Thanks! Actually, I absolutely agree about labor. One of the many things I’ve learned more about and changed my perspective about in these past years. :)

Hi Giulianna,
I do still get notifications but I’m not so involved in education anymore. My immediate thought, though, is that there’s little reason to give every student an individual computer, since students aren’t confined to a frontal lecture situation and will never all spend all of their time in front of a screen… It would make sense, to me, to have a pool of laptops that anyone can use, just like most Sudbury schools have a pool of desktop computers everyone can use, maintained and regulated by a Computer Corporation.
Either way, I think boredom will still be there; there are always lots of things that could interest someone, it’s just that some of the time, none of them do. I’d say the damaging thing is when boredom is stigmatized and when active steps are taken against it, instead of allowing it to take its course…
Maybe other commenters who come through here might have more thoughts. :)

Some friends and I are thinking about starting our own Sudbury model school, and one idea we’ve been thinking about is providing a Chromebook – or LeapFrog, depending on age – for every student. This sort of one-to-one computing access has only recently become affordable for most schools, and the schools that have used it note that it creates far more benefits than a bank of computers that students have to share. It especially makes a difference to low-income students who don’t have computers at home.

Now of course, these are conventional schools – to my knowledge, no democratic school has tried this yet – so when they talk about “making a difference,” they mean that students get better grades, write better essays, and do more in-depth research for school reports. But it’s easy to see how increased access to the vast resources of the internet would benefit a Sudbury student.

What concerns me is, could this reduce boredom? Surfing the web can become addictive; if you’re bored, you can just refresh Buzzfeed all day and you never have to confront your own soul or question what you really want out of life. I’m just curious to know what you think about this.

“………The most important educational concept in the school is that of responsibility. For each student, as Harry Truman posted on his desk, “the buck stops here.” There is nobody in the school who will carry the burden for your child and my child. They each carry it for themselves. It is impossible to overstate how important this is for the educational process here.

We saw this vividly when we first opened the school. In those days, students didn’t believe us when we said to them that they were fully and solely responsible for their own education. We told them we would respond to expressed needs, but we weren’t going to direct anyone. Several students thought we didn’t really mean it . After all, we were good guys, progressive educators who, when the chips were down, were surely going to come through and bail them out. We had a group of students who tested us for months. They just wouldn’t get going. They hung around. They listened to records. But they carefully didn’t “do” anything. They were terribly bored, but they waited. They were testing us to find out the answer to a simple question: when would one of us finally break down and come into that room and put an arm around one of them and say, “We understand. We know you’re going through hard times. Can we help you find something interesting things to do?” That’s what they were waiting for, but it never happened.

One by one they had to break out of their stagnation on their own. That’s the heart of the whole process. The ability to carry the ball for yourself………..”

[excerpt from, “How and What Do Children Learn at SVS”, Daniel Greenberg, The Sudbury Valley School Experience.]

“I have become more convinced with each passing year that even though a host of problems are raised in connection with the Sudbury Valley School educationally, the root problem people have with the school is whether the people here are going to make good use of their time. That is what really bugs people, whether they are parents, or visitors, or educational critics, or even potential enrollees. “Suppose I send my kid and he spends a year or so at the school. What’s he going to do with himself? Is he going to waste his time there?” As a result, we find it necessary to get into philosophical discussions on what’s a good use of time………”

“………If the student doesn’t have a technological goal — if they say, for example, that they want to get themselves together to find out what they want to do in life, that they want to work out what their relationship is to themselves, to their parents, to the culture – these are non-technological aspects of life, and to these there is only one good use of time, a non-technological one. You can’t say to a person in that position, “We will give you three months to figure out your attitude toward life,” or “We will let you come here for a year, and if after a year you can pull yourself together, then we will let you come again; if not, it’s been a waste of time and money.”……”

[two excerpts from, “When Does a Person Make Good Use of His Time”, Daniel Greenberg, The Sudbury Valley School Experience.]

“…….The respect the school shows to private rhythms is inviolate. It guarantees that everyone, “sooner or later,” will get in touch with their inner selves. Students are well aware of this respect for private time. They come to depend on it, to cherish it. How often have I heard an older teenager say, “More than anything, the school gave me the time to find myself.”……..”

[excerpt from, Chapter 18, “Time Enough”, Free at Last – The Sudbury Valley School, Daniel Greenberg.]

see also:
Chapter 2, “Classes”, and 3, “Persistance,” Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School, Daniel Greenberg.

From Free at Last Classes
http://www.sudval.com/05_lifeatschool.html#05

From Free at Last Persistence
http://www.sudval.com/05_lifeatschool.html#06