Replying to LO28573
At 15:04 21-05-2002 +0200, Minnigh wrote:
>Dear LO' ers,
>
>I recently came aware of a special school which exists alrady from 1968
>onward. It is the Sudbury Valley School. Please look at:
>http://www.sudburynetwork.org/ and http://www.sudval.org/
>
>I think that this is a true LO (...)
>
>Are there members of this list who know more about these schools (...)
Thank you, Leo, for opening this thread that conducted me to remember
one of the experiences and an Author that was most influential in my
life (from parenting, to teaching,... to living) that I knew when I was 18
or 19 year old and later reread often - but not in the last few years.
And it all come because I understood your message but misread your
title ;-)
You wrote "Sudbury Valley School" and I read "Summerhill School" (an Hill
in UK and not a Valley in USA).
And then I though "No, Leo must be wrong about the date, as I remember
that I first read about A.S. Neill's experience of Summerhill, through the
book of the same title, in 67 or 68, and the experience was old by
then". (of course, Summerhill's experience - not Sudbury Valley's).
Indeed, Neill's book was published in 1960, and Summerhill school
was founded in 1921. But it is the model for all the other similar
experiences, including the one you reported.
You can get some information about the Summerhill experience here:
http://www.s-hill.demon.co.uk/index.htm
Then I went to the link you gave us and I was very surprised that they
do NOT refer this previous experience. Making a search on "Neill"
using the search engine of the site I found references from someone
only about some "staff problems" of the author's (of the message)
experience in Summerhill...
There are currently many other schools with the same principles.
I know about one in Portugal called "Escola da Ponte", but I could only
find some old Web pages in Portuguese only. I know another very interesting
in Canada - and I will see if I can find the URL before the list closes for
holiday ;-)
Now, I think those experiences are very important and impressive,
and for sure I would like my children to have been in one of them
(and I have chosen schools as similar as I could) as they are very
important to create habitudes ok team work, knowledge sharing and
"open space" that I think are essential to create LOs in the future.
But I think that those schools are focused in providing the best environment
for the learning of EACH student. They don't have the objective of being
LOs themselves and probably, due to the age of the students, they wouldn't
qualify as LO's.
I would say that they are MORE IMPORTANT than that as they are creators
of future LO's.
I am not sure if there are any LOs in the present - but I still have hope in
what concerns the future ;-)
Best Regards (and have a nice fishin', Rick)
Artur
--Artur Ferreira da Silva <artsilva@mail.eunet.pt>
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