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By Melanie J. Hiner
The transition from traditional schooling to Democratic Schooling is long and sometimes painful. It can be especially difficult for those children, or parents, who try to preserve the forms and goals of traditional schooling. At TNS both children and parents must trust each student to become responsible, competent, and self-directed. Our community values and requires these qualities. Each student develops them, if he or she is given the time to grow into the role.
Even for children whose parents trust them to become self-directed learners, the path to self-knowledge is difficult. Every child and parent who has attended traditional school has become inured to the institutions' objectives and methodology, and to the treatment they have received in them. It takes time and patience to learn to think and work in new ways. Both parents and students have to be patient.
Some families come to understand the difference between schooling and learning, liberty and license, in a few weeks. Most take several months. A few continue to work on it for years!
The most effective support adults can provide to children engaged in this arduous task is to exemplify the things which we value -- to speak honestly about our own interests, experiences, and opinions -- to listen with open minds to the interests, experiences, and opinions of others -- to show a genuine interest our child's day, while avoiding a love-inspired fifth-degree interrogation -- to demand the same rigor of ourselves that we demand of our child -- and, to let each child suffer the true consequences of his or her actions. Even with such honesty, compassion, and support, the necessary shift in perspective and behavior can take months or years. Without them, the transition may never be accomplished. A parent's unfamiliarity with the nature of Democratic Schooling or impatience for traditionally recognizable results can undercut a child's ability to achieve the most important benefits of The New School.
Will my child ever make this transition? What will happen if I give my blessing and give my child time?
First, The New School will give you back your child -- that darling, daring, laughing person you remember from infancy. Your child will learn to play again. Remember true play? That full engagement in mind and activity is how we come to understand the world and what it has to offer.. (Edison and Einstein were experts at playing!) Given time, your child will rediscover true interests and strengths. Your child will re-discover that he or she wants to be a competent adult. Learning, not schooling, will become an imperative. The reason for learning will no longer be, "I have to...," but, "What is the world like? What do I want to be? What can I discover?" Given time for transition, your child will learn to think well and independently. Your child will become and remain an interesting, happy, competent adult.
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