Silver City, Nevada - For a brief time around 1973, Silver City hosted a unique K-12 education experiment called “The Silver City Free School.” There was culture clash (to put it mildly) between the newcomers to Silver City and the Dayton schools that the Silver City kids attended, and Silver City parents decided to withdraw their children en masse and start their own school. In this column, Sam Toll and Theo McCormick, two students of the Free School, describe some of the things they recall about that time. Later, we’ll interview some of the parents who spearheaded the experiment and get their perspectives as well.
In the spring of 1972, Silver City held a benefit for the Free School at the nearby Craft Guild with popular local bands like the Sutro Sympathy Orchestra. Admission was $2. Local artist Barbara Stein, who had trained at the Art Students League in New York under German expressionist artist George Grosz, created a poster for the event, which included sketches of some of the Free School students such as Kristin and Theo McCormick, Sam and Sarah Toll, Bob Elston, Channing Lovely, Rose Works and James Stein.
Theo McCormick’s Recollections: Theo McCormick moved from Reno to Silver City in the early 1970s with his parents. He recalls that at first adults from town taught the 15 or 20 students of the Free School themselves, using hands on lessons on practical subjects, and educational field trips to events such as theater productions in Reno, Lagomarsino Petroglyph Site in Storey County, and Fort Churchill Park in Silver Springs. The students spent most of their time studying traditional subjects like math, English, history and art at the homes of various parents, but the pedagogical methods were a little different. McCormick recalls a floor to ceiling shelf of books to choose from, and daily blocks of time devoted to reading, journaling, and story writing. History was a popular topic, because locals were recruited to give accounts of things they’d personally experienced, such as WWII, and answered the students’ many questions.
It gradually occurred to the school district that the absence of the Silver City students meant a reduction in district funding. Citing objections to the Free School’s teaching methods, they required the school to hire a licensed teacher. The town raised the funds and hired a teacher from Reno. McCormick says that the teacher was well received by the students because she taught core subjects using whatever the kids were interested in, which at the time included airplanes and the history of wars.
Sam Toll’s Memories: Sam Toll recalls the parents of Silver City as "rogue dreamers" who nevertheless took the school very seriously - several of them were university professors. He explains that “after repeated incidents and meetings with the school and basically being blown off, the parents of Silver City got together and decided they would put together what I’m going to guess was probably one of the first charter schools in Nevada. Silver City was a collection of artists, musicians and ‘escapees’ from Oklahoma, and a bunch of ‘hippies.’ But they weren’t really necessarily hippies, they were just free spirits and folks who had a wide variety of different backgrounds and experiences they felt they could cobble together and put into a curriculum that would be beneficial for kids. Of the many classes offered by the parents and talented adults beyond the three R’s were welding and metal fabrication using an iron forge, rock wall building, firearms safety and use with black powder rifle and pistols, art and drama (we attended several plays and went backstage to learn about the process), jewelry making using wax molds and a kiln, and the skill I found most valuable throughout my lifetime, how to light a fire with one match using wet sagebrush.” Toll also recalls lessons on woodworking, silversmithing, photography, and painting.“All of the parents had a skill set. There was just this wide variety of things that as kids we were exposed to that we would never have been exposed to had we continued to slog through the traditional government school system.” [Quotes from email messages; Sam's essay "Deer Guts"; and from a recording by Mary Works Covington taken in 2016 at the Silver City School House that was incorporated into Frances Melhop's Comstock Portrait Project exhibition at UNR in 2017].
Eventually, the students were forced to return to public school. Determined to improve the school climate, Theo’s mother Sandra McCormick decided to run for a seat on the district’s school board in 1974 and won. And decades later, when his own son was in Dayton schools, Theo McCormick followed his mother’s example and served on the school board.
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