<p>A free school is a prace where there are a whole rot of<br />

things happening. The kids can come and make a<br />

choice among the things that are happening&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; or make<br />

the choice not to participate. Kids can work with<br />

their hands or work with their minds&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; or work with a<br />

combination of the two. What we try to do is to show<br />

that&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; despite the bad experiences kids have had in<br />

public schools&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; there s a real value in intellectuality.<br />

It is one of the many things that is very interesting and<br />

exciting and fulfilling to people&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; not that it has some<br />

supervalue that makes it somehow superior to every-<br />

thing else. ]t s simply fun to learn about the world and<br />

to think about it&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; to analyze it&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; and to understand<br />

things&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; We try to do the same thing in every other<br />

area -- art&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; science&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; or any activity you like. That s the<br />

kind of atmosphere we like to have&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; think we have&iuml;&frac14;&OElig;<br />

and have had for a couple of years.<br />

People should feel good about what they do every<br />

day. They have to learn to tap their own fantasy lives&iuml;&frac14;&OElig;<br />

to learn to get along well with other people. In other<br />

words&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; learn how to build a community based on love<br />

and human values&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; and based on a sharing of the<br />

earth&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; the plants and animals&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; with other people. I<br />

keep the school going because it s fulfilling for me.<br />

It s an agency of social change in the sense that the<br />

heart of the school is the idea that we could learn to<br />

I~ve together&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; and that we can learn to grow up<br />

together -- children and adults. We can learn to solve<br />

our problems together as people. So I hope a large<br />

number of schools are going to pick up from where<br />

we are and go a lot farther&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; and do a lot of better<br />

things for people involved in those schools. So far&iuml;&frac14;&OElig;<br />

this school has been changing and evolving continu-<br />

ally&iuml;&frac14;&OElig; and I hope that s always the case.</p>