Environment Influences Behaviour

The theme of next Monday's walk-and-talk is one of the school's founding beliefs: that behaviour is greatly influenced by one's environment. Here are questions to seed the investigation:

Kids in mainstream schools are generally restricted from moving and talking, and separated by age. Is behaviour under these conditions indicative of how they would behave when allowed to focus on their own interests?

What fraction of diagnosed learning disorders is due to kids being energetic or unimpressed?

Did humans evolve to be active, eager learners up until they enter school, and then lethargic, disinterested beings thereafter?

Kids learn to walk and talk in an environment of freedom, with focus and determination. Why is this freedom then blocked?

Do Sudbury-model students have difficulty adjusting to a restricted environment when, for example, they get a job that requires it?

All welcome, please come to the walk-and-talk, Monday May 3rd. We meet by the front steps of City Hall at 7:00, and begin walking at 7:15.

Unintended Learning

Here's a seed for next week's walk-and-talk on one of the school's founding beliefs: That most learning is an unintended consequence of following one's interests.

How do kids learn to use computers, TV recorders and other gadgets? Their focus isn't on learning, it's on doing fun things, moving forward with their drives and goals. The learning is a natural consequence.

Sometimes Sudbury-model kids decide to go back to a mainstream school. They generally find that they are just as advanced as traditionally-schooled kids, who have been busy "learning" while the Sudbury-model kids were "just following their interests".

Sudbury-model kids do sometimes intentionally learn specific things. It's a small fraction of the time. We need schools that fit the ways kids are driven to learn.

Effective Learning Methods

Here's a seed for next Monday's walk-and-talk about one of the school's founding beliefs: That effective learning methods include play, conversation, and being with kids of all ages.

I had a conversation this weekend with a mathematician. I asked him how he learned best. He said that he learned best through conversation. Conversation! A mathematician!

Sudbury-model students would not be surprised by this answer. A tremendous amount of their learning is through conversation. Conversation requires you to clarify and articulate your beliefs, experiences and observations, and it requires you to find a common understanding with others, who have different backgrounds and beliefs. This is true whether you're talking about how your weekend was, what your favourite music is, or anything else that comes up. Kids with freedom naturally talk about what is most important to them, and they are a better judge than anyone else of what that should be.

It's a common belief that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Schools should allow this, not block it by dividing people by age and insisting that they not talk. Kids love learning from other kids, informally through conversation, or even formally, by asking for help. And kids love using their new knowledge to help others. Learning, understanding, and teaching go hand in hand - unless the hands are made to let go.

Kids love to play. Play is fully engaging. Kids create new worlds, investigate new concepts, explore personal limits. To adults it might just look like playing, but to kids it's fully engaging with the world as they know it, an ever-expanding world.

Our world is changing quickly. The best preparation to be an adult in this world is to spend your childhood exploring, investigating, playing fully with the world as you know it. Kids are the best judge of what they are ready to engage with, and how to engage with it. They have a drive to play at the edge, to expand themselves, to grow into the world.

Play, conversation and age-mixing: Invaluable attributes of an effective school.

The Drive to Grow Up

Here's a seed for Monday's walk-and-talk about one of the school's founding beliefs: That people are born with an instinct, a drive, to understand and master the world around them. Their most important activity is growing up.

There is much agreement that this is true for toddlers, who are intent on learning to walk and talk. Nothing will stop them.

It takes tremendous effort to stop kids from following this instinct to grow up. To stop a kid's drive to grow up, you need to stop them from moving and you need to stop them from talking.

You also need to separate them from older kids who might act as role models. This part is easily done if you have enough authority. Authority isn't enough, though, to stop kids from the instincts to move and talk. To do that, you need to be constantly disciplining them. This is a teacher's main activity, where most of their energy goes, in a mainstream classroom.

It's clear when you see Sudbury-model children that they are driven to grow up. They're exploring their world, they're talking about it, they're observing older kids or using their life-experience to help younger kids. They're creating worlds and fully living in them, and they're doing it with tremendous energy and focus. Wonderful preparation for creating a life as an adult.