Free Rein

This article presents Fairhaven School, located in a still-bucolic area near Washington, which operates in a way that would baffle many educators, much less the public. Known as a "free school," Fairhaven offers students a radical alternative to the demands of traditional education since it was founded in 1998. In this article, the author discusses how the concept of free school model works for the students at Fairhaven School. Thus, according to Jerry Mintz, the director of Roslyn Heights, New York-based Alternative Education Resource Organization, free schools operate under "an entirely different paradigm" from that of traditional schools. At "free" schools, children choose what they want to learn and when they want to learn it.