Remembering Arlington’s ‘Experiment in Free-Form Education’
Half a century ago, this short-lived experiment in student-directed learning was a precursor to the creation of H-B Woodlawn.
Wakefield High School students in 1970. (Photo courtesy of Wakefield High School Education Foundation)
On a sunny April day in 1970, five students sat in a circle in the grass outside Wakefield High School, their hands collectively clasped together so that their arms resembled spokes on a wheel. This “happening of hands,” as the activity was called, was part of a class in tactile stimulation and sensory relaxation—just one of the unusual school offerings over the course of one week that was unlike anything students had ever experienced.
The Experiment in Free-Form Education, or EFFE (pronounced “Effie”), was a week of largely student-directed learning that began at Walt Whitman High School in Maryland in 1969 and spread to a few other Washington, D.C.-area high schools over the next two years. Adapters on the Virginia side included Washington-Lee (now Washington-Liberty) and Wakefield in Arlington and George Mason (now Meridian) in Falls Church. Yorktown had its own version known as Progressive and Innovative Education, or PIE.
During EFFE week, students were exempt from their regular curriculum so they could join (and in some cases, lead) classes in such subjects as religion, coin collecting, ballet, cooking, bricklaying, quantum physics and civil rights. One EFFE class at Wakefield consisted of an afternoon jam session with a flutist in flowing flower-power regalia. Other EFFE options were probably considered transgressive at the time: a sewing tutorial for boys and an auto mechanics lesson for girls.
“Everyone was quite excited about being able to take whatever classes they wanted,” says Yvonne Gibbie Harney, a Wakefield alumna who now lives in West Virginia. “One class was in early child development. The class took a field trip to Howard University to visit their child care center. The other class I took was about reading and writing mystery and suspense stories. I loved it.”
EFFE was a natural corollary to the student activism erupting across the country during the Vietnam War era. By the late 1960s, an Arlington Youth Council had formed to advocate for student choices, including EFFE. School administrators and the local press paid attention. “The clear consensus…was that it sure beats study hall,” one Northern Virginia Sun reporter wryly noted. “For a week, anyway.”
Although EFFE didn’t last, progressive educators and students pointed to its popularity when they proposed a new student-led secondary school to the Arlington school board in 1970. That program—H-B Woodlawn—opened the following year.
Often referred to as “Hippie High” after its debut, H-B is still going strong more than 50 years later.
“I felt the EFFE program was a success, as did most of my friends,” Harney says. “It allowed students to experience other subjects that they may not have known about or been interested in previously. There was something for everyone.”
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