and that they intend to bring more lower income children into the school under scholarships. But this model seems to require children who are already above average in intelligence, drive, emotional adjustment, etc. so the disadvantaged students who make it in will already be exceptions. I would be interested in whether this environment would be better or worse for a typical public school student (after a period of adjustment).

platz 12y ago

prior art: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/brooklyn-free-school-_n_2214263.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/brooklyn-free-schoo...

fiatjaf 12y ago

"Democratic", really? How would you define "democracy"? "Free" is not a synonym of "democratic", it's quite the contrary.