臺灣瑟谷教育推廣協會
Sudbury Taiwan: Practicing Democratic Education in New Democracy
One of the founders of the Taiwan Sudbury, Angela Utschig, gave a speech at the IDEC 2024 (International Democratic Education Conference) where she shared her team's experience in implementing the Sudbury education model in Taiwan.
The Sudbury model is the most flexible educational approach, with the first Sudbury school, Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968 in Massachusetts, USA by Daniel Greenberg, Hanna Greenberg, and Mimsy Sadofsky. It admits children aged 4 to 18 who are capable of self-care and expressing their opinions and needs. Today, there are over 50 Sudbury-model schools around the world, with thousands of students graduating from Sudbury schools and entering society.
The two core principles of the Sudbury model are self-directed learning and democratic governance.
Students are fully responsible for their own education and learning. The school organizes mixed-age activities, does not pre-arrange any curriculum, and has no fixed learning domains. Students mainly acquire knowledge through self-directed learning, social interactions, and play. The adult staff members provide assistance only when students actively request it.
Based on the belief in the inherent goodness of human nature, the balance between freedom, equality, and responsibility, the school is governed democratically by a school meeting consisting of all students and staff. They establish rules to protect individual freedoms, and these rules are upheld by a peer judicial system.
In the school meeting, every student and staff member has an equal vote.
Taiwan's first Sudbury school was founded in October 2021 in the Huayuan Xincheng community in New Taipei City. It was established as an experimental education institute and retains the three main characteristics of the Sudbury model: democratic governance, self-directed learning, and mixed-age groups. In addition to New Taipei City, there are also Sudbury-model-based communities in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung.
