Curriculum-based schools vs. Community-based schools

What do our real lives consist of? What will our children’s real lives consist of?

With these rather important questions in mind, Sudbury schools were formed over half a century ago. At Sudbury we prepare our children for real, full, capable lives. 

It’s no wonder, then, that Sudbury graduates consistently report that they feel incredibly prepared for real life - prepared for the struggles and also prepared to flourish - often first in college and jobs, and then perhaps more importantly in relationships and pursuits that matter to them. 

Can the same be said for children in curriculum-based schools? Are they truly prepared for the 'real world' if their skills are limited to writing formulaic essays, creating dioramas with outside help, or solving algebraic equations that computers can handle?

Ideally, curriculum-based schooling has “taught them” to complete tasks as required, but too often young adults are reporting that it taught them to resent the very material they’re required to complete, made them stressed or anxiously perfectionistic, cut them off from their real interests and passion, and had them focus so narrowly on task completion that they felt lost outside of that overly external structure when it was finally time to make their own decisions and get in touch with their own genuine interests. 

Real life preparation must be comprehensive, a little messy, and focused on the real, internal structure and skills that our youth truly need to both survive and thrive. 

It makes sense for a machine to need direct content-centered programming from a linearly-organized set of materials. 

Human beings, though, are simply not machines. We are hard-wired for Dynamic Human Learning - and that does not most effectively happen in a linear, externally-structured way. It simply does not. 

The Sudbury advantage is the engagement of Dynamic Human Learning which always involves the daily practice of real life:

• cooperation,

• accountability,

• problem solving,

• exploration,

• self-management,

• group decisions,

• and all the skills now called “academic” that are simply tools people need to accomplish real goals - reading, calculating, organizing, learning new words, learning about new places and discoveries, etc. 

As a former high school English teacher, I find the vocabularies and linguistic complexities of my Sudbury students to be far superior to that of my curriculum-based high school students - without vocabulary lists and tests. They’re using language at Sudbury in the way language was intended to be used and learned - and it shows. 

The way seasoned Sudbury students take charge, empower themselves and others, and problem solve as a team could put executive managerial teams to shame. 

And, at the very same time, Sudbury kids have the precious time and space to be kids - to play tag, scrape their knees, climb a tree, make bracelets, build model airplanes - thing that helped young people develop into successful young adults for many more decades than today’s high pressure schooling method has even been around. 

Ask yourself - what is a child really learning in a high pressure, curriculum and performance-based school? Are those the skills they’ll truly need as adults? Let’s hope, because they’ll be getting at least 13 years of practice. And the hours of sitting at a desk, completing homework assignments, and studying for and taking tests are all hours that they won’t be playing, genuinely problem solving, interacting, creating… there’s always a trade - is the desk and the social “norm” today worth that trade?

The outcome data for Sudbury schools is pretty fantastic - it didn’t feel like a “leap of faith” to me once I read the studies and spoke with Sudbury graduates. It felt like a sure bet and a really valuable life laboratory for my kids. I want them to know who they are, what they like, and how to work authentically with others. I know that in the process they’ll learn to read and calculate - they’re human. But I didn’t want them to learn to read and calculate at the expense of practicing really being human. 

The outcome data, on the other hand, for test and curriculum driven schools is a pretty mixed bag with some pretty big red flags: anxiety, depression, lack of interest, failure to launch, failure to thrive... That seemed like much more of a gamble - albeit a socially-acceptable one these days. I spent a long time looking for a nicer rat race for my children until I realized there was an amazing option that didn’t involve the shame and stress I was worried was the compulsory part of compulsory education. 

What do kids learn at a Sudbury School?

• How to make decisions that matter

• How to work as a team cooperatively led by other kids of many ages, adults, and themselves 

• How to pursue their own interests

• How to advocate for their ideas

• How to compromise

• How to take accountability for their actions

• How to hold other people accountable 

• How to lead

• How to follow

• What matters to them

• What it means to be in Community

• Why fun is important

• Why follow through matters to them

• What it feels like to be respected

• What it feels like to respect others

What about literature, languages, mathematics, science, history, and the sort? These are all really exciting and wonderful things that are actually naturally part of dynamic human learning and, contrary to current convention, don’t need to be forced. In fact, they are absorbed more significantly and deeply when they’re not forced. 

Academics aren’t avoided or blocked during a Sudbury education at all. In fact, they are often a really natural and dynamic part of a young person‘s education because they’re interacting with other people with the resources at a Sudbury school. They’re joining clubs and workshops. They’re finding these languages and science experiments and art projects and history lessons in dynamic ways instead of forced preplanned ways - and this actually makes a huge difference in their reception to these subjects and their lifelong engagement with them. 

What should be more of a concern than, “Will they learn x,y, or z,” is whether they’ll be in an environment that will narrowly focus on “x, y, or z” with academics at the expense of the play, interaction, creativity, and problem solving.  

The “essentials” of what kids need is not at all “missing” at a Sudbury school - it’s actually the true essentials that are the focus, and all the other great stuff is learned in integrated, dynamic and deeper ways than any forced curriculum could hope to achieve.