The Brooklyn Free School

Location: Brooklyn, New York

The Brooklyn Free School (BFS) practices the principles of democratic education in a small school setting with a diverse group of youth and families from the surrounding Brooklyn and New York City neighborhoods. The school strives to provide a multi-disciplinary, reality-based/project-based and applied learning approach to further the student's understanding and appreciation of interests that they are pursuing. While an independent school, BFS offers a sliding scale tuition to make the school affordable for all interested families.

Highlights:

Mission:
The Brooklyn Free School places the highest emphasis on the personal development of each student and seeks to minimize, or if possible eliminate completely, undue influence, pressure and stress that accrue from expectations on students to acquire the accepted wisdom of present day society or meet arbitrary standards, so that each child can become an independent learner and thinker.

The school will spread the news about the effectiveness of democratic/free schooling in the New York area to promote the growth of non-coercive education throughout the country and the world.


Features of Brooklyn Free School:

• self-directed and project-based learning
• strong advising system
• youth involvement in decision-making
• multi-age groupings
• small school setting

Links:

• Brooklyn Free School (website) - http://brooklynfreeschool.org/

Submitted by Dana Bennis on: Sunday, February 06, 2011 - 3:56 pm

Tags for this entry:
leadership, engagement, diversity, project-based learning