Free To Learn www.freeschoolmovie.com

A documentary by Bhawin Suchak and Jeff Root

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University of Ottawa
Friday November 2, 2007
Screening begins 19h00
Venue: University of Ottawa, MacDonald Hall Auditorium (MCD 146), 150 Louis Pasteur Street, Ottawa, Ontario

USA/2006/70 Minutes/ English

Free to Learn is a 70 minute documentary that offers a "fly on the wall" perspective of the daily happenings at The Free School in Albany, New York. Like many of today's radical and democratic schools, The Free School expects children to decide for themselves how to spend their days.

The Free School, however, is unique in that it transcends obstacles that prevent similar schools from reaching a economically and racially diverse range of students and operates in the heart of an inner-city neighborhood.

For over thirty years in perhaps the most radical experiment in American education, this small inner-city alternative school has offered its students complete freedom over their learning. There are no mandatory classes, no grades, tests, or homework, and rules are generally avoided. As a last resort, rules are created democratically by students and teachers, often at the prompting of a student. At a time when our educators are mandated to march forward with no child left behind, the students of the Free School, many of whom would have fallen through the cracks of today's failing public school system, have managed to slip out of education's back door and have run away free.

Free to Learn follows a handful of these children courageously meeting the daily challenges of hope, acceptance, loss, friendship, conflict, and the difficult task of deciding, for themselves, what to do with each day.
Source:
www.freeschoolmovie.com/menu1.htm

Information on free schooling and how it started:
A free school, often intentionally spelled free skool, is a decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without hierarchy or the institutional environment of formal schooling. The open structure of a free school is intended to encourage self-reliance, critical consciousness, and personal development.
To read more go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_school

A teacher from the school:
Chris Mercogliano was a teacher at the Albany Free School for thirty-five years and stepped down as director in June, 2007 to concentrate on writing and speaking about non-controlling education and childrearing.
To read more go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mercogliano
His website is www.chrismercogliano.com

A movie blog review of the film:
http://msfrizzle.blogspot.com/2004/08/free-to-learn.html

To contact the directors email them at:
info@freeschoolmovie.com

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