The Sudbury Model Works

The theme of next Monday's walk-and-talk is another of the school's founding beliefs: That the Sudbury model demonstrably works. Here is a seed for the investigation:

Sudbury Valley School, the first Sudbury-model school, studies their graduates perhaps more than any other school in the world. Their experience is clear:

-students learned to read, and didn't find it difficult compared to other tasks of growing up
-people who wanted to go to college were able to go
-people grew up to be effective adults
-the democratically-run school has low per-student cost and excellent behaviour

One school's success could be due to any number of things: A particularly capable staff, for example, or a special environment. Many Sudbury-model schools have started up, only to close. But enough schools have succeeded, in a variety of environments, with no stand-out traits among founders other than extreme commitment, that it's worth examining the claim that it's the model itself that supports success.

I'll bring a couple of books to the walk-and-talk: The Pursuit of Happiness (Sudbury Valley's study of their graduates) and Like Water (describing the success of Fairhaven School).