The Spirit
of Ma’at Vol 1, No 10
with Larry Weshon
Co-Founder of the Sudbury Model
Alpine Valley School
''...this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands
mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching
can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.''
-Albert Einstein
Alpine
School - a place of freedom, respect, and responsibility - promotes discovery,
learning, and self determination in its community. As an alternative school
patterned after the Sudbury model, I was interested in hearing another
perspective and how this model might be applied in an environment that has
adopted, rather than developed, the idea.
Diane:
Please explain the democratic idea of schooling as it relates to what you're
doing at Alpine Valley School.
Larry:
Well, the root is historically in the idea of self-government - where a group
of people can come together of their own free will and establish some sort of
constitution or set of laws to protect individual freedom. One of the ways of
insuring this freedom is by making sure that everyone in the community has a
say in every issue.
Diane:
So there are rules and laws at a school dedicated to freedom?
Larry:
Well, of course! The laws are geared to protect individual liberty. That is
their purpose. Everyone has the right to pursue their happiness at this school,
providing that it doesn't injure somebody else. So nearly anything is possible.
Nearly...
Something
that could harm somebody or someone else is not free to happen here. But if I
want to study physics, or biology, or human interaction in some context, I'm
free to do that. I can study whatever I want to study, I can do whatever I want
to do, as long as I'm not hurting anyone.
If you
read the Declaration of Independence, I think you will find that this
definition of freedom is primarily how this country was founded. People have
the right to pursue their happiness, and governments are instituted among men
to protect this right.
The
pursuit of happiness also relates to the bigger picture, in that the children
here are absolutely allowed to fail. Failure is an important part of the
school.
Somebody
might decide that they might want to study calculus and find they just can't do
it. They might want to become the judicial clerk and find that they just can't
do it. They might want to start a corporation within the school corporations,
and find out that it is more work than they want to do, and stop doing it.
That's the kind of failure I'm talking about.
Diane:
''Failure'' is a really difficult word. My sense of the word failure is that it
implies a sense of defeat.
Larry:
Sometimes children are defeated. Sometimes they fall on their faces and are
down in the dumps about it for months. It happens to all of us. When we tried
to open the school in 1994, we failed, and several of us were down in the dumps
about it for six or seven months.
And
then we picked ourselves up and tried again. The second time we opened the
school. Failure, in my way of thinking, is not bad, because it can lead to one
of two things: the realization that the goal is not worth it, or the realization
that the goal is difficult and we have to try again.
Diane:
So what else happens in the school?
Larry:
The kids play an enormous number of self-generated games. They invent games,
they invent the rules, they invent how to play it.
Diane:
So how does that benefit them in the future when they leave the school and go
out into life?
Larry:
They learn to deal with other people in a group setting. They learn to make
decisions and go forward with those decisions. If the decision is wrong, or if
the game turns out to be a stupid game, they have a huge self-correcting
mechanism - they learn self-correction.
Diane:
When I spoke of the Sudbury model to other parents, they looked at me as though
I were crazy, and they said that if you don't provide discipline, if you don't
show students what to study, then they won't get an education. In other words,
they felt that a child given the choice to fool around and play all day would
never choose to learn academically. How do you answer that?
Larry: The
most important thing that kids learn here is self-discipline, self-education,
and self-responsibility. No one can learn true responsibility, no one can truly
learn about themselves, no one can truly learn any subject by being forced.
When you force people to learn, they learn for the test, and then the
information is gone.
The
idea that you have to force children to learn certain things is asinine.
Have
you personally been around infants? Have you shared in child rearing? Out of
the womb children come, and within some number of months they start to lift
their heads up. Did you have to teach them to do that? After some more months,
they learn to roll over. Did that have to be taught? After some more months,
they get up on their knees and they walk. They crawl. Are those things taught?
No. Are they essential for understanding the world and for living successfully?
Yes. Is reading, writing, and math essential for living. Yes. Do children know
this? Yes. Do they need to be forced to learn it? No. If you leave them alone
they will learn it because they know it is essential.
Diane:
How do children know these things are essential? In my mind, that kind of
knowledge would not be an innate, biological urge.
Larry:
What makes you think standing up is innate, or learning how to speak is innate?
I don't think it's necessarily innate. I think what IS innate is the desire to
be successful, and the desire to be competent. That's the desire. That desire
is what is innate. The desire to succeed, the desire to grow, the desire to
learn, those things are innate.
Diane:
So what you are saying is that there is a biological urging which is about
survival in one's environment which in this case is the structure of our
society?
Larry:
Sure. There is a biological urging, or some innate drive, to master your world.
An argument could be that children two thousand years ago didn't naturally want
to learn how to read. Well, of course they didn't, because they naturally
wanted to learn to use a mataka or something, or go hunt - those are the things
they naturally wanted to learn. They were drawn to them because they saw the
adults in their environment doing these things and saw that this was what it
meant to be successful. That's what it means to be an adult? How do I get
there?
Diane:
So are there instances where something needs to be learned that isn't learned?
I'm just thinking of my stepdaughter, who comes from Switzerland. Her parents
are very interested in her grades' being near perfect. They and her teachers
are very strict about studying and discipline. In my mind it is a very
militeristic way of looking at education and learning. She's a brilliant and
creative child, even in that environment.
Larry:
Have you read about the history of schooling? I suggest you read several books,
especially John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down and the Underground History of
American Education.[1] You should read these books because when you say it's
''militaristic'' I have to laugh. Of course it is. The whole system of education
in this country is based on the Prussian model from the 19th century. Another
book to read is called Separating School and State by Sheldon Richman, produced
by the Future of Freedom Foundation.[2] These books will make you sick. Honest
to God, it is so gross and sickening when you realize what the true purpose is
of this country's system of schooling.
Diane:
What purposes is that?
Larry:
To make children docile. Happy doing repetitive tasks. Obedient. It was
designed to make them non-critical thinkers, to make them...
Diane:
Slaves to society?
Larry:
No.... to make them uniform, or similar.
Diane:
That's scary.
Larry:
It's frightening! It is absolutely frightening. One of my biggest frustrations
about being the registrar - I talk to every parent who wants to enroll a child
- is when, for instance, some mom will call me and she'll describe how the
public school is damaging her child and has been doing so for several years. I
describe our school and she agrees that it sounds like a good thing. And then
she asks how much it will cost and I say $3,580.00. And she'll say, Oh, we
can't afford that. I guess my child will have to stay in public school.
I've
heard that so many times it just wrenches me to hear a mother say that about
her child. Three thousand dollars is not that much money! My wife and I pay,
just like everyone else. We don't get a discount here. But we have set our
priorities. Schooling is first - before a vacation, before a new car. It's very
disheartening to hear families capitulating to the system.
Diane:
Well, that's because we are used to free education and tuition connotes
''private school.''
Larry:
That's correct.
Diane:
And adults looking at new alternatives for there children are dealing with over
100 years of educational programming...
Larry:
You've been brainwashed.
Diane:
So if we have an entire society that is brainwashed, how are we going to make
the shifts that need to happen, especially when schools like Alpine and Sudbury
are still considered by the masses to be ''out there'' in their philosphy?
Larry:
Public schools need to be closed.
Diane:
How likely is that, though?
Larry:
I don't know. But that's the solution. As long as there are public schools -
and let's stop calling them ''public'' shall we. Let's call them what they are.
They are government schools. There is nothing public about them except that
they are publically funded. They are government schools. They are run by the
government.
There
is still this mythology of local control. There are still people who say that
education is a local matter. Well, it's not anymore. Look at how much the
department of education at the federal level spends on schooling. They are
influencing children daily, and they do it by mandate, and they do it very
cleverly. If a school accepts government funds, they are a public school, and
they will have to do what every other public school does.
If we
educate people to understand the purpose of public schooling - or government
schooling - hopefully they will come to the realization that they need to
remove their children from those schools. The only solution is to close public
schools or abandon them.
Diane:
Most of the parents I've talked with hate the idea of their children attending
public school. They detest them, but they don't feel there is any other
recourse.
Larry:
They haven't looked. They've been raised in the system that says there is no
other recourse. It's my way or the highway - I'm the teacher, I'm the boss.
Mine is the right answer. Whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant because it
is my answer that is going to be on the test. If I tell you that the only thing
out there is public education except for ''elitist'' private schools, then
that's all there is for some. People have been conditioned that there is no
other option. There is home schooling, for crying out loud! If you don't like
public school, there's home schooling. It is not a choice I would make, but it
is a legitimate choice. In some countries, home schooling is illegal.
Diane:
Do you mean that what you are saying about abandoning public school, though
desirable, is also realistic?
Larry:
Sure - it might take 50 or 60 more years of people realizing the truth of
what's really going on. Once you read these books, I think you'll understand
what I'm saying more thoroughly. The public government school institutions that
we see today were not pushed on America all at once. It was gradually put there
over the course of many years. Slowly, slowly. The compulsory attendance laws that
are on the books now are a fairly recent addition.
Diane:
So who's doing this, Larry? Who's responsible for the educational controls in
this country?
Larry:
The Carnegie Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers were largely behind creating
the compulsory school.
Diane:
They seem to be behind a lot of different things that look like control of the
population.
Larry:
Sure. My child's mind is not controlled by the government. How many people can
truthfully say that. My child will never be controlled by the government. He
will be a free-thinking individual.
Diane:
Where do these ''free thinking'' individuals end up?
Larry:
They end up doing what they want to do. They are productive, happy, successful
people. Look at the graduates of Sudbury Valley. You'll find that 80 percent go
on to college, 40 percent end up being an entrepreneur of one thing or another.
These are happy, contented people who know what it is to work, and they know
how to get things done.
Diane:
What are the downsides of the Sudbury model?
Larry:
I don't think there are any. We graduate happy, productive people. What's bad
about that? They are missing out on the chance to be totally irresponsible for
their life.
For 12
years, they can be obedient and compliant servants and leave all the
responsibility on the adults' shoulders. Or they can be here and be complete,
volitional children making real decisions.
We had
a School Meeting today, which most of the student body and staff attended,
where we decided whether or not to admit a new child into our school. That's
real power! This is a nice young boy, and this is what we do with all new kids.
We have them here for a week, and then we have a school meeting and we decide
whether they are going to come. Five-, six-, eight- and eighteen-year-olds get
to talk about it freely. I thought he was a great kid or I thought he wasn't,
and here's why. They have a vote, and I have a vote.
Diane:
That sounds scary in a way. I was just thinking if I were a child going into a
situation like that, I would want to be accepted. Going through the judgment
process might be difficult.
Larry:
It's not really a judgment process. It's not that we sit around and say, He
kind of had some funny hair. It's based on actions, and the only questions we
have are about the kids who might hurt people or bother people. It really has
to go over a clear line. The standard is not, He looked at me funny once,
therefore I'm voting no. It's, He kept bugging me, and I kept asking him to
please stop, and he never stopped. That is the kind of thing that might stop
someone from being voted in.
Diane:
What are some of the challenges you deal with concerning the parents of these
kids?
Larry:
Most parents are programmed, some are not. Some come to the philosophy quite
naturally and there's no problem. The real problem for many parents is that
they find themselves in the position of having to trust their child without
getting extensive external feedback. We don't send home report cards. We don't
give evaluations. And so a parent will say, How do I know how little Johnny is
doing? Our standard response is, Ask little Johnny how little Johnny is doing.
Communicate with your children. Get to know them. That's probably the hardest
thing for parents, knowing that their kid is going to be okay.
Diane:
Could this system be used for adults?
Larry:
This is what adults do when they are outside. It might be more accurate to make
the statement that this is the sort of education that adults pursue. It is
need-based. An adult needs to learn accounting, so he goes and learns
accounting. At this school, a children determines they need to learn whatever
to accomplish some goal, and so they go and learn it. Is this appropriate for
adults? Sure. We are ultimately trying to create adults who can do this.
Diane:
Thanks very much Larry for your passion and your courage in fostering a
healthier learning environment for our children.
Resources:
1.
Gatto's website is at johntaylorgatto.com.
2.
Sheldon Richman's article titled ''Freedom 101'' can be found at
www.libertyhaven.com/thinkers/sheldonrichman/freedom.html His review of
''Separating School and State'' is at sepschool.org/reading/richman.html.
3.
Alpine Valley School is located at 4501 Parfet Street, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033,
phone 303-271-0525, website alpineval.org.