“Montessori really is a ’no child left behind’ teaching philosophy. If you are ready to keep moving, you keep moving. If you aren’t, you can stay on task until you get it.”
~ Tanya Stutzman, whose six children have attended Mon- tessori schools in Sarasota, Florida
“The reading, writing and academics all came out eventually, as day-to-day living required that they learned them.”
By contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Educa- tion, the number of kids enrolled in an assigned public school dipped from 80 percent in 1993 to 73 percent in 2007. “We are at a crucial point,” says Jerry Mintz, who founded AERO in 1989. “Everybody knows there is something wrong with the current educational system, and people are now starting to realize they have choices.”
Old Factory Model of Schooling
When parents step into 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 another 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 settings (where life followed a seasonal rhythm) to cities, education pioneers faced a formi- dable task. “Civic leaders realized that people were not well prepared for this new lifestyle of working 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 demo- cratic society, yet our youngest citizens were given no voice. In 1968, a group of parents in Sudbury, Massachusetts, founded the Sudbury Valley School, a K-12 learning center where adults were literally prohibited from initiating activities, while kids chose what to do, where and when (
SudVal.org). One year later, a homeschooling mom named Mary Leue opened The Free School in Albany (
AlbanyFreeSchool.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 flourished, Miller says the larger movement
August 2010 29
~ Wonshe, who “unschooled” both of her sons in rural Virginia
“Waldorf understands that there are many ways for a child to express oneself—not just through words and academics, but also through creativity.”
~ Patrice Maynerd, who enrolled her son in Waldorf education at age 3
photo courtesy of Harriet Tubman Free School
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