CHAPTER 1: SECTION 4

Once JC was complete, and by complete that meant that the JC members were fairly board with it after an hour, then Theresa put me under her wing and took up where Rebecca left of on the tour. Theresa had moved to Salt Lake from the Berkley area where she surprisingly could not find a school she liked. She also had a lovely accent which is always soothing for me to listen to. She was originally from South Africa.

“I was homeschooling my boys, “ she stated “and it worked well for awhile but after a time I felt like they needed more social interaction, so that’s when I began looking.”

We walked from the main room towards the back of the house stopping in each room. Our first stop was the PG-13 computer room, designated for older students that had a permission slip to play more of the violent computer games. Next we came to the PG room for computers. Next to these two rooms was a quiet room where anyone could go if they needed space. A sign hung on the door for the student that absolutely did not want to be interrupted. Today there were 4 students hanging out on the couch looking at something on a lap top.

We continued downstairs to the two rooms that could double as classrooms. Kids could gather their own group if they wanted a class on a subject, or a staff member could decide to present something and the children could come or not come, it was entirely up to them. This year the children that wanted to would be learning Japanese. Why? One of the students thought that would be fun, so the staff found a member in the community that agreed to teach the kids Japanese. No one was having class on the day I was there. A group was in one of the classrooms playing computer games.

“So you obviously don’t restrict media by any means?”

“No!” Theresa said with a great shake of her head. “My kids were Waldorf kids for a time and Waldorf is very adamant about no TV or computers before a certain age and even after that age then were restrictive. But honestly the structure was just so stifling. I watched Will go to school and he just lost his spark. The kids are so controlled all of the time. I mean, I used to be like that. I wanted to control everything from what they watched, to their food, to what they did. It was when I started raising them democratically that I felt better about my parenting. I mean, who am I to tell them what they need? I’m not in their bodies, I don’t feel what they feel. So we believe here that if the kids want to spend all their time playing video games on the computer or the X-Box, then they should do that. We truly believe that once a child gets whatever interest they have out of their system, they will naturally and gradually move on to something else. It’s just the nature of their curious minds. Like Alex, for example, he spent every day his first two weeks here on his computer. Today, he hasn’t even opened it. He needed to fulfill his interest and now he’s in the foam room.” Will was her older son and Alex was her younger son. “It’s so wonderful. I mean look at them run around. They are truly themselves.”

So while it appears true that children left to their own devices wouldn’t do any “learning” whatsoever and just sit about and socialize or transfix themselves to some form of media, the democratic educators not only accept this but also value this! The democratic schools believe that socialization is imperative to a child’s growth, so important that democratic schools do not separate by age, but allow and encourage the children to socialize and learn in mixed age groups. It is said this gives the children extreme social and emotional advantages verses just interacting with the same age group. (Jeff Collins, The Sudbury Model of Education).

A “Social IQ” as it is referred to by the Raymond H. Hartjen in his book Educational Futures has been found to be an essential element for career success even over SAT scores. The attributes that come along with being socially adept are high confidence, self-reliance and personal awareness. This socialization can take the form of play and fantasy in the younger ages, to chatting with other students in the preteen years to finding yourself mentoring young new students as you become an older teen. The mixed ages and freedom of socialization is said to be an important missing puzzle piece in the modern school setting. Our children are increasingly having less and less time or space to be in their child-like society where they need to make decisions, have conversations, or arguments without adult intervention. Adults tend to be the rulers, ring masters, and whip crackers of the circus that is childhood, sometimes out of the goodness of our own hearts and sometimes out of fear - fear of societal ills plastered on the tube, or perhaps fear of losing control over our children in our own mega-structured lives.

I was reminded of a story I heard on NPR in the early part of 2010 about a father who was so disillusioned with the state of organized sports for youth these days. He went on to tell a wonderful recollection he had as a youth of grabbing his skates and stick and running down to the local pond in winter to meet the neighborhood boys and girls for hours upon hours of hockey. He cherished this time where they as kids made the rules, decided what to do about violations to those rules, and fought out the disagreements amongst themselves without any adult near by. This was how they learned fair play, compromise, how to make comprises at their young ages. Now it seems, the writer went on to say, that the trend has moved towards school organized teams or local community sports where the adults pick the teams, coaches the children, punishes and rewards them and even supplies high class uniforms and gear that inevitably do not mean much to the children since they never had a say in the entire process anyway. Can you hear the conversation? “Johnny! Where is your hockey stick!?” “I don’t know MA!” Have you seen the movie Sandlot? Back in the day if one of the neighborhood kids lost the community baseball or puck it was devastating. The pond hockey kids were not only responsible for themselves but for the community as a whole. Life lessons were more tangible, more realistic. This is a great example of what democratic education enthusiasts believe all of childhood should be like, including their education.

We walked past the music room where one student was playing a guitar alone with the door shut. It was an wonderful array of drums, keyboards, guitars and other musical instruments. The students had to be certified in their demonstration for respect for the instruments, turning things off after use, and not bringing any liquids into the room. The boy looked thoroughly engrossed and did not even look up at me.

We continued to walk down the hall where we came upon the infamous foam room, a room littered with giant pieces of foam. The perfect place for children to literally bounce of the walls.

“In our new facility, we are going to have an entire padded room installed so the kids can just go crazy.” Theresa gladly reported. “Do you know about our new school. It is the first Net Zero certified building in the area and we have raised almost 2/3rd’s of our needed funds. It really is very exciting. We can have 40 or so students right now, but the new facilities will house 150 or 200 students. Ok, and so here is the kitchen.”

The kitchen was an expansive room that was half kitchen and half long tables, which turned out were not only places to eat but were also places to do art. The whole left half of the room was art land.

“The students don’t have a lunch time here. They bring their lunches and they are labeled and put in the refrigerator. It is up to the kids to decide when they are hungry and when they want to eat.”

So while there were no rules as to the time to eat lunch, the room abounded with the now familiar bright red signs siting that a certain item needed certification in order to be used. The microwave, the stove, washing dishes, everything had a list of rules and the students that proved they could master the guidelines of the kitchen had their names listed below.

Today Mia and Rachel were making homemade pretzels. Rachel supervised while Mia dipped braided clumps of dough into a baking soda and water solution that was boiling on the stove. Mia counted to herself while tipping the hand strainer from side to side along with her head as she counted the 30 seconds the dough was suppose to remain in the water.

“This is great!” I exclaimed. “I love to bake, but I have never made pretzels!”

“Yes, Mia wanted to make pretzels, so I found a recipe and we decided to do it!” Rachel was being modest. I had already read on the Sego Lily website that she was very passionate about baking.

“You should have had the apple pie we made last week.” Theresa gleamed. “We ended up forgetting to cover it though and it was full of ants in the morning.” She started to laugh. “Rachel and I ate it anyway, ants and all, just to show the kids they shouldn’t be afraid of a little extra protein!”

Theresa made me tea and after I paid my 50 cents for my pretzel we went upstairs. Everyone had to pay for baked goods and they were happy to do it. Money was needed to keep the baking going. No one complained about that lesson in goods and services, especially me.

I was then befriended by 12 year old Beth, her 10 year old sister, Ellen and 8 year old Ashely while I snacked on my oh, so soft, warm, and fresh from the oven pretzel and sipped my black tea. Beth, it turns out, has a love of dogs. She had a giant dog book laid out on the table and she was going through all of the dogs and telling anyone that would listen all about the breeds. She told me how she wanted to show dogs some day. Ellen, who was on the couch working on a spelling book, looked up to me and said, “What’s exhaust?”

“Exhaust is what comes out of the tail pipe of a car.” I said. “When you burn gasoline, it gets turned into exhaust.”

“Oh. Ok.” And she went back to her spelling.

I heard doors shut as James, done with vacuuming, decided to shut himself in the main room to “work on my French,” he said.

Beth was still discussing dogs with Ashely. “What about this dog?” Ashely asked.

“Oh, that is a Yorkshire Terrier. They need a lot of exercise but they’re not very protective.” I could see that Beth was following a little chart explaining the attributes of each dog. The chart had boxes that were blackened. The more blackened boxes, the greater was that trait in the dog.

“What does that one say?” Ashely asked.

“Oh, that’s friendliness,” answered Beth.

Ashely had clearly caught on to the meaning of the boxes, “Oh, so they are very friendly! What about this one, what does it say?

“That is nice to strangers.”

“Oh, they don’t like strangers?”

It became clear to me that Ashely could not yet read at 8 years old. Public schools would be having a fit. Specialists would have been called in, remedial studies would have ensued, but not here. They believe in the democratic model of education that Ashely will teach herself to read when it is the right time for her and only her. They believe that all children will learn to read just as all infants learn to talk and walk. Infants are surrounded by talking and walking and their brain automatically creates the desire in them to emulate this. The same is true for reading, writing, math or any other subject in a democratic school. If a child is surrounded by readers, they will learn to read. This happens at 4 years of age for some and 11 years of age for others. They do not believe it is up to adults to decide.

This may be a shock to those that are used to our current method of teaching core subjects earlier and earlier, especially reading and writing, but democratic educators believe this advanced and forced schooling is a detriment to the child. When a child is forced to read or forced to write when they are individually not ready to do so, then resentment for learning can set in. In the instance of reading many democratic children actually end up greatly enjoying reading which is said to be a direct result of them not being forced to read before they were ready. Children at democratic schools are said to have more positive feelings in general about all aspects of learning. We have exactly the opposite of “a love of learning” in the classroom today. By being forced and coerced into learning when, where and what someone else dictates, children may begin to resent learning in general and try to dodge anything that resembles it. So, no, no one here minded that Ashely was 8 and not reading. Beth and Ellen were happy to read the words to her, both seemingly knowing that she would catch on at some point.