There is a new alternative school in my hometown where my 6yo grandson started. Lots of outdoor play, storytelling, artistic activity and relationship building. He loves it!
I’m looking forward to reading the book. Thanks for sharing the foreword.
I mean, it really feels in the UK like we’re flogging a dead horse and with the introduction of VAT on private school fees the whole landscape of education is shifting over here and therefore there’s a huge inquisition into “what are we actually paying for” (if private) versus state funded is falling apart versus the system works for so few children.
This feels like a well timed book.
We are trying to open a democratic school but Ofsted the gatekeepers of education in the UK are trying to bottom dredge these smaller pop ups and sweep them all together.
Charlotte, you might want to check out Rights-Centric Education Network https://rights-centric.education/declaration Those of us with blinkered governments are working toward this as an angle to cut through their BS. Come join forces!
I'd love to learn more about what you're experiencing in the UK. I wrote the book from a U.S.-centric perspective as that is my experience, but I see the patterns of collapse for all industrialized education systems regardless of where they are located.
I founded and own a 105 place forest school for 6 month old children up to school age (oldest we have tend to be four, sometimes 5 years old.)
We have been doing this for 14 yrs now. Before that I taught in a prep school (fee paying private school.)
As I had my own children and returned to work after maternity leave, I noticed a ramping up of scheduled and prescriptive learning. That coincided with my own children developing and It all felt wrong. So I set up Free Rangers. A place where my children and others could exist, learn about the world and themselves and get the start I felt they needed; play, positive relationships, learning about nature and risk.
Now my children are at school (three boys) and although they are neurotypical (aren’t faced with the challenges many schools present neurodiverse learners with) and fairly accepting of the schooling system, I find it switches them off and as boys in education, treats them inhumanely. There’s a lot more to say there.
But most significantly it all feels outdated. It’s not how we should treat people, it’s not what and how we should be learning, and it doesn’t feel like it’s serving the children or getting them ready for life.
We live in the southwest, and where we live isn’t terribly diverse or forward thinking and so alternative to mainstream schooling options are thin on the ground. That’s why we are now opening a school (The Universal Farm) first classroom being delivered today….we have 30 acres and want to begin to regeneratively farm this with the children. (Our first artisan wheat going in very shortly….exciting times.)
But it’s an uphill battle….
Just this week our local councils and central government has announced an extension of the roll out of “free childcare hours” and 300 schools are due to open nurseries on their site…as young as two yr olds will now be learning in a school based setting….what on earth is going on? Schoolification of younger and younger children. We are a private nursery setting and we accept government funding, so families have a choice to come to us and subsidise their children’s time here. The government is trying to oust us out of the sector by underfunding the hourly rates very poorly….which further demonstrates the lack of value of what we do and the importance of education….
Anyway, we go again.
I can’t help but feel there is a seismic shift coming and old institutions are clinging on and fighting back…I just can’t decide whether to help dismantle, or focus on ploughing on ahead and creating The Universal Farm.
Then there’s the small matter of money…no one really funds education or at least new models of education. My absolute dream would be to have a research centre here too. Then we could drive policy change….
I heard a regenerative farmer say about his methods that they are not scalable, but they are highly duplicateable. I think this is an extremely important distinction to make.
We could easily have tons of Sudbury Schools, the problem in truth is funding. Transportation is only an issue if there are so few of them.
Great insight, thank you. My own ultimate vision is to have an interconnected network of small welcoming spaces with different specialties through which young people are supported to flow. An ecology : )
I love the way you're thinking about this. I talk about pockets of new schools emerging here, there, and everywhere. Once that starts in earnest, they will connect and network.
I love that! Exactly. About 15 years ago Implementation Science came into vogue in educational research circles. The premise is to conduct randomized control trials to identify which specific teaching practices "work" and then to "scale up" those practices by implementing them exactly as they were implemented in the original RCT studies. Trouble is, every location, every community, every school and classroom are different. Trying to scale up by controlling implementation is part of the complicated approach to schooling that I challenge in this book. Yes, there are many excellent practices that can be duplicated and implemented elsewhere, with adaptations that make sense for that new setting.
In this context it is interesting to reflect on the increasing physical violence (much of it perpetrated by students) in mainstream schools. This is quite new in Australia and, not surprisingly, is causing considerable distress in our communities. (One recent suggestion was to attach full time police to each school in the country - a further move towards authoritarianism).
What hasn't been suggested is that maybe students are trying to tell us something about the nature of their education and the need for change.
I don't directly address this issue in my book, but as a former school psychologist, I think about it all the time. We're so divided between the artificial choice of it's either "the guns" or "mental illness" that we fail to interrogate the obvious question: what is the relationship between what goes on in schools and school violence, especially school shootings. Think about it -- a shooter intent on doing the most harm would be much more likely to inflict mass casualties at a sporting event, but school shootings happen in the school, in hallways and classrooms, in cafeterias and bathrooms. Why is so such deadly violence directed into the spaces where "learning" is supposed to be happening? And why are we not questioning this aspect of school violence?
I agree that the British education system has fallen apart and the focus on levelling up and charging VAT on private schools is just political distraction. A democratic school sounds wonderful in many ways, but there are a few practical obstacles which I would find hard to overcome if I was starting a school. Firstly I feel that in order to establish the right culture within then school setting there needs to be consistency of approach from home. Parents need to support what the school is doing. There are too many social problems in today’s society to overlook home at school. For those of you who haven’t read the Lost Boys report from the Centre for Social Justice or have not watched Adolescence on Netflix I urge you to do so. Secondly, I can visualise an utopian school setting say 20 years ago, but how does this work in practical terms with todays technology and the ways in which use of devices and access to the internet are in themselves extrinsic motivators and more compelling than real world play. The internet has captured children’s developing brains and minds in ways that must be contributing to worldwide levels of social, emotional and mental poor health. And my third concern is that the entry level to tertiary education, graduate schemes and interesting employment are good grades in standardised ALevels or an equivalent. Would society recognise a Diploma from a Democratic school (something non-mainstream that what would be labelled weird at the moment). It’s a massive risk for parents of small children today, who want something else because they know the current system isn’t working, but fear their child stepping out of this alternative method of education at 18 and finds there are very few doors open to them.
Janey, you've nailed several of the core obstacles that we all face when founding democratic learning communities - and your open eyes make you an ideal candidate to give it a try! Given your interest in the Lost Boys, you may want to try contacting Nuestra Escuela in Puerto Rico for advice. The founders, Justo Mendez and Ana Iris focused entirely on school dropouts and sued the state in the name of the right to education to fund it, and have established a hugely successful community that's sustained for a couple of decades now. For other issues such as devices and tech, there's a huge community out there ready to support and mentor you such that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Go for it! It's hopeless if you want to get rich, but it's the kind of experience that leaves us feeling like there may be a point to life on earth after all.
Janey, you raise excellent concerns. I invite you to consider rethinking the assumptions we've been taught about education. For example, we assume that successfully completing a "traditional" school course is what opens doors to higher education and that higher education opens doors to wealth and success. I can tell you story after story of families that chose a different path and their children were not limited at all in their adult lives. I was friends with a colleague when I worked for a large U.S. based education nonprofit. He had a well-paying position in upper management. He and his partner completely unschooled both their children through primary and secondary school and neither kiddo had difficulty getting into or succeeding at university or landing good jobs. That's just one example. My primary point is that when we start to think of "schooling" in a whole new way, many of the concerns that would be true for students in our current education system fall away. I also take your comment about "utopian" school settings seriously. Isn't it sad that we think of humane schools organized around how we know young humans actually learn as "utopian?" Our expectations and assumptions about school are so tainted by the industrial education we've all experienced that those inhumane systems seem "normal." I want to help change people's minds so that humane, regenerative, life-affirming schools are considered the norm.
I wonder whether more consideration should be given to the form of schools. The typical standard issue school is what most will ever know. Yet, there is a very wide range of school forms that could be considered and this could greatly change the way students perceived their experiences. As an idea perhaps school systems could purchase suburban houses and then allow high school students to have their own offices within these residences. One great benefit of such an arrangement would be that bullies would then not have the level of power that they traditionally acquire in a bricks and mortar standard school. In a residence school there might not be any opportunity for bullying because students might little or no contact with the other students.
Being both a "child libber" and a small-government, free-market libertarian puts me in a lonely place politically, but it can also give me a rare vantage point from which to discover points of agreement. Does Florez count Friedrich Hayek among her influences? I ask because they appear to share an attitude of intellectual humility about the workings of complex systems—even though, for reasons somewhat arbitrary, the two of them would be considered to belong to opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Peter, do you suppose that there could ever be a nonpartisan free-child coalition among people who cordially agree to disagree on matters such as capitalism and climate change?
There is a new alternative school in my hometown where my 6yo grandson started. Lots of outdoor play, storytelling, artistic activity and relationship building. He loves it!
I’m looking forward to reading the book. Thanks for sharing the foreword.
I mean, it really feels in the UK like we’re flogging a dead horse and with the introduction of VAT on private school fees the whole landscape of education is shifting over here and therefore there’s a huge inquisition into “what are we actually paying for” (if private) versus state funded is falling apart versus the system works for so few children.
This feels like a well timed book.
We are trying to open a democratic school but Ofsted the gatekeepers of education in the UK are trying to bottom dredge these smaller pop ups and sweep them all together.
Charlotte, you might want to check out Rights-Centric Education Network https://rights-centric.education/declaration Those of us with blinkered governments are working toward this as an angle to cut through their BS. Come join forces!
I'd love to learn more about what you're experiencing in the UK. I wrote the book from a U.S.-centric perspective as that is my experience, but I see the patterns of collapse for all industrialized education systems regardless of where they are located.
Always happy to share.
I founded and own a 105 place forest school for 6 month old children up to school age (oldest we have tend to be four, sometimes 5 years old.)
We have been doing this for 14 yrs now. Before that I taught in a prep school (fee paying private school.)
As I had my own children and returned to work after maternity leave, I noticed a ramping up of scheduled and prescriptive learning. That coincided with my own children developing and It all felt wrong. So I set up Free Rangers. A place where my children and others could exist, learn about the world and themselves and get the start I felt they needed; play, positive relationships, learning about nature and risk.
Now my children are at school (three boys) and although they are neurotypical (aren’t faced with the challenges many schools present neurodiverse learners with) and fairly accepting of the schooling system, I find it switches them off and as boys in education, treats them inhumanely. There’s a lot more to say there.
But most significantly it all feels outdated. It’s not how we should treat people, it’s not what and how we should be learning, and it doesn’t feel like it’s serving the children or getting them ready for life.
We live in the southwest, and where we live isn’t terribly diverse or forward thinking and so alternative to mainstream schooling options are thin on the ground. That’s why we are now opening a school (The Universal Farm) first classroom being delivered today….we have 30 acres and want to begin to regeneratively farm this with the children. (Our first artisan wheat going in very shortly….exciting times.)
But it’s an uphill battle….
Just this week our local councils and central government has announced an extension of the roll out of “free childcare hours” and 300 schools are due to open nurseries on their site…as young as two yr olds will now be learning in a school based setting….what on earth is going on? Schoolification of younger and younger children. We are a private nursery setting and we accept government funding, so families have a choice to come to us and subsidise their children’s time here. The government is trying to oust us out of the sector by underfunding the hourly rates very poorly….which further demonstrates the lack of value of what we do and the importance of education….
Anyway, we go again.
I can’t help but feel there is a seismic shift coming and old institutions are clinging on and fighting back…I just can’t decide whether to help dismantle, or focus on ploughing on ahead and creating The Universal Farm.
Then there’s the small matter of money…no one really funds education or at least new models of education. My absolute dream would be to have a research centre here too. Then we could drive policy change….
Best,
Charlotte
I heard a regenerative farmer say about his methods that they are not scalable, but they are highly duplicateable. I think this is an extremely important distinction to make.
We could easily have tons of Sudbury Schools, the problem in truth is funding. Transportation is only an issue if there are so few of them.
Great insight, thank you. My own ultimate vision is to have an interconnected network of small welcoming spaces with different specialties through which young people are supported to flow. An ecology : )
I love the way you're thinking about this. I talk about pockets of new schools emerging here, there, and everywhere. Once that starts in earnest, they will connect and network.
I love that! Exactly. About 15 years ago Implementation Science came into vogue in educational research circles. The premise is to conduct randomized control trials to identify which specific teaching practices "work" and then to "scale up" those practices by implementing them exactly as they were implemented in the original RCT studies. Trouble is, every location, every community, every school and classroom are different. Trying to scale up by controlling implementation is part of the complicated approach to schooling that I challenge in this book. Yes, there are many excellent practices that can be duplicated and implemented elsewhere, with adaptations that make sense for that new setting.
In this context it is interesting to reflect on the increasing physical violence (much of it perpetrated by students) in mainstream schools. This is quite new in Australia and, not surprisingly, is causing considerable distress in our communities. (One recent suggestion was to attach full time police to each school in the country - a further move towards authoritarianism).
What hasn't been suggested is that maybe students are trying to tell us something about the nature of their education and the need for change.
I don't directly address this issue in my book, but as a former school psychologist, I think about it all the time. We're so divided between the artificial choice of it's either "the guns" or "mental illness" that we fail to interrogate the obvious question: what is the relationship between what goes on in schools and school violence, especially school shootings. Think about it -- a shooter intent on doing the most harm would be much more likely to inflict mass casualties at a sporting event, but school shootings happen in the school, in hallways and classrooms, in cafeterias and bathrooms. Why is so such deadly violence directed into the spaces where "learning" is supposed to be happening? And why are we not questioning this aspect of school violence?
I agree that the British education system has fallen apart and the focus on levelling up and charging VAT on private schools is just political distraction. A democratic school sounds wonderful in many ways, but there are a few practical obstacles which I would find hard to overcome if I was starting a school. Firstly I feel that in order to establish the right culture within then school setting there needs to be consistency of approach from home. Parents need to support what the school is doing. There are too many social problems in today’s society to overlook home at school. For those of you who haven’t read the Lost Boys report from the Centre for Social Justice or have not watched Adolescence on Netflix I urge you to do so. Secondly, I can visualise an utopian school setting say 20 years ago, but how does this work in practical terms with todays technology and the ways in which use of devices and access to the internet are in themselves extrinsic motivators and more compelling than real world play. The internet has captured children’s developing brains and minds in ways that must be contributing to worldwide levels of social, emotional and mental poor health. And my third concern is that the entry level to tertiary education, graduate schemes and interesting employment are good grades in standardised ALevels or an equivalent. Would society recognise a Diploma from a Democratic school (something non-mainstream that what would be labelled weird at the moment). It’s a massive risk for parents of small children today, who want something else because they know the current system isn’t working, but fear their child stepping out of this alternative method of education at 18 and finds there are very few doors open to them.
Janey, you've nailed several of the core obstacles that we all face when founding democratic learning communities - and your open eyes make you an ideal candidate to give it a try! Given your interest in the Lost Boys, you may want to try contacting Nuestra Escuela in Puerto Rico for advice. The founders, Justo Mendez and Ana Iris focused entirely on school dropouts and sued the state in the name of the right to education to fund it, and have established a hugely successful community that's sustained for a couple of decades now. For other issues such as devices and tech, there's a huge community out there ready to support and mentor you such that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Go for it! It's hopeless if you want to get rich, but it's the kind of experience that leaves us feeling like there may be a point to life on earth after all.
Janey, you raise excellent concerns. I invite you to consider rethinking the assumptions we've been taught about education. For example, we assume that successfully completing a "traditional" school course is what opens doors to higher education and that higher education opens doors to wealth and success. I can tell you story after story of families that chose a different path and their children were not limited at all in their adult lives. I was friends with a colleague when I worked for a large U.S. based education nonprofit. He had a well-paying position in upper management. He and his partner completely unschooled both their children through primary and secondary school and neither kiddo had difficulty getting into or succeeding at university or landing good jobs. That's just one example. My primary point is that when we start to think of "schooling" in a whole new way, many of the concerns that would be true for students in our current education system fall away. I also take your comment about "utopian" school settings seriously. Isn't it sad that we think of humane schools organized around how we know young humans actually learn as "utopian?" Our expectations and assumptions about school are so tainted by the industrial education we've all experienced that those inhumane systems seem "normal." I want to help change people's minds so that humane, regenerative, life-affirming schools are considered the norm.
I apologize for self-reference, but I made much the sme argument in my book. Your forward is wonderful and immensely important.
https://www.garnpress.com/news/first-do-no-harm-progressive-education-in-a-time-of-existential-risk-by-steve-nelson
Wow! Thank you for sharing this! As a mom struggling with the traditional school system NOT working for my children, I appreciate this so much!
I wonder whether more consideration should be given to the form of schools. The typical standard issue school is what most will ever know. Yet, there is a very wide range of school forms that could be considered and this could greatly change the way students perceived their experiences. As an idea perhaps school systems could purchase suburban houses and then allow high school students to have their own offices within these residences. One great benefit of such an arrangement would be that bullies would then not have the level of power that they traditionally acquire in a bricks and mortar standard school. In a residence school there might not be any opportunity for bullying because students might little or no contact with the other students.
I hate to be overly critical, but that "internet apostrophe" in the title of the forward is not a good look in a book critical of schools.
Being both a "child libber" and a small-government, free-market libertarian puts me in a lonely place politically, but it can also give me a rare vantage point from which to discover points of agreement. Does Florez count Friedrich Hayek among her influences? I ask because they appear to share an attitude of intellectual humility about the workings of complex systems—even though, for reasons somewhat arbitrary, the two of them would be considered to belong to opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Peter, do you suppose that there could ever be a nonpartisan free-child coalition among people who cordially agree to disagree on matters such as capitalism and climate change?