Teddy McArdle Free School

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get involved?

We're looking for interested families, supporters of the free school initiative, volunteers at the school, teaching interns, teachers, students, and just about anyone else who is interested in some aspect of the school! If you're even just curious, please feel free to contact us.

How can I help?

For starters, a free and easy way to help is to download a copy of our flier and hang it up in your neighborhood. PDF Format | MS Word Format

You could also attend one of our regularly scheduled planning meetings listed on the home page to find out in what other ways you could help out. We're always looking for enthusiastic people who could spare even a small amount of their time! If you can't attend one of the meetings, you could also simply contact us.

How do students at this school learn "the basics?"

While there are basic skills necessary for life – reading, arithmetic, and so on, these will come as part of our approach which is focused on the more pressing need: learning how to learn. The real basics are the abilities to make one's own choices about what it is that they want to study and to successfully set out to do so. The Teddy McArdle School empowers children to determine their own learning curriculum and provides a staff that guides and supports them through their pursuits.

Reading, writing, arithmetic, and any other subject deemed necessary in the traditional educational model are learned in a free school through an organic, flexible, and individualistic environment through actual hands-on experiential learning, where the lessons are meaningful because the individual determines them to be so. The benefit of our approach is that learning is truly individualized, not one-size-fits-all. In a world that is quickly changing and has so many different facets and perspectives, it is important not to presume that there is one predetermined set of basic information that everyone must learn.

Once a child has the understanding that they can learn whatever interests them and the self-confidence to actually do so, they are able to pick up any subject matter with ease. The natural curiosity and desire to learn that lie in each and every child and their interactions with the world become their motivations.

What age students does the school serve?

We are accepting students aged 5-14 the first year, with the intention of going through to 18 years of age as the younger students move on in the following years. There is no age segregation at the school, where students are split up into separate grades.

We'll consider younger students if a parent is able to stay with their child or if other arrangements can be made. If students older than 14 are interested in the school, it will be considered on a case by case basis as to whether we'd be willing to enroll them, as it can be tough for students to assimilate to a free school environment if they have experienced a traditional education setting all their lives. Of course, as this is a generalization, we're more than willing to make exceptions in certain cases. Feel free to contact us if you're interested in enrolling at any age.

Where does the school name come from?

Teddy McArdle is a fictional ten year old genius from the J.D. Salinger short story "Teddy," first published in The New Yorker on January 31, 1953. School founder Alex Khost first read the story while in tenth grade at his local public school. As the story goes, Alex was kicked out of an economics class after telling off a teacher for failing him on an opinions essay that contained some controversial opinions (apparently, one was only allowed to write opinions the teacher agreed with). Rather than going to the office as he was told, he went to the library and coincidentally picked up a copy of "Teddy." After he read the following passage from the story, he decided that that was how he was going to run his school one day:

"I think I'd first just assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that . . . I guess, even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's big, I'd make them empty that out. An elephant's only big when it's next to something else--a dog or a lady, for example." Teddy thought another moment. "I wouldn't even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I'd let them just walk up to the elephant not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them. The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way--your way--instead of some other way that may be just as good, and may be much better ... I don't know. I'd just make them vomit up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out of."

"There's no risk you'd be raising a little generation of ignoramuses?"

"Why? They wouldn't any more be ignoramuses than an elephant is. Or a bird is. Or a tree is," Teddy said. "Just because something is a certain way, instead of just behaves a certain way, doesn't mean it's an ignoramus."

"No?"

"No!" Teddy said. "Besides, if they wanted to learn all that other stuff--names and colors and things--they could do it, if they felt like it, later on when they were older. But I'd want them to begin with all the real ways of looking at things, not just the way all the other apple-eaters look at things--that's what I mean."