This article is dedicated to the careful analysis of the Sudbury Model. by RB Champ
(libertarian)
Friday, February 11, 2011
Many of you probably have not heard of this twentieth century idea. That's alright. The general idea is that the school will be run by a democratic process where the kids get to, basically, decide what classes they take, where they take them, and with whom they choose (age-wise).
Now, there are some good things about it. However, there are downsides. Some positive characteristics are:
Kids feel happy about school because they know everything they are taking is what they want.
Teachers are hired and fired by a vote of the staff and students where all votes are counted equally.
Some problems are:
Parents have little, if any, involvement in their children's education.
There are no tests, evaluations, or transcripts.
Students appropriate time for the classes they want.
There is no curriculum.
Reclaiming Authority
As a teacher, I feel this is not the right system to be used in schools. The people that promote this idea are pretty much telling children, ages 4-19, "Here's a list. Now pick whatever classes you want and you'll get them." Children are not as experienced as adults. Why are they given this level of autonomy? The parents should decide what is best for them.
Learning a Life Lesson
Kids also need to learn that in society, you can't pick the work you want. You have to do everything that is needed. I'm not just talking about jobs, I'm also speaking about things to do in the house. If the dishes need to be cleaned, you need to clean them. What I'm saying is that one day, you will be telling kids they don't need to learn math and the next day you'll be saying you don't need to take the trash out. These schools run off of the philosophy that, "no kind of curriculum is necessary to prepare a young person for adult life."
How Do Ya Know?
If there are no exams, how do you know if the child is learning? You know, I see this kind of stuff in a lot of progressive schools. One, up in Minnesota, is called Prairie Creek Community School. On their website, they say this:
"Assessment is authentic and holistic. Children are well known by their teachers and peers. There are no tests or letter grades. Instead, narrative reports are written about children that cover all aspects of their development: social, emotional, personal, physical, and intellectual."
What I Have to Say
Personally, I don't care if you are libertarian or liberal. If you promote this idea, I suggest you rethink your logic. That's just my opinion.
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Posted By: Walt
Date: February 11, 2011 05:52:28 PM
As someone who has actually founded and worked at a Sudbury model school (I co-founded the Mountain Laurel Sudbury School in New Britain, CT in 2002), I can assure the author of this article that his conclusions about the model are completely wrong-headed.
I must admit that I'm not surprised by his comments, given the fact that he admits to being a school teacher. School teachers assign inordinately high value to their own presence in school. They often consider themselves to be indispensable. This notion is wrong.
Among other things, the presenter, Sugata Mitra, shows and talks about numerous experiments that demonstrate quite clearly that teachers are vastly overrated when it comes to students actually learning things.
The author of this article claims that children are incapable of making educational choices for themselves. This is wrong. Sudbury schools, without exception, produce graduate after graduate who learn exactly that. It's the graduates of public schools who are at a severe disadvantage on this point, not Sudbury students.
At the root of the author's false assumption is the fact that he really doesn't understand how learning works, despite his years of experience as a teacher. Real learning (as opposed to rote learning) occurs when students have an interest in something on their own (as opposed to interest that's pounded into them. You WILL like this!). Sudbury students, with tons of time on their hands, get loads of experience finding out what their interests are. Public school students, if they're extremely lucky, will like the classes that are handed to them, but they will be very ill-prepared to make such choices for themselves upon graduation. If they're unlucky (as most are), they'll hate and dread most of their public school experience. By contrast, Sudbury students don't wait to be taught something they're interested in. They actively go and get it, whether in the form of asking for help or simply finding it out on their own. This option is not available to public school students.
The author of this article claims that Sudbury students don't learn life lessons. He writes, "Kids also need to learn that in society, you can't pick the work you want. You have to do everything that is needed."
First, the author is wrong. He confuses work with chores. Chores only need to be done if you want to keep your house up. Public school kids don't learn the real meaning of chores until they leave home to live on their own. Sudbury kids learn the lesson much earlier, in school. The reason is that they are responsible for administering their own schools. Public school kids never have to worry about whether the school is clean. Sudbury students, on the other hand, are faced with it from day one.
Second, the suggestion that people shouldn't choose work that they enjoy is offensive...and so typical of public school thinking. Thanks to the public schools, we have a world full of angry, dissatisfied people who feel chained to a desk or a job. Thanks a lot, Mr. Teacher!
Third, he asks the ultimate question, "If there are no exams, how do you know if the child is learning?" All an exam proves is whether a student has enough interest in a subject to learn it on his/her own. Further, when education is forced on them, even if a student crams for an exam he really hates and gets a high grade, retention level is terrible months or years later. As Mitra showed in his experiments in the video, when learning is based on student interest, retention is nearly perfect.
The fact is that children (and adults) learn all the time. From the moment we open our eyes as infants, we are constantly exploring and learning about our world. If you're a teacher and you don't "get" this, then you don't truly understand education. Every child is born with what we might metaphorically describe as a built-in magnet that draws them toward their interests...and more exactly to what they need the most to learn. It's highly arrogant for a teacher to claim that he knows better than his students what they need to learn. Most often, the teacher is wrong because he never bothers to find out first whether they're interested in the subject before he starts cramming it down their throats. There's the real reason why Johnny Can't Read!
If you leave a child to his own devices within the social context of a Sudbury school, he will learn all the basics. He'll learn to read, to do math, to write, etc. He won't necessarily do it in the order or timeframe a teacher would have in mind, but it will happen regardless of whether there's an adult teacher in the vicinity. Moreover, it happens 100% of the time!
The author very definitely needs to rethink his own logic.
I will close with one of the many success stories that come from Sudbury schools. This one comes from the school I helped found. One of our founding students was a 12-year-old girl, whose name I will conceal to protect her privacy. Let's call her "Jane".
"Jane" came from a broken home. She was in and out of foster homes throughout her childhood. She was sullen, angry, and testy most of the time. She didn't know or care who her father was. Her grades were terrible.
During her six years at Mountain Laurel, "Jane" grew tremendously. By leaving her alone to her own devices, to socialize with friends, etc., she ended up learning boundaries through the experience. She developed an interest in school governance and became president of the school meeting. After graduation, she became president of the school assembly, which is a combination of the students and parents who get together once a year to set the next year's budget. She has grown into a mature, thoughtful young woman who enrolled at college to get a degree in, of all things, education. She is determined to work as an adult to promote the principles of Sudbury education.
Oh, and by the way, "Jane" had no problem getting into college without grades, transcripts, or any of the other trappings you worship. The reason is the same as for all other Sudbury graduates. When a public school student applies to college, their application looks just like all the others: transcripts, essays, letters of recommendation. Admission department personnel often despair at the uniformity of it all. Sudbury graduates, on the other hand, don't rely on the paperwork (although they do submit it). Instead, they gear themselves up for the interview, which is where they shine. Sudbury graduates know what they want, in contrast to most of their public school peers. This comes through loud and clear in the interview room.
Posted By: donberg
Date: February 15, 2011 12:22:43 AM
Well said, Walt.
It seems ironic to me that RB Champ, who is labeled a libertarian, insists that it is necessary for adults to impose their will on children in a similar way that statists presumably want the will of government bureaucracies imposed on citizens. Perhaps their scale needs to identify which areas of interest the labels apply, libertarian for adults, statist for children, liberal on the economy, conservative in religion, etc.
Posted By: Logical Premise
Date: February 17, 2011 09:29:12 PM
The only worry I have about Sudbury comes from personal experience with a couple of graduates who applied for jobs back in 2008. It was the first time I ever heard about the program, and I remember thinking, "oh wtf". But I interviewed them, and those were the best two interviews I'd ever done in more than 15 years. I hired both on the spot.
They were very hard-working, could pull up information like they had eidetic memory, were great at handling social situations and stress. And as the weeks went on, they simply got bored. They were good at plenty of things but were not what I call effective leaders, mainly because they didn't really grasp the culture the way everyone else did. I never had any discipline problems with them, and I never felt like they didn't do their jobs, but despite all of their clearly stunning abilities neither one really demonstrated they were capable of sublimating their boredom to get the job done , to deal with really long hours while we worked out system inefficiencies. They disliked office politics and complained about not being paid as much as engineers who had been there longer but who were (perhaps) not as technically proficient.
Both eventually quit. I don't regret hiring them, but nor do I think that Sudbury is a "wonder process" that produces perfect children. Financial analysis , gene typing, most data processing and programming work -- all of these things are , unfortunately, products of rote educational systems. I think rote education is not of the quality it used to be, and that both educational systems have a place in society. Some people and cultures will adjust more to one than another.
Posted By: Walt
Date: February 25, 2011 10:17:54 AM
The only worry I have about Sudbury comes from personal experience with a couple of graduates who applied for jobs back in 2008. It was the first time I ever heard about the program, and I remember thinking, "oh wtf". But I interviewed them, and those were the best two interviews I'd ever done in more than 15 years. I hired both on the spot.
They were very hard-working, could pull up information like they had eidetic memory, were great at handling social situations and stress. And as the weeks went on, they simply got bored. They were good at plenty of things but were not what I call effective leaders, mainly because they didn't really grasp the culture the way everyone else did. I never had any discipline problems with them, and I never felt like they didn't do their jobs, but despite all of their clearly stunning abilities neither one really demonstrated they were capable of sublimating their boredom to get the job done , to deal with really long hours while we worked out system inefficiencies. They disliked office politics and complained about not being paid as much as engineers who had been there longer but who were (perhaps) not as technically proficient.
Both eventually quit. I don't regret hiring them, but nor do I think that Sudbury is a "wonder process" that produces perfect children. Financial analysis , gene typing, most data processing and programming work -- all of these things are , unfortunately, products of rote educational systems. I think rote education is not of the quality it used to be, and that both educational systems have a place in society. Some people and cultures will adjust more to one than another.
I think it's safe to say that a product of a Sudbury school will not be an effective, centralized leader. So to this extent, you are correct. However, is this truly an example of inadequacy of Sudbury graduates? Or is it more accurately an exposure of the extreme limitations of centralized leadership? I lean heavily toward the latter, and I think the evidence supports my position. Centralized leadership depends completely on the energy level of the leader. Decentralized leadership depends more on the energy level of the followers. Sudbury graduates are excellent at the latter, which is why I suspect they didn't fit in well with the organization of which you were a part.
I would also argue that the quality of rote education was never high. To the contrary, its results throughout history have been uniformly dismal. What it tends to produce is robots, rather than intelligent beings. Rote education products are rarely able to "think outside the box". Thus, even though they are often granted high positions by those who advocate that educational method, the results they produce are usually less than adequate. Since such a system routinely discourages non-conventional approaches, its advocates often convince themselves that it's an effective system, due mainly to the lack of comparative data that would show it is not. Such data isn't lack due to unavailability, but rather to the dominant position that traditional schooling has in society, thereby dwarfing any attempt to examine or even find alternative data.
I never said that Sudbury produces perfect children. I do claim, however, that traditional schooling produces damaged children. That claim is indisputable, I think.
Most important of all, however, is that fact that traditional education undermines the lives of all those people who don't succeed in rising to the top. Sudbury-style education, on the other hand, enables people to succeed regardless of the traditional structure.
