● Waking up and being excited to go to school.
● Children having an equal say and equal vote.
● Students deciding what they want to learn.
● A school with no classes, no grades, and no homework.
This all may seem like complete fantasy,
but it doesn’t have to be…
South Jersey’s Premier Democratic School
SJSS was founded in 2015 and modeled after the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Mass, which was founded in 1968. The Sudbury Model allows students to discover who they really are and what they are passionate about while creating an environment where children learn to truly love learning. The school is governed entirely by a democratic School Meeting consisting of all students and staff. This means that everyone from a five year old student to an adult staff member all have an equal say and vote.
“Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how.”
- John Holt
At South Jersey Sudbury School children experience an environment that values freedom, trust, and responsibility. There are no classes or grades. This means that students have complete freedom and are trusted to decide how they’d like to spend each day. They could read a book, write a screenplay, learn math, paint a painting, research nutrition, plan a field trip, learn to play piano, make pasta for everyone, redesign the school’s website or play Dungeons & Dragons with their friends — it’s completely up to them. We believe this is where the best kind of learning comes from, intrinsic motivation.
If you ask a child enrolled at a traditional school in June about a concept they learned back in September, there’s a good chance they won’t remember anything about it. And how many adults who attended High School in their youth can recall anything more than a few concepts from their four years spent there, let alone anything that they actively use in their daily lives. This is because most students in traditional types of education are not given the time to explore and pursue things that interest them. They are instead forced to sit in classrooms for most of the day being taught things that probably don’t interest them. They may even be taught topics, that if discovered through intrinsic motivation, they would find fascinating but instead find dull or boring.
At South Jersey Sudbury School, kids are given the time to discover and pursue anything and everything that intrigues them,
and the results speak for themselves.
“The social and problem solving skills gained at SJSS through the self-directed learning and democratic processes are ones that are completely unmatched by all other types of education. They simply don’t exist anywhere else.”
Daniel Marcus,
SJSS Graduate & Board Member
