Trial Run
House on Red Corner · 2010-01-22 · Eckenrode
This week, we have put TheBubster into Manhattan Free School on a trial basis. This is a democracy school where the kids have an active voice in planning the curriculum and agenda. She is responding very well to the environment and seems to enjoy the freedom to make her own decisions. When I went to get her today, she was intently reading the Batman comic book that was included inside the case for a Playstation Portable video game disc. Very intently. We are fully engaged in the Batman phase. I have a couple seasons of the Animated series on the Apple TV and she loves to watch a couple episodes a day, actually she’d love to watch more than a couple but I do put some restrictions on things.
Many people have been a bit confused by the concepts of the democracy school, I think most of them go off to some imaginary extreme where the kids really are on some island divorced from reality and separated from any adult supervision whatsoever. There are teachers in the school, and they help the children learn the things that they are interested in. TheBubster is obviously very interested in learning to read.
There is also a complete disciple plan. When there are problems with behavior, it is taken to the Complaint Committee. The Complaint Committee consists of a teacher and three children, which rotates on a daily basis. The complainees and the complainers explain the problem to the Complaint Committee and the solution is discussed, planned and implemented. There are also rules such as, an hour limit on playing video games or something like that.
At this point, I have to say that its not everyone’s philosophy to accept that children will learn, especially if they are curious, but we, TheWife and I, believe that a very curious child who is forced to sit in a desk and perform exactly the same task as everyone else around her is going to go to waste quickly. If she plays video games in school, or reads comic books or plays computer games while other kids are making puppets or playing hockey under special rules that they have created, and she returns home just as curious, or more, as she left in the morning, then the school is wildly successful in our book.
We haven’t made an official decision and frankly it is her decision to make, but it looks like she will be returning to MFS full time, that is as long as the other students vote to accept her into the school.