Sudbury's AARP

It looks like the 5 year olds are making their mark. Desmond and a friend made a motion to allow fort building indoors(it passed) and when a subsequent motion to ban fort building from the quiet areas was made, it failed. A staff member told me she had to go tell them that the vote was happening though. Amelia said she was going to make a motion to allow eating in the playroom.

Of the 45 or so students at Sudbury at least 10 are 7 and under. They can attend the school meeting, where the business of running the school takes place, serve on JC and pretty much take on as much responsibility as they want. However, they are also held to the same standards as everyone else. Two 5 year olds have already been suspended this year.

A digression-There are two forms of suspension at Sudbury definite and indefinite. And while it carries a tremendous amount of weight, I don't think it has the same lasting social stigma as it might in a public school. It's also done for different reasons and more quickly. Defined suspensions(lasting a couple of days or less) seem to be for specific incidents(I think one was for overturning a table and shouting at someone,remember my information comes from Amelia so it could've been for a completely different reason that I will find out about three months from now) or repeated similar offenses(the two five year olds really hate to do their cleaning jobs and may have been breaking some other rules). Indefinite suspensions(and I only know of one this year so far) have to do more with patterns of behavior especially if it is abusive to other members of the community and if it involves breaking major rules. Basically what they say is-you can't be here if you act this way, if you can change, you can come back. When they are ready to come back, they have to explain themselves and ask to be let back in and it gets voted on. Can you imagine how hard that must be?

So where was I? Oh yes, two five year olds have been suspended. I do wonder if they take age into account as they go through disciplinary procedures. Des has had two dollars in fines for not signing in and out. He got one warning and after that he was fined. The mom in me sees her little guy and thinks he should have gotten a few more chances because at this age they forget all kinds of stuff. The other part of me thinks, well, the earlier he gets into the habit the better it will be in the long run. I don't know. Sometimes I think they don't get the little ones into JC fast enough. Usually write ups are addressed the next day and I think for little kids, when that much time has elapsed its almost like it didn't happen. I don't know if they still associate the punishment with the infraction. They seem to take an "if you say so" attitude. I don't know, the staff probably sees more progress day to day but it would be interesting to do a study of recidivism among the different age groups.