The Learning Models of Rockaway College

Rockaway College design is premised on a special use of the general principles of Democratic Education.  It institutes a supported self-directed and negotiated learning for the spectrum of gifted and talended, but it is attending most to the needs of the Twice-Exceptional.  The College holds four learning levels, an early childhood, a primary, a secondary and an early college.  Each learning level structures itself according to a unique Democratic Education model of student knowledge acquisition.

As it turns out, Dr. Susan Baum has developed a highly compatible learner-decision-centered process for the student population of The College, the bright neuro-diverse, called Talent Development.  The College, quite naturally, infuses Talent Development in the Democratic Education learning models chosen for each learning 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 has been chosen based on the individual’s cognitive strengths and innate compensated weaknesses, 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. 

With this in mind, the following can go on to explain the learning models used.  There are four models: Democratic Montessori with Toys, Democratic Montessori, Democratic Education and Democratic Education Within a Conventional College Semester Course Structure. 

Democratic Montessori with Toys is the learning model used in the early childhood program.  It combines Montessori’s prepared environment with Democratic Education’s intrinsic motivated learning.

Maria Montessori about 100 years ago in Italy observed how children learn.  She saw children striving to satisfy their immediate needs as motivating individual learning behavior.  She noticed in children what she called “sensitive periods”, those times when a child’s mind is more in need of acquiring a specific knowledge set than at others as constituting their immediate learning needs.  Additionally, she viewed very young children in learning environments constructed by adults of the time unable to grow children mentally or physically healthy:  These environments were looking to satisfying adult need, not child need.  Further, she well noticed how powerful and energetic natural curiosity was for learning, to the point where no adult need force a child to learn, especially during the sensitive periods.  From these observations, she developed her “Method”. 

The Method centers itself in adults preparing a learning environment for children to engage filled with material and activity calculated to resonate with each sensitive period.  In the Method adults do not tell children what to do beyond an initial permission to actively engage the material of the prepared environment.   They consciously observe how each child interacts with the materials and the activities ascertaining each child’s needs and if required altering the environment-the material and the activity-to put in the way of the child the elements to satisfy his and her needs.

Over the decades The Method has given rise to the production and use of specialized learning materials.  They are engineered for what is called “internal correction of error”, meaning that each Montessori Material when used right will correct any unintended learning to exactly and only that learning for which the material has been engineered.  In that way, the child learns what the adults think is appropriate to each sensitive period through the active experience of learning from the material, far and away the best method of learning, instead of having the adult telling the child exactly what the child is to learn, the worst way of learning, the worst way of trying to satisfy child need. 

Unfortunately, the highly structured one way learning forced by the “right” use of Montessori Materials works, like conventional schooling, to exercise convergent cognitive processes to the exclusion of the divergent ones, especially held by the intended student population of the early childhood and primary programs.   The Pink Tower is a fine illustration here:  The Pink Tower is comprised of a number of graduated sized foam blocks meant to be stacked in order from the largest on bottom to the smallest on top; it is also meant to fall over if constructed improperly; so, through trial and error a very young child will experience the connections among the block sizes until the idea is learned that size matters in relation of one to another as well as a practical lesson in gravity.  Now, when a child’s mind is largely convergent, this internal correction of error is quite natural and not harmful, but when a child’s mind is largely divergent, the correction of error in the Pink Tower, and in all other Montessori Materials, makes no sense as the child will do with the blocks, or other Materials, as the child’s divergent neurology compels trying to arrange and re-arrange to see how many different arrangements he/she can make.  Sad to say, too often, when a Montessori teacher sees a divergent thinking child working with a material differently than is intended, he/she will verbally correct the child to bring the child into doing the right thing with the material, which goes against the entire exercise of the adult role in The Method.  And, in the end, the child learns that he/she is not smart enough to learn on his/her own-that is called “learned helplessness”, something at which our conventional schooling excels.

We know the above average neuro-diverse are divergent thinkers.  Thus, to limit engagement of learning material to the “right” use of the Montessori Materials would not work to align the learning environment to the neurology of youngsters in both the early childhood and the primary programs.  Thus, the school’s teachers would grant youngsters, of course within safety guidelines, the permission to engage the engineered material based on their own proclivities allowing the intended learning to be discovered along with any unintended learning the material allows.  Additionally, with the importation of appropriate toys and play activities exercising the divergent processes into a Montessori Materialed prepared environment, students would be able to broaden their learning to that intrinsic to each toy and activity, providing further development of their natural divergent cognitive processes as well as enabling each child to take away the good feelings individual, independent experiential learning imparts, not to mention the mental wellness the power of self achieving its own goals engenders. 

Democratic Montessori is the learning model used in the Primary Education Program.  It stitches together Democratic Education and Montessori schooling by combining Montessori’s prepared environment with Democratic Education’s community governance and intrinsic motivated learning.

Democratic Education is the learning model used in the secondary and early college programs of Rockaway College (and is infused within the Montessori models of the early childhood and primary learning programs).  Democratic Education is 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 managed by the learning community collectively where the school body as a whole takes responsibility for governing itself.         

The Democratic Education system described earlier is given recapitulation here.  Democratic Education is driven by the individual social, emotional and cognitive needs of the students as manifested by them, not by an interpretation of them by the adults in the class rooms, indeed, where the child is the definer of his and her own need and the decision maker as to how to satisfy the felt need.  This goes against traditional adult over child power relation where the adult is the one to define child need and is the decision maker on how to meet the interpreted need with the result that a Democratic Education school would look quite different from what people have come to expect in schools. 

First, the course of study in Democratic Education over an entire school residency emerges unique to every child as each engages learning through his and her individual differences.  Children possess different neurological constructions, interests, abilities, temperaments, learning and communication styles and rates of emotional, cognitive and social development.  These natural instincts and individual differences drive learning tasks whether anyone likes it or not since that’s the biology of each youngster.  But the standardization of curriculum of the conventional setting, especially under the rubric of grade level standards, completely deny difference and in the end forces youngsters to work against their neurological constructions, interests, abilities, etc.  Indeed, the interventions and accommodations undertaken in the conventional setting attempt to remediate learning differences having as their goal every youngster socially, emotionally and cognitively enabled to place in ready recall memory the same content at the same time with approximately the same outcomes as every other child, thus, demanding youngsters to repress those elements of personality driving child need for different knowledge sets and for knowledge acquisition through distinctly different, biologically determined means resulting in the denial of those needs with the concomitant negative psychological impacts. 

Such differences in predispositions ought to be understood to drive differentiated knowledge seeking, acquisition and use yielding quality differentiated outcomes over a term and over the course of a school residency for each youngster.  Democratic Education being an authentic child learning self-directed system would put in the way of children the widest possible range of subject matter and let the children’s natural inclinations and differences drive what is learned, when it is learned and how what is chosen is learned.

However, unlike the Sudbury Valley model of self-directed learning which removes the adult from almost all of the child’s decisions, this model of self-directed learning used in Rockaway College 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.  The agreements on what is undertaken to be learned and when and how learning is to happen is known as a “negotiated curriculum” and is a fundamental part of this institution.

Second, in-school engagement within a child learning self-directed community of a negotiated and a self-selected curriculum during a Democratic Education school day would be through the student choice of one or more of three ways:  through independent, individual or small group engagement with the materials and activities open to students, through self-selected small, whole group adult facilitated topic study or activity and/or through self-initiated one-to-one instruction either with another student or with an adult.  In the authentically child-decision-centered learning environment of a Democratic Education school the initiation of learning engagement, including instruction, is up to the child, based on a felt need to connect with the knowledge, the materials, the activities, the adults and classmates, rather than the fully adult initiated whole group classroom process of the traditional taking all decisions away from the youngster.

Third, Democratic Education aligns its learning on the way children actually learn.  Youngsters learn through a slow process of inquiry where, by way of natural intuitive observation, they form extremely tentative hunches which are self-tested against experiences.  They continuously and unconsciously survey the consequences of their hunch testing, noticing regularities and patterns.  They begin to ask questions, to make deliberate experiments, sharpening their own awareness of the interplay of action, environment and results and in the process cultivate a reflexive and then an intentional self-regulation, within which there is a growing meta-cognitive process propelling intentional knowledge seeking and use.  Compelled by adults to constantly prove either they know or do not know youngsters stop trying to self-test, confirm and strengthen their faint hunches and give up. This is also the case when youngsters are compelled by adults to undertake objects of learning in which they have no interest or native inclination.  This learned helplessness debilitates during school days and well throughout a life-time.  Democratic Education constructs learning to advantage the way children actually learn empowering them to take responsibility for their own decisions in schooling and in life.

Fourth, Democratic Education elevates “learning to learn” well above content mastery. Content mastery focused learning cannot cultivate in youngsters the quick adaptability required of the wired life of the twenty-first century and beyond. Within an era of total social diffusion of information technologies and the information saturation these technologies’ have wrought, the ability or the desirability to store in one’s mind a set of Core Knowledge has become grossly irrelevant. Rather, the basic skills of learning itself, the abilities to define a question, to answer it and to articulately report what has been discovered through the skilled use of different media, additionally, to analyze the information according to the demands of the question, to synthesize the information with prior knowledge to create new knowledge to answer the question, to generalize the new knowledge and the process itself across other questions, are the keys preparing youngsters for the quick adaptability necessary for life today and in the future. And these learning to learn skill sets are taken by Democratic Education to be the principal objectives of its education. 

Fifth, emotional readiness to accept a learning task comes well before the task in a Democratic Education school. Any learning first depends on how a youngster feels about herself, empowered or powerless, competent or stupid. Compelling a task when someone feels powerless or stupid just frightens, discourages and deepens helplessness. Democratic Education environments concentrate on providing a time for emotional development first, when youngsters come to feel safe in trusting their native leaning instincts and their unique ways of knowing. As well, it provides those injured by their prior schooling, a time of healing, a time of taking off the pressure, of reassurance, as in time they will gain the energy and the courage to accept any task. 

Free and self-organized imaginative play is the readiness activity in Democratic Education. Youngsters engage in whatever play the environment supports for as long as they wish. Indeed, Democratic Education environments provide areas intended to stimulate imaginative play as well as individual and group physical play.  In Rockaway College’s early childhood and primary programs, along with the Montessori Materials there would other “stuff” like Lincoln Logs and blocks, toys and puzzles, sand and water tables, costumes and theatrical makeup, paints and crayons, newsprint and paper, hammers, nails, saws and wood, etc. There would be performance spaces and child friendly kitchens and appliances. There would also be indoor and outdoor playground equipment and open space. Even for the adolescents in the secondary program play can also be in wood or in metal or in performance with acting or music or in the arts with drawing, painting, sculpting. Or they too can take to the kitchen or the indoor/outdoor playground equipment and open space. Or, they can play in the outdoors, camping, hiking, backpacking, canoeing, rafting, skiing, biking, etc. Then, when in their own time they feel ready, each will engage in whatever formal learning is chosen.

Sixth, in Democratic Education formal learning is required to turn its attention to preparing youngsters for life itself, not for jobs or careers.  To have as the goal of formal learning the social utility of a disciplined, trained workforce is to give to education the conventional meaning which is a far too narrow, counter-productive and harmful one for 21^st century America and which continues the dysfunction damaging to all youngsters and to the nation and the society. Schooling ought to be looking to the larger function of socialization, of providing the society and the nation with healthy citizens capable of making their own decisions.  Or to sum it up:  The goals of our intentional learning communities ought to be to cultivate in all youngsters a solid psychological foundation for future growth and a cognitive dexterity for adaptability to life’s vicissitudes.  Indeed, schooling should be about the healthy, happy growth in self-awareness, self-regulation and self-actualization.  In the end it’s all about taking care of the psychic side of life, for once that is healthy, the rest will follow in good order.  The 21^st century and beyond need mentally healthy citizens who can leverage their good health in which ever way they discern is in their best interest and in the best interest of family, community, country and civilization. 

Seventh, the adults in the room of a child-decision-centered, child learning self-directed environment of a Democratic Education school have an additional role beyond being facilitators and mentors in self-directed and negotiated study:  They are to model life long learning, passionate engagement and the meanings of collaborative work, goal setting, task acceptance and completion by undertaking learning activities of interest to the adult, inviting youngsters as helpers, as apprentices, in what is being done rather than as “students” being told what to do, and to in equal measure with the children of the learning community maintain behavioral norms according to both individual child and whole community needs through The Democratic Process, peer mediation, Non-Violent Communication (https://www.cnvc.org/) and the LEAP process (http://leapinstitute.org/).  .   

And eighth, Democratic Education schools are self-governing, like Summerhill.  As A.S. Neill states:  “Summerhill is a self-governing school, democratic in form.  Everything connected with social, or group life…is settled by vote at the Saturday General School Meeting. Each member of the teaching staff and each child, regardless of his age, has one vote…Our democracy makes laws…[However,]…there are aspects of school life that do not come under the self-government regime.  My wife plans the arrangements for bedrooms, provides the menu, sends out and pays bills.  I appoint teachers and ask them to leave if I think they are not suitable. The function of Summerhill self-government is not only to make laws but to discuss social features of the community as well. (Alexander Sutherland Neill, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, New York: Hart Pub. Co., 1960, pp 45-47.) 

In Democratic schools the community comes together in regular meetings of the whole community to decide 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. The community can decide policies on such as curriculum and assessment, projects and assignments, graduation requirements and ceremonies, expectant behaviors consistent and inconsistent with the norms of the school as well as the means by which inconsistent behaviors are resolved.

Democratic Education within a conventional college semester course structure is the learning model used in the early college.  It incorporates community decision-making entirely, but expresses individual learning decisions as participation within a cooperative course configuration rather than in independent topic study.