These days it’s getting so you can’t go online without being fairly bombarded by inspirational quotes, often dressed up in pretty images. But I’ll tell you, as sketchy as the wisdom of sound bites may be, I’ve come to appreciate the truth behind clichés and sentiment. Sometimes truth really can be captured and crystallized, however challenging it may be to tease out the nuances and apply the lessons.
For example, in my last blog post of this school year I’d like to share a couple quotes that speak to the heart of what we do at Alpine Valley School in surprisingly powerful ways.
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
~ Frederick Douglass
While today Douglass might have said “adults” or “people” rather than “men,” the truth of his statement is timeless. One of the challenges of describing life at Alpine Valley School is conveying the piercing beauty of watching young people grow up whole and intact. I say “piercing” because this beauty stands in stark contrast to the struggles young people face in other kinds of schools, struggles that often linger well into adulthood. As one of our parents has said on more than one occasion, what if we never had to lose our youthful spark, never had to spend much of our adult lives trying to recover our curiosity, intuition, drive, and self-confidence?
Giving young people a head start on healthy, vibrant adult lives is one of the things that most drives me in my efforts to promote Sudbury schools like Alpine Valley. It’s hard to imagine something a lot more moving than allowing children to retain and actualize their breathtakingly beautiful passion for life.
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
~ Howard Thurman
As long as there’s been mass schooling, people have adamantly asserted that schools exist to serve a larger purpose, that we have a moral obligation to ensure that children are trained to meet the needs of the economy, or social justice, or environmental preservation, or any number of external agendas. Trained as a conventional teacher, it came as a revelation to me that letting people connect with their passions is an infinitely more effective way to create positive change than any kind of pushing or orchestrating could accomplish.
Conventional schooling assumes a level of control that doesn’t exist, and so it sets out vainly to engineer a better world—or rather, differing camps of adults pull kids in various directions, trying to mold these young souls in the image of their own personal values. Well, Alpine Valley School takes a radically different approach: our only agenda for young people is that they be empowered to tap into their own potential, to realize their unique gifts in a culture of freedom and responsibility. In other words, our only agenda for children is that they form their own agenda. Amazingly enough, nearly five decades of Sudbury schooling shows that these powerfully alive people are role models for all of us in how to live authentic, meaningful lives.
What do you think about “building strong children” (or rather, letting them build themselves)? How about the idea that “what the world needs is people who have come alive”? What are your favorite inspirational quotes, and how might they guide the way we raise children? Please leave a comment below, and if you have (or know people with) children, consider how Alpine Valley School might be the best place for them to grow into their best selves.
Bruce Smith is a substitute staff member at Alpine Valley School and founder of the organization Friends of Sudbury Schooling.