Blog
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 ›
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
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… Read more ›
Monday, December 7, 2020
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… Read more ›
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
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… Read more ›
Thursday, November 5, 2020
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… Read more ›
Thursday, October 22, 2020
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… Read more ›
Monday, October 5, 2020
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… Read more ›
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
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… Read more ›
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
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… Read more ›
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
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… Read more ›
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
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… Read more ›
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
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… Read more ›
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
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… Read more ›
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Remote Learning:
When Governor Baker announced on April 29th that schools would remain closed in the state of Massachusetts through the end of the school year, he also emphasized the importance of continuing and expanding “remote learning” for… Read more ›
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
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… Read more ›