I am willing to bet that the parents of children at this school are educated (likely have college degrees) and have a strong focus on education.
Some students do well in structured environments, some do really well in unstructured environments, there is no one right solution for everybody.
Claiming that any one technique works for all demonstrates a lack of empathy for how others think and learn.
I know that for me, I received failing grades in the few classes I took that were unstructured. Heck the same applied for online classes. Trivial material, but lack of forced time to participate (e.g. go to a classroom and listen to a lecture) means I would just give up on the class and not do anything.
So it would kind of be more meaningful to not compare to the national average but to private schools targeting the same socio-economic situations, but with a traditional curriculum.
Again the point is not to show that Sudbury Valley is better, but rather just that the complete lack of curriculum is clearly not producing horrible results.
Children who have been raised to value learning will, in all likelihood, value learning. This is not a surprise!
I would also be curious to see the breakdown of what fields those students go into.
Some people are capable of self-learning in certain fields where as others are not. A great example of this is math, we all have heard stories (or know the person, or are the person!) of someone who can learn math on their own straight from a text book. Then there are others who learn best from an interactive discussion about math with a teacher. And then there are those who learn best about math from a discussion within a peer group!
If you look at our current teaching system, it tries to target all three learning styles to varying degrees.
Hearing stories about some wonder-kid in 7th grade who taught himself everything up to calculus in a single summer by reading on his own doesn't really help the discussion around setting national educational policy, because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier.
Writing is similar. Having an instructor guide students in areas to learn can be very valuable. Left to their own devices and being told to just write poems for a few hours a day for some length of time, I am betting most students wouldn't stumble upon haiku(s?) on their own!
because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier. //
One of the major problems as I see it is that pretty much all kids are outliers in some way but en masse education tends to ignore this and force uniformity to a great extent (much greater than necessary IMO).
Please, can you give more insight about the school, instead of this short info "No curriculum - 80% went to college". What happens to 20%, are they completely uneducated because they didn't want to learn? Do they past some official mandatory tests? How exactly do they learn, who teaches them? You mentioned no classes if not requested, maybe 90% of knowledge gaining happens on that requested classes? How often do students get expulsion? What happens if some student don't want to do anything or don't even show up in school?
I'll do my best to write more posts getting in to the specifics, but my observation so far is that none of the extreme possibilities happen. There are problems. There are expulsions. Not many, but they do happen. The students don't magically learn everything on their own, but they do seem to develop in to competent, thoughtful, curious adults on their own...
Thanks for interesting blog posts. Answers to those questions help to understand what's good or bad about that system. Or any educational system. It's interesting, do they develop into curiosity, or they had it from the beginning.
There's no silver bullet in education, it's very complex thing. And to disregard traditional system on any ground could be too hasty. I've attended two schools. Both traditional system, but second one (last 2 years of education) had good reputation and to get there you had to pass exams (not very hard though). 100% of my class got into college (not US). And much less people from my first school did. The main difference was all the students in my class got in that school specifically because they wanted to go to higher education (also good teachers :).
I think the main problem is that these days we tend to look at this as a purely quantitative matter, when it's largely a quality matter.
We largely abandoned the enlightenment ideas of a humanist education. One whose purposes it isn't to drill people into fulfilling norms, but that enables them to live fulfilled lives where they can express themselves and grow into the kind of educated citizen being able to judge on political matters beyond who you'd like to drink a beer with more.
8k is not nearly as unreasonable as you make it sound. 157/wk is the price of a decent-but-not-top-flight daycare that many two-income families would be used to paying for to begin with. Certainly the income will be more than the median, but not necessarily as much more as you'd think.
I also suspect (given others comments that it's a private school) that when they do have lessons, they have very small class sizes, making it far easier to learn/be taught.
The point of the post was not to claim that Sudbury Valley is for everyone or is better than other educational environments necessarily. It was more to observe that I'm surprised that people are not more curious about such a different environment. I would expect people to have more questions and want to learn more...
Comments
I am willing to bet that the parents of children at this school are educated (likely have college degrees) and have a strong focus on education.
Some students do well in structured environments, some do really well in unstructured environments, there is no one right solution for everybody.
Claiming that any one technique works for all demonstrates a lack of empathy for how others think and learn.
I know that for me, I received failing grades in the few classes I took that were unstructured. Heck the same applied for online classes. Trivial material, but lack of forced time to participate (e.g. go to a classroom and listen to a lecture) means I would just give up on the class and not do anything.
It's a private school. Tuition is 8k per year. This places the families and students who may attend in a specific socio-economic situation already.
So it would kind of be more meaningful to not compare to the national average but to private schools targeting the same socio-economic situations, but with a traditional curriculum.
The stats on other schools in MA with a similar socioeconomic average are around 70% - 90% going on to college: http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32
Again the point is not to show that Sudbury Valley is better, but rather just that the complete lack of curriculum is clearly not producing horrible results.
Thank you for this! 82% is right in the middle.
Children who have been raised to value learning will, in all likelihood, value learning. This is not a surprise!
I would also be curious to see the breakdown of what fields those students go into.
Some people are capable of self-learning in certain fields where as others are not. A great example of this is math, we all have heard stories (or know the person, or are the person!) of someone who can learn math on their own straight from a text book. Then there are others who learn best from an interactive discussion about math with a teacher. And then there are those who learn best about math from a discussion within a peer group!
If you look at our current teaching system, it tries to target all three learning styles to varying degrees.
Hearing stories about some wonder-kid in 7th grade who taught himself everything up to calculus in a single summer by reading on his own doesn't really help the discussion around setting national educational policy, because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier.
Writing is similar. Having an instructor guide students in areas to learn can be very valuable. Left to their own devices and being told to just write poems for a few hours a day for some length of time, I am betting most students wouldn't stumble upon haiku(s?) on their own!
One of the major problems as I see it is that pretty much all kids are outliers in some way but en masse education tends to ignore this and force uniformity to a great extent (much greater than necessary IMO).
Please, can you give more insight about the school, instead of this short info "No curriculum - 80% went to college". What happens to 20%, are they completely uneducated because they didn't want to learn? Do they past some official mandatory tests? How exactly do they learn, who teaches them? You mentioned no classes if not requested, maybe 90% of knowledge gaining happens on that requested classes? How often do students get expulsion? What happens if some student don't want to do anything or don't even show up in school?
Great questions. I've written a few more blog posts about my experience with the school:
http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/first-day-at-a...
http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/how-are-these-...
http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/is-socializing...
http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/chess-minecraf...
The founders of the school have also written a number of books: http://sudburypress.com/
I'll do my best to write more posts getting in to the specifics, but my observation so far is that none of the extreme possibilities happen. There are problems. There are expulsions. Not many, but they do happen. The students don't magically learn everything on their own, but they do seem to develop in to competent, thoughtful, curious adults on their own...
Thanks for interesting blog posts. Answers to those questions help to understand what's good or bad about that system. Or any educational system. It's interesting, do they develop into curiosity, or they had it from the beginning.
There's no silver bullet in education, it's very complex thing. And to disregard traditional system on any ground could be too hasty. I've attended two schools. Both traditional system, but second one (last 2 years of education) had good reputation and to get there you had to pass exams (not very hard though). 100% of my class got into college (not US). And much less people from my first school did. The main difference was all the students in my class got in that school specifically because they wanted to go to higher education (also good teachers :).
I think the main problem is that these days we tend to look at this as a purely quantitative matter, when it's largely a quality matter.
We largely abandoned the enlightenment ideas of a humanist education. One whose purposes it isn't to drill people into fulfilling norms, but that enables them to live fulfilled lives where they can express themselves and grow into the kind of educated citizen being able to judge on political matters beyond who you'd like to drink a beer with more.
In the United States, any student with money can find a college which will accept them.
8k is not nearly as unreasonable as you make it sound. 157/wk is the price of a decent-but-not-top-flight daycare that many two-income families would be used to paying for to begin with. Certainly the income will be more than the median, but not necessarily as much more as you'd think.
$8K/year is on the low end of what it costs the government to send a kid to a public school. In NY State and Washington DC, the cost exceeds $18K.[1]
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/21/155515613/how-much...
I also suspect (given others comments that it's a private school) that when they do have lessons, they have very small class sizes, making it far easier to learn/be taught.
The point of the post was not to claim that Sudbury Valley is for everyone or is better than other educational environments necessarily. It was more to observe that I'm surprised that people are not more curious about such a different environment. I would expect people to have more questions and want to learn more...