Sudbury Val- ley School, a K-12 learn- ing center where
adults were literally prohib- ited from initiating activities, while kids chose what to do, where and when (SudVal.
many public school classrooms today, they find neat rows of desks occupied by children, while a teacher in the front of the room presents a lesson. When the bell rings, students file into anoth- er room, where the same scene plays out again. That structure, according to education historians, is no accident. With the Industrial Revolution
underway in the 1800s and waves of families moving from rural set- tings (where life followed a seasonal rhythm) to cities, education pioneers faced a formidable task. “Civic leaders realized that people were not well prepared for this new lifestyle of work- ing in a factory,” explains Ron Miller, Ph.D., a widely published education historian.
“Public education was designed with the idea that people had to learn how to follow a set schedule, follow orders and come up with a product in the end. The day was broken up into time periods with a bell, because that was what factory work entailed.” Miller observes that the system served its purpose well. “The U.S. became a tremendously productive industrial society.”
But by the 1960s, some critics began to point to what they saw as a glaring hypocrisy: America claimed to be a democratic society, yet our youngest citizens were given no voice. In 1968, a group of parents in Sudbury, Massachusetts, founded the
org). One year later, a homeschooling mom named Mary Leue opened The Free School in Albany (Albany
FreeSchool.com). By the 1970s, as many as 800 democratic schools were in operation. While pioneering models like Sudbury Valley and The Free School have survived and flour- ished, Miller says the larger movement became usurped by the 1980s trend toward more standardization, with most democratic schools shutting their doors.
Now, growing discontent over standardization has inspired a revival. “The public school system tends to operate under the paradigm that kids are naturally lazy and must be forced to learn, so they need homework and testing to be motivated,” says Mintz. “Advocates of democratic education and other learner-centered approaches believe that children have a natural passion for learning and are good judges of what they need to learn. Our job as educators is to provide them resources.”
Renewed Democracy in Action
Rebirth of the democratic school movement can be credited in part to Alan Berger, an idealistic New York teacher who, after reading an article about the 1960s Free School move- ment in 2002, was inspired to open The Brooklyn Free School in the basement of a small church. Today,
August 2010 11
the school is thriving, with a diverse student body of 60, a new five-story brownstone to call home, and a slid- ing fee scale that lets children of all economic backgrounds participate in an education they largely create themselves. On a typical morning, students gather in the music room for impromp- tu Beatles jam sessions, do yoga in the hallway, scrawl art across a designated wall or curl up with a book in the well- stocked library. Some attend optional math and writing classes. For others, the year’s lesson plan evolves more organically out of a larger goal. For example, in preparation for a school trip to Tanzania, some students stud- ied Swahili, African cuisine and the region’s history. “There are just so many things
that I love here,” raves student Erin Huang Schaffer in a new documentary about the school called The Good, The True and The Beautiful. “I love making art and drawing, and I’ve started making stories… I’m just find-
photo courtesy of Harriet Tubman Free School
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