Blue Ridge Discovery School

A Sudbury Model School

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DJs: Dave Lewis and Mari White

Guests: Shahriar Abbassi and Walt Thiessen of Blue Ridge Discovery School

Dave: 8:37 [AM]. Good morning. Welcome back to The Morning Line. Hour three on this July 15th [2003]. Thank you for joining us. Live local talk radio for Central and Southside Virginia. Our number is 846-8255, that's 846-TALK; toll free 888-881-8851; email address WLNI@aol.com. And in the studio, and gentlemen, please correct me if I mispronounce, is Mr. Shahriar Abbassi, is that correct?

Shahriar: Yes.

Dave: And Mr. Walt Thiessen.

Walt: You got it.

Dave: Both you guys come on closer ... get up to that mike. Our guests are with the Blue Ridge Discovery School; it is Discovery School, in spite of what Brian might have told you.

(Chuckles)

Dave: And it's a school planning to open, hoping to open, I guess, in the Fall of 2003. Still looking for a site. Is that right?

Walt: That's correct. Although we're really close to having one.

Dave: OK. How close? Where would that be?

Shahriar: Well there's a site on Campbell Avenue that we're considering for the school now. It's not quite certain yet, but we're hoping we'll be able to open there.

Dave: And all you'll have to do is move in the desks and materials or whatever you need.

Shahriar: Things of that nature as well as making sure the building is up to code.

Dave: Well, tell us about the school; what's distinctive about this school?

Shahriar: Well the school is aiming to essentially provide children with freedom of education. As you know when [that] most traditional schools, children are essentially told how to study, when to study, and what to study. This school tries to provide a different approach to education which puts the students in the driver seat. They decide what they would like to study, and how to do it, when to do it, for how long to do it, and from whom to learn, and to whom to teach.

Dave: Will you have traditional grades, first grade, second grade, that sort of thing?

Walt: No. (aside to Shahriar) Go ahead.

Shahriar: No, the school is not divided into the typically graded format of the traditional schools.

Dave: How about the typical age? Would a kid enter the school at the same age as a child starts?

Shahriar: Yes, they enter at the age of five, and they can stay 'til they're 19. So actually, it's past high school age.

Walt: One thing to qualify on that, we expect to probably have "open enrollment" which means, first of all, that kids can enroll anytime during the school year, and second of all, if their fifth birthday is after September 30, they don't have to wait a year to enroll; they can enroll right away.

Dave: Our children starting out their formal education in many ways are empty vessels. We're hopeful that their parents have engaged them, and they come in with some knowledge. But empty vessels, do you start them off immediately with this you decide or do you do some basics in order to give them the tools with which to pursue what they want to pursue.

Walt: The School is based on the Sudbury Model which was created in 1968, in Framingham, Massachusetts at Sudbury Valley School and has enjoyed and prospered to this day. The basic model depends on a couple of factors that are true about all children, and indeed about all people. The first is that all children are intensely curious, as anyone who has a two-year-old knows, and that curiosity, if allowed the freedom to pursue whatever interest that child has will eventually lead that child to explore everything that they need to know in order to become happy, productive citizens. That's the philosophy behind it, and it actually proves out very well in reality.

Mari: Wow, because that flies in the face of what a lot of people would say, if they're bringing up children, is that the children need structure.

Walt: Well there is structure.

Mari: OK.

Walt: But it's not the structure of the kind that forces kids away from their natural curiosity. The structure is the way that the school is organized. It's organized on democratic principles. Basically the school is administered by a school meeting which consists of the staff and students each getting one vote. So obviously in that arrangement, the students have the majority. And yet, despite what many people might think it actually works out extremely well. One of my favorite points to point out - I actually helped found a Sudbury Model school in Connecticut before moving down here, and we established a budget for the kids to work with throughout the year. Halfway through the year they had used less than 10% of their budget, which flies in the face of what most people would expect. They think that the kids would just fly through the money, and there would be nothing left. It' s just the opposite, diametrically the opposite. So, it turns out that the kids take a very active role in deciding what the rules of the school need to be, how you're going to deal with legal issues, who's going to run the meetings, who's going to take care of the money, [and] who's going to follow up on responsibilities anything from who's going to clean the school to who's going to deal with disciplinary problems. There's actually a Judicial Committee who helps with the disciplinary problems. So, there's a definite structure to the school . . .

Mari: Right.

Walt: . . . but it's just not a traditional structure.

Mari: Give us an example of how a day would be for, say, an 8-year-old who comes to the school.

Walt: It's difficult to do that, mainly because every child has their own approach to a day, and it's as unique as the individuals that are involved. However, in general a lot of play happens, which, by the way, Sudbury schools are very much in favor of because play is the basis for learning. In fact adults don't like to admit this to themselves, but when they're trying to learn something new they play with it. A modern example is the computer. You have to play with it before you can understand it. That's exactly what kids do. The difference is, kids are always playing to learn, because their whole motivation is to learn how to be like the big people, to learn how society works, and so they're constantly playing with things to learn how that happens. That's why we're very much in favor of play as part of the school.

Mari: What about a child who comes in and . . . Are you saying that children will have the natural curiosity to learn about everything that's going to be important to them as adults? Is that. . .

Walt: Over time - you have to give them the time. I mean, you can't think of it in the same terms as thinking that you can have everything that a child needs to learn within one year, because [in] a traditional school you don't do that either. Traditional schools, they give them 12 years to learn everything they need to learn. If you give them that 12 years in a Sudbury school, yeah, they do.

Mari: How do they learn to read?

Walt: Usually from each other, in some cases from staff members, in many cases just by going off and picking up a book and learning. The difference is that they all don't learn to read at the same time. They may learn to read at age five, age seven, age nine-it's been known to happen as late as [age]12 or 13. The one thing you can count on is by the time they're 14 they all know how to read; and not only do they know how to read, you can't tell them apart.

Dave: What if. Say that a child at ... doesn't learn to read until 14 - what about all those years that that child could have pursued a lot of interests and learned, but they couldn't because they couldn't read.

Walt: Well actually . . .

Dave: Why not take the time . . .

Walt: You're making an assumption that isn't true.

Dave: What's that?

Walt; The assumption that you're making is that if they want to learn something, that they need to learn by reading, that they aren't going to learn to read. And that's not true. The true assumption is that they're following their own initiatives, during all those years that they've decided not yet to learn to read, but the means that they need to get there don't include reading yet.

Dave: But then all the ... what were they doing for those intervening years?

Walt: All kinds of things. What the kids do in school that don't necessarily involve reading. There are lots of things that kids do.

Dave: Gosh.

Walt: Think about it. I mean ...

Dave: Well, it's ...

Walt: ... don't allow yourself to be tunneled by the typical three R's. Think in terms of what actually happens with kids, what actually happens in school, and there's innumerable ways that kids learn.

Dave: It's hard for me to imagine a child going to age fourteen and not learning to read, and not having missed opportunities. That's just my take on it.

Shahriar: Actually I think the experience has been that the children, by the time they have reached the age of fourteen are all able to read at all these Sudbury Model schools. I think that the point that needs to be emphasized here is that when a child realizes that reading is a tool necessary to function, he or she has a very strong impetus toward the acquisition of that skill. The same goes for math and many other skills that we have in life; we usually know that if we need something we look for tools to do the job.

Dave: Then why doesn't this happen in other schools?

Shahriar: That is primarily because the children are forced into them before they're ready, and also they do not see the logic behind the acquisition of that skill. They have to just simply assume that what they're told is necessary for them. And generally speaking children try to accommodate that to the extent they can in order to cope. But if they have the need coming from inside them, that they need to learn to read because it is becoming an impediment not to. Then they have very strong motivation for that.

Dave: Many people, including me, might have a take on this: Gee, this is a real radical approach to education, but ...

Walt: It is.

Dave: But ... things aren't going so well in some of the other models, so maybe it's something to work ... to look at. How do you demonstrate the performance of these children, to show that this works; how could you show that it works?

Walt: Well the tool that many people use to measure that is how successful are they after they leave school? I think that's a pretty easy thing to compare because most people are familiar with students who leave traditional schools. So, just to kind of give you some Sudbury model comparisons, among those students who leave the Sudbury school - not all of them, by the way, want to go to go to college; about half of them already know what they want to do, and they're ready. They just want to go out there and go to it. But perhaps half of them also do want to go to college, and of that group 100% get into college successfully, 90% to the college of their first choice. I defy you to find a traditional school that can match that.

Dave: Is there a certain number of years that they go? From this age to this age, or ...

Walt: Typically they follow the same schedule that a traditional student would follow. It doesn't mean that they always do, but then again traditional students don't always follow the same schedule.

Dave: Can they opt ... I mean, obviously they could quit. But they're under certain ...

Walt: Well, some graduate early ...

Dave: ...government regulations ...

Walt: ... some graduate late.

Dave: ... I guess, as far as having to send children to school. A 12-year-old can't just say, I'm not going to go to school any more and knock off.

Shahriar: Yes, that's right. I mean, we're still under the mandatory, you know, education policy of the state. There's this need to attend a certain number of days and hours at the school. What's interesting though is that if you have a chance to visit one of these Sudbury model schools, you realize that the children actually have a hard time leaving the school. They have a great deal of satisfaction with what they are doing. They come in the morning - many of these schools are open for longer periods of time during the day - so it's really interesting that they like to be at school.

Dave: What kind of ... You say how many schools are there using this model, now?

Walt: There are roughly 20 of them throughout the country, another 4 or 5 around the world.

Dave: What kind of tuition? What's that?

Walt: It varies, obviously, because schools are in different regions with different economic situations. Typically, you find tuitions being in the range of $4-5,000 a year. There are some schools that have experimented with tuition assistance programs, including the one that I helped start in Connecticut. Over all ...

Dave: Before we get to the call, would it be fair to say ... that with that tuition that these are kids who's parents have some means, and perhaps are ... more likely to prosper, to flower in this environment.

Walt: Actually, you end up with just the opposite of that most often. Most often the kids that you get are the ones that aren't doing well in school, the ones who don't fit it in, who get in trouble; or they find themselves in Special Ed, when they're not really supposed to be in Special Ed. You usually don't get the best and brightest coming to a school like ours, because the best and brightest are the ones who get the big rewards in a traditional school. So they don't have the motivation to leave. The other interesting point is that once a best and bright[est] student comes into a school like ours, they're the ones who have the most trouble adapting, because they're used to taking their lead from the teacher. Whereas in a school like this, there's no teacher controlling your day, so there's nobody to take your lead from. They take a little bit longer to learn how to take their own initiative, to follow their own example. They eventually do learn it, but it's a little bit of a burden for the A student compared with the C or D student.

Mari: Here's Ron. Hi Ron!

Ron: Good morning, guys. It's a real Ron here. (?) Fascinating conversation. I'm a graduate of Hampshire College, up in Amherst, Mass., which has a similar sort of approach to the college student, in terms of design or their own program, maybe a little bit more structure than what you 're talking about. My question goes to this, once a student decides that he or she is interested in something, what is the relationship of the student to the teachers there vis-à-vis questions like: here's what you need to learn if you're really interested in that. Have they empowered the teachers to ... be their coaches so to speak, or their repositories of good knowledge, and that they follow their advice pretty easily?

Walt: Hey Ron?

Ron: Yes.

Walt: Essentially, yes! The question has to take into account the fact that staff members are not constantly trying to keep the kids under control, trying to do all the stuff that a traditional teacher is trying to do: keeping up with grades, and all the tests that have to be scored, and all the disciplinary problems, because in a traditional school the teacher is responsible for dealing with disciplinary problems, and on and on. Because all those responsibilities are controlled by the students themselves and by the School Meeting [at the Sudbury Model school], the teachers are-the staff as we call them-are much more free to interact with students who are asking for help. So actually, in that situation there's a lot of one-to-one going on. And in certain situations, there are a number of students who want to have the same kind of studying going on. An actual class will be organized. They'll actually develop a contract, saying, "OK, we're going to meet every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We're going to meet from 10 to 11. There's going to be two hours of work outside of the class. And if you don't do it, we'll just shut the class down." And because the kids are there because they want to, they'll tend to do the work. They'll also only tend to do the work until whatever reason has motivated them has reached its conclusion, and then they'll move on to their next task, which may not fit the traditional model of how a class works, but it does meet their own needs in terms of what they're trying to learn.

Dave: What would you say to someone that ... maybe parents who have come to the conclusion that children tend to grab the first shiny thing, the first fun thing that comes along, and may not know what's good for them later in life?

Walt: I'd say that's true. I think they do tend to grab the first shiny thing, the first thing that grabs their attention. And I think that that's a very common factor. However, how many shiny things are there in life? Eventually ...

Dave: There's [are] a lot of shiny things.

Walt: Eventually, after you've tried a whole bunch of shiny things - the one thing that we look for by the way is when a student gets bored. And that's what happens. Eventually they run out of shiny things and they get bored. And that is when learning really starts to happen, because when a student is bored, and there's nobody there to solve the problem about what they're going to do next, guess what? They have to solve that problem. They have to look inside themselves and say, "OK, what do I really want to understand about this world next?" And that's when the true learning process from within starts to work rather then having the externally directed learning process that is really much harder to replicate when you get out into the real world.

Dave: Now, we have a thousand questions, but never enough time. Now at 8:52, we'll do what we can when we get back with our guests. We'll be right back.

(Commercial break)

Dave: Welcome back to The Morning Line. On the line we have Michelle. Hey, Michelle.

Michelle: Good morning.

Dave: What's up?

Michelle: Well, I'm a friend of the Blue Ridge Discovery School. Hi Walt. Hi Shahriar.

Walt: Hello.

Michelle: And I wanted to - what I hear people concerned about is not ... is the information the children leave the school with. And I think it's important to remember that it's not so much about the knowledge that they have, but the skills that they have. And the skills that this kind of school teaches, are the ability to adapt to one's environment, because they're used to gaining ... being responsible from learning the education, learning the things they need to know to adapt ... (excuse me) ... also they learn to communicate well with their peers, with their colleagues, and they learn how to participate actively in a democracy. So these skills that they learn in these schools are very transferable, and will serve them well throughout their lives. So it's not - they may not learn John Quincy Adams, or how to measure the arc of a circle, but they learn really important life affirming, life supporting skills.

Dave: OK. Thanks. Aside from the comment - which I hope you're not teaching kids - that this country is a democracy.

(Laughter)

Dave: It isn't, but it sounds pretty good. It really does, it's an interesting concept.

Walt: In theory at least it's a democracy, in practice it may be something else.

Dave: No, I think it's ... well, obviously we're not here to argue politics - in theory it's a republic using democratic forms to select representatives. There's a big difference. But we want to give the last few seconds to how people get in touch with you, and if you're hoping to open this Fall - is that right?

Walt: Yes it is.

Dave: People need to talk to you now.

Walt: Absolutely, and we have informational meetings on the first Wednesday of every month, that they're welcome to attend. Probably the best place to get information is at the website, www.blueridgediscoveryschool.org. And we do welcome people to become involved with the project, people who are willing to commit themselves to building a Sudbury Model school. We'll actually make you a member of the assembly, you'll have a vote, you'll help us make decisions about what the site's going to be, what the tuition is going to be, the budget, and so on and so forth.

Dave: Thank you. We're out of time. We would like to continue though to keep in touch with you guys, and see how this goes. This is a fascinating idea. And good luck.

Walt: Thank you for having us here. Have us back.

Dave: We'll do it. And that'll do it for us.

Mari: And we'll see you back here tomorrow on The Morning Line.