The Sudbury Valley School:

Origins of the Sudbury Model

Strictly speaking, "Sudbury" is not an educational concept. The roughly 45 democratic schools modeled after the original Sudbury School often call themselves Sudbury schools, but there are no guidelines and no organization one must follow to be recognized as a Sudbury school.

The first Sudbury School:

The democratic school model emerged with the founding of the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, USA, which was established in 1968, among others, by Daniel Greenberg and Mimsy Sadofsky. The founders' goal was to establish a school model that is not shaped by coercion, performance pressure, and conformity, but that gives students complete freedom to develop individually.

Role model Summerhill:

The Sudbury School was not the first democratic school. As early as the 1920s, educator A. S. Neill founded the world-famous Summerhill School in Britain, which remains one of the best-known democratic schools to this day.

Slow spread:

When the Sudbury founders started the Sudbury Valley School, they were convinced that many more democratic schools would open very quickly. But it took almost three decades before more schools based on the Sudbury model were established. Today there are around 45 such schools worldwide, for example in Germany in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg and Munich.

Free learning according to the Sudbury school model

The year the Sudbury Valley School was founded seems programmatic for its educational orientation: 1968 is considered THE year of social and cultural upheaval and even lent its name to an entire generation. No wonder that Sudbury schools follow a revolutionary model: in everyday school life, children should be entirely free from coercion, learning individually and autonomously. In practice this looks like:

No fixed hours:

Depending on the school, children must spend a certain number of hours per day at school. When they arrive and when they leave is largely up to them.

No grade levels:

At Sudbury schools, children do not learn in class groups and are not organized by age. Children between 5 and 19 mix in everyday school life. The goal is that they learn with and from each other in this way.

No curriculum:

There are no compulsory course contents. Students decide what they want to learn, when and with whom. It is up to them whether to play, learn together with others, or attend one of the instructional courses.

Democratically agreed school rules:

Students and teachers agree on the school rules as equals, which are recorded in a kind of school codebook. If a student violates the school rules, this is handled by a democratically elected judicial committee organized according to the principles of the rule of law.

According to founder Daniel Greenberg, the secret of success of Sudbury schools lies in the age mixing of students: in this way students not only learn, they also teach the younger ones at the same time. In this way they deepen their own knowledge, strengthen their self-confidence and acquire important social skills.

Learning without rules – can that work?

As with the example of Summerhill and many other progressive educational school concepts, Sudbury schools also face strong criticism. Many parents and educators fear that children without rules and obligations will not develop motivation to learn or that they will simply be overwhelmed by the freedom to decide. Another point of criticism is the lack of comparability of learning performance with that of conventional schools: since Sudbury schools operate without a curriculum, structured lessons or exams, learning progress can be difficult to assess objectively.

According to the Sudbury school, a government-approved curriculum is more of a hindrance, since school success alone does not determine whether a student will be successful as an adult. However, the school has conducted studies of its graduates showing that around 80% of the graduates attended college or university after graduating from the Sudbury school. It is very likely — as is true for most alternative schools — that the Sudbury model does not work for every child. But for those who have problems in regular schools, it may be the path to a more satisfying adult life.

Image credits

Children raise their hands in class © insta_photos - stock.adobe.com

Students sit in a circle and clap © JenkoAtaman - stock.adobe.com