|
|
| Clearview Sudbury School |
| About | Learning | Democracy | Life at School | Resources |
|
Learning The primary premise of our learning philosophy was stated by Aristotle over 2000 years ago, "All human beings are naturally curious." It follows from this that all people are driven to learn. Just as babies are driven to master movement and speech, all of us are driven to master the potentials and interactions of the world around us. Our paths to understanding take many varied and specific forms, which cannot and should not be the same for everyone. Self-Determination The longest lasting, most effective learning is actively pursued by the learner. Learning motivated by a genuine interest is fundamentally superior to externally motivated learning. Any interference with the genuine interests of a student by compelling or coercive teachers is counterproductive to learning. When natural learning skills develop properly every person has the capacity to learn what they need when they encounter that need. The basics are the basics because they are ubiquitous; one can't help but learn them. In addition to the basics, students collect useful information through experience, exposure to media and other people. The experience of most traditional students is that non-useful material set forth by the curriculum is not internalized long-term or at all. Self-Paced In the spirit of non-coercion students can be entirely self-paced. The standard timetables of developmental readiness are artificial, and they do not hold in Sudbury schools. Students may spend minutes, months, or years on one interest. There has been a tendency in this country to teach reading as early as possible; however, there are no measurable differences between adults who learned to read at 4 and those who learned to read at 10. Self-Evaluation A student is the best judge of the quality of their work and of the productivity of their time. Students must retain the self-respect to trust their own judgement. However counter-intuitive, recent research suggests that feedback demotivates students when it takes the form of a value judgement. See this article by Alfie Kohn. Naturally, students are free to seek out criticism and support. Success is not achieved by outperforming a classmate, but by obtaining personal satisfaction. Failure is seen as an important and worthy obstacle, not something to be aversive or discouraging. |
| About | Learning | Democracy | Life at School | Resources |