Blog

I offer these thoughts as one who has and continues to work with young people and their families for over 35 years. I have been so intrigued by the SVS Model, that I had to experience it in person. Sudbury Valley School is not really a school. It… Read more ›

It was Valentine’s Day. There had been something afoot for quite a few days, and there were lots of valentines – simple but perfect (Cori and her friends at work) – made for people to write inside. Pink, white, lavender and red papers were… Read more ›

Sudbury Valley nay-sayers often point to the lack of grades and high school grade point averages as one of the great risks of sending your child to SVS.  As I understand the argument, a good grade point average is necessary to get into the best… Read more ›

[reprinted from The School Bull, Informal News about The Clearwater School] Feel in it Even swim in it And music noits Fill my bain This is the poem my son wrote to accompany a three-foot tall, three-dimensional art project he created while… Read more ›

For many centuries, philosophers and scientists have been debating human knowledge: its nature, limits and origin. On this last point, we still are trying to understand how much the human being is born knowing and how much he discovers… Read more ›

It started with the 12-year-old girl down the street who told my daughter she would never get into college. I am sure many of our friends, who were devoting untold hours to ensure that their children excelled in public school, wanted to say the… Read more ›

There is not a lot of talk these days about happiness. It’s considered more of an accidental condition than a fundamentally required, or expected, one. Company human resource officials don’t start their interviews with prospective employees by… Read more ›

What do SVS students have in common? What are the distinguishing features of this vibrant collection of people whose energy strikes you the moment you encounter them? For a long time I have been trying to articulate the answers to these questions.… Read more ›

All through this past winter kids at school spent time outdoors when they could (usually), playing basketball, taking walks, climbing on the rocks, or using the swings and the slide. After the pond froze and was safe to walk on, many of them were… Read more ›

This is a tough question. SVS lacks the more traditional ways of bench marking a child’s progress through school. There are no parent-teacher conferences, no grades, no MCAS scores, no curriculum, no classes and no grade point averages. There is… Read more ›

Emma is just one of those “little girls”. They don’t look that individualized; they look like the little girls one used to see in picture books, the ones that behaved either perfectly or horribly, but the story came out all right in the end. But… Read more ›

In the car on the way home from the Maynard Fine Arts Theater on Saturday, January 26, Danny and I were elated.   We had just seen the movie “Drowning in Pennsylvania”, which was written, produced and acted by Sudbury Valley students and alums.… Read more ›

During this holiday season, my daughter gave each of her SVS friends pillow cases. Using a fabric marker, each pillow case was emblazoned with a block of text. Then each pillow case was rolled up like a scroll and tied with a ribbon. The result… Read more ›

Originally appeared in the June Journal of 1992, Volume 21 After so many years of explaining the philosophy of SVS I occasionally get tired. Tired of the same old questions which show me over and over again how difficult it is for people to… Read more ›

A couple of months ago, one of my good friends told me of an interactive exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art. William Forsythe, a ballet choreographer, created rooms where a person’s own body movements were the subject.   I immediately felt… Read more ›