A recent opinion piece in The New York Times, Let Kids Rule the School, described a program run within a Massachusetts high school that let a small number of students create their own curriculum and evaluate each other for a semester, using teachers and a guidance counselor as advisors.

While the students attended the program for only a semester, and the curriculum they devised seems fairly conventional to me (science, social science, literature, math, in addition to a less-conventional “individual endeavour” and a collective project documenting their experience in the program), it is interesting that the article’s author concludes, “We have tried making the school day longer and blanketing students with standardized tests. But perhaps children don’t need another reform imposed on them. Instead, they need to be the authors of their own education.” While this program does not strike me as a complete answer to the author’s statement that “we need to rethink the very nature of high school itself”, it is positive to see people in various types of education questioning the status quo and venturing towards empowering students.

A first step is recognizing that “we want young people to become independent and capable” and acknowledging “the huge role [social interaction] plays in [students'] psychological development”. Many traditional classroom practices do not encourage students to practice independence or socialize, as this article points out. We are no longer trying to mass-produce willing factory workers, so our educational system should no longer focus on training kids to be silent and obedient.

Sudbury schools take this idea and run with it. At Sudbury schools, education is not about moulding students into ideal types but about allowing them to grow into their own best selves, through daily practice of the very skills they will need to succeed as adults.

Although I am a Sudbury proponent, I recognize that this type of schooling is still cutting-edge, and I believe that students in all types of education can benefit when they are empowered even to a small extent. Give them even an inch and watch them go a mile. Or give them a mile and….?

Dr. Carlo Ricci, Reach’s education consultant, who is a professor of education at Nipissing University and an advocate of learner-centred democratic education, was featured on the Canada AM series “What To Do When Kids Are Failing”. Watch the full series here. See Carlo speak about educational alternatives and particularly about Reach as well as other Sudbury and free schools by scrolling to “Canada AM: Carlo Ricci, Nipissing University” in the CTV video box on the right-hand side.