I was with the author until the following line in the last paragraph:
"...it is not a fault only to have energy for what I care about. I don’t know what I would have become if my gifts had been acknowledged and nurtured rather than ignored."
This argument comes from the same privileged perspective of the "follow your passion" line. He can only make this claim because, as an apparently gifted programmer, he is fortunate to care about skills that are currently valued in the workforce, if not in the confines of many school systems.
No one has energy for the things they don't care about. However, people do their jobs regardless of whether they care about it because it is their job. Does the author suppose anyone works as a janitor because they care about cleaning other people's toilets? Of course not. Janitors have bills to pay, mouths to feed etc.
Teaching students to learn the importance of doing their job, regardless of whether they care about it, is not an intrinsic flaw of modern education. There should arguably be less emphasis on it, and more done to nurture student's natural talents.
However, the notion that students should not be taught at all the importance of good citizenship, following orders and doing their job -- even or especially if they don't care about it -- is unpalatable. To do away with it completely, as implied, is even more disrespectful to students than the situation he describes. It is extremely disrespectful to the people who will spend their working lives doing things that they don't particularly care about, and who go home at the end of the day to the things that give meaning to their lives.
When you come from a place of ownership of your own life, you can accept doing whatever needs to be done.
I am a janitor with a math phd that gets to have water gun fights with kids; I work at a Sudbury school. I am much happier cleaning toilets than being in some BS academic department committee or grading kids and telling them they suck. Or even worse, teaching engineering students beautiful mathematical secrets, holding them to high standards, seeing them get there, and then hearing from them that the time spent on my course was hurting them in other courses. True story.
Being supportive of life is itself a fantastic reward. Being treated with respect is what matters, not the actual work. Cleaning toilets is really not a big deal. Being treated like a piece of crap is.
Also good citizenship is not about following orders due to fear of retribution. It is looking at the world with care and compassion for others and doing what needs to be done, speaking up and supporting one another. It is about seeing the beauty in others and appreciating that. At a Sudbury school, the halls flow with such feelings as it is the natural way that communities of human beings bind together. That is citizenship.
And not surprisingly, when a person wants to be a part of a community, then they can follow community rules and standards quite easily. It is in our nature.
Traditional schools teach gaming the system, being brutal to other people. Being excluded because of not meeting some arbitrary pointless standard is just a crappy way of living. Humans learn from what those around them do. Are the behaviors of teachers in traditional school the way humans should treat one another?
Luke's essay reminded me of Aaron Swartz's essays when he dropped out of high school and my own experiences when I dropped out around the same time. We knew something was wrong, and by the size of the "education reform" section at the library, we're not the only ones.
Sudbury Valley School was my first thought as I read Luke's essay, so I am very excited to read your contribution to this discussion. The readers of Hacker News want a startup to fix education. But what if this startup was already founded forty-seven years ago in Framingham, MA?
For anyone who is interested in learning more about Sudbury Valley School, I recommend reading some of their articles at the following location:
Every Sudbury school startup is its own thing. Each school is different in its own way, much like different tribes of humans. There are a few basic common elements such as Judicial Committee and School Meeting, but each school forges its own path.
This is one of the big challenges of spreading this model. It is a lean startup. By the way, for those who want to sort of see the school from the eyes of a startup, I wrote a series of blog entries using the ideas of Peter Thiel's Zero to One and making the case that the natural way to prep people for startups (and the future) is a Sudbury education.
Can you describe how graduation works at a Sudbury school? Does everyone have to meet the same requirements as in most school systems, or are graduation requirements tied to each student's stated goals?
Students need not graduate from a Sudbury school. They can simply age out of it. In general, it is not an accredited diploma and so it is only if a student wishes to do so.
But the process if a student choose to do it is to answer the question "How has your time here prepared you for the adult world?" It is a very open-ended question and students write a thesis on it, often submitting a portfolio of what they have done.
There is an internal committee that serves the role of advisor, if requested. The committee for the defense of thesis consists of staff from other Sudbury schools who generally hold students to high standards. It is possible to not successfully defend though one can take another chance the following year if so desired.
We are a young school (7 years) and have only had two graduates so far. One submitted a portfolio of pictures along with their thesis (pursuing visual arts in college) and the other presented a cookbook (currently a chef at a well-regarded local bakery).
The defenses lasted two or three hours. Experiences at other schools vary, but it seems that it is quite a common experience for 18 year old Sudbury students to pursue the graduation.
You describe yourself as a janitor with a math phd in a fully democratic school. I imagine janitorial work in a school that kids want to be at is much different than janitorial work in a traditional school.
Do you end up teaching on a regular basis? I can't imagine you just stick to janitorial work and water gun fights in the environment you describe.
This is a school where kids have a great deal of freedom, particularly in regards to eating. This leads to messes. I write the worst messes up to be adjudicated by our Judicial Committee (a team of students and possibly a staff, depending on the week), but children are inherently messy. Given the freedom, they make more of a mess.
The age range is also from 5-18 which adds in another level of potential messes.
I wear many hats at the school. Janitorial work is largely a few hours in the afternoon. At other times, I am largely talking with kids and staff. I do administrative work, I work on promoting the school, I write up some code to help make things move smoother, I do interviews of prospective students, I help kids with band-aids and finding lost items, etc. We are currently working on raising capital to buy a new building which has been both interesting and time consuming.
There is no teaching done here. Rarely I might get a question about math from students, but those who pursue it do it on their own. They don't want answers, they want journeys.
The life of a Sudbury staffer is one of a minimal salary. So I do teach online at a couple of places to support my family. That can be drudgery, but a burden I take on willingly as I need to. I do teach a course of my own design which is a lot more to the point of what math is and it is more fun to do. But the courses where I just teach what I'm told to teach are frustrating, to say the least.
So I am certainly not a classic janitor. But I have known many in my life. When treated with respect, they don't mind their job. When treated like crap, they despise their job, as any would do. And in a nice, pleasant environment, they do plenty of talking and their days need not be drudgery. It is about the human environment, whether red, white, or blue collar work.
First of all, thanks for the first hand perspective. I work in a small alternative school that's explored a number of models, and we're still finding the right model for us. I tell students about Sudbury schools from time to time, as a measure of how far we could go away from traditional ed.
> There is no teaching done here. Rarely I might get a question about math from students, but those who pursue it do it on their own. They don't want answers, they want journeys.
For students who want a journey, an expert in the field can be an invaluable mentor. I didn't learn a whole lot of programming for my dad, but he sure helped me choose directions in my journey at key points. I imagine some of your conversations put you in that role.
Thank you for the work you and your colleagues are doing. You are a source of deep inspiration for many of us.
I certainly had that idea before I started. I think we all do. And I hope it may happen here and there. Mentoring and collaboration are to me the true teaching models that work for humans. But interests have to align, of course.
We are still a young school with just a handful of 14+ year olds. I think in terms of content, that kind of mentoring would happen with the older ones, if at all. And it may take a sufficiently large pool before compatible interests start to emerge. More than likely, older students would end up with mentorships from external people.
But certainly the presence of a diverse set of adults being authentic about what they do and who they are is an important aspect of this model.
If you or anyone else you reference to Sudbury ever want more information, my email is my username here at gmail.
If you're interested in a student's perspective on a Sudbury school, I went to/help to found one from 7 to 16. My email is my username at gmail if you have any questions.
Children should do boring, pointless assignments to teach them "the importance of following orders and doing their job -- even or especially if they don't care about it"?
This doesn't make sense to me. It's dehumanizing to expect people to behave like robots, parts of the machine.
Even if doing a routine, manual job, people should be able to see some point to what they are doing. If it really is pointless (like lots of jobs), they should feel encouraged to speak up.
In the janitor example, cleaning is an important job that people appreciate, the janitor making an important contribution to whatever is going on in the building (hospital, office, etc). But if the janitor is asked to do pointless busywork they should complain.
This doesn't make sense to me. It's dehumanizing to expect people to behave like robots, parts of the machine.
Any meaningful activity incorporates a significant amount of drudgery as a prerequisite. It's like the old joke, a man lost in New York asks a passing violinist, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? And the violinist replies, practice. Either you learn this young or you spend your whole life unable to do anything that isn't superficial.
But do you learn the importance of practice from someone saying "Do these problems and you get a gold star?" or by letting someone try to accomplish what they want to do and letting then learn the value of real, thoughtful, purposeful practice for achieving personal success?
Being engaged is a state that many of us want to be in. Failure to grow in ability leads to boredom which is a wonderful negative motivator.
Being engaged is terrific. Forcing yourself to do it anyway when it's not fun is at the very heart of professionalism and the pursuit of excellence. Engagement is important, but so is self-discipline.
Consider what Frank Herbert says about this, for example: "So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two."[1]
You don't get to Carnegie Hall as a violinist by playing like a robot.
It's amusing in these conversations how quickly some people go from "say no to drugery and busy work" to "but its essential for discipline!", its almost as if they've been inculturated into a pathological system of education.
the discipline to do what though? To be good at drudgery and busy work would prepare you to face down boredom and learn how to overcome larger bureaucratic barriers to accessing information and to participate in us legal/civil society.
Show me a top-tier musician, and I'll show you someone who could write a book about self-discipline, pursuit of excellence, and working hard even when they don't feel like it.
The only problem is that the machine was built 300 years ago and almost no one would agree it works the way it's supposed to. The essential, defining aspect of human experience that you mention was invented by people who had the equivalence of, at best, a modern highschool education. I'd take my chances with contrarianism before I trust dumb old ghosts with my humanity.
More likely, "was an essential, defining aspect briefly in the XX century".
That century is now over. Before that, you was expected to steer your own judgement while working on a farm (not very machiney experience), and after that, everything that can be replaced by a machine would.
Yes and no. When there's a disturbance in the repetitive work, it's your task to figure out how to fix it.
Also, high-level management of the operation (what to plant, when to plant, how much effort to spend on each task) is up to you too.
In hilly places rice growing has created the whole new highly custom landscapes.
Compare this to XX century school or factory assembly line where you have no choices.
"Writing the program increased my understanding of circuits a great deal, but the existence of the program itself afforded me no real advantage. Perhaps this experience is why my preferred way to use software today is as a mathematical and mind-expansion exercise rather than making a tool that can actually be used."
It came off as whiny, because it comes off as a stretch to blame the school for his inability to write effective computer programs.
On reading that line, I thought about what I would have done if I had been in the teacher's position. I thought: well, he clearly understands the bits that the assigned homework was to reinforce, why not excuse him from that drudgery? Better yet, give him additional problems to apply his program to that expose issues with circuit simulators, giving him a deeper understanding.
But then: that is time I am spending as a teacher that benefits him only, not the rest of the class (my time as a teacher is finite). Is that fair? And: what would happen if other students/parents found out about this arrangement - wouldn't there be complaints? Of course, what he's getting at is that the educational process should be designed to avoid conflicts like these...
With more resources for teaching it would be perfectly possible for schools to look for individual talent and work to develop it.
Supposedly the better private - public in the UK - schools try to do this already. With fees as they are, they certainly have the resources for it.
I know someone who went through public school and was in a music class of exactly two pupils. The school also worked hard to provide relevant professional contacts.
So with someone talented, a teacher wouldn't be thinking about limited time, but about whether there were any local startups/companies who might want an intern.
It's not disrespect by the teachers, so much as disrespect by a political system that tries to limit these kinds of opportunity to a tiny fraction of the population.
"...it is not a fault only to have energy for what I care about. I don’t know what I would have become if my gifts had been acknowledged and nurtured rather than ignored."
This argument comes from the same privileged perspective of the "follow your passion" line. He can only make this claim because, as an apparently gifted programmer, he is fortunate to care about skills that are currently valued in the workforce, if not in the confines of many school systems.
No one has energy for the things they don't care about. However, people do their jobs regardless of whether they care about it because it is their job. Does the author suppose anyone works as a janitor because they care about cleaning other people's toilets? Of course not. Janitors have bills to pay, mouths to feed etc.
Teaching students to learn the importance of doing their job, regardless of whether they care about it, is not an intrinsic flaw of modern education. There should arguably be less emphasis on it, and more done to nurture student's natural talents.
However, the notion that students should not be taught at all the importance of good citizenship, following orders and doing their job -- even or especially if they don't care about it -- is unpalatable. To do away with it completely, as implied, is even more disrespectful to students than the situation he describes. It is extremely disrespectful to the people who will spend their working lives doing things that they don't particularly care about, and who go home at the end of the day to the things that give meaning to their lives.