The school that hates rules
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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.
I think the pressures placed on someone by social norms outweigh the influences these unproductive sites have, at least in the long run.
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.
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.
Anyway, I'd redesign the whole thing if you gave me the job. That's all.
Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure.
But yes, that part stood out to me too. "Kids will get bored and start learning". Says who? What if they don't?
Just having 100 users playing your game and watching what makes them open the app again can easily be considered a psychological experiment, though in the tech business they are probably more often referred to as just "user testing".
Most of them are "designed" by the market, not
psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure.
I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"
I was homeschooled until high school and I had a tremendous amount of freedom in my learning after I had gotten the harder and less interesting subjects out of the way (for me, spelling and creative writing).
I graduated nearly at the top of my class, but I hated how high school felt like prison. No free speech. Led by incompetent adults. Some of these adults went on power trips. The school system is broken, at least it was for me.
College is fine though, surprisingly. Maybe it was just my high school that was terrible...
But what else are you going to do when you're pooping? Just stare at a wall?
Obligatory SMBC link: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2225
Sadly, this really works that way sometimes. Just yesterday an unexpected moment of introspection triggered a small anxiety attack in me. Thank God we have Hacker News...
Of all the visions of the future, the one that almost nobody predicted was that the children of the 21st century would use writing as a dominant form of informal social communication.
Also, what is wrong with spending hours looking at photos?
Because rather than get work done, learning a new skill, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, applying for a better job, one is looking at photos.
Perhaps. But maybe it works the other way around too. Today's adults are bombarded with addictive, manipulative products all the time, and most find themselves woefully unable to resist (cf. phone-staring parties).
Isn't school the best place to get kids to develop some ability to resist this kind of addiction? External pressure stops working as soon as it's gone, but internal resilience doesn't.
Even mundane things, time wasting games like Cookie Clicker, still have some educational value behind them. Could we get more education out of drills, homework, and regular testing? Maybe, but they certainly don't provide the same level of engagement.
I can almost guarantee that 1) you really haven't, and 2) the time here is wasted.
With that, I'm going to close this window and go back to reading a book on math theory.
Nope. Been here for a long time (this is not my first account) - it's mostly senseless factoids that fade. Nonsense synthesized from research paper abstracts.
Linked from another thread: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/...
You are not building a systematic understanding of anything by reading HN, you are encountering unconnected assertions that mean nothing in isolation.
Learning comes from doing.
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 , and a pretty good TL;DR on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School (check out the brevity of those sections!)
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 and you can see it’s still a long way from a typical school!
How hard was the transition out of a Sudbury school for you? Since you only did K-12 at one, presumably you went to a "traditional" High School, College, and then got a job. So how hard was moving from that "no grades, your pace, you decide how you learn!" type environment to one with formal classes, grades, and so on. Both culturally but also do you feel you knew as much as the other kids when taking a class?
My second question is: Would you send your kids to a Sudbury school?
Happy to answer, and sorry for the long-delayed reply, hope you still see this and it’s not too wall-of-text-y.
A slight misconception/communication here; I actually attended Red Cedar School from age 5 to 18 (when I graduated), so I never attended a standard public school. From age 16–18, I spent half the school day at an offshoot of a public high school, studying movie post-production, but that was also relatively radical in both its trust of students to be independent learners and its lack of formal classroom setting. The difficulties I had with the pseudo-public film school were primarily with recognizing and respecting hierarchy and the student-teacher relationship. I talked with the school director/principal, the class instructor, and the students all equally as peers, and I critiqued curriculum, challenged teachers to back up their statements, and had little patience for students that screwed around or disregarded rules. Because of this I was often labeled (sometimes formally) as arrogant or standoffish to teachers, and aloof or condescending with my actual peers. I really took it to heart to learn and improve from this though, and I adjusted in about a year. I’m also very glad for that experience—understanding the structure of power and chain of command as part of nearly everything in society is pretty crucial to success, and that is one thing I just wasn’t exposed to in the fully democratic, completely equal-opportunity model of Sudbury schools.
As to “knowing as much as the other kids in a class”, I go into every class expecting we’ll all have the same pre-requisite knowledge for the subject, and if I know less than that, I study until I learn what I need (or more), so that’s never felt like an issue to me. Culturally though, I’m definitely the odd one out—just like a public school student in Vermont wouldn’t know about hardships of building a Spanish Mission model in school (as apparently every student does in California), there’s a core set of curriculums presented in public schools that bond public students together from across the US, and I have no knowledge of it. That can certainly be isolating—I’ve never had 1st-period gym (or any mandatory PE at all, we were outside when we wanted to be), never had notes passed in class, never been in detention, etc. and so I can’t participate in a huge part of most people’s common experience growing up. On the other hand, talking about junior high doesn’t happen much in your thirties anyway, so that’s not really an issue for me anymore :-)
Post high school: Like many students in Sudbury-Model schools, I took the SAT’s after studying for them intensely for several months, and I scored about as well as a traditional-curriculum student—much better than average in reading/writing/language, slightly worse than average in math/geometry. As my first real standardized test though, I was left fairly disgusted by the experience as proxy for college-worthiness, since every multiple-choice question was simply “confuse the test-taker into choosing the wrong answer”, and easily guessed by understanding the psychological tricks behind the test construction, even for supposedly difficult math problems. I ultimately ended up not going to college—the cost/benefit didn’t make sense for what I wanted to do—so instead I moved to the SF Bay Area when I was 19 to work on films—managing finances, meeting with clients, working with deadlines—I had no problem with any of that (though I was really poor… movie production is not a money-making market).
Now, I’ve worked at Apple for over 10 years, and the only difference between my colleagues and me is my tendency to still flatten the level of managers and direct reports, but fortunately the culture there leans heavily toward shallow hierarchy and candid discussion anyway. I’ve never once felt hindered or at a disadvantage for having gone to such a radical antithesis of the entire public school system.
Would I send my kid to a Sudbury School? Yes, definitely, if the student body was rich enough (numbers and diversity of students, not wealth of course), and if my kid clearly enjoyed it there. The school by its nature forces you to be introspective and consider your own needs, and some students do ultimately decide they need a different environment. It’s not a perfect fit for everyone as a start-to-end school, though for me the entire experience was ideal.
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.
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).
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!
And what did you end up studying?
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
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.
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. 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.
Neill said he only wanted the child up until he was seven (the classic Jesuit model of education). Do you agree that before seven is the critical age?
As for going for just a year or two - not sure I can give advice on that. Zoe Readhead, the principal, is very approachable - she could help you there.
If you've any questions you want to ask me offline, I'm at <hn user name>@gmail.com.
My daughter is nearing two so we're trying to make plans for her, but as others have said in this thread it's hard to know without knowing her personality. She might do great at a Summerhill-type school or she might need more structure.
The unschooling link looks helpful.
My three children all go to highly regarded UK state schools which are frustratingly conservative, inflexible and very focused on teaching for tests rather than life.
However breaking out and homeschooling seems wildly risky and frankly not possible without me abandoning my business.
Moreover I think that education should be a social and collective action so am pulled in both directions.
I'd love to see people with influence and funds (pg!) apply themselves more in this area. I'd be willing to throw myself behind that.
There's a keen and pressing need for humans to grow up happier, more self and environmentally aware and I doubt the current dominant educational paradigms and systems are going to provide this.
Automated systems are replacing 'rote' jobs at increasing speed, so educational systems that cater for developing creativity (Summerhill, Steiner etc) are likely to have an increasing economic advantage.
TBH I don't think daily contact with parents is _that_ important to children, certainly not mine, as long as they're in a happy environment.
I wonder if there is any pattern to the further education and career choices of alumini from these schools, e.g. arts or sciences. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School#Notable_form... , which of course is unlikely to be representative, there does seem to be a tendency towards the more creative industries.
I would be interested in whether this environment would be better or worse for a typical public school student (after a period of adjustment).
Source: I went there.
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.
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.
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).
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.
As for curriculums, how to get around it depends on the state. Some have no restrictions on private schools. For some, it might have to be placed under a religious school kind of situation.
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.
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.
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).
As a species, we certainly have strong mentoring needs for learning mastery. But that is quite different from requiring a class.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-coupl...
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?
If traditional schools were effective, one would expect significant evidence of this when compared to Sudbury schools. That evidence clearly does not exist.
"Free" is not a synonym of "democratic", it's quite the contrary.