FREE SCHOOL –connection to community—

Kozol’s aricule clearly shows the strong objection toward the free schools only for whealthy white students. He expressed that such free schools are ‘dangerous’ and ‘disheartening.’ (On the other hand, the other type of free school, which is more public-school-connected, neighborihood –created, politically controversial) is ‘courageous’ and ‘heroic.’ I think, according to his belief, the free schools need to be based on ‘real society’ and established where students can see the bottom part of the society. I think this is a great point that students base their learning and knowledge on real world because that’s where they’ll be living and dealing with the issues.

‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ also mentioned ideas close to ‘real society.’The arthors stated that the ‘Sudbury Valley claims to be an ideal environment in which children can develop into effective adults in the modern world.’ It seems that there’s no curriculum in the school and students and adults have freedom to do anything. However, such environment is not like real society. In real society, there are regulations, hieralchy etc. I think it’s great to develop students’ initiative in their own learning and thinking; however, that might not necessarily prepare students for real world society.

Another claim of Sudbury School was that by showing these results from study, Sudbury school’s education is somewhat benefiting alumni; they feel empowered to change their own destiny and live happily. The arthors didn’t define ‘happiness,’ but one thing that I noticed was that I think all (if not, almost all) students only mentioned their own happiness and not the happiness of others. They feel they can change the situations or decide to live a happy life. However, no one mentioned that they feel happy because they are contributing to others/society. I think to feel happy is very important for life, but if ‘global citizenness’ is concerned, like at SUA, this education might not necessarily support students to be able to live a contributive life in a society.