A Child's Heaven on Earth: The Sunset Sudbury School

A Child's Heaven on Earth: The Sunset Sudbury School

“No more pencils, no more books,/ No more teachers’ dirty looks./ Kick the desks, kick the chairs./ Kick the teachers down the stairs!” Far out of earshot of teachers, we used to chant that bit of doggerel when school was let out for the summer.

You won’t ever hear any of that or anything like it in or near the Sunset Sudbury School in Davie, Florida where kids pretty much rule the roost.

The Sunset Sudbury School, an unfortunate name which suggests ending rather than beginning, “South Florida’s first and only Sudbury model school, . . . on the cutting edge of education reform today,” according to its website, is a non-profit “alternative school” for kids aged 4-18, with annual tuition ranging from $3,300 to $6,600 which would be money well spent because Sunset knows that it is succeeding in its goals.

After all, it’s been in operation since August 23, 2010 and its first-year enrollment is 20 students.

Nevertheless, Sunset Sudbury’s goals are admirable, indeed: “Students of all ages can be expected to be: Self-directed, motivated, and enthusiastic lifelong learners, Creative and self-confident, Responsible, independent, and resourceful, Community-minded, and Highly adept at communication:” http://sunsetsudbury.org/

Dedicated to the idealistic proposition that what America’s children need is freedom and “justice” and, well, more freedom, kids attending Sunset can decide to contemplate their navels, or not, arrive whenever they want and leave whenever they wish, as long as they meet a very minimal number of hours in attendance. Exams are non-existent, even FCATs, as is homework, as are teachers in the traditional school sense, and hence chalkboards and lesson plans.

The kids set their own agendas and establish their own rules, sort of.

Again, according to Sunset’s website, “Rules for day-to-day life at the school are made by School Meeting, where each student and staff member has one vote. All students serve periodic terms on the Judicial Committee, which deals with rule violations.” How much input is received from 4, 5, or 6 year olds or how well those cherubs judge on the Judicial Committee is unclear.

Lord knows, American public education needs a top to bottom revamping but this has all been tried on an adult level any number of times before. Such experiments were all the rage in 18th and 19th century America: the Amana Colonies, Brook Farm, the Oneida Community, et al., all predicated to one degree or another on establishing utopias, perfect societies. Except for those built on strict religious principles, such as by the Shakers and the Moravians, all failed.

Perfect societies tend to function much better with perfect people. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2953)