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Welcome to AI in the Air, Under the Tent, and Around Baltimore.
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This is Talk About Tuesday, where I talk about some kind of topic related to Sudbury School
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and I just go on at length and then I stop.
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So today, it's election day, November 3rd, 2020, and I thought I'd talk about democracy
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at Sudbury School.
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One might think that democracy is a central idea at the school that's really the most
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important aspect of what happens here, but it's really a foundation rather than an active
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principle that impacts hourly and daily, maybe weekly.
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But the, you know, so I think it's worth talking about that, that, you know, we use democracy
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in the same way that all other governments and so forth use democracy in the sense that
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it's just how else are you going to govern in a way that's fair and equitable to everybody.
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But you know, most people don't actually want to deal with it.
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They want to do what they're doing.
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And only if something is really problematic or there's an opportunity or something does
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one really get into the democracy aspect.
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Now, one aspect of our system is our judicial committee, JC, which is, you know, very much
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a voting process, but it's a select sort of voting body.
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It's randomly selected each week.
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Well, this year it's more chaotically selected, but it is randomly selected just because,
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you know, people are here and not here and whatever.
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So I have a system that kind of, you know, deals with that in some sensible fashion,
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but more or less people just end up being there when they end up being there.
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And there's no like real, you know, determining when that happens.
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But so there's that sort of limited democracy and then there's school meeting where we also
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have a team, but anyone can come to school meeting and vote and make motions and it's
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much more open.
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Now originally when I joined the school, there was no team for school meeting and oftentimes
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it would just end up being the staff.
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And you know, while it was functioning, it seemed disconnected.
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And so we implemented teams and so, you know, now a selection of school meeting members
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randomly come to school meeting and they figure out, you know, they're the ones voting.
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And so then they also hear things and they transmit things and it's quite an effective
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tool for making school meeting really representative while not forcing everyone to be there all
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the time, which would just get a bit much.
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Now what do we actually use our democracy for?
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Well, first and foremost, the rules.
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So these are, the idea of the rules is simply having a community that functions well and,
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you know, safely basically.
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So you know, our notion of safety, I'm watching three kids right now, you know, using really
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long sticks and kind of attacking each other and they're being very careful about it.
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But you know, one could imagine that most adults looking at it and be like, what?
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You got to put that down.
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You're going to poke somebody's eye out.
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However, we trust our students that they're, and I can see that they're being very cautious.
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And you know, and so our safety is one of, you know, really just making sure if lines
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are crossed, we have a system that deals with it and so lines often do not get crossed,
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right?
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It's not about making sure nothing, nothing could happen, but that it's basically limited
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and generally fine.
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So that's what our rules are for, enforcing a decent kind of community interactions.
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And so, and then, you know, where are the rules coming from?
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Well, so JC is the one that says, okay, here are the rules that, you know, somebody might
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have broken and then they vote on whether that happened and the person agrees whether
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or not they broke it and then some consequence happens and call them actions and that's all
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good.
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But, you know, the rules are actually coming from school meeting and people talking, debating,
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and it's really quite a useful way to get a lot of buy in to how the school works.
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Just saying like, here are the rules, you got to follow them.
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Oh, you broke some rules, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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It's not very, you know, it's not very useful at all, but, you know, when they become part
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of the process, when they start saying, yeah, okay, here are what the rules say, yeah, that
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applies.
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Oh, no, it doesn't apply.
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Oh, maybe it should apply, but it doesn't apply or maybe it shouldn't apply.
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And then, you know, so some of those situations, you can immediately, you know, apply the rule
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in just the way you want, that everybody agrees to and other times you need to go to school
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meeting and change the rules because it was inadequate and that's basically, you know,
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what the rule is.
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Our democracy is not, you know, about just kind of like, oh, this is how you vote.
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No, that's not it at all.
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It's really about we need to be able to have a functioning community and this is how we
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can do that.
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And we all participate and we all get on board and we can see, you know, new students over
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time.
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They start understanding that one, breaking rules isn't like the worst thing in the world.
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So then, they become honest about it, but then they also stop actually breaking the
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rules, at least the rules that anybody cares about.
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For some students, a rule being a rule means they're going to care about a period and that
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usually involves changing the rules if no one actually thinks that that application
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should be what happens.
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Oftentimes we'll say, yeah, that rule is broken, but it shouldn't have been that way and so
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it's, we just give a warning or something else, the action.
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So yeah, democracy, it's, you know, it's mostly a direct thing.
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It's kind of a, you know, on a larger scale beyond this community, I guess this would
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be kind of, our system would be kind of like randomly selecting people to kind of be legislators
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for a little bit.
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That's kind of what we're doing and, you know, it works decently.
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It might, you know, like a lot of times, well, I don't know, I mean, it does work well, but
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what do I want to say?
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So the, you know, on a larger scale, the issue would be one of kind of expertise, really
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being clear about what is happening and really diving deep into something.
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You can do that with a random selection from the population, although I suspect you need
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to make sure that they can have the time and space to really dedicate to it.
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Gosh, one could argue that the current politicians do not have that time and space as they always
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have to do fundraising or whatever to get elected for the next time.
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There's that, but, I don't know, on this small scale, I think it works really well.
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We do have some elected positions that are, you know, the basic idea is that they're responsible
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for making sure stuff happens.
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They do make, I mean, they do make decisions, but really if it's sort of a decision that
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they think that people might disagree with, then they should have at the very least a
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committee meeting to get feedback and quite possibly go to school meeting to get approval.
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But, you know, yeah.
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So that's kind of the democracy.
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Sorry, I'm rather distracted by all the stick fighting and running and jumping and, you
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know, in some sense that's the real democracy here.
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It's just people living together, seeing them talk, figuring out what they're doing together,
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you know, they're really kind of, you know, figuring it all out.
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And it's like, yeah, it's all about figuring out, you know, how to work together, cooperate,
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be safe together.
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And so it's, yeah, it's really having the freedom to do that.
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That's the cornerstone of what our school is.
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And then there are decisions that need to be made at a larger level than just a few
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students and hence school meeting and JC and all those things.
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I don't know, it's, it really has a feeling though that, you know, a democracy, our democratic
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formal structures are things that everybody appreciates and, you know, almost everybody
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appreciates not having to be there all the time.
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That makes sense.
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Like everybody, yeah, it's like a random sampling of the school meeting members.
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You know, they really do represent a lot of times the feelings of the community.
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Sometimes a few times when decisions are like, what, what were they thinking?
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But oftentimes it's like, yeah, that's what everybody else would think.
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And so, yeah, I'm quite happy about that.
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I'm also quite happy about all the students, especially the young ones who have a real
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hard time sitting in a long meeting like this and, you know, they stick to it.
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So I think that's really nice too.
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Oh, well, I think I've gone on long enough.
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Just sort of on this day of election, you know, that the ease with which we do a democracy
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here, and admittedly it's a small community, only a hundred, not 330 million.
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So that's kind of an advantage for us, but you know, it just isn't about like winning
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so much.
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I mean, sometimes it is for some people, but for the most part, it's about really trying
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to find out reasonable, good answers to what the community needs.
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Sometimes having to balance with individual needs, but you know, it's quite, it's quite
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useful and nice to be, to have this just working out so smooth, like it's just not, you know,
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it's not a win, win, lose kind of democracy.
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It's a let's figure this out.
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Let's have conversations.
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Sometimes it's just being supportive of somebody.
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We amended a rule today that was just basically someone didn't like the way something happened
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and I'm not even sure if the rule amendment adds much to what was there before, but it
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was a way of venting and sometimes we do that.
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That's fine.
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Um, I don't know, uh, sometimes, you know, whatever was an issue a long time ago, no
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longer is.
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And we drop rules.
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It doesn't mean that the people who pass the rules before kind of lost out or anything.
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It's just things change.
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It just so depersonalized, I guess it's not teams winning and losing sides.
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It's just debates and deciding, you know, how to move forward with the understanding
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we can always go backwards or sideways case might be well.
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So that's some words about democracy on this election day.
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May the day go well.