Truly Free

I read The Pursuit of Happiness and though I am happy for the seemingly successful and intriguing lives that its alumni are leading, I still feel like this essay might be making some assumptions that I'm a little hesitant to accept.
Firstly, in the introduction, it states, "We are also convinced that, when they internalize the fact that they are truly free, all human beings endeavor to function at their highest level." It is not that I object that freedom=awesome functionality, but how can the Sudsbury Valley School, no matter how lovely it may sound, claim to give students true freedom? "Truly free" is already such an abstraction that I'm not even sure what that means. Is it free simply because the school has no curriculum? Because I think it could be argued that by giving a student so many choices about what they are going to be doing every minute of the day could possibly be a burden. Like what we talked about last class, a decision like this cannot become automatic. It is a kind of labor, and so not precisely free. (Not that this is necessarily bad...and I don't think very many would ever actually take this to quite an extreme)This essay is very proud and enthusiastic and rightly so, but I think its a little overconfident in its use of loaded abstractions.

My other objection is to this implied idea that to to be in control of one's life=success. Many alumni responders see themselves as totally in control, but for those that don't don't (but are actually equally "successful"), there's a little hint that maybe they lack confidence, but I don't feel like that is the case. Ironically, those that say they are in control of their lives give credit only to themselves, not to anyone else, not even the Sudbury School. Yes, it is true that at the school they largely created their own environment, but it was still a community. They could not have possibly done it alone.
Can one really claim to be in control? Or truly free? Am I being too cynical?