the magazine of alternative education … welcome to the education revolution! in this issue we have...
TRANSCRIPT
The Magazine of Alternative Education
Education RevolutionI s s u e N u m b e r F o r t y
Winter/Spring 2005 $4.95 USA/
w w w . E d u c a t i o n R e v o l u t i o n . o r g
Neill and SummerhillIdec inIndia
also:
Education RevolutionThe Magazine of Alternative Education417 Roslyn Road, Roslyn Heights, NY 11577
ISSN#: 110679219Phone: 516-621-2195 / 800-769-4171Fax: 516-625-3257Email: [email protected] Site: http://www.educationrevolution.org
Executive Director: Jerry MintzER Editor, Illustrator and Designer: Albert LambAdvertising: Isaac GravesMail and Communications Editor: Carol MorleyPrinter: Brenneman Printing Inc., Lancaster, PA
AERO Advisory BoardAlexander Adamsky, Mary Addams, Chris Balch, Fred Bay,Patrice Creve, Anne Evans, Patrick Farenga, Phil Gang, John Gatto,Herb Goldstein, Dan Greenberg, Jeffrey Kane, Dave Lehman,Mary Leue, Ron Miller, Ann Peery, John Potter, Mary AnneRaywid, John Scott, Tim Seldin, Elina Sheppel, Andy Smallman,Nick Stanton, Corinne Steele, Tom Williams
Education RevolutionThe Magazine of Alternative Education
Fall 2004 - Issue Number Thirty Nine - www.educationrevolution.org
The mission of The Education Revolution magazine is basedon that of the Alternative Education Resource Organization(AERO): “Building the critical mass for the education revolutionby providing resources which support self-determination inlearning and the natural genius in everyone.” Towards thisend, this magazine includes the latest news and communicationsregarding the broad spectrum of educational alternatives: publicalternatives, independent and private alternatives, homeeducation, international alternatives, and more. The commonfeature in all these educational options is that they are learner-centered, focused on the interest of the child rather than on anarbitrary curriculum.
AERO, which produces this magazine quarterly, is firmlyestablished as a leader in the field of educational alternatives.Founded in 1989 in an effort to promote learner-centerededucation and influence change in the education system, AEROis an arm of the School of Living, a non-profit organization.AERO provides information, resources and guidance tostudents, parents, schools and organizations regarding theireducational choices.
Looking for News
Mail & Communication
Butterflies...........................................................
Funding Shell Game..........................................Secretary of NCLB.............................................IDEC in IndiaJerry Mintz...................................................BooroobinDerek Sheppard..............................................
Main Section.....................................................Home Education...............................................Public Alternatives............................................International News............................................Conferences......................................................
Being There
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Revolutionary TimesNeill and SummerhillHussein Lucas..................................................Woodstock Cooperative 2003-2004Lincoln Stoller....................................................The Case Against EducationSimon Robinson..............................................A Student Teaches Her TeacherChris Canfield...................................................TsunamiVani and Niru..............................................
Books Etc..................................................
Kids Corner.............................................. 39
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Welcome to the Education Revolution!
In this issue we have a short biogra-phy of Neill and his beloved Summerhillwhich I have been angling to get for you forthe last couple of years. Enjoy.
Also you can catch up on the IDECin India, in case you couldn’t get a ticket.(page 5). On this page you can get the flavorof the event in Michel Weiner’s e-mail home.
Subject: more from michelleFrom: “michelle weiner”Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 05:11:33
Today was a work day, which means I went to workshopsall day. Yet, the people who run the workshops andparticipate in them are so amazing and the material soengrossing that it was more like play than work.
This morning I went to Jinan’s workshop about supportingchildren’s natural exploration of the environment throughtheir senses. He showed slides of children exploringfound objects and making play things of them. This wasvery familiar to me and I was thinking of Jamie, Zak, Robinand Daniel using the rainwater in the gutter to make littlesail boats, and all the little mud villages in the backyardmade by Jamie, Zak and Stan.
Also he taught a great lesson on color using leaves theycollected and then arranged according to color value andthen they replicated the leaf colors with paint. Then theymade pictures with leaves and paint. Hard to describe, butthey were simply gorgeous.
I went to a presentation of a group from S. Korea whonetwork with small alternative schools in Seoul... mostlyserving kids who refuse to go to school or have droppedout because of school failure. They were so inspiring and Iwas thinking maybe I should look in to getting somethinggoing like that because there are so many kids who coulduse support in their learning process and the schools justaren’t meeting their needs. This network gets publicfunding because the school system has acknowledged thatthey don’t have an answer for this problem. I don’t know ifour greedy school system is ready to say they could give upand fork over any of the money they hoard andmisappropriate. But it is something I might want to explore.
At lunch I sat with Ravi, from Nandi Foundation, and wemade a plan to suggest at the morning meeting that allparicipants with DVDs arrange to make copies available.
In the afternoon I went to a workshop called WALK OUTWALK ON which aimed to open people up to thepossibilities in life so that they don’t see themselves asdrop outs or losers, but as people with lots of possibilitiesand choices, who can self-educate and create their ownunique path. The workshop leaders are Indians and theirwork is a response to an extremely pressurefuleducational system and fear of failure because of the highrate of unemployment.
Well, it would be nice to hear from you. Of course, I am inthe email habit because of all the planning and supportrequired for this trip. Maybe the rest of you aren’t emailjunkies like I am.
bye for now.
Michelle
A Wordfrom Jerry
E-MAIL:IDEC ININDIA
Thanks to:Michelle Weiner Woolner
[email protected] Mountain Place
Mentor Teacher
Testing time?Check out The Case Against Education on page 32
A lot of exciting things are happening at AERO, butwe still need all the support we can get from you, ourreaders, to be effective. You will read about theamazing IDEC in India and our visit to the Butterfliesprogram in Delhi and the video documentary we havemade of that visit. Now we are hard at work on theAERO Conference 2005, “A Spectrum of Alterna-tives.” John Gatto, Alfie Kohn, Matt Hern, Tim Seldinof the Montessori Foundation, and Ann Cook of the
Urban Academy in NYC will be keynoters. Butthose of you who have been to our conferences
know there is much more to it than that. Pleasehelp us spread the word. It is only three monthaway. Hopefully I’ll see you there!
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NewsLookingfor
with Albert Lamb
A lot of traditional liberals liked the No Child Left Behind(NCLB) package of laws. At last the federal government wasmaking a commitment to improving primary education, andpromising a substantial increase in funding for education.Some people bought into the idea of High Stakes Testingbecause at least the federal government was going toincrease its aid to America’s cash-strapped schools.
With the latest proposed US budget that particular hope hasevaporated. A third of the budget cuts in this new budget arein education. The NCLB has never actually been fully fundedbut the new budget will force a cut in real terms. Robert Gordonis worried about ‘flat-funding’, holding future spending tocurrent levels:
The new budget looks kind of like the old shell game. Whichshell is hiding the education money? It definitely looks like themiddle one, but it’s hard to be sure. Maybe it’s the one overthere that seems to be empty. Keep your eyes on the shells asthey are whisked around the table.
Appearances seem to imply that money is leaving the earlyyears and moving over to the high schools. High StakesTesting in reading and math is now going to include the finaltwo years of high school. Remedial reading for older kids willalso get new funding. There’s even a $500 million fund toreward teachers who have students who do very well.
Funding Shell Game
But, under another shell, the entire budget for high schoolvocational education, $1.2 billion, is to be eliminated. Intotal, $2 billion of popular high school programs are on theway out.
One more set of shells is on the education table: The wholeset-up for funding college students is about to change. Whowill benefit and who will lose out? Who knows? There is tobe a slight increase in the Pell Grants, where the maximumgrant will rise by $100 per student, per year, (costing thegovernment $18 billion). But the largest single cut will be theelimination of the $6 billion Perkins loan program.
So where do we stand? At the very least Americanstudents, schools and colleges are going to have to beshunted through another massive set of changes in howthey do business, facing many substantial losses in funding.But maybe that is part of the purpose of the game. No soonerdid the NCLB Act get schools scrambling to learn the newrules than the government, through altering the funding,changes the game. And maybe this was the real idea behindthe whole game from the very beginning. Destabilize publiceducation to the point where big business has to step in andtake over.
Away from Education there is another, larger, funding tablewith another, bigger, shell game. This current budgetincludes substantial increases in spending on the military,the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligenceand diplomatic services. Under one shell an increase of $19billion for the pentagon, almost the same as all the cuts fromsocial programs. And the Energy Department will get an extra$20 billion for nuclear weapons programs.
But what’s this? Could this be some sort of invisible shell?The whole Pentagon budget, not including wars, is $419billion but Bush’s budget apparently makes noappropriations for America’s continuing involvement inAfghanistan or Iraq – or for the proposed Social Securityprivatization plan. In fact, in the opinion of the HouseDemocratic leader:
Will this administration get away with it? Will these changesin educational provision become law? Maybe. But this shellgame is being played with a US Congress who is used togetting to make the spending decisions. They may feel thatthe game is just a kind of smokescreen for an administrationthat wants to keep all the power in its own hands. And thegeneral public may not like seeing many popular programsslashed.
“The president’s budget is a hoax on the American people.The two issues that dominated the president’s State of theUnion address—Iraq and Social Security—are nowhere to befound in this budget.” Nancy Pelosi
The ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee,Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, called for Congress toreject the education budget. “The administration is going tofind out that people believe we need to invest in our chil-dren,” he said. The Associated Press. February 7, 2005
(Bush’s) No Child Left Behind request now falls $12 billionshort, fully one-third of the authorization level. Bush hasflat-funded the charter schools that his own administrationchampions. He has flat-funded the afterschool and preschoolprograms that troubled kids need. And he has eliminated prom-ising reforms like breaking up big, weak schools. At the verymoment when reform’s demands have climbed – when moreschools must allow students to transfer, offer tutoring, orprepare to shut down – the gap between funding envisionedand funding offered for reform has widened into a chasm.Robert Gordon “Failing Prospects” The American Prospect,Inc.
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Let the debate be sparked!
It is not just with schools that standards are going down:
In the meantime dozens of states are trying to change therules so that they can lower their standards before they gettheir schools closed or turned into charters:
While looking at the big picture we might like to look at apatriotic little picture of the attractive new US Secretary ofEducation, Margaret Spellings (see photo). In Bush’s first termshe was one of his advisors on domestic issues. Back whenGeorge W. Bush was Governor of Texas Margaret Spellings
was his senior advisor oneducation, where shehelped him put together hisschool assessment andaccountability program, theprecursor to NCLB. Beforethat she was associateexecutive director of theTexas Association ofSchool Boards.
Now that she is at the toptable, she is going to haveto deal with a variety ofstates rights issues andsome very angry publicschool people:
Educators Expect Flood of Lawsuits: The federal No ChildLeft Behind Act threatens costly penalties for schools deemedfailing to meet academic standards. In response, many educa-tors have a threat of their own: A flood of lawsuits aimed atavoiding the sanctions. CNN http://www.cnn.com/
Since passage of Mr. Bush’s signature education policy, stu-dent performance leveled-off or fell in 11 of the 15 statesparticipating in the study, according to researchers at StanfordUniversity and the University of California. Tracking achieve-ment trends is proving difficult as state education officialsswitch to new tests and alter definitions of student “profi-ciency” to conform to new federal rules. But the universityteam compiled test results for the biggest states which havesuccessfully tracked reading achievement over several years.These new findings will likely fuel debate over whether Mr.Bush’s more aggressive regulation of local schools, along withnew funding, is sparking gains in teacher effectiveness andstudent performance. The Education Policy Studies Labora-tory (EPSL) at Arizona State University. Web: http://edpolicylab.org
Lower Standards Aid School Progress in Pennsylvania:More than twice as many schools would not have made whatthe state considers “adequate yearly progress” toward goalsset under the federal No Child Left Behind Act if the ruleshad not been changed, reports Dan Hardy. The changes al-lowed schools with lower graduation rates, lower standard-ized test scores, or lower attendance than in previous yearsto win passing marks. Pennsylvania was among dozens ofstates allowed by the U.S. Department of Education to changethe standards. Philadelphia Enquirer
Secretary of NCLB
In 1993 I was invited to do a presentation at a largemulticultural education conference in Israel. After the conferenceYacov Hecht, founder of the Democratic School of Hadera,invited about a dozen of us who were involved in democraticeducation to come to his school for a meeting. We didn’t knowit at the time, but that was the beginning of the InternationalDemocratic Education Conference.
The next year David Gribble, a founder of the Sands Schoolin England, invited a small group to his school to follow up onthe Hadera meeting. I missed that one. For the next year or twoDavid kept people in touch via a small newsletter.
The next year a group from Austria hosted the meeting inVienna in a building called the Wuk. I made it to that one andhave been to all the subsequent gatherings. At that point it wasstill called the Hadera Conference.
In1997 things were revolutionized by two students from theSands School, who organized the conference there. They were16 and 17-year-old girls. They decided that the meeting shouldbe in the summer, and much longer, long enough that the groupcould become a community. They used a system similar to OpenSpace Technology, in which workshops and activities are co-created at the conference itself. And they renamed the gatheringthe IDEC, International Democratic Education Conference.
Since the IDEC wasn’t and still isn’t an organization untoitself, we at AERO created a listserve so that IDEC attendeescould communicate with each other during the year and plansubsequent conferences. At present we have over 225subscribers to the listserve. (Let us know if you want to besubscribed to it. JM)
Subsequent IDECs have been in Israel, Ukraine, England atSummerhill, Japan, and New Zealand.In 2003, AERO and Albany Free Schoolhosted the IDEC in the USA for thefirst time. 500 people attended from 25states and 25 countries. $60,000 wasraised so that third world students andstaff members could attend.
This year the conference washosted in Bhubaneshwar, India. It wasorganized by Amukta Mahapatra, whohad attended IDECs in Japan, NewZealand and the USA. Among otherthings, in India she had worked withstreet children and had founded aMontessori school.
Amukta seemed to be everywhere,and always with a smile. She wasregistering people, introducingspeakers, and back in the office withher dedicated staff members preparingfor the next day late into the night.
IDEC in Indiaby Jerry Mintz
Amukta Mahapatra
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walking on.” (www.swaraj.org/shikshantar) TheCWC has a program with over 20,000 workingchildren in India, some of whom were presenters atthe conference. The children made it clear that theywant to be able to work, but in good conditions,and they also wanted to be able to studyacademically. (www.workingchild.org)
In his keynote speech Yacov Hecht paused torecollect the short history of the IDEC. “Who couldbelieve,” he said, “that in 2005 we now have anIDEC in India!” I thought that one of his mostinteresting points was that both Montessori andSteiner started teacher training programs within ashort time of starting their work. He feels we needto do the same with democratic education, and, infact, in Israel he has set up college level programsto prepare people to teach in democratic schools.
When I first visited the Democratic School ofHadera at that meeting in 1993 it had 300 studentsand an incredible 3000 on the waiting list.Subsequently Hecht had left Hadera to found theInstitute for Democratic Education and has nowhelped to start 25 more democratic schools in Israel,and is now travelling to other countries to helpthem do the same. He spoke in a very big, beautiful,open sided bamboo-framed tent that was our mainmeeting place. The site was hosted by the SiliconeInstitute. Half of us stayed in its dorm rooms, andhalf in host houses and hostels off campus, about300 people in all, from 19 countries.
The workshops were in the tent and inclassrooms. There was an outdoor area for teachingcrafts such as pottery and weaving. A professionalIndian dance troupe not only performed but gavedance workshops throughout the week.
They even had two ping-pong tables for me toteach on in a fourth floor gym area. I taught about35 children and adults from such places as Korea,Japan, Nepal, England, and India. I love teachingtable tennis in such situations: It is an activity thatgoes beyond language, and is not academically
threatening.We had helped fund the group of 13 who came from the Sri
Aurobindu Ashram/orphanage in Nepal, led by Ramchandra.They had travelled for a day by bus to get out of Nepal, andfour days by train to get to the conference. Most of them hadnever seen a train or the sea before. Later in the conference theyput on a performance of Nepalese music and dance for the wholeconference.
One of my assignments was to organize and work with thestudents in a democratic process. It turned out that we metalmost every morning of the conference, resolving problems,finding resources and organizing workshops that were studentled. One very popular one was organized by Luke Flegg, a recentgraduate of Sands School in England. It was about comparativerelationships between staff members and students at differentalternative schools. Also out of the student group came thecreation of a daily newspaper, written by students and distributedto attendees each morning with schedules, pictures andcommentary.
We had a beautiful opening ceremony with a group of dancer/acrobats blowing conch shells throughout their performance.The Minister of Education for the state of Assam was there aswell as the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; this is ArunGandhi’s son, Tushar. He made an irreverent crack that it wasgood that the Minister of Education was there because he’s theone that makes sure that people take all these terrible tests andit’s good he can learn something about democratic education!The guy made quite a face. When the Minister made his speech,he read it haltingly. Maybe his English wasn’t that good. Thenext day Tushar again poked fun at “Ministers of Educationwho read speeches their secretary wrote for them.” His talk wasabout what it was like to grow up a Gandhi, the burden of highexpectations, etc. He now has a computer database processingcompany.
One of the main themes of this IDEC was non-formaleducation. This was embodied by representatives of theConcerned for Working Children, and Manish Jaine’sShikshantar group with its catch phrase, “Walking out and
Youth meeting at the IDEC
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In the student meetings the students from AbacusMontessori and Naama Shaale School said that they wanted tostart the process of democratizing their schools. It turned outthat the administrators were also very interested in this. So I dida demonstration of the democratic process with each grouptoward the end of the conference. They were very excited aboutthe results and what came out of the process. For example,when the Abacus Principal and other administrators made itclear they wanted this process to go forward, the students saidthat it would be a difficult process, involving the education ofthe parents and other teachers. Subsequently the director ofNaama Shaale said that their school had established an all-schooldemocratic meeting, and had even demonstrated it to otherinterested schools at a Montessori conference.
Before the conference I had received a communication fromDerek Sheppard of Booroobin School in Australia. They are ina bitter fight for recognition and survival, having been attackedby their local education authority for not teaching the nationalcurriculum. Booroobin is based on Sudbury Valley School.
At their request, the IDEC discussed the situation and passeda resolution in support of Booroobin. In addition, they set up aspecial fund, to be administrated by AERO to support threatenedalternative schools. Funds from an auction and craft sales byAbacus Montessori were contributed to start the fund.Contributions can be made through the AERO website. TheIDEC meeting also passed a resolution proposed by Yacov abouthow future IDEC sites would be selected.
The conference was almost overwhelming. After theconference people went in various directions. I went back tovisit the Butterflies program in Delhi. Many flew home. Someothers chose to travel in India. The Nepalese group, seventeachers and six children, went to visit their spiritual home, theSri Aurrobindu Ashram in Pondicherry, by the sea. Every daythe children joyfully went swimming in the ocean. On December26, on the last day before boarding the train to return to Nepal,they decided to go to the zoo instead of swimming. On that day100 people were killed by the Tsunami on the beach where theywould have been. Amazingly, after a 12-hour wait, their train didleave for Nepal. It took them five days to get to Nepal. It thentook them several more days of evading the Maoist rebels inNepal to get home to the orphanage.
Luke Flegg’s workshop at the IDEC
The Booroobin Sudbury School - A Centre of Learningwas a community based independent school established byfounders who included young people, their parents, teachersand friends.
The school was founded according to education needsexpressed by people in a small rural community in Australia.An Educational Needs Analysis was undertaken to establishwhat people wanted from education. It was a ground upapproach, not top down. No one person had “the vision”that was comprehensive.
The first meeting was in late 1993, and a search began tofind a model of education that fitted the democratic idealsand practical outcomes sought by the group. Books, videos,literature, brochures, and first hand information wereassembled, disseminated and reviewed about differentmodels of education including Montessori, Steiner,Summerhill, various alternative schools and the SudburyValley School. It became overwhelmingly clear that SudburyValley School most closely, and almost precisely, reflectedthe needs and wishes of the people.
Two years of hard, determined work, making decisions byconsensus, resulted in the opening of our school on February7, 1996. By the time the school opened a number of publicmeetings were held and the right land was found andpurchased. An application with long term land use planswas lodged with local government (including schoolbuildings, facilities and accommodation, organic farming andreforesting to create a village like atmosphere). The firststaff (a mix of parents, teachers and others) were agreed;applications together with financial and enrolmentprojections provided to Queensland State and AustralianFederal governments, and approvals received.
Democratic values of freedom, responsibility and justicepermeate all the processes and practices in Booroobin.Young people have rights equal to those of adults and theymanage the justice system. Young people have the majorityof the votes. Play is regarded as central to learning.
Qualified staff are elected with no tenure and longprobationary periods, subject to specific Terms and
BooroobinBy Derek Sheppard
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Conditions of Employment, tosupport students in preparingthemselves for life and to keepthe business of Booroobinrunning smoothly. Everyone issubject to the same rules.Freedom enables free thinking,individual effort and co-operation to achieve jointobjectives.
It is important to understandthat the school has always seenitself in the context of acustodian of the land uponwhich we are located. The landprovides an ideal natural environment to enable self-directedlearning by people of all ages. It consists of 40 acres of landhigh in the hills of the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in southeastern Queensland. Although it has no ground water, it hasvolcanic soils, ideal growing conditions, trees of up to 250 yearsold, a farmhouse, cow milking bales, an old carport and a toolshed. None of these are large. The aim is sustainability. Longterm plans were devised and agreed by students, staff andparents in 1997.
Voluntary effort, and that includes the staff (who decided inApril 1998 not to take wages), has resulted in the almost completerebuilding of the house for use by the school. Planting of fruitand indigenous trees, digging the vegetable gardens, anderecting fencing to contain a small dairy herd have beenundertaken by hand and with low impact tools and equipment.
In terms of its planned operation as a school, The BooroobinSudbury School has been successful. Students do pursue theirinterests with support, but they do this mostly by and forthemselves.
There has never been lots of money to spend. The schoolwas and is, (although operating under a new name) stillachieving what it set out to do – to provide a supportive, natural,democratic environment in which young people can preparethemselves for life as effective adults. It has always been asmall school with no more than 26 students between the ages of4 and 19. We would like more students but have never soughtgrowth over the quality of the relationships and the culture ofrespect.
Up to 2003, all long term students (those who have attendedfor three or more years) as graduates have either followed theirinterests developed at Booroobin into further education or havecreated their own self-employment or found employment. Nonerely on government financial support. Every one of these paststudents follow different interests, from fine art, computergraphics, web site development, farming, ceramics, motorvehicles, to hospitality but all remain in contact with each otherand Booroobin and contribute to the human and social capitalof the world.
In Australia, the state governments must approve non-stateschools. Almost all non-state schools receive recurrent fundingfrom both the state government and the federal government.
All through its relatively short life of eight years as a school,the Queensland state government undertook continuousinspections and assessments that became intolerable intrusionsinto the day-to-day operation of the school. State intrusion has
resulted in the school’scampus being sold twice andrepurchased once by theschool. Inspections andassessments of Booroobinwere undertaken in 1997,1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001.The Booroobin SudburyDemocratic Centre ofLearning now rents itscampus from friendlyowners. We are happy tosay that the father of one ofthe owners was one of thefirst students of A.S. Neill at
Summerhill and the other owner, his wife, has been a Montessoriteacher. Booroobin intends to repurchase the campus at sometime in the future when it can raise the funds.
In April 2003, using new legislation, and based on a complaint,the Queensland government’s Non-State Schools AccreditationBoard launched its latest assessment of Booroobin. Two weeksnotice was given. The assessors were present on campus forfour hours and were given complete and free access to thefacilities, students and staff and records. Booroobin hadpreviously reviewed the new legislation and found it to beignorant of internationally agreed human rights legislation,highly prescriptive in terms of curricula requirements and verycontrolling.
A Freedom of Information application was made to find outthe details of the complaint. Such searches take at least 45days. We finally learnt that the complaint was from the non-custodial, not locally resident father of a happily enrolled student(and now a graduate) whose mother (the complainant’s formerpartner) was and is an elected staff of the school.
A Show Cause Notice was issued following a decision by theboard which required the School to show cause in writing whyits accreditation should not be cancelled for stated reasons.Those reasons revolved around three issues:
(1) Teachers were not programming and directing students inan age and developmentally appropriate manner according tothe Queensland State Curriculum.
(2) We did not arrange for the “ascertainment” of studentswho may have disabilities. (That is arranging for a student to betaken to an ‘expert’ to ascertain if they have a disability.)
(3) The written policies, or Rules of the School, did not statein writing that students should report any inappropriateinterference to two nominated staff.
Booroobin regarded this as yet another attack. The wholeapproach by the board was heavy handed, autocratic, negativeand lacked respect for the school and anyone associated withit. Booroobin was never invited to have input into the choice ofassessors or their qualifications or knowledge of democraticSchools. We wondered at the time if the outcome waspredetermined.
A submission comprising some 300 pages from the school,its five staff and all its parents, comprising information on thebasis of the school’s philosophy, including international humanrights conventions supporting Booroobin’s practices, andevidence of learning at the school was hand delivered to theboard, on time.
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The board decided to cancel the school’s accreditation. Theonly appeal under the legislation was to the Queensland Ministerfor Education. Booroobin declared it would appeal. The appealand further documentation was lodged, also on time.
After a long delay, the Minister wrote and advised of herdecision to convene an independent panel to review documentsand the decisions of the board, to assist in her arriving at adecision. We were invited to submit any further documents.We did submit further documents and we provided the requestedinformation.
The Minister agreed with the board and cancelled the school’saccreditation.
We were very appreciative of the resolution passed by IDEC2003. It was wonderful to see the names and signatures of somany of the people who we know by reputation, or whose nameswe had read in e-mails, whom we have great respect for becauseof their pioneering work and their courage. The petition washand delivered to the Queensland (State) Minister for Educationat Parliament House in Brisbane by students from the age offive-years, with staff, parents and friends, whowalked 100kms for 24 hours from Booroobin toBrisbane.
The resolution and the petition, along with dozensof letters and e-mails of support from people inQueensland, elsewhere in Australia, and around theworld, seemed to have little obvious impact on theMinister for Education or the QueenslandGovernment. Submissions from all our students, allthe staff, and all the parents, few as we are, similarlyhad no noticeable impact.
The Minister cancelled the accreditation ofBooroobin on December 4, 2003. The letter wasreceived on the last day of the school year. Everyonein the school had hoped this would not happen. Itshocked and saddened everyone. But, to an extent,those of us who had been there from the first meetingin 1993, and present during every previousinspection, were not surprised.
The new legislation, the composition of the board,the selection of the assessors, and worst of all ourdemocratic, very different school were all set againstus, and therefore the loss of accreditation did notcompletely surprise us. Of course, cancellation meantthe cessation of government funding, greatlyreduced income, the potential loss of students (dueto compulsory education laws requiring school agedstudents to attend a school) and an inability to enroloverseas students. There was no cash on hand atthe end of the year, and no equity in property.
A wide-ranging search commenced to locatesolicitors, and a barrister agreed to attend to the workpro bono. He arranged for representation by a firmof solicitors. Documentation was prepared and anapplication made to the Supreme Court ofQueensland. Under a discovery process, thedocuments we had requested the board to provideus in April 2003, the assessors’ reports, weredelivered at 6.30pm on the night before the matterwas due to be heard in court in late January. We had
only that night to review the documents and prepare affidavits(written statements) about what we found for production in thecourt the next day.
There wasn’t enough time but did find inconsistenciesbetween the assessors’ reports and the documentation andnotices issued by the board. It was also clear that had we beengiven access to the assessors’ reports, we would haveresponded in a different manner. We had been denied naturaljustice, and procedural fairness. The court was requested, byour barrister, to reinstate the school’s accreditation until a caseagainst the Minister and the board, alleging denials of naturaljustice and procedural fairness, was heard. The judge declinedto reinstate accreditation, but agreed there may be a case to beanswered by the Minister and board. Every student, everylong term past student and every graduate, along with parentsand all staff attended court in Brisbane, 100kms from Booroobin.We filled the public area of the court. It was very inspiring.
To proceed with the case, the barrister and solicitors advisedthat the legal costs would be in the vicinity of and could be aminimum of $10,000.00 (Australian dollars). We knew we didn’t
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Butterflies
with Jerry Mintz
Being There
It seems to me as a Westerner thatgoing to India is stepping into a differentreality. The first thing that struck me wasthe traffic. I used to think thatManhattan traffic was congested. Nomore. It is like child’s play compared tothe streets of Mumbai, Calcutta or Delhi.
Parwez, a social worker at Butterflies,a democratic program for street andworking children, came to the DelhiYMCA to pick us up in the morning. Wehad arrived in the middle of the night onAir India, on our way to the InternationalDemocratic Education Conference inBhubaniswar,scheduled tostart two dayslater.
Riding in thetaxi he had hired,going the 10kilometers to theButterflies officeis like looking ata movie of a thirdworld we couldbarely imagine.We are dis-oriented to begin with because we aredriving on the left, but some traffic goeson both sides of the road! On each sideof the street, going as fast as they canand driving primarily with their horn andtheir brakes, are trucks, busses, othertaxis, motorcycles, and mopeds. Thereare also swarms of motorized, triangularrickshaws, running on something likelawn mower engines, vying for everyinch of space they can find, spewingclouds of gray exhaust. There are alsobicycles, bicycle rickshaws, horse drawncargo carts, bicycle drawn carts piledwith boxes, pedestrians, and cows! Eachis fighting for every inch of space,
weaving back and forth, honking theirhorns and hitting their brakes, andalmost continuously moving, stoppingfor nothing. There are even signs onmany bumpers asking people to use theirhorn. When traffic slows, beggars fromthe slum-lined streets walk up to thewindows of the taxi, pointing to theirmouths to indicate hunger, includingmany women carrying babies.
This is winter but it is still warm here.The sun is out, but a haze of smog coatsthe skies. After a 45-minute ride the taxistops. The door is opened, and we stepout—into our new reality.
Parwez led us through the street tothe Butterfliesoffice. It was ontwo floors of ar e s i d e n t i a lbuilding. On onefloor was a crisiscenter. On thefloor above arethe Butterflyoffices. There wemet Rita Paniker,who foundedButterflies in1997. I had
originally met her in 2000 at the JapaneseIDEC.
When I met her in Japan she broughtwith her Amin, a 15-year-old workingstreet-child from Delhi. He had beenliving in the Delhi train station since heleft home at age 11. But he was also anorganizer of a working children’s union,a speaker at the Japanese IDEC (Ritatranslated), and clearly self-confidentand full of life and ambition. Just meetingAmin peaked my interest in Butterflies.We became friends and havecommunicated since then. What kind ofprogram could have such a child? Washe an aberration, or were the other
have the money and would have tofundraise but decided that the case wastoo important, not just for Booroobinbut for other potential democraticschools in Queensland and Australia,for it not to continue.
We decided also to prepare acomplaint of breaches of human rightsconventions and treaties against thechildren, their parents, our teachers andthe school by the QueenslandGovernment. That complaint is almostready to be lodged.
On the first day of the school year,continuing students, their parents andstaff met and made the followingdecisions: To form a fundraisingcommittee to raise enough money tokeep the school running (and to paythe legal costs) and to change theschool’s name, because the educationlegislation only permitted accreditednon-state schools to use the word‘school’ in their name. It was agreed tochange the name to The BooroobinSudbury Democratic Centre ofLearning. We think the name moreaptly describes what we do.
Many people may not regard $10,000as a lot of money, but to Booroobin,located in a rural area with only nineenrolled students from five families, fivestaff (three of whom are parents ofenrolled students and graduates), it isvery hard. We knew that from thebeginning. In addition there were billsheld over from 2003, which we wereintent on paying.
Recently the Queensland Ministerfor Education increased the pressure afew notches by writing and threateningto take criminal action and financiallypenalize our directors, because sheclaims Booroobin may be holding itselfout to be a school – and by offeringcourses to overseas students, incontravention of two QueenslandActs. We have denied the allegations.We now have a final QueenslandSupreme Court Hearing date of March21, 2005, for which we will still need toincrease awareness and our fundraisingefforts.
We still need support. Check the newupdates to our web site. Help us bysigning the petition attached to ourweb site. The new domain name issimply: www.booroobin.com
Rita Paniker, Butterflies director
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children as confident,independent and open? Iwas about to find out.
In the Butterflies officewe saw a powerpointpresentation which showedtheir four shelters, 12 contactpoints for educationprograms for street kids,accredited by thegovernment’s Open School.We saw some of theirinternational fundingsources. They work with1000 children around NewDelhi, with about 250sleeping in their sheltersevery night. They have 62staff members. If the childhas parents nearby,Butterflies uses its resourcesto try to reunite the child with his or herfamily. All the children it serves on acontinuing basis are not living withparents but on their own. Most of thestreet children are boys.
We left the office and Parwez tookus to their largest shelter in the middleof Delhi. After walking through analleyway we came to the shelter, abuilding with a central open area and asmaller back space with somecomputers. 90 children had slept therethe might before, in mats on the floor.
We had a meeting with about 15 ofthe children, mostly boys, with Parweztranslating. During the meeting thechildren said they were all working.They ranged from age 8-15. Some arewaiters; some work at parties (it ismarriage season); many are rag pickers—that is, they find cloth, plastic and otherrecyclables and sell them to recyclersand merchants. One eight year old wemet there was about to go out and sell astack of pressed rice cakes. When I sawhim later he had sold most of them. Hethen paid Butterflies for his fooe�d,lodging and classes and puts the rest inthe student bank!
They consider themselves to beworking children, not beggars. Whenthey asked me if there was any programsimilar to Butterflies in New York City, Isaid that I hadn’t seen anything like it.But I said I had seen children beggingfor money. Their immediate reaction wasthat they thought that was quitedemeaning. The children at Butterfliestake some of the money they earn, about
5 rupees a day (about 10 cents), and paythat to Butterflies for their food,education, and sleeping.
There is an education program rightat the shelter, and 12 others aroundDelhi. In that program the students canlearn math, English, Hindi, Science, etc.They get credit through India’s OpenSchool. They can take any class theywant or none. They can also choose togo to the government school, and 14have done that. They can take tests togo on to higher learning. Butterflies isaccredited to run programs that gothrough the equivalent of 8th grade. Sothey can have their classes right thereand graduate 8th grade. Beyond that,they can take tests to continue theireducation and some of them do that.
The children were attentive, curious,confident, and seemed happy andhealthy. They look you directly in theeye. They respond seriously to anyquestions asked. At one point I toldthem about Summerhill School, which wehad just visited in England. I explainedthat all decisions were madedemocratically and that students couldchoose to go to any classes theywanted, or none at all. They looked ateach other, nodded, and said, “Yes,that’s the same as our situation here!”That comment stunned me a bit.Suddenly Butterflies seemed like a sortof very low cost democratic boardingschool for 8-15 year olds living on theirown! In fact, I found that Butterflies hassometimes arranged for some childrento go to boarding schools. Guess where
they go on theirvacations? —back to theirButterflies family! Thesame is sometimes true oftheir graduates. Amin, theboy I met in Japan, is now19 and is training to be aButterflies staff member.
The working children,with help from Butterflies,have organized a workingchildren’s union, to protectother working children.For example, when a childworks for someone anddoesn’t get paid, a groupof children from the unionwill pay a visit to theemployer. That’s usuallyall it takes. It’s rare that anadult has to get involved.
On our return trip to Butterflies on ourlast day in India we met a 14-year-oldboy, Bablu, who is a union official. Hehas been living at the shelter for a yearand is taking classes there through theOpen School. He recently took a trip toBangladesh to help organize a union forworking children there who were doingdifficult work with iron and steel. Theyhave an elected head of the union whoat the moment is a 15-year-old kid. Assoon as he was elected he created aboard, using the four other kids who ranagainst him. So he’s already a smartpolitician. Right now he’s in Nairobi,Kenya, and then he’s going toBangladesh so I didn’t get a chance tomeet him. Once a month, there’s ameeting the representatives of all of thegroups around Delhi. They have fiverepresentatives of each group at thesemeetings. They make basic policydecisions for the union.
The children have also organized abank so that working children do nothave to always carry their savings withthem and risk being robbed. They havemany branches around Delhi andbeyond.
On our second trip to Butterflies, wewere met by Ashfaque, a ButterfliesCoordinator who has a Masters in Socialwork and is working on a Masters inBusiness to he can help with that aspectof Butterflies. We did several videotapeinterviews with the children there. Themain reasons why the children came tostreet life were that they were beingbeaten or abused at home, had no
Two Butterflies students, age 17 and 10Living on their own
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educational help, or their families hadbeen broken up or were too poor to takecare of them. Some had run away bystowing away on atrain, coming fromdistant rural areas,mainly to gosomeplace wherethey could get aneducation, havingno educationaloptions in theirvillages.
When weneeded more tape,Depak, 13,volunteered to takeus to the market tobuy a cassette. Wewent by motorized rickshaw. He quicklylocated the right shop and we boughtthe cassette. Then we went to severalother shops. Depak took my hand andgently dragged us out of one afteranother when he felt the prices weren’tright, until we got what we wanted atthe right price. I wanted to buy a cricketbat for Butterflies, because the kids thereplay a lot of cricket in a nearby field. Herejected many of them, found a goodquality one but said it was overpriced.Finally we negotiated a high quality onein which the shopkeeper came downfrom 760 to 500 rupees, or about $12.We then went back by bicycle rickshaw,a ride I won’t soon forget!
When we got back, Sharon Caldwell,from Mahoon School in South Africa,and another teacher from Los Angeleshad just finished a visit. They had alsocome from the IDEC and we planned tomeet there. We all went to lunch and Iinvited Depak to join us. We walked to aDelhi equivalent of an Indian fast foodrestaurant, but it was quite nice. By theway, both Depak and Bablu want tobecome doctors, and I wouldn’t want todiscount their chances of making it.
Each Butterflies subgroup has itsown democracy, and therefore the rulesvary. For example, at one shelter the kidshave outlawed inhalant drugs inside theshelter, but not outside the shelter, sinceit is common among street children. Atthe shelter we were visiting the childrenhave outlawed any drug use inside oroutside the shelter, including smoking.According to a staff member, peerpressure is quite strong and the kidsconsider it a privilege to be a part of
One of theboys, 10 years old,said that his familyhad lived in aslum. When theg o v e r n m e n tcleared the slum, itbroke up his familyand he was on hisown. The oldest in
the group was 17. They seem to take careof and nurture each other.
The children asked us if there waspolice brutality toward children in NewYork. Asfaque told us about a casewhere a Butterflies student was brutallybeaten by a policeman and leftunconscious. He was rescued by a groupof children who brought him to theshelter and from there to a hospital.When he recovered, the children andButterflies made an official complaintand brought the story to thenewspapers. It became big news. Thepoliceman was fired. They hope that thiskind of action will make things better forthe children. Nevertheless, the childrenwe met said they were basically happywith their lives and their independenceand their chance to get educationthrough the Butterflies program. Theywere happy taking care of each other.Again, they each seemed to have loftyambitions
Visiting Butterflies has given me alot to ponder. I always wondered ifchildren with such ultimate freedomwould flourish if given support. Theanswer seems to be yes. After thinkinga while about the children’s question,as to whether there was a similar programin New York, I realized that such aprogram would be impossible. People inNew York, or in London or Tokyo, forthat matter, would simply send a child ofthat age to social services and to a fosterhome and public school. They wouldnever believe that children of that agecould live independently and takecontrol of their own lives. What we sawat Butterflies was unique, important, andrequires much more examination.We have just finished editing a 42-minute DVD documentary on our visitto Butterflies. For more information onobtaining it, call the AERO office at 800769-4171 (in USA), checkwww.educationrevolution.org, or writeto [email protected]
Butterflies.If someonebreaks arule in someway, they’llhave aconsequenceof beingfined some
money, of being excluded from the placefor two or three days, of having theirlocker locked for two or three days, etc.The consequence is up to the kids. Themeeting can even fire staff members, andhas done so on some occasions.
I asked the kids about how they feltabout the freedom they have. They feltit is very important to them and it’s oneof the reasons why they like thislifestyle. I asked Ashfaque if people evercame there wanting to adopt thesechildren. He said that the children havetried parents and decided it wasn’t sucha good idea and don’t really want anyother parents. They’re basically happywith their lives. But the kids said theydidn’t like having to go out and do ragpicking and stuff like that. They wouldlike more dignified work if they could getit. When we were leaving the youngestboy said he wanted to go with us, buthe was just kidding.
After leaving the shelter, Ashfaquetook us by motorized rickshaw to one ofthe Butterflies educational contactpoints. It was in a field near a Hindutemple. There, in the middle of the fieldwas a group of street and workingchildren in a circle, talking and playinggames with two Butterflies staffmembers. We joined them and gavemutual introductions.
These children did not live atshelters, but on their own. In this case,they slept on the grounds of the Hindutemple. There, nobody bothered them.But they said they got beat up almostdaily by the police. They took on similarjobs to the ones the kids had at theshelter.
Depakat lunch
Educational help at contact point.
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Hello Everyone: Pat Montgomery here. I am leaving today (February25) for Tokyo to participate in the Tokyo Shure Symposium thisweekend. It marks the TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY of thefounding of Tokyo Shure. I carry with me greetings and best wishesfrom the NCACS, and I will gladly convey IDEC’s congratulations aswell. When Keiko Okuchi started Tokyo Shure many naysayerspredicted that it wouldn’t last because it wasn’t “the Japanese way”to start such a venture. It flew in the face of convention. But Keikosan and Kageki san and all of Tokyo Shure’s devoted group has proventhat the true Japanese way is to care lovingly, humanely for ALLJapan’s children. To raise voices of cheer onthis auspicious occasion, send messages [email protected].
SVS to China: I have just returned from China,still a bit jet lagged. I presented two lectures toChinese instructors, mostly chemistry andphysics teachers, all non-English speaking.China is deeply rooted in the “teach to the test”and “teach by lecture”. If the teacher deviatesand test scores go down then there is in fear ofa loss of job. It looks like China was the modelfor how our states and the feds are nowmodeling our US schools. My presentationswere on how projects get done at Big RockSudbury School. I ran over in both of mypresentations and instead of people leavingmore kept coming in. A great deal of time was spent answeringquestions. I also participated in a discussion group where I made thestatement “The model that China’s teachers follows is great forproducing good technicians and factory workers but not industryleaders, business owner, or inventors.” There was no dissension tothat statement. Besides the Chinese teachers, there were an executivefrom both IBM and Lego in my group, and they were very much inagreement. I was later introduced to a person who I was told was thehead of curriculum development for the Chinese government, and hewas very pleased with my presentations. 11:00 pm the last night Iwas packing up to leave and there was a knock at my dorm room door.I was a bit surprised to have my room filled with the staff from one ofthe schools. The headmaster of the school was extending an invitationto me to come to his school for two weeks. The point of my wholediscussion here is that China, whom the US seems is modeling our“test well or die methodology,” is seriously interested in a diametricallyconflicting pedagogical model. Brian King.
Sudbury Valley School has just published a new book, which is anin-depth study of the quality of life, the value systems, and the lifestyles of alumni who had spent their formative years at SudburyValley School. The book’s name is The Pursuit of Happiness, and it is
available at www.sudval.org for all those interested in learning moreabout what happens to students who have been in schools wherethey are in charge of their own lives.
After the IDEC, on my last day in India, I went to visit Loreta DaySchool (aka Rainbow School) in Calcutta. It was possibly the mostamazing experience I had over the whole trip. I went with Tarin (fromVillage School, Minnesota) who’d been before, and he introduced meto Sister Cyril, an Irish nun, who runs the place. She explained howLoreta (named after the founders, the Loreta Sisters) had an open-
door policy, allowing all street-children(‘rainbows’) to come in. Lessons are notcompulsory, and the school can be used as ashelter for homeless or orphaned children, sothey can just come and eat and sleep there, forfree. The school is half fee-paying students.These 700 students provide much of the income,along with sponsorships and grants, since theyare quite well established, having been going for140 years. Loreta, serves as a preparation levelschool for its street children, offering the studentsbasic reading, writing and communication skills.I was moved by the atmosphere there. Most ofthe children I had seen in India looked likehardened grown-ups, with empty faces andworked hands. Rainbow school felt like Sandsschool – happy children, playing basketball and
ping pong, and skipping and generally running about. All the childrenwe met were endearingly mischievous and playful, and polite too.They have many outreach programs, like job-seeking programs forthe parents of street kids, so they can get a secure income for theirfamily, and they operate teacher-training in 400 centers around theworld. There is actually one in England. Luke Flegg
STORK (Aist) Family School, Ukraine, and the CLEMI ( Ministryfor Education-Mass Media Link Center), France, invite you toparticipate in the next issue of FAX! magazine, which is aninternational children’s magazine compiled within 24 hours by studentsaged 6 to 18, who send their materials by e-mail from differentcountries. The current issue’s topic is FAMILY. Read more aboutFax! at: www.clemi.org. Contact us in Ukraine at STORK (AIST)Family School: [email protected] and [email protected](Contact person: Elena Zverinina). French contact at CLEMI:[email protected]. Contact person: Marie-Francoise Poulain Readmore about Fax! at: www.clemi.org
Firm cancels student ID deal: (In New Mexico) the Sutter Countyschool that required students to wear identification badges that trackedtheir movement on campus stopped the controversial program Tuesday
Edited by Carol Morley
CommunicationsMail&
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of white students. Published in the scholarly peer-reviewed journalEducation Policy Analysis Archives (http://epaa.asu.edu/), the study,“High School Graduation Rates: Alternative Methods andImplications”, by Jing Miao and Walt Haney of Boston College,reviews literature on and practices in reporting high school graduationrates. “Our report highlights an ongoing crisis in American education.Declining graduation rates mean that if young people do not evengraduate from high school, their employment and other socialopportunities are sharply curtailed,” study co-author Walt Haneyadded “While much public attention has focused on achievementgaps in test scores, a much more serious problem, is the 20% gap ingraduation rates between white and minority students. Additionally,the increasing dropout rate for minorities appears to make the testscore gap to be decreasing among students who remain in school. Thereality, however, is that the racial divide in educational attainmentamong all young people – in and out of school – a has actually beenwidening.” http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n55/.
Major Gates Foundation Grants to Support Small High Schools,Education Week: Of the $2.2 billion in education-related grants madeby the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the past five years, about$647 million has gone to support the creation of smaller, morepersonalized high schools. This does not include $66.3 million thefoundation has spent on policy, research, and evaluation projectsrelated to the reform of secondary education.
The Online Communities Directory is a free searchable databaseof intentional communities. You can browse through the alphabeticalcommunity list or search for communities based on location, keyword,and various aspects of community living that are important tocommunity seekers. Communities from around the world are alreadyupdating their listings via a web-based interface and new communitiesare being added daily to the list so that seekers can have the most up-to-date information possible. If you live in an intentional communitycome to http://directory.ic.org to add or update your listing. There isno charge of any kind for this service. Email: [email protected].
The Garrison Institute and the Fetzer Institute are currentlyconducting a project to map the status of school-based programs thatutilize contemplative practices and/or help foster love and forgiveness.If you would be willing to tell us about your school’s use of such aprogram, or if you know of any existing programs of this type, pleasecontact Deborah at deborah@ garrisoninstitute.org. Correspondencewill be kept confidential. However, at your request, participatingschools can receive a free copy of the project’s final report.
Behind That Blank Expression, NY Times, January 16, 2005: Sowhat’s the adjective most commonly used by teenagers to describehow they feel about school? “Bored,” according to a Gallup Pollreport. In a recent online survey, Gallup asked 785 students ages 13to 17 to look over a list of adjectives and choose the three that bestdescribe “how you usually feel at school.” “Bored” was the clearwinner, named by half the students, beating out “tired,” which waspicked by 42 percent. Girls and boys were equally uninterested, and16- and 17-year-olds were more often bored and tired and less oftenhappy in school than the 13- to 15-year-olds.
Kids skip class – and parents go to jail, By Stacy A. Teicher: Theheadlines read like a version of “Scared Straight” for adults: “Parentsarrested over truant kids.” The roundups in the past six weeks - 11arrests in Detroit, four in New Mexico, and 19 in Knox County, Tenn.- are the most eye-catching aspect of a get-tough approach to schoolattendance. But the goal is to get students back to school, not to puttheir parents behind bars, school and law enforcement officials say.While some parents have served short jail terms for contributing totheir children’s truancy, most are sentenced to perform community
night when the creators of the technology abruptly pulled the plug onthe deal. Brittan Elementary, a K-8 school west of Yuba City, got thebadges for free from InCom, a small Sutter City start-up whose ownershave ties to the school district. Brittan’s seventh- and eighth-gradershad been required to wear badges with the technology – called RFID,or radio frequency identification devices – on lanyards around theirnecks, and school officials said the badges were scanned and used totake attendance easily. But some parents were outraged that the badgeswere given to children without their knowledge or consent. TheAmerican Civil Liberties Union publicized the concerns, and beforelong, news crews from Germany and elsewhere arrived at the 600-student campus. San Jose Mercury News February 2005
Tim Seldin writes: this US story is significant because it is one of thefirst times a Montessori charter (an independent publicly funded)Montessori school has come under such direct attack. School officials,parents differ over Montessori statistics By Eben Harrell Fromthe Aspen (Colorado) Times January 17, 2005: As a group of parentsattempt to found a new alternative education school in Carbondale,school district officials are calling attention to statistics indicatingthat Montessori education fails to prepare students for standardizedreading and writing tests. Data returned from the Colorado StudentAssessment Program (CSAP) show Montessori students at CarbondaleElementary School lagging their traditional counterparts. Advocatesof a new Montessori school refute the district’s data, arguing that thesample is too small and that the results included students who hadonly been in the Montessori program for less than a year. But districtofficials question whether the Montessori approach fails to instillbasic reading skills at a pace acceptable to state requirements. Anapplication to found a new Montessori school in Carbondale hasbeen submitted to the state.
BUSH CUTS SMALL SCHOOLS FROM THE ED BUDGETWell here we go again (says Mike Klonsky). The new education budgethas been gutted. Smaller Learning Communities – gone. Voc ed – gone.Gear up – gone. Just about every program designed to leave no childbehind has been gutted or shifted into the administration’s new ‘SchoolIntervention’ (read testing and punishing) program. The administrationclaims that this program is ‘research based’ and that all these otherprograms, including SLCs are ‘ineffective.’ So once again it looks likewe have to contact our representatives and become lobbyists. Wealso have to continue to make our case in the area of research.
From US High School Graduation Rates Continue to Fall; RaceGaps Remain Large: A new study released concludes that highschool graduation rates in the U.S. continue to decline and graduationrates for black and Hispanic students lag substantially behind those
“Don’t get too close to Daddy’s food, Esme!”
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service or pay fines if they fail to respond to less-punitive measures.The Christian Science Monitor Feb. 17 2005
The International Association for Learning Alternatives for thepast 35 years has promoted giving parents choices of programs. Themission of the nonprofit International Association for LearningAlternatives is to lead, promote and support learning alternatives ineducation. This mission is to see that parents and learners have choicesof educational programs to meet their needs, interests, learning stylesand intelligences. We believe that one-size education program doesnot fit everyone and that education is best served by having choicesfor all. For more information go to www.learningalternatives.net. Youcan also sign up for the free monthly email news on alternatives.
If Repeating a Grade Doesn’t Help Kids, Why Do We MakeThem Do It? Making students repeat a grade hasn’t worked for 100years, so why is it still happening? And why do government officials,school leaders, and teachers persist in recommending retention as aremedy for low student achievement – even when researchers call it afailed intervention? Linda Darling-Hammond, executive director ofColumbia University’s National Center for Restructuring Education,Schools, and Teaching, has a one-word answer: assumptions. Manyschools, she says, operate on the assumption that failing studentsmotivates them to try harder, gives them another chance to “get itright,” and raises their self-esteem. Those claims aren’t true, Darling-Hammond maintains. The widespread trust in retention is uncriticaland unwarranted, she says. It ignores severaldecades of research showing that, for most children,retention: (1) Fails to improve low achievementin reading, math, and other subjects; (2) Fails toinspire students to buckle down and behave better;(3) Fails to develop students’ social adjustmentand self-concept. Darling-Hammond concedes thatgrade retention might benefit some students inthe short term, but in the long term, holdingstudents back puts them at risk. More often thannot, students who are retained never catch upacademically. Many eventually drop out, andsome end up in the juvenile justice system. Thebelief that students, as well as their parents, areto blame for low achievement plays into mostretention decisions, writes Susan Black. But teachers and principalsseldom accept their share of blame for inept instruction, lacklusterlessons, low expectations, and other school factors that contribute tostudents’ academic disengagement and behavior problems,Darling-Hammond says. http://www.asbj.com/current/research.html
How Smart is Advanced Placement? As ambitious students loadup on Advanced Placement (AP) classes, critics question their quality,reports Claudia Wallis and Carolina A. Miranda. The thirst to standout in the brutal college-admissions game is driving a kind of AP-mania all across the U.S. Some educators are worried that AP, whichwas created as a way to give bright high school seniors a taste ofcollege, is turning into something it was never meant to be: a kind ofalternative high school curriculum for ambitious students that teachesto the test instead of encouraging the best young minds to think morecreatively. And as AP expands, some educators have begun to questionthe integrity of the programs and ask whether the classes are trulyoffering students an extra boost or merely giving them filigree fortheir college applications. http://www.time.com/
I just came back from the World Religion Parliament in Barcelonawhere I volunteered as a circle facilitator on refugees. I spent theweekend with a group of Palestinian students from Jerusalem, Arabstudents from Israel and Jewish students from my area. It is a newprogram. I am involved with an Arab and a Palestinian teacher fromRamalah who got special permission to cross the checkpoint because
of his extended relationships. The weekend was full of excitementand activities. Last night the students were so happy dancing andjumping to Arab and Hebrew music. I sat in a corner of the room andcontemplated these kids’ energy and fresh chains they made. Thiswas a miracle. I wonder how different their life could be without theadults’ stories and prejudice they are hearing since they were born.Today we went through activities that included writing our firststatements on human rights about “freedom of expression and talk.”Our decision was made in a mini-parliament assembly where the kidscould experience a democratic way of freedom of speech and decision.Mara List, learner and educator for peace, Israel.
From KnowledgeWorks Foundation Collaborates With DistrictsAcross Ohio to Open 53 New Small High Schools: 10 schooldistricts across Ohio will be opening 51 new small, autonomous highschools. As part of the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative(OHSTI) KnowledgeWorks Foundation is working with a total of 20large, traditional high schools which have transformed into autonomoussmall schools. The Early College High School, anotherKnowledgeWorks Foundation small school initiative, will also opentwo small high schools this year. “These schools are part of the mostintensive high school conversion effort in the country,” said Chad P.Wick, president & CEO, KnowledgeWorks Foundation. “In Ohioand across the country, we are working with communities to createsmaller, more personalized high schools, which emphasize the new
3Rs, rigorous academic coursework, supportiverelationships to ensure that students can meet highstandards and relevant learning opportunitieswhere they can apply their knowledge in real-worldsettings,” said Tom Vander Ark, executive directorof education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,which has invested more than $745 million tosupport the creation of more than 1,900 highschools in 45 states. In the fall of 2005KnowledgeWorks Foundation anticipates theopening of 24 additional small schools for OHSTIand five for Early College. Learn more aboutKnowledgeWorks Foundation at http://www.kwfdn.org.
A new way of learning, by Blair Reynolds, Sun Newspapers: Whenclasses begin this fall at River Heights Charter School at 60 W. MarieAve. in West St. Paul (Minn.), students who choose to attend the newpublic school will experience a different approach to attaining a highschool diploma. As the area’s first EdVisions School, River Heightswill try to break the mold of what people think of when they imaginea high school class because at River Heights, there aren’t traditionalclasses. The EdVisions model was created in 1993 and developed atMinnesota New Country School in Henderson, Minn. The EdVisionsconcept of project-based learning has recently been teamed with themonetary power of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As ateacher-owned and teacher-operated venture, Zimniewicz and fellowco-founders Jill Wohlman, Alex Liuzzi and Shannon Dahmes willstrive to provide students with tools that will ready them for lifeafter high school. RiFor more information on River Heights CharterSchool go to www.riverheightscharter.org or call 651-457-7427. http://www.mnsun.com.
Pacific High School (Sitka, AK) is a small school situated in theTongass National Forest on a mountainous island in southeast Alaska.Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB) is used as the schoolmodel. It emphasizes learning by doing, with a particular focus oncharacter growth, teamwork, reflection, and literacy. Teachers connecthigh quality academic learning to adventure, service, and characterdevelopment. Courses are taught through challenging projects thatare connected to real-world experiences. Our students learn the value
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of contributing selflessly to their community, while the service leadersshare their knowledge and experience. Pacific High will develop lifelonglearners with strong community connections who have a desire,purpose, and ability to learn and succeed in life. Pacific High School,509 Lincoln Street, Sitka, Alaska 99835. Tel: (907) 747-0525. Web:www.pacifichigh.org. E-mail: [email protected].
We at Puget Sound Community School have entered our 11thyear. We are no longer a homeschool co-op but are a state-approvedprivate school. We made this switch in January 2003. The reason forthe change was pretty simple – being an approved private schoolallows us to grant high school credit and state-approved high schooldiplomas. To gain our state-approval we needed to acquire a site sowe are now housed in the University Heights Community Center, a100+ year-old former elementary school in Seattle’s UniversityDistrict. Students are free to choose all their activities. On Thursdayswe meet “across the lake” in the city of Kirkland, using a teen center,vacant during the school day, as our home. We no longer offer part-time enrollment as we found that to be eroding our sense of communityand made it hard for the part-timers to feel fully involved. If anyoneis in Seattle and would like to check us out, drop me a line. AndySmallman. Email: [email protected].
Stonesoup School has broken ground on new facilities. The campuswill have state-of-the-art classroom facilities, a professional kitchen/dining area, new recreation rooms, and four large dorms for student/staff accommodations. Mark Jacob recently assumed the role ofExecutive Director. Carrie Straub, MS will continue to direct theeducational program, along with coordinating school referrals. Web:www.stonesoupschool.org. Email: [email protected]. Tel:(386) 698-4595.
Home EducationThe Homeschoolers’ College (our working title) will acceptstudents from ages 14-19 for part-time undergraduate study. It willoffer opportunities for independent, self-designed study earning upto 8 credits per semester. (Full-time study normally earns 15 credits.)Students would attend a 3-day residency on campus, and during thistime they would meet their faculty advisor and other students anddesign their personal study plan for the semester. Tentative dates areSept. 9-11 and March 3-5 (2006). In addition, we are consideringholding a conference at Goddard during the weekend of June 18-19 toexplore homeschoolers’ college options and share students’ experiencesof these different options. Please contact me with any questions or
comments. If you would like to be put on our mailing list, I will letyou know when the program is approved and will send more detailsabout it. Ron Miller, Ph.D., Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont05667 [email protected]
All Sports and Event Management (ASEM) is excited to announcethe first annual National Homeschool Olympics. This event will takeplace May 19 through May 26, 2005, in Cocoa Beach Florida. Thepurpose of this event is to provide the homeschool student/athlete aNational platform to compete with only other homeschool student/athletes. ASEM has selected events that will allow students to competein three age divisions. The three age divisions are 12-under, 15-underand 18-under. The athletic events that have been selected basketball,bowling, beach volleyball, decathlon, golf, iron man/woman, ping pong,pitch/hit/throw, punt/pass/kick, putt putt golf, racquetball, soccer,surfing, swimming (no diving), tennis, and track and field. Academicevents will be brain bowl, chess, geography bee, and spelling bee.Medals for 1st, 2nd 3rd place will be awarded in each event andcategory per age division. For further information please contact ASEMat [email protected] or contact event coordinator Ace Youngat (321) 636-1511. Web: http://www.asem16.com.
From Homeschooling Up 29 Percent Since 1999: Almost 1.1 millionstudents were homeschooled last year, their numbers pushed higherby parents frustrated over school conditions and wanting to includemorality and religion with English and math. The estimated numberof students taught at home has grown 29 percent since 1999, accordingto the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the EducationDepartment. In surveys, parents offered two main reasons forchoosing homeschooling: 31 percent cited concerns about theenvironment of regular schools, and 30 percent wanted the flexibilityto teach religious or moral lessons. A distant third, at 16 percent, wasdissatisfaction with academic instruction at schools, reports Ben Feller.The 1.1 million homeschooled students account for 2.2 percent of theschool-age population in the United States, young people ages 5through 17. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com.
Who Should Monitor Children’s Education? Babette Hankin ofCroyden, Pa., likes to show off her home-schooling program. Notonly do her seven children stay occupied all day, but the five ofschool age seem to thrive in her regimented rotation covering earthscience, reading, math, and even piano practice. Yet despite pride inthe program, Mrs. Hankin is suing the Bristol Township School Districtfor requiring a yearly review. At dispute is the question of who ownsthe children, and who therefore should oversee their education – theparents, the state, or God? Hankin’s is one of two landmark casespending in Pennsylvania courts. In each, home-schooling families areusing a new religious freedom law to fight what they see as stateinterference. Twelve states have recently passed similar laws, puttinga potentially powerful tool in the hands of those who educate thenation’s 1.1 million home-schooled children. G. Jeffrey MacDonald,http://www.csmonitor.com/
Homeschooling in Australia: omMThe alternative for our children,after the freedom and democratic values of Booroobin is very dark.An example of this is this Queensland Government is intending toregister every homeschooling parent, requiring them to report resultsevery year to the Director General of Education with samples ofwork, and if they get it right, then they can continue homeschoolingfor the following year, and will be subject to increased fines for notenrolling their children somewhere. All of this flies in the face ofrecommendations of a Homeschooling Committee. 85% of parents inQueensland who currently homeschool have not sought the requireddispensation from the Minister to homeschool their children. Anotherexample is that every student will be allocated at age 16 a unique
“Are you tagged broadband or mainframe?”
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student “identifier” (as if their name was not enough) and an “account”with a central Queensland Studies Authority so their results fromstate and non-state schools, and arranged work experience, can be“banked” for inclusion on a report card. Homework is about to belegislated. And it goes on. And all of this is from a Labor (for USresidents, equal to a Democrat) government. Derek Sheppard
Public AlternativesFrom The Little Class that Could, by Danna Harman, The ChristianScience Monitor: This weekend, Deon Milton will graduate fromhigh school. A slight kid with an easy grin, Deon will attend HiramCollege in Ohio next year. It was his second choice, actually, but heis psyched. He has a full scholarship, a place on the basketball team,and lots of plans. Nationwide, only about 45 percent of public highschool graduates this month will go on to a four-year college, accordingto the National Center for Educational Statistics. But Deon’s storyis a very different one. He attends the SEED school - a highly unusualpublic school that requires that its city students live on campus.Deon and his 20 classmates are about to become the school’s firstgraduating class. The success of these students would be noteworthyunder any circumstances. One hundred percent of the class is goingto college next year. SEED’s Class of 2004, like the rest of the school’s300 Grade 7-12 students, is fairly typical of the public schoolpopulation of southeast D.C. Ninety-eightpercent are African-American, 2 percent areHispanic. Ninety percent come from homesbelow the poverty line; 88 percent come fromsingle parent or no parent households, and 93percent are the first generation in their familiesto go to college. All students were selected by alottery system, and most were two grade levelsbehind in academic performance when theybegan seventh grade, says John Ciccone,assistant head of the school. Typically, some30 percent of each class has to repeat a “growthyear” before moving into high school. But thesedays, SEED’s students are scoring higher onstandardized tests than their counterparts atother public schools in DC, staying in school(the national public high school graduation rate is 63 percent, here itis almost 100 percent) and getting into colleges across the country.www.csmonitor.com.
Chicago’s contract schools began about 3 years ago when localbusinessman and school reformer, Mike Koldyke, decided to open apublic school called the National Teacher Academy without goingthrough a competitive charter school process for the limited numberof charters available. The school was given to him as a contractschool or in-district charter. Then CEO Arne Duncan used the contractschool idea to create new small schools in the closed-down Dodgeand Williams Elementary Schools. These schools just completedtheir first year and while there isn’t much in the way of documentation,they all have had promising, if troubled starts. Our Workshop ispresently housed in one of these schools. It started with only 30freshman students and two teachers (advisors). The strong personalconnections made with these mainly Latino kids accounts for thefact that nearly all are returning for their 10th grade year – unheard ofin other heavily Latino high schools. The contract had a dual role.Positively, it gave Big Picture an opportunity to innovate andpersonalize. Negatively, it set the school up as a target from somebureaucrats and deprived them of some early facilities support.Contract schools will figure heavily in the district’s long-rage strategicplan and they will be much more carefully defined as in-district
charter schools, as city leaders try to figure out a way to attract themiddle class back into the city and into public schools. Contractsfigure to be a central piece in areas where public housing is comingdown and new mixed-income developments are going up. Mike Klonsky
International NewsAUSTRALIAPainting for sale to assist Booroobin with its legal costs (See page6). The original painting by Australian landscape artist, Ken Wenzel,is of one of south east Queensland’s Glasshouse Mountains, MrCoonowrin (or Crookneck), so named by Capt James Cook when hesailed down the east coast of Australia in 1770. The painting is datedJuly 1975. The painting has been donated by one of Booroobin’sFounding families. $AUD2,300 (or $US 1,725 or 1,350 EUR) +delivery costs. Contact Booroobin to arrange purchasewww.booroobin.com
BELGIUMOur school project is running like a train, really amazing. Our websiteis up and running: www.sudbury.be, but needs more info and is onlyin Dutch for the moment. We scheduled four info evenings and ourgroup in Ghent is getting bigger very fast. Tomorrow we meet with allthe people in Ghent who want to help in setting up the school here.
We also spoke with the former minister ofeducation and she was very positive; she gave usmore useful contacts and was even going to contactsome people herself! Maaike Eggermont. Email:[email protected]
FRANCEHigh school students demonstrate againsteducation “reforms” By a WSWS reporting team,17 February 2005: One hundred thousand Frenchhigh school students struck and demonstrated onFebruary 10 to oppose the law on education reformintroduced by François Fillon, education ministerin the right-wing government of Prime MinisterJean-Pierre Raffarin. The number of studentsparticipating is even more significant given that
nearly half the high schools in the country are currently closed forvacation. The issue highlighted by the students, a reform of the highschool graduation diploma, the baccalauréat or “bac,” is just oneelement in a package of measures that was to be placed before theNational Assembly on February 15. In response to the massdemonstrations, Education Minister Fillon immediately suspendedthe reform of the “bac” and withdrew it from the parliamentary debate.He confirmed, however, his determination to go ahead with the restof his proposals. World Socialist Website.
GERMANYLife With Big Brother, by Ron Strom, WorldNetDaily.com: Sevenhomeschooling fathers in Germany recently spent several days in jailfor refusing to pay fines that were imposed on them for failing tosend their children to government schools. The fathers, who are partof the Twelve Tribes Community in Klosterzimmern, Germany, wereforced to spend between six and 16 days in what the group’s websitetranslates as “coercive jail.” According to the group’s website, whichincludes a chronology of its battle with the government, the meninitially refused to go to jail. The police then picked them up andbrought them to a lock-up in Augsburg, Bavaria, on Oct. 18. “Theauthorities want to ‘bend’ the parents’ will so they will pay theirfines, stop homeschooling their children and instead send them topublic schools. The mothers (three have small, nursing children) are
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supposed to go to jail later,” states the group’s website. According toHal Young, president of North Carolinians for Home Education, whohas followed the plight of the German families, the media in Germanyhave given the homeschoolers favorable coverage. As WorldNetDailyreported, some German families have escaped the nation to preventthe state from taking custody of their children. Those wishing to helpthe cause of homeschooling in Germany can contact a legal defenseorganization there, Schulunterricht Zu Hause E.V.
Germany’s No. 1 Boarding School Throws Down a Gauntlet:Salem, the most famous boarding school in Germany, seeks a dissentingvoice in the U.S. education media and journalists covering the educationbeat with the temerity genuinely to question received ideas. Salem,which is the only boarding school in Germany to offer education inEnglish, is profoundly different from similar institutions in the U.S.of which the School’s leadership is critical. Preoccupation withuniversity admissions is strongly discouraged in favor of a holisticapproach to education and learning for its own sake. At Salem College,the campus for the equivalent of the School’s juniors and seniors, therunning of the boarding community is heavily in the hands of students.Boarding community rules cannot be changed without the consent ofa student parliament. Those who break these rules are judged by theelected leaders of the student body. For further information, includingcensorship-free campus visits and student interviews, contact Dr.James Bloom, [email protected]. Tel: 49-7553-919-389.
NETHERLANDSSudbury Valley was known by the founders of the first Iederwijs inthe Netherlands. They had been meeting already for some years anddiscussed how their ideal school should look like, and then they cameacross the book “Free at Last”. It was then that they realized thatthese stories had so much in common with their own ideas that itbecame a major source of inspiration.After discovering it they noticed some minor differences, not in thephilosophy but in practice, for which they probably chose to keepthe name and build it out. The school uses the sociocratic decision-making model. Decisions are based on the principle of ‘consent’,which means that there are no argued and paramount objections againstthe proposal. The school meeting is held every week, and they decideabout all school running activities and funds, staff etc. In Soest, wehave a Judiciary Committee up and running. It runs exactly the sameas Sudbury Schools, with written complaints etc. Christel A.Hartkamp, Iederwijs Soest “de Ruimte”, Insingerstraat 39-53, 3766MA Soest, The Netherlands.www.iederwijssoest.nl
NORWAYI am a member of a Norwegian group called “Forum ny skole” (newschool). We are working to start up a free democratic school in Oslo.We have gotten permission from the government so the school, thoughprivate, will be funded primarily by the government (85%). Theleader of the group is Mosse Jørgensen, she is 83 years old and wasone of the founder of “Forsøksgymnaset” that started in 1966.Forsøksgymnaset is the only democratic school in Norway. It is onehigh school level for kids 16-19 years old. I recently came back fromMinnesota, where I was interning at the Village School of Northfield.My group has also been working together with a Sweden schoolcalled “Friskolan i seffle” (Free school of Seffle). Before I went to theUS I also worked in another Sweden school called “Solvikskolan,”this is the only free, but not totally democratic, Waldorf school in theworld. Jostein Strømmen. Email: [email protected]. Web: http://nyskole.org/.
UNITED KINGDOMBrits Moving to Hogwarts-Style House System in High Schools,BBC: Every secondary school in England is being urged to become anindependent specialist under the government’s five-year plan forlearning. It wants them all to be specialising in at least one subject by2008. They will be urged to adopt foundation status - taking controlof their own land, buildings and other assets and employing their ownstaff. All schools will be encouraged to have uniforms and housesystems, as part of a traditional ethos aimed at wooing middle-classparents. The plans have already provoked disquiet on Labour’s backbenches, with 32 MPs registering their opposition to ‘foundationschools’. Former Health Secretary Frank Dobson is among thosecomplaining that local education authorities will not have a say inrunning the new-look schools. The Tories have proposed giving everyschool grant-maintained status - controlling their own budgets andadmissions policies - and giving parents more choice over which schooltheir children go to.
Cheap private education in the UK: There was a news item latelast night on how a middle-eastern business is developing cheap privateschools pricing an education at £5,000 which is the same figure asthat floated by the conservative party two years ago as the value ofeducational vouchers they intend to give to parents for their child’seducation. We now have this chain opening 20 schools around thecountry, an educational think tank in north London creating another,and someone in south Wales creating an online school also on a similarbasis. They clearly see that there is a profit to make here. Theseorganizations would not be setting up these businesses unless theywere confident that a future government will offer vouchers. I thinkthat education in the UK as about to undergo a major shift in direction.The effect upon society is going to be dramatic. Mike Fortune-Wood.
Blair woos private sector to run new state schools The Business,March 6/7 2005: Tony Blair is drawing up a radical plan to use theprivate sector to run a new breed of English state school. The Businesshas learned that Britain’s Prime Minister is considering approachingSunny Varkey, a Dubai-based education tycoon, who is planning toopen a chain of independent schools in Britain with fees starting at£5,000 a head, considerably less than most existing private schools.Varkey believes that British education market is ripe for competition.Blair is considering a proposal to persuade Varkey to work for thegovernment and focus on inner cities to set up in competition withsink schools. Fraser Nelson
Conferences“And no toast, please. I have a yeast allergy.”
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in all levels and settings, parents, and the community. Featured speakerswill include: John Benghu; John Taylor Gatto; Rachael Kessler; AlfieKohn; Iyanla Vanzant; and Neale Donald Walsch. For moreinformation/registration: www.soulineducation.org or contact:[email protected]
June 19, 2005: Teach Your Own: An Unschooling Seminar by PatFarenga, Ethical Humanist Society, 38 Old Country Road, GardenCity, NY 11530. To register for a seminar please download aregistration form from www.holtgws.com. Pat Farenga, HoltAssociates Inc., PO Box 89,Wakefield, MA 01880. Tel: (781) 395-8508. Fax: (781) 874-1053.
June 22 – 26, 2005 AERO Conference Russell Sage College, Troy,NY. Join educators, students, and parents from across the U.S. tochallenge the status quo in education and explore the possibilities ofeducational alternatives. Read our ad on the back page and visit ourwebsite: www.EductionRevolution.org
July 21 – July 24, 2005: The National Coalition of EducationActivists (NCEA) national conference, The Real Mandate: Educateand Fight for Social Justice, St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia,PA. Join parents, teachers and other educators, community activists,and child advocates at our national conference: Share organizing
strategies for the coming period; Build ongoingnetworks with public school activists; Sharematerials and models for public school change.Contact MaryBeth Griffin [email protected].
July 30 – Aug. 7, 2005: InternationalDemocratic Education Conference IDEC2005 Berlin The 13th IDEC will take place inGermany in Berlin. After a six-year gap the IDECis coming back to Europe. We are looking forwardto meeting many friends and everyone whocomes. From this moment on you can registeron line. The number of participants is limited to300 (plus 200 for the two-day public conferencein Humboldt University). http://en.idec2005.org/registration/ we hope and recommend thateveryone who is interested signs up for ournewsletter: http://en.idec2005.org/newsletter/ In
order to enable as many people as possible to participate in theconference, we are very grateful for relevant hints and suggestions oralso for direct financial help.The essential information about aims,content and practical details is to be found here: http://www.idec2005.org/
April 6 – 8 IALA 2005 Annual Conference The 2005 annualInternational Association for Learning Alternatives conference (our35th) will be in Waterloo, Iowa with a fine line up of keynoters and anoutstanding mix of small group sessions as described in the conferencebrochure. You might consider making a presentation. If so, the websitehas information and a brief form to complete. Ignore the date, as theywill continue accepting presenter forms until early March. There willbe area highlights and school visits. Lodging is $65 per night at theRamada adjacent to the conference center. Other questions can beaddressed to Rachelle Brown at Expo High School, 319-433-1930 [email protected]
April 21 – 24, 2005: Tomorrow’s Children, Tomorrow’s Schoolsat the beautiful ocean-side Asilomar Conference Center on theMonterey Peninsula in California. This will be the inaugural meetingof the Montessori Foundation’s new Center For Partnership Education.The conference theme will be how to build on the connection betweenPartnership Education and Montessori, Holistic education, Waldorf,and other progressive approaches. To download the conferencebrochure and information about the symposium, please go to http://www.montessori.org/sitefiles/asilomar_flier.pdf or call theMontessori Foundation at 1-800- 632-4121
May 12-15, 2005: The 2005 NCACSConference in Chicago, IL at the InternationalConference Center, 4750 North Sheridan Rd. TheForum School for Creative Study is organizingthe conference with help from Dr. Pedro AlbizuCampos High School and Dorothy Werner. Theconference center will sleep approximately 175people in dorm, single, and double rooms. Weare hoping to keep conference costs about thesame as last year with adults at $200 and studentsat $150. The exact cost and the program will beconfirmed later. Further information will be sentout as it becomes available. But, put these dateson your calendars and start making plans toattend! Muffie Connelly is coordinating theconference while Jan Favia is out of the country. Muffie can be reached at: [email protected] or 708 293 0777.
May 14 – 21, 2005: HES FES, The World’s Biggest Gathering ofHome Educators, Manor Farm, Charmouth, England. This will be thetenth such event in eight years and will once again see people attendingfrom all over the UK as well as the USA, Finland, Sweden, France,Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Germany and elsewhere. Apacked week of workshops, music, events, conferences and lots more.Web: www.hesfes.co.uk.
June 16 - 20, 2005 The 6th International Soul in EducationConference: “Creating aCompassionate Future” willbe held in Boulder, Colorado,at Boulder High School,hosted by the Alliance forCompassionate Education(ACE). There will beinspiring world-renownedspeakers, interactiveworkshops, panels,discussions, multi-culturalpresentations andperformances for educators
Our circular designs appeared ascrop circles on the English
landscape, in Wiltshire, during thesummer of 2004. Their origin is
entirely mysterious. Thesediagrams, made by Rob Seaman,
come from the Crop Circle Calendarof 2005, published by the Wilshire
Crop Circle Study Group
Jobs and InternshipsThe Organization for Education and Science Integration(www.oedsi.org) is currently seeking volunteers to assist them in theareas of fund-raising, accounting, design, P/R and technical servicesfor their current project working with schools in NYS and a scientificproject in the Pacific. The purpose of OEDSI is to integrate educationabout sustainability into school curricula by creating partnershipsbetween scientists in the global community and schools within theUnited States using science, technology, international dialogue andin-school projects. For more information please [email protected].
The Highland School - a democratic school with daily activitiesbased on students’ individual interests - is currently accepting
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AERO’s
ButterfliesDVD
To order the Butterflies video,go to the AERO website and click on ‘videos,’
or call the AERO office at 800 769-4171,or send $20 plus $3 postage to the AER0 address
(if you are in the USA).
Here is our exciting 42-minute documentaryof our visit to Butterflies, a democratic program
for homeless street and working children in Delhi.
applications for an internship position for the 2005-2006 schoolyear. The internship provides room and $250 per month stipend. For more information on The Highland School, visit our NEW websiteat www.thehighlandschool.org or call us at 304-869-3250.
Director wanted for The Cloud Forest School, a non-profit, private,non-denominational educational and environmental organization inCosta Rica. We are also looking for pre-school, elementary, specialeducation, and high school teachers to start in July 2005. We offerour students a creative, bilingual, environmentally focused education.We have 208 students in preschool through high school, with overhalf receiving scholarships due to financial need. With land stewardshipclasses on our 106-acre campus, small teacher to student ratio, and alarge volunteer/intern program, our students receive a uniqueeducational experience. Bilingual-Spanish/English strongly preferred.For more information, contact Rebecca Goertzel [email protected]
Golden Independent School, a small, progressive,private elementary school in beautiful Golden, Colorado, is lookingfor a full-time teacher beginning in August 2005. This is not youraverage teaching job! As a start-up school entering our 3rd academicyear, we are looking for someone with experience in: teaching inmulti-age classrooms (e.g. 2nd through 5th grade); challenging advancedand highly gifted students; collecting and developing hands-on learningactivities; using portfolio assessment to demonstrate student progress,etc. Feel free to explore our school website at:www.goldenindependent.org Please send a cover letter and resume
via email or to the address below, including your salaryrequirements, and we will contact you: Dr. Erika Sueker, Director,Golden Independent School, 1280 Golden Circle, Golden, CO 80401
The Ridge and Valley Charter School We Are A K-8 Public Schoolof Choice Located in Warren County, NJ We have: Ecologicallysustainable, environmental focus on curriculum & programs;Experiential, child-centered, multi-aged, individualized learning; Non-hierarchical, consensus school governance. We are currently seekingcaring, experienced educators for: Academic Coordinator/Lead Teacher(NJ Principal/Supervisor Certification and experience desired); NJCertified School Nurse; Teacher/Guides ; Support Staff. 1234 StateRoute 94, Blairstown, NJ 07825 Phone: (908) 362-1114 email:[email protected] www.ridgeandvalley.org
Don McKelvey. I love kids, I love to teach, and I come free. (That is,I am retired, with enough income that I don’t need a salary.) Thougha “volunteer,” I want to be a fully engaged member of the teachinggroup, and of the wider school community. I have varied experience— the graphic arts (typesetting, layout, running a printing press),computer programming, editing, office managing. And for the past 30years I’ve been very successful at youth soccer refereeing, which Isee primarily as an opportunity for teaching. I don’t care about location- I expect to move to wherever I can find a school to work with. I havea brief resume and other materials, especially parent recommendations,that I can send you. I would love to visit. Please contact me [email protected], or (617) 327-9366.
“The Butterflies DVD is wonderful! WhenI first put it in I actually stood in front ofthe TV for about 15 minutes before I satdown! I really like the entire rawness &spontaneity of the questions, reactions,answers and reactions again!” D.F., FL
Vijay, 11, with Butterflies staffmember Parwez, in the shelter
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Alexander Sutherland Neillwas born in Kingsmuir, Scotland in 1893,the third of eight surviving children ofthe village schoolmaster, or dominie.After a rather unhappy and academicallyinauspicious childhood he left schoolat 14 to work firstly as a clerk, then as adraper’s assistant. Neither of these jobsproving a success, he was taken on byhis father as a pupil teacher – that is,giving lessons to younger children inreturn for further education for himself.Neill continued in this mode until 1908when, at the age of 25, he gained a placeat Edinburgh University from which hegraduated with an MA in English. Aburgeoning career in publishing andjournalism was cut short in 1918 by theoutbreak of war.
Having failed the army medical, Neillwas appointed acting head of Gretnavillage school. Here he was able to putinto practice and develop hisincreasingly innovative ideas oneducation. Out of this experience camethe first of his 20 books, A Dominie’sLog (published 1916), which became animmediate best seller and made Neill, ifnot famous, very well-known.
A subsequent army medicalexamination passed Neill as fit forgeneral military service and he wascalled up for training in 1917. Whilst onleave he met and came under theinfluence of Homer Lane who ran hisLittle Commonwealth for delinquentboys and girls using a system of self-government. This had a profound effect
The Magazine of Alternative Education
Revolutionary Times
Neill and SummerhillBy HUSSEIN LUCAS
An Education
Collaborative?
It Can be DoneBUT Be Careful!
See Page 28
In Neill and Summerhill Hussein Lucas tells the story ofthe man and his famous schooland sets this story in the contextof amazing changes in educationand politics, during the first 70years of the 20th Century.Hussein’s book of interviews,provisionally titled After
Summerhill, willbe published later
this year byPomegranate
Books.
The Case
Against
Education!
Page 32
22
on shaping Neill’s approach to thecommunity aspect of education. Lanealso introduced him to the work of Freudand other psychoanalysts. Neill’ssecond book, A Dominie Dismissed, waspublished that year and like itspredecessor sold well.
It was agreed that Neill would join thestaff of Lane’s community as soon asthe war had ended, but before he coulddo so the Little Commonwealth wasclosed down.
Neill’s third book, The Booming ofBunkie, was published in 1919. In thatsame year – the opportunity of workingdirectly with Lane having been deniedhim (though the relationship continued)– Neill joined the staff of King AlfredSchool, in London, at that time the mostprogressive school in England. It wasnot progressive enough – or perhapsradical enough – for Neill however, andhe left after five terms following adisagreement over self-government. Oneof the children in his class at King Alfredwas Walter Neustatter whose mother,Lilian, an Australian married to a Germaneye surgeon, had been visiting her sisterin England when war broke out anddecided to stay on. She was impressedby this unusual man and his ideas abouteducation, and on her return to Germanyinvited him to stay with her and herhusband Otto.
In 1921, whilst staying with theNeustatters in Hellerau, a suburb of
Dresden, Neill visited the nearbyDalcroze School which had beenfounded before the war by JacquesDalcroze as a center for the teaching ofEurhythmics. Christine Baer, anAmerican and former pupil of Dalcroze,who now ran the center, was also takenwith Neill’s education ideas andsuggested he should start aninternational school in an unused wingof the building. A limited liabilitycompany was formed and Neill investedwhat savings he had in what was to bethe first ‘Summerhill’. That year alsosaw the publication of his fourth andfifth books, A Dominie in Doubt andCarroty Broon. Neill was thus alreadycomparatively famous as a writer andthinker by the time he started his greatadventure in education.
In 1923 a series of crises precipitatedby the French army’s occupation of theRuhr, in an attempt to force German warreparations, resulted in the exchange ratefrom sterling to mark becoming extremelyunfavourable, and Neill was impelled tolook elsewhere to continue hiseducational experiment.
After several weeks’ search in Austriahe found a hostel on top of a mountaincalled Sonntagsberg, not far fromVienna. Lilian Neustatter – Frau Doctor– left her husband and went with him,as did Derrick Boyd and his youngerbrother Donald and a handful of otheradults and pupils from Hellerau. New
ones joined. Mary Artner andInge Foerstol, who came aspupils and later evolved intohousemothers, and BronwenJones (Jonesie) a youngmathematician who also taughtphotography and astronomy,were to remain as part of theSummerhill community formany years.
In Austria Neill completedthe last of his five Dominiebooks, A Dominie’s Five (pub.1924), a children’s adventurestory in which the pupilsfeatured as the principalcharacters. The stories wereoriginally improvised in thepresence of the children, apractice he would continueoccasionally into his old age.A later collection, featuring adifferent generation, waspublished as The Last Man
Alive.In June 1924 financial disaster struck
again when the bank in which Neill hadall his savings collapsed. He returnedto England and with the help of LilianNeustatters’s sister found a house onthe South West coast, in Lyme Regis,called Summer Hill.
Keeping the school in Lyme going wasa tremendous struggle. Paying guestswere taken in during the holidays, andfor three years Lilian Neustatter workedwithout a break. Neill paid tribute laterto her determination that the schoolshould succeed. “Her optimism andenergy were so great that neither of usever thought of failure.”
In 1926 The Problem Child waspublished, more serious in tone than itsDominie predecessors, in which Neillmade plain that his interest was directedfar more to the understanding of thepsychology of children than toeducational methodology. Certainly afterits publication the number of childrenwith more obvious problems who joinedthe School began to increase, thoughparents would often take them away assoon as they felt a cure had beeneffected.
In this book Neill showed himself tobe one of the few educational writersprepared to discuss frankly and non-moralistically the importance of sex inthe life of a child. He had already writtenin A Dominie’s Log, “Most of us realise
Summerhill’s totem pole
23
that there is something wrong with ourviews about sex. The present attitudeof education is to ignore sex, and theresult is that sex remains a conspiracyof silence.” In The Problem Child hewas more explicit. “I write it withoutblasphemy – that a child is nearer to Godin masturbating than in repenting.” Aremark that many would find shockingtoday, let alone almost 80 years ago.
But sexual honest alone would notbring about the free person. There wasalso the matter of power. To his earlierobservation “Freud showed that everyneurosis is founded on sex repression,”he added, “Too little importance isattached to the power theories of AlfredAdler,” and expressed his belief that themotivation for delinquency lay in “tryingto express power that has beensuppressed… the anti-social boy, theleader of a gang of stone-throwers,becomes, under freedom, a strongsupporter of law and order.”
The Problem Child sold well and aftereight years was in its fourth edition. In1927 two significant events occurred:Neill and Mrs Lins (who was 12 yearshis senior) were married and the leaseon the Lyme building expired. Justoutside the small town of Leiston inSuffolk, on the East coast 90 miles aboveLondon, the Neills found a house which,apart from a brief exodus during the war,was to establish Summerhillpermanently on the world map ofeducation.
The 30’s are sometimes looked on asa kind of golden age in the history ofSummerhill. Many exceptionally giftedpupils and teachers were there duringthis time; the School began to gain someapproval in the outside world; its famespread. It was certainly Neill’s mostprolific period as an author: five bookswere published between thebeginning and end of the decadeas well as numerous articles;earlier books were translated intoJapanese and Scandinavian. Neillwent on an extensive lecture tourin South Africa and also spoke inthe USA, Scandinavia and severalEuropean countries as well as athome.
He found supporters in otherschools and amongst theintelligentsia. In the same yearthat Summerhill moved to Leiston,Bertrand and Dora Russell
opened Beacon Hill School. AlthoughBertrand Russell placed rather too muchemphasis on intellectual developmentfor Neill’s liking they had much incommon. But it was after Russell leftBeacon Hill in 1931 that Neill found DoraRussell to be one of his few soul matesin the educational sphere. Indeed by themiddle of the 30’s Neill referred to themboth as “the only educators.” At leastone other educator was to gain Neill’sapproval: Bill Curry who in 1931 wasappointed head of Dartington, eventhough Dartington itself Neill felt wastoo large for real self-government.
Neill was to become increasinglyaware of the gap between himself andthe progressive educators. In 1932 theNew Education Fellowship establishedan association of progressive schools.Neill attended one meeting and spoke,but, as Dora Russell wrote, “A.S. Neilland I were regarded as so far to the left,educationally speaking, as to be almostbeyond the pale.” Neill saw theprogressive schools as having only onething in common, “a dissatisfaction withconventional schooling,” whereas hisconcern was radical education based on“self-government and freedom frommoral teaching.” The progressives weremerely sugaring the authoritarian pill. In1934 he formally resigned from the NEFgroup.
Outside of Curry and Dora RussellNeill felt he had few friends and indeedthe decade started with a shock whenthe Committee on Private Schoolsseemed about to recommend strictercontrol of schools outside the statesystem. He foresaw “a few stupidinspectors demanding why Tommy can’tread,” and advocated that “we must fightto keep Whitehall out of our schools.”
The Problem Parent, 1932, expressedthe view that Neill was to hold all hislife: “There is never a problem child;there is only a problem parent. That maynot be the whole truth, but it is nearlythe whole truth.” Parents were a damnednuisance. “I am getting weary ofclearing up the mess that parents make.”
But it was about this time that a newwave of parents, mostly left-wingintellectuals, began to send their ‘non-problem’ children to Summerhill, becauseof a positive belief in Neill’s methodsrather than as a last resort or feeling offailure. Among the first were the scientistJ.D. Bernal and his wife Eileen.
Although when he grew up, their son,Mike Bernal, was almost sure that hisfather never was a member of theCommunist Party, several parents andteachers at Summerhill in the 30’scertainly were. In those days thediscrepancy between educationalfreedom and the totalitarianism ofcommunism was not so apparent as itlater became. In the UK at this timeCommunism and left-wing politics ingeneral tended to be mixed up with pre-war new-ageism in all its variety – theMen’s Dress Reform Society, the NewHealth Society, the World League forSexual Reform… and Summerhill.
Most of the adults at Summerhill atthis time, including Neill, fell into the‘bohemian’ category – pipe smoking‘lefties’ in open-neck shirts andcorduroy trousers, nude sunbathing and‘cranky’ diets. Mrs Lins, under theinfluence of a Swiss dietician, ensured aplentiful supply of fresh fruit, rawgreens and wholemeal bread –Summerhill had its own vegetable gardenand full-time gardener – and Neill coinedhis maxim that far more important thethree R’s were the three F’s: Freedom,
fresh air and fresh food.Although he never allied
himself to any political party,Neill had strong left-windsympathies at this time andmade several favourablereferences to the ‘braveexperiment’ of CommunistRussia. In 1937 he spoke of it asa ‘creative civilization.’However, later that year hissuspicions were aroused whenhis visa application was turneddown by the Soviet authoritieswithout explanation.“Beat it, pond life!”
24
Also, it was a matter of principle withhim that, just as no child should besubjected to religious or moralpropaganda, so it should be free frompolitical molding. He tolerated andaccepted Communist Party membershipand activity amongst his staff but didnot approve of them involving thechildren – in distributing the DailyWorker for example. In fact, manychildren were strongly influenced andseveral of them subsequently becameCommunist Party members orsympathizers – at least for a time.
With the advance of fascism andnazism, and the outbreak of the SpanishCivil War in 1936, it would have beenimpossible to keep politics out ofSummerhill, especially as Spanish andGerman refugees began arriving at theSchool and several parents were activelyinvolved in anti right-wingorganizations, one being killed in Spain.
In 1939 four air-raid shelters wereconstructed in the ground ofSummerhill, though it was some timebefore the bombing raids commencedand they began to be used in earnest.The Garrett Engineering works inLeiston had put Summerhill in apotential target area. As late as DunkirkNeill was still unsure whether or not toevacuate when the army took the matterout of his hands by requisitioning hisproperty.
Neill looked back on the five yearsspent at Ffestiniog as the most miserableperiod of his life. He disliked thedampness and isolation of North Wales;
the narrowness and chapelfundamentalism of the locals remindedhim of the village he grew up in; the warand its aftermath filled him withpessimism; and finally the drawn-outdecline and subsequent death of hiswife was a sad and depressingculmination to an active 24 yearpartnership.
For the first and only time in its lifeSummerhill was full to overflowing, andwith a waiting list which could havedoubled its roll overnight. But this wasbecause of the war and the desire ofparents to get their children out of rangeof the bombing. It also seemed to havebeen the chief motivation of some of theadults who found their way theretogether with refugees who needed ahome and whom Neill found it difficultto turn away.
On top of everything else there wasthe scarcity of supplies caused by thewar and the chronic shortage of cash.Luckily for Neill a parent of one of theyounger children, Ena Wood, followedthem to Wales to act as their cook andshe was able, as Mrs. Lins’ healthdeteriorated, to act as a sort of SchoolMatron. Ena had trained as a nurse andwas extremely practical and hardworking. She declared the whole schoolvegetarian in order to secure them abetter deal on their rations.
Apart from Neill’s unwavering beliefin the natural goodness andcommonsense of children when left freeto govern their own lives, perhaps thebrightest spot in this period was his
friendship with the Austrianpsychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich. This hadbegun in 1935 when Reich attended alecture Neill was giving at OsloUniversity. Neill had been readingReich’s The Mass Psychology ofFascism on the voyage over, andthought it the greatest book he had everread.
Reich had developed a system whichhe called vegetotherapy – acombination of analysis and massage –to treat ‘character armouring’. Neill hadseveral sessions with him between 1937and 1939 and obtained considerableemotional release from them as well asridding himself of the stiff necks andheadaches that had often plagued him.The two continued to correspondthroughout the war years and after.
Neill was able to confide in Reich in amanner which he was unable to with anyother adult. In fact he found many ofthe adults who joined Summerhill at thistime extremely troublesome and was ableto grumble about them in his letters toReich. Most important of al he was ableto express his deep sadness at his wife’sdecline.
Shortly after the move to Wales MrsLins suffered a slight stroke, whichinitiated mental deterioration. Neillwrote to Reich, “My wife fails fast andis most pathetic to see… it is a grim lifeto see one who was so energetic andcapable go downhill like that.”
Mrs Lins spent the last year of herlife in a mental home in Harlech, whereshe died in April 1944. Neill, who hadvisited her regularly throughout thisperiod, wrote a moving memorialconcluding, “Her epitaph might well be:‘She belonged to tomorrow, to youth,to hope.’”
But if the 40’s were the dark ages forNeill, for many of those pupils attendingSummerhill for the first time it was stillthe golden age. Many of them evenpreferred the rugged wilds of Wales tothe flat world of Summerhill in Suffolk.
Early in the summer of 1945, on amorning just a few days after the warended, Neill and his dark-eyed attractiveEna Wood were married quietly in aLondon Registry Office. Neill wrote ofhis return to Leiston at this time that itwas “maybe the most joyous day of mylife.” With Wales and his pessimismabout the war behind him, and a youngand vigorous wife beside him, he felt he“Now scrape!”
25
had been given a new lease of life. Ontop of this he became for the first time,at the age of 63, a father, and was able totravel to the USA to see his belovedfriend Reich. “Ena says I look yearsyounger and happier since I came homefrom Maine (Reich’s home),” he wroteafter returning from his visit in 1947.
After the war Neill published two newbooks in the 40’s, Hearts notHeads in the School, 1945, andThe Problem Family, 1949, andone in the 50’s, The Free Child,1953. It was to be nearly a decadebefore his next book appeared.
His continuous financialworries were relieved by a groupof parents who formed acommittee to raise money for theSchool, (which they achievedlargely by calling in overduefees). A dreaded schoolinspection in 1949 turned out alargely favorable report. JohnBlackie, on the of the twoinspectors, recalled hiscolleague, an old Etonian,remarking, “Yes, Neill, well I thinkthis is rather a pleasant place:you know, it’s almost as free asEton.” Neill was taken aback,and from that moment realized hehad nothing to fear. Indeed hepublished the full report in TheFree Child.
However, he received ashattering blow in 1950 when,whilst preparing for his thirdpost-war visit to Reich, his visaapplication was rejected on theground of his supposedcommunist sympathies. Thiswas the era of the McCarthycommunist which-hunts, but itis particularly ironic in that beforethe war Neill had been refusedentry to the Soviet Union,presumably for beinginsufficiently sympathetic toCommunism. In October 1950 hewrote to Reich, “More than everI feel ALONE.” They continuedto correspond until Reich’sdeath in 1957, but he was neveragain to see the one person whocould give him “anything new.”
The initial post-war euphoriahad ebbed away: Schoolnumbers had started to dwindleand in the country at large the
new Education Act and desire to build afairer and more democratic society hadfailed to take any account of Neill’seducational concerns. But Summerhillremained a haven of sanity and life-affirming experiences for thosefortunate enough to go there.
Sometime after Zoe’s birth the Neillsmoved into the Cottage, a house at the
edge of Summerhill which had previouslybeen sleeping accommodation for theyoungest children. This gave them thepossibility of at least some measure ofprivate life. At the age of five Neill andEna’s daughter, Zoe, moved into themain house as a boarder.
Throughout the 50’s Neill continuedto lecture to parents and teachers, many
The Big Beech
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of whom were very sympathetic to hisideas and remember him as a brilliantspeaker. But the climate of the newsocialism of Britain’s welfare state wasnot favourable to independentinitiatives. In Scandinavia Neill foundthe culture more responsive to notionsof Freedom. His reception there was thatof a VIP rather than an eccentric on thefringe of society.
In 1957 it was decreed that all privateschools were to be registered. Aninspection found the facilities atSummerhill to be well below ministrystandards. That year the parent’scommittee established itself as theSummerhill Society with the aim offorming “an organized body of opinionto support Mr Neill in his dealings withpublic authorities” as well as to raisefunds to improve amenities.
In 1959 a further inspection found theSchool ‘drab, Spartan and comfortless,’as well as being critical of much of theteaching. There were 44 children on rollat the time of the inspection. A year laterthis had fallen to 24. Many parentspreferred rather more organized schoolsinspired by Summerhill such as NewSherwood and Kilquhanity House. “LikeSummerhill used to be.” There was afeeling that Neill was now too old andlosing his touch. Some told Neill theywould send their children to Summerhillif he made lessons compulsory in themornings. Neill was not prepared tocompromise and just after his 77th
birthday, in a letter to a formerhousemother, he wrote, “Hardly anyparents want freedom for their kids now,”however; help was at hand from anunexpected quarter. The New World wasabout to discover Summerhill.
In a letter to Reich shortly after hisfirst post-war visit to the US, in 1947,Neill wrote about himself: “Neill, you arecheating yourself. USA doesn’t reallycare a damn if you come or stay athome.” And at the time he was right.
The US had a much larger and strongerprogressive school movement that GreatBritain, and its own education guru,John Dewey. It didn’t want another. TheProblem Child had been published inthe US before the war, but had attractedscant interest, and The ProblemTeacher, published in 1946 did littlebetter. Neill gave one public lecture inNew York in 1947 and severalthroughout the States on his secondvisit in 1949 following publication of TheProblem Family but, with one or twoexceptions, made little impact. Oneperson who was impressed by Neill wasthe child psychologist BrunoBettelheim, probably best-known in theUK for his book, A Good EnoughParent.
The 50’s ushered in a conservativebacklash against progressive education,fostered by McCarthyism and the armsrace with the Soviet Union, and anywayNeill was an undesirable alien, deniedan entry visa. But in 1958 a New York
publisher, Harold Hart, perhaps sensingthat the pendulum was about to swingagain, wrote to Neill with the suggestionthat he prepare a compilation of four ofhis earlier books. Summerhill: A RadicalApproach to Child Rearing waspublished in the same week JohnKennedy was elected president. Thetiming was perfect: it became animmediate best seller – though in a smallway. By the end of the decade it wouldbecome a phenomenal best seller,notching up over two million copies inthe US alone.
In 1961 the American invasion beganand the School roll doubled virtuallyovernight. Summerhill, at 40 years of age,was saved. Within a couple more years,by Neill’s 80th birthday in 1963, both heand it suddenly became ‘modern’.
Philip Larkin, in his poem, AnnusMirabilis, wrote:
Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(Which was rather late for me) –Between the end of the Chatterly banAnd the Beatles’ first LP.
This “annus mirabilis” which usheredin the Swinging 60’s and the permissivesociety was peculiarly receptive to thefreedom which Summerhill symbolized.And even more so when it evolved intothe hippy era. As Freer Spreckly, anEnglish ex-pupil, found when he visitedCalifornia, copies of Summerhill wereeverywhere and he was accordedcelebrity status when he revealed hehad been there. In fact many middle-aged people remember Summerhill as a60’s phenomenon, and are surprised tolearn it is still around or that it existedmuch before that decade.
There was a rush to open free schoolsin both the US and UK. Most of themwere short lived. Freedom was a muchmore difficult and complicated businessthat people cared to think. Few peopletook the trouble to visit Summerhill tosee how it worked. Most took what theywanted from the book, ignoring Neill’soft-repeated warning that freedomshould not be confused with licence, orthat defining 60’s word‘permissiveness’.
Like Dr. Spock, with his CommonSense Book of Baby and Child Care,before him Neill was to find his messagedistorted and misinterpreted. Perhaps
“She’s multitasking.”
27
because of this Hart persuaded him toproduce a book, called Freedom NotLicence!, consisting of a selection ofquestions from his huge fan mail,together with his replies. In the sameyear, 1966, a rather different set ofquestions and answers appeared in theUK under the title: Talking AboutSummerhill – one of his best books.
Neill refused to endorse any schoolsimply because it acknowledged him inits prospectus. He was happy to be aninfluence for the good, but not to be thefounder of a movement. “Let your schoolfounders stand on their own feet,” heurged.
Nevertheless he seems to haveenjoyed his celebrity status andaccepted numerous invitations to appearon TV and radio, where he became apopular broadcasting personality andtalked on a wide range of subjects otherthan education. He also found a wideroutlet than hitherto in newspapers andmagazines and joined the advisory panelof ‘Children’s Rights’, remaining thereuntil the magazine folded in 1972.
In 1968 he visited America once moreand appeared on the NBC Tonight showin front of his largest ever audience.Fifteen million people saw hat thepresenter Orson Bean later called “thebest guest the Tonight show ever had.”The US had forgiven Neill for hissupposed Communist tendencies,though he had continued to be avociferous protester against the Bomb.He had joined the Committee of 100 atthe request of his old friend BertrandRussell and in 1961 took part in a sit-down demonstration at the Polarismissile base in Holy Loch. After a 30hours’ stint in a police cell he was finedten pounds. Though he was not torepeat this experience he remained asupporter of the Committee forNuclear Disarmament till the endof his days.
Academic recognition, inthe form of honorarydoctorates from threeuniversities, came late forNeill and that it came atall is surprising and wasonly made possible bythe tenor of the times inthat decade whenfreedom fever gripped somany.
Though by no means all. In 1968 hewas once again faced with his oldenemies the school inspectors, and asusual feared the worst. Though theinspectors proved tougher than theirpredecessors their criticisms weremostly concerned with the state of thebuildings. Improvements weredemanded and made. They alsocommented on the poor standard ofmuch of the teaching, and Neill saw somejustification in this.
In 1969 a translation of Summerhillappeared in Germany under the title TheTheory and Practice of Anti-Authoritarian Education. It caused aconsiderable stir, selling over a millioncopies in three years and precipitatingthe German invasion of pupilsthroughout the 70’s, when they replacedAmericans as the largest minority group– to be followed in the 80’s by a wave ofnew pupils from Japan.
In 1971 Neill suffered a heart attackand had to spend a short period inhospital. For all of his later life he hadwondered who would succeed him, orwhether indeed Summerhill wouldsurvive his passing. Now the issuebecame more pressing. He made up hismind that his wife Ena wouldbe capable of running theSchool after him, and toldher so. In all thepractical ways shehad been runningthe school foryears.
Neill’s last book, Neill! Neill! OrangePeel! was published in the US in 1972.The first half consisted of hisautobiography which had beencompleted in 1939. The second half,covering the next 30 years, containedgeneral reflections on Summerhill,education and life.
The next year saw its publication, inan English version, in the UK by whichtime Neill was writing, “I have suddenlygrown very old and think more ofpainkillers than schools;” though he wasstill able to take pleasure in his firstgrandchild born in 1972.
In the summer of 1973 he had to gointo hospital in Ipswich. After a shortreturn to Summerhill he moved to thecottage hospital in nearby Aldeburghwhere, on 22 September, he diedpeacefully sitting in a chair, just 25 daysshort of his 90th birthday. An obituaryappeared in the Times.
A few days later children returned toSummerhill for the start of the new term,with Ena in charge.
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Development
In the winter of 2003 a few families inthe Woodstock, NY area met to discussoptions for schooling our 4 and 5 yearold children who were coming ofkindergarten age. Most of the people inour group had a background in the artsand limited experience in education.Everyone in the group was parenting anonly child, twins in one case. By the timespring arrived we had a group of 6families, consisting of 10 parents and 7kids.
Members of our group shared asuspicion of conventional education andits emphasis on uniform performance,lack of individual attention, and socialindoctrination. We were interested instarting our own education group so thatour kids would be supported asindividuals. Our plan was to hire afacilitator whom we liked and trusted,and to have them meet with our childrenfor 6 hours a day, three days each weekfor the coming school year. Aside fromthis we had no agenda.
We held a dozen organizationalmeetings to discuss logistics. Weinterviewed two facilitators, both youngwomen who were child care providersand who were interested in careers ineducation. We choose the person with
teacher certification who demonstratedthe clearest activities plan. While noneof the parents were set on particularcurriculum goals, some wanted to seetheir kids meet conventional age-basedstandards.
We agreed that we all trusted ourfacilitator’s judgment and that we wouldlet her design and conduct a programthat was responsive to our kids needs.We expected that parents would beinvolved with the facilitator to “tune” theprogram. These were idealistic and headytimes during which members of the groupbuilt stronger relations between theirfamilies and kids. We dealt with conflictsas they arose and we resolved thefollowing issues:
Location:In an attempt to contain costs, retain
control of our space, and draw as littlepublic attention as possible we rented alarge apartment that would function asboth our facilitator’s home and ourgroup’s meeting place. The locationneeded to be affordable, safe, centrallylocated, properly sized, inconspicuous,and with a supportive landlord. We werelucky to find such a place. In retrospect,we might have done better by rentingspace in a local church or community
center and spending more of our time andenergy on organizational issues.
Insurance:We found an agent who could issue
our group liability coverage. The costdepended on the number of kids and theamount of time they would be together.The whole policy cost about $1,000 forthe school year.
Accounting:We opened a bank account, decided
upon a tuition structure and establisheda payment schedule. Parents would payroughly $25/day per child, and couldenroll their child for either a 2 or a 3-dayweek. We had a supplies account, fundedby a contribution of $75 from each family,that would be replenished as necessary.The group paid for insurance andsupplies separately, all other monies wentdirectly to the facilitator, who wasresponsible for paying for rent,telephone, and utilities.
Commitment:Because our facilitator was depending
on us to cover her cost of living, eachfamily made a one-year commitment tothe program. Tuition was divided intofour “quarters” with the first and the lastbeing paid before the program began. Weplanned out a school year, complete withvacation days for the group, and anallowance for sick and make-up days forthe facilitator. Families could choose theirown vacation schedules, but they wouldnot get a refund if they choose to beabsent when the group was in session.
Parent Helper:We agreed that one parent would be in
attendance to help the facilitator everyday. This would be a rotating obligationand parents would sign up on a calendarin advance. We did this to ensure thateach family would be informed andinvolved. We also knew that a helperwould be needed at certain times, suchas when the kids were playing outside.The facilitator was charged with bring asnack for the group. Being a helper alsoprovided parents with the opportunityto share their skills with the group.
State Regulation:We considered New York State
regulations that apply to schools and
WoodstockEducation
Collaborative2003 - 2004
By Lincoln StollerEver wanted to set up your own
educational cooperative?Before you do you should read this
splendid account of the pleasures andpitfalls that could be waiting for you.
29
daycare centers. We spoke to daycare,and pre-school operators, and homeschool parents. Without making ourplans clear we consulted representativesof the various NY State agencies: theDepartment of Education, who overseeseducation, and Child Protective Services,who oversees daycare operations.
We discussed how we wanted topresent ourselves to the state, andwhether we wanted to register ourselvesat all. We decided not to register as eitheran educational program or a daycare forthree reasons:
1) We did not feel this was required.
2) We did not want to bear the burdenof state regulation.
3) We felt that if the state shouldrequire us to register, then we would meettheir requirements at that time.
While forming our group some of us,myself included, were involved with thelegal defense of another independenteducation program in our neighborhood.This other group was under assault fromChild Protective Services who claimedthey were operating an illegal daycareand was threatening the group stiff finesand penalties.
That case was still developing at thetime we were getting started. We did notknow which side would prevail, but whatwe saw soured us to the prospect ofdealing with state agencies. The issueeventually went to court and ChildProtective Services soundly lost its case.Nevertheless, state policy at that agencyremains unchanged and the threat ofunjustified harassment remains real tothis day. As it turned out, the problemsour group encountered came from atotally different direction — one that wedid not anticipate.
The area where we spent the leastenergy was program development and
decision-making within our organization.We merely agreed to decide all issues byunanimous vote, and to empower ourfacilitator to make all program-relateddecisions. We would meet monthly, ormore frequently if necessary, to reviewour progress, resolve problems, anddevelop new ideas.
Things proceeded smoothly throughthe summer and everyone’s spiritsremained high. None of us had organizedanything of this kind. I think we were allamazed at how well everything wasgoing. We shared a utopian faith in ourprocess. If you have been involved inindependent community organizations,then perhaps you can see the problemsthat lay ahead.
Too Much Structure
Our program began smoothly enough.Some kids were more comfortable thanothers. Some parents spent more time
Woodstock Education Collaborative Art - Chogi’s Guitar Painting
30
during drop-off so that their kids wouldbecome at ease and then transition intothe day’s activities. However, not all kidswere equally receptive to the program.
Two of the kids, twin brothers, werefamiliar with a third boy who had beentheir playmate. These three had beencared for by our facilitator and haddeveloped their own dynamic with herand with each other. Old rivalries arosethat manifested as issues of hitting,biting, and crying. The facilitator tried todefuse the tensions by providingindividual attention, but it seemed thatthe problems had more to do with theway the group was organized, and howthis organization brought out conflict.
Our son was disruptive. He refused tofollow the facilitator’s plan of when tochange topics. He wanted to maintain hisfocus on certain projects for longerperiods. He did not like the “circle time”when the facilitator tried to focus thekids’ attention on problems pertaining tothe group. He had trouble subduing hisenergy at this time of the day, and hemay have felt uninvolved, threatened ormisrepresented. He expressed hisfrustration, as I would have at his age,by tuning out.
The more active, independent, andless verbal kids were rebelling. Someparents felt that the facilitator was
conducting overly organized, orinappropriately organized program. Theymet with the facilitator and reorganizeddaily activities according to a moreflexible routine. The space wasreorganized to allow more simultaneous,separate activities. The result wasuniformly appreciated by the kids andlargely resolved the conflicts.
Too MuchParent Interference
The three girls in the group formed aclique that provided them with a privatecommunity away from the frenziedactivities of the four boys. One girlexpressed her frustration at the gun andswordplay. Another pressed herdominance in the clique in a way thatintimidated the youngest girl. The parent-helper intervened. After review, someparents felt the helper’s action washeavy handed.
There were other problems with parenthelpers. The facilitator was notaggressive in circumscribing the parents’role. On the other hand, it had not beenmade clear that she had such power. Someof the parent helpers may have, orappeared to have exercised executive
oversight at the same time that they weresupposed to be supporting the facilitator.Kids different behavior in the presenceof their parents undermined thestandards set by the facilitator.
After a few months the role of theparent helper was scaled back. The newplan was that the helper would be thereonly during drop-off, and during snackand the subsequent free-play period. Atother times parents were asked to leavethe kids alone under the facilitator’ssupervision. This was a positive change.
A Real BattleOver Weapon Play
The issue of the boys’ aggressiveplay-fighting continued to rankle certainparents. They felt that this aggressiveand noisy play was intimidating theirgirls. They insisted that their kids weresuffering and a new policy against thiskind of behavior should be put into place.Parents lined up on opposite sides of thisissue with the parents of the girlsadvocating limits on play fighting, andthe parents of the boys insisting that ithad an important developmental role.
The facilitator listened to the parentsdispute this issue and said that she andthe kids would address it themselves. Sheimplemented a policy of no gun or sword-play while inside, except as part of aninclusive activity such as a drama, orduring a period explicitly devoted to playof this kind. Some parents insisted thefacilitator follow a harder line againstweapon play, and that it was their rightas parents and group organizers to setthis policy. The parents’ faith in thefacilitator was being tested, and thefacilitator’s autonomy was at issue.
One group felt that it was disrespectfulto subject kids to the pressure of havingto resolve this issue after they hadalready asked for our help. They felt thatis was their obligation as parents toprotect the interests of their kids. Thesecond group, to which I belonged, feltthat the facilitator and the kids shouldbe given the chance to define and resolvethe problem themselves. We felt that anexecutive decision was disrespectful tothe facilitator and to the kids who werelearning how to control theirenvironment.
Woodstock Education Collaborative Art - Kiri’s Heart
31
Our parent meetings became fractious.Some parents were more concerned withtheir own issues, than the orderlyoperations of the group. We could notreach a consensus and we had noprotocol on how to proceed without one.Because we had no group leader, no rulesof order, and no limits on discussion ourmeetings amplified our differences ratherthan resolved them.
A Fundamental ConflictOver Group Control
I found the events that were unfoldingto be fascinating. The central issues werethose of decision-making and control.Dealing with these issues is essential toboth personal and communitydevelopment. Most other parents foundthe events disturbing and unproductive.Some saw these struggles as evidencethat the collaborative was not working.
During this struggle the facilitator waspulled in different directions. Each parenttook a different role, and each had someclaim to authority. Some offered to workwith our facilitator, some tried to convinceher to act on their behalf, and someinsisted that their needs were paramount.At the same time our facilitator had toplan her program, address the kids’needs, redress individual problems, actas the advocate for the kids, and act hasher own advocate in creating theprogram. And while a parent who feltburned-out could take a break, thefacilitator could not.
Issues Reach An Impasse
Our group meetings degenerated intohostile arguments over abstract issues.There were accusations of insensitivityand disingenuity. Frustrated parentsstopped attending the meetings.Subgroups met with each other privatelyin order to clarify their position andsolidify their base of support. Once thiscame to light there were others whowanted the private meetings to cease,arguing that things were being saidbehind their backs. Still other parentsattempted to play the role of peacemaker,but these efforts backfired and the groupbecame completely polarized. The issueof weapon play, which was the pretense
for much of the discussion, appeared tobe of greater importance to the parentsthan it was to the kids.
A breaking point was reached whensome parents became angry and accusedothers of being deceptive andmanipulative. Some people were offendedand broke off further discussion. Groupmeetings stopped. During this time thekids continued to meet normally with thefacilitator, and the facilitator worked withthe kids to address their problems.During this final period the kids had someof their best times together.
For the last 2 months of the year thetwo groups of parents largely avoidedeach other. At most we exchangedpleasantries when we dropped our kidsoff. Some of us were concerned that thekids would be infected by the negativityof their parents. As far as I could tell thisdid not happen.
Once the school year ended it was clearthat the group would not reconvene. Notonly were the parents unwilling, but thefacilitator also had no desire to continuewith the program.
Some Conclusions
It is now 9 months after the end of ourexperiment. Our kids have gone indifferent directions: some to privateschool, some to public school, and someare being home schooled. Two of theboys, including ours, now attend thelocal Sudbury Valley School. The othertwo boys go to public school. All of themsay they are having a good time at theirrespective schools and they remain closefriends.
I cannot gauge the effect that ourshort-lived group had on thedevelopment of our kids. I doubtthere will ever be a consensus aboutour experiment. I do know that ourson is now more enthusiastic aboutattending the Sudbury Valley schoolthan he has been about attendingany other program in the past: hewants to get to school each day, andwill spend as much time there as hecan.
What transpired between theparents had nothing to do with theirkids’ education. In gaining what wasprobably our first opportunity torevisit our own conflicted andunhappy past, some of us were
swept away by our feelings. We startedwhat we thought was an educationcollaborative for our kids, but what wereally poured our hearts into was aneducation collaborative for ourselves.And to this degree I feel we achievedsomething truly spontaneous,unprecedented, and deeply therapeutic.I’m glad that our kids survivedunscathed.
Some Advice
This project taught me whyorganizations, even small ones, developwritten plans for governance. All thosetedious rules of order could have savedour group from spinning out of control.I’m referring to things like regularmeetings, assigning the roles ofchairman and secretary, electing apresident, having an agenda, taking andapproving minutes, passing motions, andfollowing written guidelines.
I have since spoken to experiencedorganizers, people who have organizedsuccessful schools. They listen to mystory with knowing smiles. They’ve beenthere – it’s familiar terrain. They confirmthat organizational structure is the keyto keeping everyone focused on the goalsof the organization.
Had we followed this approach wewould have had a more successfulprogram, and we would have saved ourfacilitator much anguish. But this is allwe sould have had, and it’s my feelingthat the implosion that we experinced willdo more for us as adults, and probablymore for our kids, than anything we couldhave planned.
Some people live under protest.
Blattitudes
32
goes to school. Everybody. That factalone should give you pause for thought.Whilst on the face of it this would seemvery reassuring (“Since everybody goes,it must be okay”), in fact this should makeyou start to think, “What if it is wrong?”Since school is so ubiquitous, sinceeverybody goes, we had better be damnsure that the theories it is based on arecorrect, because otherwise we could becommitting a very serious error indeed.
(2) Children need to learn this stuff
The second assumption behind theideology of compulsory schooling is oneso obvious that it needs to be statedbefore we really realize that it is there. Itis this: children need to learn the stuffwe are making them go to school to learn.This is taken as truth and gospel byvirtually everyone in our society.
This assumption is actually veryclosely related to the first, in fact ismerely a qualification of it. If the firstassumption was that “children wouldnever learn anything if we did not makethem,” then this second assumption isthat “okay, so they would learnsomething, but they would not learn thethings that they need.”
I am not trying to claim that much ofwhat is learned in schools is a waste oftime – far from it – most of the knowledgetaught in schools is extremely useful,often vital, in the areas in which it applies.
(3) The students will learn if we makethem
You cannot compel someone to learn,because any true learning requiresenergy, thought, and active participationon the part of the learner – to the extentthat she finds herself thinking about itin random moments as she tries to graspand understand the concepts andconnections. This can only happen whena learner wants to learn and understand.The absolute minimum requirement iswillingness, though really you needenthusiasm.
Timothy Reagan, in his study of non-western educational traditions, Non-Western Educational Traditions –Alternative Approaches to EducationalThought and Practice, notes thathistorically compulsory education hasbeen a feature always of highly stratifiedsocieties, i.e. of societies where the lowerorders are controlled by the higherorders. This is because compulsoryschooling sets up power relationshipsof dominance, thereby getting childrenused to being subordinate, and so theygrow up accepting that role in society.In effect, they are socialized andindoctrinated to be obedient andrespectful at best, or if this is not possiblethen they are at least afraid of theauthority that stands over them.
John Taylor Gatto expands on thishypothesis. Compulsory schoolingproduces students who are less creative,and more obedient and subservient, lessconfident, less self-sufficient and moreaccepting of societies status quo. PauloFreire wrote a whole book, called ThePedagogy of the Oppressed, about howcompulsory schooling serves to keep thelower orders in place. Those students ofcourse make up the next generation ofsociety, which will be correspondinglyaccepting of the status quo and of itsplace as workers working for the rulingclass.
Compelling students damages the self-esteem of the unwilling, creatingnegative attitudes to learning anythingat all, and instilling both a fear of andanger towards teachers, adults ingeneral, and authority figures. It alsodenies that freedom should be a basichuman right. A person should be able todecide how they spend their time,whether a six-year-old or a sixty-year-old. Anyone of any age who isoppressed will feel the same way (unlessthey have been indoctrinated not to).
Why do we have democracy in oursociety? One reason in the preventionof abuse by those in power. Anotherreason is because autonomy is one ofthe things humans need to be happy, and
have been a teacher (well, anAssistant Language Teacher anyway)for the last seven years in Japan, and assuch I have had a lot of time to thinkabout what I am doing and where I amdoing it.
The conclusion I have come to is thatthese schools that I found myselfteaching in are fundamentally flawed inthe most profound respects. NowadaysI look around myself while at school andI see little but a systemized attempt tocrush the humanity out of my students.
I wish to make absolutely clear that Iam talking about all schools, or morespecifically all compulsory schooling,including that which I had inflicted uponme in my own childhood. People, bothJapanese and Westerners, often ask mewhat the differences are betweenschooling in England and Japan. I do notfind that there are any major significantdifferences in the nature of the schoolingbeing practiced in the two countries.
As John Holt said, “If the medicine ismaking you sick, stop taking themedicine.” The way we educate ouryoung, the way I was educated and theway I now find myself educating, isfundamentally flawed. The problems wesee in schools are very much created bythe schools themselves.
Not only are our schools inappropriatebut the way we as individuals and as asociety view learning and education isfundamentally flawed and the very termsin which we define the discourse areflawed. Remember: everyone goes toschool, and so everyone has beencolored by its influence and its values.In order to assess, and if necessary getaway from those values, we are firstgoing to have to understand what theyare.
(1) Everyone goes to school
Everyone goes to school. You went, Iwent, and everyone we know went or iscurrently going. Think about that factfor a minute. Virtually one hundredpercent of the population of our society
The Case Against
Education!by Simon
RobinsonI
33
at base level the idea of democracy isabout the idea of the right of each personto be happy, to live in freedom and tolive as they choose to live. Studies showthat giving people control over theirworking lives, involving them intimatelyand meaningfully in the decision-makingprocess, is the most significant thing youcan do to improve people’s overall levelsof satisfaction. This applies no matterhow unpleasant or tedious the workmight be – one study involved dustbinmen who were allowed to decide forthemselves how they divided themselvesup into teams and went about coveringthe routes they needed to cover.
It is curious that we do not usuallygrant this right to choose to children.Somehow we as a culture do not considerthe need for a sense of autonomy to beimportant in children, as if they weresomehow less than human, only half-humans until they grow up. Of course,we do much of this because we think itis in the child’s best interest,
Here is the problem: Yes, our statedpurpose now is to produce able,independent, thinking people, but we arestill using to that end a tool that wasfashioned a hundred years ago for a verydifferent purpose: compulsoryschooling was designed to dumb down,not educate, and hence we see this tragicgap between the way people really learnand the way we are schooling them.Gatto argues that this is part of the beautyof the design – since it indoctrinates eachnew generation with thesame set of values, eachsuccessive generation ishamstrung from making anynew choices.
However, to Gatto’s thesisI would also add that apatriarchal attitude tochildren is a part of a largerworldview stemming fromthe Victorian and Puritanideas of “man as a savagewhose natural urges must betamed,” an idea that has itsroots in the biblical doctrine of originalsin and is thus in many ways central tothe western philosophical view of theworld.
Compulsory schooling kills the loveof learning that could potentiallyadvance a persons standing beyondbeing ‘a worker’. It does more than that:it breeds a hatred of learning. If you find
that difficult to believe then you need totake another look at the difficult studentsin your low-grade classes - they hatelearning, and revel in their ignorance.Then take a look at (and listen to theconversations of) some “working class”people in your area – this is what yourstudents will grow up into. Note the lackof intellectual activity and aspiration, andas you do, remember that this is less afunction of “innate intelligent,” and morea function of the fact that they have beenturned off of thinking.
Compulsory schooling originally alsohad one more very important aim: bymaking uniform the education of wholegenerations across a whole country, itaimed to produce a uniform society. Thisuniform society would have uniformtastes, which would make it much easierfor industry to turn out uniform products(at much greater economies of scale) forconsumption by this uniform populace.Now fast-forward 100 years: If a wholegeneration of young people has theircreativity stifled by compulsoryeducation, and sees the only meaningfulrebellion against this as living an MTVlifestyle, that will make it much easier tosell huge amounts of Coca-Cola. Here inJapan, the schooling is so oppressivethat the students cannot wait to get awayfrom school, but their chief rebellion isto go shopping for the latest fashionsand cute characters.
Our students are now largely cut offfrom most of the pleasures that can be
had in life for free. Meanwhile they arelocked into large classrooms where theanger of oppression is refocused on eachother to the result that the classroombecomes a battleground of competitivebehavior, of which one of the chiefcharacteristics is an obsession withfashion and cute toys. The othersignificant characteristic is that the
students come to regard learning andthinking as unpleasant activities,essentially turning themselves stupid.
In regarding this issue, I think that mytime in the Japanese system has beeninvaluable, because in Japanese schoolsthere is very little more than lip-servicebeing paid to the idea of producing able,independent and thinking people, a factthat has been lamented by nearlyeveryone with anything to say on thematter. Thus I have been able to look atcompulsory education unmasked, as itwere, and to see that it is about littlemore than indoctrination for socialcontrol. It is of course a cliché to claimthis about Japan, so to bring this clichéto life I would like to describe a coupleof instances of how this control isenacted.
In my school, any student that is latefor school in the morning has to sit bythe staff room in the seiza kneelingposition. This position is painful, butthe students are nevertheless made tosit in it for fifteen to twenty minutesbefore being allowed to go to theirlessons. They also receive a “late” markin their mark book, and to furtherreinforce the point, a count is kept ofhow many students are late in eachmonth.
Shirt-dashi is another crime. The whiteshirts of the school uniform are to betucked neatly into the trousers at alltimes. Of course, all the boys untuck theirshirts, partly because the tucked-in style
is pathetically dorky, but mainly becauseto do so demonstrates their rebellionagainst the school rules. The teachersare thus constantly haranguing thestudents to tuck their shirts in, whichcontributes considerably to theatmosphere of the school: teaching is aday spent making people do things theydo not want to do.
The seiza kneeling position
34
away. But by the next class meetingshe’d have taken my direction—on thisessay or that research paper—and haveclearly spent a lot of time doing so.
What I remember in that “I’m notcoming to your class” moment ismanaging to stay relaxed. I paused amoment before asking, “Why not?”Hally explained that she didn’t like thekitchen, our “classroom,” a homey placewith fairly ugly tables that seat a dozenor so people, a four burner stove,
two sinks, scads ofm i s m a t c h e dkitchenware, acouple of beat up oldrefrigerators, andthe occasionalwandering kid.
“You don’thave to come to
my class,” I began, hoping thatmy principal wasn’t overhearing me, “butyou have to check in with me at thebeginning of every class and tell me whatyou’re doing, what you’ve done, andwhat you’re going to do to show me thatyou’re learning.”
That was the fall of Hally’s junior year.In the “I’m not coming to class” class,Hally would come find me and usuallytell me she was reading some vampirenovel. Most often during my class, Hallywould sit in our lobby, reading in frontof the woodstove—fireless in the warmdays of fall, fired up through our longNew Hampshire winter, and fireless againin the spring. Now and then I’d have tochase away some of her lobby-hangingpals, but, mostly, she read.
When Hally had an assignment inanother class things changed. Shewould appear at check-in snapping,“Chris,” in a tone any drill sergeant wouldenvy. This, I quickly came to understand,meant she would be meeting with Liz, hertutor, and wanted to be prepared. Nowand then she’d let me critique issues oforganization or expression, but usuallyshe just wanted me to “fix it.” I quicklyunderstood that there’s not much pointin drilling Hally in how to spell or how todifferentiate between complex andcompound sentences. So, I’d “fix it.”She’d be happy. I’d see her the next day.We’d repeat the drill. This patternrepeated itself right up until the weekHally finished her senior project—draftupon draft upon draft.
Hally is tall and statuesque; I’m short;she calls me “little man”. She is blunt,quick to react, iron-willed, clever, artistic,and driven to succeed. Liz, her tutor,spent ten days out West looking atcolleges with Hally. Each morning, Hallydisappeared into the bathroom for 30 or40 minutes. She’d emerge, the Hally ofthe day, each day a work of art. She is, Ihave learned a little at a time over twoyears, remarkably self-aware. She is alsopainfully dysgraphic.
The Community School is small. Wehave an 8-to-1 student-teacher ratioand am o n t h l yrotation ofclasses, soteachers andstudents arelikely to have asmany as severalclasses together over the courseof a year. When Hally told me that shewouldn’t come to my year-long Englishworkshop, I knew a few things about her.I knew she had a tutor with whom shemet weekly for highly productive extrahelp. I knew she was devouring formulafiction novels. I knew her father hadserved in Vietnam. The previous springshe’d written a research paper about PostTraumatic Stress Disorder. While it didnot meet the MLA standards for researchor obey the rules of standard writtenEnglish, and while its content might havebeen as much the ideas of websites asthe ideas of Hally, the kid found and readthrough at least a dozen articles, manyof which were full of statistical analysis.
In my first month at The CommunitySchool, the fall before the “I’m notcoming to class incident,” I walked outonto the porch to breathe in the end ofthe week and found Hally on a bench.We were the last people at school. “Whoyou waiting for, Hally?” I askedinnocuously, new teacher making nicewith one of the few students I hadn’t yetspoken to. “My father,” Hally snapped.I felt the bite of February in thatSeptember air, and I shut up. Not muchafter, a little Nissan pickup pulled in.Hally’s face lit up as she leapt from theporch calling, “Daddy!”
So, beneath it all, I knew that Hally wasa softy. I also knew that her first reactionto direction was often to bark, “I’m notdoing that, Chris” and then to storm
TheAlchemy
ofLearning
What do you do when a kid tells you,“I’m not coming to your class”? If you’reme, as your back, neck, and jaw stiffen,you clench your teeth, and say (maybeeven hiss), “Oh, you won’t…” followedby a nasty little sarcastic comment asyour feet start moving—toward theclassroom in certainty you’ve “won” ortoward the “authorities” to get backup.When Hally said it to me, the stiffeningreflex began, but something stopped me.Thank goodness. In that moment Ipaused and breathed and relaxed. Shewas a hard worker. That moment, thatlittle moment, began an experiment thathas resulted in one of my most satisfyingteaching experiences.
her
a
teacher
teachesstudent
Chris teaches English and History atThe Community School, an indepen-
dent day school serving grades 7-12 inSouth Tamworth, New Hampshire. He
is also Dean of Students.www.communityschoolnh.org
Chris Canfield
35
Really, it’s that simple. Hally wouldshow up and demand help. At theCommunity School, our grades are pass/fail coupled with narrative evaluations.Hally’s evaluations repeatedly point outher capacity for asking for help. Theyalso almost always include a variationon this comment from a class in hersophomore year: “Hally is the kind ofstudent who takes pride in simplyknowing what is expected and completingit efficiently and promptly.”
Hally had seen and been fascinatedby the Boston Museum of Science’sFoucault’s Pendulum. She decided tomake one. Here’s a snapshot of Hally’sproject: In the middle of a class period,at least eight kids, the science teacher,the librarian, and I are hunting for abowling ball that our former physicsteacher had cemented a hook into – Hallyis perturbed – and imperious. Then thetwelve-pound bowling ball is swinging afoot above the floor. It swings four inchesabove the floor. Two inches above. Themagnet on the end of the bowling balldescribes a pattern in the metal filingsHally has sprinkled on the floor. You getthe idea.
In the end, the project didn’t quitework. We never got the pendulum toswing long enough or straight enough,but all the while, Hally and I read togetherabout the physics of how Foucault’sPendulum bares witness to the earth’srotation.
I had Hally for a class or two her senioryear, but week in and week out, she’dappear and ask for help. Senior projectis a student’s culminating experience atthe Community School. At its mostsimple, sometime during the first half ofthe year, students leave school for amonth to study. Some find internships.
Some find mentors to foster themthrough a creative endeavor. Sometravel. They return and spend the restof the year creating a report.
Sometime around February of herjunior year, Hally asked me if I’d take alook at her senior project proposal. Istill hadn’t fully recognized Hally’stenacity and agreed without reallythinking she’d have anything soon. Thenext morning she handed me herproposal. Expecting a rough sketch ofan amorphous idea, imagine my wonderas I read a plan that not only explicitlystated the goal, finding the right collegefor Hally, but the plan—books to read,interviews to conduct, schools to visit—including a detailed itinerary. Hally’sresulting senior project, “Finding theRight College for an Eccentric Student”was an honor to behold.
Hally visited art schools in Maine,Massachusetts, and New Mexico;colleges that espouse hands-on learningand field work in Arizona and NewEngland; and straight liberal artscolleges in Massachusetts and Vermont.The straight schools left her cold; thehands-on ones were intriguing; the artschools captivating. But all the whileHally was aware of her dysgraphia andhow difficult it made writing. As shevisits the colleges, her journal entrieschronicle her likes and dislikes—alwayscandidly, never disrespectfully.
That future began two falls ago atLandmark College in Putney, Vermont.The school promised Hally eight hoursof homework a day. While she spendsthe brunt of that time working with tutorsand learning specialists, eight hours ontop of classes is eight hours. ButLandmark’s focus, training the learner tofind her strengths and to use them to
overcome her weaknesses, is Hally’sfocus. Her single-mindedness hasconvinced her parents to spend the smallfortune for the two-year program. Hallyplans to use Landmark as her stepping-stone to college.
Senior project culminates with a seniorproject evaluation. I learned a lot atHally’s evaluation. My principal was ata conference and couldn’t be there. Shehad, however, been in dialogue with Hallythrough most of the project. She’drecommended that Hally combat hernervousness about facing down theevaluation team by arriving with paperand pencils, and that she draw while wepeppered her. We consisted of Suzanne,Hally’s favorite teacher, Liz, Hally’sbeloved tutor, and me.
While our fondness and respect forHally and our principal’s drawingsuggestion obviously helped her feelsafe, Hally’s poised and consideredresponses awed me. Hally is a girl of fewwords, though they’re usually well-chosen. She’s also shy about speakingin public; in fact, it was touch and gowith her senior project presentation. Untilthe week her presentation date arrived,we weren’t sure whether or not she wouldget up in front of the whole school.When you get right down to it, she didn’t:I introduced Hally to the room, and she,sitting cross-legged, responded, “Okay,listen. I don’t like how we have someonestand in front of the whole group. I wanteveryone to sit in a circle.” It was thequickest the fifty of us ever moved!
An hour before the evaluation, Hallywas nervous, and she met with me tocalm down and prepare. She decided Ishould take notes of some of the thingson her mind, notes she could use during
The Community School
36
the evaluation. Here are some of thenotes Hally dictated to me:
I know reading and writing are hardfor me. It took 18 years and a lot oftears to learn this. Because if you havea learning difference, it is twice as hardto do something because you have toread, figure out, retain all that info whenother people that don’t have a learningdifference skip this step. So you’realways behind and they’re always infront. No fun. But if you understand howyou personally learn, you’ve made thatdouble work load better. It takes a longtime.
Reading For example, when I read,sometimes I have to read it more thanonce. Sometimes up to five timesbecause I have to figure out the words.I had to learn to break them down andsound them out. It’s like the pieces of apuzzle that I put back together so it flowsand I am able to understand it.
Writing is the hardest. My mind’smoving with ideas but I have to stop allthe time to figure out how to spell whatI’m thinking which is really startingfrom scratch, and then I lose mythoughts. I get frustrated, angry, andmy instinct is to walk away, but I foundthat that gets me nowhere. Breaks aregood but the only thing that makes iteasier is to just suck it up and get itdone.
I’m reminded again of Hally in thekitchen: “I’m not coming to class,Chris.” “She doesn’t care,” could easilyhave been my reaction. It’s this we asteachers need to recognize: all learnersstruggle, but all learners want to care. Ifwe could be a little quieter, take that pagefrom Hally’s book and observe, whatmight we find? How do we stifle ourstudents? When is the class or itscontent or our manner or the classroomoff-putting—as it had been for Hally inthat kitchen? My hockey coach used totell us to pause before shooting, to seethe possibilities in that extra second. Icould never do it, and I never amountedto much as a hockey player. But I neverforgot that lesson. With Hally, I think Iapplied it. By letting Hally not come tomy class, I gained far more than astudent: I got one of my finest teachers.
TsunamiBy Vani
(Vani came to the IDEC in Bhubanishwar from the Abacus MontessoriSchool.) I live in Chennai (in a sea-facing house!) and I’m a student of Abacus.I’m okay – although the tidal wave that hit us came rushing through with all itsfury at about 14-ft and broke down the compound wall of the plot before ours. Itwas so scary as there is just nothing you can do. I felt so helpless. Luckily, the wavejust stopped in front of our house (thank God!). We are all just shocked right nowand too scared to go back. We’ve moved to our old house, which is nowhere near thesea.
By Niru(Niru is a 16-year-old homeschooler in Southern India. She was an editor of
the daily newsletter at the IDEC.) Unlike other places along the coast, the surge took theform of an actual wave, and the horror stories are still piling up. The refugees are pouringinto towns in the landlocked districts, and the town nearest to where I live - Tiruvarur -is one of these. Very few buildings within the reach of the tsunami are left standing, andentire villages have been razed to the ground. People have already begun rescue services,but the effort is still inchoate and disorganised. Most of the fishermen and traders aroundNagapattinam are reasonably well off; the larger teams make about a thousand rupees aday in peak season - not at all a bad sum, especially in a rural area. These people hadexpensive jewellery, wore good clothes, and made merry on a grand scale when they hadto. The main problem seems to have been that they were mistrustful of the governmentand did not put their valuables in safety deposits or avail themselves of savingsschemes. As a result, they were penniless at one stroke - or one wave.
To these people, receiving food and clothes as alms from strangers is undignified,to say the least. On finding a few cast-offs and torn clothes among the clothes sent tothem, one woman says, “We too, were rich. I had lots of gold and silver ornaments.Why should I wear something I would have thrown away before without a thought?”What they want, these people say, is not food or clothing, but means to restarttheir lives.
The Rapid Action Force (RAF) evacuated people promptly afteryesterday’s warning of a second tsunami following a 5.5 earthquake in theAndamans. I was one of the few people who were crazy enough to go toNagapattinam yesterday from my safely landlocked village despite this, andeverything less than 3 kilometres from the sea was deserted. Police andmilitary personnel were everywhere, coordinating food distribution tothe people huddled in marriage halls and temples. Clothes which hadbeen rejected by the refugees lay in tangles on the road. Other peopleare moving inland in a steady stream, carrying what they can.According to the locals the tsunamis hit at roughly fifteen-minute
intervals. The first wave came in and took all the people,mostly children, who were on the beach - playing, as it
was holiday Sunday and Christmas vacation. The wavewas fifteen feet tall, and the water came inland two
kilometres, past two streets of houses, and wentback immediately. As people ran out to
search for the missing people, thesecond and third waves hit. The
timing was as bad as itcould be.
37
The Science Behind the Genius By Angeline Stoll Lillard OxfordUniversity Press. An important new book has just been releaseddescribing the Montessori experience in depth. This is the first bookpublished in America to explain the modern day science behind thiseducation technique developed nearly a century ago. The bookcarefully demonstrates how ongoing brain research and studies aboutchild development support the validity and effectiveness of theMontessori approach. It discusses what happens in carefully preparedMontessori environments and shows why the method works so wellwhen used correctly.
High Schools in Crisis: What Every Parent Should Know ByEllen Hall and Richard Handley This book explains to parents whatis happening with teenagers in the large and outdated public highschools. It puts a finger on the rage that children feel and the degree towhich they feel failed by the system. There are two of chapters thatplace the book in larger debates – A New Model for the Classroomand The School as Community. Those two chapters are a vote infavor of small schools. Both educators and parents will find themselvesin the middle of an interesting debate when reading the book. Beingbased on over a decades experience of an alternative school, the bookis a strong voice in the small school camp. It is a valuable resource forparents who try to understand what their children are getting into byenrolling public high schools. In a boarder sense, the book is a strongadvocate of educational alternatives. But the question in the air remains- are small schools a panacea?
The Compassionate Classroom; Relationship Based Teachingand Learning By Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson Ever sincethe concept of emotional intelligence became well known educatorshave considered ways in which to accommodate new findings in brainresearch. This book demonstrates the connection between learningand the relationships between students and teachers. It is stronglybased on non-violent communication principles. For teachers notfamiliar with non-violent communication it will take multiple readingsbut for those already familiar with the principle it is a helpful guidefor classroom implementation. It is filled with exercises and role-plays that could be introduced to the classroom to enhanceunderstanding. This is a great curriculum development resource!
Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest YoungMinds By Jan and Bob Davidson with Laura Vanderkam With failingschools and one-size-fits-all solutions, gifted children seem to be thefirst to feel the rejection. Although Davidsons and Vanderkam are notthe first to note the waste that goes on in the classroom, they paint agrim picture. Classroom work geared to the lowest commondenominator is only too painfully obvious in a wide array of examplesthe book has to offer. This book is not only a call to nurture thechildren’s talents but it’s also a call to accept the exceptional needs ofexceptional children. Parents and educators must give these childrentheir due, even if it means taking different educational paths. A parentalMUST-READ!
The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematic Talent in EveryChildBy John Mighton This man did what many of us have always wantedto do: get our children interested in, and not scared of, mathematics.Mighton is the founder of JUMP (Junior Undiscovered MathProdigies) and educational program providing free tutoring forelementary-level students who live in Toronto. He based the book ona great deal of research into early childhood education that has shownthat children are born capable of learning anything, including math.Thus the book is not only an exposition of an educational approachto math that will turn calculus and fraction from a bogeyman to anafternoon pastime. The second and larger part of the book puts theoryinto practice and included workbook problems. Some call Mighton‘Math Motivator’, others ‘Educational Alchemist’ It seems to me heis a guy who has figured out how to teach kids math by teaching themto believe in themselves first. Children who are made to believe theycannot do math, will never do math well. Thus, Mighton makes sureto boost children’s math self-esteem. A great resource forhomeschooling parents!
Books etc.By Aleksandra Majstorac Kobiljski
Looking for aBOOK, A JOB
OR AN ALTERNATIVE
SCHOOL?Have you checked out the AERO website lately?
www.EducationRevolution.orgWe put the RESOURCE into theAlternative Education
Resource Organization
? ?
38
Berlin
IDEC2005
in Europe!
will be held this year fromSaturday 30th July toSunday 7th of August
The number of participantsis limited to 300
(plus 200 for the two-daypublic conference inHumboldt University)
The 13thInternationalDemocraticEducation
Conference - IDEC -
Berlin
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http://www.idec2005.org/and subscribe toour e-newsletter
Berlin
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39
It all began one summeryevening when the evil king Tomowas in his castle figuring out theperfect plan. And he foundthe perfect plan. Hedecided that he woulddisguise himself as an oldbizarre man and that hewould get into KingTony’s castle and listento where King Tony andQueen Zoë and PrinceNeill would go onholiday.
Meanwhile the sevenknights and the ladyPascale were havinglots of fun partyingand eating nice roastsand chicken, enjoyingand making lots ofstupid jokes, especially SirLeonard. While all this washappening the evil King Tomomanaged to disguise himself as aguard at the door, because therewas only one. After disguisinghimself as a guard, looking veryconvincing, the seven knights andthe lady Pascale walked by. And
Sir Matteo started teasing the newguard as he was very drunk andthen Sir Lancelotty and Sir Maxboth agreed on this and said,“You! We’ve never seen you herebefore. Are you one of the newguards the king was talkingabout?”
The evil King Tomo had to thinkfast or else they would have foundout it was him and the whole thingwould have been a pointless act ofgetting into the dungeons, so Tomocame up with one of his brilliantlywonderfulideas andsaid,
“Yes, Iam.”
And all the knightsand the lady Pascale said,
“OK, then,” and they all went totheir rooms and went to bed.
After they all went to bed Tomostuck one of his ears to the doorlistening to where King Tony,Queen Zoë and Prince Neill wouldgo on holiday. They said, “Let’sall go on safari to Africa!” So thenthey chose, but the evil King
Tomo, while listening, made a verystupid mistake, which he wishedhe hadn’t have done. He lethimself go thinking the door waslocked and leaned against thedoor. And then the door openedand he fell to the ground.
King Tony, Queen Zoë andPrince Neill all said, “What areyou doing here?”
He said, “I slipped and fellagainst the door. I’m sorry, myKing, Queen and Prince.”
Queen Zoë said, “All right then.I guess you are too tired. You
have permission to go to bed.” Tomo went to his so-called room and said,
“Aha! Now that Iknow where they
are going, Imight as
wellsendmy
forcesthere to
stopthem.
Aha,” hesaid, and
“Aha!” again.Tomo decided to
jump out of the windowwhere his guards were
supposed to have made some kindof trampoline so that he didn’t gethurt. And then when Tomolooked down he realised that therewasn’t any fall, there was a verydeep moat.
He fell in the water. Luckily thewater was nice and refreshing andthen his guards had to fish him outof the moat and he went back tohis kingdom on his giant frog withhis two stupid guards.
Max Ferreris a current student ofSummerhill School
Evil KingTomo Goes
SpyingBy Max Ferrer
Kid’sCorner
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“A Spectrum of Alternatives”The 2005 AERO Conference: June 22-26, 2005 - Russell Sage College - Troy, NY
Conference features: • Open scheduling for you to present • Panel of alumni of educational alternatives • Panel of current students at alternatives • Workshops for those starting new alternatives
Keynote Speakers include:
John Taylor Gatto, authorof Dumbing Us Down andThe Underground History ofAmerican Education
Alfie Kohn, author ofPunished by Rewards,and What Does it Meanto be Well Educated?
Also giving keynotes:! Ann Cook, principal of Urban Academy! Matt Hern, author of Deschooling Our Lives! Tim Seldin, president of The Montessori Foundation! Jerry Mintz, founder and director of AERO
Conference costs as low as $15/dayhousing and $30/day fees for students.
AERO www.EducationRevolution.org (800) 769-4171
Space is limited,contact us now toreserve your spot!
Join educators, students, and par-ents from across the U.S. to chal-lenge the status quo in educationand explore the possibilities ofeducational alternatives.