If it's Thursday, Lily is making bread in the kitchen of the Hudson Valley Sudbury School. She's a one-woman show - taking the orders, toting the ingredients up and down from the school's chilly attic, mixing the dough, baking the loaves, wrapping the loaves, setting them out to be picked up, and collecting the money. She does not love bread especially, nor does she aspire to be a master baker - so why do it? Because she wants to go to London in the Fall.

Lily and four other HVSS students and one staff member are planning a trip to London, and more specifically, to Suffolk, England, to visit A.S. Neill's Summerhill School (http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/). Lily says she wants to visit the Summerhill School because it will be "cool to see how they do things." Baking bread to raise money for the trip started out as a group project, but very quickly everyone lost interest except for Lily. She says she keeps at it because she made a committment to do it and she wants to keep that commitment. Just a few weeks ago, profits were up around $500, but then she spent close to $300 buying bulk ingredients for future loaves.

Baking the bread is a two-day process: On Thursday afternoon, Lily measures out the dry ingredients, adds the water, mixes the dough and then covers it. She leaves it covered on a counter for 12 to 18 hours. There's very little yeast in the recipe, but since the rise is so long the dough has a chance to collect yeasts from the air. On Friday morning she turns the dough out onto a counter, lets it rest for 15 minutes, then shapes the loaves. They are then covered and left to rise for another 2 hours before going into the oven.

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In 2005, Henning Graner and Martin Wilke conducted some interviews with Sudbury students, staff members, parents and alumni.  They produced a video from these interviews.

The Sleeping Student

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The full video is for sale at: http://www.tologo.de/sudbury-schulen-dvd.

In 2005, Henning Graner and Martin Wilke conducted some interviews with Sudbury students, staff members, parents and alumni.  They produced a video from these interviews.

Parents (Part 2)

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The full video is for sale at: http://www.tologo.de/sudbury-schulen-dvd.

In 2005, Henning Graner and Martin Wilke conducted some interviews with Sudbury students, staff members, parents and alumni.  They produced a video from these interviews.

How the Staff is Elected

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The full video is for sale at: http://www.tologo.de/sudbury-schulen-dvd.

"I've traveled two million miles over the past 12 years searching for answers to how we might fix schools to help us in the creation of good people, good citizens, and good individual lives. No model encountered is more promising than the Sudbury model. I would urge parents to give this method a close look. Trust your kids, they will surprise you." — John Taylor Gatto, Author, NY Teacher of the year 1989.

"The Sudbury Valley School model respects each child's innate joy of learning and natural developmental path through childhood. Respect for the child is balanced with the creation of a community supporting freedom and democracy while rejecting permissive license. One of the most powerful aspects of the model is the absence of an imposed structured academic program and the presence of an environment in which children can be imaginative, creative, and self-directed. The Sudbury Valley School model, when faithfully executed, allows these adults of tomorrow to grow and blossom into strong individuals of integrity, joy, and positive purpose." — Win and Bill Sweet, Authors Living Joyfully with Children

What was your child's past schooling experience?

"Thor went to public school from kindergarten 'til half of second grade. By their standards Thor was doing "great", by mine I felt his spirit was being stolen." — Cindy, Mother, Artist

Why did you enroll your child at Sudbury?

"We wanted our Terry back. I knew Terry's self esteem would come back if he was allowed to be himself." — Ric, Father, Restauranteur

"Don't much believe in schooling; don't think it leads to a well-educated person. I want to instill motivation, inspiration, foster intellect, confidence and social consciousness." — Lincoln, Father, PhD, Business Owner

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What was your past schooling experience?

"I attended public school up 'til a year ago, I did fairly well but the monotony is what really got me. I was constantly expected to conform. Any creative effort was zapped because it made me too unlike my peers. Ugh!" — Amelia, Age 17

"It was a lot of hard work and there was a lot of pressure and I didn't feel like going through a whole year of stress again." — Elan, Age 13

"I was home schooled because I hated public school. I only had one nice teacher while I was at public school and I couldn't stand anyone else." — Cody, Age 13

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By John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto has been named the New York City Teacher of the Year on 3 occasions. In 1991 he was named the New York State Teacher of the Year. His books include: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); and The Underground History Of American Education (2001).

Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?

I want you to consider the frightening possibility that we are spending far too much money on schooling, not too little. I want you to consider that we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up--and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children's lives and away from their homes and families and neighbourhoods and private explorations--gets in the way of education.

That seems radical, I know. Surely in modern technological society it is the quantity of schooling and the amount of money you spend on it that buys value. And yet last year in St. Louis, I heard a vice-president of IBM tell an audience of people assembled to redesign the process of teacher certification that in his opinion this country became computer-literate by self-teaching, not through any action of schools. He said 45 million people were comfortable with computers who had learned through dozens of non-systematic strategies, none of them very formal; if schools had pre-empted the right to teach computer use we would be in a horrible mess right now instead of leading the world in this literacy. Now think about Sweden, a beautiful, healthy, prosperous and up-to-date country with a spectacular reputation for quality in everything it produces. It makes sense to think their schools must have something to do with that.

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John Taylor Gatto has been named the New York City Teacher of the Year on 3 occasions. In 1991 he was named the New York State Teacher of the Year. His books include: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); and The Underground History Of American Education (2001)

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers he carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

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PART I -- WHERE WE STAND TODAY

CHAPTER 1 -- The Problem

The educational institutions of this country are being challenged on every side with an intensity unparalleled in history.

There have been attacks before, by isolated individuals or groups. But the schools have always enjoyed the solid support of the great masses of people whom they served.

Today, the onslaught takes place on broad fronts, and the mass support is no longer evident.

A year ago many could still say the problems are elsewhere but not here. Now only those who choose not to see are still complacent. The mood has changed from "It can't happen here" to "How soon?"

Let us look at just a few examples of danger points in the school set-up.

The central purpose of our schools is to provide students with an education. For generations, the vast majority of students were satisfied clients of the system, accepting the services performed for them, and giving in return a fair degree of effort and obedience. Most educational reforms came not as a result of student protest, but as a result of the work of devoted teachers and administrators, who sought to improve even further an already excellent product.

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