Writing by:
Daniel Greenberg
Blog post | Tuesday, April 13, 2021
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… Read more ›
Essay post | Thursday, April 1, 2021
One of the objections most frequently raised against Sudbury Valley School as an appropriate educational environment for children growing up in contemporary America is that the school, in focusing on self-knowledge, promotes the development of… Read more ›
Blog post | Tuesday, March 16, 2021
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?
Blog post | Tuesday, February 23, 2021
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… Read more ›
Essay post | Tuesday, February 9, 2021
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… Read more ›
Blog post | Wednesday, January 6, 2021
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… Read more ›
Essay post | Thursday, December 10, 2020
As I write, I am looking outside at the beautiful campus in the morning sun. Children of all ages are all over – running, playing, calling each other, romping. Inside, voices can be heard from the adjacent rooms – and sometimes floating up from the… Read more ›
Essay post | Wednesday, October 7, 2020
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… Read more ›
Essay post | Thursday, June 4, 2020
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… Read more ›
Blog post | Tuesday, April 21, 2020
People often say to me, “What you're doing at Sudbury Valley School is really amazing. There are so many things that are wonderful about it. How can we incorporate some of the more important aspects of what you do into our school?” Usually these… Read more ›
Blog post | Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Here's a real puzzle: when I was growing up, there were no such things as “learning disabilities” in our classrooms. There were kids of all kinds of different abilities and interests, and we were just plain different from each other. Nobody said… Read more ›
Blog post | Tuesday, December 10, 2019
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… Read more ›
Blog post | Monday, October 7, 2019
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – the three cornerstones of this country, and the reason it was founded in the first place. These were the “unalienable rights” that our founders declared belonged to every person – rights that could… Read more ›
Essay post | Tuesday, October 1, 2019
The Circumstance that Drives Evolution
The key factor that enables evolution to take place is the uniqueness of each individual in every species, which in turn guarantees a wide variation in the nature and characteristics of the individuals… Read more ›
Blog post | Monday, September 9, 2019
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… Read more ›