Forgive me children, for I have sinned…
and these are my sins as I see them:

• I have wasted hours and hours of children’s lives by having them stand in lines, wait for bells, and do word search puzzles while other children “caught up.”
• I have taken away recess as a “punishment” for unruly second grade boys, leaving them with no outlet for their energy, or their natural desire to move and play.
• I have told children they would need to wait until after the spelling test (or other activity) to use the bathroom, thereby taking away a most basic human need for the convenience of order.
• I have administered standardized tests to hundreds students, instilling them with fear that they must perform well in order to prove their own worth and intelligence.
• I have imposed reward systems in classrooms of children, replacing the intrinsic joys of learning with points, plastic prizes, shiny pencils, and attention. In addition I have set up systems in which only “good” children would ever meet their goals, while those who needed support and attention were left to feel more and more defeated.
• I have drilled seven and eight year olds with math facts and spelling words, trying my best to “make them learn”, leaving little or no time for them to explore the world around them or delve into their own interests.
• I have assigned hours of homework, forcing children to continue their school day even after returning to the safety of home.
• I have sent children into the hallway to maintain classroom order, isolating them from the community they so desperately want to be a part of.
• I have silenced children who talked at the wrong times, when all they wanted to do was practice their communication skills and connect with other human beings.
• I have made the rules with which to govern, keeping children from creating their own methods of self control.
• I have upheld curriculum guidelines and adult imposed school rules, never allowing children to be responsible for their own educations, let alone their own actions.
• I have sent children to the principal’s office, instilling in them a fear of adults and authority.
• I have sat with parents, assuring them that their children were doing just fine, when a part of me, deep down, knew that this just wasn’t working.

I have been a public school teacher.

There’s a part of me that hopes that none of my former students or parents will ever read this. After all, I’m admitting some pretty big sins here. And by the way, when I use the word “sin”, I am referring to an action done without thinking, because it has always been done this way, or because it’s what’s best (or some other similar excuse). Although, there isn’t a public school teacher in this country who hasn’t done most (if not all) of the things listed above, and yet very few people would think twice about doing them. Surely society as a whole does not consider any of the above “sins” to be a problem, let alone sinful. We have been educating our children this way for over a century, and most of them turn out “just fine.” At least that is what we often hear. Yet, when looking at our society as a whole, we can see many areas that aren’t just fine. Take voter turnout, for example. Why is it that people don’t vote? Maybe a large reason is that we exist in a culture (public school system) in which our voice does not matter, our opinion doesn’t count, and an ultimate authority (teacher, principal, superintendent) decides everything for us. Then we turn 18 and are expected to become “responsible members of society”, when we have little or no practice being truly responsible (i.e., self-generated responsibility), let alone practice operating in a democratic society. This is one small example, there are many more. Why do students drop out of school? Why do teenagers rebel? Why do people end up in jobs that they hate? Why do people stop learning? And so on. And what can be done about it?

Here’s a novel idea. Let’s stop thinking about children as something less than adults. Let’s stop pretending that we respect children, and actually show them the respect that they deserve. Let’s make available to them the same rights and responsibilities that are available to adults, and allow them to take on those rights and responsibilities when they feel ready to do so. And let’s educate them in a system that gives them the opportunity to try on those rights and responsibilities.

There are alternatives. They will take some getting used to – it’s uncomfortable enough for most of us to think about educating our children in a way that is different from our own experiences, let alone to put them into a system that is almost unrecognizable as an institute of education. In My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, the following conversation takes place between Ishmael and a twelve year old girl, Julie, regarding education:

“But what WILL work?”
“What worked for three million years, Julie? Humanity got along fine for three million years without schools.”
“People will say, ‘Oh but it’s very different now. There’s so much more to learn!’”
“This is the very best argument for getting rid of your schools, Julie. What little the schools teach, they teach very badly, as you know yourself.”

Quinn goes on to say, “The best way to assure that this (a culture or tribe having all of the knowledge that the culture or tribe needs to know) happens is to open the world up to your children and allow them to learn what they WANT to learn at the time they WANT to learn it.” He then continues: “Look, maybe we could head toward the tribal model by building on the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts. I’d work toward liberating the children in my school from the schooling process—however I could and to whatever extent I could.”

When I read this book, I was in the process of starting a new private school in Salt Lake City, Sego Lily School, modeled after the Sudbury Valley School. It was thrilling and strange to come across this quote, from an award winning author and scholar, saying that in his opinion what there is to do to transform our educational system is to do exactly what I was already doing. I didn’t need the validation, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Now, three year later, we are on the threshold of opening Sego Lily School. I feel cleansed of my sins, and more importantly I feel that we are creating a school in which the children of Salt Lake will be able to thrive in ways that our traditional schools cannot allow. We are creating an educational system that runs on a democratic system (just like our country), that is based on equal opportunity, freedom, and individual responsibility (just like our country), that has students be responsible for their own education (just like adults in our country), and allows them the opportunity to learn from masters in the fields they are interested in. Our system lets the students make the laws and rules that govern them. It allows for each and every person in the school community to decide his or her own destiny, as well as having a voice in the destiny of the community as a whole. And most importantly it lets children be children.