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The Tom Woods Show

Ep. 1043 Spontaneous Order or Lord of the Flies? An Inside Look at a School That Puts Students in Charge

The Tom Woods Show

Tom Woods

Politics, Economics, Libertarian, Government, News

4.83.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2017

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A promotional video about this school sparked a heated debate among listeners in my private Facebook group. The video describes the school as having no classrooms, tests, or homework, in which the students direct and evaluate themselves, etc. Is this a natural model for libertarians, or is it just plain silly? I talk to a staff member and a student at the school in today's episode.

Show notes for Ep. 1043

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Tom Woods Show, episode 1,043.

0:03.0

Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion.

0:08.0

Your daily dose of Liberty Education starts here, the Tom Woods Show.

0:14.0

Folks, a lot of people shy away from homeschooling because they think they're going to have to run themselves ragged in order to give their kids a decent

0:21.2

education. Not true. Do what I do with my own children and use the self-taught Ron Paul curriculum.

0:27.8

They're going to learn stuff they'll never learn anywhere else, and you can keep your mental health.

0:33.1

Plus get $160 worth of free bonuses from my link only, ronpaulhomeschool.com.

0:40.1

Hello everybody, Tom Woods here. I am joined today by Matthew Joya, who is a staff member

0:46.6

at Hudson Valley Sudbury School in Woodstock, New York. Now, I decided to have him on,

0:53.5

because he sent me a student-made video about what life is like at that particular school.

0:57.9

And I posted that video in my private Facebook group I have for supporting listeners, which you should join that program at supporting listeners.

1:06.0

And such a heated discussion ensued over the course of two days that I thought, I think it's necessary to hash this out.

1:16.2

Let's bring somebody on.

1:17.9

Might as well be Matthew.

1:18.9

He's the one who contacted me.

1:20.3

And talk it through.

1:21.6

Because if you watch the video, it says things like, what if there was a school where there are no classrooms, no tests, no homework, where I could more or less direct my life, and I was in charge, and I knew what was best for me, and all these sorts of things.

1:36.7

So in a way, it sounds like unschooling, which is a term that's come into use in recent years.

1:42.7

And I had some people saying, hooray, this is what all libertarians must support.

1:46.2

And I had other people saying this sounds like a dystopia.

1:49.0

This is a terrible idea.

1:50.7

So I thought, well, first of all, you can't judge an institution by a three-minute video.

...

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