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Findings #4 (Divvy Group) (Democratic Schools & Anarchistic Pedagogy…

- - - - “The Sudbury Valley School (hereafter abbreviated SVS) is a private day school located in Framingham, Massachusetts, home to a substantial commuter population, some older industry, shopping malls, and, increasingly now, spin-offs from Boston's Route 128 version of Silicon Valley. The school admits anyone who wishes to enroll, age 4 to adult, paying no attention to previous school records or other indications of ability.” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 185
        
        This quote is giving an explanation of three main points of a democratic school. It is very loose learning styles and there is no real expectations from students other then that they lead the classes and their curriculum.
      - “To receive a high school diploma at SVS, there is one requirement. The student must defend a graduation thesis at a meeting open to all members of the school's Assembly, which includes students, staff, trustees, parents, and elected public members. Essentially, the thesis is that the candidate is ready to take responsibility for himself or herself in the society at large” Gray p 187-188
        
        Rather then testing students the only requirement for students to graduate is to construct and perform a thesis which is presented in front of classmates, faculty, and families.
      - “Students must generate or discover their own interests, decide what goals to set for themselves, and decide how to pursue their goals. A corollary is that they must also judge their own progress. The school offers no institutional evaluations-no grades, no substitutes for grades, no written or oral reports of progress.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p. 187)
      - A huge concern for many people who think about enrolling their students in alternate schools like this is that there is a lack of known successful people who have attended these types of schools. I believe parents are afraid that their child will be behind or unprepared for the future.
      - “Students have no schedules and are assigned to no groups. The school simply leaves them alone to organize their own time and associate with each other and with the staff as they will. From the youngest to the oldest, they use their day as they wish, socializing, playing, studying, attending classes-alone or in groups-following some carefully devised plan toward a career goal or simply doing what comes with the moment.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p. 186)
      - “Here we simply wish to wish to note that free association together with self-directed learning gives SVS much to its distinctive flavor.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p.187)
    - - “By far the most common criticism of the SVS philosophy is that children who are not compelled to do schoolwork will fail to acquire the knowledge, skills, and work habits needed for effective functioning in our complex society.”(Gray 1986, pg. 190)
      - “Our approach in the study was to survey the school's graduates to gain information about their pursuits in higher education and careers and to obtain their opinions about the impact that SVS had on those pursuits.” (Gray, 1986, p. 190)
    - - Response Rate and Classification according to Amount of Previous Schooling
        
        a. “To aid in interpreting our findings concerning the post-SVS experiences of the graduates, we gathered information regarding their family backgrounds, previous school backgrounds, reasons for enrolling at SVS, and recollections of how they used their time at SVS. To save space, we shall simply list our main conclusions concerning these issues before moving on to the issues that are more central to the present report.” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 193).
      - Family Backgrounds, Reasons for Enrolling at SVS, and Use of Time at SVS
        
        “ The great majority of the graduates come from middle-class homes and had college-educated parents. In all, 83 percent of the respondents had at least one parent with a college degree, and 74 percent had at least one parent whose occupation seemed best described as either business (managerial or self-employed) or professional.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p.193)
        
        "The tuition charge has always been very low compared with that of other private schools in the area, varying from $700 per year in 1968-69, the first year of operation, to $1,700 in 1984-85." (Gray, 1986, p. 185-186)
      - Going to College
        
        There was no evidence that the graduates left college because they failed the course or felt that they could not do the work.
      - Graduates' Evaluation of Effects of SVS on Their Pursuit of Further Education
        
        “eight stated that they were weak in one or more academic areas or skills (math being mentioned most often) when they entered college. Three others reported feeling handicapped in applying to college because they lacked a high school transcript.
        
        "The remaining two stated that they initially felt intimidated by college because they perceived it as so different from SVS (one said she postponed going to college for several years for this reason). All 13 of these respondents also said yes to the questions about SVS being a benefit for further education, and most of them made it clear that the benefit outweighed the handicap.” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 199).
        
        “ The graduate’s motivation to continue learning was greater as a result of attending SVS (included were statements about being ‘curious’ or having ‘a good attitude toward learning’)” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p.199)
      - Career Choices
        
        a. “Perhaps the most striking observation in table 4 is that half of the group-i graduates (7 out of 14) were pursuing careers in the broad category of the arts. Of the four of these in the noncollege subgroup, one was dancing as a student member of a world-famous ballet company; another was developing a portfolio as a landscape photographer while supporting himself by doing studio work in portrait photography; another was studying as an apprentice to a potter; and the fourth, whose goal was a career as a rock musician,” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 202).
        
        “ The graduates pursuing careers in the visual arts had also all devoted great amounts of time to their arts while at SVS. for example the landscape photographer began doing photography seriously at SVS beginning at age 13. At that age he helped build the school’s dark room, and during the years after that he would commonly spend all day, two or three days a week, in the darkroom developing his own photographs.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p.205)
      - Relation between Career Choices and Activities at SVS
        
        “Very often those who devoted unusual amounts of time to particular activities continued to pursue those activities as careers when they graduated. For example, the four graduates pursuing musical careers were all deeply involved with music at SVS.” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 204.)
        
        a. “Graduates' Evaluation of Effects of SVS on Their Pursuit of Careers and Employment 206 “In line with the point made in the previous subsection, many graduates indicated that they had a head start in their careers, compared with people coming from traditional schools, because of the amount of time that they had been able to devote to it at SVS.” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 207).
      - Graduates' Evaluation of Effects of SVS on Their Pursuit of Careers and Employment
      - Graduates' Overall Evaluation of Their SVS Education
        
        “The two most common categories were the perceptions that (a) the graduate's motivation to continue learning was greater as a result of attending SVS (included were statements about being "curious" or having "a good attitude toward learning"); and (b) the graduate was more responsible for or more in charge of his or her own education as a result of attending SVS (included were statements about being "self-directed," "responsible," or "able to find things out on my own").”(Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p. 199)
        
        “ As one respondent put it, ‘ The school gives one the realization that whatever you want you have to work for, and my life since leaving SVS has been a good example of that’” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p.206)
    - - a. “Clearly, as our survey showed, the SVS graduates do not represent the entire spectrum of socioeconomic classes with regard to their family backgrounds. Nearly all of them came from middle-class homes. We have not provided empirical evidence that an SVS-like education would work for children coming from economically and culturally impoverished homes.” (Gray and Chanoff, 1986, 209).
      - “This line of reasoning might lead one to think of SVS not as a model appropriate for everyone but as a model of alternative education for children with a certain kind of "special need" (the need to be in charge of their own education).” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p. 210)
      - “Our principal conclusion is that these people, including both those who started the school early in their primary years and those who started in their secondary years, have not suffered as a result of attending such a school. They have gone on to good colleges and good jobs. They have become, or are clearly en route to becoming, productive members of our society, contributing to the economy in nearly the entire range of ways that people can contribute.” (Gray, 1986, p. 208)
      - “From the view, the primary objectives of school need not to be instill motivation on to prescribe courses of study. Instead, our observations of Sudbury Valley graduates suggest the value of two very different goals: (1) to make educational resources available in a supportive but non-intervening way, and (2) to create a milieu in which young people are expected to make their own educational decisions.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p.211)
      - "Our observations of Sudbury Valley graduates suggest the value of two very different goals: (1) to make educational resources available in a supportive but not intervening way, and (2) to create a milieu in which young people are expected to make their own educational decisions.” (Gray, 1986, p. 211)
    - - “And yet the cry we hear today, certainly louder than that for more student autonomy, is the one that urges us to go farther in the other direction-toward fewer choices, more requirements, more assigned homework, and more total hours under a teacher's direction, as reflected in the reports of the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983) and the Education Commission of the States (1983).”(Gray 1986. Pg. 183)
      - “What would happen to young people who are truly allowed to take charge of their own education, who (unlike our truants) are provided with ample opportunities for learning but are free to use them in whatever way they choose or not to use them at all? Would they acquire the knowledge and develop the skills and work habits necessary to be happy, responsible, contributing members of our society? There is little in the educational literature that would help us answer that question.” (Gray, 1986, p. 184)
      - “To the best of our knowledge, Sudbury Valley is the only school in the United States that satisfies the following criteria: (1) it is administered entirely through democratic procedures by the students and staff members equally; (2) it places absolutely no academic requirements on students and establishes no academic standards for graduation; and (3) it has survived long enough so that there are graduates (albeit few) who have done all of their elementary and secondary schooling there.” (Gray, 1986, p. 185)
      - “And so when an alternative school begins to look not at all like school, that is, when it becomes a real "alternative," it is seen by the adults (and many children too) as failing and is either closed or modified.” (Gray & Chanoff, 1986, p. 184)
    - - “In terms of its approach to learning, the school's most conspicuous feature is the complete absence of a curriculum. There are no academic requirements of any kind, not reading or other basic skills at the lower end or vocational or college preparatory courses at the upper end. Instead, the initiative for learning is expected to come entirely from the students. Students have no schedules and are assigned to no groups. The school simply leaves them alone to organize their own time and associate with each other and with the staff as they will. From the youngest to the oldest, they use their day as they wish, socializing, playing, studying, attending classes-alone or in groups-following some carefully devised plan toward a career goal or simply doing what comes with the moment.” (Gray, 1986, p. 186)