Imperfect Genius

A great article appeared in the Washington Post yesterday, Learning On Their Own Terms, which describes experiences that can only be called unschooling at a, um… school.

At the Fairhaven School there are no tests, grades, or course requirements. There is no “typical student day” because each kid determines their own learning experiences.

For some this means Spanish and algebra classes. Others write plays, shoot basketball, and read poetry. And still others do nothing but play video games, talk on their cell phones, and hang with their friends.

Yet these are all equally valid choices and each is considered just as educational as any of the others. There is no curriculum they must follow, they just discover experiences and explore topics of their choosing, guided mostly by a sense of curiosity.

The school does have an agreement about attendance, but even that is flexible. Students are to spend at least five hours a day at the school between the hours of 8am and 5pm. Children come and go all day. Some arrive early in the morning, while those who enjoy sleeping in come later.

Danny Mydlack, who spent two years filming a documentary about the school, describes why the school works and how it changed his thoughts about learning:

it [the school] turned his beliefs about learning upside down, leading him to conclude that what kids learn is less important than how they learn. “Everything these kids study, they own,” he said. “It’s theirs. Because they wanted to.”

Unschooling allows children to have confidence in their learning abilities and to have ownership in the knowledge they gain through their experiences. They discover information and engage in activities when they were interested, calling on the innate curiousity that resides in us all.

They are not forced to memorize material deemed important by someone else but are instead free to become fully engaged in their own explorations. This is the heart of the unschooling philosophy and it’s more than just a method of learning, it’s really a way of living.

There are dozens of study that show that people are less distractible, have better comprehension, and retain information longer when they are interested in the topic.

This is precisely what John Holt, an unschooling pioneer and author of many books with titles like Teach Your Own and Learning All The Time, is saying here in this quote from The Underachiving School:

“True learning - learning that is permanent and useful, that leads to intelligent action and further learning - can arise only out of the experience, interests and concerns of the learner.”

The Fairhaven School brightly illuminates the fundamental flaw of government schooling - students have no autonomy or freedom. They must follow anartificial educational program. This is precisely why calls for school reform are pointless - can you imagine public schools switching over to unschooling method?

It’s a lovely thought and it’s what needs to happen, but public misunderstanding would kill the idea before it got past the drawing board. It’ll never happen. People will just continue pushing for reform with nothing effective actually taking place.

There are definitely critics of the Fairhaven school, mostly the type that ask ridiculous questions like ‘how do we know the children are learning anything if they’re never tested?’ and ‘how is playing all day going to develop a child’s mind?’.

If I was ever inclined to put my children in school, it would certainly be a place like Fairhaven, which is based on the Sudbury model, a democratic free school established in 1968 in Massachusetts.

There are more than 25 so-called Sudbury schools in the US, with several more scattered around the world in countries like Canada, Israel, and Belgium. There are several in various stages of planning, scheduled to open soon.

I’ve read quite a bit about the Summerhill School which is in England, but I was unaware that similar schools had been founded in the US. I was surprised to learn that there are three Sudbury schools within a day’s drive of us and one just three hours away.

I found it very interesting to note that several of the students enrolled in the Fairhaven school are children of teachers and other public school employees, such as Justin Reed’s mom, who is principal of Mount Rainier Elementary.

She had this to say, which brings to light the problem with the one-size-fits-all educational model:

[She] said Fairhaven restored Justin’s love of learning. “It had really been beaten out of him.” Now, she said, Justin studies poets such as Allen Ginsberg and is flourishing as a writer.

“What I would like to be able to deliver to my child, and every child, is the education they need, and the education they desire, and really open that up for them.”

May her wishes find fertile ground to take root upon and spread like wildfire.