The Sudbury Valley School was founded in 1968 in Framingham, Massachusetts, United States. There are now over 35 schools based on the Sudbury Model in the United States, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The model has three basic tenets: educational freedom, democratic governance and personal responsibility. It is a private school, attended by children from the ages of 4 to 19.
At the Sudbury Valley School, students individually decide what to do with their time, and learn as an aside to their personal efforts, interactions and ordinary experience, rather than through classes or a standard curriculum.
Read more about Sudbury Valley School: Facilities, Curriculum, Government, Staff, Alumni, Officers of The Corporation
Famous quotes containing the words valley and/or school:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)