Le maudit Mo D.

They cheated me

Today during a random act of googling, I learned about the Sudbury Valley School, an alternative system of education in which students are not handed a compulsory curriculum with negative consequences if they do not excel at it. Nope, kids at Sudbury basically do whatever they want. It is modeled on the idea that children are naturally curious and will learn, and excel, at what they are interested in. If they want to nap and read comic books all day, that is fine. And if they want to study algebra and Proust, that's available, too. All staff (their word for teacher) comes up for annual review every year, and students essentially vote to see who stays and who goes.

I can't stop thinking about how different I'd be today if I had had this type of schooling.

It makes sense. I often think that if I had a teacher who could have taken the time to teach me math in a more direct and personal way, I could have excelled in it, instead of taking C's in it because public school teachers are spread too thin and don't get paid enough to give out personal attention. I think of how many of us smart, bright kids got stuck doing boring stuff because we were waiting for the slower kids to catch up. I think of how unsafe a school environment can be--emotionally, physically--and how burdened teachers are, and I think, why is this normal? Why is it normal for kids to have little to no say in their educations? Why is there a culture of mistrust? Why are talents that do not fit in with the reading/math/science paradigm left to rot when school could be a place to nurture them? I see how school and conformity has utterly broken my brother. He's a smart, funny kid, but doesn't do so well so he is given negative feedback and is called a bad kid. He's not a bad kid! He has only failed in conforming to some arbitrary, lazy, outmoded educational standard. He's a great kid, but no one in public school is ever going to see that.

Bob and I, when discussing our decision to have or not have kids, both emphatically agreed that if we did have kids, we'd have to leave Texas because the public schools are so crappy here. But where would we go? We never made it that far into the conversation, but I would definitely pursue this type of education if I had a kid. These schools have high rates of post-graduation success, success in both traditional and non-traditional ways.

I must visit Sudbury...