Design A School 10-3:Clubhouse Democracy Wk.3 Summary
We review the concept and importance of Movies in Democratic Free Schools plus more: the Clubhouse at Summerhill, environments, over-arching soft authority, larger schools.
Design A School 9-3: Clubhouse Democracy Wk.2 Summary
Recap of the Wednesday Podcast and more. Leonard explains further about how he began Clubhouse Democracy with state school students.
Age Range 1
Age Range and the importance of Professional/Veteran children.
Design A School 1-3: Reasons Why Summary
We have different motivations for designing a model school Leonard: Pointing To Thinking over the podcast it’s very obvious to me that I’m designing this school as a Demonstration Transitional Model. I want to invite people to follow along as we discuss all the critical aspects of the engine that is a…
Keep it in the Family
Family and kinship are a part of our mammal nature. How do they relate to our choices in education? Is it right for the state to work against our primal instincts.
The Essentials: Big, Little or In Between
Big Little or In Between Here There and Everywhere We’ve been talking about democracy and scale … size of the school and the building and the finances and the student population and the number of staff and so on. Can a democratic free school environment work regardless of scale; how does scale change delivery? Are…
No one listens to what kids want, yet…
Very rarely do you find people disagreeing on ends: that we want schools to inculcate independent learning, critical thinking individuals, not drone-like rote-learners with a penchant for multiple-choice questions. Yet when it comes to means, the most obvious tool in the box – allowing children some freedom of choice, a hand in the proceedings – is repeatedly shunned by policy-makers.
Kids are being taught there is one kind of intelligence, and it’s all about memory-power
In our last post about our research project in primary schools, Dan and I talked about the way education is largely justified to kids in terms of its economic value, and the dangers – as well as philosophical inconsistencies – of that paradigm. This time, we’re going to talk about the dangers of one-dimensional…
Kids are being taught that education is of instrumental – and economic – value only
Kids are being taught that education is of instrumental – and economic – value only Our last blog post talked about how Dan and I decided to begin a research project in primary schools, based around asking kids what they think of school. As you get into the swing of interview-based research, you…
Education Research and Making Kids’ Voices Count
This is the first of a series of articles by Freya Aquarone and her research partner Dan. We knew Freya when she was at Summerhill and she was particularly close to Leonard in Class 2. She took leading roles in some of the impressive plays that were put on there. She and Dan have visited…
