Between Pre-school and College

Q: What do 4-year-olds and college students have in common?
A: Both learn without compulsion or coersion, and enjoy it!

The motivation for the creation of this school is this trio of observations:

1. Young children who have not yet been exposed to compulsory education exhibit both a capacity and a desire to learn and discover the nature of the world around them, without prompting by adults. Children usually enjoy the early stages of schooling, such as pre-school and kindergarten, which incorporate significant amounts of unstructured or play-based activity.
2. Children frequently dislike the coercive aspects of school, especially as they get older. It is common for children who are compelled to attend classes to resort to expressing their resentment by disrupting instruction, destroying school property, or leveling personal attacks at school staff. Adults least associated with the mechanisms of compulsion (coaches, counselors, sympathetic teachers) are often "exempt" from such effects.
3. Young adults typically re-discover a love for learning in non-compulsory higher education. Many people identify college as the best years of their lives. It is here that they do the most learning, grow to maturity, and discover their dreams.

From these observations we conclude that the compulsory aspect of conventional education transforms learning from a joyful act of discovery to an onerous chore, and creates an intrinsically adversarial relationship between teachers and students.

The Open School fills the gap.

The Open School of Rochester is a non-compulsory environment where children can explore any and all aspects of human knowledge. Children can spend the day selecting and pursuing their own activities; they have the opportunity to obtain instruction from other people with a wide variety of knowledge, skills, and interests. A distinguishing feature of the Open School is that we make available to our students a menu of offerings in terms of courses, contacts, guest speakers, and hosts for off-site activities. To this end, the school seeks contacts in the community to supplement that which our teachers can provide.

Our facility will support a wide range of experiences including, but not limited to, independent study, free play, group lessons, domestic activities, outdoor exploration, and ongoing projects. The school facility will include classrooms where courses may be offered by staff teachers, guest instructors, and self-educating groups of students. Just as children in pre-industrial cultures learn from daily observation of adults going about their own work, we feel it is important to have adults as part of the school community who are pursuing their own projects. Teachers will be instructors, mentors, and models of lifelong learning, as they pursue their own disciplines.

For more about our methods, see the "About us" page.