GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING

31                                              Date of Issue, Feb. 1, 1983

We had our first Open House at the GWS office - a great success.  I had thought that perhaps, because of the rather short notice, very few people would come, but there were twelve or so families there, probably forty or more people in all.  Everyone had a wonderful time, above all the children.  It was lovely, as is usual at home school gatherings, to see children of many ages playing happily together, the big ones looking out for the little ones - a thing that too rarely happens with children who go to school.  We’re looking forward to the next ones (second Thursday every month, 6-8 PM).

Wherever there are a number of homeschooling families and a convenient place for them to meet, it might be fun to have regular gatherings like this, as often as seems desirable and convenient.  The advantage of having them at a regular time and place is, of course, that it saves the trouble and expense of sending out notices, and also lets people plan to attend well ahead of time.  If any groups decide to do this, please let us know - and tell us how it works out.

Only one other word - try to avoid making these “business meetings”, complete with agenda, etc.  Just have them a nice occasion for people to get to know each other and have a good time together. - John Holt

IMPORTANT MICHIGAN RULING

Time magazine, 1/10/83:

…In a strong, unambiguous decision, a Michigan judge reaffirmed the First Amendment guarantee of separation of church and state by exempting private Christian schools from state supervision of their curriculum and teachers. Ministers, teachers and parents of the Bridgeport Baptist Academy and the Sheridan Road Christian School, both near Saginaw, had charged that attempts by the state’s board of education to supervise curriculum and teacher qualifications violated their religious freedom.  Judge Ray Hotchkiss agreed. ruling that the board, by imposing its secular standards of education on religious schooling, “interfered with plaintiffs’ constitutional right to freely exercise their religion”.  Said Hotchkiss: “This court fails to see a compelling state interest in requiring nonpublic schools to be of the ’same standard’ as public schools in the same district.  Such a scheme does not ensure even a minimum degree of quality of education.”  Hotchkiss, however, did uphold the state’s right to impose on the Christian schools health and safety requirements, to which they had never objected.

The fundamentalists were jubilant at their victory.  Said Sheridan Road Principal Bill Swain: “We knew our position was strongly supported by the Bible. We thought we had the Constitution on our side.  But I didn’t expect to get a favorable decision.”  William Bentley Ball, a leading constitutional lawyer who argued for the two schools, called the judgement “very strong on religious liberty, clarifying the right to teach and the right to learn.”

While the decision applies only to Michigan, it may influence other states. As independent Christian schools have proliferated over the past decade - with an estimated enrollment of 600,000 students nationwide - so have conflicts with state authorities.  In Nebraska, the Rev. Everett Sileven of Louisville was jailed four times in 1982 for defying a court decision requiring him to hire state-approved teachers for his Faith Baptist School.  In Massachusetts, Assistant Attorney General Maria Lopez has asked a civil court to impose a $100-a-day fine on two ministers who operate the Grace Bible Church Christian School in Dracut until they agree to report the names, ages and residences of their 30 students.  In Maine, a major case will be tried in February.  The issue, whether the teachers at the Bangor Baptist Church School and some 20 other Christian schools need to have state approval and whether the schools must maintain and report educational records…

In the Michigan trial, the issue of teacher certification turned out to be more of an embarrassment to state officials than to the Christian schools. Education experts could not agree on which standards to Christian teachers needed to follow, nor could they prove any link between certified teachers and good education.  Noted Judge Hotchkiss, a former public school teacher: “The overwhelming evidence shows that teacher certification does not ensure teacher competency and may even inhibit it.”  Since each student who leaves a Michigan public school to attend a Christian academy deprives the local school district of about $2,000 in state aid, the judge also observed that state officials were hardly disinterested guardians of education.  He called state regulation of private schools “an incredible conflict of interest.”

…Michigan officials intend to appeal Judge Hotchkiss’s verdict.  Says Assistant Attorney General Richard Gartner: “The state now has no process to approve nonpublic schools.”  Part of Michigan’s compulsory education law says that parents must send children to state-approved schools.  According to Gartner, there is now a legal doubt as to whether the compulsory attendance requirement is legal…

JOHN’S COMING SCHEDULE

Feb. 21. 1983: Guest of Honour, Harvard Dinner Series, Cambridge, MA. Apr. 9 (tent.): Homeschooling meetings and lectures, Chico CA area. Apr. 30: 6th Mass Area La Leche League Conf., Walsh Middle School, Framingham MA.  Brown St, Ipswich MA 01938; May 3: International Reading Assoc. meeting, Anaheim CA. June 28-30: 7th Annual Kephart Memorial Child Study Center Symposium, Univ. of Northern Colorado, Aspen/Snowmass, CO.  Aug.1-2: Child Development Symposium, Assoc. for Research & Enlightenment, Virginia Beach, VA. Anyone who wants to coordinate other meetings or lectures around these times and locations should contact me directly. - Peg Durkee

SUCCESS IN MICHIGAN Cheryl Wustman (MI) wrote:

…Jacob went through kindergarten last year, but this year we’re teaching him at home.  It was so much easier than I thought it would be.

We wrote a letter to the Superintendent of the Kent County intermediate school district…  We were told that if we wanted to we could enroll Jacob as a home bound student.  This would mean he could receive all the material that the first graders are covering free.  To receive this we would meet the first grade teacher every other Tuesday after school let out.  It was that simple.  So we’ve been doing this for the last month and a half.  It has worked out perfect because the school is happy and we’re happy…

FAMILY MEETS LEGISLATOR

From John Boston (CA):

…When you spoke, John, in Anaheim, in 1981, you mentioned it would be helpful if our legislators know about homeschooling.  You suggested we visit the, Well - that’s just what we did.

I first contacted our state senator’s office trying to find out if he could help clarify why some school districts were contacting some home schools on their legal status and other were not.  His office said they would get back to me.  A few days later, I got a call from one of his staff informing me as to the man who I could talk to about private schools in the State Dept. of Education.  More importantly she asked if I would like an appointment to talk to the senator.  I said yes, my son would like to meet him to learn about state government as a real-person experience.  She gave us an appointment.

My wife and I, with our son (age 13), went to his office about 20 miles away.  His secretary showed us into his office and introduced us.  The senator was dressed leisurely, as were we, and he asked us to relax by sitting in some comfortable lounge chairs in one area of his office.  We told him of our son’s unusual schooling arrangement, home learning, and of our private school.  He wanted to hear from our son about what he did at home.  Our son told him about his bicycles and model airplanes he built.  He told him about his Boy Scout group, his religion classes, and his Humane Society volunteer work.  We talked, informally, for close to 50 minutes.  We found out the senator knows people we do so we had some things in common.

He invited our son (and us) to some up to Sacramento after the new legislative session starts and he would personally tour the Capitol with us.  He was very interested in our son learning about government and gave him a booklet on our state’s constitution and how a bill becomes law.  All in all a very pleasurable experience, both for our son and us.

I’m sure if anything about home schooling comes up in Sacramento our senator will feel more knowledgeable and positive about it.  We would encourage other home schoolers to do this.  Our legislators are the people who make the laws the school officials must follow!  Get them, on our side!  Let them know we are families concerned about our children!…

NOTES FROM DONNA

We had a nice visit from Rosalyn Frank of the Mass. Department of Education.  She’s in charge of the “Gifted and Talented Special Programs” throughout the state, and is very sympathetic to the notion of homeschooling. She would like to know how many home-schoolers there are in Massachusetts, and would be willing to held someone do a survey of the various school districts. Would someone like to take on this research project?

Yet another home-schooler has sold an article to the “Mother’s Children” section of The Mother Earth News; that’s three at least.  In the Jan. issue, Joshua Wood wrote about the same business selling sprout jars that his mother pat Stone told us about in GWS #21.  Pat Stone of TMEN (1205 Stoney Mountain Rd, Hendersonville NC 28791) is always looking for how-to articles by young people. And if by chance he’s not interested in your story, we at GWS probably would be.

A 12-year-old reader suggests we put in a pen-pal section for kids.  We’re willing to do this if it doesn’t take up too much space.  So, any children wanting pen-pals, send in your name, age, address, and, if you want, 1-3 words about your hobbies, interests, favorite authors, etc.

We were distressed to hear that reader Rena Caudle’s son Jeremy has a massive brain tumor and is not expected to live beyond another year or so.  Rena says, “If there are any readers that would like to boost up a little boy, cards would be welcomed.  He’s collecting his cards and he’s collecting stickers too.”

Another reader asks if we could print more about divorced homeschooling parents, especially it the other parent disapproves of the homeschooling.  has it ever been an issue in a custody case?  Any of you who think your experience would be useful to others, please write to us.

Someone asked if we have any videotapes of T programs with John Holt.  We don’t; none of us here have any video equipment.  Do any of our readers have such videotapes; and if so, are they willing to loan them out, or can they make copies?

Rachael Solemn has just finished the 24-page index to GWS #1-30, which is available for $2.50.  She’s done a thorough job with the help of a computer. Entries are in the following categories: Alternative Schools, Art, At Home, Authors, Books Quoted, Books Reviewed, Children Working, Colleges, Communities, Contributors, Correspondence Schools, Court Cases, Curriculum, Friendly Lawyers, Games, General, In School, Language, Learning, Local Schools & Legal Issues, Mathematics, Money, Music, Newsletters, Organizations, Poetry, Politics, Printing, Publications, Reading, Religion, Reports, Resources, Social Issues, Tapes, Teaching, tests, Teens Working, Travel, Work, Writing, and Young Graduates.  Rachael welcomes suggestions for futures editions of the index.

At John’s suggestion, Mary and Mark Van Doren brought in a little table and chair for our office toddler, Anna.  Our extra typewriter sits on it, and sometimes Anna will busy herself for a long time with the machine.  Mary has a neat trick of taping two sheets of paper together into a loop, so that no matter how much Anna presses the “Return” key, she never runs out of paper. - Donna Richoux NEWS OF COURT CASES

We have recently gotten word of two home-schooling court cases lost, and a number of others pending.  Of the losses, the bigger was the Virginia State Supreme Court ruling (12/3/82) against Robert and Vicky Grigg of Chesapeake.  The court, using reasoning similar to California and Florida cases, said that since the Virginia compulsory education law has a specific exemption for “home instruction by a qualified tutor”, the Griggs could not claim exemption by a different route, namely, that their home was a private school.  How this will affect other home-schoolers in Virginia remains to be seen.

The other loss was in Stephens County Superior Court, Georgia, involving Terry and Vickie Roemhild.  We do not yet have any details on this decision.

Other families who are being prosecuted are: Wayne and Margaret Burrow, Little Rock, Arkansas; Mary and Garfield Morgan of Lebanon, Connecticut; Bob and Jean Smith, Albert Lea, Minnesota; the Warren Parker family, Alexandria, Minnesota; Pat Baker of the Southside School District, San Antonio, Texas; and Tahca Ska, Poplar, Wisconsin. - DR

GEORGIA REGULATIONS

[JH:]     In two states, Georgia and Maryland, the State Boards of Education have proposed regulations that will make home-schooling difficult or impossible for most families.  First, the Georgia situation.  As the Atlanta Constitution of 1/13/83, in a story by Jane Hansen, reported it:

…RULES PUSHED TO END HOME SCHOOLING IN GA - …The state school superintendent has recommended standards to eliminate home schooling in Georgia in response to the growing number of parents who are teaching their children themselves… The new policy would further define private schools by requiring them to meet these criteria: 1) A minimum of 15 students must be enrolled in the program at least 4.5 hours daily and 180 days annually.  2) The building must be used primarily for instruction and must meet fire inspection codes.  3) At least one teacher must have a college degree from an accredited institution…” ____

[JH:]     Home school families and parents and teachers involved in small church-based schools are banding together to try to block these regulations.  The board is expected to vote on the policy on Feb. 10, so by the time you read this they will have decided either to pass these regulations or an amended version of them, or, if public pressure is strong enough, as we hope will be the case, to let the whole matter drop.  We will tell you what happened in GWS #32.

Meanwhile, because education officials in other states, thrown into needless panic by stories about growing numbers of home schooling families, may try to make similar regulations, we might look at these a bit more closely. About them, three things can be said: 1) There is not the slightest educational justification for them.  2) They will probably be struck down in most or all courts in which they are put to the test.  3) Even if they were upheld by the courts, they would not automatically or necessarily make home schooling impossible.

We should understand ourselves, and help the public to understand that the first two of these proposed board regulations have nothing whatever to do with education or learning or even the quality of private schools.  In defending the need for these regulations, the board has apparently said that it wants only to “clarify” the status of home schooling under law, so that it will know where and how to enforce the state’s compulsory school laws.  This word “clarify” has been used in similar circumstances by education authorities in other states.  In using the word, the board in Georgia is, to put it very politely, not being candid; as the newspaper story itself makes clear, they do not want to “clarify”, but to prohibit.  More specifically they want to make private schooling so expensive that only a few rich can afford it.

The public schools have for a long time had a kind of silent bargain with the richest five percent of the parents of this country.  They have said, in effect, “We will let you teach your children any way you want, if you will give us a monopoly over the other 95%.”  Until recently, this is what has happened. private schools, meaning schools in buildings not used for other purposes and staffed by paid teachers, have been so expensive that with few exceptions only affluent parents could afford them.  Almost all the private schools started by moderate or low income parents in the past twenty years have failed for lack of money, and those that have survived for any length of time have almost all been rich ones, with high tuitions and often large endowments.  With very few exceptions, state and local public education authorities have never interfered with these rich schools.  They could hire any teachers they wanted, not just those with education degrees and teacher’s credentials.  They could teach any kind of curriculum they wanted, or none at all.  State laws might mandate courses in state history, or health, or (as in NY) the dangers of alcoholism; rich private schools ignored such laws.  In the fourteen years I taught in private schools we were never once visited or inspected by public education authorities. Rich private schools have their own private accrediting agencies, bur these are to allay the anxieties of rich parents of prospective students, not to satisfy any requirements of the state.  The state’s position has always been and is now, whatever rich people want in the way of schooling for their kids, they can have -if the state can have complete control of all the rest.

What now scares the public education authorities is that the second part of this bargain is breaking down.  More and more people who twenty or even ten years ago would never had considered sending their children to private schools are now doing so.  Despite hard times and inflation, the median income of parents of private school children has been dropping every year now for a number of years.  One reason is that more and more parents are becoming so critical of public schools that they are willing to make very larger money sacrifices to get their children out of them.  But an even more important reason is that people are beginning to invent ways, among them home schooling, to make private schooling cost so much less that more and more people can afford it.  This growth of low-cost private schooling is what the public school authorities are trying to stop, since it threatens their effective monopoly over the education of the great majority of American children.  They say that it is the low quality of home schooling that worries them., but what really worries them is its low price tag.

Perhaps the best evidence that there is no educational need whatever for these regulations, let alone any compelling need, comes from Georgia itself.  One of the books on our list is the PETERSON’S GUIDE TO INDEPENDENT STUDY THROUGH CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION, which lists over 12,000 courses offered for academic credit not just at the high school but also the undergraduate and even the graduate level, by sixty-nine leading private and state colleges and universities.  By happy chance one of these universities is the University of Georgia.  Pages 52 and 53 of the Guide lists 68 lower level college and 96 upper level college courses which the university offers, for credit, by correspondence. lest any suspect these are some kind of Mickey Mouse courses, not really academic, here are the fields of study offering upper level courses: Agriculture, Archaeology, Anthropology, Ecology, Latin, American Literature, History (American, English, European, etc.), Philosophy, Government, Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Business Law and Management, Education, Forestry, Nutrition, and Journalism.

None of these many major departments or divisions at the leading university of the state seem to feel that in order for someone to learn the material in their courses they must be in a room with at least fourteen other people in a building not used for any other purposes, etc., etc.  The University, like all the other universities listed in the guide, says, in effect, “We don’t care where, or how, or when, or in whose company, or with whose assistance (if any) you learn this material.  If you can show that you have learned it, we will give you fill academic credit for it”.  This should be enough to dispose of any idea that effective learning can only take place in certain special places where nothing else takes place, and in the company of some minimum  number of people, and in the presence of a college graduate.

Beyond this we have as evidence the experience over many years and even decades of such correspondence schools as Calvert Institute, Home Study Institute, and a host of others we have listed in GWS.  Calvert alone has estimated that over the years over 300,000 have used their home study course; the total figure for all the home correspondence courses put together must be close to half a million, and might well be more than that.  Beyond that, there are right now many thousands of families in Alaska, in the northern parts of Canada, and in the “outback”, the great interior desert of Australia, where children are being educated, with the support and approval of state school systems, if only for the very good reason that they are many miles away from the nearest school. No one has ever produced a shred of evidence that all this home schooling has not produced satisfactory results.  So, as I say, there is not the slightest educational justification for the regulations which the Georgia state board of education is proposing, or for similar regulations which we may see put forward in other states.

But let me say again, as at the start of this piece, that even if through some strange piece of twisted judicial reasoning a Georgia court were to uphold these regulations, they would still not necessarily or automatically close down all home schooling in the state.  The regulations say there must be at least fifteen children in a school, but it should be easy for more than fifteen Georgia home schooling families to register their children in one or more schools, perhaps the Horizons School which already exists and in which many of them are already registered.  Beyond that, there is no reason why home schooling families could not register their children with each others’ schools, so that family A would have in its school the children of families B, C, D, etc., and so on. Indeed , this would be a good thing for home schooling families to do in any state where home schooling may come under attack.

The regulations also say that the school must be in a building primarily used for instruction.  But who could say, far less prove, that any home in which children were growing up, certainly any home school, was not being used primarily for instruction?  What else happens in the home that is more important, or that occupies more of the time, thought, and energy of the parents?  No reasonable person would claim that a home was used primarily for cooking, or eating, or sleeping.  The regulations also talk about 4.5 hours a day of instruction, 180 days a year.  But as countless parents have [pointed out, in a home school learning goes on twelve or more hours a day, 365 days a year.  Again, who could reasonably claim, let alone prove, otherwise?

With such arguments as these, I think home schoolers may be able to persuade most state boards of education or comparable bodies, or the state legislatures themselves, that there is no good reason to try to pass regulations or laws such as those proposed in Georgia, which can serve no useful or legitimate purpose, and will only produce a great deal of litigation for our already terribly overcrowded courts - so overcrowded, it may be worth pointing out publicly, that all over the country they are unable to bring to a speedy trial criminals, often with long records, who have been arrested for violent crimes, but instead must let them back on the streets or, as is common, let them off with a greatly reduced sentence.  We cannot say too often that our courts have far more important and indeed urgent things to do than pursue conscientious parents who are doing a capable job of teaching their own children.

ACTION BY GA. HOME-SCHOOLERS

Connie Shaw, editor of the Georgia home-schooling newsletter, A Different Drummer, sent us a copy of the information packet, including a list of recommended actions, that she sent to Georgia home-schoolers in order to fight the proposed regulations.  It seems like such a thorough job, especially for being done on short notice, that we thought it would be useful to reprint in case other GWS readers faced a similar battle:

…Here is a checklist of things each of you can do to help in the days ahead: 1)  Call your local legislators in the Georgia Assembly.  Let them know what has happened and ask them to call their state board representative for their district (provide them with a phone number) and tell them to vote no on the proposed policy.  This is where the real power is going to come from.  If you know someone or has a friend who knows someone in the Capitol or on the Board of Education, let us know…

2)  Call all 10 members of the Board of Education and let them know why you are opposed to the proposed ruling.  Be careful not to attack openly the public schools.  Calling is going to have more of an impact because they can easily overlook letters which they delegate to their secretaries to take care of.  If you cannot call, then do write everyone a letter.

3)  Sit down and compose a sincere letter for your local newspaper.  Try to be tactful and project a good image of home schooling.  If you are willing to be interviewed, contact local radio and TV stations and let them know what is happening and why you oppose it.  We need favorable publicity.

4)  Get signatures on the petition that is enclosed.  Make copies if you need more.  Return all petitions to Phillis Bostar before Feb. 5, so they can be presented to the school board at their meeting.

5)  Duplicate this material as many times as you are able, and pass it along to other groups or individuals that you may know that are interested in the family and basic rights of citizens…

6)  We need money.  Whatever you can donate, please send.  Money is needed to cover all the printing costs of this mailing, postage, envelopes, long distance calls, and other items…

7)  Attend the meeting of home schoolers and interested citizens on Sat. Jan. 22…  Bring copies of any letters you have written.  Please share them with us so we can benefit from your ideas…

8)  Attend the State School Board of Education Meetings on Wed. Feb. 9 and Thur. Feb. 10… Our numbers will carry a lot of weight at these meetings… Bring as many others as you can - parents, grandparents, friends, and other interested parties.

9)  If you are seeking permission to speak out at the school board meetings, please bring a copy of your prepared speech to the meeting on the 22nd, to share with us.

…If everyone will actively participate, we will be able to win and maintain our rights to continue teaching at home. Do not let individual philosophies, religious beliefs, opposing lifestyles, or other differences divide us.  We must stand solidly together on this one issue. …There is not much time.  We need to move as quickly and deliberately as possible..

MARYLAND REGULATIONS

At the same time, the Maryland State Board of Education is proposing even more stringent regulations.  Manfred Smith of the MARYLAND HOME EDUCATION ASSOCIATION tells us that home-schoolers will be at the public hearing Jan. 26 to testify against them.  The Baltimore Sun of 1/16/83, in a story by Gail Campbell, sub-headlined “State move would virtually eliminate parent as teacher”, summarized the regulations and added some interesting comment.  We quote, in part:

…Parents’ freedom to teach children at home instead of sending them to school will virtually end if the State Board of Education adopts a proposed revision of its bylaws. A draft bylaw would allow only parents with college degrees or certification in the subjects they teach their children to do home teaching. The draft also would require children to receive at home a minimum of 180 days, or 1080 hours, of instruction in courses such as English, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. These home courses would have to be described to school officials in a written curriculum citing specific objectives and submitted to the local school superintendent for approval. Parents teaching at home would also have to provide books and materials comparable to those found in public school systems [JH: the regulations actually say they shall be “of good quality… and in sufficient variety and quantity…”], and the local superintendent would determine how often children should be tested to measure their progress… Last January, a Harford county couple were refused permission to teach their 7-year-old daughter at home.,  The county school board voted with one abstention to uphold Superintendent Alfonso A. Roberty’s decision and ordered Miguel and Ellen Andriolo to enroll their daughter Zoe in school immediately… Mrs. Andriolo is not a college graduate and therefore would not qualify as a home teacher under the proposed bylaw, but she said she felt she did a good job teaching her daughter at home in spite of that. “My daughter tested three grade levels above her own,” Mrs. Andriolo said. School officials tested Zoe after she had been taught for a year and a half at home… Dr. Roberty said he totally supported the proposed bylaw. “The qualifications are stringent, there’s no doubt about it, but it needs to be stringent.  Otherwise, we’ll have everybody teaching everywhere with no specific curriculum,” Dr. Roberty said. “Some people don’t like uniformity, but when you’re running a school system, that’s what you need,” he added. Rabbi Kenneth B. Block, vice president of the Harford county school board, said he was equally opposed to the bylaw… “I think it’s too restrictive and unnecessary.  They’re trying to legislate home instruction out of existence,” Rabbi Block said… He said… he believes families should have the option of teaching at home if they wish… W. Eugene Graybeal, president of the Harford county school board, saying he spoke as an individual citizen… said he too believes parents should have the choice of teaching at home. “But this bylaw the state board has in the works is to strengthen its control over home teaching.  The trend should be to loosen its hold,” Mr. Graybeal said… ____

[JH:]  Some comment on this particular story.  It seems very likely that a reasonable court would rule that the Harford county school board erred in not allowing Mrs. Andriolo to continue teaching her own daughter, since she was obviously working more than twice as effectively as the schools.  And, though a court would not say this, more reasonable citizens would further conclude 1) that Dr. Roberty was not competent to judge the qualifications of a home teacher, since he so obviously judged wrongly in this case, and/or 2) Dr. Roberty and the Harford county school board were clearly not acting in good faith, that is, in the best interests of the child, in acting as they did.

Beyond that, we can only wonder, since two members of the Harford county board said in these hearings that they thought people should, be able to teach their own children, how did it happen that this same county board voted 3-0 against Mrs. Andriolo?

In quoting the news story, I underlined the words “citing specific objectives”.  They refer to a certain kind of meaningless school jargon - every teacher’s lesson plan is supposed to list “Objectives”.  In many places, teachers are required to list both “Outcomes” and “Objectives”, and have to do verbal handsprings to make them sound different, since there is in fact no real difference.  But the schools could use this clause as a way of penalizing parents for not using the approved private jargon.  Of course, top rated private schools and colleges do not use this kind of jargon at all.

MORE LOCAL NEWS

For addresses of the organizations mentioned, see the Directory in GWS #30, or our “Home-Schooling Resource List” ($1).  If you have a local newsletter, we’d really appreciate being on your mailing list; that way we can let the rest of our readers know what you’re doing.

CALIFORNIA: We list the San Juan Ridge Union School District in California as a “Friendly School District”.  Its Independent Study Director, Marilyn DeVore, has just told us that although its mailing address is in Nevada City, the district is actually in North San Juan, 16 miles away.  She writes, “Our Nevada City mailing address has presented some problems.  A family reading your publication moved to Nevada City, only to find that the school district there does not offer Independent Study…”

Connie Warthan in San Jose writes, “In the Bay Area we have been meeting for almost a year now… It is an informal picnic and anybody interested in unschooling is welcome.  Date is second Saturday of the month.”

CONNECTICUT:  From Jennifer Lupinek: “As a result of a picnic held at the home of Madalene and Tom Murphy last summer, many families have gotten together and the Murphys are putting out a newsletter, Hearth Notes.  Laura Pritchard and I have put together an information packet on home schooling in Connecticut, which contains the guidelines on home education from the state department, our letter to the supt., and extensive list of resources, and names of homeschoolers.  We have to ask $2 for the packet to cover printing and mailing expenses…”

FLORIDA:  Ann Mordes writes in the FLASH newsletter, 1/83: “I have received many telephone calls and letters from all over the state since October, from people who are complaining of harassment by truant officers.  FLASH was happy to supply these many people with copies of our letters from the Governor’s office, and the Health and Rehabilitative Services letter which ‘let my husband and me off the hook’ here in Jackson County [GWS #28].  Indeed these letters have helped every home schooler who needed and used them.”

ILLINOIS:  The Demmins sent us a report submitted to the State Board of Education, dated 6/24/82, called “Informational Report and Preliminary Recommendations Regarding the State’s Relationship to Illinois Nonpublic Schools”.  It recommended that the State “add to the current list of assurances required for registration (i.e. immunization/health examination; health and fire safety; and academic term of 176 days or 880 clock hours; and nondiscriminatory policies) the following: that children are taught the branches of education also taught to children of corresponding ages and grades in the public schools…” Anyone knowing of the fate of these recommendations, please let us know.

KENTUCKY:  According to some newspaper articles sent by Ruth McCutchen, the state Superintendent of Public Instruction told the local districts that they were responsible for bringing legal action against parents whose children attended unapproved schools, and officials in at least two districts have started truancy proceedings against families in Christian schools.  However, the Rev. B.C. Gillespie has filed suit against the state board in U.S. District Court.

MASSACHUSETTS:  Deborah Armer, writes, “Some of us here in the Falmouth area are now calling ourselves the CAPE COD HOMESCHOOLING COOPERATIVE.  At last we have name for ourselves (and some discounts when we go places as a group)!  We consist of eight families at the moment; six actually have their children out of school, the others are not yet of school age.  We are beginning to get lots of phone calls from others in surrounding towns, as well… We have finished putting out our second monthly newsletter!”

MICHIGAN  Dr. Raymond Moore, author of SCHOOL CAN WAIT, HOME-GROWN KIDS, etc., has started a newsletter, Family Report, for members of his HEWITT RESEARCH FOUNDATION (553 Tudor Rd, Berrien Springs, MI 49103).

OKLAHOMA:  Toni O’Leary told us that the OKLAHOMA HOME-SCHOOLERS ASSOCIATION was to have its first meeting on Feb. 12.

PENNSYLVANIA:  A story in the Fall ‘82 Pa. Unschoolers Network began with this quote by Wendell Phillips:  “What is defeat?  Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better,” and then went on to say: “This was borne out in the experiences of the Rattenni family in Canonsburg.  Jean and Richard had applied to their local superintendent about homeschooling their two daughters.  The reply was negative because of their lack of teaching certificate. Drawing deep gulps of faith, they set about collecting recommendations from local elementary faculty, regional overseer of their church, etc.  Based on these, the superintendent REVERSED HIS DECISION…”

TEXAS:  The TEXAS HOME EDUCATION COALITION is planning seminars on how to defend your own case in court, and is considering submitting a pro-home-schooling bill in the state legislature.

VERMONT:  Jerry Mintz of the Shaker Mountain School has started a newsletter for the VERMONT ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION NETWORK.  He says, “The woman who typed up the mailing list is about to start home-schooling her granddaughter when she takes her on a three-month trip down south.”

AUSTRALIAN NEWSLETTER

The Dec. 82 issue of Other Ways has much exciting news of alternative school and home school developments in that country.  Not only is home schooling continuing to grow in the state of Victoria (where the city of Melbourne is located), but it is spreading to and growing in other states: New South Wales, Southern Australia, Queensland, Western Australia - which covers most of the country.  Lorraine and Adrian Doesburg, with whom I had a very interesting long distance phone conversation a few months ago are the resource people for Western Australia.

Other Ways, which at first concerned itself mainly with doings in the state of Victoria, seems to have become the Australian national newsletter of alternative and home schooling - at least, I don’t know of any other. Any who are interested in the growth of home schooling in Australia, and certainly any who think they might be visiting or moving there in the near future, should subscribe.  Also, it may be a good way for children to make some Australian pen pals.                                                                  - JH

LEGAL INSURANCE WORKING

[DR:]  In January 1981, Ed Nagel and the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE LEGAL SUPPORT OF ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS  started an insurance program for home-schooling families concerned about facing legal action.  We asked how it was going, and Lu Vorys wrote on Ed’s behalf:

…Ed feels the Legal Insurance For Education (LIFE) program is working very well as a protection for home study families from intimidation and/or prosecution.  Of the 52 families who have taken out policies, only two have made claims, In most cases, strong letters from Ed to threatening school officials have averted legal action.

The rates are the same as originally explained ion Tidbits #8: $80 a year for up to $20,000 coverage, $40 a year for up to $10,000 coverage, and $20 a year up to $5,0900…

MORE NEWS FROM CARVER

From Pat Montgomery (MI):

…I thought you might like to know that Norman Bossio, superintendent of Carver Schools in Carver, Massachusetts, is very supportive of home schooling. In the last two years he has gone before his board four times and recommended that families in his district do home schooling, and specifically, Clonlara’s Home Based Education Program.  He called the other day regarding one of the families and was lavish in his praise of our program.

He was also seriously concerned about another family in his district who were not following any program and were apparently feeding him mis-information about their home schooling.  He seemed genuinely disturbed by this in view of the fact that he is known to support home schooling.

You will probably recall [GWS #21] that Carver is the place where, two or three years ago, a judge ordered a family of a frequently-absent-from-school teenager to enroll in Clonlara’s program and he also ordered the school district to pay the bill…

COMMISSION FOR ADS

As you can see, our campaign to get display and classified advertising in GWS is off to a good start.  Many thanks to all of you who bought these ads.  In order to make GWS as close as possible to self-supporting, and less dependent than it is on the very uncertain and declining lecture business, we want to increase this advertising as fast as we can; our target, which we hope to reach in a year or two, is four pages of ads in each issue, which by that time would be 28 and more probably 32 pages.

We plan to solicit ads actively from this office; Pat Farenga will be our Director of Advertising.  But because we are small and already very busy, we will only be able to do a limited amount of this.  What we would like is to have as many readers as possible solicit ads for us, from any businesses they may know of or read about that they think might like to advertise in GWS.  To encourage you, we make this offer: for every display ad that you recruit for us (from someone else, of course - an ad for yourself wouldn’t count), and send in together with the check in payment, we will pay you a commission of 10% of the cost of the ad.

The only other thing I would like to say about our advertising is that it would be very helpful if whenever you buy anything advertised here, you mention to the company that you saw their ad in GWS - perhaps writing them a letter, perhaps just making a little note on the order blank.

For any help you can give us in either of these ways, thanks very much. - JH

YOUNG FARMERS’ EARNINGS

Betty Anderson (FL) wrote:

…In April of ‘81 my daughter and son opened bank accounts for their own business practice.  The bank loaned them each $800 to purchase a steer and feed for the year.  In February of ‘82 their steers were sold at auction (this was their 4-H project).  In our county bids on these 4-H animals go beyond the average market price for beef animals.  The profits have paid for many college degrees and set up independent businesses for young people.  My children were fortunate to add approximately $4500 to their bank accounts through the sale of their steers (profit).

…According to the bank, the money belongs solely to me.  How ridiculous. They were the ones who were up at 6 AM daily to feed, water, and groom the animals.  They were the ones who missed out or were late arriving at social functions because they were tending the steers in the afternoons.  They were the ones to balance bank statements, write checks for feed bills and keep daily records of the project.  They did all the work - but the bank does not recognize an 11-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy as established customers of their bank.

You should have seen the look on the piano salesman’s face when my 11-year-old walked into his showroom and began to make a deal on the purchase of a piano. At first he wanted to speak with me, but I made it clear that he and Tammy would be conversing.  He was astonished.  Tammy was indignant that he didn’t treat her as a valid customer.  The purchase was made and I heard him say to Tammy, “Your mom can make the check out for $X.”  Tammy looked up at him sweetly and said, “No sir, my mother doesn’t have enough money to buy this piano, so I’ll write you a check from my account.”  Without hesitation she opened her checkbook and began to write out a check for the full amount of a brand new Kimball.  The man began to chuckle at his own ignorance of her ability.  When the piano tuner came, he said “Is Tammy Anderson here?”

Children do need more rights and more respect.  Scott (9) would like the right to vote.  This past election I feel he made wise choices.  I believed it enough that when I went into the booth I voted on the candidates he had chosen. I did that because I wanted to prove to him his political; choices were as sound as mine…  Actually, he made an effort to become well informed about each candidate - I didn’t and I’m 31 years old.  I would have voted a straight ticket because I was less informed…

THEY LEARNED AT HOME

From Rosalie Schultz,

…My parents and I collaborated to keep me out of school as much as possible.  We did it with creatively written excuse notes.  It’s a lot like the more common art of creative menu writing.  You’ve seen how hamburgers get dramatized into “delicately diced boeuf au jus naturel” on a menu.  Well, my watery eye would be written up in the absence note as a true epic of “lachrymatory excess limiting the ocular field.”  Described that way, it was worth a good week to ten days at home.

…My absences allowed me to grow up with large open spaces in my life. It was like being a pioneer into frontier territory…  I read myself into the rhythms of other worlds.  For three voyaging months the language of MOBY DICK rolled me on the ocean.  At other times I walked briskly to the clipped affectation of Lord Peter Wimsey.

Then too, there were the comforting rhythms of our adjoining family printing business.  I’d been collating printed sheets into booklets since I was two years old.  Now I added typing, addressing, filing, and metering to my repertoire.  Much of the work was what most adults might shun as routine, but I enjoyed the almost mystical monotony very much.  The work left the mind uncluttered and receptive.

My parents never filled my free time with any formal instruction.  They were there, and we were part of a way of life together.  That was enough.

Now I’m well into adulthood and am in charge of the family business…

____

From Eileen Perkins (VT):

…My senior year I had a concussion and was physically out of school for over a month.  (Mentally it took me a couple of years to recover.)  My assignments were sent home.  That semester I received my first straight A’s and in my English class not only did I get top score in the class, but top score in the four English sections that teacher taught.  I assure you, I spent much less time on school-work than the six hours a day I would have spent at school.  My parents had predicted that my grades would drop because I spent hours working on plays.

From the last experience I changed my study habits when I got to college. I relaxed, enjoyed my classes, didn’t worry about grades, and I think I learned more than if I were trying to please the teacher or outguess him…

SELF-TAUGHT SCIENTIST

A Christian Science Monitor article, reprinted in the L.A. Times, 12/22/82:

…ROTTERDAM, NY - Vincent J. Schaefer, “the father of rainmakers” and one of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists, did not take the conventional academic route to eminence.

Until 1961, when he founded the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Albany, which he directed as its leading professor for 15 years, he had never set foot inside a college or university -except as a distinguished lecturer or to receive some honorary degree.

Schaefer never aspired to become a self-instructed scientist.  He had hoped to go to college to become a forester.

“But we had a large family,” he said in an interview at his home in rural Rotterdam.  “Being the eldest of the family, with our parents in poor health, it was necessary for me to go to work to bring in enough money to keep us in food.” After only two years in high school, he left to become an apprentice at General Electric in nearby Schenectady.

Four years later, he had mastered the machinist trade and was making experimental models for scientists at GE’s Research Laboratory.

…Schaefer refers to his experience at General Electric as “Langmuir University”.  Under the tutelage of the late Irving Langmuir, for whom he was building test models, Schaefer’s natural talents came to flower.  In a short time he was conducting his own experiments in the General Electric lab.

…That unorthodox beginning launched him on a career as a highly inventive natural scientist.  In 1946, Schaefer discovered the first feasible method of seeding clouds.

What is the secret of success? -  Work on your own. -  Learn by doing. -  Seek out worthwhile people and make them your friends. -  Read books. -  Take advantage of every good opportunity to learn something. - Remember that mature people enjoy helping young people who are trying to find themselves and realize their potential.

Schaefer insists that anyone with the desire could do what he has done. “You have to have a sense of wonder,” he says, “and be aware of everything that goes on.  You have to develop what I call ‘intelligent eyes’ - be intrigued with the world and everything in it.”

“A book is a distillation of a person’s ideas,” said Schaefer, a voracious reader.  “If you have a book, you have an open door to the area knowledge the author is interested in.  It is a tremendous resource to take advantage of.”

…A boyhood interest in collecting rocks and arrowheads in this geologically and historically rich region introduced him to the first of his long list of “worthwhile people”.

Two farmers, both self-educated men, stirred in young Vince an admiration for their knowledge of local history, where Indian lore mingles with tales of early Dutch settlers.

…In retrospect, he gives much credit to the Lone Scouts of America, an organization for farm boys who were too isolated to be active in Boy Scout troops.  They took all their tests by correspondence.  “It gave you a sense of independence because you were on your own honor,” Schaefer said.

Eventually, with three other boys, he formed the Lone Scout Mohawk Tribe. The boys published a little magazine on archaeology, which attracted the attention of the New York State Department of Archaeology.  Through the head of the research laboratory, Schaefer eventually met the state archaeologist, Arthur Parker, who invited the 17-year-old to join him on a month-long archaeological field trip…

HOME-SCHOOLER HELPS SCHOOL

From Jacque Williamson (WV):

…I direct and teach an early school for children ages 2-5 which is similar to a parent co-op school in that most parents rotate helping me in the classroom.  This is the second year I’ve had a home schooler helping me (she was 10 last year, 11 this).

It’s been great for us both.  As we only meet two mornings a week, it isn’t too demanding of her time and gives her a chance to use her skills with others. I’m constantly amazed at how she can breeze into situations with children who won’t try a new activity and have them rapidly enjoying the very thing they’ve avoided.  I think she has a “kid-sense” we have lost.  I’m quite open with parents who ask about her presence and now we have several more families interested in home schooling since they see it in action.  One of these days I hope Chris will write you about her experience helping in the school…

HIGH SCHOOLERS AT WORK

Theodore Sizer, chairman of “A Study of High Schools”, sent us an interesting paper by Eleanor Farrar.  Some excerpts:

…Our field studies in fifteen high schools around the country are in the final phase…  One widespread phenomenon which has taken many of the staff by surprise is the amount of time and energy that so many public high school students commit to working.  We’ve noticed that, regardless of family circumstances or plans for life after high school, most students are holding jobs, many virtually as full-time employees.  The recently published report from the NORC High School and Beyond Study, “Youth Employment During High School”, captures in quantitative form the impressions we have formed in the field: the NORC study reports that 50% of all students surveyed in spring, 1980 (a national sample of nearly 60,000 sophomores and seniors), had worked the previous week; and in the senior year, 63% had worked.  Furthermore, over half the seniors worked more than fifteen hours per week, 10% worked full-time, and the average weekly hours of work was 19.  These figures include private schools.  If privates were excluded, the number would be even higher…

Why are they working?…  First and foremost, students say that they work for college, or a car, or a trip.  Others work to support cars., or their closets, or their weekend fun.  Many students work because they have to; but a surprising number of students say that though their parents willingly provide an allowance, they feel uncomfortable taking it.  As one girl puts it, “My mom got a job when my sister went to college.  They’d give me an allowance if I asked, but I’d feel funny taking it.”  Like so many young people, she relishes the freedom and independence that her own money brings, but she also feels obligated to lighten the burden at home.  In this sense, students work not because they “have to” for financial reasons, but because their sense of self-esteem and of family membership requires it.

Work also seems to provide a larger arena, beyond the school, in which young people can take a measure of themselves.  While school provides a test of academic achievement or for some, athletic or journalistic skill, it seems to fall short as a yardstick of such qualities as responsibility, initiative, and ability to get on in the world.  The opportunities schools provide in these domains seem to “top off” at a point which is too low for many students.  They want bigger challenges - “responsibility” is a word that comes up over and over again - and they want the recognition that comes with success, such as raise, or a promotion, or a more difficult assignment.  As Ted Sizer recently noted, “A student may work forty hours a week as assistant manager at a fast food place, but at school he still needs a pass to go to the bathroom: it’s crazy!”  Whether or not they see craziness in the situation, many students are voting with their free hours after school for a chance to be treated like the adults they believe they are…

KIDS IN THE NEWS

A U.P.I. article from Sandy, UT:

…Karisa Rothey, 6, thinks her neighbors in suburban Sandy should take a lesson from Mormon history to get rid of a plague of hungry grasshoppers, so she has gone into the rent-a-chicken business.

Before the days of insecticides, flocks of seagulls helped save the Mormon settlers from swarms of grasshoppers that were devouring their crops in 1847.

Karisa has once again found that birds are a terrific answer to the insect plague.  Only she uses a flock of Leghorn chickens, which she rents to neighbors a week at a time.

The voracious chickens, along with domestic ducks, seem to be succeeding in partially curbing a nasty grasshopper infestation that has resisted insecticides and brush fires set by the fire department.

Sandy city officials have asked Governor Scott Matheson to provide state assistance and even call out the Utah National Guard to deal with the hungry chompers that have been stripping gardens and even fruit trees throughout the suburb south of Salt Lake City.

But Karisa said, “All people need are some chickens.  They love to eat bugs.  The grasshoppers used to eat all of the plants in our garden.  We had to plant the corn twice.  But the chickens just gobble up the grasshoppers.”

Karisa said her father, Kenneth Rothey, a lawyer, bought her some baby chicks for Easter and she raised them specifically to attack the bugs that invade her yard yearly from nearby fields.

After the chickens cleaned the insects out of her yard, Karisa began renting them to her neighbours for 25 cents per chicken per week.  She also collects and sells the eggs.

“We’re now getting some beautiful eggs from all that protein,” said her father.  “Karisa is selling them for 50 cents a dozen, and she has $140 in her savings account.”

Neighbors up and down the block have been renting the birds…

____

The Oregon Journal, 5/4/82:

EUGENE - There are kids in this town who tell some pretty tall tales - and when they do, others listen.  In fact, they listen so well that sometimes they forget where they are.

And that’s the best compliment you can give these young people -Roosevelt’s Troupe of Story tellers, in its 13th year and still the only troupe of its kind in the nation.

They may spin their yarns in the classroom, but they transport their audience to far-off fairytale lands with monsters and princesses, or scary places with haunted houses, or magical kingdoms where anything can happen.

These “spellbinder apprentices”, as they have been called, are in reality a group of junior high students who have performed for more than 26,000 elementary school students throughout the state, have given demonstrations at libraries and for college education classes, have had their work recorded for radio and television and are occasionally called on to exhibit their skills at teacher workshops.

During the summer months many of the tellers perform for children’s festivals, summer camp or park programs, and at hospitals.  One girl spent a summer as a guest storyteller in Hilo, Hawaii, and others turn their well-practiced talents to high school dramatic presentations.

Wherever they perform, it is as professionals.

“I will not save them if they are up in front of a class,” says Robert E. Rubinstein, creator and director of the troupe.  It is the kind of discipline they expect from this man.

A professional storyteller himself, Rubinstein learned the craft while working as a children’s librarian in Boston and continue to work at it is addition to fulltime teaching duties at Roosevelt Junior High School.

“It’s a hard life,” says Rubinstein, of those who attempt to make a career of storytelling.  “A few of the very best can make a living at it, but they just about have to be single and willing to travel all over the country.”

…Each of the students in the traveling troupe must develop a repertoire of four stories and be ready to perform any or all of them on call, which, of course, is one of the true storyteller’s greatest assets.

…Some have written original stories to tell.  Most, however, choose tales with good characters and exciting dialogue, which make their job easier in the long run.  They learn fast.

“I like short stories because they are easier to tell and you can make up more,” says Jean Tobin, 13.

“It is a challenge to be able to tell something to take the place of the pictures,” adds Dawn Germain, 13.

“It’s fun.  It makes other people happy and I like that,” says Claire Ferres, 12.

“What’s really hard is when you are scared and begin to fidget when you stand up,” confides another member of the troupe.

But when it comes time to pull on the red troupe T-shirts and climb into the van heading for the next school, they soon lose the jitters by wisecracking and singing songs…

“The most important thing to keep in mind when selecting a story,” [Rubinstein] tells his students, “is that the teller must genuinely like the story, want to tell it and want to share it with his audience.”…

14-YEAR-OLD ON TV

From Doris Newman (NY):

…My 14-year-old daughter, Joy Newman, just taped a television pilot called “The Kid’s Connection”.  She was one of five professional children chosen to participate in a talk show for teenagers, with an adult interviewer and a live audience of adolescents.  The five children included two tap dancers (sister and brother), a model, a singer, and an actress.

Although Joy was hired as the actress, as soon as the producers found out that she does not attend school, they focused on her home schooling for most of the questions.  In rehearsal, the other kids were asked neutral questions like “How did you get your first job?” and “How old were you when you first got started?”  Joy was asked, “Don’t you feel isolated?” and “Aren’t you lonely?”

When I spoke to the women who were running the show (teachers), they assured me that everyone was just interested, not challenging or threatening. Joy felt that she was put in the position of defending herself and her education.

Because she was so uncomfortable about the tone of the inquiries, we spent some time at home thinking of hostile questions, although it’s hard for my husband and myself to assume a frame of mind where the most important things are tests, report cards, schedules and graded homework.  At our private rehearsal, Joy’s answers were better than the ones we would have given.  We wanted to bring your book TEACH YOUR OWN and other materials to show, but they rejected the idea.

Yesterday, when they taped the show, Joy was smiling and confident, giving thoughtful answers.  When she mentioned learning French from “Parlez-moi”, a public television program, she was asked how she could learn without a book. Joy’s response was to explain how we sent away for the book of scripts, which is written in French, and how we read aloud with our own spontaneous translations. (She didn’t have time to tell about going to a French restaurant, or seeing French films, or saving labels from products made in France or Quebec.)

Someone from the studio audience asked, “Some day, won’t you be sorry you didn’t get a well-rounded education?”  The irony is this: All five kids (who were Long Islanders hired in new York City after auditioning for the show) had to travel a couple of hours to Tarrytown in Westchester County, where the TV studio was located.  All of the others, whose education was not considered questionable, went home as soon as the show was over.  Our family stayed overnight, then drove a few miles to visit Philipsburg Manor, which was built in 1720.  At the mill on the state, Joy studied the gears attached to the water wheel for grinding corn and wheat, she drew sketches of the ewes and rams near the barn, walked on the oyster shell paths, asked questions of the well-informed tour guides, and saw a short film on the history and restoration of the manor.  We compared artifacts in the manor house to the ones used on stage for “The Crucible” at SUNY Stony Brook last summer.  (Joy had played a role in the Arthur Miller play about the Salem witch trials of 1692.)

Joy’s “schooling” didn’t stop because it was Saturday, but the other students and their families apparently thought that since it wasn’t in a school building, and it was a weekend, there was no need for any more education for the week.  They were about three miles from this beautiful place when they left the TV studio and headed home.  So much for the well-rounded education!

The education of all five children who were interviewed is actually much broader than that of the average child, because of special skills and work experiences.  It was interesting to me that the model, the singer, and the two dancers kept assuring everyone that they were just “ordinary, regular, average kids”.  Joy acknowledged that her life is different.  On the program her answers were unique because of her frankness about conflicts in her life, contrasted with the idealistic picture presented by the others.  Joy was articulate, informative, and sometimes amusing.  (Her answers were singularly lacking the “like, you know, like” speech pattern of our local adolescents.)

After the show, some of the boys went over to the model, while most of the kids in the studio audience flocked around Joy.  Isn’t it funny that the girl who is supposed to be missing socialization made the most new friends!…

FROM THE MAHERS

From Mary Maher (MA):

…I still have my dream of buying a piano, but the problem is - where to put it?… Mandy (6) has a real interest in the piano.  She’s been taking music classes (with note reading and some piano) from a very accomplished Russian pianist who lives up the street.  She loves going there and is now after me to get her something to play on.  In the meantime I’m going to buy her a recorder. A friend has offered to teach her to play.  I’m going to learn to play also.

Mandy is doing so well as a home schooler.  I really see the benefits of never having let her attend school at all.  learning to read and do math is fun for her.  She has no anxieties at all about whatever she wants to learn.  It’s so wonderful - and such a contrast from Scott!

Scott (12) is free and happy now, but some aspects of school work still cause him unhappiness.  Too many bad memories, I guess.  One good thing, though -he is enrolled in the 7th grade science program at the junior high school - his choice.  He’s very excited about his class - lots of experiments and opportunities to ask questions.  His grades are all A’s.  I don’t care what his grades are, but he is proud to feel that he can succeed in school.  In the past he always saw himself as a failure, and now he has a chance to see that he is smart.  The science teacher told us that Scott is a child any teacher would love to have in his class - bright, eager, questioning.  It makes me so happy to see Scott appreciated after all the years of criticism from elementary school teachers.

I remember telling you once how Scott couldn’t write - he would just freeze up.  Well, you should see him now!  He writes page after page without any anxiety.  Not forcing him to write at all in the beginning, and being oh so patient has really paid off.

So many good things have come from home schooling.  The best is that my children hardly ever fight and care about each other deeply.  I did nothing to bring this about, it just happened.  It makes me see more and more how terribly destructive school can be to a child’s well-being and sense of self-worth.

…You asked us to let you know how we are doing with our Sinclair Computer.  We have bought several books on how to program it, and also bought a 16K memory RAM.  There is an awful lot to learn and it’s a rather slow process. Mandy and Scott have both put programs into it.  Tom will write you all about it when he finally understands it!… ____ Scott also wrote us a letter:

…When I left school two years ago in fifth grade, I felt that I would not want to go back.  I am, now in seventh grade and I am very interested in science. My friends told me that the science class down at the junior high school was very exciting and they were doing a lot of experiments.  When I heard this I decided to try it out.

In October my parents and I went for a meeting down at the school.  The teachers were glad to hear that I wanted to go down there for a class and gave me the best teacher.

The first day of class I felt awkward because I didn’t know most of the kids, but now I feel I fit in with the class.  None of the other kids think I’m different because I’m a home schooler.  The homework is very easy and I do it in about 5 to 10 minutes.  My teacher says I am one of his best students.

Some of the things we study are:  matter and energy, atoms and molecules, and now machines.

MANHATTAN HOME-SCHOOL

Articles from The Gorsetman-Landowne Home-School of Manhattan Newsletter, September, 1982: “The History of our School” By Rose Landowne

For the past ten years, Chaya [Gorsetman] and I have been dreaming about the type of Jewish education (including general education) that we want our daughters to have.  Chaya had started a nursery school and kindergarten, and we wanted to find an elementary program which continued with the same philosophy of living Judaism, respect for individuals, and unpressured growth.  We visited close to fifty schools, but did not find anything that was completely satisfying.

…At first the idea of keeping the children out of school was not much more than a fantasy, but then our consultant, Dr. Clara Loomanitz, pointed out that we really should do it.  As our frustrations with institutions of any sort mounted, the idea began to seem better and better.  When we read TEACH YOUR OWN by John Holt, we realized that, although we did not know any other people who were home schooling their children, it was a growing trend, and made a lot of sense.

Last spring we made our decision and began gathering textbooks and discussing what sort of curricular materials to use.  We decided to use a curriculum which we had written for our alternate program.  The basis of this curriculum is the Jewish calendar, and it branches out into science, social studies, and Jewish textual material.  We originally wrote it for the first two elementary grades, but found that we can go through fifth grade with it by studying the textual material in depth.

Chaya’s sister got married and sublet her apartment to us, so we have a workspace.  It’s easier to get started when you have to leave the house in the morning.  During the summer we cleaned the apartment, set up furniture, and arranged our library.  On Tuesday, September 7, the day after Labor Day, the Jewish Family School (un)officially opened its doors to our four students, Atara Gorsetman (grade 5), Dena Landowne (grade 5), Talya Gorsetman (grade 3), and Lea Landowne (grade 1)… ____

“How We Work” by Atara Gorsetman

In our school we have a very different schedule than any other school.  Our hours are from 9 AM to 3 PM.  We start with Tefila (prayer).  Then we have some sort of math scheduled until lunch.  However, when or if someone finishes math before lunch time, then she can work ion some project.  This month we worked on two projects.  One was our Rosh Hashanah cards and the other was hooked rugs, which we designed and began making.  Hooked rugs are made with special tools.

After lunch we do our jobs.  Then Chaya, Rose, Dena and I work on a workbook called You are the Editor.  It is supposed to help us write better.  It is hard to tell right now, but I think it will help.  Every day we work on Hebrew but in a different way each day.  For instance, one day we might work in a workbook called Sefatenu.  It has exercises with different words and questions to answer about a story.  Sometimes we study texts.  For example, before Yom Kippur we learned the book of Jonah and before Succoth we learned the holiday’s sources in the book of Leviticus.  After Hebrew we go upstairs to my house to practice piano.  Then the day is almost over.  Sometimes we plan trips to places like the apple orchard… ____ From “September Review” by Chaya R. Gorsetman:

…We are studying animals, classifying them according to cold blooded and warm blooded, vertebrates: mammals, and reptiles, etc.  All this came about because of the snake that we are buying.

Talya developed a mash game that is appropriate for almost all ages… All four girls are taking piano lessons and are attending the Hebrew Arts School for art, choir and Israeli Dance.  Dean and Atari are taking a jewelry class at the Walden School.  Tale is taking a gymnastics class at a local gymnastic studio…

SUCCESS STORIES

From Judith Wenz (NE):

…This is our second year of homeschooling.  We have four children, 8, 7, 5, and 2.  We have our school set up as a private school since I am, a certified teacher in this state.  This seemed like the path of least resistance.  We have our library with a card catalog, books with their Dewey decimal numbers on them and all the other little things we had to do to be approved.  Even though these things can be a bother we are aware that we are the first home schoolers in our area and want to make a good impression.  What we seemed to be judged on is how cooperative we are willing to be rather than how well we are educating our children.  And the issues they want us to cooperate on are so minor that we are willing to go along with them at this point.

Last year for school I tried to center our activities around the children’s interests.,  This year my approach has been to let each child set his own goals. They have turned out to be very short term - usually something that can be accomplished in an hour - but at least I don’t feel a need to keep things going myself all day.  When the kids bog down or get bored, then I get out a game or project that I’ve wanted to experiment with, and that gets us over the hump.

…I have met people just as able as I am to teach, who say they couldn’t possibly do it, simply because they had never finished college.  Those who have finished college but have not specialized in teaching usually feel they could teach their children in their area of expertise, but not in other areas.  Those of us who have specialized in education know that our courses have helped us very little, and just dive in… ____

From David Byram in Connecticut:

…We have been successfully teaching our own at home for about two and a half months now.

…We are using the Calvert system for Christi (6) and Jeremy (9).  My wife Linda mainly does the teaching with my assistance on areas that may be unfamiliar to her.

…The first meeting with the superintendent and his assistant ended up with what seemed to be a loss.  They tried so much to discourage us, something of course that was expected.  Before we even contacted them we did much research on Connecticut laws and had the aid of an attorney, Mr. Frank B. Cochran [see “Friendly Lawyers”], to whom we owe much thanks.  Whenever the local board thought they could get us on some technicality, Mr. Cochran pointed us to what the law really says.

…After the very first meeting with the superintendent, it seemed that we gained their cooperation, which was a great help.  The monitoring requirements were not burdensome.  We go to the local school every eight weeks to show the children’s progress… The principal is very nice and cooperative and, since he knows Jeremy and Christi from their earlier school records, told the school board they are both excellent students and that he sees no problems.  The only formal testing will be a standard achievement test given in April.

My wife does notice the lack of time she has now, but we both find it rewarding, especially as we see the children grow rapidly… ____

Carole Miller (MA) writes:

…We are unschooling here in Saugus this year - at last - with the approval of the School Committee and Superintendent’s Office.  We began this venture in Florida, but I gave in to the prevailing pressures to put Adam in school when we moved to Massachusetts after my divorce from Adam’s father.  At that time I guess I wasn’t up to another battle!  Two years in the first grade for Adam gave me the courage to renew my commitment to home schooling.  Adam’s adjustment has been beautiful (as I knew it would) and his progress has exceeded even my expectations.

I agreed to twenty hours per week of home instruction - fifteen of which are based on my summary of the town’s language arts and mathematics, curricula for Grade 2.  We’re pretty much on our own for science, social studies, music, art and physical education.

For materials I am using my choice of town-supplied texts and workbooks as the core of Adam’s program in language arts and math, although I am liberally supplementing these with other materials of my own choosing,  materials for science, social studies, etc., have been left to my own discretion.  In all area, the public library has proved to be an invaluable resource as our finances are extremely limited.

I have agreed to standardized testing at the end of the school years, although whether or not this testing will actually be required remains to be seen.  Otherwise, we’re on our own… ____

From a reader in Australia:

…I have my 12-year-old stepdaughter out of school as we were told that she needed to be put away in a psychiatric institution for her “mad” behaviour at the local State school!  How dangerously wrong they were!

…Her real problems were caused by missing out on learning until age eight due to undiagnosed deafness.  (I married her father when she was 7 and I detected the deafness which is now quite cured.)  She has comprehension problems with reading and her math level was three grades behind.  After three weeks with me “teaching” her, she has made remarkable progress.  She has already succeeded in completing eighteen months of math and is doing daily comprehension exercises at a great rate from an American series of books called INCREASING COMPREHENSION SKILLS.  Her self-esteem is rising daily, and fortunately the memories of teacher and peer humiliation are fading…  As I only asked for permission to keep her out of school for one term (our system has the school year ending just before Christmas), I only needed a medical certificate stating that she was emotionally unfit for school…

RECOVERING FROM “SPECIAL ED”

From Kristine Maihado in southern California:

…We have three children, ages 11, 9, and 6.  We took our two older children pout of public school one and a half years ago, after much struggling and dissatisfaction on our part and unhappiness on theirs.

Our oldest boy, Jamie, had been labeled hyperactive…  They advised us to put him on medication and into a special class.  Well, we did the special class but not the drugs…  Each year he and his brother Andy would fall farther and farther behind in reading…  This was creating a very negative situation for them…

In the meantime, my youngest child, Emily, had started at a marvelous little school near our home that’s based on your philosophy and that of Joseph Chilton Pearce and A.S. Neill of Summerhill.  She was doing fine and was wonderfully happy.

Her two older brothers were developing a real curiosity about what was going on at this interesting school…  So with much enthusiasm, they started going there after school two days a week.  It became a safe place for them to vent a lot of angry feelings.  Creative things happened as well and many nice humane relationships were formed.

Then one day while browsing in the local library, I happened on the book AND THE CHILDREN PLAYED by Patricia Joudry.  I immediately fell in love with the author, her philosophy and whole way of life.  I wanted that for us.

I remember the turning point.  I was sitting on our front porch one warm November Sunday afternoon reading this book, laughing, crying, and intermittently reading parts to my husband, Jim.  When the three children all trooped out and announced that they wanted to cook, I looked at Jim., he looked at me, and we said sure.  Amidst flour, butter and honey on the floor, I made dinner that night with a feeling of warmth and new freedom in my heart.

After Christmas, with lots of reservations and excitement, we took them out of public school.  We decided they would attend the private school for two or three days a week, and the rest of the time they would be home.  They loved it and very quickly fell into the routine.

Jamie has spent hours repairing bikes, had a job at a bike shop for a while. This year he built a beautiful bike for himself from scratch.  He likes reading classified ads in the newspaper, bike magazines, and Mad Magazine, though sometimes I suspect he mostly looks at pictures.

Both boys like building things and have made duck and fishponds, forts, lofts, animal cages.  Andy spent a lot of last year cooking, and cooks many things, from cookies to pizza, even a whole dinner for us at times.  He also likes stained glass, music, aerobics, and several times last year spent days working in a math workbook.  They are interested and enthusiastic about many things and are always busy.

…Jamie reads and writes very little.  Andy reads not at all - he sometimes recognizes words and other times can’t remember the sounds of letters. I often felt very scared that they lack so much self-confidence in that area and that they have so many negative feelings they may just grow up never learning to read or write.

It’s hard to face our friends and family when they hear about our home schooling and say, “But look at your children, they don’t even read yet.”  They even sometimes ask our children if they can read.  The children look down with long faces and reply, “No, I can’t.”  It really hurts me when I see them feel ashamed of themselves.

I love home schooling and can’t count all the good things that have come of it.  I see no other way; this is the best.  Our little school here (all the other pupils are home schoolers too) is great for breaking the isolation of home schooling and getting together and sharing with other people, though it is, like you say, John, a lot of extra work.  Every day I count my blessings that I can give my children this kind of freedom, and I’m feeling better and stronger and more relaxed about everything.

…How should I handle this?  If I just completely leave them alone, which is what I want to do, with their negative feelings, will they eventually teach themselves to read on their own?

…My newest idea was to make a journal for them to keep and require that they write something in it once a week with pictures, stories, poems, mainly for the purpose of allowing the feelings to come up and working through them, not necessarily that they actually write.

Another idea was to have my husband and me play school with them in the evening sometimes, Jim and me being the pupils and the children being the teachers.  I can imagine how all kinds of orders and reprimands going on.  I truly believe that once these feelings are out they will feel so much freer and better about themselves and will reclaim that natural curiosity and true desire for learning that was theirs before they went to school.

I must say that my six-year-old Emily is thoroughly in love with life.  She is constantly busy, plays great imaginary, detailed games with her friends.  She begged to go to kindergarten this year.  Well, freedom is freedom, so we let her go.  After one month she still won’t miss a day.  She really likes doing homework, etc.

I will keep close tabs on what is happening there and will let her leave as soon as she even hints about it.  I’m so afraid this natural enthusiasm of hers could be ruined all too easily… ____

John wrote in reply:

Thanks so much for your good letter…  I’m so glad the boys are recovering from their experience of schooling and “special education”.  Considering how big a dose they got, they seem to be doing very well.

About their reading, you say “…they may just grow up never learning to read or write.”  There is about as much chance of that happening as that they will grow up to be crocodiles.  If you must worry, worry about something else.

You say “Jamie reads and writes very little…”  You later say that when people ask the boys if they can read, they look down with long faces and say that they can’t.  Why do they say that?  It’s not true!  Don’t let them say it any more!  Maybe they can’t read very much, maybe they can’t don’t read very often, but if they can read something, even only a few words, then they can read.  So don’t let them say they can’t.  Don’t even let them think it.  As for your friends and family, ask them or tell them please to stop asking that question, which only makes things worse.  More, to the point, tell them, that the boys’ reading is none of their business.

Above all, don’t let the boys feel ashamed of themselves.  Even if it were true, and it isn’t, that they couldn’t read a single word, it would be nothing to be ashamed of.  Reading is a useful skill as well as a source of much information and pleasure, and not being able to do it can be a nuisance.  But it is not a crime.  Reading has nothing to do with intelligence or competence, and I have heard of quite a few highly successful and even wealthy people in this country who could not read at all.  There is no reason for shame.  Make sure the boys understand that.

As I say, not being able to read is an inconvenience and a nuisance, like having a broken leg or being sick.  But also, once people get over the idea that reading is terribly difficult or that they are too stupid to do it, neither of which is true, and once they decide that for their own reasons they really want to read, they can do it in a very short time, often only a few months or less -I myself personally saw adult illiterates in their 40’s and 50’s learning the essential skills of reading in only a few weeks.  You can say to the boys, “You don’t have to read unless and until you want to, and anytime you really want to, you can do it easily.”  You can add, “The only reason you think that perhaps you can’t learn to read is because all those people in school told you so.  But they have been proved wrong thousands of time.”

One way of showing Andy how many words he does in fact know how to read might be to offer him a small payment, say 25c, for every word he can read to you.  Keep an alphabetical card file of these words.  You and he will soon find that he can read many more words than you or he thought.

You say, “If I just completely leave them alone, with their negative feelings, will they eventually teach themselves to read on their own?”  You don’t leave them completely alone in anything else, so why should you in this?  It’s their negative feelings that you have to try to deal with.  Once they stop feeling ashamed, or thinking that even if they did try to read they wouldn’t be able to, their natural intelligence and curiosity will do the rest.  As far as help goes, it will be enough to say, “Any time you want me to tell you what a word says, ask me and I’ll tell you, and anytime you want me to write a word for you, ask me and I’ll do that.”  That will almost certainly do the trick.  Though if you can afford it, it would probably help if you bought them some kind of a typewriter - they will almost certainly like it and will want to learn to use it.

Please let me know what you think and feel about this letter, and if you discuss it with the boys, what they say about it.  And after a few months, please write again and let is know how things are coming along.  And please try to worry less.  Good luck to you all…

TRYING OUT SCHOOL

From Jacque Williamson (WV):

…Our experiment of having Nathan (5) attend public kindergarten two mornings a week has about run its course.  We had agreed to try it for three months.  Nathan loved it the first month and I was feeling a mixture of relief and anxiety.  I was glad he fit in and yet worried about what would happen if he really liked it and insisted on going to first grade which is against all our wishes - plus I was puzzled about why he liked such a structure which he’s never liked before.  I was beginning to question all our theories and plans for his schooling, thinking maybe that I’d misjudged what he needed.

However, after eight mornings (one month), he started to ask to not go. A little talking about sticking it out until November, as we had agreed, was all it took to keep him going a few more times.  However, near the end, he downright pleaded not to go so he skipped several days.  Finally, I spent a morning with him to get a feel for the whole flow - I’d visited frequently for several years in this class but only brief visits.  After our visit I told his teacher he wasn’t happy and we agreed to teach him at home for the winter and see what he wants to do come spring.  He’s happy.

Why was he happy at first and later dissatisfied?  At first the novelty was what he liked - new place, new toys, new activities, new friends. That soon wore off when every day was the same thing. In three months they finger-painted once, the only time there was any free-form art (as opposed to what I call “pre-planned parent pleasers” - those things that all look the same for each child and which parents can recognize as being a turkey, etc). His frequent question during this time was “Mommy, how come in public school they don’t let you make any decisions?” The lock-step of the system became apparent when they studied numbers 1-5 in November, even though his teacher admitted all but two children knew 1-5 before entering kindergarten, and those two she didn’t expect to learn 1-5 all year! So Nathan was bored.

Now he’s home doing his own projects, mostly non-academic. However, at times he gets interested in reading or math or science and in short order zooms ahead. He’s on par with the first graders here in math and close in reading and I dare say he’s spent less than two full school days’ worth of time getting those skills … _____

Jesse Murphree (FL) wrote in the FLASH newsletter, 1/83:

… I have been an unschooler all my life. But August 30, 1982) I stepped into a public middle school. It was the first public school I’d ever attended in my life. The reason I was going to school was I wanted to get out and meet some girls my own age. I was pretty scared since I’d never been to a real school before.

The thing I was most worried about was school work. Until I wanted to start school I’d never done any kind of work (and I’m no genius). For eleven years I’d done practically whatever I pleased and now I was in sixth grade. I made friends but it was sort of hard because I’m kind of shy and some girls were not too friendly. But as time went by I learned which girls to avoid and which ones were nice.

After the first six-week period the names of the people who made the honor roll were called over the intercom. I was one of them. The next day I got a blue card with my name and a little red ribbon on it.

I went to school two more weeks before I decided to quit. It wasn’t that I didn’t like school, it was just school wasn’t all peaches and cream. Most of the work was pretty boring and it took up a lot of my time. I wanted more time to write stories and do other things.

I think school was a good experience. I made friends and had some good times. Most of all I learned that I could go to school and make the honor roll even though I’d never been to school before. That gave me a lot of confidence…

SHE CHOSE TO GO

From Bonnie Kolodzy in Ontario:

… Though my oldest is in kindergarten, it is by her choice. She knows that anytime she wishes to, she may switch to homeschooling …

I once had someone ask me in regard to my allowing her to choose to go to school, “If she wanted to eat a whole bag of sugar, would you let her?” Though I was dumbstruck, when I reflected on it, I thought, “No, but I wouldn’t deny her a taste.”  I feel that she needs to experience school in order to make an informed choice, hence my decision to allow her to go. I must admit, though, my husband and I were both a bit disappointed when she chose to go. We were all set to allow her to learn by curiosity as she has always done at home.

… We still encourage her learning on her own, through all the ways mentioned in GWS over and over again …

Both Beth (5) and Joe (3) have been assisting me in so many areas! Last week, for instance, I was busy when my apple pie was done in the oven. Beth shut off the buzzer and the oven and, using potholders, removed the pie from the oven to cool - all without any prompting. This week, Joe made muffins for a friend who was ill. I measured the ingredients out, he put them in the bowl, beat it up and spooned the batter into muffin tins. He even delivered them to the door!

This is how we encourage self-sufficiency. Helping only when needed and allowing the children grow into independence …

AT HOME IN NEW ORLEANS

Marilyn Bohren (LA) writes:

… When will I quit worrying? I have three children - boys 5 and 3, and a newborn girl. The 5-year-old has been picking up reading as it interests him - he’s unafraid to tackle words phonetically and writes his own stuff (usually on the typewriter because it’s faster), phonetically also. Since I’ve done crossword puzzles and shorthand, I have no problem deciphering the stories.

… His math astounds all of us. “Can I have some hard-cooked egg?” he asked while we prepared dinner for company. I said to figure it out. He added our family to the visitors, counted the eggs and divided by 4 as I quartered them, and then subtracted to find he could have three pieces.

But Django’s drawing was non-existent. I didn’t want him afraid of art but he wasn’t interested because he couldn’t do it. Then he saw something on TV at a friend’s which explained something similar to a GWS article (#25) where everything is just broken down into basic shapes. Now we can hardly keep him and his brother Andre supplied with enough paper. At 3, Andre is drawing a circle head with circle eyes and line mouth. Often he’ll watch Django tackle something - for as long as 10 minutes - and then maybe he’ll do it himself or maybe he’ll digest it for a couple of days.

… Most days the boys will spend a couple of hours spontaneously at their desk: drawing, cutting, punching, pasting. A lot of it seems to be just practicing their skills. The concentration level amazes me. In the afternoons we read more - both are fanatic about books. And while Andre naps, Django generally has a quiet time where I rest from questions and he uses special materials Andre can’t handle carefully enough yet. Both boys help me cook and Django has several special recipes he can make for their snacks.

I can see the advantage for the younger siblings as Django explains letters to Andre and even 2-month-old Corinna. Andre is learning his alphabet in a very different way from Django. Django learned the song and eventually asked about letters. Andre declares a new letter about once a week - I assume he gets it from Django.

My husband and I are around to answer questions a lot. As one gets worn out, the other usually takes over the with rapid-fire conversation. Spencer, my husband, is a musician and out of town too much, so we’re working on getting a bus to be a family on the road. We’re all thrilled at the prospect of learning life first-hand. Why not learn about the formation of the earth at Yellowstone or where clothes come from in the Mississippi Delta where cotton is being farmed? I’ve been subscribing to and saving Cobblestone magazines as each month they have topics like a New England community or the Erie Canal or the Beaver trade of the 1800’s with lots of listing to supplement the magazine, like museums and literature. I was explaining locks to Django when the Erie Canal issue came out, but he interrupted me since he knew about it from a local tour boat ride he’d taken several months ago.

Django took a real interest in maps for a while. We spent two weeks vacationing and used the map a lot as we were doing it pretty free form. When we got home, Diango drew a map of a walk we were to take to a ferry that would get us downtown. It was perfect. So I drew a map of our errands downtown and he followed it.

Spencer bought a ukelele for the boys. It needed fixing so Django got into that aspect - he loves machines and knowing how they fit together (he loves going into factories to see the conveyor belts and such). As soon as the uke was together, he lost interest and Andre took over, strumming and writing songs and singing at the top of his lungs. When Spencer would sit down to play, Andre would get the uke and mimic his movements. Once, Andre even got up on stage with Spencer at a loose outdoor gig and just stood next to him and got the feel of the audience. He didn’t bother anyone - just soaked it all up. Both boys help Spencer change strings and voluntarily move the lighter equipment. They’re so eager to be in the bus, too.

I feel so lucky to have time with my children. The last three years I’ve been a licensed midwife, delivering enough babies at home to keep me pretty busy. But as the boys get older and now that we have another baby, I find my priorities changing. I want to be available to answer all those questions and to teach them as they’re ready. We also need to be on the road, so I’m letting midwifery slide for now… It’s amazing how my concentration level has changed now that I’m not keeping three or four women-who-could-deliver-any-second on my mind all the time. Much as I love mothers and babies, I love my family more. And I figure why go to the bother of a special birth if you’re not going to follow through - which in our case means home-schooling.

My kids have a weekly exchange with other kids they love and who are not yet in school. And we visit other home-schoolers as we can. But whenever they’re with schooled children, they inevitably complain later about how those kids are too rough or no fun. One exception was a little Spanish boy who was an outsider at school because of the language barrier. He and Django had great fun gently playing together.

I find both boys are nearly impossible to get out of the house some days as they’re so busy … It’s encouraging to me that they find their security at home and I hope they’ll transfer this to the bus.

I know none of this is so very spectacular, as I read this sort of thing in GWS and hear it from other home-schooling mothers all the time. But still -here’s more fuel for your fire…

TIME FOR EVERYONE

Joyce Kinmont (UT) wrote in her newsletter The Tender Tutor:

…From an Oregon mother of five, the oldest a second grader and the youngest not yet born, who is considering home school: “I’ve noticed that even when the young children are happily occupied, as soon as I sit down with an older child, both young ones are on my lap. Short of only having individual attention for the older children while the younger ones take naps (I enjoy resting also), I wonder if you have found something that works well for you? … Have you found it possible to pursue your own individual projects while having all your children home all of the time?”

In reading this letter, it suddenly hit me what a wonderful compliment it is to a person to be able to say that the minute she sits down her children run to sit on her lap. How privileged we are to be mothers. No other occupation in the world brings that kind of reward.

When I work with my children individually we go into another room where I have a desk set up and where we can close the door for privacy. The other children accept this with no trouble because they all know they will get their own turn. (Our 2 1/2 year-old is amusing in her insistence that nobody enter the room when it’s her turn.)

There is an old principle we have all heard that when a mother is busy in the kitchen and a child tugs on her apron strings, if she will stop and spend a minute answering his need he will go away satisfied and she will be free to finish her work. If she tries to put him off, he will continue to bother her until they are both frustrated.

I find that the same principle works in home schooling. If I spend my mornings with my children, they are usually happy to pursue their own projects in the afternoon, and I am left with plenty of free time …

MAKING LIFE EASIER

Susan Blount wrote in the Maine Home Education newsletter, Fall ‘82: …I have developed a job list for the girls and every time a job is completed satisfactorily they can put a star on a chart. They receive a quarter allowance for every ten stars. There are a few rules to be followed: 1) They must cooperate on a job. No fighting or they will have to finish the job but not get a star; 2) They must do three things with their money: save some, give some, spend some. They have opened their own savings accounts.

… We have implemented this plan for over a year. I can’t see us ever outgrowing it … You wouldn’t believe the work that gets done now. They    will say, “No, Mom, I’ll do that.” I love it. And it’s been so good for them, too. They don’t take for granted the many hours it takes to run a household. Plus they’ve learned about job sharing, organizing and many other things … _____

From Therese Maria Pol (IL):

… I have heard and read how difficult it is to change and dress toddlers. Well, we were having our own frustrating, squirming sessions for a while. Then it dawned on me (certainly not a brainstorm, but a personal revelation nonetheless) to include Jessica (1 1/2) actively. Now she holds her diaper pins for me while I’m putting on the diaper. I ask her for each pin, and as she decides to, she hands them to me. We laugh and play peek-a-boo and talk. Granted, Jessica may hold those pins for quite a while sometimes, but she is in control as much as I am. I know that she likes it that way … _____

From Helen Cave (BC):

… This morning the girls (9, 7, and 4) decided that I was to have breakfast-in-bed as “it’s been a long time since you’ve had to have breakfast in bed because you were sick.” While preparing breakfast they decided to move our dishes (plates, bowls, cups) from an upper, hard-to-reach cupboard to a more accessible below-counter cupboard. I was so used to years of dishes kept in high cupboards that I was dubious at first of the new arrangement. But it’s much more practical - easier to get at - not only for them, but also for me!…

NICOLE’S BOOK

From Juanita Haddad (BC):

… Since Nicole began to talk she’s been saying things that sounded as good to me as A.A. Milne or Robert Frost so I began writing things down. Now I’m writing down for Tacy, too. One only has to glance at the book to know something of two very different little girls: of Tacy as she dances and whirls through life and of Nicole as she stops to study and inspect each phenomenon. (The hardback, A175001 Record book with a single line by Dominion Blueline Inc. is an excellent well-bound book.)

To begin with, none of what I wrote down was said for writing down. I got better at keeping notebooks in the truck, upstairs and downstairs, and in the garden, an inspiring place for Nicole, as it is for me. I’m terrible at remembering word for word what she’s said so I put it down immediately or have to let it go. I’d never fill in the blanks for her. After Nicole understood I wouldn’t be sending her book, just copies from it, she said I could send some to you. She remembers each entry, word for word. After all, they’re her words and each is greater than itself, surrounded by the memories and meaning of the real context it was spoken in. We read that book more often than any other in the house. She hardly lets us catch our breath. She says, “Read!”  It looks now like it may be the first thing she’ll choose to read as I often see her with it, finding the words she knows.

I’ve always been a little uncomfortable about being the person who ultimately “chooses” what goes in her book. I’ve wanted it to be as much hers as possible until she can do it all herself. Yet, I realize I’m capturing thoughts, etc., that are unencumbered with the effort of writing. Things are changing fast though, of course. At first I subtly wrote what I heard, then Nicole began adding dictations that she “wanted in her book” and now she’s begun with the copying

… I’ll choose from all Nicole’s entries up to the present: … There was an owl in the summer when you had your summer clothes on. (4/81) Come back wind, come back wind and bring the sun. (5/81) It’s funny when your bathrobe gets stretched out like a butterfly.(6/81) I’m drinking water buttons off the pea plants. (6/81) Mamma, I just saw a fixture. He sitting on the ramp. He was just a little one. Then he flew up in the tree and he was saying, “Fixture, fixture, fixture.” (9/81 - at the time we were putting in plumbing.) Oh! It’s raining! See the windows all sparkly! Up came a rainbow drop! Look at the crowds of leaves! (10/81) When I see your old toys around I know you were a kid and Papa was a boy. That’s how I know you were little tiny people. (2/82) When I cry and I get done crying I kind of laugh a nice kind of laugh. (1/82) The song gets louder and the drum gets louder; just the drum gets louder and you sing softly to a loud drum. (3/82) Tip your cereal dish, Mama. The milk makes a piece of moon or a cradle or a leaf curling. (12/82)

ON READING & MATH

From Susan Haverfield (WA):

… When Ben was 3, we tried Doman’s TEACH YOUR BABY TO READ. I don’t think people are monsters to try it, but I think it’s possible to resent the child if he loses interest (the preparation is very time-consuming). Ben learned, then lost interest, then forgot. I now feel confident that he will learn to read when he wants to and I probably wouldn’t recommend the method. It was often fun, but not as much fun as when he figures out things for himself … _____

Dorothy Werner wrote in the 7/82 House Door:

… Using the Monthly Record the Home Based Education Program (MI) provides has shown all of us that we actually spend a lot more time on academics than we thought. We really hadn’t noticed, since much of that time is not structured-at-desk-and-write kind.

My 11-year-old was sure he was behind in math. Just for fun, we went through the Math outline to see. He discovered he is above grade-level in every area of math. That discovery let him relax about math, and now he spends more time with it.

… Joshua had done very little formal math work in the alternative school he had attended since the first grade. He was sure he was behind. And he found out it simply wasn’t so… _____

From Miriam Mangione (NV):

… Since Shanda has been home we have learned more about her. Since the second grade she has employed her own method of subtracting two digit numbers. For example, 15 - 8. First she adds the 1 and 5 of 15 and gets 6, then she counts back on her fingers 6, 7, 8; there are seven fingers left, which is the answer. She uses this only for two digit numbers up to 19. Her teachers have always told her it couldn’t be done that way but she persisted in using this method, as it was the one she figured out for herself that she understood…

3 R’S AT HOME

Denise Hodges (IL) writes:

… We haven’t really changed our daily routine very much (or lack of one), since we began. Basically the kids have most of the day to follow their own interests. When the weather was nice we went to parks almost daily and they played, walked, or observed nature.  One change I have made is that Lucas (7) now does some academic type work everyday. It usually takes him 30 to 45 minutes. I got a bit upset because for six solid months (starting when we took him out of school), he didn’t write a word. He had previously flooded us with notes and letters. When, at my suggestion, he tried to write a letter requesting some free stuff from Ranger Rick, he got terribly frustrated and gave up. For a long time I did nothing, but I finally decided that this was not a case where I should just leave him alone. He had set up a real mental block somewhere along the way. I read about D’Nealian handwriting in GWS #23, and ordered their worktexts. I told him he was to do two pages a day, starting with the first-grade-level book. He grumbled a little at first but in about four weeks he was writing easily and beautifully. He finished that book in about six weeks, and is now halfway through the Level 2 book and is learning cursive, and best of all is writing letters again! I got him his own address book and stationery and he writes to distant friends and relatives and can even address the envelopes himself…

As far as his reading ability goes, for some unexplained reason that’s one thing I don’t worry about. Don occasionally asks him to read one of his books out loud, and Lucas always does fine. He spends some time every day reading library books he picks out. I also read aloud every day. We just finished Madeline L’Engle’s A WRINKLE IN TIME, which we both loved. That reminds me, Why isn’t THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE on your booklist anymore? [DR: Sad to say, it’s out of print again.]  We got it at the library, and that is now my all time favorite book about Indian life. Lucas also loved it.  Although I have read in many other books about the “trail of tears”, when I read Little Tree’s version I was crying so hard I couldn’t see the words! And the explanation of spiritual life, and of what it means to love (to understand) is so beautiful and so simple that to my mind it’s a classic. I read that book months ago and Lucas still quotes from it

One area of Lucas’s education I do worry about is his math ability (or lack of it). After playing dominoes with him and having him keep score I was shocked to find out that he had forgotten how to do even simple sums. I have tried to interest Lucas in several of GWS’s math type games (the grids, etc.) but he is just not interested. So here again I am in a quandary. Should I give him another “push” or should I leave him alone? Of course I am scared that one of his relatives (who are all worried about his education) will ask him a math question, or that sooner or later our school will be tested in some way and found lacking.

As of the last two weeks, I have tacked on a short math type assignment to his daily writing. We do a problem with cuisenaire rods, or from the I HATE MATH book, or something else I dream up concerning something we are doing (like cooking). I am not at all sure I am doing the right thing, but I am going to stick with it for a while and hope that light will go on again as it did with his writing. By the way, Lucas doesn’t complain about doing this stuff. On the other hand he rarely does it without my reminder.

Another worry I have concerns Maia’s (3 1/2) insistence that she is going to kindergarten. True - it’s l 1/2 years away, but she talks about it daily! She is doing beautifully on her writing, totally on her own initiative, and learning to recognize some words. She will literally spend hours sitting at the kitchen table writing in a practice book I made for her at her request. I hate to see that pure love of learning destroyed by a formal school experience. On the other hand, I’m afraid if I don’t let her go to kindergarten she will resent me and feel that she is missing out on something terrific. But if I do let her go, I subject her to all the negative things in public schools that I am now so against…

She is a very social creature. We joined a playgroup to fulfill that need for now. By the way, the play-group was originally intended for 3-4 year-olds. Lucas was not going to be involved. But I quickly found out that he loved playing with the little ones, especially the two 10-month-old infants who come with their mothers!…  

DRAMA & WRITING

Karen Holguin (CA) writes:

… The University of Southern California has a summer campus, open to adults and kids, for the pursuit of the arts: drama, music, photography, ceramics, weaving, etc. Marti attended the Children’s Theater last summer for two weeks, a very good group with a dynamic instructor. Marti was also able to secure a part in an adult cast last winter. His interest in drama grew out of an interest in special effects and now he is becoming quite serious about it. He plans to get a summer job on campus in exchange for classes. At present he spends I to 2 hours each day studying pantomime. This involves a lot of “Hey, look, Mom!” but I am enjoying it! I believe this is one of the big advantages of home schooling. The child is free to explore subjects in depth for prolonged times and as a result is better able to pursue subjects of interest as an adult.

For instance, Marti is writing a short paper on the history of pantomime… As part of the paper, he is taking notes from what he reads… I did not learn this skill until I was well out of school… Marti’s notes reflect what the book says as well as what he thinks about that. In the same vein, he has begun keeping a journal. This is his private place, though he shares occasionally. All this from the boy who four years ago was having hysterics and wheeze attacks over book reports!… [See Karen’s letter in “‘Free Writing’ At Home,” GWS #21.]

READING VIA COMPUTER

Our friend Bob Lawler sent us an excellent article he wrote for The Boston Review, 6/82. The Lawlers are now living in Paris, and Bob says, “…My two older kids are in a French school (after three years of Calvert home schooling) and doing well. Because it is a private school, they can take time off to travel with me, so their position is not oppressive. They began the year in English and will convert to French, course by course, during the year…”

From the article: … I have worked in the computer industry for over fifteen years, and when my children were born I became interested in the potential impact of early computer experience on children’s learning. Several years ago, in collaboration with the LOGO project at MIT [see “Mindstorms,” GWS #24], I began an intensive study of how daily access to a computer influenced the way my two older children - then aged eight and six - learned the basics of arithmetic. By the time their younger sister Peggy turned three, a micro-computer had become standard equipment in our household, and I began to develop several programs to give Peggy access to the machine. Playing with the programs in her own way and on her own initiative, Peggy has begun to do something that looks very much like the beginnings of reading and writing…

Peggy, at the age of three. even living in a bookish family, did not know how to read in any substantial sense before her computer experience. Her knowledge of letters at three years and three months of age was quite specific and limited. She recognized only a few letters as distinct symbols with any meaning. For example, she knew that “P” was the first letter of her name. She also recognized “G” as the “mommy letter” because her mother’s name is Gretchen. What was Peggy’s understanding of spelling? One incident gave me some inkling. My oldest daughter was learning a bit of French; one day Peggy claimed that she knew how to “spell French” and continued, “un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq.” At another time her spelling of “French” was “woof boogle jig.” (Some of you may recognize this as the Klopstockian love song from a W.C. Fields movie.) Peggy seemed to have the general idea of spelling as decomposing a meaningful whole into a string of essentially meaningless symbols, but she had not yet learned any of the culture-standard assignments of letters to words.

… After receiving a book as a gift from her older sister (who then wrote PEGGY LAWLER on the flyleaf), Peggy interpreted all small clusters of alphabetic symbols as “Peggy Lawler.” Later, as a consequence of being read to, she became able to recognize the word “by,” which appeared on the title page of every book we read to her. There is no reason to believe she had any idea of what “by” might mean in that context. She did recognize that same word “by” in quite a different context, spontaneously pointing out the word in the line “These Romans are crazy, by Jupiter!” from an Asterix cartoon book. Her knowledge of reading as a process for interpreting graphic material is best seen in her observation that when we read a book together, she reads pic- tures and I read words. From her remark, we can infer she would “read” by inventing a story based on her best speculation about the pictures’ meaning. She assumed that I was doing the same with the words. Not a bad assumption, but completely empty of any information about how written words signify as they do.

Contrast the foregoing sketch of Peggy’s knowledge at three years and three months with what she now knows seven months later. Her knowledge of letters is essentially complete, in that she discriminates the 26 letters of the alphabet and can name them. Her knowledge of words, in the sense of interpreting them one at a time, is significantly greater. She reads more than 20 words, most with complete dependability. But unlike children who have learned to read and write by conventional means, she sees the spelling of words as step-by-step directions for typing a name into the computer. Although her general idea of what book reading is may not have changed, she has a different and powerful idea of what reading single words means that derives directly from her experience with computer programs I wrote. (I call the computer environments created by the programs I have written, “microworlds.”) … Her desire to control the machine led her into typing on the computer her first “written” word. Having helped load programs by pushing buttons on a cassette tape recorder, one day on her own Peggy typed “LO” on the keyboard of the computer terminal and then came seeking direction as to what letter came next. A few days later, she typed the “LOAD” command while the rest of the family was at lunch in a different room.

The initial microworlds were one for moving colored blocks around on the computer’s video display screen and another (made for her older sister but taken over by Peggy) which created designs by moving a colored cursor about on the screen. Her older sister used this drawing program to make designs, but Peggy’s first design was a large box - which she immediately converted into a letter “P” by adding the stem. Letters intrigued Peggy. They were a source of power she didn’t understand.

A few days later, Peggy keyed the letter “A” and explained to me that “A is for apple.” Her comment suggested a way we could - on the computer - make a new kind of prereaders’ ABC book …

In the ABC microworld we invented, the letter is the “key” for accessing the picture. That is, typing the key for the letter “D” on the computer’s keyboard produces a picture of a dog on the computer screen… Peggy was able to try any letter on the keyboard, first, to see what it got her, and later, if the picture interested her, to inquire what was the letter’s name. She was in control of her own learning. She could learn what she wanted, when she wanted to, and could ask for advice or information when she decided she wanted it … The shapes were selected and created on the computer by Peggy’s older sister and brother, aged ten and twelve…

More complex and interesting than the ABC microworld, the BEACH microworld provides a backdrop for action that can be controlled by the child. Waves and a beach in the foreground, with grass above, rise to a road, more grass, and clouds at the top of the display. Against that backdrop, Peggy could create a small picture of an object by specifying a name, then manipulate the picture with commands typed on the computer keyboard. Peggy typically began constructing a scene by typing the word SUN. A yellow circle would appear in the waves. She would raise it to the sky by keying the word UP repeatedly, change its color or set it in motion with another word, and go on to other objects. She could, for example, make a CAR image appear by keying that word, change its location with commands UP, DOWN, MOVE, and specify its heading and velocity with TURN, SLOW, FAST, FASTER, and HALT.

These microworlds were created using LOGO, an easily comprehensible computer language which permits the programmer to assign meaning to any string of letters by writing a simple procedure that is activated whenever that string of letters is typed. LOGO’s procedure definition was especially valuable in customizing the BEACH world. When Peggy first used BEACH, she was unhappy with the speed of the objects and asked, “How can I make them zoom, Daddy?” Nothing was easier than to create a new word, ZOOM, the procedure for which would set the velocity of the object with a single LOGO primitive command. In another instance, Peggy’s older sister made a horse-and-rider design and wrote a PONY procedure to create that object and set it in motion. After watching her sister edit that shape design, Peggy imitated the specific commands to create her own new shape. (She could not well control the design and ended with a collection of perpendicular lines. Asked what it was, she first replied, “A pony,” then later, “Something important.”)

… As a direct consequence of playing with the BEACH world, Peggy learned to “read” approximately twenty words. Initially, she keyed names and commands, copying them letter by letter from a set of 4 x 6 cards that I made up for her. Soon, her favorite words were keyed from memory. Less familiar words she would locate by searching through the pile of cards. When her mood was exploratory, she would try unfamiliar words if she encountered them by chance. Now, when shown these words - on the original 4 x 6 cards or printed elsewhere - she recognizes the pattern of letters and associates it with the appropriate vocal expression. Further, the words are meaningful to her. She knows what they represent, either objects or actions in the BEACH microworld. In the past, children have always learned to read words as alphabetic symbols for ideas to be evoked in the mind. For Peggy, words are that, but they are something else as well - a set of directions for specifying how to key a computer command. What is strikingly different in this new word-concept is that the child and computer together decode a letter string from a printed word to a procedure which the computer executes and whose significance the child can appreciate. Because the computer can interpret specific words the child does not yet know, she can    learn from the computer through her self-directed exploration and experiment.

The basic lesson I draw from this story is NOT merely about “motivation” - although Peggy did enjoy playing with these microworlds and learned from doing so. There is a more revolutionary aspect, one that is paradoxical as well. This new technology, although it may seem highly artificial, can make possible a more “natural” absorption of knowledge than learning to read from the printed page. The character of words experienced as executable procedure names brought Peggy into a new relationship with language, one different from what has been characteristic of learning to read in the past. Learning to read from print is necessarily a passive process for the child. Words on the page stand for other people’s meanings. Until children start to write they can’t use written words for their own purposes. Microcomputers put reading and writing together from the start. A word that Peggy can read is also one she can use to produce on the computer effects that interest her. For Peggy, learning the alphabetic language has become more like what every infant’s learning of the vocal language is like. Speaking is powerful for the infant, even for one who commands but a few words, when a responsive person listens and reacts. Likewise, the production of alphabetic symbols - even one letter and one word at a time - can become powerful for the young child when computer microworlds provide a patient, responsive intelligence to interpret them.

The change wrought by microcomputers may not be profound for Peggy. She would have learned to read anyway at six or five instead of three; but for many other children in the world - those with less responsive families and teachers, for example - the chance to use language symbols in microcomputers may give them a new access to the power of written words which can truly be called revolutionary. The computer revolution is worthwhile only if it liberates people. It has the potential to do so if those who care about individual’s freedom and development join in shaping this plastic medium more to the service of mankind than narrow technical or commercial interests might be inclined to do …

YOUNG COMPUTER TEACHER

From a New York reader:

… We sent our son (12) to computer camp last summer and he came home quite knowledgeable on computers. We decided to buy one for my husband’s business and it would double as an educational tool for our children. We found our son so enthusiastic over the computer that we suggested he teach a small computer class to fellow classmates.

So he gathered his notes together and got in contact with a teacher down the road from us (who will be teaching a computer course to her elementary students soon) and asked her if she would help him make up some kind of lesson plans. She was willing, for he shared with her what he knew and helped her design her course and she helped him make up his course. They visited libraries and viewed films and swapped magazines. By the end of all of this, his knowledge was doubled and so was hers.

He has been holding classes for a month now - ages range from nine years to adult. He includes a few workshops as well and will be doing an advanced course for students later in the year. In payment for this lady’s help, he offered her son the entire series free. He has accepted barter but prefers to get paid (saving for his own computer and future computer courses). This has kept him quite busy after school and on weekends.

Not only has his knowledge on computers been reinforced through teaching, but it has given him a desire to keep two steps ahead of his students as well. He is learning business management, dealing with all types of people and how to invest his money. We feel this has been a very worthwhile experience for us all and are very excited about the months ahead.

His only advertisement so far has been with direct mailing of the computer print-out he made up of his course. He hopes to advertise in supermarkets and the local newspaper. So far his best source of promotion is word of mouth by his mom.

…I called around to find a typing course for him through adult education and the instructor told me she would not take one so young for his attention span would not have the tolerance for her course (little does she know!)…

KOHL ON COMPUTERS

[JH:] Herb Kohl, a very humane and intelligent man and, as readers of his books will know, one who understands and loves children, underscores Bob Lawler’s remarks in an article he wrote for the Sept.-Oct. ‘82 issue of the Harvard Bulletin. In it he said, in part:

…I was reminded of the continual pleasure I got [as a child] from building an electric-train world recently when I visited a local computer store. A number of girls and boys between nine and fifteen were hanging around, watching the salespeople’s demonstrations, playing games, and writing their own programs whenever a demonstration machine became available. I asked the person waiting on me if she knew the youngsters, and she told me that they were the local computer buffs. They had no machines at home or at school, and the store had become a social center for them. As long as they made no trouble and freed the machines for customers, they were welcome. In fact, they were very helpful to the salespeople, because some of them knew more about computers and computing than anyone who worked at the store.

I talked to several of the youngsters and found that they were indeed knowledgeable, and that the sense of power they felt when controlling the machines was close to what I had felt with my electric trains. Over the past few years I’ve been observing a number of young people working and playing with computers, and have discovered that it is not only the buffs who love the power that comes with control, but that most children seem to enjoy the complexity and challenge represented by computers. And even more, they seem to enjoy the fact that one doesn’t need an adult teacher in order to learn to program or use a computer.

… A computer that is simply pre-programmed to take game cartridges or one with practically no memory is, over a period of time, a dull machine, one that minimizes the user’s power. But an expandable system, one that can lead to increasingly complex uses and control of greater computer capability, offers challenges that you can return to for years. This is not an exaggeration. My neighbor’s son, thoroughly bored with school, has built a small computer into a very powerful system that he has used to reproduce arcade games, to develop programs that analyze the statistics of his high-school basketball team, and to set up books for his parents’ small business. Joseph is not exceptional, even within our small community in northern California. There is a microcomputer that has been floating around Point Arena for over five years. A high-school student bought it originally, and after a year found it too limited for his purposes. So he sold it to another student and bought a system with a greater memory and better graphics. The second student went through the same experience, and now that machine is passed from student to student with the knowledge that he or she will soon outgrow it. To date, it has been owned by six youngsters and used by several dozen more. The local high school has held classes in computer science only for the past two years. Most of the students who know something about computers don’t take the course because, as one boy told me, “I know more than the teacher, and he’ll get angry at me for telling him things to do that require more than he knows.” This student is fifteen, but he said he knew of a dozen fifth and sixth graders who also knew more than the teacher.

So much for the high-school teacher. There’s a one-room school about five miles north of here with two teachers and 35 students. The man who teaches kindergarten through third grade discovered computers last year, and now he is a buff, perhaps even an expert. He and many of the children in our community have come to some agreement about “time on the machine,” but what impresses me most is the fact that they don’t relate to each other in the usual teacher/student or adult/child mode. Instead they relate to this open-ended machine that they are exploring together. It is possible for young people and adults to learn computing together, to randomize old notions of dominance, and to feel inventive and powerful. I am learning with my children on the Atari we have, and am finding out how to approach problem solving and complex thinking in a systematic way with the continual feedback a home computer provides … _____

[JH:] How sad it is that the high school teacher was jealous and fearful of the children who knew more about computers than he did. Why not instead applaud and welcome their skill, and encourage them to use it to help others? Teachers complain, with good reason, about their class loads. This high-school teacher could easily and greatly reduce his teaching load by sharing it with children - if he could only bring himself to ask them to help him.

For all that I am in many ways very skeptical about computers and the grandiose claims that are made for them, I can see that right now they are an important part of our world, and am therefore interested in them, and even more in the ways that children use them. Do readers know of other friendly computer stores where children are encouraged to hang out, use the machines, and become experts in the natural and painless way Kohl describes? If you know stories like the ones he tells about children using computers, please tell us about them, too.

Herb told me on the phone a couple of months ago that he was planning to start a newsletter about children and computers, and the first issue should be out soon. If you want more info on this, write him c/o GWS at our office. I agree with all that Seymour Papert, Bob Lawler, and Herb Kohl have said about the value of making available to children a world in which they can make things happen, and in the ways they want. But there is a danger, and we have signs already how great it may be, that some children (adults too) may so love their power over the mini-world of the computer that they will hide in that world from the larger world outside in which they control so little. May not autistic children be in essence people who, bewildered and terrified by the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the real world, have drawn back into a shrunken world of their own making in which they can predict and control everything?

Our age worships power and control far too much, and I doubt very much that a remedy for this cultural disease will be to put some form of total power and control at the disposal of everyone - or everyone who can afford a computer. Let’s discuss this further. We’d like to hear your thoughts.

BUYING A COMPUTER

I have been trying to find the cheapest computer on which you can use LOGO. The leading candidate seemed to be the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, which lists at $300 but for which dealers are for the time being giving a $100 rebate. If you have color TV, you don’t need a monitor; TI’s own monitor, with very vivid color, costs about $300. The LOGO software to go with this costs an additional $200 or so. LOGO for $800, maybe $500 - not so bad. Then I read an article on home computers in a recent issue of the Boston Phoenix, and found: … If you purchased a TI 99/4A because of the unit’s low price and TI’s long involvement in computer-aided education, did the dealer tell you that you’ll have to spend another $1000 on an expansion interface and disk drive before you can use the highly praised TI LOGO learning language? …

Is this correct? If so, TI LOGO will cost about $1500-1800. Is there a cheaper way to use LOG0? If you know, please tell us.

When I saw a demo of TI LOGO, the software package included another game, whose name I forget, in which many objects and groups of objects of different sizes and colors could be moved in different ways about the screen. It looked quite interesting. But the TI 99/4A has a limited memory, which means that you are not going to be able to do with it many of the fascinating things that Seymour Papert and Bob Lawler talk about. As another reviewer put it, with it, you soon “run out of ink.”

Perhaps LOGO with an Apple computer has more possibilities, because of its greater memory. Do any readers have experience with this? What is the minimum cost of Apple LOGO? Are there other possibilities?

Since I agree with Papert that many children might be much more interested in writing if they had a quick and easy way to edit and add to what they had already written, I have wondered what is the least expensive equipment with which they could do this? The new Commodore 64 computer costs $600, and I read in Popular Science that a New York company called Quick Brown Fox - what a nice name! - offers a word processing program for the 64 that costs only around $150, much less than most word processing software. (I’ve written for more info.) With this you would need a monitor, which for word processing could be an inexpensive black-and-white TV, and a printer, which you can now get for about $600, for a total of around $1500. Of course, you would have limited memory, but then children are not going to be writing 50,000 word novels (at least, I don’t think so). Is there a cheaper way to do this? Do any readers know children who have worked with word processors? Which ones? How did they like it? Does it in fact, as Papert predicted, encourage their writing? Thanks for anything you can tell us.

Until recently the cheapest complete computer and word processor package seemed to be the Osborne, which at $1800 (without printer) had the further advantage that it was portable - if you call 24 pounds portable. Anyway, it all fits together into a case with a handle, so you can carry it if you have to. But the unit has a very small screen, only five or so inches wide, and the further disadvantage that only 50 or so spaces of the 80-space width line will fit on the screen at a time, so that you can never see all of your text at once. This more or less defeats the whole point of having the screen. Also, when I tried out the Osborne, I didn’t like the feel of the keyboard.

 Since then a similar machine, the Kaypro, has come out at the same price. It offers a larger and full-width screen, and Tim Chapman, who has used it, says the keyboard is a delight. An ad in a recent New York Times offered the Kaypro, with the new Smith Corona letter quality printer, for about $2250, which is probably as good a buy in a new machine as you can find these days. But Osborne is supposed to be coming out soon with a new portable machine that corrects all the faults of the first, and a number of other companies, including Apple, are supposed to be bringing out portables within a year or so. If you can, wait; if you are eager to buy now, the Kaypro is probably worth looking at.

We don’t have time or money to test these machines in the office, so must rely on you, or people like Herb Kohl, to tell us what children like best. Thanks for any news you can send. - JH

FOREIGN LANGUAGE TAPES

Ann Bodine (NJ) told us with enthusiasm about THE LEARNABLES, a foreign language tape course available from the INTERNATIONAL LINGUISTICS CORPORATION, 401 W 89th St, Kansas City MO 64114. She says, “I have tried several foreign language courses and find that this one promotes the fastest learning. It’s also the most enjoyable. Like Suzuki in music, THE LEARNABLES is based on ear training first…”

Courses available are French, German, and Spanish. We sent $1 for the sample lesson in Mandarin Chinese (further lessons not available) to get an idea of the method. In the sample, you look at a series of pictures (an apple, a boy, a doctor, an airplane) while the tape repeats the appropriate name or a short sentence. You do not saying anything, you just listen. John and I enjoyed this, and remembered some of the names for days. According to Ann, only after you’ve gone through the entire series of lessons that way do you start saying any of the words. It sounds logical - after all, babies listen to a language for a long time before they try to speak it.

The cost is $35 for 5 tapes and a book. There are four levels of 5 tapes for each language, and the book is the same for all the languages, which, as Ann points out, saves a bit of money if you want to learn more than one. If you try these, please tell us how you like them. - DR

PHOTOGRAPHY AT 6

From California:

…We have a one-man store - a photography store. Zane (6) already takes fantastic pictures and did his first aerial work a few weeks ago of Yosemite Valley using an old camera of mine. You’d believe his work, but not many people could accept so much from a six-year-old. So far we haven’t had time to do anything but make a contact sheet. Soon Zane will go into the darkroom with us and make his first print - all by himself.

…His composition must be intuitive; even I don’t understand it. His first roll of slides was fantastic. And what joy he had giving his first slide show -setting up the projector, putting the slides in, etc. He’s so quick and spontaneous taking his pictures that, as a grown-up, I find it hard to believe he can get such good results. My thinking says you have to work to do it. He plays, and does it. Of course, he prefers color to black and white - and that is too expensive for how quickly he can go through a roll of film. Now we are bulk-loading black and white, so it is quite inexpensive. 100 feet of film for $17 goes a long way, even the way I shoot …  

SUZUKI IN N.J.

From Joanne Lynt in New Jersey:

…My husband’s supervisor at work told us about a Suzuki violin program in a nearby town … We are so pleased. The teacher is so tolerant of family needs. Everyone brings their babies and toddlers along to the older child’s class. There is no pressure to find babysitters. No trauma. All the parents participate fully in the classes and at home with practice. I have found some wonderful friends, many of them homeschoolers. There is much trading of experiences through the newsletter and the Talent Education Journal; 236 Spring Av, St. Louis MO 63119). Greta (3 1/2) has grown a whole lot from spending time with these families. I was amazed that so many parents would be willing to spend so much time with their children. It is really like a large family.

And helping Greta learn the violin is good practice for us as a future (present?) homeschooling family, because I am learning the truth of so many accounts I have read about leaving the children to learn on their own but be there when they do need you. The first few weeks I was intent on urging Greta to practice every day. I was being so bossy about it. Having taught myself several instruments by ear (with no parental intervention), I should have realized the value of personal incentive. But I was determined to spare her the poor habits I had developed through lack of discipline. Anyway, when I forced myself to stop being so demanding, her interest picked up on its own, spurred by the inspiration of seeing the other kids in her class play their violins.

The Suzuki experience is really a total environment in which parents learn to improve their attitudes toward their children through love and patience. I must say that the class schedules themselves are so busy that most of the enlightenment I have acquired has been through the lending library which the teacher provides, and then I relate the theory back to the reality…

SUZUKI IN N.Y.

When I visited the Wallaces (NY) in November, I went to two very interesting Suzuki events. First I heard a rehearsal of a string orchestra in which Vita Wallace (7) was playing violin. The young conductor had written a short piece in three parts for them, and it was interesting to watch him help them put it together. Later we went to a formal recital. First a number of students, ranging from five-year-old beginners to very skillful teenagers, played solo pieces, or in one case a piece for three players. Then the small orchestra of which Vita was a member played, in unison, a number of standard Suzuki pieces.

Recitals of children can often be tense and unhappy affairs, but this one was pure pleasure. One thing helped make it so; I don’t know whether this is standard practice at Suzuki recitals everywhere, or an invention of this particular group. They did not start the recital with the youngest children and slowly work their way up to the experts; instead, they mixed beginners and experts more or less randomly. There was no feeling of stars, or competition; it was simply a group of children making music together for their pleasure and the pleasure of their parents and any others who might hear them. The feeling was very much like one of our home schooling family parties.

One thing, though, struck me as odd. None of the soloists, not even the very talented girl who played the entire middle movement of the Bruch G minor concerto, one of the great pieces of the Romantic repertory, were allowed to tune their own violins; all had to bring them up for one of the adult teachers to tune. I can understand this for the beginners; not only can they probably not hear accurate fifths (the strings of violins and cellos are tuned a fifth apart), but their hands are not strong enough to turn the pegs. But why should the advanced players not have tuned their own instruments? I have to assume they knew how.

Perhaps the Suzuki people felt that letting some children tune their own instruments while making others bring theirs up for adults to tune might result is drawing just the kind of line between “good” and “bad” players that they did not wish to draw. If this was their idea, then a good case can be made for it. In any case, it is most important for even young and inexperienced players to learn as soon as possible to learn to tune their instruments accurately; it is a “basic skill” of string players. If we need to invent devices to make it possible for little children to do this, then let’s get busy and invent them. -JH

INSTEAD OF TESTING

Freda Lynn Davies (Ont.) wrote:

…I was able to convince the school authorities that it was in Kevin’s best interests that standardized testing not be used to evaluate his out-of-school learning. The meeting I was to have had with the provincial attendance counselor was reduced to a phone call through which arrangements were made for a meeting with local officials, in which we were asked to try again to solve the evaluation problem locally. The new superintendent for our area was the most understanding school official I have yet encountered (and I thought I was lucky before to have been able to deal with pretty reasonable school people in this area). He brought to the meeting a kind-eyed lady who is now a member of the “support staff” which I gather is a group whose members go from school to school helping to solve individual students’ problems. The result is that now our “evaluator” and comes to visit us.  She has come twice this fall and will come twice this fall and will come again in the spring. She did not test Kevin in the usual sense of the word, but engaged him in friendly conversation. She asked him to do a few 3 R’s type things, but never pushed him when he seemed uncomfortable. Kevin and I would of course rather be left alone entirely, but this seems like a pretty good compromise, and it’s probably good to keep the communication lines open with the many caring people still within the school system …

WRITING A CURRICULUM

After seeing her “Successful Curriculum” printed in GWS #27, Lynn Kapplow (MA) wrote:

… If any of you are planning a curriculum, just go ahead and write down what you’re already doing; you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Many of us don’t realize what amazing things are happening with our kids until we’re forced to commit it to paper. Suddenly we’re made aware of the varied and inventive ways in which learning occurs in our homes.

When I made the curriculum I realized I’d now have school people being overly curious about what we do, so I began keeping a very informal record of what we accomplish each day. It’s similar to Anna Quinn-Smith’s learning record (GWS #27) but much less detailed, since I feel I’m only doing this as a concession to the schools. I personally don’t need to look at these records once they’re written to know how my kids are doing. In the year that I’ve been keeping them, I’ve never looked back at a single day’s record. Still, they’ve proved very important. Towards the end of receiving our approval, the superintendent’s office told us that they were holding up our approval because they didn’t have a way to monitor us. They frankly expected that we’d be sitting each day from 9-3 doing school work. I was appalled and informed them that we left school because of what is imposed on children and had no intention of playing school at home. I went on to explain (in a nice way) how the rhythms of children at home who are free to study whenever they want are completely different from those at school. I then suggested that his office have free access to my daily records as a way to know what the kids are doing. They found this very satisfactory.

… What’s turned out to be more important to the girls are their activity boxes. Each one has a carton filled with all the work they’ve done for the year. It’s got their art work, cards, letters, stories, ads, mock newspapers, jokes, math, spelling bees, compositions, crafts, grammar pages, etc. They love it, and our youngest is always going through it, showing us her achievements. We save them from year to year, feeling they’ll be fun to look back on when the girls are grown up.

My biggest problem with keeping records is that I find myself pressuring my kids to do some school work so I can enter it on the record. I don’t like doing that, and feel I have to come to terms with this and devise some new thinking and new types of record keeping that typifies home schooling and what we find important. If I solve it, I’ll share it, since I know many parents are struggling with the same problem …

LETTER TO SUPT.

From Deirdre Purdy (WV):

… I wanted to send you our letter to the school board asking for homeschooling for our oldest, Jed. The point of the letter is to tell the absolute and complete truth about Jed’s schooling while never promising to follow a curriculum, study any thing any number of hours every day, use certain texts, or generally commit ourselves in writing to holding school… The crux of the letter is paragraph 3. After saying something like that, you go on to elaborate on your child’s learning in as much detail as you can muster. Every letter would be very different and full of convincing personal details of what the children are doing (rather than what they’re supposed to do or what you’re going to make them do) … _____

[The Purdy’s letter, addressed to the county superintendent of schools:]

… We would like to request a continuance of Jedediah Purdy’s home-schooling. We would also like to enroll Hannah in kindergarten but continue to teach her at home also. Jed was seven on November 29, 1981. He was enrolled last year at Minnora School, but learned at home. When he was tested at the end of the year on the CTBS, he scored very well, getting 100% on five sections of language arts and scoring above grade level in every area.

Jed will be instructed by both of us. We are both college graduates. Walter has a B.A. in philosophy. Deirdre has a B.A. in English, B.A. in American studies, M.A. in English, M.A. in philosophy, and did further graduate work toward her Ph.D. Deirdre was also a teaching assistant at Penn State and at the University of Pittsburgh, and an instructor of philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. She also has a particular interest in education and is the editor of “Alternatives in Education” newsletter.

Jed will be enrolled in the third grade. We would like the appropriate books to ensure that he is aware of the material being covered in the third grade at school. How- ever, we plan to continue Jed’s education in the same manner as we have conducted it so far:

Jed likes to read and regularly reads four or more hours per day when he is at home without friends visiting. A few of his favorite books are 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Kidnapped, Just So Stories, and Swiss Family Robinson. He has read the original versions of all of these books several times. He also read superhero comic books, adventure stories such as Star Trek, Tom Swift, or the Hardy boys, and a number of books with which you may be less familiar such as Flaming Arrows and Black Stone Knife. He visits the Knawha County Library in Charleston where he has had a library card for several years and borrows 5 to 10 books each month. Jed has special interests in science and science fiction. Another favorite book is The Time Machine. He recently made a series of diagrams which were designs for an android. Jed was given a number of junior high school science texts by a friend who is a teacher, and read sections in all of them. Jed also reads portions of the daily Charleston newspaper and the magazines which we receive. He follows the cartoons of Dan O’Neill and R. Crumb of the CoEvolution Quarterly, Because of Jed’s high level of reading ability and his matching skills at articulation we feel it is important to teach him at home where we can ensure he has material to read and discussion concomitant with his level of understanding.

Jed’s interest in science began with his rock collection. He has collected rocks since he was three and has a large and varied collection, mostly gathered in West Virginia. Among them are half a dozen fossils and a collection of floating rocks. He has studied several books on geology and on rock identification. We have visited quarries, strip mines, and stream beds for rock collection. Jed also has a bone collection with specimens from wild and domestic animals. He and his friends often go on nature walks together, gathering whatever interesting items they may find, including turtles, lizards, fish, and lost hound dogs, all of which we have kept for a time and then returned or released. Jed also takes complete responsibility for his pet rabbit, which he hopes to breed soon. Jed is interested in the cows, horses, and gardens which we raise. He experimented with soil mixtures and bean seeds this spring to determine which soil mix produced the best bean seedlings. Jed is interested in plant and animal identification, and can identify most of the trees and flowers, many birds, snakes, insects, and large animals which live in our area. He has helped tap trees and make maple syrup, and watched trees cut, hauled out, milled, returned, and made into buildings, so he is getting an intensive education in the use of natural resources. Jed reads regularly about space exploration and astronomy. He has a chemistry set with which he performs simple experiments. As part of our everyday conversation we discuss such issues as nuclear power, acid rain, soil erosion, and the causes of diseases, tying his scientific interests in with current events and more general knowledge. He also receives and reads Ranger Rick nature magazine cover-to-cover each month. We plan to encourage Jed to continue to explore these interests while broadening his knowledge in all of these areas.

Jed is interested in several areas of history: the American revolution and civil war, the life of the American Indians, and pioneering in the 19th century. He has read all eight of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books many times. He has read a number of books about these periods as well as biographies of such figures as Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. He has been learning about Peter the Great recently. He is also learning to read maps and globes at present. We use road maps for trips and when discussing current events. We have also examined local topographic maps. National Public Radio is on for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” two news programs, so the whole family listens to portions of these three hours of daily news programming. We discussed the Falklands war and its causes, followed the action on the globe, and read about it in the newspaper. It was on public radio that Jed first learned (or at least ingested the fact) that nuclear weapons existed that could destroy the world. He has been bringing that fact up for discussion in many contexts. Jed’s interest in cartoons has led him to examine the daily editorial cartoon in the newspaper, and usually to understand it and its object. Jed reads in National Geographic each month, and we have a large collection of old Geographics which he and his sister can examine. We visit the Department of Culture and History in Charleston several times a year to see the art, craft, and history displays.

We regularly take the children to see appropriate movies, such as “E.T.” “On Golden Pond,” “Superman I & II,” “Star Wars,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and so on. After the movies we discuss with them what parts they liked or didn’t like and why. We do the same with books they read and programs heard on the radio, feeling that this provides the foundations of personal judgment for aesthetic appreciation and understanding. We do not criticize the children’s art, however. They both draw with great pleasure. Jed does extensive cartooning and has developed several superhero characters such as Fish Man, Antimatter Man, and Mental Man. These characters occur in comic strips which he draws and each has an appropriate origin, strength, flaw, costume, alter identity, and so on. We keep pens, paint, pencils, crayons, markers, paper, and other art materials well supplied. We also examine reproductions of fine drawings, paintings, and other arts and crafts of many eras from many parts of the world. We visit the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh at least once a year and visit natural history and art displays (though the children’s preference is for natural history). The children see us build buildings, do architectural drawings and auto mechanics, make books, knit and sew. Contact with and participation in ongoing productive creativity is, we believe, the most important part of education in the arts.

We often play music on the radio, and on record and cassette players. We all listen to jazz, bluegrass, rock, and folk music. We also sing songs. Jed is least interested in music of all subjects, particularly in his boyish resistance to dancing. Hannah loves to sing and dance and plans to take dancing lessons starting this fall. We will continue to play music and sing with the children, take them to dances and to hear live music, and giving them the chance to enjoy music without any pressure to perform.

Jed studies arithmetic from several elementary arithmetic books which we own. He is competent and working above grade level as shown by the CTBS tests. He is quite able, for example, to be the banker at Monopoly, figuring percentages for mortgages, as well as making change for property purchases and overseeing bankruptcies. We will continue to oversee his studies, using the third grade arithmetic books, as well as those he is already working with.

Both of our children have an extensive social life. They have friends from 3 to 73. Their young friends often spend the night, or they go to spend the night with their friends, both boys and girls, about once a week and sometimes more often. Many of their best friends are also homeschoolers, so they have the opportunity to participate in lessons whenever they visit. Once or twice a week they visit with our neighbors who are in their seventies. Every few months, they watch Saturday morning TV cartoons and have dinner with these friends. They attend adult softball games where they can play with their friends while the adults play softball. They have learned many group games such as tag, Red Rover, Red Light Green Light, and dodge ball at the children’s sports group which several parents have been running. They both like to play chess and checkers. Jed plans to begin karate lessons this fall which will bring him in contact with new children in an atmosphere of education and disci pline. I am particularly impressed with the children’s ability to carry on conversations with adults who loan them books, talk with them, and take an interest in their education. For instance, Jed will travel to Washington, DC, for 3 days next month with a man who is his friend. Each child has several friends around their own age, with whom they are particularly close. Jed, for example, is friends with Lucy Perineau with whom I have overheard him discuss the intelligence of dolphins, life after death, and reincarnation, as well as books they both have read or their plans for the afternoon. One of the main reasons we wish the children to study at home is so that they have time to maintain these social relations.

Both children are learning to play softball and to swim this summer. They are extremely active all day long, when they are not quietly working or reading. Another reason for teaching them at home is so they will be able to complete their necessary schoolwork in shorter time, given individual attention, and not be forced to remain inactive for long periods of time that are often required in the classroom.

We would like Jed and Hannah to continue to participate in school activities, such as the Halloween party, at the Minnora School as they did last year. We would be very happy to share any of our activities with any students or classes at school.

Thank you for consideration of our request …

MONTESSORI LEGAL MEMO

We received a “Memorandum of Law - Private Montessori Schools” from the International Montessori Society, 912 Thayer Av, Silver Spring MD 20910. It makes some very important points that apply just as well to people with private schools in their homes. From the memo:

… State control and regulation over Montessori schools has been legally justified to limit the free exercise of liberty in private education through a general application of “state police power.” From State v. Williams (253 NC 337, 117 SE 2d 444, 92 ALR2d 513 1960):

…”the state has a limited right, under the police power, to regulate private schools and their agents and solicitors, provided (1) there is a manifest present need which affects the health, morals, or safety of the public generally, (2) the regulations are not arbitrary, discriminatory, oppressive, or otherwise unreasonable, and (3) adequate legislative standards are established.”

However, application of such police power is limited by countervailing rights of private schools protected by the U.S. Constitution … From Binet-Montessori, Inc. v. San Francisco United School District, (160 Cal R 38, 98 Cal App 3d 991 1979):

“A necessary corollary to the parent’s right to send a child to private school is the right of the private school to operate. The right to send one’s children to private school would be a hollow right if the state could prevent the operation of such schools.”

… In Milwaukee Montessori School v. Percy (473 F Supp 1358 1979), a private non-profit Montessori school in Wisconsin successfully challenged the constitutionality of the pertinent day care law as a denial of equal protection of the laws since this law established a classification exemption for “parochial” schools, excluding other private schools. The court held that: “…there is no rational basis for the distinction created (by the statute) between private parochial schools and other private schools and therefore the enforcement of that statute … is in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment…”

… In Griswold v. Connecticut, (381 US 479 1964). the US Supreme Court specifically noted certain rights in private education as under the protection of the First Amendment:

“…the right to educate one’s children as one chooses is made applicable to the states by the force of the First and Fourteenth Amendments … In other words, the state may not, consistent with the spirit of the First Amendment, contract the spectrum of available knowledge.”

In Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 1973) the Supreme Court noted the high judicial scrutiny afforded to fundamental rights such as those included under the First Amendment:

“Where certain ‘fundamental  rights’ are involved, the Court has held that regulation limiting these rights may be justified only by a ‘compelling state interest’… Legislative enactments must be narrowly drawn to express only the legitimate state interests at stake.”

In application, a “compelling state interest” normally requires the state to show some special emergency or exceptional need, above and beyond a rational purpose related to the general public interest, to justify the infringing of fundamental rights…  However, even if a “compelling state interest” can be asserted within the state’s compulsory school age range (normally, 6-16). the state must still further show that such interest does not extend past certain “minimum standards” of control or regulation.

…In State V. Whisner (351 NE 2d 750 1975), the court @oted the Ohio “minimum standards” for private schools as beyond the bounds of reasonable regulation.

“…these standards are so pervasive and all-encompassing that total compliance with each and every standard by a non-public school would effectively eradicate the distinction between public and non-public education, and thereby deprive these appellants of their traditional interest as parents to direct the upbringing and education of the children.”…

CHANGING RESIDENCY

[DR:] When John was in New York, the Helmke-Scharfs told him that they changed their legal residency in order to be in a district that was more co-operative with home-schoolers. Other home-schoolers may want to consider doing the same thing, although we caution anyone thinking of this to check the legal requirements for their state and district thoroughly first.

Bill Scharf later wrote us how they did it:

… 1) We informed school district #1 that we would be “relocating” to district #2. (When asked if we were selling our farm, we of course explained that we would still be running the farm and spending as much time there as possible.)

2) We rented (for $10 per month) a mailing address from a friend’s mother in district #2… We wrote a brief but legal paper with her saying that we were subrenting part of her apartment for $10 per month and that she would accept our mail. She could terminate the agreement at any time and for any reason. For this agreement and payment she added our name to her mailbox. We notified the post office.

3) We informed district #2 that we were now in their district and    went through the usual routine paperwork.

4) District #2 informed us that their legal counsel advised that a resident of the school district was a person who filed their Federal Income Tax Return from an address within the district. This was good news because by attending to those details, everyone (administrators in both districts as well as ourselves) were off the hook. We telephoned the IRS, transferred our voter registration, and became legal residents of our chosen school district …  

 
GRADUATES LACK SKILLS

From a story headlined “Survey Finds Young People Lack Work Skills,” by Kathleen Teltsch, in the New York Times, 1/16/83:

… Industry in the United States is being severely undercut because young people entering the work force lack basic skills in reading, writing, mathematics and science, according to a survey of corporations and school systems across the country.

As a consequence, companies are spending millions of dollars for remedial training to learn skills that should have been accomplished in the ninth and tenth grades, the researchers concluded. The study was conducted by the Center for Public Resources and financed mainly by [several large corporations] …

The responses [to the questionnaires sent out], the study said, suggest that a “significant gap” exists between business’ and educators’ perceptions as to the adequacy of the job skills of young people. It said many companies reported that deficiencies in basic skills were apparent in a majority of job categories. By contrast, school officials insisted that the majority of graduates entering the job market were adequately prepared for employment. But the study said there was “surprising” recognition by both schools and business that companies would have to be more precise in defining job-preparation requirements, in assisting with the development of curriculum and even in participating in classroom instruction …

While the need for improving basic skills has long been recognized by educators, the report maintained that it had only recently become a priority issue” for American industry as it faced stiffer economic competition from other nations. Changing technology has also compelled business to seek job applicants capable of handling more comprehensive tasks.

Of the 184 companies responding, half said skilled and semi-skilled employees, including bookkeepers, could not complete mathematics problems involving decimals and fractions. 50% of those responding also said managers and supervisors could not write paragraphs that had no grammatical or spelling errors. 40% of the companies said secretaries had difficulty reading at the level required by their jobs.

In contrast, of the schools surveyed, 80% said their graduates read well enough for employment, 66% said the writing ability of their graduates was adequate and 79% said their graduates’ knowledge of mathematics was adequate.

A copy of the report can be obtained from the Center for Public Resources, 680 Fifth Ave., New York NY 10019 … _____

[JH:l Ordinarily we don’t give much space in GWS to stories like this of the schools’ many troubles and failures. We would rather help those people who wish to teach their own children to do that as well as possible. But in states like Georgia and Maryland, where state school officials and Boards of Education are now trying to pass regulations designed only to make home schooling impossible, the information in the Times story may be able to help home schoolers block these efforts. And in any places where home schooling families are being prosecuted in court, this information may also be helpful. This survey makes clear that not only are the schools not doing a good job of instruction, but also that they are doing an equally poor job of monitoring or measuring learning. They like to claim that they are the only people who can either produce learning or measure it; the facts are clearly that they are not good at doing either.

The survey also disposes of the schools’ claim that they, and only they, can prepare children for entry into the “real world” of employment. On the contrary, the evidence is strong that about half of their graduates are very badly prepared for Chat world. Nobody has produced or is likely to produce any such evidence about home schooled children. Stories like the one from the Times quoted above give home schoolers the means to make a strong case that it is precisely because they want their children to be prepared for the real world that they want to teach them at home.

We must be sure to use information like this with tact and discretion; we are not trying to make war on the schools, only to persuade them to stop trying to make war on us. When we talk to school officials or legislators or the general public about the problems of the schools, we would probably do well to say, first of all, that we understand very well that some of the serious problems of the schools have their origin in the world outside, and that the schools cannot fairly be blamed for them. Beyond that, we can say, as I have just said in an article for Phi Delta Kappan (Feb ‘83), a leading educational magazines that we believe that much of what we are learning in our experiences as home schoolers could in fact be very useful to the schools and might help them go a long way toward solving some of their more serious problems, and therefore that the schools have much to gain by cooperating with us rather than trying to fight us.

As I have written before, when home schoolers find themselves in court they must be careful not to appear to be inviting the judge to say officially that he agrees that the schools are doing a poor job. Whatever may be their private thoughts, few judges will say this officially and publicly, for this reason among others, that to make such judgments is not their proper business or within their competence. if they think that by ruling in favor of a family they will be widely understood as making such a statement, they will not so rule. We should make clear that we are not asking the court in any way to condemn the schools, only to say that their record in teaching and monitoring children is not so good as to entitle them to say that they are the only ones who should be allowed to do it.

In golf terms, we are not asking courts to say that people who have never broken 90 in golf should not be allowed to play golf, but only that they Should not be allowed to say that everyone who plays golf should be made to play it their way.

RECORDS AVAILABLE HERE

\TAPIOLA CHILDREN’S CHOIR: SOUNDS OF FINLAND and CHRISTMAS MUSIC . Here are the first two commercial recordings we have added to our list, two beautiful collections of songs by this astonishing children’s chorus, of which I wrote in GWS #30. What I said about their singing at the concert is just as true of their singing on these records; I have never heard any singing group, children or adults, anywhere in the world that sings with more beauty of tone, perfection of pitch, and musical feeling than these children from Finland.

The first of these two recordings, Sounds of Finland, was made in Helsinki in November, 1977, either just before the chorus left for a six-week trip Lo Japan or just after they had returned - the cover photo shows some of the children in costumes made for that trip. Since the chorus, whenever they visit another country, always includes on their programs some songs of that country (always astonishing their hearers by how well they pronounce the language), on this record they sing three lovely Japanese folk songs, so beautifully that it must have practically undone their Audiences to hear them. The other songs are Finnish songs of the 19Lh and 20th centuries, beginning with Sibelius’ “Finlandia” - how I envy the Finns that beautiful national anthem. Some of these songs are traditional, some quite modern and extremely difficult - it is amazing how they keep these complicated and shifting harmonies so perfectly in tune - and all are beautiful.

On two songs there are interludes played by a string orchestra, the Espoo (the city of which Tapiola is a part) Chamber Orchestra, conducted by the brother of the man who directs the chorus. The record jacket describes them as a group of young players. My guess is that they are another and perhaps slightly older group than the chorus - they play like adult professionals, and I’d be happy to have a recording of them alone.

The first half of the recording of Christmas Music is made up of traditional Christmas songs, four of them old Finnish songs, the others by Praetortus, Bach, Handel, and Sibelius. The only melody familiar to me is the Handel, which I have known as the Dead March from his opera “Saul” (the melody is a Suzuki violin piece). But all have a strong Christmas feeling about them, made even more beautiful by the clear and pure sound of the chlidren’s singing.

The entire other side of the record is a new piece, written in 1975 for this group by the Finnish composer Rautavaara, “The Mysterious Legend of Marjatta, Lowly Maiden.” The text is taken from the Kalavela, the great collection of Finnish legends. This particular legend is the story of the birth of Jesus, but changed many centuries ago into a Finnish context. Marjatta, the lowly maiden, chaste and pure, is made pregnant by a magic berry which begs her to eat it, which she does. When the time comes for her to bear her child, she looks for a sauna in which to ease her labor, but the man who controls all the saunas will not let her use one. Instead he sends her to a horse stall in some burnt out woods. There the breath of the animals makes the stall like a sauna and lets her have her baby. At the end, as the chorus sings the soft and mysterious song with which the piece started, the narrator, an adult man with a very gentle and beautiful speaking voice, says, “This is how the old legend ends, which came from afar to Finland, bringing a new time, a new belief to forests and lakes, new hope for their inhabitants, new love among people, good will.”

The piece, for narrator, vocal soloists, solo flute, solo violin, organ, percussion, and the chorus, is modern in feeling and technique, but very beautiful - the music fits the legend perfectly, and of course the children sing it perfectly. They pronounce their words so clearly that, especially with the shorter songs on the first side, it is easy to follow them in the text. Indeed, from the record we can get a little lesson in pronouncing Finnish, which for all its strange grammar and spelling sounds much less foreign than any Slavic language or, for that matter, French or German. The words sound very much the way they look. After hearing “Marjatta” only one or two times, you should be able, by following the text and the translation, to know the meaning of what is being sung, Even without the meaning, the music is very beautiful, but the meaning makes it even more so.

One more astonishing thing about this chorus is that they sing their music from memory, which is rarely done. A friend of mine sings in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which is one of the outstanding choruses of the world. The other night they sang in a superb performance of “The Damnation of Faust.” The conductor, Seiji Ozawa, had them sing it from memory, instead of from the music, as is usual, and my friend said to me how much more difficult this was. But that is how this very talented Tapiola Children’s Choir does it.

The recordings themselves are made by a small Swedish company called BIS (a musical word meaning Itagain” or “repeat”). The company itself is something of a phenomenon. The founder was Robert von Bahr, who has run it for a number of years with only a few assistants. Most companies lose money making classical records, and must be subsidized by their popular divisions or in other ways. Von Bahr and BlS, without subsidies, make money, at least enough to continue to make recordings, of which they have by now over 200. In quality of sound they are among the finest recordings being made. When the big companies make a classical recording, they tend to go in with a big crew of engineers and about a ton of equipment. Von Bahr carries in his own Revox tape recorder and two mikes, and every one of his BIS recordings I have heard has a far more natural sound quality than almost any of the recordings of the big companies. I hope you love this music as much as I do. - JH  

NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE

THE BORROWERS AFIELD and THE BORROWERS AFLOAT, by Mary Norton . I loved THE BORROWERS (GWS #16), the first book in this series, so much that I can’t think why it has taken me so long to add the others (I will add THE BORROWERS ALOFT, the fourth in the series, as soon as we get it in.) I faintly recall someone telling me that they were not as good, and I may have put off reading them for fear of being disappointed. Well, whoever told me that (if anyone did) was mistaken; these are every bit as interesting, beautiful, and exciting as THE BORROWERS itself.

Those of you who have read the first book will remember that the Clock family, father Pod, mother Homily, and teen-aged daughter Arietty, all tiny human-like creatures only a few inches high, were discovered by the full-sized humans in whose house they had been living for many years, and were driven out of their comfortable home under the kitchen floor and forced to flee into the fields, where they hoped to find shelter with some relatives who were said to be living in an abandoned badger den. In these two books we follow their further adventures as, very much indoor creatures, they find shelter and learn to live in the wild outdoors, though they never give up their hope of finding a human house and living secretly in it, as true borrowers should. In time they meet another borrower, Spiller, a boy not much older than Arietty, who unlike themselves is at home in the wild and loves it, only going into human houses when he must.

This is all I will tell about these fascinating stories. What makes them seem so true - truer than much supposedly realistic fiction - is first of all Mary Norton’s accurate and loving eye for the significant details of life, both indoors and outdoors, and secondly the fact that having created in imagination these fantastic tiny people, she then takes them seriously enough to treat them as if they were real. Having asked us to take on faith that there are people six inches high, she does not ask us to take anything else on faith. Instead, as seriously as any scientist, she explores the question: “if there were such creatures as these, how would they live, what would the world look like to them, what problems and dangers might they meet, how might they solve and overcome or escape them?” And the more we see these little people dealing with uncertainty, hardship, and danger - not just the danger of death, but the even worse danger of being captured, imprisoned, and exhibited for the greed of some humans and the pleasure of others - the more we admire and love them.

COOT CLUB, by Arthur Ransome. In this next book in the SWALLOWS series, we meet again not the Walker and Blackett children of the first two books, but Dorothea and Dick, she the romancer and writer, he the naturalist and scientist, whom we first met in WINTER HOLIDAY. They are going to Norfolk in the east of England to visit their mother’s former teacher Mrs. Barrable, who is going to spend a week or so of the Easter holiday on her brother’s small boat. The two D’s, as they came to be called in the earlier book, are overjoyed, because they think they will have a chance to learn to sail, and so will be able to meet their sailing friends as equals on the lake when summer comes. They are crushed when they learn that Mrs. Barrable doesn’t know how to sail either, and is only planning to spend her time on the boat at anchor. But things happen, as they always do in these books, and before long they are having the sailing adventure they longed for, and becoming the competent sailors they dreamed of being.

I began to read this as I started off on a bus trip to New Hampshire. As always, it was like opening a window and getting a delicious breath of fresh air. Beginning a Ransome book, we find ourselves in a world full of energetic, serious, capable people, young and old, doing meaningful work that they enjoy and believe in. Some of these are moderately rich, many are not rich at all, but all recognize and respect serious and skillful work wherever they see it. Ransome’s world is a democracy such as we might dream of living in, in which people are respected and honored, not for wealth and power, but for competence and character. Among all the people we meet in COOT CLUB, there is only one group of bad guys, rich vacationers down from London, who don’t know how to handle boats or how to behave on the water. But all the others know they are bad guys and silently conspire to outwit them. And at the end, when they bring well-earned trouble on themselves, and in spite of the fact that they don’t seem to have learned any lesson from it, we even feel a little bit sorry for them. A fine end to a fine story.

WE DIDN’T MEAN TO GO TO SEA, by Arthur Ransome. This story starts very much like the others, with some children, our friends the Walkers, off for some pleasant sailing with a college-age friend. For a while everything is as interesting and happy as Ransome knows how to make it. But it takes only a couple of small mistakes by the young captain, a little bad luck, and another mistake by John Walker to put the children into a real adventure, in which they are not in some kind of ingenious made-up contest with the Blacketts but are fighting with every drop of strength for their very lives. Despite being ignorant and confused, sick and exhausted, and terrified almost but not quite out of their wits, they don’t give up or panic, as many surely would have, and in the end all the courage, skill, and judgment which they learned from their play adventures, plus some good luck, earn them the mercy of the sea, and at the end, a very moving tribute from one of the sea’s veterans.

It is a very exciting and indeed frightening story, with which Ransome reminds us that the sea must be not just loved and enjoyed but respected and feared, that tide and fog and wind and wave do not allow or forgive many mistakes. On the water, things must be done right, or it may cost you your life - thus the tragic death last summer of the very gritted young black conductor Calvin Simmons, who while canoeing in the middle of a calm lake overturned his canoe and drowned before any could reach him. Ransome has already shown us that the water, whether in river, lake, or ocean, is a great teacher. Here he shows us that it can be a very stern one.

ALL NEW DINOSAURS, by Robert Long and Samuel Welles. Here’s your chance to know more dinosaurs and dinosaur names than any kid (or adult) on the block! All children love dinosaurs, and almost all know, as well as they know the family dog or cat, the shapes and names of the old standbys - tyrannosaurus rex, brontosaurus, triceratops, stegosaurus, pterodactyl, perhaps allosaurus and diplodocus. But this is just scratching the surface. On the cover of this book you will meet deinonychus, “only” twelve feet long but pound for pound probably the most vicious and fearsome killer of them all. After that come brachylophosaurus, podopteryx, chanaresuchus, grasilisuchus,  tanysuchus, hupesuchus… and so on, probably close to a hundred of them in all. Along with the many drawings of animals and plants, all in black and white, with space to color for any who want to do that, is a great deal of information about the latest work being done by paleontologists, the people who dig up and identify and classify these old bones.

On the last page of the book the authors put forward a theory of Dr. Russell in Canada that a supernova in space killed all the dinosaurs by bathing the earth in intense radiation. Since this book was written, an even newer theory has been proposed, with much evidence to support it, that a very large meteorite actually hit the earth, sending so much dust into the sky that it produced a change in the earth’s climate which the dinosaurs could not survive.

No dinosaur fan should be without this book.

TOTTO-CHAN, by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. This is the true story of a young child’s adventures in a most unusual school run by a most gifted, humane, and imaginative teacher. The child grew up to become the leading TV personality in Japan, host for eight years now of Japan’s #1 TV talk show, and the author of this book. The school was Tomoe Gakuen, a small elementary school founded in Tokyo in 1937 and destroyed in the great fire raids eight years later. The teacher, founder of the school and its headmaster during its short life, was Sosaku Kobayashi, a man I wish (as will many others) I had known, who died in 1963 at the age of seventy.

The book has been a publishing sensation in Japan; in only sixteen months it has sold more than five million copies. This is probably more than all the school reform books put together have sold in this country in the last twenty years. Of course it helps that the author is one of the best known and most often seen and heard people in Japan. But this alone would not explain the book’s success; biographies of our most famous TV personalities don’t do nearly as well. Perhaps millions of Japanese want for their children, at least while they are young, a kind of schooling very different from what they have had. Perhaps the idea that young children can and should be trusted and respected, which has certainly not taken root anywhere else that I know of, is about to take root in Japan. Let us hope so. They are setting us an example in many other things; perhaps they will do so in this.

The book itself is altogether charming. Totto-chan (the author was called that as a child) was a delightful little girl, curious, imaginative, warm-hearted, friendly, energetic, and logical and impulsive as happy children so often are - if a thing seemed sensible and interesting for her to do, she did it, without worrying about whether others were doing it or what they might later say about it. Her kind parents loved this innocent courage and adventurousness, but it quite naturally got her in trouble elsewhere - while still only seven years old she was expelled from her first school (which her mother didn’t tell her until she was twenty), as she would probably have been expelled from almost any conventional school that could expel her. One of her chief crimes was that when something interesting happened outside the window, and since the school was right on the street this happened all the time, she could not keep from rushing to the window to see what it was; hence the sub-title of the book, “The Girl At The Window.” (Today she would be called “hyperactive.”) In her new school the kindly headmaster, knowing how much of this kind of trouble with adults Totto-chan got into, would always say to her, “You really are a good girl, you know.” It was what she needed; as she says in her preface, without him she might very easily have grown up thinking of herself as a bad and worthless person.

It is impossible in this short space to give more than the barest hint of the wonderful character of this school or the wonderful man who ran it. Two details may help: the classrooms were in a group of old railroad cars that Mr. Kobayashi found somewhere and managed to have moved to the school; every day he looked at the children’s lunches to be sure that, as he had asked them and as they were always happy to show him, they had brought “something from the mountain and something from the sea.”

Perhaps the most characteristic and touching incident of all, the one that made me think when I read it, “We have to have this book on our list,” took place when Totto-chan first went to be interviewed by the headmaster.

…The headmaster offered her a chair and turned to Mother. “You may go home now. I want to talk to Totto-chan.” [After Mother left] The headmaster drew over a chair and put it facing Totto-chan, and when they were both sitting down close together, he said, “Now then, tell me all about yourself. Tell me anything at all you want to talk about.” “Anything I like?” Totto-chan had expected him to ask questions she would have to answer. When he said she could talk about anything she wanted, she was so happy she began straight away … [After a long time] she could think of nothing more to say no matter how hard she tried. It made her rather sad. But just then the headmaster got up, placed his large, warm hand on her head, and said, “Well, now you’re a pupil of this school.”

Only sometime later did she realize that she had talked for four hours. “And all that time the headmaster hadn’t yawned once or looked bored, but seemed just as interested in what she had to say as she was.” A lovely man, a lovely book.

GIVING UP THE GUN, by Noel Perrin. This is a beautiful, astonishing, and encouraging book. Though it has practically nothing to do with home schooling, it has much to do with the world that we and our children are living and will live in. I am adding it to our list for a number of reasons: 1) It is a beautiful book, finely printed and illustrated with many beautiful reproductions of Japanese prints. 2) It tells us something that I suspect none of us knew and that many of us will be glad to hear. 3) It shows us that something we have all been told was impossible has in fact been done. In the forward, Mr. Perrin tells us:

… This book tells the story of an almost unknown incident in history. A civilized country, possessing high technology, voluntarily chose to give up an advanced military weapon and to return to a more primitive one. It chose to do this, and it succeeded … Guns arrived [in Japan] in 1543, brought by the first Europeans. They were adopted at once, and were used widely for the next hundred years. Then they were gradually abandoned …

How and why this all happened makes a fascinating story. From it I learned many things I did not know and would never have guessed, one being that in those days (16th - 18th centuries) Japanese technology was in most respects far ahead of Europe’s. At the end, Mr. Perrin writes:

… None of this proves in the least, to be sure, that what the Japanese once did with guns the whole world could now do with, say, plutonium. Japan’s circumstances in the seventeenth century were utterly different from those of any military power now.  What the Japanese experience does prove is two things. First, that a no-growth economy is perfectly compatible with prosperous and civilized life. And second, that human beings are less the passive victims of their own knowledge and skill than most men in the West suppose. “You can’t stop progress,” people say … This is to talk as if progress - however one defines that elusive concept - were something semi-divine, an inexorable force outside human control. And, of course, it isn’t. It is something we can guide, and direct, and even stop. Men can choose to remember; they can also choose to forget. As men did on Tanegashima …

ROCANNONTS WORLD, by Ursula Le Guin . This very early novel of Le Guin is an adventure story set on a distant world, a plan et of the star Fomalhaut (by which I remember navigating in submarine days), in a far distant future, when three technically advanced civilizations, one of them our own on Earth, have joined to form the League of Worlds. Rocannon has been sent with a small group of assistants by the League to study the primitive races and cultures of this world. As the story begins his ship, and with it all his companions and the instant communicator which is his only contact with the League, have been destroyed by a sudden attack by a rebel planet which plans to make this remote world a base for war on the League, leaving Rocannon alone and seemingly helpless against these powerful and ruthless enemies.

Against this background Le Guin spins an absorbing tale of fantasy and swashbuckling adventure. What makes this story stand out from hundreds of others of its general kind, and why so much of it sticks in memory, is that Le Guin has such an original, fertile, and detailed imagination; that she writes so well that she can make us see in our mind’s eye what she sees in hers; that she takes such trouble to make the many details of her story consistent with each other; and finally, that even in this tale of pure adventure (which in the right hands could make a wonderful film) she writes from a thoughtful and coherent point of view about people and civilizations and what makes some better or worse than others. This book is far less philosophical than her later books (see booklist), but it holds hints of important ideas she was later to develop in much more depth. A fine story.

MANY DIMENSIONS, by Charles Williams. This is the second of seven remarkable novels written during the 1930’s by the British theologian, who died in 1945 at the age of fifty-nine. The book jacket says, “There is nothing in fiction quite like these novels.” It is an understatement; I don’t know anything in fiction even remotely like them. They are, in one way or another, stories of exploration and adventure, of the body and/or the mind and spirit. They are all involved, in an astonishing variety of ways, with the supernatural. They are all to some extent, and again in many ways, about conflicts between good and evil. Finally they are all, again in many different ways, about the nature of time, death, and existence after death.

MANY DIMENSIONS was my introduction to Williams’ novels, and having now read all of them, all more than once, I think it is the best introduction. Like all the novels, it is set in Williams’s “present,” that is, England in the 1930’s. The villain (a really hateful one), a rich and powerful man whose supposedly scientific curiosity is at bottom only a desire to wield unlimited power over people and things, manages to have stolen for him a very ancient, powerful, and holy religious relic, a stone from the crown of King Solomon. This stone has two properties: it can be divided into an infinite number of replicas of itself, and to anyone holding any one of these replicas it gives the power to move anywhere in time and space, and also, to know and to have some power over other people’s thoughts. The rightful guardians of the stone come to England to report the theft to the Lord Chief Justice, a man of great judgment and probity, and he and his young secretary set out to regain it. What happens to the stone in England, how it affects the lives of the many people who come in contact with it, and how the stone is restored, is what the plot of this novel is about. Like all serious fiction, it is of course about much more than that. If you like it, please let us know; if enough do, I will add others of Williams’s novels to the list, which I would very much like to be able to do.

MATHEMATICS: A HUMAN ENDEAVOR,  2nd Ed. by Harold Jacobs. I wrote about this book in GWS #47, but since it was expensive, and since I thought it might soon come out in paperback, I didn’t add it to our list. But it has been such a success that the publishers have kept it in hardcover, and indeed printed this second edition. Meanwhile, many people have written us about how much they liked it. So I’ve decided to add it to our list. Families who find it too expensive could perhaps find a way to share the cost of the book with other families, sharing time with it as they might share time on a computer.

In GWS #7, I wrote: … [This] is about the best book on mathematics, for beginners, that I have ever seen. What Jacobs tries to do, and does very well, is give the beginner, or even the math-hater, an idea of what mathematical thinking is about, why human beings have found it so interesting, and how (to some extent) it has grown over the centuries. It is a delightful book, for people of almost any age. People who (like me) have done school math (and even got good grades) without ever having the slightest idea of what math is really all about, may find it interesting and exciting. People who have always feared and hated math may find there is no reason to fear and hate it. And I can’t think of any book on math that would be more fun to read aloud to and work on with quite young children. I believe that it was written for high-school or even college students, but I would guess that quite young children would like it if they could work on it with an adult, perhaps to help them with some of the long words.

The book is laid out somewhat like a conventional text, in chapters, with questions and problems. But, unlike most texts, it begins by looking at the path of billiard balls on a table, and the ways in which we might think about that. From there it goes on to many other fascinating and unfamiliar topics. The mathematical illustrations are clear and well-chosen, and the book is sprinkled with pertinent and very funny cartoons from “Peanuts,” “B.C.,” and other sources. I can’t recommend it too highly …

STEWART PIANO PRE-SCHOOL BOOK and TEACHER INSTRUCTION BOOK. Many readers will be familiar with Books I and II of Mrs. Stewart’s Piano Method, which I reviewed in GWS #21, saying in part, “From the very beginning, children - the books are designed for children to use or for adults to use with children - are encouraged to transpose, i.e. to play the same tune in all keys and are given a simple device … which makes it easy for them to do so … Where the other books I had seen made learning music look mysterious, difficult, and dull, these books made it look sensible, exciting, and easy … in the sense that at every point I know what I am doing and why I am doing it.” I remain just as enthusiastic.

The PRE-SCHOOL BOOK is a book of thirteen songs for young children of four (or less) to hear, sing, and play. It precedes Book I of the Stew- art Piano Lessons. The TEACHER INSTRUCTION BOOK tells the adult teacher (who need not know how to play the piano her/himself) how to use this book (and by implication the later books) with children. It is full of sensible and helpful suggestions drawn from actual experience. Indeed, I would recommend it even to people who were using the later books, whether to teach children or themselves. One particularly wise suggestion is, “Play All Over The Piano.” Another: “Be sure to move onto the second, third, etc., scales right away. Do not wait for each to be perfect - keep adding on new scales as you practice the old ones…” A very good point - if children never tried to say a new word until they could say all their old words perfectly, they never would learn to speak. Learning is more interesting and exciting, therefore more efficient, when we are exploring many related things at once.

The iinsight seems to have been lost or given up in Suzuki music instruction, which is full of talk about making sure that the child does each step perfectly before going on to the next step. This is surprising, since it was precisely from listening to children teach themselves to speak that Dr. Suzuki got his original ideas about how they might best learn music. At any rate, it’s one of the many merits of the Stewart method that it doesn’t make this mistake. - JH

THE FIRST HOME-SCHOOL CATALOGUE by Donn Reed. Mr. Reed, a home-schooling parent, has put together this 200+ page collection of articles, reference lists, and catalog descriptions in an attempt to make a kind of WHOLE EARTH CATALOG for home-schoolers. The first section deals with the how-to’s and legalities of home-schooling, including copies of the correspondence between the Reeds and the school officials; a summary of the home-schooling laws in each state and province (which the author admits is “only very basic” and not up-to-date); and lists of correspondence schools and textbook publishers.

Most interesting to us are the dozens of items described in the remainder of the book. Many of these, such as rubber stamps (six pages’ worth’) and stencils are the kind of simple learning materials that John has suggested using in the past. There are science kits, maps, globes, and an “eyescope” that lets you see the inner workings of your own eye. There are many pages of “Talking Books” and “Old-Time Radio Shows” on cassette tapes. There are 14 pages of free materials to send for, and the address of a man in Massachusetts who has over a million back issues of magazines to sell. Want the front page of the New York Times for any day in the last 130 years? Or a badge made with any design you choose? THE FIRST HOME SCHOOL CATALOGUE will help you.

Many of these items are available through the Reed family’s BROOK FARM BOOKS service, which is located in Canada. They also offer hundreds of books such as all the Modern Library and Portable Library titles; all the Danny Dunn, Tintin and Tarzan books; the Foxfire series, the “Made Simple” series, the Bellerophon coloring books, and more.

The catalog is printed by the Reeds themselves, who welcome readers’ ideas and contributions for future editions. We see this catalog as potentially very useful and valuable to many home-schoolers, and we wish the Reeds well in this venture. - DR

LATE NEWS LATE NEWS LATE NEWS LATE NEWS

As we go to press, we’ve heard several developments concerning the Georgia and Maryland proposed regulations (Pages 2-4 inside). In Georgia, due to the surprisingly strong opposition from home-schoolers, church groups, family lobbies, etc, the Board decided to post- pone any hearings until March. In Maryland, 120-140 people went to the Jan. 26 hearing, where almost all the testimony opposed the regulations.

Also, we have just learned that there’s a bill in the Iowa State Senate, S-70, which would eliminate the certification requirement for home-teaching. _____

Editors - John Holt & Donna Richoux Managing Editor - Peg Durkee Editorial Assistant - Pat Farenga Subscriptions & Books - Tim Chapman Office Assistant - Mary Van Doren

Copyright 1977 Holt Associates, Inc.