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I confess that I wasn’t thinking about happiness in 1968, when my husband and I decided to send our children to the almost-open Sudbury Valley School. We had unfortunately noticed that public school seemed to cause our little son to feel something worse than “just” unhappy, and also seemed to interfere with what he had been […]
How can every person be above average? It sounds impossible, but it is a given in the community at Sudbury Valley. Living life with a measuring stick, watching to be certain that you are doing OK by others’ standards, and getting a thumbs up that you are pulling your own weight is easier than living […]
If you happen to be sitting in the large front room called “the sewing room,” you might notice that every day at 11:00 a.m., eight people walk into the adjacent book-lined “seminar room.” What you are seeing is the gathering of the school’s Judicial Committee (JC).
Hanna: People who hear about the school often say: so everybody will just work on what’s easy for them. And my answer to them is: “Well, what’s wrong with that?” However, my observation is that it’s not true, that a lot of the kids work on whatever is hard for them. If they are shy, […]
“Where do you work?” “At Sudbury Valley School.” “What do you do?” “Nothing.” Doing nothing at Sudbury Valley requires a great deal of energy and discipline, and many years of experience. I get better at it every year, and it amuses me to see how I and others struggle with the inner conflict that arises […]
I am writing this on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Neue Schule Hamburg, to offer congratulations and a tiny bit of retrospection. I work at Sudbury Valley School, in the United States, and we are celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. I think it could be fairly said that Neue Schule Hamburg has […]
Somewhat to my surprise, I have recently gained a new insight into a key element of what goes on here, in an area that I thought had been thoroughly analyzed from ever-so-many angles from the very first days of the school’s founding. It came unexpectedly as a result of my coming across a quote from […]
Everybody sees that the notion that kids have to go to a building–to a school–and have to be taught stuff in person by a teacher who talks at them, has been flushed down the toilet.
People often ask if there is a problem with bullying at Sudbury Valley School given that all these kids of all different ages are mixed together in a seemingly haphazard and unordered way. I tell them that bullying is quite rare; to which they often respond, “How is that the case?” I think the answer […]
What is the justification for trying to guide children and tell them what they need to be successful adults? Does anyone have a right to interfere with their process of finding out who they are and what their purpose in life is?
This is a confession: It took me many, many years to learn how not to pounce and use what are called “teaching moments” at home with my own children and here at school. Like most people, I like to tell stories, to talk about things that I know and find interesting and to pass on […]
I. The question I pose in the title may seem outrageous: of course someone cares! Everyone cares, don’t they? When media outlets feature a story that is explicitly about some instance of child abuse, outrage is expressed on all sides. And certainly no one actively defends such situations when they surface! So what is this […]
You could be forgiven for thinking that this is a silly question. After all, it’s fun to play, and what more of a reason does one need? But why is it fun? Why has Nature provided our species with an activity such as this that is fun, so that we’ll want to engage in it […]
Matt Wolf and Daniel Greenberg discuss pursuing interests and passions at Sudbury Valley. How do students find out what interests them in the first place? Are they missing out on important subjects by focusing on what they’re interested in, instead of what a curriculum imposes on them? Is it possible for people to choose what’s interesting, […]
School’s a place for kids to learn. Everybody agrees to that. That’s why they exist. Well, but kids learn all the time; it’s part of human nature to learn. People have known that forever. The opening sentence of one of the most famous books ever written, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, starts with “all human beings are naturally […]
One of the criticisms I hear from time to time about Sudbury Valley School is along the lines of, “Well, doing what you want all day and making democratic decisions about the way your community is run, that’s all well and good, but when they get out in the real world and they find out […]
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