Beyond Free Schools: Community
(Page 2 of 11)
November/December 1970
By Jerry Friedberg
Financially, as with so much else, our guiding principles were madness and trust. We began with some support from Bensalem (in the form of salaries for myself and one other person), less than half of what we would need even barely to survive one year. If we failed to raise about $23,000 more, the staff would be out jobs and the parents and children who eventually came into the venture would be out a school. But surely, it seemed, it would have been a worthwhile experience even if we failed financially. In the end lots of people worked very hard, and the money was raised. Lorillard continues.
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Whatever money came in went into the common pot. Each of us drew from it for our personal wants and needs as he saw fit. We all decided together about school expenditures. We cared deeply for one another and the school, and so gave and took without question or explanation.
Never once did the eight of us who were the original staff, nor the six others who eventually came to join us, get into a money hassle. And, as far as I can tell, no one ever abused the complete freedom we each had to take what we wanted. On the contrary, Hop and John P. went into debt rather than draw from the school for certain personal expenses, and Marge had lots of trouble allowing herself a new dress. Everyone bent over backwards to help make ends meet, and it felt great to be risking and trusting that way together.
We worked like crazy. We had to learn about environmental design, community politics, laws and mores of city and state bureaucracies, fund raising, parent education, the street, lots of subject matter we got into with the kids and—most important—a great deal about ourselves . . . all in addition to Cuisinaire rods, approaches to reading, child psychology and the rest of what normally goes into teacher education programs. The learning was alive and vital because we had enormous responsibility for everything. It was ours, and it mattered to us.
We operated without any rules. There were no formal duties, penalties, hierarchies or ways of enforcing anything even if somebody wanted to. Decision making was communal, by consensus. We never once took a vote or felt moved in that direction. We operated, rather, on the basis of personal encounter, dealing with our feelings as they emerged, working through our differences and confronting our angers, fears, frustrations and joys.
It helped that some of us had had experience with encounter groups, Gestalt therapy and related approaches. Once a week whoever wanted to—generally most everybody—went to a Gestalt-encounter group led by a fine professional who helped us get at some of our deeper difficulties.
The style which developed permitted no easy refuge in theories, abstract commitments or rules, but demanded personal and fairly constant contact. That the process had developed organically over a full year and had clearly worked reinforced the trust on which it was based. Sure; it was excruciatingly painful at times and far less convenient and secure than having a rule book or hierarchy or majority rule to fall back upon. But, with the difficulty and vulnerability came a sense of much growing and being more real.
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