Originally published in Paths of Learning.

by Robin Ann Martin
November 2000

To see the full article, please click here.

Types of Schools (and homeschooling too)

“Increasingly, people hear about Waldorf schools and Montessori preschools in the United States, and many people have known for years about Quaker schools as well. Often, though, folks who might find several educational approaches attractive have only learned about a single type of school, remaining unaware of the diversity of choices available.

The descriptions below illustrate eight types of educational alternatives, along with resources and links for more information. The summary for each type of school does not necessarily reflect any one school within that category. With some exceptions (such as Waldorf, Montessori, and Sudbury-model schools), most philosophical alternatives tend toward less rigidity in how each school creates itself from the dynamics of the local community and the values, beliefs, and experiences of current members.

• Democratic and Free Schools
• Folk Education
• Friends (Quaker) Schools
• Homeschooling, unschooling, and deschooling
• Krishnamurti Schools
• Montessori Schools
• Open Schools (and Classrooms)

Democratic and Free Schools

Many educators have heard of Summerhill, the radical “free school” in England, founded by A.S. Neill in 1921.[13] Fewer people know about the many other schools that have developed similar approaches on their own, or modified Neill’s premises to fit their own needs and community. From Play Mountain Place in Los Angeles to the Albany Free School to the Children’s Village School in Thailand, free schools have not withered away but continue to flourish with records of their long-term successes.[14] Their primary purpose is to create a safe environment where children can learn freely, that is without the use of force or coercion, drawing on children’s curiosity to lead their own learning.

Many free schools are structured in ways that often lead them to be democratic schools as well, where staff as well as students get an equal vote. Some schools allow votes on all matters, including financial, conflict resolution, staffing, and minor administrative decisions. Other schools divide into committees, or sometimes the director maintains powers to make some administrative decisions. Voting in democratic schools is usually done in weekly all-school meetings. At the Albany Free School, whenever a child or adult feels their rights have been infringed upon by another, they may call an all-school meeting at any time to resolve the conflict immediately. The leader of an all-school meeting is generally elected at each meeting and is usually a student rather than an adult. Rules and procedures agreed upon by the whole community via a democratic vote have a tendency to be honored by community members young and old, with everyone understanding the procedures necessary for overturning a decision.

The role of the children is to learn, with the expectation that they will follow their own interests. In addition, students are expected to serve as responsible community members, following the rules of the community or facing the consequences. The role of teachers and parents varies from school to school. In some schools, teachers offer classes for students who wish to take them; in other schools, teachers are cautious even about teaching until the students request a lesson.

Like Summerhill, the Sudbury Valley School (SVS) believes that parents tend toward the unnecessary use of authority and external compulsion to educate children which Sudbury tries to avoid.[15] Thus the SVS school community is primarily the students and staff; however, other schools modeling themselves after SVS are so small that parents often serve as staff to get the schools started. In contrast, at Play Mountain Place (PMP), the role of the parents has been significant from the get-go in the 1950s because the PMP philosophy considers everyone to be a teacher and so they strive to involve parents in the daily activities of the school. For more information about PMP and other free schools, visit the Paths of Learning archives at: http://www.PathsOfLearning.net/archives/freeschools2000.htm.

Folk Education

Folk education is “learning that happens when individuals and communities come together to celebrate culture and life in order to critically analyze challenging and especially oppressive situations, to build a knowledge base [and] to apply that knowledge to create alternative possibilities for the institutions in which we live and work” (as quoted from the Folk and People’s Education Association of America web site at http://www.peopleseducation.org/).

Folk education is a grassroots movement whose history began in Scandinavia in the 1800s. Unlike other alternatives described in this paper, which are mostly for youth and K-12 education, folk education is more concerned with the political empowerment of adults. As we move into the new millennium adults might be more familiar with folk education through experiences with voluntary simplicity, eco-teams, or other informal grassroots movements.

Within academia, this type of learning is sometimes called “radical adult education” as it aims to get at the roots of education for social change. In its profile of the original folk high schools, the Informal Education Homepage states:

Danish Folk High Schools first opened in 1844 (the year the YMCA was founded). The key figure was N.F.S. Grundtvig who planned a network of self-governing residential institutions that . . . would provide a place `where the peasant and the citizen can obtain knowledge and guidance for use and pleasure not so much in regard to his livelihood but in regard to his situation as . . . a citizen’ (quoted in Moller and Watson 1944: 27).[17]

In 1925, over 300,000 young Danes attended folk schools, which were free of government control, a place having nothing to do with grades, tests, or even diplomas, but having everything to do with emotionally-charged issues directly relevant to the lives of the participants. The American social activist Myles Horton, who visited these Danish folk schools in 1931, found that the most successful folk schools dealt as much with feelings and will as with memory and logic.[18]

Also called people’s education, this movement aims to provide education that is of, for, and by the people. Its power is such that governments or companies in political power tend not to like it, as it stirs people to think and act in ways that disturb the status quo. Educational activist Paulo Freire was exiled from Brazil from 1964 to 1979 for teaching his fellow citizens to read in ways that also made them more aware of their own disenfranchisement.[19]

Today the movement of folk education in the United States is facilitated by the Folk and People’s Education Association of America (http://www.peopleseducation.org/). Through its newsletter and quarterly journal as well as its annual conference, the FPEAA supports radical adult education in many forms from simplicity circles to participatory action research to other grassroots groups in cultural work, environmental work, economic work, and community leadership.[20]

It is my hope that adults experiencing various forms of folk education can begin to see the meaningful connections between being and action, learning and doing, and other less traditional ways of thinking about education. As people understand these connections through their own experiences, the ground is laid for philosophical shifts within education across all ages.

Friends (Quaker) Schools

Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends) have contributed to social and educational reform in American culture since the seventeenth century. Friends schools are distinct from many other religious alternatives in the extent of their person-centered practices. Known for their academic rigor, Friends schools also pride themselves on the development of a caring community within and beyond the walls of the school.

Examining the missions of schools in the Friends Council on Education (http://mathforum.com/fce/), several themes stand out. The goals tend not to distinguish the end of education from the process of learning. Both the purpose and process of education involves treating each person with dignity and respect, and understanding that different people learn in different ways. They sometimes describe the goal of self-direction as helping students to “uncover their own leadings.” Personal and individual responsibility within the community are essential for success. In addition, life-long learning, social justice, and challenging human oppression are often supplementary goals of the Friends schools. At the global level, Quakers like to think of it as “creating the world that ought to be.” Many Friends schools emphasize “simplicity, honesty, the peaceful resolution of conflict, the dignity of physical labor, mutual trust and respect, and care for each other and the earth” (from The Meeting School web site, http://www.mv.com/ipusers/tms/).

Quaker schools tend to be organized in somewhat traditional ways, within classrooms where teachers tend to use traditional methods to facilitate discussions around common academic subjects. They often use grades and grade levels for student advancement as well. Their use of meetings, silence, queries, and conflict resolution techniques are the primary approaches by which they enliven their educational goals and philosophies. These processes give a more heartfelt flavor to decision-making within the schools. For conflict resolution, they engage in “clearness committees.” Author Parker Palmer describes these committees as “a communal approach to discernment” that is designed to protect “individual identity and integrity while drawing on the wisdom of other people”.[16] In addition, you can find a useful listing of Peace and Conflict Resolution Education Bibliography for different age groups posted in the FCE web site.

The student’s role in Quaker schools is to serve as responsible learner and community member. Among other characteristics, the teacher’s role is “To make daily space for the inward journey of every student.” For a brief list of 16 characteristics of teachers identified by the FCE, visit FCE web site, and click on “Best Practices.” Parents are not mentioned much in the Quakers’ online educational literature and a number of Quaker schools in the U.S. are residential which limits the involvement of parents in many ways. Nonetheless, Amy Cooke, director of John Woolman School, describes parents as “partners and allies” with the  school.

Homeschooling, unschooling, and deschooling

As perhaps the largest alternative school movement in the 1990s, from 1994 to 1996, the numbers of homeschoolers may have grown from an estimated 0.8 to 1.4% of the K-12 student population in the United States. While these figures are estimates, it is quite certain that between 345,000 to 636,000 children ages 6 to 17 participated in home education during those years.[21]

The goals of homeschooling vary as widely as the goals and purposes of schools around the world. Like other educational alternatives, homeschooling expands well beyond traditional modes of teaching and learning as well. Of particular interest for parents thinking outside the mainstream approaches are the movements of “unschooling” and “de-schooling” within home education. (It should also be noted that homeschooling approaches also exist in affiliation with Montessori, Waldorf, and many other educational philosophies.)

Unschooling is a form of homeschooling that was popularized by educator and author John Holt in the 1970s. Today, the unschooling philosophy is perhaps best expressed in popular books by Grace Llewellyn and Linda Dobson.[22] In 1997, Llewellyn’s Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School & Get a Real Life and Education was published as a practical guide for teenagers (and parents) who were fed up with traditional learning where students remained hidden inside classrooms and text books. Her purpose was to illustrate the means and resources for learning through the community and personal experiences (apprenticeships, etc.). She showed how homeschooling could be a fulfilling use of time while also providing the necessary social interactions far and beyond what is available in most traditional schools.

A complementary trend in homeschooling, called deschooling, began with the publication of Ivan Illich’s famous book, Deschooling Society (1970). A recent book on the topic edited by Matt Hern entitled Deschooling Our Lives (1997) provides practical examples “about people, individuals, families, and communities taking control of the direction and shape of their lives . . . and homelearning as a fundamentally cooperative social project”.[23] In the book’s foreword, Ivan Illich writes:

If people are seriously to think about deschooling lives, and not just escape from the corrosive effects of compulsory schooling, they could do no better than to develop the habit of setting a mental question mark beside all discourse on young people’s “educational needs” or “learning needs,” or about their need for a “preparation for life.” I would like them to reflect on the historicity of these very ideas. Such reflection would take the new crop of deschoolers a step further from where the younger and somewhat naïve Ivan was situated, back when talk of “deschooling” was born.[24]

Often when liberal or progressive-thinking parents hear about such homeschooling trends the gut reaction is that it’s a good idea — in theory. Yet, the fears of “what if?” often lead parents to use less learner-centered methods of educating their own children. For more evidence and “fear-relieving” facts and stories about how unschooling really works, Growing Without Schooling: Q & A is a good place to start, along with other works by John Holt. To locate national and local networks of unschoolers, you can also try www.unschooling.org (The Family Unschoolers Network), as well as www.unschooling.com (sponsored by Home Education Magazine). In addition, Karl Bunday’s School is Dead; Learn in Freedom web site provides evidence on how students can and do learn on their own with great success and with greater freedoms than ever. Bunday also shows that despite this nontraditional approach, homeschoolers are admitted into many highly selective colleges.

Krishnamurti Schools

How do we move beyond our own conditioning? How do we create schools for the young that do not instill in them our own fears and prejudices? According to Jiddu Krishnamurti, we must create an education that is not a “system” but is built around the attitudes and qualities of the teacher and child and how they relate to one another.

What exactly constitutes a Krishnamurti School? What are the intentions and aims of these schools? These questions, along with important implications about the roles of teachers, were addressed by Krishnamurti in 1984 in a statement made at a school in Ojai, California, based on his teachings:

It is becoming more and more important in a world that is destructive and degenerating that there should be a place, an oasis, where one can learn a way of living that is whole, sane and intelligent. Education in the modern world has been concerned with the cultivation not of intelligence, but of intellect, of memory and its skills. In this process little occurs beyond passing information from the teacher to the taught, the leader to the follower, bringing about a superficial and mechanical way of life. In this there is little human relationship.

Surely a school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the taught explore not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their own behaviour. From this they begin to discover their own conditioning and how it distorts their thinking. This conditioning is the self to which such tremendous and cruel importance is given. Freedom from conditioning and its misery begins with this awareness. It is only in such freedom that true learning can take place. In this school it is the responsibility of the teacher to sustain with the student a careful exploration into the implications of conditioning and thus end it.

A school is a place where one learns the importance of knowledge and its limitations. It is a place where one learns to observe the world not from any particular point of view or conclusion. One learns to look at the whole of man’s endeavour, his search for beauty, his search for truth and for a way of living without conflict. Conflict is the very essence of violence. So far education has not been concerned with this, but in this school our intent is to understand actuality and its action without any preconceived ideals, theories ot beliefs which bring about a contradictory attitude toward existence.[25]

Structurally each Krishnamurti school is each quite unique as each endeavors to evolve from a “methodless” or “pathless” approach.[26] Some have evolved with an academic focus, others with a spiritual emphasis, and others with a more psychological foundation for student development. More information about specific schools, foundations, or educational centers inspired by Krishnamurti can be found on the Krishnamurti Information Network’s Community web pages: http://www.kinfonet.org/Community/.

Montessori Schools

These schools are in principle based on methodologies developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, the first woman to become a medical doctor in Italy and one of the most respected pioneers in education as well. As Ron Miller explains, “Montessori’s central concern was the natural development of the child, the healthy formation of the physical, mental, and spiritual qualities that are latent in the human being and which unfold, she believed, according to a purposeful, even divine, life force (for which she used the word horme) . . . Given the proper nurturing environment, horme impels the child to unfold his or her potential personality, to expand his powers, assert his independence, and create an adult identity.”[27]

Montessori’s own work focused around research through direct observations of young children. Thus, the strength of the Montessori method is working with the developmental needs of young children. As of 1997, there were over 3,000 Montessori schools in the United States. These are primarily private schools, but some are public; as school choice expands, more and more Montessori charter schools will likely appear as well.

The American Montessori Society states that “The aim of Montessori education is to foster competent, responsible, adaptive citizens who are lifelong learners and problem solvers”.[28]

The student’s role in a Montessori school is to engage in experiences and activities designed to foster physical, intellectual, creative and social independence. The teacher’s role is to develop curricula and learning environments that are age-appropriate and aligned with the Montessori philosophy and methodology. Families are consider partners with the schools, an integral part of each child’s total development.

For more details on the philosophies and structures of Montessori schools, consult any of these large and growing organizations:

• International Montessori Society, http://www.wdn.com/trust/ims/
• American Montessori Society, http://www.amshq.org/
• North American Montessori Teachers’ Association, http://www.montessori-namta.org/

Open Schools (and Classrooms)

The Open Classroom: A Practical Guide to a New Way of Teaching by author and New York City teacher Herb Kohl defined a radical alternative that came to be used even in public schools in the 1970s. This book was a direct response to working in an authoritative school environment that was more about controlling students than teaching them. Kohl describes the struggles, problems, failures, and successes of teachers trying to create non-authoritarian classrooms amidst the “battles with self and system” that teachers encounter in public schools.[29]

In theory, the open classrooms were designed based on student participation rather than compulsion; they were intended to validate and honor students’ sincere desires to learn. In practice, the patience needed to make such a school or classroom work effectively often exceeded what most school districts were willing to endure. Many teachers now look back on open classrooms as merely another fad of the seventies. However, today many of the over 1,000 members of Coalition of Essential Schools continue to focus on such progressive ideals and the use of non-authoritarian practices originally exemplified by open classrooms. Essential School principles emphasize the “values of unanxious expectation (“I won’t threaten you but I expect much of you”), of trust (until abused) and of decency (the values of fairness, generosity and tolerance)” (from http://www.essentialschools.org/aboutus/phil/10cps.html).

Several open schools now have long and well-documented track records, including the Mankato Wilson Campus School, Mountain Open School (now the Jefferson County Open School), and St. Paul Open School.[30] In describing the early days of one school, educational researcher Robert Skenes writes:

The St. Paul Open School pioneered student-centered, community-based learning in the public school arena. With no bells, no grade levels, no course grades or credits, the Open School demonstrated that students could successfully learn through making choices and pursuing their interests with the help of supportive, facilitative adults both within the community of the school and in the broader community beyond the school’s walls. At the time of this “snapshot,” there were over 1,000 students on the waiting list to get into the school”.[31]

One of the best resources documenting the successful practices of open classrooms, open schools, and related humanistic endeavors in public education is Dorothy Fadiman’s video “Why Do These Kids Love School?” (1990).[32]

Waldorf Schools (or Steiner Schools as they are called in Europe).

Finally, we come to the growing phenomenon of the spiritually-based Waldorf education. Waldorf schools are based on the “anthroposophical” (human wisdom) teachings of Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century. This approach aims to educate children to “become free, responsible, and active human beings, able to create a just and peaceful society”.[33] Waldorf educators consider themselves to be “child-centered” because one of their hallmarks is focusing on the needs of the whole child. Paradoxically, however, in an important sense they are teacher-centered as they are clearly led by teachers. Waldorf teachers aim to help children in learning the life rhythms for creating an inner balance which helps prepare them for creating lives of outward balance.

Structurally, Waldorf schools are similar in some ways to Montessori schools. Both tend to be private schools, with some trials as public charters as well. Both are mostly small schools for younger students, with a focus on the developmental needs of students. However, the core philosophies are quite different. Maria Montessori did significant research into natural learning and the unfolding needs of the whole child. In contrast, although Rudolf Steiner founded the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919, overall he was more involved with the development of his own spiritual philosophy of human wisdom than with researching education or children. Nonetheless, his approach has a number of holistic elements that appeal to many parents as well as teachers. Steiner schools focus on integrating the inner rhythms of nature and child through music, art, and dance.

Also, it is worth noting that both Montessori and Waldorf schools have their own special teacher credentialing programs. Further, both types of education have rarely been studied by outside educators or researchers who are not already committed to the school philosophies and structures.[34]

For a more complete summary and discussion of these and other types of alternatives, I recommend Ronald Koetzsch’s book, The Parents’ Guide to Alternatives in Education (1997, Shambhala Press). In addition, the Informal Education Homepage (www.infed.org/) is an excellent source for historic descriptions of core educational philosophers and activists who are associated with these alternatives, including Paulo Freire, Carl Rogers, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and many others.”