Description of The New School

The New School is a coeducational, private day school enrolling children ages 6 to 19. Opening with seven students in September of 1995, the school more than tripled in size in its second year and now enrolls 58 students. The school is open to all students who are willing to take responsibility for their own actions and who have chosen to determine the course and scope of their education. Regardless of age, everyone enrolled at The New School is responsible for their own education without coercion or constraint by others. The New School offers an education for the courageous, inquisitive, and independent-minded.

The New School has a child-centered philosophy based on the beliefs that every person desires to learn, and that to become a responsible adult, children must have the liberty to practice being responsible. These are two areas to consider, the school's attitude towards a person and our beliefs concerning learning.

Children who have the use of language, are complete people. They experience, think, and form opinions. They have beliefs about reality, how it functions, and the relationships between its participants. Their beliefs may be different from an adult's or less sophisticated by adult standards, but they are not blank slates or formless lumps ready to take on the shape determined by an adult. Adults aid children in the construction of reality, not by imposing unquestioned reality from without, but by supporting the children's attempts at figuring it out for themselves. This stems from a basic respect for the child as a person.

Every person, as an adult, is responsible for himself and his actions in his community. School is intended to help children become responsible adults. We become adept at that which we practice. This is true of intellectual, social, physical, and personal pursuits. If children are to be responsible adults, they must practice responsibility while young. The New School acts on this premise. To this end, the children are responsible for the direction and progress of their own education. No one will reap the fruits of a person's labor or suffer the consequences of his actions as personally as himself.

Although a person is responsible for himself, human beings are social by nature, we exist within communities. The community is a resource and guide, providing possibilities and assistance. When we practice something new, we rely on coaches or experts in our community to help us progress. The New School believes that a community of responsible adults who are themselves active learners with a wide range of interests are the best examples for children. Although a community can provide assistance, it cannot determine the directions a child's investigation will take. In essence, we do not intend to instruct, but to allow them to learn.

Allowing children to learn often brings to mind a kind of laissez-faire free-for-all in which tyrants of tender years terrorize well meaning but ineffectual adults. On the contrary, because we allow them to make their own decisions and feel the consequences of their actions, we are allowing children to develop as far as they can with as little impediment as possible and with only as much guidance as needed. Thus they learn to appreciate liberty, instead of craving license. They will not become savages because every child, from the time they are small, longs to join the world around them, to become like the people they see, to become competent adults.

This idea of guidance without constrictive control is supported by the work of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian educational philosopher, psychologist, and semiotician. He developed the idea of the Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD. It was Vygotsky's belief that children learn by trying things just slightly outside their range of ability, the upper end of their ZPD, and then seeking the aid of someone more knowledgeable. The more knowledgeable other helps the child by letting the child do everything they can for themselves, only interjecting with possibilities or corrections when the child can no longer make progress with the task. Children, by observing the more knowledgeable other, by working with the expert, just as an apprentice works beside the master, learn something beyond their own ability and so progress by expanding their ZPD. Of course, the "more knowledgeable other" can be either adults or children, so long as they have the additional skills which the learner seeks. Thus the entire community offers potential support to each child’s efforts.

This process is dependent on children recognizing that they are stymied, their desire to advance, and their asking a question. In many children's educational experience, only the first step, recognition that they are lost, is prevalent. Because much current educational practice focuses on subject matter determined to be important by the teacher or school and progresses by children answering rather than asking questions, what learning occurs is often superficial and more time consuming than it needs to be.

The New School follows a different course. The New School,

Provides a secure place and enough time for children to practice being responsible for their lives.

Helps children analyze reality, determine its nature, their relationship to it, and its ramifications for their thoughts and actions.

Allows children to observe and interact with others who are both more and less knowledgeable than themselves in order to see and engage in learning as a process practiced in a variety of ways with a variety of goals.

Encourages children to come up with their own questions, to devise ways to find the answers, and to get them.

Because our current society is changing so rapidly from the industrial age to the information age, it is hard to determine what specific knowledge anyone will need in even twenty years. We must focus instead on goals of self-awareness and personal responsibility.

Because our work and social patterns are changing so rapidly, those who are self-reliant, thoughtful, and inventive will adapt best.

Because our adult community is more global than ever, we need people who can create and function in community. Children need to know how to function in a true community of people with various skills and interests who are responsible for themselves and responsive to others on more than a superficial level.

Because wanting to know, the disposition to inquire, is lost without practice, the school must guard against determining what questions should be asked and instead provide opportunities for children to ask questions themselves.

To this end there are no required courses, no grades, and no segregation by age. Children work with each other and adults on whatever interests them. Classes do actually take place with all the attendant necessities of scheduled class times, skill practice, and reading assignments which rigorous study or investigation require. But unlike classes in a more traditional setting, their organization, subject matter, topic coverage, duration, and materials are determined by the interested parties, children and staff alike. The fluidity means that a project's inception, the means to accomplish it and the effort to achieve the desired result rest in the children's hands. And although adults are available and willing to participate, they are more like fellow (and more experienced) explorers than founts of knowledge in each endeavor. What must be realized is that classes may be initiated by anyone, adult or child, participation is completely voluntary, and the authority in the class is held by the most knowledgeable participant, which is not necessarily the adult. From this, children develop a profound sense that their success lies in their own hands, and that learning, although difficult and often frustrating, is a natural, fulfilling, and lifelong process.

Because of this natural inquiry, the classroom discourse is a conversation, not a lecture or teacher-directed "discussion." Conversations entail the mutual respect of the participants, an interest in the topic, and a willingness to exchange ideas. At The New School, because the participants are interested in the conversation, more is learned than if they were forced to cover a topic of the teacher's choosing in an artificially initiated and artificially sustained "discussion." Classes built on true conversation inevitably occur without force or coercion, simply because human beings by nature desire to know (Aristotle).

But will children actually learn anything? By this question, most people assume that there is a body of knowledge which every person should possess to be considered educated. There is so much information available today, no one could hope to be cognizant of all of the topics available for study, let alone determine which are most important. Children accept as important those ideas, attitudes, and activities which they see practiced by their parents and others around them. In the New School they will know what is possible through access to the world via the internet and by spending their time with people who have varied interests which are actively pursued. In this environment, education is more than the accretion of knowledge, it is the development of an individual, his personality, talents, and interests. Children, shown learning as the continuous development of the self and given the opportunity and responsibility for their own learning, do learn.

Because children have a responsibility to become members of the community beyond the School, they must show some evidence of having sufficiently prepared themselves to do so. To this end, the students of the New School, in order to graduate and receive their diploma, must determine what it is for them to be responsible members of the community and demonstrate this ability through a written thesis, an oral presentation, and a cogently argued defense. They must be attentive to their own development, articulate in their presentation, and persuasive in their arguments. The School Assembly after reading, listening, and questioning determines whether the student has truly taken advantage of their opportunities. Only when the school community, including other students, staff, mentors, and parents, are satisfied, will a diploma be granted.

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