FREE
FOR ALL
Ron Miller, author of Free Schools,
Free People: Education and Democracy After the 1960s. These
free schools were often in obscure
locations with minimal resources,
like abandoned dry cleaners, public parks and churches.
“1972 was about the peak year,
a sense that a real revolution was
happening in education,” Miller
said. “Not only were there these
hundreds of independent free
schools, but even in public education, people were pushing for
open classrooms.”
But that initial surge faded,
quashed by the Nixon administration’s strict education policies, Miller said, and most of the
schools closed. Now 30 years later,
the movement is revving up again,
though it remains mostly private in
the United States. Education Revolution, a website of alternative
education resources, lists more
than 100 free schools. Most are in
blue states, but some have spread
into the red ones, like the Great
Oak School in Spring, Texas, and
the Farm School in Summertown,
Tenn. In New York, Brooklyn Free
School paved the way for the Manhattan Free School, which opened
in 2008. There are other free
schools all over the world, includ-
HUFFINGTON
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ing Palestine, Indonesia and Egypt.
Miller lamented that today’s
American free schools still generally cater more to middle- and
up W"