Why families choose the schools they choose

Families who have the means to do so will choose where to send their kids to school (public or private) based on a variety of factors such as price, proximity to home, average class size, education philosophy, clubs and extracurricular activities, and the colleges the school’s graduates get into. Families rarely get everything they want out of a school because many of their wants cannot coexist in a school setting. So, families are forced to prioritize their wants.  

But there is more to the decision process than where various schools land on each of the preferred factors. There is the motive behind sending a child to school in the first place. And that motive, for the great majority of people, almost always revolves around, “what school is going to do to make my child ‘successful’?” And success as measured by schools means testing and academic performance and sometimes college placement; and by society it generally means the prestige of the colleges and jobs the students end up gaining access to, as well as their potential future earnings. 

And because most families are members of dominant society, and are enculturated by it, their motivations and prioritized wants become a response to their own anxieties and notions of scarcity. They think in individual rather than collective terms. They focus on the “best” schools for their kids, choosing security over liberation, and what helps their kids get ahead even if it is at the expense of other kids or society. And the schools give them the assurances they need to keep the kids enrolled. And then, too often, the families bemoan the state of society. The same society their kids will grow old in.

Our recommendation: be different. 

“Even our supposedly "best" schools—maybe especially these most resourced, largely white schools—fail to give young people a chance to teach and learn the meaning, the responsibilities, and the demands of freedom. Schools serving the wealthy do the most extraordinary job teaching children to define success in individual rather than collective terms—to get ahead rather than to struggle alongside, to step on rather than to lift up. On any serious measure of practicing freedom, these would be the "failing" schools.”
~ Carla Shalaby 

A delicious mess

On Monday of last week, two of the younger Abromies who plan to open a bakery together someday decided that they wanted to experiment in the kitchen and make a new kind of dessert. They pulled out many of the standard ingredients such as flour, baking soda, sugar, and vanilla extract. They played around with the ratios based on the available amounts of each ingredient they had, but they felt the real opportunity was in the dessert syrup they could create.

During the excitement of the food making another young person asked if he could also participate. Together, the three of them created a new dish, and quite a mess. When the dessert was finished all the folks at Abrome were invited to taste the results, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. “This is actually really good!” “This is kinda delicious!”

The most challenging part of the day was the cleanup, everyone’s least favorite part. But it is our agreements (e.g., clean up after yourself and participate in end of day cleanup) and principles (e.g., take care of the space) that allow us to have the freedom to express ourselves without unduly burdening others in the community. At the end of the day reflection the question was posed, “what could make cleanup easier?” That question would be revisited later in the week.

Autonomy is not just about the individual

Youth autonomy is one of the core pillars of the Abrome community. It is not a talking point. All people should be able to choose how they use their time, have control over their bodies and minds, and have their boundaries respected. Children and adolescents are people, too.

Some people think that giving kids the choice of which learning app to use, or which character they want to represent on a project is autonomy. Others think it is having students ask the questions that will help structure the learning that they will be guided into next. But that is not autonomy, it is the illusion of choice.

Autonomy is much bigger than the pedagogical approach we take to education at Abrome. But fully supporting Self-Directed Education is certainly necessary if we are going to support the autonomy of young people. Young people do not have autonomy if they are made to focus on math or writing at certain times, or if they must perform for adults.

In order for the environment to support youth autonomy it is necessary to shift from thinking how adults should act on young people through manipulation, motivation, or coercion; to how adults can serve as allies to the youth and as partners in their journeys.

“[Youth] are only autonomous when their environment provides them with the space to freely explore and to use their agency to learn. Autonomy is therefore both about the person (who needs to feel that they have the power to change things) and their environment (which needs to give them the opportunity to do so).”
~Naomi Fisher from the book Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning

Do adults really have children's best interests in mind?

Please, stop thinking you have children's best interests in mind if you don't care about them having a mind of their own.

The focus in parenting and schooling is too often (usually) to shape and manipulate children so that they turn out to be somebody (the adult wants): a Harvard or Stanford admit, a successful professional, the owner of a large home in the right neighborhood, a wealthy entrepreneur, a parent who will in turn make sure their kids also turn out to be somebodies, too. In the pursuit of trying to turn kids into somebodies, they demand control over their minds and bodies, dictating to them what should be important, and bribing, shaming, or punishing them into behaviors that are meant to put adults at ease as much as it is to make sure the kids are headed for so-called success. They focus on academic priorities and add-on activities that they believe will help the children navigate academic, professional, and social hierarchies. They steal time from children, preventing children from being able to seriously consider what they want out of life, and they (intentionally or not) prioritize performance over all else, inhibiting the ethical and moral development that can equip the child to become an adult who improves the human condition.

Updated foreward to contingency planning document

Dear Abrome Learners and families, 

We published the first version of this contingency planning document on June 9, 2020. This document outlined our plan for how we could more safely be together during the pandemic, and allowed our community to have more certainty about what the 2020-2021 academic year would look like. It also made clear that we were going to place community care before convenience, and people before profits. We would err on the side of centering the needs of those people who were most at risk of serious illness or death: the elderly, those with certain underlying medical conditions, BIPOC communities, those without material resources.

Our approach to the pandemic set us apart. We took everything outdoors in small cohorts of Learners and Facilitators. We prevented cross exposure by keeping cohorts physically distant from each other, and never having siblings in different cohorts (no matter their ages). We also held firm to stage based standards for coming together, to include shutting down in-person meetups when we hit the highest risk stage level of the pandemic in January and February of 2021. And our focus on community care extended beyond Abrome--Facilitators, Learners, and family members were all asked to adhere to Covid-19 protocols at home, and to be transparent and honest about situations that could put others at risk of exposure.

The people who make up the community at Abrome are as unique as our approach to the pandemic. Everyone at Abrome fundamentally agrees that children and adolescents should have autonomy over their lives and that they should be treated as full human beings. They recognize that the most important things young people can learn are completely left out of schoolish curriculum, such as how to find meaning in the world, how to build relationships with others, how to manage conflict, how to discover their own interests and gifts, and how to be with and enjoy oneself. They also understand that building community and being in community with others is vital to human flourishing. 

There are not many parents and guardians who trust their children enough to allow them to experience Self-Directed Education in lieu of schooling in the best of times. And Abrome’s vigilant approach to protecting one another and the public during this pandemic shrunk that pool even further. But our collective focus on community care has allowed us to navigate this pandemic year in the most admirable of ways. Not only have we not had a single infection within our community (which means we have not contributed to the growth of the pandemic in any way), we have been able to support and hold one another through economic recession and hardship, an uprising centered on rejecting police brutality and racial injustice, right wing street violence and an attempted coup, and a debilitating winter storm that left millions without energy or water. 

The pandemic is not over. As of March 27, 2021, the national 7-day moving average of new cases and deaths were still over 60,000 and 1,000, respectively. While much of society is eager to “return to normal,” we recognize that “normal” was never good enough. We will be able to loosen protocols as vaccinations increase and when community spread becomes rare. Eventually, we will be able to come back together indoors, although it may be limited to vaccinated Learners at first. This continues to be a living document. Thank you for your continued vigilance, your concern for others in our community, and your concern for broader society.

With love and gratitude,
Antonio Buehler
March 28, 2021

——

Cover photo by Natalie Pedigo on Unsplash

Day 73 of AY20-21: autonomy and the option to not show up (or leave)

This past weekend we hosted a virtual information session and open house. Five families dropped in to learn about Abrome and Self-Directed Education, and one has already followed up with some admission specific questions. We were thrilled to have so many families interested in liberation attend. Unfortunately, we spent more time than we would have liked talking about how the pandemic is preventing prospective Learners from shadowing ahead of enrollment because we need to be fully remote during this period of unmitigated community spread of Covid-19.

Morning meeting

We did not meet on Monday as we were celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so we came together on Tuesday morning for day 73 of the pandacademic year. At the meeting everyone shared one fun thing they did over the weekend: a 14-mile bike ride, hiked with her dog, 4.1 miles of walking with his dogs, played on his Kindle, slept and ate, Minecraft, hung out with friends, dealt with his cat who decided to not be in a good mood, breathed oxygen, training with crew, went to a safe outdoor restaurant, spent most of her time on her tablet all day, finally completed Jurassic difficulty (a game on Friday), hung out with mates in Houston (and is now quarantining).

During the meeting, a younger Learner kept talking over others. In response, I muted him several times and we discussed the need to honor the practices we are working on. Facilitator Ariel had shared the practices at the beginning of the meeting which includes each member focusing on active listening during meetings so that we don’t talk over each other. He also received feedback from the Facilitators and an older Learner. Upset, the Learner left the meeting early. Facilitator Ariel then reached out to his mom to get help scheduling a 1-on-1 with him that morning. When they linked up later in the day for the 1-on-1 Facilitator Ariel tried to talk about the difficulties with meeting, but the Learner did not want to discuss it. Facilitator Ariel recognized that this was an opportunity to just spend time with the Learner instead of forcing a discussion he did not want to have, so they hung out over a video chat while the Learner talked about a dinosaurs and video games.

After the morning meeting Facilitator Lauren hosted the Set-the-Week meeting where we scheduled in our meetings and offerings for the four days of this week and the last two days of the cycle next Monday and Tuesday. We had hoped that Learners would fill the schedule with offerings, but only a couple of offerings were proposed. Both Facilitators Antonio and Lauren posted offerings that required commitments from Learners to attend because they would require us to deliver supplies in advance of the offerings. Unfortunately, only a couple of Learners committed to attending. If we were a school that did not value the autonomy of children and adolescents we would simply demand that the Learners stay engaged with us all day on Zoom, and that would certainly make adults more comfortable about what we are doing, but we cannot sacrifice their autonomy for adult comfort. With offerings being optional, each Facilitator had at least one offering that went unattended on Tuesday: 7-minute workout, coffee and read, free write, yoga.

Among Us

One offering that did draw a couple of Learners in was Among Us. It did not receive the heavy turnout that it has received other times this cycle, but it was scheduled at the same time as an offering and a 1-on-1 check-in. In addition, the Learner hosting the Among Us offering was 15 minutes late, which may have deterred some Learners from joining in. Those who joined in still enjoyed the offering, and hopefully the Learner who organized it walked away with some lessons learned about organizing.

At the coffee and read offering only the three Facilitators showed up, but we really appreciated our time with each other. I was reading Progressive Dystopia again, and I just couldn’t help but share with the other Facilitators some amazing excerpts from chapter three. In particular, I was really drawn into Savannah Shange’s discussion on the way that the school-to-prison-pipeline framework helps highlight the carceral impact of schooling but how it fails to fully explain the carceral nature of schooling.

Facilitator Ariel and a younger Learner checking in on each other, one of three 1-on-1 check-ins during the day

I came back together with Facilitators Ariel and Lauren at 3:00 p.m. for our continuing discussion of Raising Free People by Akilah S. Richards. The conversation was in many ways a spillover from our coffee and read offering as we talked about liberation work when working with children.

At 3:30 p.m. I said “meeting started” to begin the afternoon roundup. First we reflected on the favorite thing we each did that day: read, hang out with a Learner on Discord, an amazing yoga practice, taking a nap, making Valentine’s Day cards for kids with cancer, Minecraft, exploring Google maps, wrote a horror story and it is just about to get to the good point, and played with mates on VR. Then we shared what we want to do by the end of January: newspaper article, mountain biking, more creative cooking, find a way to make a good income and have a good life, find a source of income, Minecraft, breathe, work on a project on Minecraft, practice driving, go to Altitude again, and watch the first Jaws movie.

One of the most interesting things I noticed on the day is the eagerness with which some of the older Learners want to take on more adult responsibilities. One Learner plans to get his permit on Wednesday, another Learner is starting her job on Thursday, and a third Learner is looking for a sources of income. It will be interesting to see how they leverage their freedom to pursue their interests.

Thinking about the limitations of Covid-19

So much of Abrome’s approach to the year has been influenced by Covid-19 and the challenges of bringing people together safely in ways that don’t put the welfare of the members of our community at risk, and in ways that do not contribute to the spread of a pandemic that has destroyed the lives of so many. Our focus on taking care of others led us to spend our days outdoors, where we continue to build community and practice Self-Directed Education.

What we offered before the pandemic was already difficult for most families to wrap their head around: ‘No curriculum, no classes, no testing or grading, and no age based rankings … but how will they learn to be successful?’ It was no surprise that in non-pandemic times we were unlikely to convince people that children cannot not learn; that they are always learning; that it is the medium in which that learning takes place that provides the real learning; and that prioritizing autonomy, play, and community is the surest way to providing a meaningful education that can prepare them to contribute and improve the human condition.

Our focus on community centers on the child, but extends to those outside our community

During the pandemic we imagined that families who had been apprehensive about letting go of the illusion of schooling as necessary would finally let go. We have had so many families look into Abrome over the past few years who said that they knew that Abrome was what was best for their children, but at the end of the day they said they just could not trust themselves to let go of their fears that their kids would miss out in some way if they were not in a conventional (public or private) school setting. They knew Abrome was what was best for their kids, but they just couldn’t let go. I thought the pandemic (and recession, and uprising) would surely be enough to help families recognize the value of life, the value of time, and the necessity for their children to be able to have a sense of control over their lives.

Yet in many ways the pandemic has, counterintuitively from my perspective, made it more difficult for families to join Abrome. First, the fears for their children’s future financial security have been amplified. They can see that tens of millions of people have lost their jobs, and that most Americans are financially worse off now than they were one year ago. But they also see that a tiny sliver of society is profiting handsomely from the pandemic. Even a year ago there was a general sense that the future of society was going to be broken down into a small number of (economic) winners and a large mass of losers, and the pandemic has only made the ratio greater, and seem all that more daunting. The illusion of schooling as the way to end up on the right side of the ratio becomes more powerful the more lopsided the ratio becomes.

Second, our Covid-19 protocols have made it even harder for many families to get comfortable with Abrome. In response to the pandemic we took everything outdoors, in physically distant small groups (cells), and we wear masks around each other. We have expectations of each other in terms of the risk that each household exposes themselves to outside of Abrome, and in terms of communicating with us about that risk. Our approach to the pandemic assumes that there could be an infected person in the community at any time and that we must act in a way that minimizes the risk of them spreading the disease within our community, or out into the broader community. And that approach can seem a bit much to anyone who does not believe the pandemic is that dangerous, or who is focused more on their willingness to take the personal risk of contracting Covid-19 than their risk of contributing to the spread of the disease.

Third, logistically, the pandemic has limited the number of people who can join our community. Because we are separated into cells of seven Learners or less, we can only bring on Learners when there is space available, and we can only grow by growing the number of Facilitators we have on the team. If we have two Facilitators we can accommodate 14 Learners. If we have three Facilitators we can accommodate 21 Learners. But finding the right Facilitator is difficult as they need to trust and respect kids, be committed to anti-oppression and liberation, and be excited about being outdoors all day with young people. Fortunately, I believe our current team of Facilitators form a great foundation to build upon. Another logistical constraint is our need for prospective Learners to shadow. We are unique among most education communities in requiring Learners to shadow for five days so that everyone can make an informed decision as to whether the community, the prospective Learner, and the prospective family are a good fit for each other. There also needs to be enough room in a cell to accommodate shadowers (and if there are siblings they cannot be broken up between cells as that compromises the integrity of the cells). This required shadow period coupled with our three week on, one week off schedule creates challenges for many families, and pushes many to choose alternatives that provide a more immediate alternative.

Lastly, although our protocols that have made it easier for us to more safely be together in person for the first few months of this academic year, they are also going to make it harder for us to be together as the pandemic continues to ramp up. In Travis County (where Abrome is located) we started the year in stage level three. For most schools they started the year either remote (zoom schooling), in-person but socially detached (masked up, not allowed to interact with each other because they were inside), or in-person and unwilling to abide by the most basic practices that prevent the spread of the disease (mask optional, no or unenforced distancing measures). We got to be safer while also being together. But as Travis County went to stage four last Friday, we stuck to our protocols and made one of the cells go remote. And as Travis County quickly moves toward stage five, we are preparing to support our Learners by going fully remote.

Local parents demanding that schools fully reopen during the pandemic

Yet, while we hold fast to our commitments, we have noticed a near universal relaxing of standards for schools. Some of it has been driven by business and political interests who want employees to have available childcare so they can go to work. Some of it has been driven by pandemic fatigue where people shift their notions of risk for convenience as the pandemic wears them down. And some of it has been driven by parents who are demanding that the schools relax their approach to the pandemic, whether for reasons of Covid skepticism, because they want their kids to be able to be with their friends again, or because they think that their kids are losing at the game of schooling due to pandemic practices. This shift means that although Abrome was more easily able to bring Learners together at lower levels of risk than the conventional schools were able to; we will be partially or fully remote when the pandemic is at its worst; while students, teachers, and staff will continue to congregate indoors, with loosened pandemic practices, at many conventional schools. And as we get more stringent in our practices as the pandemic becomes worse, many others, including much of the mass media, are arguing that schools should take on more risk. It makes Abrome a harder sell to families who may want to join as we approach what may be the peak of the pandemic.

There are people who believe in Self-Directed Education who don’t believe Covid-19 is something to take seriously. They may have considered joining Abrome in non-pandemic times, but they are not going to choose Abrome now. There are people who believe Covid-19 is something to take seriously but don’t believe in Self-Directed Education. They have never considered Abrome and never will (unless something happens that causes them to prioritize autonomy for their children). And there are people who believe Covid-19 is something to take seriously and that Self-Directed Education is necessary for their kids. These are the ones most likely to join Abrome during this pandemic, but this group is also small, and the ones who have the flexibility within their lives to make the move to Abrome makes the group even smaller.

When I started Abrome I was committed to staying true to child autonomy, anti-oppression, and community care. I knew that if I wanted to grow I could have introduced aspects of schooling into Abrome such as “core skills” time where Learners were expected to work on mathematics or language arts, or I could have forced Learners to produce projects that would make parents feel comfortable because they could see a tangible representation of learning, whether or not the learning contributed to the development of the child. But I also knew if I focused on making anxious parents feel comfortable by subjecting their children to schoolishness, that we would become just another school that harmed children. And during this pandemic I knew that if I wanted to grow Abrome I could have simply said that masks were optional, and that we could come together indoors for reasons of comfort and perceived normalcy. Or that I could say that we will loosen our protocols and continue to meet in-person despite the heightened degree of community spread. But I also knew that doing so would put the health and welfare of our Learners, our Facilitators, their households, and everyone that they came into contact with at risk. And that by doing so, we would also be putting broader society at risk. And that doing so would signal to those within our community that growth was more important than doing what was best for everyone in society, whether they are members of our community or not, whether they believe that Covid-19 is a dangerous disease or not, and whether they are committed to the welfare of people they do not know or not.

Are They Learning if They're on a Screen? Self-Directed Learning is Active Learning

This morning I received a call from a parent whose teenage son attends a nearby traditional private school that is not working for him, and she wanted to know if Abrome could work for her family. She had two primary concerns: (1) could he get into a top college if he left "mainstream" schooling, and (2) would he spend all day on screens if he came to Abrome. 

It was pretty easy to address the college admissions question, as we have done so time and again in our public presentations and blog posts (e.g., here, here, here, and here). However, she was not reassured by my answer to the screen time question. My answer was maybe.

At Abrome, we trust young people to take control of their learning experiences, and we see their choosing how to spend their time as critical to enabling and preparing them to lead remarkable lives. For some Learners, particularly older students who are transitioning from hierarchical, age-segregated, curriculum-based school settings, they may initially spend what seems like an inordinate amount of their time on screens. This is in part because computers (and iPads, phones, etc.) are common tools of society, and most young people want to play with the tools of society; and in part because they need the time and space to shed the bad habits and mindsets that develop from traditional schooling. 

The belief that school children on screens is a bad thing is misplaced. First, short of certain addictive disorders, limiting or prohibiting students from accessing technology during school sets them back in preparation for a future where technology will be intertwined with daily life and most careers. Second, there is a belief among many adults that screen time is for zoning out, and that being on screens means that students are not actively learning. This belief is likely colored by our generation's experiences plopped down in front of a television watching whatever came across the tube. 

The reality is that when young people are able to engage in self-directed learning, even if they choose to spend that time on technology, they are much more likely to engage in active learning than their peers who are in class in traditional schools. Today, young people have control over their interactions with technology. When they play games they are much more likely to play games that allow them to manipulate the conditions in which they play (e.g., Minecraft, Roblox). When they get bored they are much more likely to move onto something that captures their attention. And for many young people, technology provides the one outlet in their lives where they have the opportunity to experience autonomy, mastery, and purpose (experiences they are not getting in traditional schools).

At the end of the day we would prefer that Learners not spend all day on their computers, but we will not prevent them from doing so. And the reality is that they do not spend all day on their computers. Our Learners, like the overwhelming majority of humans, want to interact with others. At Abrome they have the opportunity to spend all day in front of screens, but they choose to also read books, play board games, take the dogs for walks, and run around in the back yard. They find time to test the pH, ammonia, and nitrate levels in the fish tank. They make themselves lunch, work on puzzles, and create works of art. They sit around and talk, and laugh. And they even find time to do more academically oriented tasks such as working through multiplication tables or debating topics in articles that they have read. Instead of saying maybe, I considered that I should have said maybe, but unlikely. But what I really should have said is that self-directed learning is active learning, and the medium for that learning is sometimes a screen.  

Five Steps to End School Bullying: Agency (Essay 3 of 6)

While this essay series focuses on the problem of bullying, I would like to take a step back for a moment and address self-motivation, which is critical to academic and life success. Self-motivation is what makes or breaks many people once they come out the other end of the schooling apparatus, whether it be high school, college, or graduate school. There are many people who do well academically in school, only to fall on their faces in the “real world” because they never learned how to take control of their lives and drive toward a self-defined goal.[1] Following a syllabus and neurotically studying to perfectly answer every question that will be on the test might give one a perfect GPA, but it leaves little to no time for young people to author their own lives.   

Self-determination theory (SDT), made famous by Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan, states that there are three needs that are essential for the psychological health and well-being of an individual: competence, autonomy, and psychological relatedness. When these three needs are not met over a sustained period of time, there are significant and substantial risks that an individual will suffer mentally, physically, socially, and emotionally. And in traditional schools, autonomy is virtually absent. That lack of autonomy undermines self-motivation which does not bode well for the future happiness and success of students. It is also a major driver of bullying in schools, which destroys psychological relatedness and further undermines the well-being of students.  

A decade old research study conducted at W. F. Boardman Elementary School in Oceanside, New York, focused on SDT to identify the causes of bullying in the school.[2] What they found, similar to most traditional schools, is that there were very few instances in which their students could act autonomously in their learning, even though teachers thought they were providing their students with ample choices and opportunities for self-expression. Most remarkably, this study focused on the bullied, and not the bullies, and lack of autonomy, real or perceived, was a common factor for those who were most bullied. A lack of autonomy in education can easily be extrapolated to a lack of autonomy over one’s life, and those who feel they have the least control over their lives seemingly become easily identifiable targets for bullies.

In addition to grooming the bullied, the lack of autonomy in school grooms the bullies as well. First, we know that those who have been bullied are much more likely to become bullies themselves.[3] Hurt people hurt people is a cliché that bears true in bully-infested schooling environments. Second, there is ample research that shows that a lack of autonomy over one’s life promotes dysfunctional behaviors, many of which manifest themselves as bullying. While education researchers have touched upon this dynamic, prison researchers have done a much better job addressing the matter. The only American institutions that provide people with less autonomy than schools are prisons, jails, and parts of the military (e.g., basic training), each of which are also plagued with bullying.

Research by Anthony Bottoms highlights that while dysfunctional behaviors were common in prisons, the more prisoners were prevented autonomy in their daily lives, the more likely they were to engage in dysfunctional behavior, including violence toward other inmates.[4] Further, Bottoms highlighted the success of the Barlinnie Special Unit in Scotland for violent offenders. Breaking with convention, this unit provided greater than usual prisoner autonomy in spite of their more complicated prison population, and significantly brought down dysfunctional and violent behaviors, including bullying.[5]

Student autonomy means handing the reins of education over to the learner. It does not mean there is no role for adults, but it requires that adults abdicate their role as authoritarians who dictate where, when, what, and how students learn. Student autonomy allows learners to make the decisions that are relevant to their education, and gives them the belief that their approach to learning will have a significant impact on the outcomes of their learning.

While lots of schools may give lip service to the idea of autonomy, very few have offered even a small sampling of it to their students. They may allow students to choose a topic to research, who they can work with on a project, or the format of the end product that they will be graded on, but such narrow options do not equate to student autonomy. One place schools can look to within their system for proof that greater autonomy is possible in learning are individualized education plans (IEPs). IEPs have traditionally been reserved for students that have been labeled as learning disabled, but schools should expand them to all students. IEPs are an attempt to personalize learning, and the most effective IEPs allow the student to have greater ownership over their education by given them an opportunity to provide input into how they will learn, what they will learn, and how that learning will be assessed. Unfortunately, the structures and practices of schooling prevent even the most forward thinking traditional schools from taking increased autonomy as a tool to promote learning to its logical conclusion.

Because the schooling system treats children as though they are incompetent and ignorant people who are incapable of taking control of their education, they promote a sense of learned helplessness. This behavior or belief that develops in young people, in addition to handicapping their ability to learn, leaves them vulnerable to being bullied by others, or to developing into a bully as a means of externalizing control on others since they have no control over their own lives.  

Giving students full autonomy in education can help undo the harm to the bullies and the bullied, and it can prevent future bullying. This is a step that all schools should eagerly embrace. However, doing so would require them to let go of the structures and practices they were all trained to employ, and that they are evaluated on.

(1)   Our measure of “doing well” academically differs from that of most educators and parents. Their measure of doing well means getting the highest grades and ranking the highest among one’s peers. Our measure of “doing well” entails deep, meaningful, and enduring learning experiences that allow young people to lead remarkable lives. However, it should be noted that far more young people in the traditional schooling system are not doing well relative to the tiny few who are doing well.  

(2)   “Interrupting the Cycle of Bullying and Victimization in the Elementary Classroom”, Phi Delta Kappan, Volume 86, Number 4, December 2004, pp. 288-291. http://www.ernweb.com/educational-research-articles/successful-anti-bullying-program-focuses-on-victims/

(3)   There is a chicken and an egg aspect to bullying. Bullying requires the bullied and the bullies. However, once the cycle starts, there are ample numbers of people who were bullied waiting in the wings to become bullies.

(4)   Bottoms, Anthony E., William Hay, and J. Richard Sparks (1995). “Situational and Social Approaches to the Prevention of Disorder in Long-Term Prisons.” Long-Term Imprisonment: Policy, Science, and Correctional Practice. editor. Timothy J. Flanagan. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

(5)   Some may take issue with our use of prisons as a way to highlight the point about the lack of autonomy in schools. While we do not intend to minimize the inhumane treatment of inmates in prison, it should be noted that there are many parallels between schools and prisons. Both are hierarchical institutions where the students/inmates have no choice but to follow the directives of the staff. There are punishments for non-conformity (e.g., dress codes) and there are rules that cannot be questioned. Additionally, there are legal consequences for those who flee schools (truancy) and prisons.