Are you an autistic graduate of a democratic school?

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Hi all, I'm a disability studies student at UCLA.

For my disability studies capstone project I'm exploring whether democratic education (like Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts) is a viable alternative to public education for autistic students. I'm interested in finding if there are any autistic graduates of a democratic school in the Wrong Planet forums who would like to be interviewed about their experiences.

Thank you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY

Is this what you mean?

My college was very "liberal." Does that count?

@bleh12345 What a cool kid! His talk has the same spirit as democratic schools I would say, but what he's talking about sounds more like unschooling. Democratic education is like unschooling in that everyone gets to determine their own curriculum; however unlike unschooling the location is at an actual school, instead of the student's house. So, while Logan's school is based at home (although he notes that he branches out to other areas of the community like Starbucks and his internship), a democratic education would be based at a building where many students would meet. Basing the education at a "school" allows students to meet other students, share ideas, and collaborate.

@zer0netgain lol, not really Plus I'm looking at secondary and primary education, not post-secondary.

Sudbury schools was a previous special interest of mine.

I hope you are able to locate some people. It sounds like an interesting project.

I've never heard of this kind of democratic school before so I just looked it up.

Interesting that everyone learns to read on their own. Compare that to immigrants who come here (or us when we go elsewhere) who have so much trouble learning or even speaking a foreign language. I wonder how much of that is loss of plasticity of the brain and how much is just us thinking we can't learn it.

I'm curious though - don't all schools and home-schoolers for that matter have to pass some government bench mark every year to ensure that the kids are meeting the government's idea of a good education? IF they don't have any formal learning in these schools and the kids can do what they want, how do the accomplish that?

@screen_name I find the schools fascinating too! I hope one day I can go visit one and observe or something Thanks!

@wozeree As far as the government benchmarks, I think that because the schools are private schools, they are exempt from that sort of testing, but I could be wrong. I'm actually going to be speaking with a staff member at a democratic school this Saturday (hopefully) so I will ask him and get back to you.

Nah, I dropped* out of the typical authoritarianism type.

*I like to think "escaped" is a better term than "dropped out"

This is a topic that I am very interested in. I am currently launching a co-op among unschool families that will be democratic in nature. We would like it to eventually be a M-F school. Most of us have kids that are on the spectrum. We aren't quite sure what to anticipate and would love to hear about your research. So far we have not found very much info about ASD and democratic schools.