Sudbury Valley Schools are the gold standard as far as I can tell from my research. (I spent a number of years as an education/students rights activist; built and ran the country's most famous education blog back in 2009; and have otherwise been doing advocacy work for a couple decades)<p>They are fully democratic and focus on producing empowered self directed citizens who understand how to share limited resources and cooperate.<p>The kids have as much power as any adult or teacher, which I really love -- they say you can't make someone partially equal -- either you share power with them or you don't. No grades or grade levels, students decided what to focus on. Great mini documentary on the website to watch as well.<p><a href="http://www.sudval.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sudval.org/</a>
My partner became involved in Montessori a few years ago, and I've been really impressed with how it works.<p>If you don't know much about Montessori, here is my "in a nutshell" version: It's a method of schooling usually associated with preschool and elementary education. There are mixed age groups (e.g. 3 to 6) in classrooms. There is at least one adult who gives one-on-one lessons on how to work with "materials." The materials do the teaching, not the adult.<p>There are hundreds of different types of materials. They're designed to teach or exercise a particular skill, but they look like games and are all designed to be "beautiful" as to entice children to them (Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn). They follow a particular progression. Children may work with any material for which they've had a lesson. They can work with it as many times as they like.<p>My favorite example of how Montessori works is how it develops reading skills. First a child is introduced to materials that involve very short crayons - when they use them they strengthen the muscles in their hands. Then they're introduced to letter-tracing materials. Then they're introduced to letter/sound matching materials.
Children who follow these lessons wind up writing first, and then reading follows very naturally. The emphasis on developing physical capabilities first really demonstrates the attention to detail that's typical of Montessori.<p>The math education progression is impressive also. There are materials that have children doing proto-multiplication, exponentiation, algebraic manipulation, and more. My partner developed a material that teaches counting, addition, and subtraction in base 8. (Her 4 and 5-year-olds understood it much more quickly than her colleagues!)<p>There are parts of the method I don't like (e.g. dogmatic resistance to rewarding performance, for example), but overall it feels like a huge improvement over typical early childhood education.
" Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, which combine all three school forms of Germany’s tertiary system. Last year’s school leavers achieved an average grade of 2.0, the equivalent of a straight B – even though 40% of the year had been advised not to continue to abitur, the German equivalent of A-levels, before they joined the school. Having opened in 2007 with just 16 students, the school now operates at full capacity, with 500 pupils and long waiting lists for new applicants.<p>Given its word-of-mouth success, it is little wonder that there have been calls for Rasfeld’s approach to go nationwide. Yet some educational experts question whether the school’s methods can easily be exported: in Berlin, they say, the school can draw the most promising applicants from well-off and progressive families. Rasfeld rejects such criticisms, insisting that the school aims for a heterogenous mix of students from different backgrounds. While a cross adorns the assembly hall and each school day starts with worship, only one-third of current pupils are baptised. Thirty per cent of students have a migrant background and 7% are from households where no German is spoken."<p>OK, Rasfeld. If you believe you are working this magic with normal students, switch to lottery admissions, and provide pre-admission grades, IQ scores, parental incomes or language or country of origin, and we'll see how much of that outperformance remains after controlling for baseline characteristics and comparing the lottery winners with losers...
Minor nitpick: "evangelical" is a bad translation of the German "evangelisch" (at least in the sense that many Americans think of "evangelical"). In the German context, this is better glossed as simply "Protestant".<p>(And the German protestant church, at least here in Berlin, is a vastly more liberal and progressive organization than one would imagine if you grew up in the American south like I did.)
Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day.<p>I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.
Education is <i>extremely</i> political. It's not that we can't come up with better ways of occupying school-age children. Montessori has been around since the early 1900s!<p>The problem is convincing everyone they need to adopt a new method. Which is absolutely completely politically impossible compared to making small tweaks to the system already present.<p>Nobody is going to turn education upside down. Ever.
The bottom line is: how well do these "progressive ideas" work in practice? I couldn't find much evidence online that they're more effective in general than the "traditional" approach.<p>I have been a college professor for 7 years, here's what I have been able to PERSONALLY observe in that time:<p>(1) Frequent, regular feedback (quizzes, tests, homeworks, projects) helps a lot for most students. If you just have a final at the end the majority of students will finish the course having learned a lot less.<p>(2) Obviously students learn more when they're personally engaged and interested in a topic rather from just doing it to get a grade. But getting them excited is not obvious and engagement varies in predictable ways based on previous background knowledge and aptitude for the subject. A lot of the extra effort a teacher does is ultimately to try to get students more excited about a subject.<p>(3) One on one time with a teacher students can be very helpful. It will almost certainly produce a noticeable improvement in subject understanding, particularly for those students who are motivated but struggling a little bit. Unfortunately this requires a lot of time from the professor, so it's not really practical except with small classes and a small teaching load.
> The pupils decide which subjects they want to study for each lesson and when they want to take an exam.<p>So the student learns what they want to learn when they want to learn it. The student focuses on a subject when the brain is ready and interested. Sounds efficient.<p>OTOH, one of the really valuable things about a curriculum is that it serves as a guide to a complex and bewildering subject.<p>A curriculum, at its best, is like a highly knowledgeable person telling a novice: "Study these nineteen subtopics and you'll grasp this field pretty quickly. If you study these other nineteen subtopics, you'll just waste a year of your time and never really get a clue." Which also sounds efficient.<p>How to reconcile?
> Year after year, Rasfeld’s institution ends up with the best grades among Berlin’s gesamtschulen, or comprehensive schools, ...<p>So there are still grades, or at least someone is still testing the kids. This isn't utopia yet.<p>>> each school day starts with worship.<p>Sorry. Game over imho. I am not so put off by the specifics of the religion, but by its presence muddying the academic waters. A school religion means a distinct value system, and associated enforcement mechanisms, over and above what is available at standard public schools. That means the academic achievements of this school may not be applicable as the school's faith may be playing a large role in student motivation.<p>I once read a paper on whether Hogwarts was a faith school. The theory went that faith schools are characterized by the fact that teachers double as faith leaders, as teachers of morality and dogma, something that does occur at Hogwarts. This motivates students in a manner not available where there isn't religious commonality between students and teachers. The problem is that the scheme breaks down once the kids realize their teachers are but human, flawed and sinful as anyone else. Let's call that the Krabappel effect. Then the religion becomes a reason to distrust teachers, to break ranks even work against them ... like at hogwarts.<p>xxxxxxxxx<p>As I am not allowed to reply (thanks for that btw) I'll edit in my reply here.<p>My comment above is not to whether religion is a good/bad thing, but to the fact that the presence of religion at this school makes it less likely that its results can be replicated at other schools with either different or no religion present.
An obligatory reference:<p>A. S. Neill "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" (1960), especially chapter 1 (about the Summerhill school itself). The schools started in 1920s, and sadly, we made no progress in that direction in the last century.<p>Link: <a href="https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://trisquel.info/files/summerhill-english_1.pdf</a>
It really comes down to the children. If they have a lot of selfdisciplin it's great if not they are better off at more strict schools.<p>At the end of the day though, parents and their indirect involvement is the key to a proper education no matter what educational philosophy one follows.
I went to a Montessori school for a while. Much like what is described here. For me it was fantastic and I sometimes lightly regret not continuing in high school due to (minor) practical obstacles. That said, I believe these types of systems are definitely not for everyone. Lots of kids are probably better off with a bit of structure and imposed discipline.
I have to say I'm of the opinion that modern education is terribly inefficient, and to back my claim I offer that most people who are any good get there not by following a curriculum but by having an interest which they explore on their own.
But that's just on the supposed goals of education. I feel the important achievement of modern school systems is the obedience of the populace, which from a historical perspective is quite a feat really, if far from their professed aim.
We school-educated people associate learning with authority and it's hard for us to truly grasp that education takes place most efficiently under conditions of freedom. Repealing Hitler's 1938 law against home education would be an important step for Germany.
The essence of teaching, it seems, to assist students with theoretical knowledge while they are learning by doing the right things. We are evolved to learn by doing (beautiful studies about how children of remote rural areas in Himalaya and Mongolia are learning their native language without being taught, by mere exposure is a nice evidence).<p>The second factor is to be taught of right things - the first principles, fundamental ideas with no nonsense examples. This is why classic MIT or Berkeley Scheme courses based on SIP were wastly supervisor than modern "pragmatic" Python or Java crap. Brian Harvey's CS61A is a gold standard.<p>Schedules and grades are of second importance. The proof is all these self-educated people who picked up knowledge without attending any high school. Moreover, in many cases a municipal primary school, being much like an overcrowded prison-like facility for kids from impoverished families, did more damage than good by imposing wrong habits and impressions of what education is about.<p>Learning is a continuous and natural process for us and other higher animals. Removal of obstacles, distractions and idiots and exposure to right principles and ideas will do much more than all the micro optimizations combined. "Good schools", like MIT or Yale proved it many times.<p>There is also Pirsig's book.
Incredible! Sounds very similar to what schools like Acton Academy and Talent Unbound are doing in the US. I have no doubt that the future of education will come from private schools made by entrepreneurs re-imagining schools from the bottom-up.<p>I opened the second campus for Talent Unbound in Houston about a year ago, and am now working on building software to help power more of these schools. It's very exciting to be a part of what seems like a world-wide learning revolution!
I don't think you need to be a helicopter parent to be somewhat wary of the description of this. There's plenty of value in standardized education and a scoring system.<p>It doesn't need to be so rigid as traditional schools, but some metric, even if very abstract and vague, that helps us identify that there are possibly important gaps in the kids' knowledge is pretty damn useful.
I don't understand the 'no timetable' part. In my experience kids will do nothing if no deadline is presented. How do schools avoid some kids diddling away the semester? Or is it just OK for some kids to fail?
AMA: We are secular homeschoolers and primarily use self-directed learning as our teaching method. Unschooling/self-directed gives our children extreme freedom to pursue their interests, encourages deep play-based learning, and instills a deep level of self-confidence in them.<p>Most of our homeschooling friends also use this method of "teaching". We have really become more like facilitators for the next big project they feel like doing.
It depends on perspective. Getting education or acquiring skills or better network is ol'good combination of carrot and stick anyway. Those instruments just happily passed from teachers to students themselves. Time will tell who is using these precious things more wise.<p>Full disclosure - I am big fun of didactics in delivering knowledge, since only implying of proper level of didactical pressure makes the right chemical background for application of nootropics.
I went to one of these as a child and learned nothing. It became a real struggle to learn in a time efficient manner. I would strongly discourage parents from choosing this kind of education for early learners as it doesn't include various social skills like how to sit in a classroom, address a prompt, etc.
A great primer to this type of philosophy (no grades for kids) is Deming--from about 40 years ago.<p>"A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers"
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ3lGJ4OFo</a>
The title should read "No grades, no timetable, and no degree". As much as I like the idea behind it it's simply not a feasible concept in today's society and it's competitive environment. In fact, I'd even wager that the pupils of that school will be ridiculed by their fellow peers for attending such a school. Not to mention that admission boards of prestigious universities would never give them the time of the day. With such an "education" it's literally impossible to compete in today's society.
> such as coding a computer game instead of sitting a maths exam.<p>Okay I suck at math but am decent at programming and the last time I checked there is a bunch of math in game development.<p>I agree that <i></i>some<i></i> subjects in school are useless but if you give a kid the option of doing whatever he wants versus learning math (which most would) then I'd say your school system sucks.
if I was still in school I wish they included being able to choose what matters I wanted to be graded. But I wish no grades for humanities like history, literature, geography.
so, this method is great for the outliers, kids like hawking or tony hawk - kids that are driven by themselves, don't need no guidance, help, discipline.<p>there is a reason asian kids outperform others, and it's not montessori.<p>and yes, school is about performance as kids will grow up and will need to be able to earn for a living. work, compete.<p>school is optimized for the average kid with average parents. all the HN outliers don't apply.<p>i would opt for full day schools in shitty areas, get the kids away from their parents as much as possible. off the street. teach them.
This is a child being disrespectful on a monumental level, not outsmarting anyone. It also sounds like her parents are paying a great deal of attention.<p>She may also be a classic psychopath.<p><a href="http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psychopath-difference" rel="nofollow">http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/sociopath-psyc...</a>