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Alternative Schooling Styles : Free Schools Independence and Natural Learning in a Democratic Setting Progressive styles of schooling recognize that children are naturally curious and can learn about anything -- if they want to. Progressive schools, therefore, endeavor to make subjects more interesting and let children work at their own pace in order to make learning more fun and effective. Free schools do one better. They let the child initiate learning. That is, the child decides not only how fast he will move through a subject, he even decides which subjects to learn and how and when to learn them. This freedom of inquiry enables the maximum amount of interest and concentration in the learner. (Think about your own experience. Don't you learn best when you decide what to learn?) Free Schoolers are constantly reminded that they are responsible for their own education. They are allowed to seek their own challenges and make their own mistakes. They may spend their days reading, writing, working on math or science projects, swinging, arguing politics, doing crosswords, walking, exercising, and playing games. Or they may do nothing at all. There are no classes, no subjects, no curriculum. There aren't even any teachers. There are adults (staff members) of course, but they are "resources" or "guides to learning." Teaching only occurs when specifically requested by the learner. All ages are allowed to mix freely. This lets children learn from each other. They work and play alone and in groups, segregating themselves naturally by age, ability, and interests. The typical Free School is busy but not chaotic. Like any institution or community there are rules to keep things functioning smoothly. But unlike most schools, children in a Free School get to help make the rules. Parents, staff, and children are all school members and each get one voice and one vote in the operation of the school. Each may serve on a committee, bring grievances, call meetings, and participate in debates and trials. Staff members are elected. School meetings are run like a traditional New England town meeting. This is real democracy in action. This style is child-directed for use in private schools, for ages 4-18. The natural learning philosophy behind it is very similar to Unschooling. Because a safe pleasant environment is so essential to emotional health, Free Schools tend to be located on large, rural, scenic plots of land. The best working model in the United States is the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts, which is incorporated as a non-profit organization.
Resources Quotes “Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons' experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives. Whoever takes that right away from us, by trying to 'educate' us, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience, has no value.” -- John Holt, teacher, education writer and school reformer “To educate successfully for democracy, the real life surroundings of the children we seek to educate must be democratic in every respect, through and through, to the core and down to the last detail. The world of children we want to reach must be a democratic reality, so the children wishing to master it will have no choice but to master the whole intricacy of its democratic structure. Education for democracy demands democratic Schools. There is no other way to make it effective.” -- Daniel Greenberg, teacher, writer, co-founder of the Sudbury Valley School “I am not a teacher; only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead –- ahead of myself as well as of you.” -- George Bernard Shaw, British dramatist, writer and critic “America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.” -- Ayn Rand, novelist and philosopher “I am inclined to think that one's education has been in vain if one fails to learn that most schoolmasters are idiots.” -- Hesketh Pearson, British biographer, travel writer, essayist Copyright 2005 r u s t y ἐπὶ r u s t y m a s o n . c o m , all rights reserved. |