Post by eye2i2hear on Jun 3, 2007 18:46:24 GMT -5
Free to be "me", learning is child's play?
Out of "chaos", order? Natural order?!
"Wow! We think what he needs is freedom, not structure."
** I realize this post may seem (well, ok, it IS) long, but the subject specifics, particularly relative to Government = Control, with blind obedience being central & learned, seem so vital I felt it worth it. **
excerpts from "the rest of the story": A Bird's Eye interView of Sudbury Valley School
Daria: How in the world did you personally come to the understandings that you have and allow yourself to free yourself of former opinions, beliefs, and judgments about children [and learning]?
Mimsy: For me, it was a very personal journey to get here. I grew up just like anybody else and I went to college just like anybody else and I had children just like anybody else. Suddenly I had a first-grader who my husband and I thought was a wonderful child and very bright and he was going to school and having stomach-aches every day and complaining. We had learned through the six years of getting him to be a first-grader that the less we interfered with what he wanted to do, the happier he was, and therefore the happier we were. He had sort of trained us from early childhood. So when he was unhappy in school we said, "Wait a minute, maybe it's not the child. Maybe there's something wrong with the system." This was late '60s, and we started doing a little research into education and of course that was the time when lots and lots of books were being written. We read Summerhill, and we said, "Wow! We think what he needs is freedom, not structure."
Daria: So you basically helped develop this school for your own children and came together with other people to design something in order for your own children to be a part of it.
Mimsy: Yes, that was the primary motivation. But of course once you get a hold of these ideas they're too exciting to put down. It's so wonderful to be in a place where children treat you like a person instead of like somebody that they're afraid of, somebody they're supposed to be nice to. It's so liberating for an adult to be treated that way that it's a fabulous place to be every day.
...
Daria: Is life chaotic at Sudbury Valley? I saw 200 children everywhere – from in the house to all over the buildings and outside, inside. There was constant movement all the time and I would consider that chaos, except I believe what you are telling me is that there is direction and intentionality to the chaos.
Mimsy: To each person's movement; and 210 people moving with their own intention can feel kind of chaotic if you are not part of it. The idea is chaotic. It's less chaotic if you're part of it because you realize that people are very aware of everything around them and very aware of the community and they're not just rushing madly off in all directions. The one comparison that I think of is that if you go to an elementary school, during recess the kids burst out of the building and they're a little bit wild. The kids here, although they're very exuberant, are not wild at all. That's part of why I don't think that it's chaos. Each person is not chaotic in their own mind, but they're also not chaotic in their actions. They're playing, they're happy, they're full of fun, they're running around a lot, but it's not wildness at all.
...
The idea of the school is that you are not only responsible for your own education here, but you're responsible for the whole community in conjunction with other people. That makes being responsible for your own education a little bit less of a fairytale and more down to earth, because it's a very real community with very real responsibilities and very real calls for judgment on many, many different subjects everyday for everybody – not just for grownups, but for every child also.
...
Daria: So learning for children, quantitatively speaking, has to do with meaning in your estimation – the meaning and the relevance of everyday life – rather than subjects that are irrelevant to whatever is happening concurrently in a child's life. Is that what you're trying to say?
Mimsy: Yes. Of course, as life goes on for every one of us, what we're interested in shifts and changes and becomes more and more sophisticated. We expect that to happen with every single child.
Daria: Describe for us some of the things that are happening around the school. The children aren't in classrooms studying English, Social Studies, Mathematics. What are they doing right now as we speak?
Mimsy: They're playing basketball and riding bikes and reading books. They're talking about what they did over the weekend, talking about political issues, talking about anything that might come up in a conversation between two people. They're meeting new people, swinging, eating. Almost anything you can imagine people doing in a large family – in a really large family because we have 210 kids – they're doing here today. That means that some of them will be studying traditional subjects in a traditional manner and most of them won't.
...
Daria: If children don't choose the basics to learn, do they waste their time year after year after year? What happens if they choose to go fishing, an example you have in one of your books?
Mimsy: The child who chose to go fishing wasn't exactly missing the basics. He was reading about fishing and doing research on fish and doing all sorts of things that had to do with fishing. We think that if something's basic, then it will be quite obvious to each person that they need it. That doesn't mean that every child decides reading is basic when they're six. Some may decide when they're four and some may decide when they're ten or older; we don't make any value judgments about this because it only means that for that particular person, reading wasn't important if they didn't do it until they were ten. Reading wasn't something they needed in order to gain knowledge. Many people gain knowledge more through reading and others more through conversation or visual stimulation, so we're not worried about the basics. We think if they're basic everybody will figure that out for themselves, and they do. Also, it's not as if they're here in isolation, because they're here six, seven hours a day and then they go back into the rest of the world and they have a very clear idea from the rest of the world, and from their friends who are students here, what people think of as important and as basic.
Daria: Tell us a little bit about the boy fishing, because I think it's really important. How did he get there and what happened to him?
Mimsy: Well, there were two boys who fished all the time. The first one had been in a public school, but he wasn't very old – he was eight or nine – and he was not comfortable with being told what to do, which is true of most kids who come here over the age of five or six. He just was not that happy and his parents thought that it wasn't good for him to be told what to do, that it was better for him to be able to figure out what to do on his own. I think parents who have children who have been very self-motivated before going to school often feel that once their child gets to school, s/he becomes less self-motivated, a little bit duller. So he was enrolled here and he got very excited about the pond and about fishing and he met a friend who got very excited with him. They spent years and years together fishing a lot of the time, and making mischief a lot of the time too. They were kind of rowdy and rambunctious and they had lots of good friends at school, so they weren't loners. But they spent time researching fishing, watching fishing videos which I didn't even know existed, reading every book that had to do with fish science (ichthyology) and they became very knowledgeable fisherman. This particular concentration, which for them was on fishing, was also something that both of them switched: they're not fishermen now. They may still like to fish, but that's not their prime focus. One of them is a computer scientist and one of them is a musician. But the ability to focus on something and pour yourself into it was important to them as they developed other interests through their lives, and they're both very focused, committed people.
Daria: So it took learning to just be focused and committed on one subject to allow them the space to know that this too shall pass – it's just a passing phase for them to sit fishing every day.
Mimsy: Well, it didn't look like a passing phase when it was three or four years, but yes it was a passing phase.
Daria: And what we can infer from that then, is that the kind of skills that they learned were patience – especially fishing, if anybody's ever gone fishing. They learned to be patient, they learned how to be resourceful, they learned how to investigate a subject, they learned how to stay focused for long periods of time when the results weren't necessarily there. The underlying objectives and the motivation and the passion of fishing definitely taught them so many different skills from what might look externally like two boys who are lazy and don't want to do anything. I really applaud you for your respect in understanding that children have an innate ability to learn and they will learn no matter what.
Mimsy: I think fishing was the 1970's version of video games today because people still feel the same way about video games. They watch kids who come to school here and spend tremendous amounts of time playing video games and they see it as mind- numbing. We know – because we see the kids and we know the kids – that it's the opposite of mind-numbing, that they only play a particular video game until they've mastered it and then they go on to something else. They also play in an extremely social situation with other kids, talking all the time, and they develop very deep social relationships. And we know that the kind of concentration they put into each video game is mind-building and not mind-numbing, but people still feel the same way about video games that they felt about fishing in the '70's. It's just sort of a more modern version of it.
Daria: I think there's a different set of circumstances here than just playing video games and I want to make that point clear because everything that is done at Sudbury is also in a social context as well as an environmental context. It is not just an isolated incident, for the most part.
Daria: Do your children go on to college for the most part, or what kinds of careers do they go on to?
Mimsy: They go on to every kind of possible career. We have studied what happens to kids after they leave here and found that some eighty percent, in general, went on to college. The more years you had spent here, the more likely it seemed that you were likely to go on to college. But it's not a college-centered school and a lot of kids who do end up going to college don't go directly to college when they leave here. They may leave saying, "I'm probably going to go to college someday," or they may leave saying, "I'm going to travel next year, or work next year and save money, and then I'll go to college." Or they say, "Look, I've got a great job in the computer industry," or "I know what I want to do, and I know how to work on what I want to do, and I don't need college. College has nothing to offer me." So we don't make any value judgments about people making those decisions about their lives. Sometimes I think that the people who are the most concentrated and the most brilliant are the ones that are least likely to go to college.
Mimsy: For me, it was a very personal journey to get here. I grew up just like anybody else and I went to college just like anybody else and I had children just like anybody else. Suddenly I had a first-grader who my husband and I thought was a wonderful child and very bright and he was going to school and having stomach-aches every day and complaining. We had learned through the six years of getting him to be a first-grader that the less we interfered with what he wanted to do, the happier he was, and therefore the happier we were. He had sort of trained us from early childhood. So when he was unhappy in school we said, "Wait a minute, maybe it's not the child. Maybe there's something wrong with the system." This was late '60s, and we started doing a little research into education and of course that was the time when lots and lots of books were being written. We read Summerhill, and we said, "Wow! We think what he needs is freedom, not structure."
Daria: So you basically helped develop this school for your own children and came together with other people to design something in order for your own children to be a part of it.
Mimsy: Yes, that was the primary motivation. But of course once you get a hold of these ideas they're too exciting to put down. It's so wonderful to be in a place where children treat you like a person instead of like somebody that they're afraid of, somebody they're supposed to be nice to. It's so liberating for an adult to be treated that way that it's a fabulous place to be every day.
...
Daria: Is life chaotic at Sudbury Valley? I saw 200 children everywhere – from in the house to all over the buildings and outside, inside. There was constant movement all the time and I would consider that chaos, except I believe what you are telling me is that there is direction and intentionality to the chaos.
Mimsy: To each person's movement; and 210 people moving with their own intention can feel kind of chaotic if you are not part of it. The idea is chaotic. It's less chaotic if you're part of it because you realize that people are very aware of everything around them and very aware of the community and they're not just rushing madly off in all directions. The one comparison that I think of is that if you go to an elementary school, during recess the kids burst out of the building and they're a little bit wild. The kids here, although they're very exuberant, are not wild at all. That's part of why I don't think that it's chaos. Each person is not chaotic in their own mind, but they're also not chaotic in their actions. They're playing, they're happy, they're full of fun, they're running around a lot, but it's not wildness at all.
...
The idea of the school is that you are not only responsible for your own education here, but you're responsible for the whole community in conjunction with other people. That makes being responsible for your own education a little bit less of a fairytale and more down to earth, because it's a very real community with very real responsibilities and very real calls for judgment on many, many different subjects everyday for everybody – not just for grownups, but for every child also.
...
Daria: So learning for children, quantitatively speaking, has to do with meaning in your estimation – the meaning and the relevance of everyday life – rather than subjects that are irrelevant to whatever is happening concurrently in a child's life. Is that what you're trying to say?
Mimsy: Yes. Of course, as life goes on for every one of us, what we're interested in shifts and changes and becomes more and more sophisticated. We expect that to happen with every single child.
Daria: Describe for us some of the things that are happening around the school. The children aren't in classrooms studying English, Social Studies, Mathematics. What are they doing right now as we speak?
Mimsy: They're playing basketball and riding bikes and reading books. They're talking about what they did over the weekend, talking about political issues, talking about anything that might come up in a conversation between two people. They're meeting new people, swinging, eating. Almost anything you can imagine people doing in a large family – in a really large family because we have 210 kids – they're doing here today. That means that some of them will be studying traditional subjects in a traditional manner and most of them won't.
...
Daria: If children don't choose the basics to learn, do they waste their time year after year after year? What happens if they choose to go fishing, an example you have in one of your books?
Mimsy: The child who chose to go fishing wasn't exactly missing the basics. He was reading about fishing and doing research on fish and doing all sorts of things that had to do with fishing. We think that if something's basic, then it will be quite obvious to each person that they need it. That doesn't mean that every child decides reading is basic when they're six. Some may decide when they're four and some may decide when they're ten or older; we don't make any value judgments about this because it only means that for that particular person, reading wasn't important if they didn't do it until they were ten. Reading wasn't something they needed in order to gain knowledge. Many people gain knowledge more through reading and others more through conversation or visual stimulation, so we're not worried about the basics. We think if they're basic everybody will figure that out for themselves, and they do. Also, it's not as if they're here in isolation, because they're here six, seven hours a day and then they go back into the rest of the world and they have a very clear idea from the rest of the world, and from their friends who are students here, what people think of as important and as basic.
Daria: Tell us a little bit about the boy fishing, because I think it's really important. How did he get there and what happened to him?
Mimsy: Well, there were two boys who fished all the time. The first one had been in a public school, but he wasn't very old – he was eight or nine – and he was not comfortable with being told what to do, which is true of most kids who come here over the age of five or six. He just was not that happy and his parents thought that it wasn't good for him to be told what to do, that it was better for him to be able to figure out what to do on his own. I think parents who have children who have been very self-motivated before going to school often feel that once their child gets to school, s/he becomes less self-motivated, a little bit duller. So he was enrolled here and he got very excited about the pond and about fishing and he met a friend who got very excited with him. They spent years and years together fishing a lot of the time, and making mischief a lot of the time too. They were kind of rowdy and rambunctious and they had lots of good friends at school, so they weren't loners. But they spent time researching fishing, watching fishing videos which I didn't even know existed, reading every book that had to do with fish science (ichthyology) and they became very knowledgeable fisherman. This particular concentration, which for them was on fishing, was also something that both of them switched: they're not fishermen now. They may still like to fish, but that's not their prime focus. One of them is a computer scientist and one of them is a musician. But the ability to focus on something and pour yourself into it was important to them as they developed other interests through their lives, and they're both very focused, committed people.
Daria: So it took learning to just be focused and committed on one subject to allow them the space to know that this too shall pass – it's just a passing phase for them to sit fishing every day.
Mimsy: Well, it didn't look like a passing phase when it was three or four years, but yes it was a passing phase.
Daria: And what we can infer from that then, is that the kind of skills that they learned were patience – especially fishing, if anybody's ever gone fishing. They learned to be patient, they learned how to be resourceful, they learned how to investigate a subject, they learned how to stay focused for long periods of time when the results weren't necessarily there. The underlying objectives and the motivation and the passion of fishing definitely taught them so many different skills from what might look externally like two boys who are lazy and don't want to do anything. I really applaud you for your respect in understanding that children have an innate ability to learn and they will learn no matter what.
Mimsy: I think fishing was the 1970's version of video games today because people still feel the same way about video games. They watch kids who come to school here and spend tremendous amounts of time playing video games and they see it as mind- numbing. We know – because we see the kids and we know the kids – that it's the opposite of mind-numbing, that they only play a particular video game until they've mastered it and then they go on to something else. They also play in an extremely social situation with other kids, talking all the time, and they develop very deep social relationships. And we know that the kind of concentration they put into each video game is mind-building and not mind-numbing, but people still feel the same way about video games that they felt about fishing in the '70's. It's just sort of a more modern version of it.
Daria: I think there's a different set of circumstances here than just playing video games and I want to make that point clear because everything that is done at Sudbury is also in a social context as well as an environmental context. It is not just an isolated incident, for the most part.
Daria: Do your children go on to college for the most part, or what kinds of careers do they go on to?
Mimsy: They go on to every kind of possible career. We have studied what happens to kids after they leave here and found that some eighty percent, in general, went on to college. The more years you had spent here, the more likely it seemed that you were likely to go on to college. But it's not a college-centered school and a lot of kids who do end up going to college don't go directly to college when they leave here. They may leave saying, "I'm probably going to go to college someday," or they may leave saying, "I'm going to travel next year, or work next year and save money, and then I'll go to college." Or they say, "Look, I've got a great job in the computer industry," or "I know what I want to do, and I know how to work on what I want to do, and I don't need college. College has nothing to offer me." So we don't make any value judgments about people making those decisions about their lives. Sometimes I think that the people who are the most concentrated and the most brilliant are the ones that are least likely to go to college.
--excerpted from an edited version of a 2000 transcript, where Mimsy Sadofsky was interviewed by Dr. Daria Brezinksy on her live radio show, "Children Come First" (see www.rlc.net/prokids) available from The Sudbury Valley School Press. Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968, is in Framingham, MA, USA.
The rest of the interview/faq is well worth a read as well, imho.