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Alternative / unusual school systems

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Jun 04, 2023
6 min read


Question to answer

  • Why haven't Sudbury / Montessori schools taken off? Why don't better school methods spread more quickly, the way Facebook did?





Boarding schools


Blab schools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blab_school


Lincoln learned first from spelling books. It was customary to learn first to spell all the words of the spelling books and recite several times before advancing to read other books.[23] Lincoln studied Dillworth's Speller and Webster's Old Blueback.[24] Later then he advanced to reading Murray's "English Reader."[24]

Lincoln was noted for shouting out his reading lesson on the path from his home to the blab school and could be heard for a considerable distance.[25] He had the habit of reading anything aloud.[15] Between the ages of 11 and 15, Lincoln went to school occasionally between his obligated home duties.[26] All of Lincoln's schooling combined in various blab schools amounted to less than a year.[24][27] Many times the blab school Lincoln attended didn't even have a teacher and the older, smarter students, often teenagers, taught the younger children.


Charter schools

Democratic education

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_education

Democratic education is an educational ideal in which democracy is both a goal and a method of instruction. It brings democratic values to education and can include self-determination within a community of equals, as well as such values as justice, respect and trust. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with the students' voices being equal to the teacher's.[1]


Homeschooling

Child Prodigies


KIPP Schools


MOOCs


Montessori schools

  • Attendees
    • Pieter Levels
      • 2013.01.03 - In the 21st century, Maria Montessori shows to be more relevant than ever
        • Maria Montessori‘s philosophies on education are more relevant than ever, now we are in the 21st century. As a Montessori graduate myself, it makes me happy to see the world slowly realizing this too. Montessori-style educaiton can make school more fun for kids and create a foundation for kids to become problem-solving and creative people when they grow up.
    • Sergey Brin
    • Larry Page (pre-school and kindergarten)
    • Jeff Bezos
    • Sean Combs

Books

Montessori Today
  • This looks like a better starting point than Montessori's own writings.
1. The origin and theory of Montessori education
2. Overview of the Primary Years
3. Changes at the Second Plane
4. The Great Lessons and Key Lessons
5. The classroom environment
6. The elementary teacher
7. Freedom and responsibility
8. Scenes from an elementary classroom
9. The planes of adulthood
10. Montessori: Present and future



The Montessori Method
  • by Maria Montessori
Chapter I: A critical consideration of the new pedagogy in its relation to modern science
Chapter II: History of methods
Chapter III: Inaugural address delivered on the occasion of the opening of one of the "Children's Houses"
Chapter IV: Pedagogical methods used in the "Children's Houses"
Chapter V: Discipline
Chapter VI: How the lesson should be given
Chapter VII: Exercises for practical life
Chapter VIII: Reflection–The child's diet
Chapter IX: Muscular education–Gymnastics
Chapter X: Nature in education–Agricultural labor; culture of plants and animals
Chapter XI: Manual labor–The potter's art, and building
Chapter XII: Education of the senses
Chapter XIII: Education of the senses and illustrations of the didactic material: General Sensibility: The tactile, thermic, baric and stereognostic senses
Chapter XIV: General notes on the education of the senses
Chapter XV: Intellectual education
Chapter XVI: Method for the teaching of reading and writing
Chapter XVII: Description of the method and didactic material used
Chapter XVIII: Language in childhood
Chapter XIX: Teaching of numeration: Introduction to arithmetic
Chapter XX: Sequence of exercises
Chapter XXI: General review of discipline
Chapter XXII: Conclusions and impressions


One-room schools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-room_school

A typical school day was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with morning and afternoon recesses of 15 minutes each and an hour period for lunch. "The older students were given the responsibility of bringing in water, carrying in coal or wood for the stove. The younger students would be given responsibilities according to their size and gender such as cleaning the black board (chalkboard), taking the erasers outside for dusting plus other duties that they were capable of doing."


Sudbury schools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school

  • very interesting.


A Sudbury school is a type of school, usually for the K-12 age range, where students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by direct democracy in which students and staff are equals.[1] Students individually decide what to do with their time, and tend to learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education.



Reading is treated the same as any other subject: Students learn to read when they choose, or simply by going about their lives.
"Only a few kids seek any help at all when they decide to learn. Each child seems to have their own method. Some learn from being read to, memorizing the stories and then ultimately reading them. Some learn from cereal boxes, others from game instructions, others from street signs. Some teach themselves letter sounds, others syllables, others whole words. To be honest, we rarely know how they do it, and they rarely tell us."[16]
Sudbury Valley School claims that all of their students have learned to read. While students learn to read at a wide variety of ages, there appears to be no drawback to learning to read later: No one who meets their older students could guess the age at which they first learned to read.


The model differs in some ways from other types of democratic schools and free schools, but there are many similarities:
De-emphasis of classes: There is no curriculum or set of required courses. Instead learner interest guides things, with students studying what they want to study.[1] There are generally no classrooms, just rooms where people choose to congregate.[18]
Age mixing: students are not separated into age-groups of any kind and are allowed to mix freely, interacting with those younger and older than themselves; free age-mixing is emphasized as a powerful tool for learning and development in all ages.[19]
Autonomous democracy: parents have limited involvement or no involvement in the school administration; Sudbury schools are run by a democratic school meeting where the students and staff participate exclusively and equally. Such meetings are also the sole authority on hiring and firing of staff, unlike most other schools.[20]


Teach for America


Ungraded schools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungraded_school

An ungraded school is a school that does not formally organize students according to age-based grade levels. Students' achievements are assessed by teachers, and each student is individually assigned to one of several fluid groups, according to what the student needs to learn next.
Typically, skills and knowledge are divided up into smaller pieces, rather than a year's worth of material. Students continue studying a given skill until they have learned it. For example, when a child has mastered the given level of subtraction skills, then he may be sent to a group that is learning beginning multiplication skills. Major skill areas are assessed separately, so prowess or weakness in one area does not force the student into an inappropriate level in other areas.

Because of the flexibility, learning at faster or slower pace than average does not leave overachievers bored and neglected, or force slower students or students whose home life has been disrupted through trauma, divorce, or serious illness to repeat whole years to pick up individual skills.

Graded schools being largely an invention of the 19th century, the small, ungraded school could be properly considered traditional education, although they are rare enough now that they are usually classified as alternative education. Ungraded schools still persist in poor, ethnically disadvantaged, small, rural schools, where the limited number of students and poor attendance make organizing classrooms according to age-based grade levels more complicated.

Unschooling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

Unschooling is an educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschooling students learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, believing that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood and therefore useful it is to the child. While courses may occasionally be taken, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, conventional grading methods, and other features of traditional schooling in the education of each unique child.






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