Today the Globe and Mail published an article called “For a child, it’s all about control”. It’s about a New Zealand study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on self-control. The researchers found a link between self-control in children as young as 3 and their later life outcomes in areas such as health, wealth, criminal convictions and single parenthood. Basically, kids who are more conscientious, self-disciplined and persistent are more likely to be successful later in life.
One of the common questions people ask about Sudbury education is how students will learn these very skills at school if they can “do whatever they want”. Sudbury schools actually promote self-control because they challenge students to grapple with it daily, through both self-directed learning and participatory democracy.
Students who are engaged in activities of their choice learn to persevere towards their goals rather than being discouraged and sidetracked when things don’t come easily. I have watched groups of students strategize together day after day to beat a difficult video game, or work for months to produce their own school play, not only writing and acting but also slogging through the work of scheduling, budgeting, problem-solving, assembling materials to make their own sets and costumes, and seemingly endless hours of rehearsal when they could have been playing with their friends. Sudbury students learn to figure out what they want to do and then do it, even if it’s hard and takes a long time.
Sudbury students also learn self-control through the intense community-building that takes place within the school. Everyone is involved in working out what kind of community they want to be part of and how their actions contribute to it positively or negatively. One academic in the Globe and Mail article is quoted as stressing the importance of “training people to think about the long-term consequences of their behaviour.” This is exactly what participation in a Sudbury Judicial Committee and School Meeting does. Problem solving and conflict resolution are not add-ons or distractions from “real” learning at a Sudbury school. They lie at the very core of the school experience.
“Self-control” in a Sudbury school means what it does in most schools: controlling one’s immediate impulses in pursuit of a larger goal. The difference is that, in traditional schools, the larger goals are not set by the students. Students may chafe against them or fail to really consider their value. These kids’ self-control is often extrinsically motivated. Sudbury students set their own goals, or, in the case of school-wide initiatives, at least have a say in them. Their self-control thus is intrinsically motivated. I like to believe that this means Sudbury students can use this skill throughout the rest of their lives.
