Tag: free school

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The Freedom Academy (Part 1)

The Freedom Academy is my vision of what an educational center ought to be. 

It is not a school — certainly not as we traditionally understand schools. Mention the word “school” and what comes to mind are classrooms, lessons, homework, quizzes, exams, recitation, grades, curriculum, teachers, uniforms, requirements and class schedules. Most of these are thrust on kids who have almost no say on the matter and have little choice but to comply.

A kid can’t say, for example, “I don’t feel like doing Math today. Can I skip Math for today? Can I skip Math for a week?” or “I don’t like my teacher. Can I have another teacher? Can I just watch Youtube instead? I understand the guy there more than our teacher” or “I don’t like all these subjects. I want to learn how to fix things around the house like fixing a leaky faucet or a squeaky door. Can I learn those instead?”

In school, students have to do as they’re told, and perform tasks as required of them, and they are judged, graded and labeled based on how they perform. It doesn’t matter if they like it or not, if it is important to them or not, if they’re interested in it or not. What’s worse is they are expected to master these tasks at more or less the same timeframe. Too bad if a kid can’t figure out how to add and subtract polynomials in 3 days, the teacher has to move on to multiplication and division, and the kid will just have to struggle to catch up. Some just give up.

And so kids get tired of school, and because learning is so often associated with school, they get tired of that too.

Now that’s a shame, because people, especially as children, have that inner curiosity, that burning desire to learn things. It’s a shame that school kills that desire. Don’t believe me? Ask kids if they’re excited to go to school, especially those who are just beginning — you’ll get a lot of nods, “yes’s” and smiles. Of course, it’s a new experience for them.

Now, ask any teenager if they’re still excited to go to school. You’ll be lucky to get 1 yes out of 10, or maybe 1 out of 100.

The Freedom Academy is not a school, but I envision it to be a center of vibrant learning. There will be no classrooms — or rather, anywhere is a classroom. There will be no teachers — or rather, anyone can be a teacher, whether an adult or a fellow student. There are no imposed schedules or subjects, no curriculum except what the student wants for himself or herself. There are no quizzes, exams, homework or grades except if the students ask for them, maybe to measure their own understanding.

The Freedom Academy is so named because we believe the cornerstone of learning is freedom. A child who is forced to learn will only learn enough to to satisfy the teacher or the parent. Learning is a chore, done only for compliance, and whatever they learn may be easily forgotten after the exam. But a child who learns out of their own free will, out of their own interest and volition, will retain that knowledge and will even delve deeper into it on their own without any prodding or coercion.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.

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Visiting Sudbury Valley School (Part 3)

“Don’t do it,” said Mimsy.

Mimsy Sadofsky is one of the pioneers of Sudbury Valley School (SVS). Apart from Dan and Hanna Greenberg, she is one of the school’s longest-serving staff since it opened in 1968. All her three children graduated from the school.

She said those three words as her advice on our desire to open a Sudbury school here in Davao.

“Don’t do it,” she repeated, when I chuckled the first time. “I’m serious,” she said. “Move here, send your kids here.”

Then we talked about the never-ending challenges of starting and running this type of school. You literally get bombarded from everywhere — government, other schools, even parents. She knew the pain, and wanted to spare us or prepare us for it.

Society has a hard time wrapping its head around the idea that there can be any other type of “education” than the “standard” model. Many people have become successful despite not going through the school system or dropping out of it. In fact, some of the most recognizable names in the world were once dropouts – Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, Tom Hanks, Coco Chanel, Al Pacino, Jim Carrey, Ralph Lauren, and so on.

I’m sure you know someone who didn’t do well in school but are at the top of their game in their business or profession. The person who has the reputation as the best doctor in your community may not have topped the board or graduated with honors. I know several successful businessmen who admit to just copying from their classmates or who were troublemakers.

Even my own father did not finish high school. His schooling was interrupted by World War 2, but his education went on as he learned how to fight and struggle for survival — building a pharmacy business that started from a box of medicines he and his brothers carted to the public market every day.

When he was still alive and active in the business, he was often mistaken for a doctor because he could tell you, from memory, what this or that medicine is for, what the dosage was and what are the side effects. He told me that he and his brothers had to learn all those the hard way, by painstakingly reading the literature found in each box.

Education does happen in the absence of, and in spite of schools. The goal of SVS to provide an environment where students have the time and freedom to explore what it is they really want out of life, how to relate with other people, and discover who they really are — but not to dictate to them what it is they should be learning. Without the desire to learn, teaching is useless.

It is a difficult journey we face, but when my wife asked Mimsy if it was worth it — the heartaches and trials — she answered, “Oh every minute, every second.”

That’s all I need to know that this is a cause worth fighting for, because Davao deserves a Sudbury school.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

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A Final Word on Finland

Having spent the past few weeks dissecting Finland’s educational system and comparing it to my preferred model, the Sudbury Valley School, has been enlightening for me. I’m not sure if you, my readers, have been similarly enlightened. But they do say that the person who learns most from any lesson is the teacher.

I guess the task of trying to understand the strengths of each model, and then trying to simplify and explain those models in small 500-word chunks (which is my weekly limit for this column) forced me to think of them in ways I had not thought of before.

So what’s my final verdict on the Finland system?

In a previous article, I mentioned seeing it as a halfway point between the strict confines of traditional schooling and the almost total freedom in a Sudbury school. I also mentioned the reason it is so successful in their country is because it moves towards liberation from the rigidity of the old systems.

In fact, an article recently caught my attention that Finland was already considering removing subjects from the curriculum in favor of a more holistic approach:

“Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills…More academic pupils would be taught cross-subject topics such as the European Union – which would merge elements of economics, history (of the countries involved), languages and geography.”

Instead of teaching various trivia per “subject,” they now want students to understand “topics” perhaps like global warming or pollution or recycling. And if it needs a little math or science or history along the way, then that gets taught as well, but it is now relevant because it helps the students understand the topic. It’s not just taught because “hey, you need this in college” or “it’s part of the curriculum” or something like that.

If I were to start a school, I would still go with the Sudbury model. I think it’s the best educational model there is. But for those already running traditional schools, shifting to a Sudbury model might be too radical and would bring a host of other issues that might overwhelm them. The best bet for them is to shift to the Finland model which I think can be done quite easily.

The problem lies not in the “how” as Tim Walker already lays down so many ways schools can start implementing the Finland system. The question is, are the school’s stakeholders — administrators, teachers, parents, students — willing to shift their mindset to accept this more liberal and collaborative approach to education?

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

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Finland vs Sudbury (Part 3)

Tim Walker related an interesting story in the latter part of his book, about the Sudbury Valley School. He showed his students a short Youtube clip featuring the school and what it was all about. He thought that his students would love to be in that school.

Surprisingly though, his students thought it was “too radical” and they weren’t very comfortable with that. They particularly found something “wrong” about a school that allowed its kids to play video games all day. In the end, they still preferred having a teacher guide them.

What’s my take on this?

Well, first of all, I think it’s safe to say that most students in Finland enjoy school, or at the very least, they don’t hate it as much as in other places where school is more rigid and traditional. They have an easy schedule, frequent breaks, cool teachers who don’t get mad at them easily, or pressure them unreasonably — hey, what’s not to like? Sounds like a lot of fun.

Here is the danger, and take note that I am not saying this to disparage the teachers or administrators as if they were secretly plotting something diabolical. No, the danger comes from the system itself which conditions the students to have someone “guiding” them all the time, so much so that they feel uncomfortable when you take that guidance away.

Greenberg calls teachers in the traditional system as “entertainers.” Good teachers are usually good entertainers — they keep the class interested and motivated to “learn,” and I would think that there would be a lot of great teacher-entertainers in Finland (simply because they support each other and are not that stressed from the more rigid requirements of their traditional counterparts). Because of this, students feel they are “learning a lot” from these teachers and taking that away would somehow diminish their learning.

But that is wrong.

What each person needs to develop is a sense of identity and direction, to know that his or her choice matters, and that others can respect that choice — whether or not it seems good or bad. In a Sudbury school, nobody tells you what to do. You do what you choose to do, and you either reap the benefits of doing so or suffer the full brunt of its consequences. Sudbury staff do not entertain the kids nor do they feel any need to do so. If a child wants to learn something, he may sometimes even need to convince the staff to teach him.

The process is slower at first because you have to wait for each individual’s maturity to kick in. You don’t just gather them all by a certain age group and begin lecturing them about this and that because the “experts” say that’s the right age to begin teaching that material. Each person eventually has to develop that inner drive and say, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to learn, and no one can stop me.

That’s the value I see in a Sudbury school.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

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Learning Democracy (Part 2)

Part 1 | Part 2

What if we began practicing democracy in school?

Not the pretend democracy we give when we let students choose, for example, whether they want the quiz on Friday or on Monday; or the playhouse democracy we give to student councils and school papers, where they can decide whatever project they want or whatever article they want to print, but all it takes is a word from the principal or the school board and that project can be instantly vetoed, that article immediately censored.

But what if students’ decisions actually mattered? What if they voted on having no uniforms or having no haircut rules and that decision was actually respected? What if students could decide how the school spent its money? What if students voted on which teachers (including administrators) to hire and which ones to fire? What if students could actually choose what they wanted to do — whether it’s to read a pocketbook or to chat with their friends or even to play all day?

You may think that is a recipe for disaster for any school and it wouldn’t last a year, or even a week, but that is what Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts has been doing since day one for the past 50 years. Not only has it survived but it has thrived and become a model for similar types of schools in different cities and countries. Its graduates go on to colleges or trade schools of their choice and are in diverse fields and professions.

Hal Sadofsky, one of the school’s earliest graduates, went on to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics at M.I.T. and is currently an Associate Professor in the University of Oregon. He has this to say: “The most fundamental educational lesson we hope our students will learn is that they are responsible for their own education, and in fact for their own lives. Actually internalizing this, and all that goes with it is the best lesson they can have for the rest of their lives. I believe that it is important for people to acquire knowledge and skills, but I don’t believe I can or should force them to do so. Much more important is for our children to learn that if they value something, it is worth working for, and that if they have a goal they care about, they need to take responsibility for realizing it.”

And the way this lesson is imparted is not through dry lectures but through actual experience, where the student feels and knows that his decisions do matter, and no adult is going to come along and say, “Well that’s interesting, but now it’s time to come in and learn your grammar,” or something along those lines.

Sudbury founder, Daniel Greenberg, says that even he has no special authority or tenure in the school. He has one vote like everybody else, and he always has to perform well in the eyes of the community, or risk being voted out.

In an essay entitled The Significance of the Democratic Model, Greenberg writes, “To educate successfully for democracy, the real life surroundings of the children we seek to educate must be democratic in every respect, through and through, to the core and down to the last detail. The world of the children we want to reach must be a democratic reality, so the children wishing to master it will have no choice but to master the whole intricacy of its democratic structure. Education for democracy demands democratic schools. There is no other way to make it effective.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles atwww.freethinking.me.