As it turned out, it was exceedingly difficult to find an appropriate site for our neighborhood in the western suburbs, close enough to SVS for a reasonable commute. The zoning laws of the towns out here are designed for large houses on large plots and generally do not allow the kind of clustered neighborhood we were planning to build. We went through many possible sites, several times we thought we had found the right spot, only to be thwarted by technical problems with the site or NIMBY opposition from abutters. In the mean time, our group evolved to include families with other educational philosophies, singles, and older couples whose kids had flown the coop.

Two years ago, we were approached by another cohousing group, Camelot Cohousing, who in turn had been approached by the conservation agency The Sudbury Valley Trustees, who in turn had been approached by the Selectmen of the Town of Berlin, MA. There was a large parcel that used be a tree nursery that was coming up for sale. The town had the right of first refusal on the parcel and did not want a typical subdivision that would turn all that very attractive land into asphalt driveways and large houses. The Sudbury Valley Trustees convinced the selectmen that cohousing was a great solution. As part of the arrangement, the project would fall under the state’s 40B housing law, which would ensure that 25% of the units built would be “affordable” under state guidelines. The selectmen agreed to the plan. Camelot and Mosaic Commons would jointly develop the land, building two separate 34 unit cohousing neighborhoods, and preserving most of the parcel as conservation land.

But before the project could go forward, we would have to get a comprehensive permit from the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals. That process turned out to be much more adversarial and contentious than we had been led to expect. Abutters fiercely argued against our project and the board itself was very skeptical about the merits of our project (and frankly, of our “strange” lifestyle). After two years, however, in what for us is still a stunning turn of events, the ZBA granted us our comprehensive permit this past January and the appeals period just ran out without any appeals having been filed.

So, we are ready to finalize our designs, break ground this summer, and move in to our new homes in the fall of 2008.

There is the obligatory establishment curmudgeon, who says things like “it is not clear to me how they will transition to a structured world and meet the most basic requirements for reading, writing and math” and somewhat scary-sounding things like “as school choice expands and home-schooling in general grows, this is one of those models that I think the larger public sphere needs to be aware of because the folks who are engaging in these radical forms of school are doing so legally. If the public and policy makers don’t feel that this is a form of schooling that is producing productive citizens, then people should vote to make changes accordingly.” (The article does not challenge the presumption that the question of whether unschooling produces productive citizens should be addressed by consulting the feelings of the public and of policy makers, rather than checking in with reality: just find out whether unschooled children actually turn into effective adults — by which I don’t mean standardized testing, as hinted at in the article, but simply checking whether the adults that were unschooled as children now lead productive and enjoyable lives.)

The article does not draw the connection to free schools, such as Sudbury Valley (see also the Wikipedia article on SVS) which is where my children go to school. In my mind, such schools add to the unschooling idea the advantage of giving the children a space of their own (I am suspicious of the power structures involved in homeschooling) and a much more complex social environment than they face in their own home.

BTW, there is an Associated Press article on the Brooklyn Free School, which is being picked up by many news outlets around the nation, such as the MetroWest Daily News. Today, an abbreviated version appeared in the Boston Globe.

Is it nature or is it nurture, heredity or society? In that great debate of our time, conservatives lean toward the former and liberals toward the latter.

I believe both are asking the wrong question. I believe it’s nature and nurture, and this is why.

I didn’t go to school until I was 12 or so. My parents thought that traveling in a house trailer was as enlightening as sitting in a classroom, so I escaped being taught some of the typical lessons of my generation: for instance, that this country was “discovered” when the first white man set foot on it, that boys and girls were practically different species, that Europe deserved more textbook space than Africa and Asia combined.

Instead, I grew up seeing with my own eyes, following my curiosity, falling in love with books, and growing up mostly around grown-ups — which, except for the books, was the way kids were raised for most of human history.

Needless to say, school hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t prepared for gender obsessions, race and class complexities, or the new-to-me idea that war and male leadership were part of human nature. Soon, I gave in and became an adolescent hoping for approval and trying to conform. It was a stage that lasted through college.

[…]

Since then, I’ve spent decades listening to kids before and after social roles hit. Faced with some inequality, the younger ones say, “It’s not fair!” It’s as if there were some primordial expectation of empathy and cooperation that helps the species survive. But by the time kids are teenagers, social pressures have either nourished or starved this expectation. I suspect that their natural cry for fairness — or any whisper of it that survives — is the root from which social justice movements grow.

So I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe that a unique core self is born into every human being — the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

The truth is, we’ve been seduced into asking the wrong question by those who hope that the social order they want is inborn, or those who hope they can write the one they want on our uniquely long human childhoods.

But the real answer is a balance between nature and nurture. What would happen if we listened to children as much as we talked to them? Or what would happen if even one generation were raised with respect and without violence?

I believe we have no idea what might be possible on this “Space Ship Earth.”