“I’m not sure how I learned how to read,” says Lily Collins, sixteen, Jeff Collins’ daughter, who went to Sudbury for her entire education and is now at SUNY Ulster. “It was always a part of life. I learned by doing. But when it came to higher level math I actually did study and had to learn on my own. I got help from different people, including staff members. When I got to college any gaps I had were minimal and I didn’t suffer because of them”
“Sudbury taught me how to learn,” says Morgan Thrapp, 18, of New Paltz, now a sophomore at SUNY New Paltz. “The school didn’t teach me specific subjects, but it did teach me how to absorb information and understand things, because I had to if I wanted to learn. I didn’t have to memorize, so anything I picked up was because I wanted to. If there were concepts I didn’t understand I went to staff and they were incredibly helpful. I’ve always had an interest in math but I realized my algebra was rusty so I went to a staffer who was engineer. He told me to find a textbook and come up with a lesson plan and I met with him twice a week for a month and a half and for an hour and a half we would do algebra problems. It wasn’t ever ‘you should learn algebra,’ it was me realizing it was something I needed if I was going to succeed, and taking steps to remedy that. I actually really enjoyed learning because I enjoy knowing how things work.”
These days a lot of Sudbury students simply learn by using the web. “The Internet offers a great wealth of knowledge at your fingertips,” says Thrapp. “I did a lot of learning that way. I Googled, used Wikipedia and learned from websites, or hands on. I had no learning deficits in college. College was the first time I’d ever been in structured learning environment, but I got a 3.8 GPA.”
People who scoff at Sudbury tend to assume that it’s a super-permissive free-for-all where the inmates run the asylum. But it appears quite structured, just not in the same way as public schools. There is an extensive list of rules Sudbury students have to follow or face consequences. Sudbury students aren’t required to learn the three R’s but they are required to behave in a respectful manner to each other and to adults. “The founders believed that the best educational environment in which to prepare young people for responsible democratic citizenship is one that operates according to democratic principles,” said Gray. Sudbury schools are run as a participatory democracy where each student and each staff member has equal representation and an equal vote in the weekly School Meeting that makes all the day-to-day decisions necessary to run the school, including rules of behavior, use of resources and staff hiring. There is a “Law Book” containing 15 single spaced pages of detailed, explicit rules and regulations governing everything from littering to bullying to school safety that students must follow or face consequences. Every day a Judicial Committee is held to deal with disciplinary problems. Anyone who breaks a rule is written up and investigated, witnesses are called in and then the committee writes down a complete report, decides if a rule was broken, and gives the student an opportunity to plead guilty or not guilty. If they plead guilty they’re given a consequence. If they plead not guilty a trial is scheduled. If they don’t agree with the sentence they can appeal. Kids who rebel against the authoritarian structure of traditional schools apparently have little to rebel against at Sudbury. Social responsibility is a daily lesson.
But it’s not for every student. Some come to Sudbury and leave. A common syndrome is what Sudbury calls “hitting the wall.” Older children who transfer to Sudbury from public school become restless and bored after a few months because they’re not used to taking responsibility for their own education and don’t know what to do with themselves. At that point they either work through their resistance or they go back to public school.
“Sometimes they get expelled because they’ve failed to assume the kind of personal responsibility the school requires,” Gray explains. “Since the primary curriculum is taking responsibility for yourself, you have to be willing to follow rules, and respect the democratic process. Now and then there is a student, often a rebellious teen, who doesn’t come around. Most kids do come around when their own peers tell them they can’t use drugs on campus, for instance, which is more powerful than an adult telling them. But if they’ve gone through JC a few times and been suspended, then they come back and lo and behold they do it again, at some point the student gets expelled.”
“Sudbury can’t provide the kind of special education some children need that the public school has to deal with,” says Gray. “Children far enough out on the autism spectrum can’t learn from others and need an expert to show them how to play and interact. Sudbury is a school for students who can take responsibility since so much of the process involves interaction with other kids. If you can’t interact, it’s not for you.”
Sudbury can be a surprise for some. My 15-year-old daughter, Freda, who recently chose to transfer to Sudbury because she was uncomfortable with the social atmosphere at Onteora, says what surprised her is that Sudbury is a real community. “Everyone at Sudbury cares for each other. Not as students, classmates, or teachers, but as people.”
College prospects are a concern. Sudbury offers a Certificate of Graduation and/or High School diploma which must be earned by creating a portfolio that proves they’ve learned to be an effective adult in the larger community. The diploma students must meet State requirements and pass the Regents exams. A number of Sudbury students go to SUNY Ulster for a year, get their GED and then go on to other colleges.
Sudbury hasn’t been around long enough to provide long term statistics, but 84 percent of the graduates of the original Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Mass. pursue formal study after graduation.
Interested parents can find out more on Sudbury School website: www.sudburyschool.com. Sudbury admits students all year and holds regular open houses.
