A Visit To The School For Self-Determination in Moscow, Russia

Click on writing link to left, to see the index to all the parts. You are viewing part II.

Nov 10th, 10pm

Now I am at Liliana’s house. Ilya and I spent most of the day together today. I was planning to be at Tubelsky’s school already during the day but we called the school this morning and Tubelsky is out of town until tomorrow or Wednesday and had not told anyone about my visit. Finally after many phone calls throughout the day, Ilya was able to arrange for me to stay with Liliana, an English teacher at Tubelsky’s school. This well be a great place for me to be this week. She has taught at Tubelsky’s school for thirteen years, and her son attended the school for the first ten of those. He’s twenty-one now and lives here.

November 11, 2003, 5pm

Today at lunch, I ate too much school food. The borscht soup was great, and I’m glad I ate it. The raw carrots as well. But on top of these good choices, I mounted the error of “mystery grains” that seem to have had some buckwheat (I’m allergic) and “pancakes” of white flower. As a consequence of overeating, and particularly due to the buckwheat, my system is not happy right now. It will pass, of course. It is indeed passing right through me. My body does not like to hold its buckwheat.

This afternoon, Anglina and I spent several hours running between two bureaucratic agencies trying to get me some specific “registration” stamps to go along with my visa in my passport. This is insane. The hostel that gave me the original invitation two days ago claimed they would only give me one day worth of registration because I had only paid for one night at the hostel. That didn’t seem indicated to me by the internet page when I paid (The Russian embassy in Paris had required me to have a faxed reservation from some hotel in order to issue the visa). I wasn’t going to offer to pay for two weeks of not staying at the hostel, so I just took my one day of registration and left. Liliana apparently believes my lack of proper registration could be a major problem for me. She thinks I may have to pay a fine if a policeman spontaneously insists I produce my registration one day, and that I will almost certainly have to pay a fine at the airport when I leave the country. I am not particularly scared. I don’t find worrying about authorities or catering to their stupidities worth much energy. We’ll see how all this plays out.

November 12th, 4pm

This morning I called the US embassy and heard their opinion, that I would not have major problems leaving at the airport. Like everyone, they said that the police might detain me several hours and fine me if they by chance pick me out to view my papers. Two days ago, Ilya traded hats with me, so now I think I look sufficiently Russian to reduce the chances of this. Perhaps that is why she suggested the trade.

Ilya seems more concerned about her appearance than she was two years ago. It seems to be part of a general trend of self-consciousness – stopping to look in a mirror, which I don’t imagine her ever doing before, looking at other people (especially her peers) for approval, discouraging me from being silly.

We played chess the other day. I made a mistake and would have lost but she let me take it back. Then she made a mistake and would have lost but I let her take it back. Then we had a draw. I am glad about the result. We were evenly matched at chess before, and it seems that we still are.

She used to say that one of her gifts in life was to believe. Is it still true? She also told me that her other gift is to forgive. Could I?

Jerry Mintz attended Goddard College some forty years ago. Even before he had graduated, he had been instrumental in starting several schools. He ran his own school in Vermont for many years, a private school called Shaker Mountain. As I said yesterday, he now runs an organization called the Alternative Education Resource Organization. For the past twenty years, he has been consciously pursuing a three-part plan:

locate all the educational alternatives in the world
get those educational alternatives in communication with each other
publicize those educational alternatives to everyone else in the world

His work started with part I, then continued adding in part II (when I met him in 1996), and now he is also well into part III. This past year, one of the focuses of Jerry’s attention was The International Democratic Education Conference, held in the U.S. this year for the first time. The conference has been held for about a dozen years in assorted countries. This was my first time attending.

At this recent conference, this past August (2003), I was reunited with Tubelsky and Olga, the two educators I had met two years prior at Tubelsky’ house. I don’t know why we call Tubelsky by his last name and Olga by her first name, but it seems to be the case in these circles so I am blindly following convention. According to folklore, Tubelsky had originally met Olga when Olga (along with her father) was developing a model called “Park Schooling.” Tubelsky invited her to create a prototype of park schooling in his school, and so she started working there.

Two years ago, that prototype was fully functional. As Olga explained that system to me in Tubelsky’s small apartment, in park schooling students were able to switch from class to class at any time – between class periods, during class periods – and even to play on the jungle gym in the hall as much as they liked. The system sounded a lot like Summerhill, and indeed she cited A.S. Neill’s book as one of her inspirations. Olga then moved on to other education work in Moscow, and although Tubelsky at first thought the “Park of Open Studios” at his school would have to end without its inspirational leader, he allowed it to continue under the leadership of another teacher.

When I met Olga and Tubelsky this year at the IDEC conference, I asked, “Was it true, as Jerry said, that at Tubelsky’s school, every one of the 1000 students has the constitutional right to leave any class at any time?” Although Olga speaks good English, and answered quite clearly that it was true, I remained skeptical. I decided I wanted to see for myself whether what they were saying was true or wishful thinking. So I asked Tubelsky whether I could come visit this fall. And here I am.

Olga met me at Tubelsky’s school two days ago. It was her first time there in a year and she was very curious to see how things have changed. First, we went to the library and media center. The library looked typical for a school, though no kids were there. The media center was a classroom with four computers, all turned on. No kids were there either. I think those are the only computers that can be used by kids in the school. It wasn’t clear why no kids were there – was it because kids in Moscow don’t like computers, or because they had to be elsewhere? Usually it seems very hard to keep kids away from computers.

Then we walked to the gym, where we saw many students of different ages working in small groups with little supervision. They were shooting baskets, doing gymnastics, playing assorted ball games. They seemed to be in very good order. Outside the doors to the gym, there were some benches for waiting. Olga pointed out that there was also a bookshelf so students who waited there could read if they chose. There were lots of books on the bookshelf, but at that time no waiting or reading kids. All the kids were in the gym. The gym teacher showed us small tally cards that some students had been using to record their achievements.

We continued our tour. There were a lot of students who recognized Olga, and in particular several older students seemed very respectful of her and at the same time informal with her. We then entered one classroom of younger students where we were able to silently slip to the back of the room without interrupting. Olga gave me commentary on what was going on. It was a history lesson, and the history of two cities was being compared. Olga pointed out both things she liked and things she didn’t like about the classroom. For instance, at one point, she said “Just now, the teacher asked a question about one city, and that child gave the answer that was correct for the other city – so the teacher accepted his answer and wrote it down on the side where it belonged, then continued to look for the answer she had originally sought, without criticizing the child.” Another time, she pointed to a child and said, “That child is absent. He is thinking of something else, what is he doing here? It would be better if he were not here. I think things may have changed here. I think there may be a lot of pressure on children to stay in class, whereas it should be fine if they want to leave.”

Olga also brought me to a school meeting. The meeting was organized by the highschool teachers, and all the highschool students were present, but none of the younger students. We all sat down in chairs in the seating area for the school theater, a cold room. A plump woman with red hair stood up and spoke at length looking quite concerned. Olga explained that something had gone wrong near the school and that this was just an informational meeting. Apparently, over the recent holiday, some students from St. Petersburg had stayed at the school and one or more of them had been beaten up right outside the school. No one actually suspected the students from Tubelsky’s school of having participated or even having any knowledge of it. After the plump woman with the red hair, several students also spoke. It seemed like an open forum, but I’m not sure.

Olga mentioned to me that one of her first impressions about the school when she had first visited the school many years ago was that the classrooms seemed authoritarian, yet the students seemed mature and interested in learning – an uncommon combination. Then she said that she had spoken with several other teachers a few moments earlier during a smoking break and expressed her concern that there seemed to be too much pressure on students to attend and stay in classes, particularly in the “Park of Open Studios” classrooms that were supposedly designed around a different philosophy. Apparently they said they might be interested in talking with her at greater length about that and she said that if they planned a time and invited her, that she would come.

That was when I realized that the large school of one thousand students was broken down into many smaller schools with different expectations, staff, and students, though all united. It wasn’t a complete division like two countries, more like two counties cooperating in a mutual state. And I also realized that although students might have the constitutional right to choose their subschool, and within some of the subschools, to not attend classes, that did not necessarily mean that they would do so.

Yesterday Liliana and I were able to talk about her practice and philosophy as it relates to Tubelsky’s school, as we walked to the metro. One thing we talked about was Olga’s Park of Open Studios. Liliana said that she is particularly at odds with the ideas of Park Schooling. “Olga had asked me several times to teach English courses for Park Schooling, but I said that I would not be willing to do it if students are able to leave in the middle of the class or even in the middle of the semester. Olga said that was not possible, and so I never did teach in Park Schools while Olga was here. But now it is more flexible, and for my one course I do teach in Park Schooling, the new director of Park Schooling has agreed that I can insist the students remain in class. They can choose it or not at the beginning of the year. But once they have chosen it, they have to stick with it. So, you see, I am not a very good example of the teachers at Tubelsky’s school. There are people who agree with Olga and Tubelsky on those things, but I don’t.”

(Writing that reminds me that Olga and I sat in for ten minutes of Liliana’s English Park Schooling class. Olga pointed out that there was a word that the students didn’t understand, but Liliana had not caught it. She said she thinks it is because Liliana is not used to Park Schooling. I said to Olga, “I think the students also have some responsibility when they don’t know a word, to speak up instead of hiding it, particularly for park schooling.” She agreed.)

Once we had boarded the metro train, Liliana said to me, “Yes, Tubelsky and I agree on some things, but disagree on a lot of other things. I do a lot of his translating for him, so I am very familiar with his philosophy. But he doesn’t take me with him to conferences in Russia or abroad because he knows I will disagree with him. I know my job is safe at his school, and I value the atmosphere there of being able to design my own curriculum. There are teachers at the school who value his philosophy more than I do.”

I waited patiently, indicating I wanted her to continue. “You see,” she said, “Tubelsky’s philosophy is that it is more important to teach a person how to use a dictionary than to spell. He thinks it is more important to teach a student how to find out information than to teach the information itself. I disagree with that. I say, Tubelsky went to a traditional school like I did, and he turned out fine, so what is the need for a change?

“Tell me, Peter, what is your definition of alternative school?”

I waited patiently again, giving her a chance to keep talking if she didn’t care my opinion. But she also waited patiently, so I answered.

“I don’t think in terms of one simple question, whether a school is alternative or not. I think there are many individual schools, and they should all be different because the people who spend time there are different. But I do have things I consider when I visit schools. I try to learn whether people lie at the school. Do teachers lie? Do students lie?”

Liliana interrupted, “But everyone lies.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“Do you sometimes keep your opinion to yourself?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. I do not necessarily consider that lying. It would be lying if I say I have revealed my opinion but have not. However, I do not consider it lying just to keep my opinion private.

“Another important question at schools is whether people are learning, and whether they are happy. And here is another question. If a small group of people – students or teachers – comes up with a proposal for how to spend their time at the school, what is the response? One possible response is for an authority to discourage or ban the proposed activity. Another possible response is to welcome it and for the authority – a teacher or administrator or school council – to be so excited by the proposal to work with the small group. Another possible response is to allow the activity, but not to participate with it. I think all these responses have their place. If a school has all of one type of response, I think there is some kind of problem. The right answer will depend on all the people involved.”

Then we had to get out of the subway and visited yet one more Russian bureaucratic office. The job of the people at these offices is to approve visas and registrations. But their interest is not to help people. Their interest is to make someone else at some other office actually stamp the document. This would be fine if there existed a correct location for the stamps to get authorized. But there is no such place. There are many such places, and whoever stamps the document is laying his job on the line by indicating that I am safe, when it is impossible to guarantee such a thing. Nobody wants to do their job, because it is in their interest to have someone else do the job instead. And if they can find any possible excuse to avoid doing their job, they consider it sufficient grounds to be able to refuse helping us. These Russians are just as obstinate as they were when fighting Napoleon. They refuse to surrender; they refuse to learn. They will die clutching their stupid system around their own necks. On the other hand, perhaps things have gotten better over the past 50 years here and life is made of slow progress. Fifty years ago it would have been impossible for me to visit the country, and socially unacceptable for anyone to even talk about inviting me. According to Liliana, just ten years ago Ilya might have been expelled from her University because I visited her dorm room. (It is one of the most prestigious science Universities in the country.)