Talk Talk

Remember that band? and song? And maybe even album? I would see the video on MTV and that little scrap of info that they gave at the end, in the lower left hand corner, would say nothing but Talk Talk. It was the video with all the animals. This will probably only make sense to people born in the 70's or earlier. I should just end here and count my gray hairs.

Anyhoo, I was thinking of them because we had a great philosophy discussion on saturday and did lots of talk talking.

As I had said in earlier posts I had been having my doubts and Ray, who has never fully been on board with this, was expressing his more vocally. I had conversations with a staff member and other parents and was definitely feeling anxious about the school year. Since the year started there is a different vibe around the school. Hashing things out at the philosophy discussion was starting to seem anticlimactic. I know I've gone before and wanted to talk about something but the staff is so eloquent that I feel silly for ever having worried in the first place so I don't say anything.

That started to happen but then I said to myself no, even if I'm not feeling this way right now I'm going to express the fears that I've had because I know that I'll just go home and the warm fuzzies will fade away and I'll start worrying again. Well, I don't worry that much, but I know I won't feel like I've had my concerns addressed because I never expressed them.

Actually, what I really did was pretend that I was Ray and said what I thought he would be thinking about all of it. He, of course, did not attend, which is probably for the better because there is a good chance he would just give up on the whole thing and want to pull them out. It's much better to have me as a filter.

I felt like the staff was listening to what people had to say, that they were countering respectfully, that they still felt committed to the core aspects of the Sudbury philosophy but acknowledged that the school could use some "tweaks". What it comes down to for them, and hopefully someday for me, is that we can trust the kids to figure it out. That if they have the confidence in themselves they can get themselves to where they need to be. Academically or otherwise. I got there late but I think there was some talk at the beginning about remembering that the goal is to produce an effective adult. If I had been there for that I probably would have phrased some of my comments differently. There was some talk about respecting the changing priorities and not being able to know what any one person's priorities would be from one day to the next and therefore not judging. There was also discussion about having the confidence to say "I don't know" and being ok with that. One of the students was there and he talked about his experience with the process and he was quite eloquent on the topic even if I didn't agree with him. There was another guy there and the two of us did not communicate well but I'll get to him later.

I listened and thought about what people were saying before I spoke. Sometimes I am guilty of looking like I'm listening but I'm really just rehearsing my comments. But this time I was actually listening.

I said that I was afraid of raising confident ignoramuses who were perfectly happy with not knowing anything and with no interest in finding anything out. I said that it was probably good that my kids had the space at Sudbury to freely change their priorities because I had no problem judging them and telling them when I thought they were headed in the wrong direction. I said I would have a huge problem if my kid's priority was to live on the street and do nothing with their life. I recognize the absurdity of my statements but I had to let them out. what else did I say? Oh yeah, that I felt concerned about what kind of place the school would be if everybody was in the doldrums. That I don't think that the Sudbury philosophy fosters a work ethic. That you need to be able to push through when the passion isn't there.

I especially disagreed with the whole "it's ok if you give yourself permission to not finish something, changing priorities argument" because I think finishing what you start is a really important quality. I made it my New Year's Resolution a few years ago. I decided to become a person who would finish what they started. And the first thing I learned to do was not start so much in the first place. But I digress.

What I lost sight of during much of this but remembered afterwards is that this process is not happening in a vacuum. There is still JC and school meeting and my kids are not just zooming around the school by themselves. This discussion was focused on academics, sort of, but I had to remember to look at it all in the context of the school as a whole.

More tomorrow.