The David Gribble Archive : Talks

Four topics

Italy, 2002. Treviso, Trieste, Ferrara, Padua and Milan
Page 6

At some of the other places I shall describe it is believed that any timetable or programme of stimulating material interferes with students' private motivations, and prevents them from finding their own true interests. I should like to give you a contrasting view from another Sands student, Matt Williams.

I think the academic side of Sands is very good at motivating me to do work. The ideology of self-motivation only works for about half the people, and the rest of us have a counter-philosophy which is about wanting to learn but relying for motivation on enjoying being in lessons with people you like being with, who are the teachers. I don't enjoy the idea of having to get everything together for myself, because it means I don't have as much time for sitting around and talking to people and moving around and socialising. The atmosphere in the lessons is similar to the rest of the time at Sands, so I only know where the academic work begins and ends because of the timetabled structure.

Other schools around the world

I shall be pleased to answer any questions about Sands after this talk, but first let me tell you very briefly about some of the schools I have visited around the world that embody similar ideals, but are very different in their practice.

Sudbury Valley, in Massachusetts, is one of the schools where all motivation must come from the children themselves. There are a hundred and fifty young people, between the ages of three and twenty, and there is no timetable of lessons at all. When a child decides to learn, it is up to that child to work alone, or to find others, adults or children, who can give the necessary help. In terms of academic learning the freedom is total. Social control, on the other hand, is extensive; there is a whole book of rules, made by the school meeting, and there is a Justice Committee which meets several times a week to consider breaches of the rules and administer appropriate punishments.

Mauricio Wild, of the Fundación Educativa Pestalozzi in Ecuador, expresses the idea of non-intervention in the child's activities in uncompromising terms. Teaching, explaining, guiding, motivating, persuading, anticipating and pointing out, he told me, are not adequate interactions between an adult and a child. This is another idea that is so surprising it needs to be repeated. It is not appropriate, Mauricio Wild says, for an adult to teach, explain, guide, motivate, persuade, anticipate or point things out. The only way the child's interests are influenced is by providing a prepared environment with a wide variety of learning materials and other stimuli.