Changing Schools Section Special THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION The Magazine of the ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION RESOURCE ORGANIZATION (Formerly AERO-gramme) Fall 2000: $4.95 #30 www.EDREV.org IDEC IN JAPAN! (International Democratic Education Conference) Jessie Jacson Summit • New Public Alternatives Organization 900 Homeschoolers Camp at the Sea • New Gatto Book 1 CONTENTS: BIGGEST EVER IDEC HELD IN JAPAN By Ian Warder ............................................................................................... The EFFE Conference in Denmark ............................................................................................................................. 30th Annual INTERNATIONAL ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION CONFERENCE ................................................................. National Summit on Zero-Tolerance Organized by Jesse Jackson ........................................................................... Mail and Communications Edited by Carol Morley ................................................................................................... Home Education News .............................................................................................................................................. Public Alternatives, Charter School News, Other Public Alternatives ..................................................................... International News and Communications: England, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Nor- way, Scotland ............................................................................................................................................................ Alumni Stories The War Years at Summerhill, By Peter Kyng .................................................................................. Teachers, Jobs, and Internships ................................................................................................................................ Conferences .............................................................................................................................................................. CHANGING SCHOOLS SECTION ................................................................................................................................ IMPROMPTU DEMOCRACY: : The Home Education Seaside Festival in Charmouth, England ................................. INTERVIEW WITH HENNING DOCHWEILER, OF ASKOV FOLK HIGH SCHOOL, DENMARK ....................................... The Danish Education System, by Robert Powell ..................................................................................................... A Brief History of the School of Living by Rita Jane Leasure ................................................................................... Book Reviews ............................................................................................................................................................ The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto................................................................. Saharasia, by James DeMeo ..................................................................................................................................... Challenging the Giant: Volume IV, By Mary Leue ...................................................................................................... Homeschool Your Child For Free, By LauraMaery Gold & Joan M. Zielinski............................................................ Reflections on the Sudbury School Concept ............................................................................................................ Edited by Mimsy Sadofsky & Daniel Greenberg ....................................................................................................... A Clearer View .......................................................................................................................................................... by Daniel Greenberg ................................................................................................................................................. Starting a Sudbury School ........................................................................................................................................ by Mimsy Sadofsky & Daniel Greenberg .................................................................................................................. Creating Learning Communities, From A Coalition for Self Learning ...................................................................... My Friend Lenny, A Memoir of my Life in Music, with personal stories about Leonard Bernstein, Mike Wallace, Paul Simon and others, By Ouida Blatt Mintz ........................................................................................................... The Education Revolution The Magazine of the Alternative Education Resource Organization (Formerly AERO-gramme) 417 Roslyn Rd., Roslyn Heights, NY 11577 ISSN # 10679219 phone: 516-621-2195 or 800-769-4171 fax: 516-625-3257 e-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.edrev.org Editor: Jerry Mintz Design Editor: Albert Lamb & John Kaiser Mail and Communications Editor: Carol Morley Director of Information and Communications: Steve Rosenthal Printed by: Sir Speedy Printing, New Hyde Park, New York Webmaster: Peter Christopher ADVISORY BOARD Alexander Adamsky, Mary Addams, Chris Balch, Fred Bay, Patrice Creve, Anne Evans, Patrick Farenga, Phil Gang, John Gatto, Herb Goldstein, Dan Greenberg, Josh Hornick, Jeffrey Kane, Albert Lamb, Dave Lehman, Mary Leue, Ron Miller, Pat Montgomery, Ann Peery, John Potter, Mary Anne Raywid, John Scott, Tim Seldin, Elina Sheppel, Andy Smallman, Sidney Solomon, Nick Stanton, Corinne Steele, Tom Williams 2 Introduction to this issue This is our 30th issue. AERO is now ten years old. In the three month period covered by this issue I did more traveling than I ever did before, perhaps because there is more going on in educational alternatives than ever before. During this time I participated in • the Home Education Seaside Festival in England, with over 900 home educators camped out by the sea for a week • a one week stint as Summerhill • participation in the European Forum for Freedom in Education in Denmark, • a trip to the Mohawk reservation at Akwesasne to study how the Native-run schools we first helped them pioneer in 1971 were doing • a summit on Zero Tolerance in Washington, D.C, hosted by Jesse Jackson, v participation in the International Alternative Education Conference in Minnesota, primarily public alternatives • participation in the International Democratic Education Conference in Japan, with students and teachers from at least 15 countries. The Mohawk story will be covered in the next issue. We tried to cover as much of this as possible in this issue. We hope you enjoy it. Please give us feedback. JM “From Typhoon to Eclipse in Japan” hen we arrived in Japan it was raining and we union. discovered that we actually arrived at the This was the largest IDEC conference yet. To help W beginning of a typhoon. We were worried that democratic schools from low income areas come to the IDEC, some of the participants wouldn’t be able to come because of Kageki Asakura said that he raised $100,000 from foundations. that, but luckily the typhoon went north of us. Then on the last This did not include the $20,000 that we raised through AERO day of the post-conference, twelve days later, there was a total from the Edwards Foundation. The total budget for the lunar eclipse. In a sense maybe all of us who are working for conference was $250,000. The Tokyo Shure students had raised a revolution in education are now in the middle of turmoil, about $10,000 through fundraising events during the year; but in the end, the symbolism will be that our kind of education the rest of it was from income that was generated by the will eclipse the old education. conference itself. Schools from England, USA, Germany, To many of the people who came from outside the country, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Guatemala, Thailand, the conference at first seemed overly structured, over- Korea, Philippines, India, and several from Japan participated organized, and consisted of the talking-head type of approach in this year’s IDEC. where you had a speaker at the front and then people just To prepare for next year’s conference AERO is planning listening. In retrospect it seems that the purpose of early part to work with the people putting on next year’s IDEC. We of the conference was to promote alternative education in Japan hope to quickly produce a good website and do everything and to get publicity for this idea and to demonstrate it for else we can to help develop the IDEC network over the next Japanese people. The idea was that the latter part of the few months. Any suggestions or offers of help are welcome. conference would be for the participants to communicate with We appreciate the following notes by Summerhill staff member each other. Ian Warder. JM One of the highlights, on the evening of the 14th, was a beautifully laid out final party with all kinds of food piled up and the inspirational singing and dancing of an Israeli song, the translation of which means “Peace Everyone,” with Israelis and Palestinians, among others, singing and dancing. One of the most impressive participants was Amin, a 15 your old “working child” who lives in the Delhi train station and survives by picking bottles. When he’s earned enough