The David Gribble Archive : Talks

My Apprenticeship

Leipzig , 2006
Page 5

Fifth Chapter: Sands School

The junior school at Dartington, where there were no problems, was the first to be closed, and my wife, a few teachers and a group of parents immediately founded a new school for children from three to eleven years old. A year later the senior school had to close, and fourteen pupils, who did not want to go to an ordinary school, had to find something else. These children, two other teachers and I founded Sands School. It is the only school in England that was planned by its students before it opened. It opened in September 1987 in the home of one of the students.

We wanted to be sure that Sands School could never be treated in the way Dartington Hall School had been, and we decided that all decisions must be made in the school meeting of students and staff. That was the first decision. The second was that the school should have as few rules as possible; we wanted to rely on common sense. The two rules we began with were against drugs and alcohol. After a few days there was a third rule – you are allowed to smoke, but only outside at the bottom of the garden. And the third decision was, to the disappointment of at least one of the staff, that we should have a perfectly normal timetable, and everybody should have to come to every lesson.

Now, nineteen years later, there are, unfortunately, a whole lot of rules, but although there is still a fairly normal timetable, all courses and all lessons are voluntary.

I was only at Sands for four years before I retired, but in those four years I learnt a lot. At the beginning I was head teacher, and I believed that, in spite of our ideals, there were some decisions which only an adult should take.

One day three girls stole all the money from the school office and went to the nearest railway station to catch a train to York. At the booking-office the clerk told them that they did not have enough money, so they asked for tickets to Brighton. The clerk became suspicious and called the police, and later I had to fetch the three girls from the police station in my car. On the way back I stopped in a lay-by and tried to discuss the situation with the girls. It was completely impossible. They cursed and swore and said that they hated the school, they hated the other children and they hated their parents, and I couldn’t get anywhere. So I drove back to the school, and the leader of the group announced that she wanted to call a school meeting, because otherwise I would tell a lot of shitty lies about them and what they had done. Everyone came to the meeting, and the leader casually recounted exactly what they had done, and then asked, “Do you want to chuck us out?”

To begin with the other children were angry, not because of what they had done, but because they were so casual and shameless. Then one teacher said that it wasn’t sensible just to be angry, and it would be better to ask questions and listen. For the next hour the adults hardly said anything. The children asked the culprits why they had done all that, listened to them and made comments, and finally asked, “Do you want to stay at the school?” All three said yes. A few conditions were imposed, and the matter was dealt with.

What I learnt from this was firstly, that a single person, even an experienced teacher like me, cannot find as good answers as a whole group of people who are really interested in the question, and secondly, that there are no school decisions from which children should be excluded.

After that I proposed to the school meeting that the school didn’t need a head, but only an administrator, who must make sure that all necessary decisions were made in the school meeting, and that afterwards they were carried out. My proposal was accepted.

At the beginning of my time at Sands I had written in a prospectus:

• Children who are trusted will become trustworthy.
• Children who are respected will learn a proper self-respect.
• Children who are cared for will learn to care for others.

Now I know that I had missed the truth. What I should have said was:

• Children are trustworthy unless they have not been trusted.
• Children have a proper self-respect as long as others have respected them.
• Children care for others unless they have not been cared for themselves.