The third day I'm in the school I acted a little smark-alecky. [The teacher] said to me: 'I don't think you're ready for class yet. I think you want to play. So why don't you go out in the yard today?' She said this calmly, without any hostility. I thought, what kind of school is this where they punish you by letting you play? I played in the yard all day. And the next day too. The day after that I told [the teacher] that I didn't want to go into the yard again. She said, 'Do you feel ready to sit down and work with the rest of the class?' I said yes. 'All right, come in.' Can you imagine the difference between this type of discipline and that in the public schools of that day, a military type of discipline, a barracks discipline?
Maurice Hollod, as quoted in The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States by Paul Avrich, p.111
