The limits of freedom

From DIA:
"It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, more social obligations were there imposed upon him than anywhere else."

It is a common misconception about Sudbury schools that the children simply run wild, Lord of the Flies like, without any attempt to curb or guide their behavior. One visit to the school should dispel this notion immediately. It is hard not to notice the sheets of paper up everywhere defining what can and cannot be done and who can and cannot do it. There are a number of lists of privileges and who has been granted them- how far out in the woods a student can go, the criteria for being allowed to use the pool table, which student can use which art supplies, who is allowed to use certain toys. There are also public agreements about snow ball or water fights and only people who have signed their name to this are allowed to participate.

When I try to explain this some people say "well, that seems a bit excessive. They're only kids." And yet they wonder how I can send my kids off to a school where they spend most of their day unsupervised and around much older kids. "Aren't you worried about safety?" I probably don't explain it well enough because these very explicit rules and regulations are what makes it possible for a school to run with 70 kids who can be in charge of themselves. There isn't the level of supervision at sudbury schools that you find in traditional school settings because there doesn't need to be. The expectations are so clear and there is also a clear cut way of dealing with rule-breakers(see my other post about the Judicial Committee).

Reading DeT's quote at the top of the page immediately brought HVSS to mind and now I'm realizing that at it's inception America must have appeared to be one gigantic Sudbury School. The idea that regular people could govern themselves from the bottom up without some prefect or other mandarin standing over them all the time making sure they didn't step out of line was an incredible concept to Europeans of the 19th century.