NAIS - Utopian Schools

The premise of utopianism is that, through human agency, we can recreate a version of pre-lapsarian perfection. From the records of art and literature, at least, there seems more evidence of artists prophesying hellish futures rather than Edenic ones. Indeed, a powerful theme in mythology and art is the terrible punishments meted out to mortals for overreaching: Icarus, Prometheus, Midas, Faust. Modern literature and film are much more likely to project negative, dystopian futures rather than idealized ones: Brave New Word, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Mad Max, The Terminator, The Matrix, etc. Part of the tension between the disparate projections of our individual and collective fates is rooted in religion, of course: Will we ultimately return to paradise or perish in Hades? But it is also rooted in philosophy: Do we, like Rousseau, believe in the fundamental virtue of our species, or, like Hobbes, in its elemental vices?

Modern utopianism emerged with the advent of "Modernism" and the "Idea of Progress" itself. Thomas More’s Utopia (from the Greek, literally meaning "nowhere") was a reaction to the European discovery of America and the very possibility of creating new societies — religious or secular. This possibility has characterized American culture since its inception, and is brightly reflected in the concept of the "American Dream." Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis was a response to the possibilities of the development of rational, organized, intentional scientific method of which Bacon was a pioneer. Bacon was one of the first to realize that this development gave human beings the power to alter their physical environment for their own benefit. Indeed, unlike those who championed the "knowledge for its own sake" approach, which had characterized Greek inquiry, Bacon was a radical advocate for investigating nature solely to gain knowledge and techniques that would benefit humankind….¹

When one thinks of schools in a utopianist sense, one must also recognize a similarly dyspeptic assumption. Left unchecked and to their own devices, do children have an innate "heart of darkness" that deterministically leads them towards Beelzebub, as in Lord of the Flies? Is schooling meant to be highly restrictive and "disciplined" (in both the behavioral and academic senses of the word) in order to condition children so that they behave as good citizens, at least well enough for society to function? Isn’t this the reality that Freud (in Civilization and Its Discontents) posited, that a thin veneer of civilization must be imposed on the individual by the superego to hold in check the rapacious id, and that adults in authority (parents and teachers) are the purveyors of the external check for children until it becomes internalized as conscience? Without shame and guilt and fear related to punishment, could we actually govern children to grow in healthy, productive ways?

In response to these questions, let’s take a look at one school’s vision that says schools can become utopian. From the opening page of the Summerhill School’s website: Imagine a school...

where kids have the freedom to be themselves;
where success is not defined by academic achievement;
where who you are is more important than what you know;
where the whole school deals democratically with issues such as bullying and racism;
where each individual has an equal right to be heard;
where creativity is not stifled by pressure and self-expression is not curtailed by conformity;
where teachers and students have equal status.

Summerhill School is a K–12, progressive, coeducational, residential and day school in England with 100 students and 20 adults, founded by A. S. Neill in 1921. In his own words, Neill describes the school as a "free school" — free meaning that Summerhill is a place where children can discover who they are and where their interests lie, in the safety of a self-governing, democratic community. There are two features of the school that people typically single out as being particularly unusual. The first is that all lessons are optional. Teachers and classes are available at scheduled times, but the children can decide whether to attend or not. This gives them the freedom to make choices about their own lives and means that those children attending lessons are motivated to learn. Many people suppose that no children would ever go to lessons if they were not forced to. At Summerhill, it is rare for a child to attend no lessons at all — at least, after the initial shock of freedom has worn off.

The second particularly unusual feature of the school is the school meeting, at which the school "laws" are made or changed or abolished. These rules of the school are made by majority vote in the community meetings, pupils and staff alike having equal votes (and pupils outnumber adults by 6:1). Usually, about 200 laws are in effect — such as "You must have a front and back brake on your bike"; "You can’t climb the Old Beech Tree when it’s dark or wet"; or "You must have lights out by 10:30 pm." Occasionally, the meeting abolishes all laws, but shortly after the essential ones are adopted again.

Among the many distinct elements of the school is the dictated absence of parents and parental involvement, which is seen as interfering with the development of the child; the absence of compulsory exit exams; and the irrelevance of homework, since classes are optional.² Summerhill makes the distinction between freedom and license: the former encouraged, the latter proscribed. Interestingly, a legendary story, whether apocryphal or true, indicates that the school floundered at one point when an adult appeared in class naked, exercising his freedom to flout convention; so the distinction between freedom and license, it would seem, is inevitably to be challenged in even the most utopian of schools. There are about 50 such "democracy-based" schools in the world, the most well-known in the United States being Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts.³

Of course, schools founded by visionaries and rooted in a deeply held set of philosophies and beliefs have, at their core, a utopian expectation. Thus, in the independent school world, we have countless iterations of original utopian visions: Waldorf schools, Reggio Emilia schools, and, most prolifically, Montessori schools. In From Childhood to Adolescence, Maria Montessori writes, "My vision of the future is no longer people taking exams and proceeding then on that certification... but of individuals passing from one stage of independence to a higher [one], by means of their own activity through their own effort of will, which constitutes the inner evolution of the individual."

What always strikes me when I visit these schools is that the teachers continue to be strong proponents and adherents of the utopian vision, while the parents and even the board members are often noncommittal or even ignorant of it. "I can’t tell you exactly what the philosophy is," I’m often told, "but I like the feeling of the school and my kid is happy here."

More telling in these philosophy-driven schools is that often, as the kids get older, the school program becomes more modified and conventional. "Yes, although we don’t believe in testing, we practice it, since the kids all have to take the competitive entrance exam to get into their preferred next school."

So the question of the moment changes, depending on the ground upon which you sit:

Are you involved with a school founding? If so, you have the freedom to execute a plan rooted in a belief system about "what’s important for kids and how they learn." You have the best chance to create a utopian school, since you have no plan to redesign, just one to formulate and generate support for.
Are you the leader of an established school, seeking to transform it towards a more profoundly utopian future? If so, your task is more formidable, but not impossible: Find the other "generative” dreamers" in the crowd of teachers, administrators, parents, and trustees and go on a retreat to define "what’s important for kids and how they learn." Come back, call in all your chits, and begin to “backward design” from the utopian destination you will be pointed towards.

For either case, the trick is to be progressive, not obsessive, about the philosophy, and utopian, not dystopian, when discouraged by setbacks. If you throw up your hands in despair (think of the initially messianic Kurtz at the end of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when he exclaimed, “Exterminate all the brutes”), it’s time for a new utopian track.

Notes

1. From “Utopianism Come of Age: From Post-Modernism to Neo-Modernism” by Tsvi Bisk, World Future Society Web Forum (www.wfs.org/bisk.htm)

2. From the Summerhill School website (www.summerhillschool.co.uk/indexgo.html)

3. Sudbury Valley School (www.sudval.org/). For a list of such schools worldwide: www.sudval.org/07_othe_01.html.