Alysia and I met while teaching at the Farm School, a laboratory school at the University of California, Irvine. Five or six teachers taught around fifty students from kindergarten through sixth grade. We replicated much of the Farm School in our design of Chrysalis.
The Farm School no longer exists but some former students organized a Farm School reunion on the 50th anniversary of the Farm School’s opening (1969). Alysia and I went down to southern California for the reunion in early August (also for a family reunion the weekend before). More than one hundred people attended. The depth and intent of each conversation was far deeper and illuminating that any other school reunion I’ve attended. The relationship we had had with each student was preserved and immediately available except for the 35 years of additional experience – especially of theirs – which turned them into very adult conversations between people who had forged their relationship as a young child and a world-introducing teacher.
One girl, now in her forties, mentioned how her co-workers in Boston could not comprehend why she had to fly across the country for a one-day grade school reunion. No one has grade school reunions. And who cares? Grade school is just grade school. But the Farm School was a special place.
A young woman asked Alysia, “What did you do to us? You changed our minds and made us different from other kids?” Alysia’s answer: “We listened to you explain your thinking, your ideas, and in so doing, demonstrated to you how much we valued you both in your heart and in your mind. You came to value your own understanding and thus your thinking.”
A father came up and thanked me, saying that I had taught his son how to think. He thought that walking up in the fields, talking about what we were seeing, was part of it. But he acknowledged that he didn’t really understand how it happened but he had no doubt that his graduate of Princeton son had learned to think back at the Farm School.
Several girls thanked Susan for showing them repeatedly that there was no shame in letting your tears show in public. They said that was such an empowering gift to transmit to them and they are far stronger women now for being able to let their own tears show.
Lots of the students made reference to the presence of animals at the Farm School. Chickens wandered the playground; kids would gather eggs. Alysia had pygmy goats and her Goat Club would stay overnight when a mother was due to give birth. The Goat Club would accompany her if she had to take a goat to the vet (who went out of her way to share vet information with the students, one of whom became a cardiologist because of those experiences).
I was delighted to have a long conversation with one of those kids who are so uniquely distinctive. He and a girl were the purest of friends. During recess and lunch the two of them in third and fourth grade would walk hand-in-hand to the edges where the tall plants grew and observe and learn more about insects than I will ever know. They would show me the various places different insect species laid their eggs. I was absolutely delighted that he had not lost his way within materialistic Orange County and was now a professional gardener.
In the 70’s and 80’s, Michael Butler, the director of the Farm School and deep mentor to us teachers, taught mathematics at the university. He and two other professors were concerned about the lack of mathematical curiosity and play in their students. So they investigated how math was taught at the high school level and found that the curiosity and delight had already been lost by then. They eventually focused on grade school and started the Farm School to try finding a way so that “kids would do what mathematicians do, not just memorize some of the things they have learned.” That spirit pervaded the Farm School in all disciplines and so a girl flies back from Boston for her grade school reunion. Michael died two years ago, but he lives on in the minds of thousands he taught to think.
I think of my “go high in the drainage” adage in terms of schooling. We treat grade school as something where we can stick thirty kids into a classroom with scripted textbooks with no real loss. Money will be focused on the universities where the best of the best are concentrated. But how much of our culture’s power that comes from understanding has been eroded by then? How much of curiosity’s creative power has been lost? “High in the drainage” in terms of public education lies in the vast fields of millions of grade school kids.
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