Next Open House: Saturday, Oct 24, 1pm – 4pm RSVP today
Hanna: A question we hear all the time is: what is a typical day like at Sudbury Valley? What do kids do here? Mikel: Over the years there have been a lot of kids at the school, and they all have different “typical” days, and there are 180 days a year. So there’s an incredible […]
I was talking to a friend of mine a while ago. He’s a college professor at one of the local universities, and he was talking to me about the different educational backgrounds that the kids who came to that school experienced and how it affected them. He told me that the one big difference that […]
Matt: Why no curriculum, if this is a place for people to become educated for life in the 21st century? Actually, have you even updated the curriculum in the half-century of this school’s existence? Dan: We didn’t need to. “No curriculum” was the perfect curriculum forever. After all, what is a curriculum? A curriculum is […]
When we say that we are “bringing people up”, it can mean anything from bringing up a person in a conversation to bringing up our kids according to certain principles. At SVS, “bringing a person up” (i.e., filing a complaint against someone with the Judicial Committee) has a meaning that morphs and changes as the […]
As Hanna tells the story, one day she and Mikel were chatting and casually looking out the window, when they spotted two of our youngest students walking down the road towards school, deep in an animated conversation. The scene prompted Mikel to comment something like, “Look at them! They’re negotiating!” And Hanna’s recounting this incident […]
It’s amazing that anybody considers that what’s called “a school” in the traditional meaning of the term has anything to do with preparing children for adulthood. To the contrary: it doesn’t let them talk; doesn’t let them move; it squelches their creativity; it doesn’t let them control what they do with their time; and it […]
This spring, there’s been quite a lot of talk, once again, about a book called Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding. Published in the ‘50’s, it is a piece of fiction about what happens when a bunch of kids get stranded on an island, and it’s not a pretty story. Nevertheless it has […]
Dan: Recently, a group of alumni on their own initiative decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sudbury Valley School, and invited all alumni from everywhere in the world to come and join them. Amazingly, almost 200 alumni came, of all ages and from all the years the school had existed. Mimsy: It was a very warm […]
Dan: One thing I can’t understand is how people have confidence in the material that’s being taught in classrooms, whether it’s elementary school, middle school, high school or college. They’re taught from textbooks or from prepared notes. And everybody in any field knows that by the time a textbook is published, much of the material […]
Hanna: I am talking to Teddy Barnes, who is 17. He has been in school 2½ years and has served on the JC twice, the second time in October, 2017. Hanna: Teddy, have you ever been brought up? Teddy: I have—for littering, once which was an accident, of course. Hanna: What I’d like you to […]
I want to talk about something called “the zone of proximal development”, an idea developed by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky early in the 20th century. He felt that people learn best when either they are learning from somebody who knows a little more than they do, or they are teaching somebody who knows a little […]
Reading for pleasure and knowledge has always been a meaningful part of my life. So when my three children started SVS at young ages I couldn’t help but wonder how they would learn to read without the direct instruction I had experienced as a child. Now that my three are in double digit ages and […]
Mimsy: Yesterday I was talking to a professor of philosophy and his daughter, who’s about 13 or 14, and she said, “The stuff that you learn for tests – you learn it, and then you just vomit it out, and you never know it again.” And he turned to her and said, “I would not […]
When you’re in a situation where you can do anything you want with your day, the fact is that most of what people do involves talking. . . . Why are they talking? What do they get from it?
The vast enterprise that has been created for the purpose of educating all of the nation’s youth is founded on a number of hypotheses. Together, they give the appearance of a powerful set of assumptions that cannot be reasonably challenged. They are the product of the best minds applying their wisdom to the sacred task […]
We got a great deal of insight into good campus design accidentally.
Have more questions? Interested in visiting the campus? We’d love to hear from you.
