Facts are stubborn things. The fact is that the Sudbury Valley School has been in continuous operation since 1968. If its students turned out dumb, unproductive, or unhappy, that school and its imitators around the world would have gone out of business long ago. And when you rationalize a need for authoritarian schooling, you enable the …
Facts are stubborn things. The fact is that the Sudbury Valley School has been in continuous operation since 1968. If its students turned out dumb, unproductive, or unhappy, that school and its imitators around the world would have gone out of business long ago. And when you rationalize a need for authoritarian schooling, you enable the oppression of young people and thereby teach the next generation to resign themselves to tyranny. No wonder that 2020 happened!
"Self-directed schooling would have left me even more bereft of some useful skills." Don't sell yourself short. In the strict sense, you taught yourself everything you have ever learned. Frankly, I detect a bit of Stockholm syndrome when people thank their whip-cracking teachers.
No. I had to discover for myself what was important to rebel against, and I was a highly-resistant student by HS. I dropped out of (nearly free public) college a couple of times until I realized they had nothing to teach me that I needed to learn from them.
The endurance of a school only means its culture continues to attract customers, regardless of its real-world value. (See "prestigious prep schools" and the generations of morons they produce. It's the reinforcing of the power of the networks in many or most cases).
But a school on the Sudbury model would have been my utter ruination.
I continue even into the full flowering of my mature years to hate my fifth grade teacher and I learned through having her only the moral triumph of being bloody but unbowed.
Facts are stubborn things. The fact is that the Sudbury Valley School has been in continuous operation since 1968. If its students turned out dumb, unproductive, or unhappy, that school and its imitators around the world would have gone out of business long ago. And when you rationalize a need for authoritarian schooling, you enable the oppression of young people and thereby teach the next generation to resign themselves to tyranny. No wonder that 2020 happened!
"Self-directed schooling would have left me even more bereft of some useful skills." Don't sell yourself short. In the strict sense, you taught yourself everything you have ever learned. Frankly, I detect a bit of Stockholm syndrome when people thank their whip-cracking teachers.
No. I had to discover for myself what was important to rebel against, and I was a highly-resistant student by HS. I dropped out of (nearly free public) college a couple of times until I realized they had nothing to teach me that I needed to learn from them.
The endurance of a school only means its culture continues to attract customers, regardless of its real-world value. (See "prestigious prep schools" and the generations of morons they produce. It's the reinforcing of the power of the networks in many or most cases).
But a school on the Sudbury model would have been my utter ruination.
I continue even into the full flowering of my mature years to hate my fifth grade teacher and I learned through having her only the moral triumph of being bloody but unbowed.