There are a great number of similarities among Summerhill, Sudbury Valley, and The New School. Each is democratically governed with student participation. Each is non-coercive with regard to lessons and traditional studies. Each has significant benefits for students who attend and each has similar pitfalls to which its members are susceptible.

There are also significant differences among the schools which are expressed in subtleties but which may have significant impacts on the overall experience of those who attend the various schools.

The New School has roots in both the Summerhill and Sudbury Valley traditions. It is compatible with both. It joins both in welcoming the benefits of "inner freedom" which is a focus of Summerhill and "political freedom" which is a focus of Sudbury Valley. However, The New School is also significantly influenced by a third tradition, represented by the New Program of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe.

This is an intellectual tradition of radical questioning and thoughtful engagement of life. Because of this element in its tradition, The New School attempts to serve freedom in as many senses as possible, but always with an eye to articulate freedom. The element of articulation colors each of the other aspects of freedom at The New School.

In all candor, the genesis of The New School or at least the history of its relations with other free schools may have been dominated by a simple mistake. Melanie Jago Hiner, the founder, and the three co-founders of The New School all attended St. John's College together. This grounding in the traditional liberal arts as embodied in the New Program gave a philosophical perspective to their thinking which was essentially taken for granted.

When Melanie set out to start The New School, she had a vision of authentic engagement and interest in all aspects of life. It was assumed that this would include the intellectual dimension of awareness as well as all others. The founders all agreed with Socrates that "the unexamined life was not worth living." They also agreed with Aristotle that "All humans by nature desire to know and the sign of this is the delight we take in our senses." It was with these prejudices that The New School was founded.

The subtle implications which arose because of these predispositions, and the divergence which they cause between the theory and practice of The New School and the other free schools are startling and intriguing.

The connections between the traditions of Summerhill, Sudbury Valley, and The New School are not accidental or unconscious. While preparing to open The New School, one or more of the founders read about Summerhill. They did not do a full review of Neill's writings, nor was contact made with Summerhill to learn what had become of the school. However, Summerhill and its founder’s theories were part of the thinking and discussions. Likewise the founders read a number of things about Sudbury Valley School. Melanie even visited Sudbury Valley School, along with several other alternative, private schools, to get ideas of how they operated. However, again, no detailed review of Sudbury Valley's literature, structure, procedures, or theory was made.

Frankly, the founders of The New School assumed, as enthusiasts will, that all of these schools had the same idea and that it was understood in the same way. (In fairness, the effort at that point was not to try to understand the workings of Summerhill or Sudbury Valley. The effort was to find ways to make The New School work.)

Because of their common background at St. John’s College, when the founders of The New School heard that Summerhill allowed children freedom, they did not focus on inner freedom or any version of psychological freedom. They took the typically naive perspective of St. John's. They took freedom to mean "the power to do what one wants," with all the complications which the history of thinking about freedom introduces into that idea. When they read that at Sudbury Valley children were "free at last," they did not think of participatory democracy. They thought of the awakening of the Italian Renaissance, Christ's victory over death, the exhilaration of sky diving, a mountain vista, the soaring beauty of a lover's touch, the delight in a child's eyes. In designing The New School, the founders’ efforts were radical in the sense that the New Program assumes -- a fundamental engagement of first principles.

The founding of The New School looked like this: The founders gathered materials of various kinds -- books, crayons, computers, etc. -- into a rented space. They got several children (and their families) to agree to membership in the School. On the first day, the seven original students and two staff members met in a large room, some on the floor some on chairs. After a brief description of how the founders pictured the School, Melanie asked, "So do you want to be The New School."  The vote was unanimous.  At that first School Meeting four laws were proposed: bodily injury, harassment, messiness, and a preamble saying that each member was responsible for the School's continued operation. The presumption was that everyone was free to do as they pleased, so long as they did not hurt anyone else, disturb anyone else doing what they wanted, leave a mess, or get the School shut down. The conversations and chaotic activity began that day and have never stopped since.

The New School, strictly speaking, is an unincorporated association of students and staff members. This group has adopted certain procedures to support the activities of its members. The primary procedure is the School Meeting which is a forum for the adjustment of competing interests and the arbitration of the use of jointly controlled resources. The School Meeting is not a corporate entity.

Controlled through the School Meeting are several other institutions which support the activities of the members of the School. The School Assembly is an association made up of parents of minor-aged students, students, staff, and others by invitation. The functions of the Assembly are determined by the actions of the School Meeting. In recognition of the parents as the primary source of funding for the School, the Assembly gives advice and consent to the School's spending plans and hiring decisions. The Assembly also acts as a deliberative body in the diploma process.

Another institution serving the School at the discretion of the School Meeting is a corporation known as The New School, Inc. This is a legal entity which accepts payments, undertakes contractual obligations, and holds assets in trust for the benefit of the members of the School Meeting.

In structure, The New School is a collaboration of individual people. The purpose of this collaboration is to mutually support the activities of each member by providing resources and materials, including the fellowship of living in a dynamic and challenging community. In many ways it is more libertarian (or even more anarchic) than the participatory democracy of Sudbury Valley. It is less cohesive than the community of Summerhill. It is designed to support the activities of each child, in the hope of making A.S. Neill's goal of being "entirely on the side of the child" a constant reality.

The New School is relentlessly challenging, in the hope of avoiding the temptation of settling for activities which are less than fundamentally satisfying. It is relentlessly and rigorously articulate in the belief that without the tools of reason, a person cannot know himself and therefore cannot be free of manipulation, coercion, or even simple mistake. It is grounded in the belief that, as Leo Tolstoy said, "The moment you give [children] full liberty and provide them with materials [they] will fill out harmoniously on all sides."

That is The New School. Its elements and approaches are unique, but both consciously and necessarily related to the experiences and innovations of other free schools. To see where the roots of some of these practices lie, and to better understand some of the differences between The New School and the other free schools, we should consider the history of the central ideas of freedom in learning for children.

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