Bells
By Martha Hurwitz

      At 7:48 each weekday morning, I hear First Bell. I'm usually sipping my coffee. Early in the school year, when the days are warm and my kitchen door is open, I can listen to the low monotone of the female voice pushing through the P.A. system. Soon after, another bell sounds (it's certainly not a ring), and I imagine roomfuls of like-sized and uniformed students moving through corridors like cars through a trafficked intersection. By this time, I'm making the final preparations for my commute to Sudbury Valley. Although the school with bells is only a stone's throw away from my back steps, I'd much rather commute 45 minutes twice a day to have the freedom that is the keystone of Sudbury Valley.
      Freedom seems impossible at this school next door. The bells themselves betray the lack of freedom inside the school. They demand: Are you where you should be now? Are you doing what you're supposed to be doing? Have you done what's expected of you? Especially coming out of summer vacation, I imagine that those students moving to the sound of the bells must be suffering a great transition, from the relative freedom of their summers to the virtual loss of self during the school year.
      Of course, there aren't bells at Sudbury Valley; the questions they pose would be entirely inappropriate. However, at the beginning of each year, or the beginning of a student's experience at the school, Sudbury Valley students also go through a transition. Typically, what returning students, new students, parents and even staff experience getting used to the school year at Sudbury Valley may seem a surprising reversal of what happens elsewhere. Here, the difficulty is in getting used to freedom, not in relinquishing it. As welcome as the possibility of freedom may be, it is not always easy to achieve. Rather, it is a formidable challenge. School members are effected on many levels: as individuals each with a unique sense of self, as members of the Sudbury Valley community, and as responsible citizens in the wider society.
      For new students, the transition into the Sudbury Valley school year must be exceptionally profound. Not only do they move out of summer and into school, but they must change their very understanding of what school is. For some, SVS may seem like a continuation of the summer or as if they'd dropped out of school for something frivolous, even illegitimate. Younger new enrollees tend to adapt without a second thought; they haven't yet become burdened with expectations. Older new students may sputter and stall like a car that needs warming up. For years they've been urged or forced to replace natural inclinations with the should's and supposed to's of a life structured by bells. Many are former 'good' students who did everything they were told, and did it well, yet felt an intense disassociation with their lives. Others were the 'bad' ones, those who wouldn't succumb to the structures and directions imposed on them. For both, summers were perhaps their only chance to exercise personal choices about what they want to do.
      In a way, our new students are similar to the slaves just after emancipation. For generations, the slaves barely had names with which to establish their sense of personal identity. Choosing a name after emancipation was both powerful and symbolic. It meant a former slave was now a person with a sense of self. Many new SVS students describe their previous school experience as if they were imprisoned or stultified. Their liberties were impaired, not rendered obsolete as were the slaves; but in both instances, time and respect are essential in allowing them to find out who they honestly want to be. Sudbury Valley deliberately gives room for this. To many outsiders, the students' experience of self-exploration looks suspiciously like they're doing nothing. To new students, this introductory experience feels challenging, often confusing, but certainly not like they're doing nothing.
      Returning students start the new school year by reacquainting themselves with what it is that they want. This is relatively easy for the lucky few whose summer experiences are as much their creation as their days at SVS. The transition is more pronounced for those whose time and choices were circumscribed during the summer; they have to learn (or relearn) to find and honor their wants. They must experience the traumas and rewards of time undetermined, apart from the norms of the society at large, adapting to the norms of the people and structure within the SVS community. Often they feel that what they want doesn't amount to much, especially in the discriminating eye of parents, relatives, friends from other schools, or our culture in general. Indeed, they must learn about what the idea of amounting to much actually means in their lives.
      For parents the transition into Sudbury Valley entails giving way, although for them it may be less of an annual event than it is for the students. This means embracing and allowing, believing and trusting, not of the school and of its staff, but of the students in all their interests, lack of interests, indecisiveness or singleness of pursuit. Parents may never know how their children spend their time at SVS, but they will know if their children are happy, energetic, thoughtful, or engaged. There can be no documentable picture of what a day at Sudbury Valley looks like. Parents may ask "What did you do today?", but the student's answer will invariably be incomplete: doing at SVS can mean anything from eating lunch with some friends, to curling up on a pillow in the sun in the conservatory, to getting brought up, to sitting on the playroom porch watching four-square. Even doing nothing is considered doing. "What did you learn today?" is a more dangerous question, depending on how it's asked. Too often the interest isn't for conversation, but for evidence. It sounds like what the sounds of school bells intimate, "Are you doing what you're supposed to?"
      Even some of the staff experience a transition in returning to SVS for a new year. For those of us who work elsewhere for all or part of the summer, being at SVS is something of a relief. At SVS, the staff are demystified individuals who relate honestly and directly with the students. In many other institutions, the role of the educator is as a masked performer who participates in limited and predetermined relationships with his/her charges. Even though I tend to work for what are considered particularly 'progressive' educational organizations during my summers, I end up reconciling many conflicts of assumption: that my students need to be supervised at all moments, that my clients won't choose the right things if given choices, or that being honest with the group may undermine the authority I must maintain over it. As with any other Sudbury Valley member, I am challenged to articulate my position, and not to compromise myself beyond what may be useful. I'm sure others from SVS also know the thrill of having a particularly SVS-like position acknowledged or adopted once it is explained.
      Although public perception might suggest otherwise, freedom is neither easy or free. Often people assume that a school with so much freedom would support chaos, invite atrophy, or generally be a free-for-all for the privileged few participants. Freedom, by definition, is freeing, but it isn't free. It takes a lot of work. There are many things we're taught as members of our society; being free isn't necessarily one of them. It takes courage, tenacity and commitment to participate in such an unusual and controversial institution as Sudbury Valley, whether as a student, parent, or staff person.
      A few blocks away from my house, in the opposite direction of the school with bells, is a church with a carillon tower. Every fifteen minutes the bells ring out. The sound bounces off the school behind my house, making a quick echo, "Bong-ong, bong- ong." I find the sound of these bells soothing. They seem to pose those questions we at Sudbury Valley enjoy being asked: Where are you at this moment? What are you thinking right now? What has your day been full of up to this point? What are you choosing to do at this moment of your life?

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Diablo Valley School admits students of any race, color, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin to all rights and privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students and staff at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan program, and athletic and other school administered programs.