[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 , and a pretty good TL;DR on Wikipedia at 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.

[DavidSJ]

Didn't Red Cedar eventually decide to become a Montessori school? What happened with that?

[rubberbandage]

Hi David — I’m pretty sure I’ve met you in person at some point :-)

Red Cedar decided to change just after I graduated in 2002, from a true Sudbury school to “heavily influenced by Sudbury philosophies”, dropping high school ages in the process. They’ve actually had great success since; ultimately the Sudbury Model was just too radical for the (very very low population) surrounding area, and the numbers of students were very few — my graduating class was me and one other! Their website is http://www.redcedarschool.com and you can see it’s still a long way from a typical school!

[calibraxis]

Thank you! If anyone has other such nuanced sources on education, be happy to look through them.

[rubberbandage]

If you feel like reading a semi-long and excellent interview transcript, this is pretty comprehensive for a “bird’s eye view”: http://www.sudval.com/01_abou_09.html