frequently asked questions
What is a Sudbury School?
Sudbury Schools are schools modeled after Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1969 in Framingham, Massachusetts. There are about 40 schools based on this model in the U.S., Britain, Denmark Canada, The Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, Israel and Australia. The model has two basic tenets: educational freedom and democratic governance. These are not just slogans but components of top quality, real-life, experiential, hands-on education where students are free to choose how to spend their time and decisions affecting the school community are made by majority vote of those affected by the decision, including students.
What is educational freedom?
Children are born with the instinctive ability and internal motivation to play with tools, ideas and relationships with other people in order to figure out the world into which they were born and how to find a meaningful place in it. In other words, people are born students of life, and do not need to be coerced or manipulated into learning. Nor do they need a universal curriculum, any more than babies need a plan for learning how to talk. Their play, their conversation, their whole lives are perfectly suited for acquiring the basic skills to survive in our complex, rapidly changing world.
Curiosity and the desire to become successful adults are motivation enough for students to actively pursue skills and interests that will lead to success in the job market and/or higher education. We believe that a preplanned curriculum interferes with a student's individual developmental path. By pursuing their own interests, students are constantly engaged in activities they find challenging, stimulating, and meaningful.
Research has shown that the bribery and punishments required to convince people to pursue learning tasks not of their own choosing actually damage internal motivation and discourage people from engaging in those same types of tasks when the bribe or punishment is not present*. In other words, in the traditional school structure, with a predetermined curriculum, group conformity to the teacher's will, and grades to reward or punish performance, are, in the long run, detrimental to one's natural ability and motivation to learn.
Doesn't a democratically run school lack structure?
Not at all. Democracy at a Sudbury School involves very strict rules of order and governance. The School Meeting meets weekly to make new rules or repeal old ones, to decide how the budget will be spent, hire staff, and even to charter new educational programs (computer lab, darkroom, woodshop etc.). Each student and staff member (teacher) has the right to attend the meeting and use their powers of persuasion and the force of their vote to influence school policy. The meeting runs according to Robert's Rules of Order and students learn to amend motions, to lobby fellow voters, and to live with the decisions of the majority. In other words, students are learning about real life in a democracy, the conflicting needs of different interest groups, the tensions and balance between individual rights and community needs, the inextricable link between freedom and responsibility.
In the enforcement of rules, democracy and the principles of due process prevail. Students have the right to a fair hearing and the right to appeal. Everyone is required to serve on the Judicial Committee for a small part of each year. The process can sometimes be time consuming and bureaucratic, as in any democracy, but is, after all, the only logical way to govern a school that aims to prepare students for citizenship in a democratic society.
If a student chooses to ignore an important subject, won't he or she be at a disadvantage in later life?
Modern society is so diverse and fast-changing that there is no way to anticipate what knowledge a person may someday need. It is therefore inevitable that our students will eventually find themselves in situations for which they are inadequately prepared. The same will hold true for graduates of traditional schools. Our former students, however, will have had the experience of being truly responsible for their educations. At this school, students do not sit back andwait for someone to teach them. Instead, they decide what they need to know, then figure out a way to learn it. This is also how adults generally learn things, and it is more effective than trying to "stockpile" knowledge in the hope that someday some of it might be useful. (Sad to say, most of us who devoted months or years to studying long division, trigonometry, sentence diagrams, and Cliffs Notes could have spent that time more profitably.)
How do students learn the "basics" that other schools teach formally?
We have learned over the years that students will come across a need for and therefore an intrinsic reason to learn those skills that are truly basic to success in our society. Everyone needs reading and writing skills. Beyond these traditional "basics" there is a great deal of information that is useful in life. Why allergies make people sick, how insurance companies work, what a "defendant" is - these are examples of things we all probably need to know. But an alert human being will pick up such basic information through reading, conversation, the media, or first hand experience over the course of their lives. On the other hand, many of the things taught in traditional schools — that John Adams was our second president, the air currents over the Sahara Desert, and the number of delegates in the State Legislature, for example — may or may not be "picked up" by students living their lives. When a student is interested in the specifics of a field they are given the time and support for in-depth inquiries. The school helps the student learn to access information through libraries, the Internet, field trips, internships, and occasionally formal classes or tutorials taught by our staff or someone temporarily hired for that purpose.
But my child is not motivated to learn. Won't he just waste his time at a Sudbury School?
There are many reasons for a child to temporarily lose his natural motivation to learn. Experiences in traditional schools often leave students bored, rebellious, or afraid of failure. It may be that the child is m otivated to learn, but has a different agenda from his school or his parents. He may be fascinated by friendships and social skills, by an art or a certain subject.
At a Sudbury School all pursuits are valued not by the extent to which they conform to the adult agenda or prepare students directly for professional goals, but by the extent to which the student is interested in pursuing them. Interest means the mind is engaged, and students are necessarily learning to focus, to persist, and to trust their own ability to learn. These skills are truly useful for creating a satisfying life.
It is contrary to human nature to seek monotony. No one wants to be bored. Those students who come to the school wounded, "burned out," and determined to do "nothing" inevitably, begin to see their lives as their own and embark on a powerful personal search for their own interests. Those whose passionate interests have been demeaned by others, or limited by the need to succeed in traditional school classes, feel the excitement of freedom to pursue their passions at a Sudbury school. Children who are captivated at home by TV or video games are often seeking escape from a passionless curriculum. They may go through a period of fully immersing themselves in their obsession, only to find that the world beyond their particular interest is irresistibly fascinating and full of challenges. Kids often seek adult reassurance first, then dive into social interaction, deliberately compensating for their inexperience as independent operators in the world of friendship, conflict, and cooperation.
If students are bored or lost, do you encourage them to find something to do?
No, nearly everyone experiences periods of boredom at the school. Especially in the first months of attendance, students who have been accustomed to having others determine how they spend their day go through a period of feeling adrift and occasionally seek adult help in finding "something to do". Facing boredom is one of the most important things a student at a Sudbury school does, and staff are reluctant to interfere with that golden opportunity for the student to really begin asking hard questions like, "What is important to me? What do I like to do? Who am I really? Why can't I find something that interests me? What do I have to do to make X happen?" For staff to move in with entertaining activities and suggestions is to defer these important stages in a student's progress to a truly self-directed, self-motivated education.
What kind of students are best suited for Sudbury type schools?
- Bright, highly motivated kids who want to surge ahead and challenge themselves.
- Kids with unique learning styles who want to move at their own pace.
- Kids who are "different" in some way and want an atmosphere of tolerance and friendliness.
- Social kids who want to be part of a democratic community — one person, one vote.
- Little kids who are passionately engaged in exploring and creating.
- High-energy, restless kids who want to be active.
- Frustrated kids who are sick of schooling.
- Shy, sensitive kids who want to pursue their own interests.
- Self-directed kids who are ready for responsibility.
How do you know this really works?
Sudbury Valley graduates have been proving that this model works for over 35 years. Students who have no grades, no class rank, and sometimes no formal classes go on to be admitted to good colleges (on the merits of their personal presentation in writing and in person and, where necessary, their test scores), to be successful in their course work (often having to "catch up" on certain subject matter, but having the resources and self-confidence to do so easily), and to move on to varied and interesting careers. Frequently Sudbury graduates do better than grads of traditional schools because independent, self-directed learners do well in a college environment. Those who have chosen not to attend college (about 20%) have become successful artists, craftspeople, tradespeople, musicians and businesspersons. In addition, graduates of Sudbury schools are articulate, responsible, open-minded adults who, having never seen their education as anyone's responsibility but their own, continue to engage life and learn new things for the rest of their lives.
*Butler, R., and M. Nisan. (1986). Effects of No Feedback, Task-Related Comments, and Grades on Intrinsic Motivation and Performance. JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 78(3, June): 210-216. EJ 336 917.
Fabes, R.A., J. Fultz, N. Eisenberg, T. May-Plumlee, and F.S. Christopher. (1989). Effects of Rewards on Children's Prosocial Motivation: A Socialization Study. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 25(4, Jul): 509-515. EJ 396 958.
Fantuzzo, J.W., C.A. Rohrbeck, A.D. Hightower, and W.C. Work. (1991). Teachers' Use and Children's Preferences of Rewards in Elementary School. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS 28(2, Apr): 175-181. EJ 430 936.
Gottfried, A.E., J.S. Fleming, and A.W. Gottfried. (1994). Role of Parental Motivational Practices in Children's Academic Intrinsic Motivation and Achievement. JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 86(1): 104-113.