This fall, DVS staff members attended a number of presentations on the latest in brain development research. One was part of an Early Childhood Education (ECE) Think Tank sponsored by the Contra Costa Children & Families Commission in October. In November, Dr. David Sousa, an international education consultant and author of How the Brain Learns, led a number of brain workshops during a weeklong visit to the Bay Area. As all of these events pointed out, a lot of exciting research has been done in recent years in the study of how the brain develops in the first five years of life. This research has started to have and will have for years a growing impact on the areas of child development, child rearing, and education. It is also important to note how brain development research and the Sudbury philosophy converge in many different ways.

Probably the most important educational ramification of researchers studying the development of the brain is that educators will hopefully move away from the "blank slate" theory. The theory that the minds of children are blank slates to be filled by teachers with volumes of academic knowledge has long been dominant in education, but new research is challenging this theory. Researchers now know that infants are ready and motivated to learn. As one of the presenters at the ECE Think Tank explained it, "Kids are born with a curriculum." Many critical things have been learned and mastered in the first five years of a child’s life even before she or he steps foot in a school building.

This way of viewing children, "born with a curriculum," has been prevalent in Sudbury schools since the founding of Sudbury Valley School in 1968. Sudbury schools have no set curriculum their students must follow, instead giving children the time and space to explore their own interests and pursue their own passions. Sudbury schools have institutionalized a number of tenets that brain research is now confirming:

Children are active, self-motivated learners.

It is clear to any new parent that an infant’s natural curiosity and motivation to learn push the child to walk, talk, use a spoon, throw a ball, and do numerous things that others in the world around them are doing. Sudbury schools merely allow students to continue learning in the same ways that helped them master the important skills of early life, rather than short-circuiting their natural motivation and desire to learn by subjecting them to programs of study that are not of their choosing. Sudbury students have a hand in shaping the learning community of which they are a part by helping to establish the rules and policies of the school, ones that enable them to learn, be active, and be themselves in a safe and supportive environment.

Children are individuals with unique natures.

Each person is born with her or his own style and temperament, with her or his own way of learning and relating to others and the world around her or him. Sudbury schools honor this fundamental belief by giving children a lot of latitude to be themselves. Students can read or draw or run around outside for as long as they choose, and they can spend their time with kids of different ages if they want. They are not at a disadvantage by being kinesthetic, auditory, or spatial learners in environments that do not accommodate them, which is often the case in traditional public and private schools.

Children are holistic learners.

One of the great tragedies of traditional education is that schools break up the world of knowledge into little pieces called "subjects" and then expect students to learn information ("reading" and "physics" and "geometry") in a piecemeal and fragmented way. This is not the way that infants learn things as they go about figuring out how things work or how to do things. They do not learn in pieces - the intellectual piece, the physical piece, the social piece, etc. Traditional schools are slowly moving in the direction of holistic learning - combining math and science classes or English and humanities classes because they seem to "go together" - but this is still a far cry from looking at the world and learning about it in ways that comes naturally to children in the early years of life.

A major educational implication of brain development research is exemplified in discoveries about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD. According to Dr. Sousa, scientists now know that true ADHD is inherited. Genetic screening and brain scans could probably detect true ADHD in a child, but these are prohibitively expensive, and therefore the only practical test for true ADHD is time. Dr. Sousa cited one study that says that about one in four kids diagnosed with ADHD doesn’t really have it. In fact, he said that at least five other powerful variables, which include a poor diet, sleep deprivation, stress, families not helping children to distinguish between acceptable behavior at home and at school, and "school-induced" ADHD, should be looked at first before even considering whether or not a child is suffering from ADHD.

Sudbury schools have always taken a skeptical approach to special education diagnoses like ADHD, ADD, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities. The Sudbury philosophy considers the likelihood that such school-induced diagnoses arise when students are forced to learn things that they are not interested in, at a pace set by someone other than themselves. Understandably, many students react to unnatural educational approaches in ways that are negatively perceived by those who advocate for them. Sudbury schools often view children diagnosed with "learning disabilities" in traditional schools as some of the square pegs that simply do not fit into the round hole of standardized curriculum and testing - students fighting to be independent in learning environments where they are continually told what to do and how to view the world. Unless a student has a true disability that does not allow her or him to take responsibility for her or his behavior, the term "learning disability" becomes meaningless in Sudbury schools because students are in charge of their own lives and proceed through activities at their own paces. No one at a Sudbury school is trying to pound our square, pentagonal, and triangular Sudbury kids into the round hole. We value them in all of their shapes and sizes.

Brain development research is in its initial stages, but, with time, DVS is confident that more findings will confirm that allowing children to continue learning in ways that are natural and instinctive to them is what true education is all about. Subjecting students to processes, topics, and timing with disregard for their individual natures and/or choosings is a dying paradigm that DVS is happy to assist in passing.

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.