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The anarchic experimental schools of the 1970s (bbc.co.uk)
92 points by wldlyinaccurate on Oct 21, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 66 comments



One change I'd like to see in education is a wider use of competency-based education. In this approach, students earn their credit when they have mastered the material for a course, not just at the end of a semester.

This approach can be made to work for high-performing students, and low-performing students. Master the material in a course in half the traditional time? Earn your credit then. Need another month to master the material? Take that time, and earn your credit when you're competent in the material.

Most of us know the adage that "work expands to fill the time we are given to accomplish it". This is perhaps nowhere more true than in school. Take the time component out of learning assessment, and let people progress at their own pace. Most students are capable of working much more efficiently than they do, but there's no incentive to do so. In fact, there's a disincentive for most people; if you finish early, the teacher will probably just give you more work. Some good teachers motivate strong students to finish early so they can move on to more interesting work; I've heard far more stories of teachers who respond to early completion by just offering more of the same work.

If you're curious about this, a good place to start reading is on the Competency Works site:

http://www.competencyworks.org/resources/recommended-reading...


How is competency evaluated, though?

This whole approach relies on testing of some kind that can reliably measure competency in a subject area that also needs to be well-defined.

If we had that -- if the material that all students should learn could actually be built into the "correct" curriculum, and tests could be made that would measure if the student had mastered each level -- then that would be great.

Students could learn in class, or sensibly test out of entire grades at a time. Teachers could be paid (or fired) based on how well their students mastered the curriculum, and school's funding could be dependent on their students hitting certain percentages.

Unfortunately that underlying foundation isn't real; defining that curriculum means cutting up knowledge into odd shapes that don't match well to useful practical knowledge, or how most people learn. Being good at passing standardized tests mostly identifies students with good test-taking skills. Teachers who will be evaluated based on this sole, shitty measure at the end of the year are obliged to spend their time training students for the test, and have to cut out the field trips, explorations, experiments -- basically, all of the things that make inspiring teachers inspiring is no longer considered valuable.

Citations required, to be sure (I don't have the spare time to dig around now) -- but some of this is common sense.

If you set up a rewards system, you have to be really smart about what, exactly, you're rewarding.

The most valuable educational experiences are not generally found in drilling for a standardized test, I think; so setting up a system where that's the only thing rewarded is going to be unhelpful.


Whatever system is selected would measure competency at least as well as the current one, and almost certainly better. We already need to measure competence, we just mix that measurement with "an ability to learn at a specific rate". If you want to go faster or slower, you either have to self educate or fail and retry, respectively.

The modern educational system is already pushing the idea of a reverse classroom, where lectures are on your own time, and homework and questions are done in the classroom. Desynchronizing the exact progress through the material is much simpler in this sort of environment. (Of course, it is important not to totally screw those people who rely on the structure and rigour of a formal schedule, or the cooperation of classmates; it is easy to focus too much on averages and ignore outliers).

Personally, I prefer to on binges (spend 30+ hours in a few days on a single subject, then don't touch the subject for a few weeks). However, the educational system specifically discourages this, insisting that you you have deadlines, learn extensively within specific well-defined subjects, discuss things as a team, attend each lecture, and so on. If you fail to follow this structure, you fail, if you follow, you pass. If you cram for tests at the exact right time, you even get a good evaluation. It evaluates your ability to fit the system with high accuracy, and your competence with mediocre accuracy. Removing the unnecessary part of that would have to increase the overall accuracy, right?


You're absolutely right that you have to be careful about how you assess students' mastery of a subject. The fact that this does not seem easy isn't a good reason to shy away from it. A few ways that this can be dealt with:

- Many courses already have a final exam well-established. Some states are starting to require that students be given the option to test out of core courses, and one option is to let them take the final. This doesn't mean take the final as many times as you want until you pass; we can set reasonable limits on offering opportunities to test out.

- Portfolio-based assessment moves beyond just using standardized tests to assess competence.

At my school, we set up independent studies frequently for students whose educational history is often checkered. These students develop a set of skills and knowledge in their course of study, and then demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways. If you've set up the structures effectively, it's not overwhelming to individualize instruction for students who need it.

One student's story: I knew a student who passed Algebra 1 and failed French 1 in 8th grade. In 9th grade he was given Algebra 1, and he was placed in French 2. His school wouldn't switch his classes; he failed Algebra because he refused to do all the work over again for a class he had passed, and he failed French 2 because he was in over his head. We gave this student the chance to test out of some of his math credit, and placed him in otherwise appropriate classes.

When schools mess up, they often times have no idea how much that impacts individual students and their families.


I personally suspect "earn credit" is the problem here. It incentivizes not learning.

Gamification has never done any good for academia. The ones motivated by such things don't learn anyway, and the truly excellent students would have been just as good without them.

I'm not saying I have a better system on hold, just that a lot of energy is spent on doing obvious and wrong things.


I think you can narrow it down. Earning credit isn't bad necessarily, but if the primary way to earn credit is to sit in a class for an hour a day for 4.5 months, then we've probably disincentivized learning.

Credit can be a meaningful way to track an individual's learning, but earning credit should be more closely tied to what you've learned than how much time you've sat in a class.


Interesting. Can you link some evidence of gamification failing? I have only ever heard good things about it.


Read pretty much anything by Alfie Kohn.

The book he's best known for is http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Reward...


The barrier to implementing this would surely be teaching resources, how do you teach a class if all students are at different stages in the course material? You would need to have very small class sizes.


You are certainly correct in identifying one of the challenges to implementing this kind of model. But the reality is, that students in most classes are at different stages of understanding. We're just used to a model where everyone is expected to be at the same place all the time, and tend to bore the students who are "ahead" and frustrate the students who are "behind". There are other models, which address this issue of pacing and differentiation effectively.

Sorry to not give a more complete answer at the moment.


Why do we need classes, specifically? Can the problem they solve be solved in a different way?


Why do they always make these experimental child-driven schools for the "bad" children? The truants, and the misbehaved.

Why not try it for the "best" children? Those who have a real desire and ability to learn, but don't necessarily fit in in a regular school.

Provide classes, and let the child decide which to go to.

Give exams, but don't record the grade - just give it to the child so they know how they are doing.


Montessori is built specifically on these principles, and is widely adopted [citation needed ;-)] by parents of gifted kids who struggle with the grind of the regular school systems. (At least, in the western world).

Also, home schooling is growing in popularity in many progressive countries, largely to cater to child-led learning.


(Engrish ahead...)

I have great memories from a Montessori School I went to as a kid. Spent most of my childhood education there. It was a big house, each room was dedicated to a subject and students would change rooms, big shared tables and very few students per room. I also don't remember grades or at least no focus on it.

When I got to a normal school it was one big room packed with tiny individual chairs, all classes happened in that room, everything was easy, suddenly I was a "top student" and grades were a carrot to chase after. I didn't turned out exactly a Noam Chomsky but I find it funny he had this same experience while going from an alternative education to a traditional one.

I think he talks about it in this interview: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20130326.htm


The thinking is something like:

A bright kid with a decent social support system may not find a place in the schools, but will make a place forthemselves outside that system. A kid who is struggling to read at grade level, who comes from an impoverished and/or abusive social network - this kid may have two strikes against them before they show up at all, and warrants the extra effort to try and help lift themselves out of there circumstances.


Raise our averages and lower our standards. Great.


You're pretty far off the mark here.

Not that I necessarily endorse the approach either, but it comes from a social welfare perspective, nothing to do with raising averages. More to do with raising citizens, as it were.


I assume it's the (sometimes valid, sometimes false) assumption that many of the 'bad' children are actually too intelligent/talented and get bored because school moves too slowly for them. Admittedly, it is definitely the case for some children, but the majority of 'bad' ones are just too stupid/lazy instead.


I disagree. I was one of those kids who was singled out for special education because I was "too stupid/lazy"; but it just turned out I was really bored. I bet our imposed labels just adversely effect these kids until they "match our expectations" and are basically lost forever. In my case, it took until high school, or even college to "break out" of the label.


Definitely both types of "too stupid/lazy" exist, but your single data point doesn't say anything to whether you're the 1 in 100 or the 99.


Actually, kids are born with lots of potential that are basically wrung out of them as they "develop." The public education systems in most countries were designed to create obedient factory workers, after all.


A.S. Neill actually talked about that in a book. It’s the parents that mostly prefer traditional schools and only consider alternatives when something goes wrong with their kids.


Calling a person "bad" children is a label.

Have you seen the dog whisperer in witch Cesar Millan takes "bad"(behavior) dogs and make the good ones?

Well, with people it is the same. My mother was teacher an volunteered to help poor children in her spare time.

She made lots of bad children become "good" ones, even becoming brilliant engineers, doctors or teachers. Basically she become their mother and gave them lots of love and care(and time, lots of time).

It is personally very rewarding but also incredible extenuating.

Our family experience tells us the main reason a kid behaves bad is because she does not care.

Imagine that your parents are drugs addicts. There is no money on the house even for the basics because for a drug addict the only important thing is getting drugs. Your parents don't care about you. You know they don't love you, drugs really fuck your brain.

Imagine your mother is a whore that loves to sleep with lots of men. You have a new dad every two weeks.

Imagine you are sexually abused by your uncle, or your father comes drunk every day and hits you.

This happens a lot. The people that suffers this couldn't care less about math or the rivers in the world.

In the US they simply put this people in jail, where they learn from other prisoners and become more and more dangerous.US has the biggest(absolute and relative) incarceration rate in the world by far.

The first thing you have to do is create a "safe net" for those kids before they are interested in anything else.


The aim isn't a good education, it's a 100% graduation rate.


they did. I went to such a school (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hb_woodlawn). It was a public 'magnet' or 'charter before the concept of charter' school.

My class was 70 students. Although being in Arlington meant "solidly middle class", among some notables (modestly achieved, not super-famous) from my graduating class (1999) include: Stephen Ridley, who is CEO of xipiter, the company making USB condoms which have been featured here. Fabian Bouthillette, former assistant to Gore Vidal and author of "Gore Vidal's last stand" (http://www.amazon.com/Gore-Vidals-Last-Stand-Initiation-eboo...), Adam Berninger founder of a advertisement and design firm, and Naomi Uyama, world champion swing dancer and band-leader.

Steven and Naomi got to where they were without finishing (or in Naomi's case ever going to) college, which is funny since H-B always was proud of its college matriculation rate.

5 entrepreneurs out of 70 isn't that bad, I think! (I'm 90% of the way to being "modestly achieved")


Governments are not brave.

England has about 17,000 primary schools and about 4,000,000 primary school children. (ages 4 to 11). This group would be amazing for randomised controlled studies of teaching methods. But teachers hate being told how to teach[1]; parents would not like the idea that their child is getting the placaebo teaching method[2]; and governments are not brave enough to try it.


Wouldn't the control group get the current standard curriculum and teaching methods. You're not looking for changes wrt non-teaching, you're looking for changes compared to the current pedagogical form.

There's much to learn from non-school based education but I doubt most of it can be applied with the financial constraints we have [in the UK].

[I'm guessing you missed some links there.]


Comparing children in some new study against the general population of mainstream children is the general approach we use and it's fraught with problems.

The studies are often small sample sizes of children who are often opted-in by their parents and the teaching is done by better than average teachers with lots of support and involvement from the institution who designed the study or otherwise stands to gain from its successful outcome.

All that is generally revealed is that children whose parents are engaged in their education being taught by good teachers and that are aware they are in a 'special' group do better than average. Unsurprisingly the methods don't scale very well.


You know, the only time I've ever heard the term "brave" applied to a large group of people is when the group in question is an army.


Mostly because the existing system works out pretty well for the "best" children. True, they might not be taxed to their full extent, but they will still be top of their class and progress to university.

And, not to sound too cynical about it, the parents of the "best" children tend to be very involved in their children's education, and might resist an experiment.


I went through school always near the top, academically, but I wouldn't say I was well-served by the school system. My wife had much the same experience, though rather worse than mine; she very clearly remembers loving doing math with her older brothers when she was small, but schooling managed to replace that with almost a phobia of anything that looks like math.

Now we have small children, and they're obsessed with reading/writing, numbers, and creative play just like we were as kids -- so they're far ahead of their age group, generally -- but we've kept them out of school so far. We're trying to figure out a path for them through the available educational options, and we're strongly inclined towards more experimental approaches.


If I can evangelize for a sec, I went to a Sudbury[1] school and I would highly recommend it. It's a very free environment and, as someone who is fairly self-motivated, it was amazingly helpful for me. There aren't a ton of locations, but if there's one near you, I'd recommend at least checking it out.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school


International schools are good, I hear. I mean, they're conventional, but they usually attract smarter student/parents. International baccalaureate is more high school, but I wish I had taken it.


Thanks for mentioning that -- we're familiar with the international baccalaureate; my wife went to the United World College in New Mexico.

It was completely different from her educational experience before that (not unstructured, but still... much more open-minded about education, and smart about guiding students to think about their place in the world) and the experience had a huge positive effect on her life; we are in touch (and in some cases, close friends) with a startling high percentage of her classmates there, and we've met up with (and often been hosted by) UWC classmates in Austria, Netherlands, India, Australia, France, Malaysia, and various parts of the US (and probably some other places I'm forgetting at the moment...). And despite being quite a diverse group, they're generally pretty interesting people to talk to.

I didn't even know such options existed when I was in HS; and probably would have thought it wasn't for me, at that age. But looking back now, I wish I'd gone as well.


Many of the smartest and most successful people I know were not well served by the traditional school system. For myself I only began to do well in school when I somehow managed to acquire the maturity, at 13, to realize that I needed to take education seriously and make use of the system. I went from being in several remedial classes in my freshman year of high school to near the top of my class at graduation and attaining a bachelor's degree at age 20. But it was a very close thing, and I've seen others with great intelligence who struggled in school.

And, to be frank, much of what I learned, at least half, while attending public school I learned on my own, independent of classes. But again, I was fortunate. Fortunate to still have faith in the system. Fortunate to have gone to a very high quality high school where I actually could get a decent education and where most of the teachers and faculty put education as their top priority (this is not necessarily the norm). Fortunate to have a home life that encouraged and facilitated reading and learning, as well as acquisition of reading materials. Fortunate that I had acquired maturity ahead of most folks at that age at a time when it was critical. Fortunate that I had not fallen in with "the wrong crowd" of people and ended up dropping out of school or getting into drugs or petty crime or what-have-you.

A lot of kids, smart kids, are not as lucky as I was. And if anything the system is even worse today. Teenagers' lives are more regimented, there's more busywork, there's less trust, the academic bureaucracy is more onerous, it's harder to escape peer pressure due to the ubiquity of social media, and so on.


I'm not sure you can say that. And especially not of the schools of the 1970s and 1980s.

A lot of academically minded children would have been very poorly served by those schools. People getting to university would have been the children of upper and middle class parents who had money to afford private schooling or tuition or coaching to get into good grammar schools.


I think they are using a recursive definition of "best" to mean those who succeed under the current system whereas the original question posted seems to be defining "best" as the misfits who fail in the current system despite (or indeed because of) their aptitude.


"Odd thing it is—the word ‘experiment’ is unpopular, but not the word ‘experimental.’ You mustn’t experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school ... and it’s all correct!"

-- C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945


A few weeks ago I painted a mural with the students at the Albany Free School in upstate NY. The school was founded in the late 60s, with a setup that is similar to what is described in this article.

I found that the students interacted with me and the project in the way I'd expect confident adults to do. They had a self-possession that I have almost never experienced in children, and rarely find in adults. A curriculum primarily centered around freedom had given them the opportunity to learn to listen to and trust their own internal narrative.

After spending a number of days working with them I was convinced that all people, children and adults, need freedom of choice in their lives. Not because of the products that come out of it, but because of the people that emerge from it.


In "The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974), there is an interesting discussion about the idea that removing university grades would provide a better education.

"[A student at a grade-less school would] be a free man. He wouldnt need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and theyd better come up with it.

Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldnt stop with rote engineering information."


Isn't this basically what auditing classes does? It's often free as well.


Yes, but at the potential expense of grade-bearing classes, and because grades seem to be important, grade-bearing classes tend to take a higher priority than interesting non-grade bearing ones.

At university, I audited several modules, and there were many that I wanted to attend, but couldn't, either due to timetabling clashes with the classes I was supposed to attend, or because the process for attending classes in disciplines entirely unrelated to my subject was prohibitive.

When the workload expected of me grew too great, I reduced my participation or dropped out of my audited classes.

With the removal of grades (and compulsory modules) entirely, I might have dropped some of my graded modules in favour of others.


Its the inevitable result of grade inflation.


This is about the UK. There is apparently something like it in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School


Last year, we visited and considered the Subbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts (the original one). A friend's daughter goes there. What we learned is that there has been a shift in philosophy over the years. There used to be a role for adults as facilitators: they suggested activities that they thought the children would like and benefit from, and they helped bring them about. These days, there is a deep distrust of any idea coming from an adult. Even a suggestion is seen as compulsion. When children show interest in academic pursuits, it is often assumed that the parents have set them up to it. That is also seen as compulsion, and the activity is discouraged. As a result, the school is full of art and music, but the chemistry lab that was once there is gone, and the library is stale.

Instead, we ended up sending our daughter to Macomber Center for Self-Directed Learning, also in Framingham. It was started a couple of years ago as a response to what had happened at Sudbury Valley, and has kept the active role of the adults.


Interesting. Not that I have anything against art or music, but you outlined some of my initial fears of checking out a Sudbury-type school. Still, I'll look into my local chapter. Thank you for the anecdote.


Thank you for this comment, it probably changed my life.


Well, thanks—but how? You're close to 5000 miles away, right?


Hmm. One about 45 minutes away from my house. I have a 3 year old son and I am deeply troubled with the ideas of where to send him for school. I may look into this, thank you.


As someone who went to a Sudbury school as a child, I highly recommend at least giving it a look.


I will. It looks like my local chapter has been very successful and has had to move three times to larger accommodations. I have read their list of rules and it definitely reads as though children voted for them, but they are very sensible. I look forward to visiting next year!


Do you mind if I ask where you're from? That sounds like the one I went to. Also, my email is on my profile if you have any questions.


I'd prefer not to disclose publicly, but your email is not actually in your profile. You can email my throwaway, mike.anon at hotmail dot com.


There is a really good book that came out last year called Free to Learn [1]. The Sudbury Valley School model comes up frequently in the book. If it's something you're interested in, definitely check it out.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Re...


We have a similar school in Portland, http://villagefreeschool.org/ -- I hope to check it out when my kids are a little older. However, I would prefer to find a free-style school specifically for gifted children.


At least one school--The Highland School in West Virginia--also boards students. So Summerhill is not the "only boarding school of its type in the world."


I went to one (not the one in MA, but one of the bigger ones) as a child and I highly recommend the model.


Is it freedom when I can't make an informed decision on what to do with my life?

Is it freedom when I inherit the values of those who teach me, making them the foundation of my (sub-conscious) thinking?


This is just a news article, with no real details. If we investigate the relevant lit, we might see explorations and experiments regarding what levels of guidance assist children best.

As for pedagogy, a good one can support children in thinking for themselves, with the support of teachers who no doubt think differently than the child.

Clearly better than the craven child abuse (caning) that normal school administrators believed in.


Is it an intelligent post when it's arguing semantics vapidly?


Summerhill: a Radical Approach to Child Rearing is an awesome book and explains how a free school works and why. The Summerhill school has been around for decades and is successful, and probably inspired all of the schools discussed in the article (the book was published in 1960). It optimizes for pyschology --- not pedagogy. This is why it is free: freedom but not license, which to Americans, would be better stated as: an environment without submission and without domination (so, as opposed to an anarchic school, teachers are not submitting to arbitrary demands of children). A healthy degree of assertion develops in this environment. I've seen Sudbury graduates describe this type of school as a generator of entrepreneurs --- they start businesses afterwards and become successful (although from the Summerhill point of view, success is having a happy and flourishing life). I've found many papers across the years, while researching this topic, that, added together, support the idea that learning is affective and pyschology should be an organizing principle of the school.


Yes, the article discusses and describes Summerhill, and mentions that it inspired the school that's the main focus of the first part of the article:

> There is really just one genuine free school left. Summerhill is a boarding school in Suffolk that inspired Ord to set up Scotland Road.


We weren't quite as experimental, but my high school was built around an "open" plan where there were no walls between classrooms (except the noisy or smelly classes like wood shop or chemistry.) Classes would have a designated space to bunch their desks around the teacher's desk and a free-standing chalkboard. The system was supposed to allow students to overhear lectures from neighboring classes and teachers to team up or answer questions for each other.

It was a fairly miserable failure. Unless your teacher was really loud it was too hard to hear lectures. It was too hard to concentrate during tests and too easy for one disruptive class to ruin six other classes. (On a minor note, most teachers really hated only having one chalkboard instead of a whole wall.) By the time I got there (twenty years after the school opened), there were temporary walls everywhere and the school had mostly switched back to a traditional layout.


Based on the terms and phrases used, I might consider using another term to describe these experimental schools instead of anarchic.


Off topic, but did anyone else notice that the BBC's video player's audio control goes to eleven?


I mean, if you are making an arbitrary numeric scale, might as well make it rock.




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