Freedom to Learn

The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning

Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an introductory textbook, Psychology. See full bio

September 3, 2008, Child Development

The Natural Environment for Children’s Self-Education: How The Sudbury Valley School is Like a Hunter-Gatherer Band

What do children need in order to educate themselves?

Immersion in democratic processes

Hunter-gatherer bands and the Sudbury Valley School are, in quite different ways, democracies. Hunter-gatherer bands do not have chiefs or "big men" who make decisions for the group. Instead, all group decisions are made through long discussions, until a clear majority of those who care have come to agreement. Anybody, including children, can take part in these discussions. Sudbury Valley is administered through a formal democratic process, involving discussions and votes of the School Meeting, where each student and staff member who chooses to attend has an equal vote. Immersion in the democratic process endows each person with a sense of responsibility that helps to motivate education. If my voice counts, if I have a real say in what the group does and how it operates, then I'd better think things through carefully and speak wisely. I'm responsible not just for myself, but also for my community, so that is a good reason for me to educate myself in the things that matter to my community.
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In sum, my contention is that the natural environment for learning--which existed during our long history as hunter-gatherers and is replicated at the Sudbury Valley School--is one in which people (a) have much free time and space in which to play and explore; (b) can mix freely with others of all ages; (c) have access to culturally relevant tools and equipment and are free to play and explore with those items; (d) are free to express and debate any ideas that they wish to express and debate; (e) are free from bullying (which includes freedom from being ordered around arbitrarily by adults); and (f) have a voice that is heard in the group's decision-making process.

How different this is from the environment of conventional schools. How ironic: In conventional schools we deprive children of all of the elements of their natural environment for learning, and then we try to teach them something!

Note
A good source for anthropologists' reports about hunter-gatherer childhoods is Barry S. Hewlett & Michael Lamb (Eds.), Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental, and cultural perspectives. Transaction Publishers, 2005.