Do you trust your child?

During your childhood, you probably had a series of Teachers who were responsible for your education, from Pre-school through to Secondary school. You are probably grateful for their role in teaching you, guiding you, and inspiring you. So grateful that you, like most adults alive today, cannot even imagine education without adults being in charge of it.

As children, we were not trusted to be in charge of our education. And when we grew up to be adults, we don't know how to trust our children to be in charge of their education - we can't even imagine what it looks like. You would be forgiven for thinking we must be crazy to even suggest it (we thought it was crazy when we first heard about it too 🙈).

And that is why, when discussing shortcomings in education and finding solutions for them, it is taken for granted that adults will be in charge.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

There are thousands of children around the world who are directing their own education - either individually (usually referred to as Unschoolers) or collectively (under a variety of names including Sudbury schools, Free Schools, Agile Learning Centers, Liberated Learners and Democratic Schools). In Sri Lanka, we are the first, and still only, Democratic School and have been in operation since January 2021.

Are you ready to trust your child?