The Trillium School. Lenz on Learning. Unschooling vs. Sudbury schooling — Lenz on Learning. “It’s an ‘unschooling school,’” is what someone told me when I first heard about Clearwater School, and Sudbury schools in general. How appropriate is that characterization? Similarities Both unschooling and Sudbury schooling value the concept of self-directed education. Proponents of both share common insights and make some of the same challenges to traditional schooling: People are born learners.
Children are trusted to have the desire and ability to engage in—and learn how to operate effectively in—their world.Coercion creates resistance. Differences Despite all the similarities, I can think of two ways in which Sudbury schooling differs fundamentally from unschooling: Kids at a Sudbury school are regularly separated from their parents for a significant period of time each day. The aspects of separation from parents and formalized democratic process make Sudbury schooling look quite different from unschooling, as it turns out.
It looks like you're new here. Sudbury Valley School • Home. Sudbury: the Unschooling Schools, a Guest Post by Bruce L. Smith. I've wanted to share some guest posts on freeschooling and democratic schools on this blog for a while now, and with the recent article on CNN talking about both unschooling and Sudbury schools, this article seems particularly relevant! So I am very happy to present to you Bruce L. Smith on the Sudbury model schools: After a few years’ teaching in the public schools of Columbia, Missouri, Bruce L. Smith left to find his true calling as an advocate for the Sudbury model of education. Bruce has founded and/or worked for Sudbury schools in Illinois, Florida, and Colorado, where he’s been on staff at Alpine Valley School since 1998. In 2005 he created the Center for Advancing Sudbury Education to promote the visibility and viability of this uniquely empowering form of schooling.
More of Bruce’s writings on the subject can be found at and So how do Sudbury schools act like schools?