MON 12 MAY :: 6:00->7:30pm @ MUCS
2000 Northcliffe #218 (use the side entrance)
Across from Metro Vendome
*The movie will start quite promptly at 6:15, and finish in time for
discussion over dinner, ($2-6 donation suggested for food, yum,
$0 if you’re broke)*
About the Movie
Free to Learn is a 70 minute documentary that offers a “fly on the wall”
perspective of the daily happenings at The Free School in Albany, New
York. Like many of today’s radical and democratic schools, The Free School
expects children to decide for themselves how to spend their days.
The Free School, however, is unique in that it transcends obstacles that
prevent similar schools from reaching a economically and racially diverse
range of students and operates in the heart of an inner-city neighborhood.
For over thirty years in perhaps the most radical experiment in American
education, this small inner-city alternative school has offered its
students complete freedom over their learning. There are no mandatory
classes, no grades, tests, or homework, and rules are generally avoided.
As a last resort, rules are created democratically by students and
teachers, often at the prompting of a student. At a time when our
educators are mandated to march forward with no child left behind, the
students of the Free School, many of whom would have fallen through the
cracks of today’s failing public school system, have managed to slip out
of education’s back door and have run away free.
Free to Learn follows a handful of these children courageously meeting the
daily challenges of hope, acceptance, loss, friendship, conflict, and the
difficult task of deciding, for themselves, what to do with each day.