

The school that hates rules - Thevet
https://medium.com/bright/meet-the-school-that-hates-rules-d55fca40d28

======
com2kid
To believe that one can compete with the psychologists who design addictive
behaviors into today's modern day entertainment is not a bet I would take.

Heck even back when I was in school, I barely did any homework or studied at
all, I lived to go home and play video games every day. I was able to skim
through because traditional school had such low expectations, but without
proper studying I did not learn any of the material that I tested so well on.
As a result I had to retake a lot of courses when I got to college.

A much more authoritarian environment in school would have been good for me.
Two periods free of distraction dedicated to studying (perhaps spread
throughout the day) would have resulted in my learning a lot more.

One saving grace might be if the majority of students who go to these schools
have parents who expect excellence. In that case peer pressure will force many
students to take the same lessons that other students are. I suspect that so
long as the school sizes stay small that it will be possible for such forces
to dominate.

Running a 2000+ student public school within the context of a community that
has little expectations of academic achievement? Good luck graduating students
who are even literate. (One can observe low literacy rates highly economically
depressed areas already!)

More fundamentally, sites/services like Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram,
etc, all directly tweak the pleasure center of our brain. By design users will
_not_ get bored of them. Yeah yeah half the users on HN will get bored of
Snapchat/Facebook/Instagram, congrats, we aren't neurotypical, I don't get a
spark of pleasure looking at pictures of people on some social network, but I
sure as heck know others who can literally spend hours just browsing photo
streams.

TIL on Reddit however? Or heck just HN itself? Yup, very addictive. Learning
new factoids feels good.

~~~
syllogism
> the psychologists who design addictive behaviors into today's modern day
> entertainment

Most of them are "designed" by the market, not psychologists — addictiveness
is a selectional pressure.

But yes, that part stood out to me too. "Kids will get bored and start
learning". Says who? What if they don't?

~~~
michaelt

      Most of them are "designed" by the market, not 
      psychologists — addictiveness is a selectional pressure.
    

If a car is reliable, is it because of the highly paid expert engineers who
improve the design; or the multi-billion-dollar company that hires those
engineers; or the free market competition that discourages unreliability?

I'd say the answer is "all of them, but in different ways"

~~~
brc
The free market is the biggest driver in this case. We know this to be true
because cars designed by companies who have lost their way and don't car
anymore are typically poor. And cars designed as national projects are
typically terrible. The engineers do the work, but it's the fussy and fickle
customers who are their ever present, unrelenting boss.

~~~
kweinber
The free market also prefers awful and addictive things like Mcdonalds,
cigarettes, and Facebook. When personal profit and easy gratification are the
main drivers of a system then don't solely expect good things to pop out...
good AND bad things arise.

------
rubberbandage
Most of my entire K–12 education was with a “Sudbury Model” school, The Red
Cedar School in Vermont, of which my mother was a founding member. I grew up
steeped in the intense and (frequently) heated discussions of educational
practices, child development, roles of staff members, and constant
explanations of the school’s philosophy to everyone that asked what grade I
was in (there are no grades). I always love seeing these articles reach wider
audiences—the schooling I had was very, very rare!

The title grated on me a little—this, like most news articles about Sudbury
Schools, ledes with some vague anti-authority/anarchy line. The only “rule”
that the school might be considered hating is in the imperial sense (namely,
the US education model that remains largely unchanged since the industrial
revolution), but as to rules within the school, there are hundreds—all brought
before committee, voted on, and enforced by students and staff alike, as in
any full democracy.

The depth of writing and research on this model of education and its successes
(or failures) for students are way way too broad for this margin to contain.
If you’re interested in some further reading, there’s a number of publications
from former students and founders at
[http://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org](http://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org) , and
a pretty good TL;DR on Wikipedia at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School)
(check out the brevity of those sections!)

~~~
Someone1234
I have two questions for you if I may?

How hard was the transition out of a Sudbury school for you? Since you only
did K-12 at one, presumably you went to a "traditional" High School, College,
and then got a job. So how hard was moving from that "no grades, your pace,
you decide how you learn!" type environment to one with formal classes,
grades, and so on. Both culturally but also do you feel you knew as much as
the other kids when taking a class?

My second question is: Would you send your kids to a Sudbury school?

~~~
rubberbandage
Hi Someone1234!

Happy to answer, and sorry for the long-delayed reply, hope you still see this
and it’s not too wall-of-text-y.

A slight misconception/communication here; I actually attended Red Cedar
School from age 5 to 18 (when I graduated), so I never attended a standard
public school. From age 16–18, I spent half the school day at an offshoot of a
public high school, studying movie post-production, but that was also
relatively radical in both its trust of students to be independent learners
and its lack of formal classroom setting. The difficulties I had with the
pseudo-public film school were primarily with recognizing and respecting
hierarchy and the student-teacher relationship. I talked with the school
director/principal, the class instructor, and the students all equally as
peers, and I critiqued curriculum, challenged teachers to back up their
statements, and had little patience for students that screwed around or
disregarded rules. Because of this I was often labeled (sometimes formally) as
arrogant or standoffish to teachers, and aloof or condescending with my actual
peers. I really took it to heart to learn and improve from this though, and I
adjusted in about a year. I’m also very glad for that experience—understanding
the structure of power and chain of command as part of nearly everything in
society is pretty crucial to success, and that is one thing I just wasn’t
exposed to in the fully democratic, completely equal-opportunity model of
Sudbury schools.

As to “knowing as much as the other kids in a class”, I go into every class
expecting we’ll all have the same pre-requisite knowledge for the subject, and
if I know less than that, I study until I learn what I need (or more), so
that’s never felt like an issue to me. Culturally though, I’m definitely the
odd one out—just like a public school student in Vermont wouldn’t know about
hardships of building a Spanish Mission model in school (as apparently every
student does in California), there’s a core set of curriculums presented in
public schools that bond public students together from across the US, and I
have no knowledge of it. That can certainly be isolating—I’ve never had 1st-
period gym (or any mandatory PE at all, we were outside when we wanted to be),
never had notes passed in class, never been in detention, etc. and so I can’t
participate in a huge part of most people’s common experience growing up. On
the other hand, talking about junior high doesn’t happen much in your thirties
anyway, so that’s not really an issue for me anymore :-)

Post high school: Like many students in Sudbury-Model schools, I took the
SAT’s after studying for them intensely for several months, and I scored about
as well as a traditional-curriculum student—much better than average in
reading/writing/language, slightly worse than average in math/geometry. As my
first real standardized test though, I was left fairly disgusted by the
experience as proxy for college-worthiness, since every multiple-choice
question was simply “confuse the test-taker into choosing the wrong answer”,
and easily guessed by understanding the psychological tricks behind the test
construction, even for supposedly difficult math problems. I ultimately ended
up not going to college—the cost/benefit didn’t make sense for what I wanted
to do—so instead I moved to the SF Bay Area when I was 19 to work on
films—managing finances, meeting with clients, working with deadlines—I had no
problem with any of that (though I was really poor… movie production is not a
money-making market).

Now, I’ve worked at Apple for over 10 years, and the only difference between
my colleagues and me is my tendency to still flatten the level of managers and
direct reports, but fortunately the culture there leans heavily toward shallow
hierarchy and candid discussion anyway. I’ve never once felt hindered or at a
disadvantage for having gone to such a radical antithesis of the entire public
school system.

Would I send my kid to a Sudbury School? Yes, definitely, if the student body
was rich enough (numbers and diversity of students, not wealth of course), and
if my kid clearly enjoyed it there. The school by its nature forces you to be
introspective and consider your own needs, and some students do ultimately
decide they need a different environment. It’s not a perfect fit for everyone
as a start-to-end school, though for me the entire experience was ideal.

------
jvvlimme
I've read extensively about the Sudbury model and education in general when I
wanted to find out why I didn't fare well in the classical educational system
although I am of above average intelligence.

While I don't think the Sudbury model is generally applicable (they have had
their share of failed schools), it contains a lot more postives than classical
education.

The classical education system is the way it is for organisational reasons,
not for any pedagogic reason:

* There is sufficient scientific research that proves that teacher based education is highly inefficient.

* The age based grouping of children is just plain stupid and has no merit whatsoever. A better way to group them, if you must group them, is on skill level. Grouping children of different ages has advantages for all of them: the younger ones get an attainable role model, the older ones learn a sense of responsibility.

* Sitting still and being required to concentrate for an hour is something you cannot ask a child to do, especially the younger ones. They should be allowed to play and explore. They will learn a lot more than what a teacher can offer.

* It’s a fantasy to believe that you learn much in school. The only thing you learn is to game the system: You learn to remember something long enough for a test or exam, and afterwards, you forget most.

And I could go on and on about it.

~~~
rjaco31
Those seem to be very fair points, but you didn't care to elaborate what are
the implied negatives of the Sudbury system in your opinion?

------
yonibot
This article reads like an almost verbatim regurgitation of A. S. Neill's
points in Summerhill, his excellent book on the school that he built and the
"free school" system that he pioneered.

Neill's belief in the inherent goodness of children and the power of freedom
on their development resonated strongly with me. However, Summerhill was a
unique book written by an eloquent man - almost a statement of philosophy,
rather than a well-researched manual. Which is fine for a pioneer.
Unfortunately this article does not add anything to the subject, and is really
just a reiteration of arguments made half a century ago (without even quoting
the original title).

------
charlesholbrow
Wow, my school on Hacker News.

I went to Sudbury Valley School from when I was 13-18. The school is not
without its problems, but I'm really grateful I got to go. For me it was an
opportunity to focus on the important things -- communication, identity,
relationships, sexuality -- The things that a more traditional education is
likely to try to distract you from.

It was difficult to make the transition back in to the traditional education
system, but I'm finishing my Master's and I'm about to start my PhD (Both at
MIT) so it can totally be done!

~~~
jostylr
Can you elaborate on what you found difficult as you went to college? How long
did it take you to be comfortable with it?

And what did you end up studying?

~~~
charlesholbrow
It was basically the Math that was difficult -- Like most SVS students I
didn't spend time on academic subjects. So I was 5 years behind when I started
the college application process. I spent a year at community college to learn
most of the basics that I had missed. I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able
to get into a college, or find a half decent job that I worked REALLY hard to
catch up.

My undergrad degree was in Music/Sound Technology, but the Music Program at
UMass Lowell where I went is quite technical, and actually prepared me pretty
well for the job market (unlike most Undergrad Music Programs IMO). I spent ~
5 years working in video games, research, and web development before starting
at the MIT Media Lab where I am now. I really like to code, so I've been doing
that the entire time.

How long did it take for me to feel comfortable? Still hasn't happened. I have
gotten more comfortable with being uncomfortable though :P

------
geden
Ok so this is basically the Summerhill school model. If I could chip in with a
data point and my own point of view for the doubters... I visited Summerhill
and spent a day there and attended one of their famous Meetings. I experienced
it as an incredibly special place.

The children I observed at Summerhill seemed to possess a remarkable clear and
calm confidence way beyond their years. It was not a subtle thing. It affected
how they moved and sat as well as how they expressed themselves verbally. I
came to the conclusion that this was the result of feeling in control of their
lives, having their own voice valued and being able to make their own mistakes
in a safe environment.

With self confidence anything is achievable. Self motivated learning is many
times more potent than that imposed upon you.

So the kids there that want to be rocket scientists study what they need to
become rocket scientists. The ones that want to be carpenters study what they
need to become carpenters. No more and no less study than necessary to persue
their self determined destiny.

I found that highly disconcerting at first. As someone who identified with
high academic achievement, the idea that you would voluntarily not want to
achieve A grades in all subjects seemed crazy. It was an unsettling moment
when I walked away realising that I was the crazy one and had been suckered
into the needlessly competitive system of academic achievement that succeeds
by satisfying its own internal logic and dismissing other approaches.

Left to their own devices and free of rules imposed on them, as opposed to
those self determined, these humans decide that their own time should be
mostly filled with... play and just enough study to fulfil what they feel
drawn to as a purpose in life.

Being given the time and space and quiet to be able to see what your purpose
in life is is the greatest gift that any school can bestow on a child. Because
when you have purpose, everything else falls into line behind it.

A further note. These Meetings are not just pupils councils guided by adults -
they are raw democracy. It's also where a lot of the learning happens I
believe, which is probably why they form such a central part of the school.
They teach rhetoric in the most hands on way imaginable. They teach morals.
They teach you how to relate socially. And things like public speaking
naturally fall out of the meeting process too.

When it's easier to self teach than ever before I feel we need more schools
like Summerhill and the poster's. Schools that allow us to read the 'what it
is to be human' manual rather than the increasingly painfully outmoded systems
we inherited from Victorians.

~~~
cage433
I sent my three children to Summerhill - the youngest is still there. I think
your impressions were correct - I certainly consider it to have been a great
success. One of the kids was of an academic bent, she studied hard and now
seems happily set on an academic career. The other two boys are obsessed with
music, and got/are getting the minimum number of qualifications to allow them
to go to music college. That seems to be a common pattern at the school - kids
figure out what they want to do, the qualifications needed (if any) and get
them. Of course, being teenagers, they're perfectly capable of screwing up -
but I think, if anything, putting responsibility for their lives in their own
hands makes that _less_ likely, rather than more.

One other data point I have concerns bullying. On my first visit we attended
one of the meetings where there was a case about some young boys, around 12,
who had been picking on one of the kids. On older boy, maybe 14/15 at the
time, tore into them. His outrage was something to behold. I remember thinking
that if I was 12, and a teacher had disciplined me for bullying, my attitude
would have been 'yeah whatever' \- but to have an older boy do the same would
certainly have had an effect.

I'm lucky to have been able to afford this - if I couldn't I'd probably opt
for unschooling,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling).
Having had experience of democratic education, I now view mainstream schools
as as somewhat bizarre, unpleasant institutions, and certainly wouldn't want
to send my kids to one.

~~~
geden
Thank you for sharing that. Could I ask how you and your children cope with
the boarding aspect of Summerhill. This was something my wife and I
fundamentally disagreed on. (Un)Fortunately the cost of Summerhill made this a
moot point.

The unschooling link looks helpful.

My three children all go to highly regarded UK state schools which are
frustratingly conservative, inflexible and very focused on teaching for tests
rather than life.

However breaking out and homeschooling seems wildly risky and frankly not
possible without me abandoning my business.

Moreover I think that education should be a social and collective action so am
pulled in both directions.

I'd love to see people with influence and funds (pg!) apply themselves more in
this area. I'd be willing to throw myself behind that.

There's a keen and pressing need for humans to grow up happier, more self and
environmentally aware and I doubt the current dominant educational paradigms
and systems are going to provide this.

Automated systems are replacing 'rote' jobs at increasing speed, so
educational systems that cater for developing creativity (Summerhill, Steiner
etc) are likely to have an increasing economic advantage.

~~~
cage433
The boarding aspect was what held us back from sending them there earlier -
that was a mistake I now regret.

TBH I don't think daily contact with parents is _that_ important to children,
certainly not mine, as long as they're in a happy environment.

------
fibbery
When I read things like this, I have to wonder how much socioeconomic statics
affects the outcome. They do acknowledge at the end of the article that this
is a private school, and that they intend to bring more lower income children
into the school under scholarships. But this model seems to require children
who are already above average in intelligence, drive, emotional adjustment,
etc. so the disadvantaged students who make it in will already be exceptions.

I would be interested in whether this environment would be better or worse for
a typical public school student (after a period of adjustment).

------
DavidSJ
Sudbury Valley has rules, as the article text even acknowledges. The
difference is that the rules are designed to protect the rights of members of
the community, not to tell students how to spend their day.

Source: I went there.

~~~
OmarIsmail
How did you like it? Would you send your own children there (if you have/had
kids)?

~~~
DavidSJ
I only went at the age of 15, after dropping out of high school as a birthday
present to myself and discovering the book Summerhill (about a similar school
in England).

It was probably the happiest time of my life, because it was the first time my
school wasn't a prison and I had the freedom to pursue my curiosity. And I
went to "good" schools before then.

Where my kids go, when I have some, is their choice, but I'd certainly
recommend something like this.

------
KedarMhaswade
We have previously discussed something similar
[here]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631)).
The book, Free to Learn, by Peter Gray discusses the promise of democratic
schools with a historical and social perspective. He even calls the Sudbury
Valley schools "America's best kept secret".

I attended the open house of the closest (around 50 miles from where I live in
CA!) local Sudbury Valley School (called Diablo Valley School, DVS) a few
months ago. We, of course, went there with the kids. After coming back home, I
asked the kids which school they would rather attend -- their present school
or this one and they had no doubt in their mind that they wanted to attend the
DVS.

But for some reason, I am not able to make the switch to the idea that the
democratic schools are the way to go, although Dan Greenberg (the founder of
SVS, back in 1968 in Framingham, MA) has been running this 'experiment' for
past 46 years. Maybe, as a parent, I feel overly responsible for my kids and
insist that I know more about them than they do. And we know, as Kahneman
(Thinking fast and slow) and others have repeated shown, how little we know.
It's a sad impasse.

------
Mimu
This is interesting but the end of the article is weird to me.

They expell every student that does not fit, so obviously their "idea" work. I
mean if you remove every data that show failure, any idea will work.

If anything it shows that every student is different and we probably can't
find a single way to teach every one of them, which is again obvious and I
believe well known by everyone, including the ones in charge of education /
instruction (not sure wich word is right).

~~~
jostylr
Nothing is a panacea. There will always be those who have trouble with
whatever your approach is. The reason for expulsion is generally violence. We
bent over backwards with one kid, but he was violent and neither he nor his
parents showed any understanding that violence was a bad thing.

Often the issue is actually with the parents. There are parents who simply
think that violence and lying are okay for kids. And their influence will
always dominate.

The model for us seems to fit 95% of kids that come in.

------
johladam
I'm interested in finding out how voting on rules and regulations does not
cause passive-agressive behavior or jealousy. It appears, based on this brief
article, that the school itself is basically a long-term babysitting service.
I don't know many parents who would be able to spend $11,000 a year on
schooling for their child, though it appears the school itself is targeted at
those who don't want the teacher to make their child do any real work. Is the
school not held to the same state-mandated curriculum as public schools? I
could imagine that, as a student, I would never have accomplished anything
within that environment.

~~~
ghufran_syed
Is there any evidence that 'voting on rules and regulations' does in fact
'cause passive-aggressive behavior or jealousy'? If not, why would you assume
so?

~~~
johladam
My assumption is that these students blame the others if things did not go as
they had planned. For instance, the losing party in a vote would become
aggressive towards the other and attempt to sabotage their projects. If you
have never worked in a group where the people who do not get their way
sabotage the group as a whole, I would consider you very lucky.

~~~
jostylr
In the Sudbury School I work at, this does not happen. Occasionally there can
be anger, but people get over it fairly quickly. It is not considered about
winning or losing. It is a completely different frame of mind.

------
alexland
Am I old school for thinking that giving kids complete freedom isn't the best
way to do things? I like a lot of the ideas being used at these schools, but
as a kid I definitely didn't know what I wanted to do or learn most of the
time, and having some guidance to show me different subjects was a huge help
in nurturing curiosity and passion for them.

Even now I prefer having someone with some experience helping me along when I
learn a new skill/tool/language, so I can ask dumb questions and learn more
efficiently.

~~~
spc476
Not "old school" but you have a different learning style than I do, as I
prefer to puzzle things out on my own.

It took me to my 30s to realize that not everyone wants to learn on their own
(or are capable of doing so), even if I still don't understand why they can't
learn on their own (the pivotal moment was when a friend complained she didn't
know how to use Microsoft Word and wanted to take a class. I asked her why she
couldn't just start using Word. I mean, it _has_ a help system, there _are_
books on using it. What's with the class? But that's her and her learning
style. Like I said, I still don't quite grok it).

~~~
jostylr
I wish we could do counterfactual analysis. I would love to see if it was
traditional education that led people to requiring a class to learn or if it
is intrinsic.

As a species, we certainly have strong mentoring needs for learning mastery.
But that is quite different from requiring a class.

------
basseq
Meanwhile, in the DC Metro Area, parents are being charged with neglect for
letting their 6- and 10-year old children walk home alone.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-
coupl...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-
free-range-kids-but-not-all-
do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html)

------
jostylr
It is said elsewhere, but the title is very objectionable. If anything,
Sudbury schools care more about rules because they are meaningful rules that
are created by the community to keep the community functioning smoothly.

One can say it is a school that hates top-down authority and their rules, but
not rules in and of themselves. How would that even make sense for a democracy
to hate the laws they themselves make?

------
protonfish
The most interesting thing about Sudbury schools to me is not about finding
better techniques for teaching but as a sort of control to test the question
"Are current educational techniques better than letting the kids do whatever
they want?"

If traditional schools were effective, one would expect significant evidence
of this when compared to Sudbury schools. That evidence clearly does not
exist.

------
m-i-l
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486324)
about similar schools in the UK in the 1970s. I believe the only one left in
the UK is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School)
(founded in 1921).

------
Lancey
I think that having a student operated discipline system might be getting
dangerously close to the same groupthink cultures we see online, even on HN.
Ultimately I think that while a unified community like this has its place, it
tends to push people towards agreeing with the group for sake of social
acceptance rather than what's actually good for the community.

~~~
jostylr
I work at a Sudbury School and my experience does not support this. My take on
this is that we have a community rooted in a fundamental acceptance of people
that tolerates disagreements. Different attitudes and views are welcomed. Thus
groupthink is generally avoided. We often have split votes in the voting
process and no one ever shuns someone for how they vote on an issue. Actually,
no one really shuns anyone though, of course, they are not all friends.

------
fiatjaf
"Democratic", really? How would you define "democracy"?

"Free" is not a synonym of "democratic", it's quite the contrary.

------
madengr
My 7 yo would play minecraft all day

~~~
jostylr
Probably. But the kid would socialize while doing so, learn the skills of
mastery, and basically learn how to manage their time in a fulfilling way.
Kids at Sudbury schools often do spend a great deal of time on the computers,
but that is rarely, if ever, the only thing they do. What they are learning to
do is how to incorporate computers into daily life, mastering the machine.

~~~
madengr
Probably true. I spent hours at a time on my C64, so I don't see my progeny
being any different.

------
platz
prior art: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/brooklyn-free-
schoo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/brooklyn-free-school-
_n_2214263.html)

