My friend works in a democratic school and is doing research on democratic education. She recently visited my school, Sudbury Jerusalem – her first real live encounter with a Sudbury school. We were at an outdoor bar on Tel-Aviv’s famous Rothschild Avenue, and it was the middle of the night. On tall wooden barstools, across a long and narrow wooden table, we sat drinking an Irish stout as she recounted her visit.

My friend loved what she saw at Sudbury Jerusalem and saw in it a place that truly lives the ideals of democratic education. But she also raised a concern: that Sudbury schools are too unusual to attract many families from disadvantaged backgrounds. All I could do is nod sadly.

Radically different

Needless to say, Sudbury schools are open to people of all backgrounds. But Sudbury schools also completely reject traditional ideas of education – curricula, evaluation, adult guidance, etc. – approaching schooling from a radically different direction. It’s difficult for most people to understand, and seems to only attract few families from low-income backgrounds.

When you first tell people about schools like ours, the reaction is often one of shock and disbelief. “So they don’t have to take any classes? How do they ever learn anything? But children need structure!”

Other democratic schools can answer, for instance, that “students have a mentor who helps them identify goals and follow through on them.” This calms a lot of people down.

Sudbury schools, on the other hand, can only answer that the children learn to be responsible for their own time and identify what they want to do and how to do it.

I, of course, consider this correct, both in principle and in practice.

Between freedom and compromise

In Sudbury schools, students are wholly responsible for their own choices, first and foremost in choosing how to spend their own time.

Other democratic schools say the same thing, to some degree or another. But they typically integrate elements of traditional education as well. Though far from the overzealous, paternalistic control exercised by adults in traditional schools, adults in these schools typically take over some of the student’s responsibility, gently guiding them in some way.

Many in the movement view it as a compromise, but it makes the school easier to accept and understand, and as a result, makes it likelier to serve disadvantaged groups. Making no such compromise, Sudbury schools are not very well-equipped to serve them.

Like my friend, I too see this as a problem. Democratic schools are a good thing, and it seems unfair that they be the privilege of those who already enjoy social privilege.

Schools as a tool of change

My friend argued that democratic schools are a vital tool for social change, and that they should compromise in favor of common norms, so as to be more attractive to disadvantaged groups. This is important because democratic schools can be a great influence for children – of all backgrounds – and help them help themselves, their families, and their communities. If we care about disadvantaged groups and consider democratic education good, we should be concerned with bringing it to them.

I see the merit of that approach, but I’m not convinced that the tiny proportion of democratic schools in society right now can have significant impact on social gaps. And even if it does, I think there are other, more effective ways to work on these gaps than starting democratic schools.

Maybe it isn’t in the details

I also think there’s a limit to how much the conceptual minutiae of a democratic school matter in this regard. People from underprivileged backgrounds actually don’t want democratic schools, and for a good reason: they need socially-approved education that can help them get ahead in society. Democratic schools are not generally recognized as a good thing and are not an obvious tool for social advancement.

Attaining prestige

Appeal to disadvantaged groups, I argued, will come with time, by democratic schools establishing themselves as a viable and successful model and becoming socially desirable. Once the general public considers a democratic education prestigious, low-income families will aspire to send their children to our schools. But the more we compromise, as a movement, the less we can establish ourselves as a distinct and superior alternative.

Like so many other innovations, the early adopters will enjoy the benefits of democratic education first, paving the way for others to follow. In a perfect world, we would be spared this injustice – but we don’t live in a perfect world.

Conclusions

My friend could see merit in my argument as well. No conclusion was reached that night.

Ultimately, I think it’s great that different groups are trying different approaches to democratic education. We all have a lot to learn from one another, and the more different things we try, the more we will know about what works.

“Where do you work?”

“At Sudbury Valley School.”

“What do you do?”

“Nothing.”

-Hanna Greenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing

I was recently reminded of a discussion we had, more than a decade ago, when starting Sudbury Jerusalem.

The topic of the discussion was whether Sudbury staff are allowed to offer classes, and it’s one of the few discussions from the founding process which I still remember vividly today.

We were sitting in a co-founder’s airy living-room, spread out on several couches and stools, and we talked well into the night. It’s no wonder – the role of staff comes up again and again anywhere where people who went to more traditional schools are trying to wrap their heads around the Sudbury approach.

The ideal staffer

The ideal Sudbury staffer, to me, is an adult who communicates with young people respectfully, and does so in an authentic, natural way. They talk with them at eye level and don’t presume to know better just because they are older. They don’t see it as their mission to get students interested in their own areas of interest or expertise. A student’s interests are their own business, and theirs alone.

It is also very important that the staff understand this approach well, well enough to explain it to newcomers. But in this post I want to focus on staff’s role in everyday interactions in the school, so I’ll ignore this important aspect for a moment.

When explaining Sudbury schools, we often have to emphasize this: The staff’s job isn’t necessarily to offer classes, nor even to give classes on request.

A lot of adults out there feel it’s their responsibility (and their right) to take up young people’s time by teaching them, for their own good, whether or not they’re keenly interested. Such people are not ideal Sudbury staff material.

If a staff member really, truly wants to offer a class, because they would enjoy doing it, and not because they want to do something to alleviate students from their ignorance, then that’s perfectly fine. It’s the motivation behind the class that matters, and it’s the same with offering an opinion: it’s fine so long as it’s authentic.

It’s in the process

Ultimately, the Sudbury model doesn’t need a crisp and clear job description for staff, thanks to the democratic process used for hiring and firing them. Staff is typically hired by School Meeting based on a recommendation by a specialized committee; all staff stands for re-election every year, and School Meeting can decide to fire a staff member more or less at any time.

Staffers are hired by the school as a resource, and this means their areas of knowledge and experience will be taken into account. A staffer who can be helpful in running the school might be just as valuable and needed as a staffer who can teach 5 different subjects at a university level. But all of this is subject to a democratic process, meaning that individuals in the school can freely take part in deciding what the school needs at that time and choosing people who can supply it.

If the school hired someone who turns out not to be so helpful, that person can be fired for it. For example, a staff member who doesn’t help with administration, or never agrees to help people when asked, or seems to care more about personal projects than the school, may well be fired before long.

The proof is in the pudding

Ultimately, you just don’t need any fixed requirement at all – not even the requirement to be respectful and authentic. Adults who come in and can’t relate to children comfortably and respectfully aren’t likely to be offered a contract, or keep one for long if they get it. Adults who don’t respect children’s time and interests and always want to fill it up with their pet subjects will be seen as pesky and rude; they likely won’t get in either.

But staff who relate to young people respectfully and authentically; staff who have their own interests and enjoy sharing them with whoever is interested; staff who have an opinion and know how to express themselves clearly but respectfully – such staffers can and do offer activities and opinions, and they’re appreciated for it.

Sudbury schools need adults who can just be adults, all day long, without the need to constantly be teachers.

The article quoted at the top of this post, The Art of Doing Nothing, offers Hanna Greenberg’s far more experienced and better-formulated take on the role of staff at Sudbury schools, or at least one aspect of it. I highly recommend reading it.

I’m often asked how many people really participated in School Meetings at Sudbury Jerusalem – as if it’s less democratic when fewer people choose to participate. But actually, low participation at meetings can be a sign that democracy is working well.

When we started Sudbury Jerusalem, for a few weeks we had a School Meeting every day.

Most of the proposals, at first, came from those who had been in and around the founding process – mainly staff and children of staff. I was a student and a co-founder, and one of the most active participants.

It took months – dozens of Meetings – for the process to become so established in the school’s culture that many other students made proposals. In parallel, as time went by, fewer and fewer students regularly took part in School Meetings.
The early School Meetings at Sudbury Jerusalem focussed on establishing the rules of the game. We spent hours in heated discussion about School Meeting, Committees, procedures – about how the whole thing works. Not everyone is interested in that kind of thing.

But some members of the community, especially those involved in starting the school, felt strongly about these things, and insisted on being part of these discussions.

Those of us who were more involved than others at the time weren’t trying to contol everything, we were mainly trying to lead by example. We, who had spent so much time in envisioning and preparing the school, wanted to demonstrate what the school’s democracy meant: that any of us can take initiative and put forward proposals for improving things in the school.
In the beginning, most students came to those daily School Meetings. They wanted to see what it’s all about, to make their voice heard, and to find out who makes the decisions. I think a few of them wanted to find out who’s really in charge so that they would know who to rebell against.

After a while, most students would only come to support or oppose some specific proposal.

In my view, this was a benefit of having an established way of doing things. It let people relax and trust the process. You don’t have to personally suffer through boring discussions if you know that decisions are made in a fair and transparent way, and that you can always propose to change them later.
For a while, most School Meetings were attended by the staff and one or two students. We came to see this as a sign that all was well.

Students who didn’t come to Meetings knew what was being discussed and what had been decided, and they knew that they could come and change things if need be. But School Meeting was doing a decent job, so most Meetings were small, almost empty.

Once in a while some proposal would come up which interested a lot of students, and suddenly the room would be full. Like the time when a student proposed to create a petting corner. When the proposal came up she called in a bunch of kids who wanted to make it happen, and they easily got a majority, despite some regular attendees (like myself) being against it.

But in day to day life, the Meeting and most of its decisions just didn’t get in the way. They were usually helpful or unnoticable.

The purpose of School Meetings was to ensure that the school continues to exist and that its members are safe and free to pursue their interests.

As a rule, apart from the first year, it was always a small group who was interested in attending every Meeting. We took this as a sign that things were working well.
Of course, different members have a different ability to participate in that kind of procedure, and that is a form of inequality.

But I think back about two younger friends of mine, A.P. and N.F., whom I knew as the kind of boys who would be interested in anything but School Meeting. Both used to have difficulties with reading and writing, another barrier to their participation. Both of them later became Chairs of School Meeting.

They became interested, they attended meetings and learned more about them, they saw work to do, and they stepped up.
People enter a school – or any organization – with diverse interests, different backgrounds, and different skills. Most are not interested in “running the business”, which is what the Meeting does. So a small group ends up doing that. It’s important that the Meeting stay accessible to new participants, but it ultimately has to focus on its important task – which most people find boring.

There’s just not much more you can do, unless you want to force people to participate, or force them to acquire the skills they’d need to participate effectively. But neither option respects people’s individual freedom and autonomy, so neither option is compatible with the liberal-democratic ideal.

All you can do is keep Meeting accessible and lead by example. If you make use of the Meeting on the one hand, and respect its decisions on the other hand, you show others what the Meeting means. If you do neither, there’s no reason for anyone to participate in it at all.

By the way: I haven’t been posting much, and probably won’t be posting much in the coming weeks either. I’m focussing on my work in linguistics now, which involved more than enough writing, but not of the bloggy kind. Being this focussed is a lot of fun and I want to keep it up while my contract lasts. I expect to post more actively starting in August.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of serving as interpreter to John Moravec, in his talk about the Invisible Learning project, in Halle (a town near Leipzig.) I had never done this before, but once I got into it it went pretty well.

You can judge for yourself – you can watch the talk (mainly English with my attempt at German translation) online:

The Invisible Learning website – where you can read and watch more about the project – says:

“The proposed invisible learning concept is the result of several years of research and work to integrate diverse perspectives on a new paradigm of learning and human capital development that is especially relevant in the context of the 21st century. This view takes into account the impact of technological advances and changes in formal, non-formal, and informal education, in addition to the ‘fuzzy’ metaspaces in between. Within this approach, we explore a panorama of options for future development of education that is relevant today. Invisible Learning does not propose a theory, but rather establishes a metatheory capable of integrating different ideas and perspectives. This has been described as a protoparadigm, which is still in the ‘beta’ stage of construction.”

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For the Hebrew speakers amongst you, there’s also a new promotional movie about Sudbury Jerusalem:

The movie was released in honor of the school’s tenth anniversary. I was in Israel briefly, to take part in the celebrations, and just got back this past weekend. This is the main reason for the long silence on this blog – normal (almost-daily) posting is now officially the order of the day.

I hope to be able to post a subtitled version of the video soon. I also expect to post videos of my talk at the decennial events, as well as the other excellent talks given there (also given in Hebrew.)

Below (after the jump) is the part with my thoughts about the future of democratic education. I talked about EUDEC, the power of networks, collective outreach, and suggested we should be emphasizing that democratic education is a human rights issue. Let me know what you think.

I’d like to share some thoughts about why democratic schools should not have even a little bit of curriculum or mandatory guidance. Imposing even a single mandatory class, even just a mentorship or a morning meeting, is disrespectful towards students, and signals that the school does not take self-directed learning seriously. Sometimes, motivated by fear, parents attack this notion, demanding more guidance and railroading to make sure their children get where they want them to go. Every school responds in a different way. Only a clear “no” — the typical Sudbury response — makes sense, especially considering what democratic schools are for.

People, especially parents, always ask why the school can’t guide its students a little more actively. It is not that the guidance itself is a bad idea — in fact, I would say it’s vital that guidance be available in the school to those who feel they need it. But forcing guidance on students, even “just a little”, even just implicitly, by making some form of educational activity mandatory, is a signal of distrust. It’s saying, “we trust you to decide what to do with your time, so long as we have some influence on it”, or in other words, “we trust you entirely, except that we actually don’t”. It’s not only a mixed signal, it’s implicitly disrespectful, patronizing and demeaning — even if the guidance itself is presented by people who are respectful towards the students, and even if it’s done in a respectful way.

Schools should strive to produce graduates who are independent, creative, know how to manage their own time, and know how to plan out their own path towards their own goals. For this, the message must be crystal clear: we trust you to make your own choices. This is not part of what a Sudbury School does — it’s what the entire project is about. The opposite message, that there’s a standard “right” way to do things, is already on offer at every traditional school and from almost every person who ever went to one. Any student today is exposed to that message more than enough, even if they attend a school that is different. We do not need to do anything to integrate it in democratic schools, because the students’ families and hometown(s) already do that for us, whether we like it or not. Our mission is different. As person-centered schools, our job is to trust the students entirely.

Having a curriculum is bad, and not only when it’s mandatory. It is not better to “merely” encourage students to pursue some course of activity. When it is mandatory, at least everyone knows what’s going on, at least it is transparent. When you don’t force it but only make it clear that it is better, or that it is expected, or that it is the right thing to do, it’s no less distrustful, but you’re also endangering the relationship of trust between staff and students, giving students every reason to be cautious about the staff. Why trust someone with some external agenda, with some plans for what you’re supposed to do? Is that the kind of person you will want to turn to when you have questions? Is that the kind of person you will turn to when you need help? When you need someone trustworthy to talk about difficult issues with? The staff at Sudbury Jerusalem are the kind of person you would turn to, and I think a big part of this is that when they think you should do something, they just say so, and you know that’s just their own personal opinion. They’re not there to guide you, but they do offer advice when you need it (or when they feel like it), and they can kind of be guides when that’s what you need. To this day I still trust them like family. It’s not that staff should be forbidden from offering guidance, it’s that it should never be their job to offer unsolicited guidance in order to educate people. When that’s your job, you’re not someone to trust — just look at traditional schools.

But let’s look at another aspect, one of the goals I proposed above: creative problem-solving. It seems to me that any kind of focus, on behalf of the school, on state standards, goes against that goal. Many democratic schools today still make it clear to students that they should take state exams at the end of their secondary school years. Some schools quietly encourage it, in some it’s just the thing that everyone does, the goal you are there to work towards. This shows students, for better or for worse, that like most of society, the school endorses the standard path through life. However, unless you specifically really want to become a medical doctor, the standard way is not the only way. There are alternative ways, funner and less arbitrary, if you look for them. But unless a person already knows they have a goal that makes the standard way necessary, the school should be equally supportive of following alternative routes. The problem is that when everyone expects you to just take the standard route, you probably won’t even look for alternatives — why bother? If a school supports the standard way, its students will usually take that standard way.

If we are truly committed to producing the kind of graduates we should, there is no place for arbitrarily supporting any particular curriculum, any guidance not asked for, or any kind of standardized testing. These are anathema to our goals, poison against our success.

But I may be too radical about this. I’d love to hear some dissent. Feel free to leave a comment.

Yaacov claims, essentially, that the mandatory military service — which most Israelis enter at 18, but I avoided — has given many Israelis training in being responsible, conscientious, adults. It is true, of course, that many people entering the workforce (or university) at 20-22 years old in Israel possess these qualities. It is also true that these qualities are very important to have in democratic schools.

I will not argue with that (though some arguments come to mind). My point is different.

My point is that if we’re trying to tell a story about how Israel got so many democratic schools, there’s a more plausible story to be told. I discussed this on the way back to Jerusalem with my fellow-alumnus soldier sister and three founding staff members from our school. Here’s what we can come up with together: bad state schools, good laws, lax rule of law, the popularity of change — which Yaacov noted — and the small size of the country.

The first thing that comes to mind, is that the Israeli state school system is a pretty awful place. This is an observation that society has basically accepted, and been discussing, for decades, which helps as well. Alternatives get a lot of attention from exasperated parents and children all over the country. We noticed it right away, and more students first came to us to get away from other schools than came for the ideals of a Sudbury education.

The second thing, which I notice painfully since moving to Germany, is that Israeli law is very permissive about educational experimentation. This is paradoxically a result of the Israeli system being not only tolerant of religious minorities, but especially supportive of the Orthodox Jewish minority in particular. Israeli education law and Ministry of Education procedure is designed to allow religious minorities to run schools with state support and essentially null state supervision. And the same law means democratic schools are absolutely legal — which in many countries in Europe is a distant dream. In most states in Germany, a Sudbury school is literally illegal. This can’t be overstated in explaining the success here: in Israel, democratic schools are simply legal.

The third thing is that the Israeli rule of law is relatively lax. This also works against young democratic schools, because the authorities don’t let democratic schools start despite the fact they are not illegal. But on the other hand, schools that are not yet recognized — and hence illegal — are tolerated by the bureaucracy. In Germany, such schools are fined within a year or two at most and then shut down. The system allows us to run democratic schools long enough to establish them and get them recognized. As you may recall, it took Sudbury Jerusalem no less than seven years.

On top of those, there is a point Yaacov made that I can now unequivocally agree with: Israel is a country in which “change” is a positive concept (and this was true long before Obama popularized it in America). Israel is a young country, everything is new, and society is very interested in new things. Society in Western, Central and Northern Europe is, it seems, generally much less interested in societal change and cultural innovation. People here in Israel eat it right up.

Putting it all together, it also can’t be exaggerated how much Israel’s small size has been important. Democratic education here reached a tipping point that made it a popular and well-known idea, and it was so easy to get there because in a country of 7 million, you just really don’t need so many schools before you become known to everyone in society.

Luckily, I don’t see any country instating mandatory military service to fuel a democratic school revolution. Gladly, progressives in most Western countries are appalled at the military and at the notion of war. But whether or not you accept Yaacov’s theory, I hope I could shed some light on the huge gap between Israel and the rest of the world in adopting democratic schooling. I look forward to discussing this with people later this week at the IDEC.

But it’s interesting to think about how this relates to democratic schools. My experience is that a democratic school is a good place for substantive conversation. In Sudbury Jerusalem, I was a student who rarely had any classes and spent much of my time socializing, talking. It was a place where the general atmosphere is happy rather than depressed. I noticed that in school, we talked a lot, and had a lot of really good conversation, and I never considered whether it’s just because people are often in a good mood (I, by the way, often was not in a good mood, despite a lot of conversation — maybe that’s why). I also never considered that this might be why people are often in a good mood.

I don’t know, but I had other things in mind. The school democracy itself, it seems to me, encourages a culture of talking things through. It’s what we would try to do in School Meeting and in committees, and it’s often what we would do to solve conflicts before resorting to a Judicial Committee complaint form. And the other side of things, the personal freedom, simply gives people more time to talk. There’s always conversation going on all over the place, and it makes sense that when you get to talk with people a lot, you eventually get to deeper, “substantive” conversations.

But maybe the large amount of conversation in democratic schools is caused by something else. Maybe it’s the nature of the school as a community in which people operate freely in the same spaces, together; the school is a very social environment. This is also something that probably contributes to the general happiness of the population. Actually, considering that more social environment are probably causes for both happiness and for conversation, maybe this is the causal link behind the study’s findings. People with more social contact are happier and have more substantive conversation (as compared to people with less social contact.) It definitely makes sense to me.

I feel highly privileged to have spent four years in Sudbury Jerusalem. It was a rare privilege to spend time in an environment where people of all ages, be it 4, 14 or 40, are treated with respect and given liberty. It was a highly unusual privilege to be involved in crafting and developing the environment in which I spent my time every day. It was terrifically empowering to be part of an organization in which I truly had a say, where the limit of my influence was the level of energy I was willing to invest in influencing things. It was a precious opportunity to have control of my own time in those years and learn how to manage my life starting at age 14. My little brother is even more privileged: he has been at the school since the first grades, for eight years now (and counting).

My experience, the experience of any young person who has had the chance to spend time in a democratic school, was a privilege. It was an enriching experience that has had a powerfully positive effect on my life, and it is something only a very very small percentage of people in my generation (or any generation so far) has been able to enjoy.

But in my experience with others who have enjoyed this amazing privilege, none of them want to keep it to themselves. Nor do I. Most of us would love for this not to be privilege anymore. The reasons can be selfish — explaining democratic education to everyone you meet gets old, very fast; one day I hope it will not need explaining — or altruistic, having had a good thing and wanting other people to have it as well. If we “democratics” (as we call it in Jerusalem) are an elite, then we’re a very unusual one. We’re a group of privileged people who don’t want to be privileged. We want to be normal. But instead of giving up our privilege, we just want everyone else to have a chance to benefit from it if they want to.

Everyone could be privileged like I have been (or more, for longer). And everyone should be. Wouldn’t that be good?