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Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the Air Talk About Tuesday where I talk about some topic
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about Sudbury School.
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So tomorrow we're having the 12 to 15 check in so I thought it would be appropriate to
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kind of do a quick run through the main topic.
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So the thing that we really want to talk to 12 to 15 year olds about is the desire to
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go to conventional school.
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So a lot of our students that come to us early in life they do the schooling and they feel
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very confident.
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They speak well, they're you know really alive and on fire and they feel like they can go
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into the world beyond.
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And so they say okay what do I need to do to do that?
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Well the conventional answer is of course you need a college degree to get a job and
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to get a college degree you need a high school degree and you know you need you know just
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to go through the system.
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Now the beginning of high school it's relatively easy to transfer in in there because they
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don't really worry too much about the the credentials of the younger earlier schooling.
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You know obviously they need to be able to do the whatever academics but our students
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have don't seem to have any problems with any academics ever.
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I don't know seems like a strong statement but we haven't heard anything.
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You know they need to spend a few weeks to learn whatever the conventions are you know
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that a dot could be a multiplication symbol that you know some of the terms for grammar
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but they know how to speak and you know that's a pretty big thing for a lot of academics
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is just knowing about communication.
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So it's a natural transition if you wait until later in the high school career it's a lot
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harder because you have to have a certain number of high school credits to graduate.
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You know you may have may know calculus may have a Nobel Prize in physics you may be a
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credit historian and you'd still need to go to like first year history class and algebra
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one and whatever.
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You know ability to actually do the material is irrelevant.
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It's just about checking a box for credits so you know there's this you know so when
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someone's 13 14 you know it's very extremely tempting to to jump and there's a lot of pressure
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at that point because it's harder to change your mind later on.
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High schools will make you you know do other courses and so forth I mean there may be ways
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around it there usually are for something or other but you know it's more difficult.
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So it seems natural to to try that jump.
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Some students of ours who have never been to conventional school don't really believe
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anything we tell them about it and so you know the idea that there are a bunch of people
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who are sitting in desks all day long being told about a bunch of stuff that they then
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scribble on some piece of paper and then promptly forget about it well that doesn't really make
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sense to them because their experience throughout the whole time is they are actively doing
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everything they do every moment every thought is all in service of learning and living and
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all that excitement and all that enthusiasm I mean you know there's also you know spots
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of boredom when the brain takes a break but you know like it's all well self-driven and
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then to think like oh there's all these people who are just sitting there kind of like being
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told how to jump through some hoops that they do and then they're done really seems kind
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of hard to believe.
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So then they they want to jump ship so from our perspective you know really what is it
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that we offer students who have been with us for so many years feel like they're ready
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for the world well for one thing I mean there is still quite a bit to learn about oneself
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about interacting with others about all these things and it's you know but it's it's a more
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difficult learning process it's I mean there can be lots of conversations but there can
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be lots of quiet there can be lots of boredom there can be lots of still emotions it's more
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intense it's more introspective so it's you know and it's really hard work to reorient
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reorient your brain from being a kid you know to adult and that's the years of being a teenager.
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So you know that's what we you know we like to try to convince our students of they never
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listen to us of course and you know part of it in addition to this pressure of going to
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you know the high school college kind of track and all that is also the idea that it's actually
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pretty easy you like there's a lot of like you know difficulty of like really learning
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to live your life you know as a kid almost anything takes their interest they run around
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they're you know doing whatever they have lots of stuff going on with other people all
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of that just seems fun fun fun fun fun and it's not hard for them to live that life but
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you know going through puberty the brain changes it's and it's like it becomes a lot harder
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to do things that seem you know not useful to others and there's a good reason for it
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because you know human beings are cooperative species they need to contribute and that's
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sort of around the time when they do they have the physical and mental abilities by
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that point to really do and so then they also have the emotional drive to do so but our
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society is and you know I think probably traditionally it's you know the roles they take on you know
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would kind of fit I'm sure there was still a lot of you know angst about changing this
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or that there's a lot of notions of newness I suppose but for the most part it is this
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you know this time when they kind of like become an apprenticeship towards being adult
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and our society just isn't set up that way adults go off and do their thing and kids
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do their thing and teens are kind of left you know kind of more in the kids category
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and so our kids who you know get old enough they say well maybe being an adult does look
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like being in a conventional school right sitting at a desk being told what to do that
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sounds like being an adult it's a terrible way of being an adult but you know that's
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that's you know not uncommon to have office jobs in that way and you get paid a lot of
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money for office jobs so why not right but the thing is is just you know there's just
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so much left on the table when students leave us at that point they can really dive down
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deeper and they don't even necessarily realize they're doing it but there there's this constant
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dealing with life that they just have to do here that they don't have to do there we do
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have the downside of being in a rather small community that's how we can be a community
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and so you know that's another aspect of conventional high school that looks appealing which is
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you know like i was at a small high school and there was 150 kids in my grade let alone
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all the other ones adjacent to it so you know you think oh wow there's all these people
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i could possibly be friends with and maybe they could form great friendships although
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you know the interactions here they'll spend hours and hours talking with one another just
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day after day right you don't get that in conventional school instead you get you know
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a five ten minute conversation here and there throughout the day or somebody yells at you
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you know it's like those moments of conversation you know i can remember it's like oh wow i'm
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a living human being and then it's like oh no sorry you gotta go to class like oh and
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then it's just depression so i don't know we still haven't found the magic words to
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convince people that this is a useful place to be but we keep hoping