Taking the Measure of Democratic Education and Rockaway College Concept Against Lynn Stoddard’s New Paradigm for Formal Learning, Educating for Human Greatness

(Note:  This paper has been divided into three parts so readers are unburdened with having to sit with it for the time it would take to read the entire piece, that is, unless the reader wishes.  This blog entry is the third of three.)

Lynn Stoddard in his Educating for Human Greatness, http://www.efhg.org/, advocates for a paradigm shift in education, from valuing student uniformity to valuing student differences, from standardization of teaching, learning and outcomes to developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities, from teachers’ direct instruction ­of basic skills and subject matter disciplines as ends in and of themselves to teachers using their knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement, from student achievement being in the mastery of a core of essential knowledge to the growth in seven major qualities/powers of greatness: Identity, Inquiry, Interaction, Initiative, Imagination, Intuition and Integrity.  To ascertain if any system has so shifted requires it to be placed against these standards.  To this point it has been demonstrated (as related the last two blog entries) both Democratic Education and its expression in the Rockaway College Concept have met the Educating for Human Greatness standards considered including the qualities/powers of Identity, Inquiry, Interaction and Initiative.  This entry will look at Imagination, Intuition and Integrity.

Democratic Education (see http://www.democratic.co.il/en/ and http://www.yaacovhecht.com/) may be defined as formal study controlled by the learner where the individual takes full responsibility for his and for her own course of learning and as schooling controlled by the learning community collectively where the school body as a whole takes responsibility for governing itself through The Democratic Process. 

Rockaway College (detailed on this blog in consecutive entries starting on 2/16/12, ending on 3/19/12, including an overview of design on 3/17/12 and an annotated index to entries on 3/19/12) is conceived to utilize the learner-decision-centeredness and school community self-governance of Democratic Education in the service of the Twice-Exceptional, also know as the Gifted and Talented Learning Disabled.  The school represents an integrated progression in social, emotional and cognitive development from pre-school though early college established in two major units:  Rockaway College School-containing the early childhood and the primary education programs; and Rockaway College-holding a personal growth intake for a secondary education, the secondary education program and a liberal arts early college program. Graduates of the early college having gone through the College’s secondary education would earn both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree. 

Imagination

“Summerhill might be defined as a school in which play is of the greatest importance…

I am not thinking of play in terms of athletic fields and organized games; I am thinking of play in terms of fantasy.” (Neill, 1960, p. 62)  Democratic Education is grounded in deep Imagination-the power of creativity in its many forms.  It transmits this to children and cultivates this in children through play.  Free, self-organized, unstructured imaginative play, yes, ensures young children acquire the self-regulatory skills needed to succeeding in school, academically and socially, but it as well stretches child creativity “to infinity and beyond!”  And play does much more as Holt explains: “In their efforts to organize and understand the world around them, children use fantasy and play in at least two ways.  First, they use it to test reality, to do what adults do with mathematical models and computers, i.e., ask the question ‘What would happen if…’?   Children’s models of reality are of course very crude; they have little experience.  But in their fantasy play and games they stick as close as they can to reality rules as they understand them...Children also try to use fantasy to make sense out of reality, make a mental model of reality that works.  Because they have so little experience, this is hard to do…little children can’t wait until they have all the…information and experience they need to make a coherent and sensible model of reality.   They have to make some kind of sense of it right now.  Their fantasy grows out of reality, connects to reality, reaches out to further reality.” (Hold, 1984, pp 248-251)

Play in Democratic Education is let loose to roam the worlds of conventional academic matter as well as all that intrinsic to the toys, games and pleasure activities.  Again Holt: “Children need…school-time for ‘Messing About’ with reading-before they start trying to learn to read, to make the connections between letters and sounds.  They need time to build up in their minds, without hurry, without pressure, a sense of what words look like, before they start trying to memorize particular words.  In the same way, they need time for ‘Messing About’ with numbers and numerals, before they start-if they ever should start-trying to memorize addition facts and multiplication tables.  They need to know how big 76 is, or 134, or 35,000, or a million.  They need to see, again without hurry or pressure, how numbers change and grow and relate to each other.  They need to build up a mental model of the territory before they start trying to talk about it.  We teachers like to thing that we can transplant our own mental models into the minds of children by means of explanations.  It can’t be done.” (Holt, 1984, pp. 221-222)

In the end, Democratic Education through play in its many forms and functions develops child creativity in its many forms and functions.  And Rockaway College follows Democratic Education in its play.  Rockaway College School children would engage in whatever free, self-organized, unstructured imaginative play the environment supports for as long as they wish.  The Venture School of Rockaway College creates play in the outdoors, camping, hiking, backpacking, canoeing, rafting, skiing, biking, etc.   Lower School students would be ‘Messing About’ with the ideas, the notions, the concepts, of the learned world which would find fine intellectual play in the Upper School.

However, the EfHG quality/power of Imagination holds another component which Rockaway College Concept incorporates-the use of the all arts to nurture all forms of imagination and creativity.  Actually, the school broadens the notion of “arts” to encompass the full range of human expression and maintains that all forms of human expression are of equal weight.  “But intelligence is a slippery customer;” Susanne Langer points out, “if one door is closed to it, it finds, or even breaks, another entrance to the world.  If one symbolism is inadequate, it seizes another; there is no eternal decree of its means and methods.” (Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key:  A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3ird Edition, Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1970, p 86)

Rockaway College equalizes all forms of human expression giving weight to only those forms which the individual student’s neurology supports.  For example, the primary school program would develop in each child competencies in receiving, processing and communicating written, oral and graphic information, through as many neurologically compatible channels as each child is capable.  The Methods and Final Product of a Lower School student’s inquiry project would be left to each student according to his/her neurologically appropriate means of receiving, processing and communicating information.  He and she could choose to undertake and present an academic paper or a science experiment, or create a drawing, a painting, a sculpture, a video, an audio recording, or stage a one act play, an epic poem, a poetry reading, a musical performance, or write a poem, a piece of music, an essay or a short story.  The Upper School while in fact weighting reading, active listening and engaged conversation as keys to receiving and processing information of the learned world, would give no weight to any single method of the report of learning.  Upper School students would be as free to do as their Lower School colleagues in the report of learning through neurologically appropriate means.  

Intuition

If nothing else, Democratic Education is about correcting the conventionally structured ignorance of and accounting for the affective side of life, about cultivating the Educating for Human Greatness quality/power of Intuition.  Neill states, “To sum up, my contention is that [psychologically] unfree education results in life that cannot be lived fully.  Such an education almost entirely ignores the emotions of life; and because these emotions are dynamic, their lack of opportunity for expression must and does result in cheapness and ugliness and hatefulness…If the emotions are permitted to be really free, the intellect will look after itself.” (Neill, 1960, p. 100)   Further, “If a child is free to approve of himself, he will not usually be hateful.  He will not see any fun in trying to have an adult lose his temper [or to make another child unhappy, for that matter].” (Neill, 1960, p. l9)  More, “How much people can learn at any moment depends on how they feel at that moment about the task and their ability to do the task.  (And I might add how they generally feel about themselves, whether they feel empowered or powerless, competent or stupid.)  When we feel powerful and competent, we leap at difficult tasks.  The difficulty does not discourage us…When people are down, it’s useless to push them or urge them on; that just frightens and discourages them more.” (Holt, 1984, pp. 50-51)  Indeed, Democratic Education is about Intuition.

The EfHG quality/power of Intuition is divided into two dimensions:  the power of the heart to sense truth and the power of the child to develop emotional intelligence.  Rockaway College realizes both.  A child builds sensitivity to the truth only if he/she first feels the truth of who he and she really is; Rockaway College cultivates this first cause through developing self-awareness, self-esteem and self-advocacy in the individual child’s way of knowing.  A child builds emotional intelligence only if his/her psycho-dynamic is as free of destructive impulses as possible allowing self-awareness, self-esteem and self-advocacy to develop; Rockaway College cultivates a well adjusted psycho-dynamic through deep mentoring relationships and a beneficial peer affiliation.

Self-Awareness in a child’s own way of knowing is brought about by developing the inner quality of Mindfulness.  Mindfulness, a meta-cognitive property of mind, is a by-product of the child’s self-observation of the consequences of the strategies employed to work through situations.  In formal learning, mindfulness is consequent to the self-analysis of the results knowledge engagement occurs.

As Holt suggests, “Children’s first hunches about anything are extremely faint and tentative, the merest wisps of intuition that a certain thing may be so.  Each time children test one of these faint hunches and have it confirmed by experience, the hunch becomes a bit stronger.  What we might call a 5 percent hunch becomes a 10 percent, the 10 percent a 20, and so, slowly, all the way to the point where they will say with conviction that they know that such and such is true…” (Holt, 1984, p 138)   Children continuously and unconsciously survey the consequences of their hunch testing, noticing regularities and patterns from the noise.  They begin to ask questions, to make deliberate experiments, sharpening their own awareness of the interplay of action, environment and results.

But to enable a full acceptance of truth in the self, children’s meta-cognitive abilities are required to move from the unconscious to a conscious awareness.  Bringing self-observations from the inner sanctum to a conscious level is undertaken through the continuous actions of play and the constant conversation with other children and adults within informal situations, not in classroom “discussion” where children tend to be guarded.  Conscious understanding develops in continuous play as the multiple experiential, immediate needs of social interaction or of individual engagement with play objects unfold processes, applications and results and as children take particular notice of it all.  Conscious understanding in constant conversation develops when the child ready to reveal to others what has been uncovered makes connections among processes, applications and results as the child internally composes his and her speech.   And, Rockaway College provides an abundance of play and informal conversation opportunities at every schooling level as has been indicated earlier.

Self-Esteem and self-advocacy in a child’s own way of knowing are brought about by developing the inner quality of Empowerment. Empowerment, a motivational predisposition of a power-felt psycho-dynamic, is a consequence of a positive developing self-esteem/self-advocacy dynamic.  Self-Esteem is about the deepest affective definition of self along the worthy-worthless spectrum which is the foundation of the ultimate survival sense continuums of hopefilled to despair, of actualization to suicide.  These self-judgments precondition self-efficacy. 

Using the Holt formulation on emotional predisposition predicting learning effectiveness cited earlier and extending it, the following can be said:  When we feel powerful, that is, when we judge ourselves worthy and hopefilled, we feel highly self-effective, and, thus, we leap at tasks, difficult and simple; and working through a heightened sense of self-efficacy, observing the positive consequences we feel our hope and our worthiness validated, which in turn generates a greater confidence in our abilities. And with greater confidence in our abilities we seek engagement. All knowledge engagement in Rockaway College is structured to empower children at every schooling level.

Mindfulness and Empowerment, emerge to their most potent in children when they are a consistent response to the learning environment, rather than through compliance demanded of children by the adults in the rooms.  A schooling structure where Mindfulness and Empowerment emerge within each youngster as a constant environmental reaction to being within it is one allowing the growth of children in their own way and in their own time, one premised on redressing the full range of individual need, that is, in a Democratic Education system and in a Democratic Education school such as Rockaway College.

While each child in every category of student struggles with myriad adverse impulses, the Twice-Exceptional in their struggles of light speed brain processing against asynchronous social-emotional, cognitive and physical develop tend to possess uniquely severe tensions among internal and external expectations creating a variety of psychological impediments to living well, generally, and schooling success, particularly.  In other words, the way they engage the world develops deep conflicts within their psycho-dynamic requiring direct attention for them to grow to be well-adjusted and successful in which ever way they are comfortable.  Rockaway College at every schooling level surrounds its Twice-Exceptional students with a highly psychologically attentive environment of counseling and of affinity grouping.

Direct attention to the child’s psycho-dynamic is through individual student-staff counseling.  Every student at each schooling level in Rockaway College is to have a staff mentor, trained in counseling the school’s student population, for as long as the youngster is attending the school.  If necessary, mental health professional counseling would be available.  Therapeutic conversations between student and mentor are undertaken processing the experiences of the youngster’s interactions with other youngsters and within the rules and the roles the environment structure to adjust psycho-dynamic construction toward healthy self-concepts, situationally appropriate behavior and empowered self-direction.  These conversations continue through every stage of development as each child grows through the school’s culture to maturity.

There needs to be a range of difference enough in the youngsters in the school setting to provide a number of possible ways of learning and of being open to experimentation to the Twice-Exceptional and thus a variety of competency models from which to be like; at the same time there needs to be a population similar enough for these neuro-diverse youngsters to have positive identification with other youngsters, to feel accepted, confirming the legitimacy of personal identity, developing positive self-concepts, preventing the development of maladaptive coping mechanisms and forming solid foundations for the prevention of possible future social and emotional problems.  The broadest range of “other” children providing a number of possible ways of learning and of being while lowering the possibility of perceived difference by the schooling system and everyone in it, and, thus, to as much as possible prevent the different from being targets for bullying, disrespect and exclusion is represented by the full spectrum of gifted and talented, from the conventional who are comfortable in complying with customary schooling demands, to the unconventional who are just made crazy because they are truly other in their knowledge needs and, of course the Twice-Exceptional themselves.  And, Rockaway College establishes an affinity environment composed solely from the spectrum of gifted and talented.

Integrity

Democratic Education is grounded in the ideas of A.S. Neill who grounded his Summerhill in an ethos which EfHG labels as Integrity – the power of honesty and responsibility.  He built the Summerhill community on the honesty of being, “…we set out to make a school in which we should allow children to be themselves….” (Neill, 1960, p.4), and on having children being true to who the child actually is “The function of the child is to live his own life-not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows what is best…” (Neill, 1960, p12) 

His environment’s corner stones are equality, “…the success of Summerhill has been in part because the children feel that they are all treated alike and treated with respect.” (Neill, 1960, p 21), and fairness, “In Summerhill, everyone has equal rights.  No one is allowed to walk on my grand piano and I am not allowed to borrow a boy’s cycle without his permission.  At a General School Meeting the vote of a child of six counts for as much as my vote does” (Neill, 1960, p 9). 

Neill is all about child responsibility, “Children should be allowed almost infinite responsibility…[They should be granted as much responsibility] with due regard for his physical safety.” (Neill, 1960, pp. 152-154)  Indeed, Summerhill children have the responsibility of how to spend their day and on when to engage formal learning, “[In Summerhill] lessons are optional.  Children can go to them or stay away from them…” (Neill, 1960, p 5)  As he witnessed when children given responsibility for their learning turn to formal learning, they will do so with alacrity, “One sees the difference in the matter of lessons.  Every child under freedom plays most of the time for years; but when the time comes, the bright ones will sit down and tackle the work necessary to master subjects covered by government exams.  In little over two years, a boy or girl will cove the work that disciplined children take eight years to cover.” (Neill, 1960, p. 116)

Additionally, under responsibility structured schooling, children own their individual relationships, “As for self-discipline, it is an indefinite thing.  Too often it means a discipline of self that has been instilled by the moral ideas of adults.  True self-discipline does not involve repression or acceptance.  It considers the rights and happiness of others.  It leads the individual to deliberately seek to live at peace with others by conceding something to their point of view.” (Neill, 1960, p. 356)  More, under responsibility structure schooling children own their collective relationships, “In a free school, the children are allowed to do exactly what they like as long as they do not break the social laws which are made by staff and pupils at General School Meetings.” (Neill, 1960, 321)  Indeed, “In Summerhill, a child is not allowed to do as he pleases. His own laws hedge him in on all sides.  He is allowed to do as he pleases only in things that affect him-and only him.  He can play all day if he wants to, because work and study are matters that concern him alone.  But he is not allowed to play a cornet in the schoolroom because his playing would interfere with others.” (Neill, 1960, p. 348) 

Rockaway College fully accepts Neill’s notions on the honesty of being, on having children being true to who the child actually is, on the environment’s corner stones of equality and fairness and on child responsibility.  Conceptionally, the honesty of being and on being true to who the child actually is is vested in the understanding of Twice-Exceptionality as a synthesis of both giftedness/talentedness and cognitive/social-emotional deficit where strength compensates for weakness creating a unique and indivisible learning style and in the acknowledgement that the individual neuro-learning style of each child will emerge as an intrinsic motivation toward different aspects of learning content and skills, establishing quality differentiated outcomes for the different neuro-learning styles.  Structurally, the honesty of being and on being true to who the child actually is is vested in the practice of the Talent Development infused Learning Models of each schooling level.  The corner stones of equality and fairness are vested in the schools Democratic governance structures.  And child responsibility is vested in the school’s self-directed learning where each child, adolescent and young adult takes full responsibility for selecting the what, when and how of their own course of study through their entire stay at Rockaway College.

Summary

Lynn Stoddard set definite standards for all formal learning settings to have demonstrated the paradigm shift to Educating for Human Greatness:  valuing student differences; developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities; using teacher knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement; and growing students in the seven major qualities/powers of greatness-Identity, Inquiry, Interaction, Initiative, Imagination, Intuition and Integrity.   The purpose of this paper was to ascertain how Democratic Education, generally, and the Rockaway College Concept, specifically, measured up to the Educating for Human Greatness standards.  As has been well demonstrated, both Democratic Education and Rockaway College Concept met and exceeded each standard.  And, thus, both can be seen as exemplars of Educating for Human Greatness.

Taking the Measure of Democratic Education and Rockaway College Concept Against Lynn Stoddard’s New Paradigm for Formal Learning, Educating for Human Greatness

(Note:  This paper has been divided into three parts so readers are unburdened with having to sit with it for the time it would take to read the entire piece, that is, unless the reader wishes.  This blog entry is the second of three.)

Lynn Stoddard in his Educating for Human Greatness, http://www.efhg.org/, advocates for a paradigm shift in education, from valuing student uniformity to valuing student differences, from standardization of teaching, learning and outcomes to developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities, from teachers’ direct instruction ­of basic skills and subject matter disciplines as ends in and of themselves to using teacher knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement, from student achievement being in the mastery of a core of essential knowledge to the growth in seven major qualities/powers of greatness: Identity, Inquiry, Interaction, Initiative, Imagination, Intuition and Integrity.  To ascertain if any system has so shifted requires it to be placed against these standards.  To this point it has been demonstrated (as related last blog entry) both Democratic Education and its expression in the Rockaway College Concept have met the Educating for Human Greatness standards considered.  However, we shall see if either grows students in the seven major EfHG qualities/powers.  This entry will look at Identity, Inquiry, Interaction and Initiative with the following entry surveying Imagination, Intuition and Integrity.

Democratic Education (see http://www.democratic.co.il/en/ and http://www.yaacovhecht.com/) may be defined as formal study controlled by the learner where the individual takes full responsibility for his and for her own course of learning and as schooling controlled by the learning community collectively where the school body as a whole takes responsibility for governing itself through The Democratic Process. 

Rockaway College (detailed on this blog in consecutive entries starting on 2/16/12, ending on 3/19/12, including an overview of design on 3/17/12 and an annotated index to entries on 3/19/12) is conceived to utilize the learner-decision-centeredness and school community self-governance of Democratic Education in the service of the Twice-Exceptional, also know as the Gifted and Talented Learning Disabled.  The school represents an integrated progression in social, emotional and cognitive development from pre-school though early college established in two major units:  Rockaway College School-containing the early childhood and the primary education programs; and Rockaway College-holding a personal growth intake for a secondary education, the secondary education program and a liberal arts early college program. Graduates of the early college having gone through the College’s secondary education would earn both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree. 

Identity

Democratic Education is all about confirming the child’s powers to engage the world through his and her natural inclinations and individual differences.  It is learning through the child’s intrinsic motivation toward different aspects of content and skills.  As children choose knowledge engagement based on inherent predisposition initially through intuition and later through conscious intention, each validates his and her way of knowing increasing confidence in that unique way of apprehending the world.  Each day as children define themselves by choice and action, they strengthen who they know they are.  And as the child grows into adolescence and young adulthood, the practice of conscious decision-making deepens the sense of self-worth, growing in the quality/power of Identity-the power of self-worth derived from developing one’s unique talents and gifts.

Rockaway College assumes Twice-Exceptionality (the population of youngster the school intends to serve) as a synthesis of both giftedness/talentedness and cognitive/social-emotional deficit where strength compensates for weakness creating a unique, indivisible and intrinsic motivation toward different aspects of knowledge content and skills.  Intrinsic motivational choice is the heart of Rockaway College regardless of the schooling level. The early childhood environment would be a play world centered on self-regulation keyed to social-emotional aspects of personality and appropriate growth in gross and fine motor movement and in overall body capacities and where children can choose to engage in whatever free, self-organized, unstructured imaginative play the environment supports for as long as they wish. The primary program would provide for play as well, but its intent on developing naturally inclined learning skills necessitates environment preparation supporting such development. While there would be blocks, toys and puzzles, paints and crayons, there would also be Montessori readers, charts, timelines, lab manuals and models.  Further, there would be set the academic learning of Montessori materials organized in Learning Stations centered on Literacy, Language and Measurement and in discipline areas of Earth, Space and Life Sciences, History and Geography.  Knowledge acquisition here over an entire residency would emerge unique to every child as they engage the prepared environment through their distinctive neurology, interests, abilities and communication styles, thus defining and growing in their individual Indentities.

The outdoor adventure secondary education intake program housed in Rockaway College’s Venture School is wholly about the cultivation of Identity through intrinsic choice. It provides youngsters self-selective opportunities to learn and apply outdoor skills, to enhance physical strength, endurance and dexterity, to acquire knowledge about nutrition, meal planning and preparation, and outdoor personal health and safety, and to explore multiple aspects of Botany, Geology, Forestry, Zoology and Environmental Science.  These nature play opportunities in camping, hiking, backpacking, canoeing, rafting, skiing, within an ecology of choice unfold youngsters’ natural inclinations and individual differences so each child new to the College can begin to understand how he and she engages the world and would deepen such self-awareness for the children from Rockaway College School.

In the secondary education program held in Rockaway College’s Lower School, students working the integrated, interdisciplinary thematic Free Academic curriculum would engage the learned world through his and her individual neurological construction, abilities, interests, temperament and communication style confirming Identity.  Examples of the academic themes are “Oceans”, “Mountains”, “Deserts”, “Cities”, “Luminescence”, “Alienation”, “Creation Myths”, “Spider Webs”, “Wild Fires”.  Students would select one theme at any one time on which to concentrate study.  But intrinsic choice here goes further in that Lower School students would be free to come up with their own themes based on their natural inclinations and individual differences, their unique Indentities, and to study what they have devised.

The learning engagement of the early college in Rockaway College’s Upper School fully expresses individual Identity as student decision making reaches its highest confidence.  Great Question Curriculum is also thematic.  Examples of such themes are:  How did the eighteenth century European belief against Superstition and Fanaticism affect the construction of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment?; Does Dark Matter Matter?; Can Your Render Unto Caesar When Caesar is Wrong?. Each semester small groups of interested young scholars would choose specific Great Questions to study and the course of study in the Upper School would be wholly the choice of individual students. But choice here goes much further in that Upper School faculty would through consensus with the initial and subsequent groups of Upper School students develop the generations of interdisciplinary Great Questions.  Great Question curriculum development would remain an Upper School governance issue for the existence of the College.  More, Great Question courses can be facilitated by faculty or by the students themselves.  

Inquiry

Democratic Education unleashes the child’s natural curiosity.  As John Holt points out, “…curiosity is hardly ever idle.  What we want to know, we want to know for a reason.  The reason is that there is a hole, a gap, an empty space in our understanding of things, our mental model of the world.  We…want to fill it.  It makes us ask How? When? Why?  While the gap is there, we are in tension, in suspense…”  (John Caldwell Holt, How Children Learn, Revised Edition, Reading, MA:  Perseus Books. 1984, pp. 291-292)  Indeed, the EfHG quality/power of Inquiry- the power of curiosity and efficient, effective investigation-is key to child learning and Democratic Education here, as elsewhere, follows the child.

And Inquiry is everywhere in Rockaway College.  In Rockaway College School the materials and activities of the Democratic Montessori prepared environment magnetically draw curious engagement.  Nature draws curiosity in the Venture School of Rockaway College.  Inquiry into the learned world is center in the Lower School.  Inquiry Project Based Learning would be the learning/reporting structure utilized by students to process through the Lower School to translation of matriculation to the Upper School. Every student would engage the learned world through an inquiry project determined by his own neurological construction, abilities, interests, temperament and communication style.  And the Upper School continues the inquiry focus through the shared inquiry of Socratic seminars where young adults would collaboratively explore Great Questions. 

Interaction

Democratic Education’s core is in community.  “The soul of [community]”, William Ayers states, “is a social spirit of compassionate solidarity, of engagement, of sympathy, empathy, and connectedness.  It begins in care and cooperation, and the recognition that our lives are suspended in interdependent webs of relationships.”  (William Ayers, On the Side of the Child:  Summerhill Revisited, New York:  Teachers College Press, 2003, p. 36) And this web is founded in the school community governing itself.  In self-governing schools, Ayers continues, control of behavior is not “external and exclusive, concentrated in a single tentative grip, but is internal to the group, shared equally by everyone.  This means that learning to live together is on the agenda every minute of every day; learning to live together is the assumed curriculum is what else is being considered or pursued…” (Ayers, 2003, p. 32) 

In Democratic schools children and adults live together through a commonly generated set of agreed upon rules.  Regular meetings of the whole community consider and resolve issues open to community decision. Adults and children have equal rights to speak and to persuade within community forums. Each has a single vote on questions up for community decision. As individual norms are community derived and as the rules codifying them are as well, individuals in self-governing schools live through that which they, themselves, institute effectively doing to others what is desired to be done to the individual deciding on the norms, their rules and the types of consequences resulting from rules’ infringement.  This direct social contract emanating from the overwhelming desire to live well together embodies the EfHG quality/power of Interaction – the powers of love, human relationships, communication and cooperation. 

Rockaway College would be a Democratic self-governing institution. Each major unit of this institution is its own community taking responsibility for creating amenable, caring, reciprocal social and learning ecologies.  While these communities would propose and decide on policies governing their respective units such as individual benchmarks of social, emotional and cognitive growth youngsters would need to exhibit as they progress through and out of The School and The College, their main focus would be on defining expectant behaviors consistent and inconsistent with the norms of the social/learning environments as well as the means by which inconsistent behaviors are resolved.  In other words, these communities would take it upon themselves to employ the powers of love, human relationships, communication and cooperation to allow everyone to live well together.

However, this institution goes further in the quality/power of Interaction, especially within the Venture, Lower and Upper Schools.  Here a Cooperative Self-Directed culture is established where mixed age children work together to exercise their distinctive interests and ways of knowing, where individual inquiry is accomplished through cooperative learning groups, where learning group members act together to achieve individual learning objectives, where an expectant behavior of the cooperative norm is that each youngster is to look for opportunities to help fellow students as well as to be open to help when needed and where Cooperative Learning strategies are employed for whole group learning.  Indeed, living through the cooperative community culture children, adolescents and young adults would help each other set solid emotional foundations for future growth while assisting to uncover and to explore their native intelligence, enhance their learning skills, enrich their scholarship and cultivate a deep appreciation of the classical and the modern worlds. 

Initiative

The EfHG quality/power of Initiative-the power of self-discipline and intrinsic motivation-is vested in Democratic Education placing the child as the key decision-maker in his and her education choices.   The learner is the best judge of what he should learn, Holt maintains:  “For it seems to me a fact that, in our struggle to make sense out of life, the things we most need to learn are the things we most want to learn.” (Holt, 1984, pp. 291-292)  Or as Neill so succinctly puts it, “And a child who wants to learn…will learn…”  (Alexander Sutherland Neill, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, New York: Hart Pub. Co. 1960, p. 5)

 

In Democratic Education the basic decisions on what is learned, when learning happens and how what is chosen is learned is the responsibility of the child.  Again Neill:  “My view is that a child is innately wise and realistic.  If left to himself…he will develop as far as he is capable of developing…people who have the innate ability and wish to be scholars will be scholars…” (Neill, 1960, p. 4)  However, Neill suggests the child ought not be totally left on his/her own.  “…[a] child should not be asked to face responsibilities for which he is not ready, nor be saddled with decisions he is not yet old enough to make.  The watchword is common sense…But the imposition of authority-necessary authority-on a child does not in any way conflict with the idea that a child should be given just about as much responsibility that he can accept at his particular age…” (Neill, 1960, pp. 152-154)  Still, that which affects the individual, Neill states, is the responsibility of the individual:  “…there is a great difference between compelling a child to cease throwing stones and compelling him to learn Latin.  Throwing stones involves others; but learning Latin involves only the boy.   The community has the right to restrain the antisocial boy because he is interfering with the rights of others’ but the community has no right to compel a boy to learn Latin-for learning Latin is a matter for the individual.” (Neill, 1960, pp.114-115)

This open and sometimes guarded learner self-disciplined and intrinsically motivated responsibility has its expression across the Democratic Education spectrum from Sands School which negotiates choice to Sudbury Valley where choice is completely child-determined.  Rockaway College is child-decision-centered; however, unlike Sudbury Valley which removes the adult from almost all of the child’s decisions, this model of self-directed learning fully acknowledges the need for a mentoring relationship of adult to child where an adult mentor and a youngster enter a process mutually respectful of the wisdom of each to attain a common understanding of and an agreement on learning goals and the action steps required to reach those goals; this includes a mentor working with children on social-emotional, psycho-dynamic and learning deficit issues. 

Thus:  While children in the early childhood program most definitely would self-direct their choice of play, because of the unique executive functioning arrangement of the Twice-Exceptional, there is required to be built a close mentoring relationship between teacher and student negotiating the emergence of suitable self-regulation to proceed to the primary education program.  And while children in the primary education program would naturally self-direct their engagement with the Democratic Montessori prepared learning environment, because of their unique social-emotional and cognitive arrangements, there needs to be built a close mentoring relationship between teacher and student navigating the development of competency in receiving, processing and communicating written, oral and graphic information, including mathematical information, through as many neurologically compatible channels as the child is capable, allowing the child to comfortably accept secondary academic study.  And while adolescents and young adults would by all means self-direct their course of studies in the outdoor adventure, secondary education and early college programs, students new to the programs as well as those nearing residency’s end would need mentors thoroughly versed in the cooperative self-directed academics of the school and in the unique social-emotional and cognitive styles of the school’s population to assist them in maneuvering through the channels of the academy to graduation.  Nevertheless, the hallmark of student engagement in knowledge acquisition at each school level is the ability to self-direct, to select aspects of knowledge according to the child’s own felt needs, the child’s intrinsic motivation, and to follow-through on what has been selected according to the child’s neurologically predisposed self-regulation, the child’s self-discipline, that is, to take the Initiative on all affecting individual learning decisions.

Taking the Measure of Democratic Education and Rockaway College Concept Against Lynn Stoddard’s New Paradigm for Formal Learning, Educating for Human Greatness

(Note:  This paper is divided into three parts so readers are unburdened with having to sit with it for the time it would take to read the entire piece, that is, unless the reader wishes.)

Introduction

Our education systems should develop great human beings contributing to society, declares Lynn Stoddard in his Educating for Human Greatness, http://www.efhg.org/.  To do so, he maintains, requires a paradigm shift in formal learning:  from valuing student uniformity to valuing student differences, from standardization of teaching, learning and outcomes to developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities, from teachers’ direct instruction ­of basic skills and subject matter disciplines as ends in and of themselves to teachers using their knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement, from student achievement being in the mastery of a core of essential knowledge to the growth in seven major qualities/powers of greatness: Identity, Inquiry, Interaction, Initiative, Imagination, Intuition and Integrity,.  Thus, to ascertain if any system has so shifted requires it to be placed against these standards.  Let us see, then, how Democratic Education, generally, and the Rockaway College Concept, specifically, measure up to the Educating for Human Greatness standards. 

Democratic Education (see http://www.democratic.co.il/en/ and http://www.yaacovhecht.com/) may be defined as formal study controlled by the learner where the individual takes full responsibility for his and for her own course of learning and as schooling controlled by the learning community collectively where the school body as a whole takes responsibility for governing itself through The Democratic Process.  While the standards as enumerated above do not directly speak to who controls what in formal learning, one can infer an apparent approval of the learner-decision-centeredness and school community self-governance defining Democratic Education and, thus by extension, any school so constructed such as Rockaway College.

Rockaway College (detailed on this blog in consecutive entries starting on 2/16/12, ending on 3/19/12, including an overview of design on 3/17/12 and an annotated index to entries on 3/19/12) is conceived to utilize the learner-decision-centeredness and school community self-governance of Democratic Education in the service of the Twice-Exceptional, also know as the Gifted and Talented Learning Disabled.  The school represents an integrated progression in social, emotional and cognitive development from pre-school though early college established in two major units:  Rockaway College School-containing the early childhood and the primary education programs; and Rockaway College-holding a personal growth intake for a secondary education, the secondary education program and a liberal arts early college program. Graduates of the early college having gone through the College’s secondary education would earn both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree.  On the surface, at least, it appears there just might be a sustainable correspondence between Educating for Human Greatness and Democratic Education and its expression in Rockaway College.  But, we’ll dig down to really see.

Valuing student differences standard

Democratic Education is driven by the individual social, emotional and cognitive needs of its students as manifested by them, not by an interpretation of them by the adults in the classrooms or the main office, where the child is the definer of his and her own need and the decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need.  Indeed, this system of formal learning fully acknowledges that children possess different neurological constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments, learning and communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive and social development and that the needs generated by these natural instincts and individual differences drive differentiated knowledge seeking, acquisition and use.  Thus, Democratic Education systems are organized, at least, to provide students with the choice on how they meet common expectations such as graduation requirements whether they be personality, skills or content performance, at best, to provide students with the choices yielding quality differentiated outcomes in personality, skills or content.  So much for student uniformity!

As it turns out, Dr. Susan Baum has developed a highly compatible learner-decision-centered process, “Talent Development”, for the student population of Rockaway College. This institution, quite naturally, would infuse Talent Development in the Democratic Education for each schooling level. 

Talent Development is derived from Dr. Baum’s research and practice demonstrating that when above average neuro-diverse youngsters concentrate on topics fitting their strengths and are not forced to engage academic achievement through weakness, they develop the self-confidence and skills allowing them schooling success, and to eventually, when ready, engage those areas which challenge weakness.  In Rockaway College, then, each student would be free to choose what to learn, when to learn what has been chosen and how to learn what is chosen based on the individual’s cognitive strengths and innate compensated weaknesses, that is, on the individual’s Neuro-Learning Style.  Only when the youngster demonstrates a very positive self-image, borne from successful work through his and her Neuro-Learning Style, and only when the child feels the immediate need to move through an area of deficit would the student be encouraged to undertake learning through deficits.  And when learning through deficit is done, compensatory strategies would be first used and then remediation only if the child wishes to tackle deficit learning that way.  Working through different Neuro-Learning Styles is projected to yield quality differentiated outcomes in personality, skills and content performance. Thus, acknowledging biological difference in structure and in functioning, Rockaway College Concept certainly demonstrates that foundational EfHG change from valuing student uniformity to valuing student differences.

The standards of developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities and of using teacher knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement

Actually, education planners within the conventional, dominant schooling paradigm, whether they be district teaching, learning and curriculum specialists or building principals or the teachers themselves, use their knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students to nurture curiosity and to draw forth student interests and engagement.  This is called “student motivation”.  However, these folks employ their inner strengths and professional knowledge to organize and arrange experiences to motivate students to acquire a common curriculum and to generate a greater uniformity of learning outcomes. 

Thus, it is not the presence of inventive pedagogical motivation of student learning which marks a paradigm shift. Rather it is in the movement to a wholly different set of objectives to which all the motivational activity is in pursuit.  The ends of the conventional, dominant schooling paradigm is the placement in ready recall memory of the uniform, mandated, circumscribed state curriculum standards; the ends of the EfHG shifted paradigm is in the cultivation of differentiated knowledge seeking, acquisition and use based on students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities.  Therefore, this standard should be seen as a corollary in valuing difference and should be combined with the standard of developing students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities to be stated as:  using teacher knowledge and creativity to organize and arrange experiences for students nurturing different knowledge seeking, acquisition and use emanating from the exercise of their unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities.  And in this, Democratic Education excels.

Democratic Education school constructors have organized their learning communities purposefully using individual student natural inclinations and individual differences to drive base learning decisions of each student.  These range across a spectrum of child decision making.  At one pole there is Sands School, www.sands-school.co.uk/, a closer to the conventional academic oriented school, but where students choose how to meet common graduation expectations.  Sands’ youngsters initially work with “tutors” exploring the kinds of academic knowledge available and the many possible learning programs for self-selection and then are let to choose the course of their study.  At the other end of the spectrum is Sudbury Valley, www.sudval.org/, opening knowledge to any and everything a youngster can think up, where immediate impulse, curiosity and biological inclinations self-direct whatever the child wishes to do, and where learning is informal and mostly accidental, rather then being formal-as in lessons-or intentional-as in directly purposeful.  And then in the middle is Summerhill, www.summerhillschool.co.uk/, which offers a conventional academic course of study along with a variety of projects and activities of interest, but provides a non-compulsory lesson and project attendance and a self-selected, individualized exit outcome. 

And then there is the Rockaway College Concept which moves along the spectrum the higher the schooling level.  Its early childhood and primary education programs start in the middle like Summerhill in that there is a formal and purposeful learning set for youngsters but there is also a broad self-selection of when and how the intentional aspects are acquired.  To paraphrase a sentiment on Summerhill’s website:  Rockaway College School (wherein these programs are housed) is a school of intelligent choice based on an intrinsic motivation of individuals toward different aspects of school behavior, where students decide each day how they will use their time…they can play, they can involve themselves in a variety of constructive social situations, they can be by themselves to read or daydream, they can engage in self directed group projects and activities, and they can choose to attend to the learning materials and activities of the Montessori-like prepared environment.  Rockaway College’s construction of student choice is solidly premised on allowing the free play of the individual’s Neuro-Learning Style which includes how each student will meet readiness expectations enabling him and her to move on to the next schooling level.

The secondary and early college programs of Rockaway College draw closer to Sands in that there is a definite set of formal and purposeful leaning from which students can self-select and like Summerhill, in that, they offer a self-selected, individualized exit outcome.   Here, as in the early childhood and primary education programs, the individual Neuro-Learning Style of each student emerging as an intrinsic motivation toward different aspects of learning content and skills would drive selection of curriculum elements.

“Free Academic” is the curriculum for the secondary program.  It is Academic in that the universe of knowledge open to engagement would be that from written tradition, Western and Eastern. It is Free in that the intellectual curiosity and the natural differences of each youngster would drive engagement with the academic world rather than that of uniform mandated core and elective curricula.  The “Great Question Curriculum” is the course of study for the early college.  It is an integrated, contemporary Great Books curriculum utilizing the Great Books as the sources from which Great Questions would be derived and the resources from which students would turn to answer these questions.  The selection of Great Question to be inquired into would be the choice of each student. 

In the expressions of Democratic Education-Sands, Summerhill, Sudbury Valley, and Rockaway College Concept-is the fulfillment of the standard as it is the paradigmatic shift from the placement in ready recall memory of the uniform, mandated, circumscribed state curriculum standards through student compliance with individual teacher inventive pedagogical motivation to the intentionally constructed ecology of the routine, daily exercise of students’ unique talents, gifts, interests and abilities nurturing their different and individual knowledge seeking, acquisition and use.

To this point it has been demonstrated both Democratic Education and its expression in the Rockaway College Concept have met the Educating for Human Greatness standards considered.  However, we shall see if either grows students in the seven major EfHG qualities/powers in the second and third parts of this posted paper.