Sligo Champion 30.11.2021
“With traditional school I hated going in, I would pretend to be sick every morning, but now it’s easier because you know you’re going to enjoy your time here.”
These are the words of Avarose Gregory Furey, a 12-year-old pupil of the Sligo Sudbury, a democratic school, with no formal curriculum and no standard syllabus.
Democratic schools are guided by an educational philosophy that’s based around children’s innate capacity to learn in a self-directed way, that if you allow a child to follow their own path, give them personal autonomy, as well as a say in what they learn, they will step up to challenge and naturally acquire the skills they will need in adult life.
“I started going to this school in September and it’s a much friendlier environment, everyone wants to be here, I find it’s easier to learn things here,” Avarose said.
“I like to do things like art and singing. I especially love learning English vocabulary and languages. I’ve been trying to learn Latin and Japanese.”
“When you ask for something, they find the resource.
“I found in traditional school they would say that’s not something you can find a job with, or you could never do that as a career.
“I think it’s important this school is here because before I wasn’t able to handle school at all.”
The school is based in Calry and was founded by Maura Duignan, Gayle Nagle and Sara Anderson. It first opened its doors in September 2018.
Starting with 15 children in the first year that has now ballooned to 63 pupils with no sign of slowing down as interest in alternative forms of education continues to grow.
“We’ve been really blown away by how quickly it’s grown, we had a much more moderate vision of how it would develop.
“But what’s surprised us most is how many people are willing to relocate their families to access this type of education,” Maura said.
“About 30% of our families have moved to Sligo to attend this school, which is kind of extraordinary really.”
The Sligo Sudbury accepts pupils between the ages of 4 to 18 and was the second democratic school in the country after the Wicklow Sudbury which opened in 2016.
The 10 staff members do not consider themselves teachers, they are merely there to facilitate and encourage students’ self-directed learning.
With art and music rooms, cooking facilities, and host of other amenities, the children have plenty of options for how they wish to spend their time.
“The students direct their activities and days; they are completely in charge of what they learn and how they go about it.
“Our role as staff is to support them. They are involved in the rule making, the discipline, and the running of the school.
“In a mainstream model it is hierarchical, adults are in charge and children follow the rules that are made for them. Here they are learning a sense of agency and responsibility from a very young age. That’s the key message.”
Educational systems that emphasise independence are nothing new with many examples of schools throughout history that have valued personal responsibility over the more rigid rules of a traditional school.
Montessori schools have been around since 1907 and encourage children’s natural curiosity in a supportive learning environment. Steiner Waldorf schools first opened in 1919 and actively encourage individuality and creativity.
“They are lovely educational philosophies but the main difference between those and the Sudbury model is they are not self-directed models of learning, there’s still a curriculum that has been devised for the children and there’s theory around what they should learn at different stages of development,” Maura said.
In the Sudbury school children are not separated by age group and are able to mix with each other freely.
“You’ll have children who are different ages but share a common interest, they have different skill and maturity levels, but they are sharing that knowledge,” she said.
“The older ones are helping the young ones, and the younger kids keep the older ones in check.
“What they develop is an awareness of other people, of difference, of modifying their behaviour to suit the environment.
“It develops a great sense of awareness in the children, personal responsibility and how their actions impact those around them.”
Criticisms of the democratic model say that children are often not mature enough to make these decisions and that if given the opportunity they may fall behind or lose out on essential aspects of education.
“For us, there is no such thing as falling behind.
“For example, we don’t talk about maths as a subject, maths is just part of the other activities that are going on. If they’re building a treehouse, they need to use maths, it’s part of everything they are doing,” Maura said.
“We don’t have maths classes unless someone gets to a point where they really wish to pursue it, then at that point a tutor would be provided, it comes back to autonomy and that sense of personal responsibility.”
The oldest students currently enrolled in the Sligo Sudbury are 16 years old, the school has not yet had anyone graduate into third-level education or enter the workforce.
“The students could take the leaving cert as an external candidate the same way a home-schooled student would,” Maura said.
“But there are alternatives to that, the international GCSE’s is one a few students are interested in.
“They can refine their interests more directly through the QQI and apprenticeship system, that would take them into third level.
“We’re at the beginning stages of that and over the next few years that will become more apparent in practice.”
Students often have the freedom to learn independently from the staff members but if they want to use certain equipment or participate in particular activity they must first acquire a certificate to prove they are capable and responsible.
“We have what we call a certification system, for rooms or resources, issues of safety. This allows students to engage independently for certain activities,” Maura said.
“They have to do a small training course in how to use that equipment safely and appropriately, once they have demonstrated their ability to use it safely they are certified and allow to use the equipment without adult supervision.”
This certification system allows safety and order to be maintained without taking away any of the students personal autonomy.
Staff member Kim Kennedy said it is a privilege to be helping students “find out who they truly are and not imposing expectations on what they should become”.
“My experience working with teenagers here compared to in other environments is vastly different, I always found it challenging and exhausting but here you are actually connecting with them,” she said.
Founding staff member Maura added that “children surprise you when you let them” that “they have great emotional maturity and compassion for each other” and “giving them this level of freedom really shows you what they are capable of”.
“People say if you let them do what they want then they’ll do nothing, they’ll run wild, but just because they have liberty and freedom here that doesn’t mean they have license to do whatever they want,” she said.
“We have rules. Respect for self, others, as well as the space.
“At the end of the day, personal responsibility is what they are learning, that what they do in life is what they’re going to get out of it.
“It’s not that they do nothing, just lounge about, or even wreck the place.
“People have a fear of that. We’ve spent hundreds of years keeping children in a controlled environment, we assume they go ballistic if we let them, and sometimes when they get out of school they do, but that’s because they’ve been contained for so long.”