Peter Herman on the Sudbury Valley School

by Peter Herman, VSBA President

 

In the interests of exploring the extent to which our Delivery Proposal about which I have spoken frequently makes sense and might be a model or part of a model for a new look at public education, I recently visited the Sudbury Valley School (SVS) in Framingham, Mass. SVS operates on what we would consider a radical model, with no curriculum, no scheduled classes, and with a democratic management system in which most decisions of consequence are made by the students.   Serving students ages 4 – 18, it is a private school with a single admissions criterion: whether a prospective student can succeed at the school. Some students spend their entire educational career at SVS, but more often students arrive at middle or high school age after deciding that the far more structured public schools didn’t work for them. 

 

On the evening before my all-day visit to the school itself, I attended a lecture by Daniel Greenberg, one of the founders of the school, a university history professor and author of, among other books, Turning Education Rightside Up.  One of Greenberg’s major messages, and one that appears to drive SVS, is that as humans we begin learning as we exit the womb and never stop. We learn what we decide we need to know and do in order to cope with the world as we find it.  And most of this we do with little help from more experienced others, including walking and other motor functions, speech, and interpersonal communications which are far more challenging than almost anything else that will confront us throughout life.  Why, Greenberg asked, do we think that we need adults to organize and drive this innate learning, as children get older?  A reasonable question.

 

Thus SVS and its sister schools throughout the world.  I arrived at the school about 8 AM, some 30 minutes before students were due to show up.  As the students appeared, they had no assigned places to be or things to do. Some went to the computer room (6 machines for 170 kids) to play video games or surf the net.  One group played baseball outside, and others read or practiced music.  There was the usual buzz one would expect, but very little confusion or inappropriate horseplay.  This was not a morning break routine; the entire school day proceeded in a similar fashion.

 

During the day kids moved around as they wished, and I saw the same youngsters in many different settings.  At no point did the entire group come together for traditionally structured learning on a subject like math or foreign language.  One group attended a seminar on world history given by Greenberg.  The seminar happened because a group of students asked him if he would do it. All the kids stayed until 5:00 PM. No one had any homework.    

 

That the school was student run was illustrated best to me by the Judicial Council. This student group meets every day to hear complaints from students and, occasionally, from staff that others had violated one of the limited number of rules by which the school operates.  The council changes every month, but the 7 member group I saw ranged in age from maybe 16 to about 7, and all of them took it very seriously. Much of their business was simple and decisions easy, but I witnessed several cases where there was real angst and where it must have been difficult for the complainants to “bring up” their schoolmates.  In every case the council pressed the issue until the participants agreed that they had in fact broken a rule or the complainant withdrew the charge. Every effort was made to mediate where possible. Sometimes a particularly difficult case or a serious violation is referred to the school meeting for adjudication.

 

The weekly school meeting is the other democratic mechanism.  Chaired by a student, it operates much like a town meeting and decides the membership of the Judicial Council, and considers referrals from the Council.  It also determines whether students who have been suspended for an indeterminate time (one of the more severe consequences of breaking the rules) can return to the school. Students and staff alike have one vote apiece.

 

The graduation requirement involves preparing a presentation to a group of outside educators from other Sudbury schools in which the student explains why she/he is ready to graduate and move on. Apparently the panel presses the graduation candidate pretty hard to defend his or her position.   This seemed to me to be a good definition of assessment and accountability.

I went to SVS as a bit of a skeptic and more than a little cynical but returned convinced that we can move our system pretty far toward greater student empowerment without jeopardizing anything. A large proportion of SVS graduates go on to college and/or make a success of their lives.  I don’t necessarily think that the SVS model is right for or applicable to Vermont’s public school system at this time, but there are many elements of the school’s operation that would greatly improve outcomes for our students.