Next Open House: Saturday, Oct 24, 1pm – 4pm RSVP today
Former students reminisce about their lives at Sudbury Valley School, and what they have been doing since they left. One is a former rock star turned chef, one a social worker, and one a documentary film maker. There are questions and answers from the audience.
The role of courses in learning has been on my mind a lot recently, largely due to conversations with various present and former School Meeting members. There is continuing pressure on the part of the outside educational community to make people at the school feel that there is something defective in a person’s education if […]
In May of 1988, Norman Bauer, a Professor at SUNY Geneseo, asked for and got permission to come to Sudbury Valley School, to interview Daniel Greenberg, and basically get a look at the school. We were in our twentieth year at that point, and had finally reached a moment when we felt sort of settled […]
Some people, who have only a passing knowledge about Sudbury Valley, are troubled and offended by the fact that our school relies on the rule of written law, rather than on guidelines or common sense. Some see our law-book, and presume that a couple dozen pages of written rules (plus many more pages of administrative […]
If I had to choose one topic to place at the very core of every child’s educational experience, I would have no trouble identifying it: how to deal with failure. Yet this is a subject carefully avoided in traditional mainstream schools. On the contrary, the motto of our schools might just as well be the […]
One of the prevalent myths about the evil wrought upon today’s young generation by “screen time” is that computers discourage their users from social interactions. The claim is that when people use computers, they cut themselves off from direct personal interaction with their fellow humans, and become instead solitary islands separated from the world around […]
We have a lot to muse about as we struggle to make ourselves comfortable in a world that seems to be mainly for people whose brains are more advanced than ours. Who is we? Well, it is my generation, for sure. It is in no sense today’s generation, and the fact that my children (that […]
Would you actually turn back the hands of time and be a kid again if you had the ‘sus’ power to shape shift or time travel? Or would you want to just simply go back to the ‘kid’ version of who you have become and re-live it, feel it all again, one long day at […]
The phrase “self-directed learning” is used in education circles all over the Internet, and it is often applied to Sudbury Valley. But the term is misleading, and is misapplied. Sudbury Valley has nothing to do with self-directed learning. In the twenty-first century, the word “learning”, unfortunately, has lost much of its meaning. It is presently […]
From the beginning, the word “trust” could be found in our literature here and there, pretty much casually—not with any great emphasis on it, certainly not with a whole essay about it. It was a kind of underlying characterization—there’s a lot of trust in the school, kids trust each other, they trust the school, parents […]
This question has clearly been answered by our society with a resounding “YES”. It is an accepted notion that all children should learn at the same pace, and stringent measures are taken to ensure that this is the case and that there be “no child left behind”. Whether it means that those who neglect to […]
A broken leg is no fun. However, since at SVS almost any new situation can become a window into what is going on in the minds of the kids, my broken leg led to many unexpected insights for me. My mobility was seriously curtailed by my inability to walk. So when I came to school […]
Whenever we have an Open House at Sudbury Valley School we often get the same question, “What do the kids do all day?” Underneath this question is a broader one, “Can you prove to me that this place works?” On the spot, the short answer is, “No.” The truth is that they do all kinds […]
The Sudbury Valley School model is an idea whose time has come. And in a relatively short time, historically speaking . . . in a mere half century, it has made a dent in the protective walls that traditional education has built to protect its bloated empire.
In the long view of things, the concept of the school isn’t that odd. In the history of human culture, public education as we know it has only really existed for about 150 years. Up until around the 1820s or the 1830s all human cultural achievements came about without the benefit of a public school […]
From Interviews by Hanna Greenberg edited by Mimsy Sadofsky and Daniel Greenberg (207) “Mobility was a big part of what was different about the school from any other institution. Mobility and randomness together let you find the things you’re interested in. You’re not stuck anywhere . . . the whole day you’re doing stuff you’re […]
Have more questions? Interested in visiting the campus? We’d love to hear from you.
