For almost 60 years Sudbury Valley School has practiced a complete educational model, based on clear and applied thinking, that continues to inspire me to this day. The distance between the philosophy and the practice that results from it is as close as you can get. Simple, wise, and profound ideas and concepts have become a practice that has as little manipulation as possible. This freedom is not conditional and not directed towards obtaining a predetermined result. The rare trust in the child is deep, authentic, and true. The imposition of personal responsibility on the children and their participation in the management of the school stem from insight and proactive thinking, not from avoidance or laziness. Over the years, I have learned to appreciate the joy of being in the company of children who enjoy a childhood of freedom, responsibility, and mutual respect.

Throughout the years, even within myself, the question arises whether giving freedom and true responsibility out of trust does not harm the child and does not detract from their ability to cope in life outside of school, to integrate and succeed. I found myself wondering and even afraid, in meeting with the young children, whether it is really okay to let go so much. They will get bored, they will be empty souls, they will fail. All these worries have passed through and continue to pass through my mind to this day. I would say that the mystery of "what will become of them?" haunts every educator and parent regardless of the educational path they follow.

In the school's tenth anniversary celebrations, we held a seminar to which we invited various lecturers, and among them we were privileged to have Danny Greenberg present the research they conducted on Sudbury Valley School's graduates. In the study, Danny clearly detailed the findings that the students integrated well into a very wide range of fields, that those who wanted to go to college did and usually at their first choice, and especially that many, many of the school's students reported a feeling of a high level of responsibility and control over their destiny. Danny ended his lecture with a sentence that remains engraved in my mind to this day: I can't say for sure from these findings that this is the best result that could have been achieved, but what I can say for sure is that we probably didn't cause much harm to the children.

I also found that many children who were not educated in the Sudbury system turned out really well. And I found that even among our graduates, there are those for whom integration and success did not come easily. They continue to experience confusion and sometimes suffering and continue to search and wonder even after graduating from school. I discovered that those who we thought were our truly successful graduates who were living their dreams sometimes say that this does not promise an easy life or happiness and wealth.

So then what is it? Why liberty? Why Sudbury? If it is not necessarily the only path to integration and success, then why choose it? And there are other questions, no less difficult. Education in the Sudbury model represents a liberal democratic agenda of a certain kind. There is still a need to deal with educational questions of this era—social and cultural complexity, screens, media and artificial intelligence, loneliness, the need for awareness of the problems of all of humanity such as global warming and whether we are truly dealing with the need for personal and social values ​​and meaning.

The process of learning is part of childhood, and childhood is life itself during the time when the child is being educated. For me, the question today is not what will come out of the child but how best to go through, spend and live this period—the period that begins at age 0 and ends more or less at age 18.

There is a very popular song in Israel that goes like this: "My uncle wanted to swim in order to float permanently. He learned to swim by talking with a well-known lifeguard. When he finally entered the sea, within seconds he was gone." On the other side of the continuum, there is my father who, as a child, was thrown into the icy waters of the Danube by his father so that he could learn to swim, as "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It seems to me that Sudbury's educational model chooses a different path of education, in which the adult enters the water that the child has chosen and accompanies him and by his side with a loving, examining and supervising gaze, but also allows him to decide whether or not to go deeper, at what temperature, and also to choose whether he now wants to float with pleasure, play, or enter the training regime of a world champion. In this way, the adult allows the child a space of feeling and empowerment and an experience of trial and error. The child and the adult team member choose their dance together patiently over time and without coercion or oppression.

I once wrote, and I think it is still true, that we in the Sudbury schools allow children to learn in a clear, joyful, respectful and profound way. In a way that respects their space and time about three important things in life: how not to be a victim, how not to become a tyrant and how to lift oneself by the hairs of one's head.

I have many heartwarming stories that have been shared with me by school graduates. At the same time, I believe that the most important things we can give our children are the trust in them and the joy of a childhood of freedom.

By their very nature, images are too narrow to contain reality, and yet to summarize my Sudbury perception: If we liken childhood to learning to swim, then, as I see it, this educational path allows learning to swim out of joy in a pool, river, lake or ocean that I as a child create and choose and with adults who enter the water with me with a smile at the pace and in the way I have chosen.

I have no idea what the outcome will be. Will I choose a different pool tomorrow? Will I become a bird on land and live in the desert? Or will I be the next Michael Phelps? At least I have learned to choose with joy and take responsibility that includes empowerment and love for my choice and respect for those who swim alongside me.