Voices from the New American Schoolhouse is a film about the Fairhaven School in Maryland, a “free, democratic school” structured around the Sudbury model:

“The starting point for all our thinking was the apparently revolutionary idea that a child is a person, worthy of full respect as a human being. These are simple words with devastatingly complex consequences, chief of which is that the child’s agenda for its own life is as important as anyone else’s agenda—parents, family, friends or even the community. In the school we wanted for our children, their inner needs would have to be given priority in their education at every point.”

Sudbury Valley School Press, The Sudbury Valley Experience (The Sudbury Valley School Press, 1992)

“Voices from the New American Schoolhouse explores life outside the usual educational box. Narrated exclusively by students, the film chronicles life and learning at the Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, MD which practices an undiluted form of freedom and democracy that turns mainstream education theory on its head. Filmmaker Danny Mydlack enjoyed unrestricted access over a two-year period to produce this candid and unblinking encounter with kid-powered learning. This movie is for anyone who ever went to school and imagined something better.”

Visit the “Voices from the New American Schoolhouse” site: here (the full-length film on dvd can be ordered from the website).

More info about the free, democatic schools and their revolutionary approach to education:
Sudbury Education Resource Network
The Fairhaven School
The Sudbury Valley School

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