BY CAROL McNAIR
FOR CITYBEAT
May/June 1997

The Circle School and others like it have been written about before. It is one of the democratic schools - those joyfully cumbersome places where education is a byproduct of passionate pursuits; where all are accorded equality and a voice in the running of the community. These alternative schools are generally written about as curiosities. Their advocates are enthusiastic. Their detractors can be incredibly vitriolic. The mere notion of these schools has been the cause of more than one strain in family relationships. What is the big deal?

The cause of the furor is the premise that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of dreams. Not a new idea? No, but in this case, the rights apply to all people - including CHILDREN!! Therein lies the "big deal."

The Circle School is a small private democratic school located in an old refurbished orphanage infirmary building on Oakleigh Avenue in Harrisburg. About 28 students and 4 faculty pursue education and dreams and excellence there. Some students are doing three-dimensional modeling on a high-powered sophisticated computer. Others are studying music and the arts. Each person is encouraged to pursue his or her dream: the learning of reading, writing, mathematics, history or whatever is all pursuant to the achievement of that dream. To some it looks like play.

There is not much new here, either. Before the "little red schoolhouse," before universities, before all career learning was turned into public education, children were taught by family members, neighbors, and other people with more experience. They became apprentices to blacksmiths and carpenters. Others "read the law" with established professionals and then became attorneys themselves. Learning was a natural outgrowth of the dream of "What I want to be when I grow up." Older people were the experienced figures to whom one attached oneself to learn what one needed to know. That's precisely how they learn at The Circle School.

The Circle School is a microcosm of American society. It is the dream of democracy in all its guises. There are, corporations that run profit-making, ongoing programs and manage large chunks of the school - such as the Cooking Corp., the Library Corp. and the Computer Corp. - which oversee the maintenance, purchase and operations of their segment of the community.

There are governing bodies as in every democracy and as in every democracy, there are bureaucrats and rules and the endless negotiations that go with them. The school meeting, which takes place on Wednesdays is reminiscent of a New England town meeting. The clumsy and wonderful process of proposal and compromise goes on here with the precision of Robert's Rules of Order and the tedium of the legislative process.

There is a book of laws - sort of a "uniform code of Circle School justice." It is the codification of this small society's standards of conduct. One law is about a set of extremely large blocks. It describes how high they may be stacked, how one may jump from them, and in general, describes safe ways with which they should be played. This law, and all of the big thick book's contents, was painstakingly and thoughtfully formulated over the years by the school meeting through legislative interaction. The laws are equally applied to five year olds and those who are in their forties and beyond. And the laws, unlike "rules," are not just enforced; they are backed by logic, followed through common understanding, and applied with the use of policing, lawyering and a court process.

The Circle School is as much an experiment as democracy is in our larger society. Many are fearful that children who are free to learn on their own terms will run amok - that there needs to be a set of royal faculty to rule their learning. They are fearful of true democracy - the idea that people through consensus can govern themselves and find their own dreams. And this debate, as all political debates, will continue.

Meanwhile, in a small school in Harrisburg, scholars are at play.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:One of the joyful truths of living in this country is that most people who don't live here, think we are all crazy. A superficial glance at The Circle School is a little like a superficial look at the United States. The casual observer of both will see unbridled freedom. What the observer does not see is the work that went into the ability to be free: revolutionary thinking and the willingness to trust that free people will work both alone and in concert toward goals that will profit that community, over the long haul. I believe, that these children, by the very nature of the process they experience here, are learning the resilience it: takes to cope in the real world that changes daily. They are learning to handle freedom.

THANKS TO ALL THE CIRCLE SCHOOL PEOPLE who helped me: Shandra Neidich, Jim Rietmulder, Ariel Douglass, Jamie Tyrrell, Joanna Bodnyk, Daniel Hodgson, Tesia Koser, dee Vogt, Catherine Bodnyk, Somers Intrieri, Jancey Rietmulder-Stone, Michael Wenzel, and Cheryl Slavinsky.

Reprinted by permission.  MAY/JUNE 1997 CityBeat