Essays

Author’s note: Lots of people, and parents especially, are perplexed at best and horrified at worst, about the extensive use of computers by children these days. It is not something that they have experienced, and thus it makes them uncomfortable… Read more ›
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 with some sort of added twist. Consider… Read more ›
Fifty years ago many of us gathered frequently in each other’s living rooms as we discussed and planned and wrangled with the ideas that eventually brought the Sudbury Valley School into existence in the summer of 1968. Yes, there were many people… Read more ›
A few months ago I went shopping with my 3-year-old son. In front of the shop door, there were six staircases, leading to the ground. While I was paying the bill, he ran toward the shop door. The staff, some customers and I were all worried that he… Read more ›
One of the key problems every democratic system must work out for itself is the relationship between the individual and the community. Democracy, taken in its unembellished form as a system of self-government, focuses exclusively on the mechanism… Read more ›
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 ›
A Conversation about SVS between Lenore Skenazy and Daniel Greenberg Note: This interview took place on the Genesis Communication Network, on the Dr. Katherine Albrecht Show (hour 2), on October 7, 2014. Lenore Skenazy was sitting in as host for Dr… Read more ›
Note: The author is a staff member at Diablo Valley School, in Concord, CA. When I first applied to graduate school in education six and a half years ago, it did not cross my mind to become a teacher. I was much more interested in developing… Read more ›
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 ›
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 ›
Sudbury Valley featured at Carnegie Hall! Those of us who were able to go to the event sponsored by John Taylor Gatto and the Odysseus Group, on November 13 were bursting-our-buttons proud, of both the school and our representative in the program at… Read more ›
Some unrelated problems that are linked after all. I don’t know why this came together for me just now, but it did. Everything simply fell into place on Tuesday night, March 10, 1992. I had completed an extraordinary novel about the Holocaust, David… Read more ›
I From the beginning, the goal of Sudbury Valley was to embed children in the culture of the society into which they would grow up to be adults—to treat them as full members of that society from the earliest age at which they could understand the… Read more ›
What it Tells us About How Children Get “Educated” What are the features that we all, as human beings, share, and that are key to understanding how we function? In this essay I attempt to identify those features. Why do I care? Because when billions… Read more ›
Since the beginning I have been wondering about the kinds of people the graduates of Sudbury Valley School would turn out to be. More to the point, I wondered what kinds of people I wanted them to be – a very personal judgment, to be sure, but… Read more ›
First published in vol. 44 of the Sudbury Valley School Journal, Spring, 2015. Pretty much all of us are familiar with the phrase in our Declaration of Independence that asserts that every person possesses three “inalienable rights”—“life, liberty,… Read more ›
I’ve been going through the material in SVS’ School Planning Kit and it has led me into a process that I did not expect. During many phases of my life thus far, I've experienced moments of revelation about myself and the world around me. Having… Read more ›
There is a great deal of talk these days about maintaining, or raising, standards in our schools. The prevailing notion seems to be that children tend to be slackers, and that the only way to ensure that our culture survives without degradation of… Read more ›