Writing by:

Daniel Greenberg

Article |
Sudbury Valley School Journal, Winter 2016 Introduction This essay has been prompted by a feeling of frustration that has finally led me to sit down and face an unpleasant reality: too many people think we are basically an “un-schooling” institution… Read more ›
Article |
The Meaning of Play [Chapter 1, A Clearer View, pp. 3-30] Back in 1965, a small group of us started discussing a set of ideas about education and schooling. That was when we began to become self conscious of the fact that rather than just being… Read more ›
Article |
Sudbury Valley School Experience, pp. 121-136 For a long time I had the strong conviction that age mixing, which is one of the most obvious features of Sudbury Valley, is among the most important educational components of the school (as well as… Read more ›
Essay post |
A New Look at Learning At the Sudbury Valley School, we have encountered a new version of the old story of the parent-child dialogue: “Where did you go?” “Out.” “What did you do?” “Nothing.” Our version is: “Where do you go?” “Sudbury Valley.” “What… Read more ›
Article |
The sub-title was carefully chosen to represent the status I think conversation has relative to the entire process of learning and living. This is a retrospective series of talks about what we’ve learned over the thirty years, and I find it rather… Read more ›
Article |
Prologue Ever since the school was first conceived, we have been searching for a way to express in clear and concise form its essential philosophy and practice. The search has been far-reaching, and has unearthed a wide range of concepts. Those I… Read more ›
Blog post |
Sudbury Valley has just begun the 2017-2018 school year – and an exciting one it is! This will be our 50th year of operation, the half century mark for what was once a “far-out” experiment. Born in the tumultuous 1960s, SVS was destined to outlive… Read more ›
Article |
There is a book on my desk: “Wanderlust” . . . . This book is about peripatetics! While reading it, I thought about the two little girls walking side by side, on a road leading to Sudbury [Valley], talking about something very important. Sudbury has… Read more ›
Article |
We always felt that Sudbury Valley was the best place to develop each child’s unique potential to the fullest. That was a given for us from day one. The question is, how does this beautiful concept relate to setting up a school? It turns out that,… Read more ›
Essay post |
Age Mixing, Positive and Negative Role Models, and Personal Independence1 We always felt that Sudbury Valley was the best place to develop each child’s unique potential to the fullest. That was a given for us from day one. The question is, how does… Read more ›
Article |
Nothing disturbs visitors to Sudbury Valley School more than the sight of children of all ages playing freely all day long. The image contradicts every notion people have of what a school should be. Moreover, it seems to offer proof of our culture’… Read more ›
Article |
Nothing disturbs visitors to Sudbury Valley School more than the sight of children of all ages playing freely all day long. The image contradicts every notion people have of what a school should be. Moreover, it seems to offer proof of our culture’… Read more ›
Article |
In a Nutshell What This Essay is Really About… The school was first conceived half a century ago, in the Fall of 1965. In so many ways, it was a different world back then. Talking to young people about life in those days is like relating stories… Read more ›
Article |
We got a great deal of insight into good campus design accidentally. We went out and looked for a place and found our campus, and it happened to be an old, distinguished estate. We might have ended up with a plot of ground on which we had to build;… Read more ›
Essay post |
In 1992, I wrote an essay under the title “Banishing Fear”. Since I wrote that, there has been a tragic resurgence of fear permeating western culture, a resurgence that has had devastating consequences for the children growing up in this new century… Read more ›

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