I have thrown myself down the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) rabbit hole as of late, and in doing so, have begun some ruminations about why decentralized governance is so familiar to me and why I am so fond of it: the Sudbury model of education. This article is an introduction into the governance of Sudbury model schools, and will be a handy device in the future as I continue to pontificate about DAOs and how I relate to them.

I had the good fortune of being raised by a parent who hated school. My father’s experiences with primary and secondary education have always been described to me as painful, uninspiring, and downright stifling.

The reason this was to my benefit was that my father was willing to put in the work to prevent his child from similar experiences. My parents were not really the typical Black parents when I was a young child, and as a result, my upbringing was not the same as my cousins’ or neighbors’. My parents experimented with veganism in the early 1990s, were wary of microwave rays, and thoroughly celebrated all seven days of Kwanzaa. If I hadn’t attended the alternative school I spent over a decade at, I surely would have lacked solidarity in my youthful rice milk drinking efforts. After diligent research, dozens of school tours, and hundreds of miles on the odometer of their burgundy 1989 Honda Civic sedan, my parents accidentally found the beginnings of an alternative school that piqued their interest.

The group of parents they found organized and in a few short years formed a school modeled from an existing school called Sudbury Valley School, in Framingham, MA. This all-ages school, created in 1968, has the unique philosophy of believing strongly in play as a method of education for children, and created a framework wherein children are not beholden to a curriculum, but rather spend their time mostly how they choose. Sudbury Valley and its spinoffs, called Sudbury model schools or just Sudbury schools, utilize direct democracy in the form of non-mandatory School Meetings. School Meeting is where the important functions of the school are voted on by students and staff members in attendance, each of whom have an equal vote. This once-weekly meeting is run by a Chairperson, and in my school’s case a minutes-taking Secretary, both of which are positions that students and staff may declare an intent for candidacy and become elected for a term of several months. Agenda items for these meetings can include permission to use budgeted money for a field trip or project, a request to paint a four-square court on the asphalt of the grounds, or a particularly impactful sentence for a student whose case had been referred to School Meeting from the other salient democratic event, Judicial Committee. The base rules of Sudbury schools are all very aligned, but the details vary among all of the schools, some of which are mentioned below.

Judicial Committee is a daily happenstance at Sudbury schools. This systemic event can be likened to court and has distinct components. There are two Judicial Committee Clerks, elected in School Meeting to serve a term, the length of which I believe varies depending on the school. These can be students (in my experience staff really want to encourage students to try this position out) or staff members if no student elects to run. Five students representing each age group are called upon to serve on the committee, acting similarly to a jury. The length and frequency of their terms also varies depending on the school. One daily rotating staff member serves on the Judicial Committee as well, and in the case of my school it seemed to be a combination of whomever was nearby, free, and perhaps had a penchant for serving.

Cases were created via grievance forms which were filled out by the plaintiff. The form’s template prompted description of the plaintiff(s), defendant(s), witness(es), and the offense. During my Sudbury school tenure, which began at four years of age, ended at seventeen, and contained a three year break in the middle, children too young to write would find either another student or staff member to fill their forms out. I assisted in the filing of many more grievance forms, affectionately called write-ups, than I created for myself over the years. These forms were collected midday as the Judicial Committee began, and the Clerks would begin the meeting with the lawbook, each law within voted on during School Meeting. Judicial Committee lasted as long as it needed to, with the average time during my schooling lasting probably an hour, and students on the committee had to sit, observe, and vote (indicated abstention was permissible) on each case. Every Sudbury student and staff member has likely endured the torture of an agonizingly long marathon of a meeting of perhaps three hours in length. Rolling cases over to the next day risked falling into a deficit and was avoided.

Students at my school would be collected by a ‘runner,’ generally a student who had been found guilty of breaking a law and been sentenced to hunting down their colleagues for a set number of days. When everyone was collected, the plaintiff would give their version of accounts, and then the defendant. Because parliamentary procedure was utilized for Judicial Committee, School Meeting, and any other important meeting event, this process was surprisingly drama-free. The patience and responsibility held by even the five-year-old Sudbury students in attendance is noteworthy. Any witness mentioned would give their account, and then a motion to charge the defendant with violating a law would occur. If the motion passes – 50/50 splits do not – a plea is taken. Guilty or No Contest pleas result in the sentencing immediately occurring thereafter, but Not Guilty pleas, or very serious cases like violent acts, are referred to School Meeting for sentencing. School Meeting had the power to suspend and expel students, so it was a serious occasion when a case was referred, and these meetings were always particularly well attended.

I must stress that even though all aspects of this process are available for students to attend, except certain Judicial Committee cases which were particularly sensitive, in my experience the biggest concern of the student was the process of the committee, and not their peers’ knowledge of their very public sentencing. With the right mindset and culture, teasing and shaming amongst a mixed group of children of all ages can be kept to a minimum, and students can instead learn from the other undesirable effects of breaking laws at a Sudbury school. Staff members must be prepared to abstain from gossiping about students around students, or having big, pointed reactions which may embarrass a student.

Going to a school with no curriculum for many years is not for every child. Many of my peers wanted to leave for various reasons: some had never experienced public school and wished to do so; others who had come from public school missed the structure and/or the selection of other children their age, as Sudbury schools are never large and may have only a handful of children of a particular age group, especially as you get older. The more I have thought about it, however, the more convinced I am that even a year at a Sudbury school is enough to fundamentally shift a child’s mindset into one of empowerment, as they have had an opportunity to have the freedom to choose how they spent their time and were directly responsible for their own actions, the sentencing of others in Judicial Committee, and learning the extent of their power in one of the most idyllic examples of democracy available.

It takes courage to send your child to a school like this. As a child, my attempts to explain this style of learning to parents resulted generally in a variety of guttural utterances and always a stream of incredulous questions. How was I learning? What did I do all day? Sudbury schools feel impossible to explain correctly as an adult, so as a child it was downright anxiety inducing. With nothing but doubt and unknowns surrounding them, my parents’ confidence waivered many times. For them, it was truly an experiment, and a high-risk one at that. Could their child learn how to be a functional adult at a school with no curriculum? Would I learn the skills needed to attend college? Is that even the point? There were no other local Sudbury schools to gather outcomes from, I was one of the first children (the first Black student!) to attend this specific Sudbury model school, and it was the 90’s. Luckily for me, the trust and friendship established between the founding parents was strong, with miraculous feats having been witnessed in their ability to build the school which I attended over a summer. I believe this helped keep me enrolled when doubts were high, and I feel incredibly lucky that this was the case. I certainly cannot fathom the type of person I would be removed from this educational experience. I don’t think I would be nearly as trusting of myself, self-motivated, or inquisitive without it, and I definitely would not be a nontraditional Ivy League student.

Suggested further reading:

‘The Significance of the Democratic Model: Self-Esteem, Self-Rule, and Self-Motivation’ by Daniel Greenberg, co-founder of Sudbury Valley School

‘A School for Today’ by Mimsy Sadofsky, long-standing staff member of Sudbury Valley School