GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING  #22

Though the official publication date for TEACH YOUR OWN was Aug. 3, it began to appear in bookstores in Boston (and apparently elsewhere) early in July. A number of people from different parts of the country have already used the tear-out page at the back of the book to ask for a sample of GWS, and so far three of these have subscribed. The publisher tells us that advance orders from bookstores have been good. By the end of July, we had sold about 70 copies from the office. A good start. You can help the book by telling as many people as possible about it, including local libraries, bookstores, newspapers, radio and TV people, etc. David Brudnoy has already interviewed me about the book for his WRKO radio show here in Boston.

In GWS #21 we suggested that readers ask some of their local radio talk shows to interview me by phone about TYO. This has already brought us one radio interview, from the “Morning Magazine” show on station WOAI in San Antonio TX. Many thanks to the reader/s who helped bring that about.

We had a recent phone call from a mother who wanted to unschool her children and who heard about us from her librarian. Another good reason for making sure that librarians know about us.

Pat Montgomery, of the Clonlara School and the Home Based Education Program (see MI Directory) was on the Donahue show on June 25. Also on the show were the head of the Los Angeles school board (saying that the schools were great) and the head of a small private school in a low-income black community, also in L.A. It was quite a battle, and Pat got in some good licks. Since some of the stations that carry the Donahue show run it one week after the original showing others two weeks after, others three weeks after, and so on all the way up to an eight or ten week delay, some of you may still be able to catch the show. If a station in your area carries Donahue, ask them what their delay is. Or ask the Donahue people, at 2501 Bradley Place, Chicago IL 60618, and mention that you are interested in home schooling.

The lead story in the July ‘81 issue of Gifted Children Newsletter (530 University Av, Palo Alto CA 94301) is a very favorable report on home schooling. The story will continue in the August issue.

In GWS #21 we told about our visit from Mr. Onuma of Japan. When he returned to his home island of Hokkaido, his local paper printed a story about the trip, complete with a photo of myself, Donna, and Peggy (Tim was out of the office that morning). Another young man from Japan, Hisashi Urashima, read the story and came in to visit us last week during his trip to the U.S. He showed me many pictures of the school to teach English, the “English House Joy,” that he started in Obihiro in Hokkaido at the age of 24 and has run for four years. He also publishes an English language annual magazine, Northern Lights. He would like very much to hear from any home schoolers who are also interested in Japan, and any Americans going to Hokkaido can be sure of a warm welcome. His (and the school’s) address: 11-14, S-5, W-17, Obihiro.

Delighted to learn the other day that there is an active unschooling group in Australia, in and around Melbourne. Their address is Alternative Education Resource Group, c/o 84 Andersons Creek Rd., East Doncaster 3109, Australia. They sent us a copy of an excellent folder of materials that they publish for home schooling parents, with much good advice about how to deal with education authorities (who from their samples seem quite cooperative), model letters and so on. I plan to meet with them during my trip, and will have more news about them when I return.
— John Holt

THANKS

We want to thank the many volunteers who have helped GWS recently. Half a dozen people have spent time in our office doing some of the unexciting but necessary work needed to keep us going - assembling sets of back issues, rubber stamping, photocopying, etc. Susan Benedict even taught herself how to use our word processor and helped us store material for GWS. Another half-dozen people have picked up work (mostly renewal mailings) at the office to do at home. And 20 people around the country just finished typing up names and addresses for us.

Many more people have offered to volunteer, which we appreciate - all your names are in our file. Sometimes it’s frustrating not to be able to take advantage of your skills and willingness, but we’ll do what we can. If John is able to talk about TEACH YOUR OWN and GWS on some major TV shows, we may need lots of help answering mail. And if you get any ideas about specific ways you can help us, we’d love to hear from you.
— Donna Richoux

THEY KNEW
John recently found this short clipping that he saved from the New York Times 18 or 20 years ago:

GAFFNEY, S.C. (AP) - Four youths appeared in General Sessions Court in connection with a series of break-ins.
Judge Frank Epps, learning that they had quit school, gave them the choice of returning to school or going on the chain gang.
Without hesitations all four chose the chain gang.

CRANK

Leopold Kohr, perhaps the first modern philosopher to write about why small institutions are generally better than big, writes in his interesting book THE BREAKDOWN OF NATIONS that E. F. Schumacher, when someone called him a crank, replied, “Some people call me a crank. I don’t mind at all. A crank is a low-cost, low-capital tool. It can be used on a moderate small scale. Ie is non-violent. And it makes revolutions.”

GOOD NEWS FROM KY.

From Ruth McCutchen (KY):

…As you can see by the enclosed article - our dream is a reality! We’re legal! We may very well have opened a Pandora’s box here in Kentucky. No one seemed to know about the new state regulations that went into effect back in October when our troubles began. Both my lawyers somehow missed them! I’ve attached a copy of the regulations to my application, etc. Feel free to use anything that I’ve enclosed in GWS. I began working on approval the first week in May and received approval on May 28th. So you see it was wonderfully, incredibly easy! Prospective “home-schoolers” in Kentucky should write or call: Patrick West, Jr., Superintendent of Non-Public Schools, Room 189, Capitol Plaza Tower, Frankfort KY 40601; phone 564-2116. He will mail them an application form and a copy of the new regulations…

From the Louisville Times 6/2/81

…For 2 1/2 years, Abigail, Rebekah, and Deborah Alison McCutchen, ranging from 7 to 12 years old, were afraid of being discovered. They stayed cloistered in the home until 2:30 p.m. every weekday. They closed curtains to shut out prying eyes.They didn’t want anyone to know that when other kids headed to regular schools in the morning, the McCutchen girls remained at home in their self-styled school.
In their house filled with books and lined with maps of-the world and pictures they drew, the girls read constantly, made puppets, put on plays, balanced checkbooks, baked muffins, listened to Beethoven. But their secrecy didn’t work._

Paranoia turned into reality. Late October, somebody - they don’t know who - turned them in to the Jefferson County school authorities.

First, school social workers arrived. Later, legal notices came. Eventually, school officials charged them with truancy. At a hearing in Juvenile Court in January, a judge gave them until June to prove they were not breaking a State law requiring children under 16 to attend school.

By now, thanks to a 1979 state Supreme Court ruling [see GWS #12, 15], and the new state regulations that followed, they don’t need to worry. Last week, the state agreed that the McCutchen home is a school. And yesterday, Juvenile Court Judge Thomas B. Merrill dismissed the case…

That makes their home the first home school in Jefferson County to be approved by the state, local and state school officials say. One other approved home school - with one student - is operating in Pike County, said Patrick Wese, consultant for nonpublic schools with the Bureau of Instruction “This is really no big thing,” he said.

…”I’m glad it’s over,” Deborah Allison, 12, said last week. “That used to be our dread - that somebody would ask: Where do you go to school? Now we don’t care. We’ll be glad to tell them.”

The Supreme Court decision that made it possible dramatically changed the authority of the state to approve schools. The court ruled that Kentucky cannot tell private schools what teachers or books or curriculum they must use.

New state regulations, which evolved from the ruling and went into effect last October, require the bare minimum of a school. It must fill out an application blank and promise to offer six hours of instruction for 175 days a year and teach reading, writing, grammar, spelling, math, history, and civics. Further, fire and health officials must inspect and approve the facilities.

The girls’ mother met all those requirements, and the school is now called “Learning Through Living.” Ms. McCutchen, named principal and head teacher, believes her kids get more not less - instruction than kids in regular schools.

“I don’t feel I’m lying by saying that,” she said. “I feel that every hour of the day is learning time. The minute their feet hit the floor in the morning, they’re learning things. I feel that is accurate, even though we don’t sit down and have classes.”…

Learning best takes places she says, when kids are attracted to what they want to learn and choose it themselves. That’s why theirs is a freeform school. They study or read when they wish. They learn fractions by cooking, about current events while discussing newspaper articles. They listen to Vivaldi or do ballet when they want to. The whole family consumes books. They troop to the library every week, returning home with piles of books.

Last Friday around 9:15 a.m., for example, Beethoven’s “Emperor’s Concerto” filled the house. As Rebekah, 9, ate breakfast and created clothes for her paper doll, Abigail, 7, came giggling into the kitchen to ask her mother to help her find a small gold bug hidden in each page of a big Richard Scarry book.

She was so drawn to reading, her mother says, that she has been teaching herself to read for months. In April, she was finally reading books on her own. Her mother and sisters help her when she needs it. Within a month, she’s completed 10 books on her own. She says she’s thrilled.

“lt’s fun. I’m not used to it,” she said Friday. “lt. feels good to know I don’t: have to go up to them and say, ‘Will you read me a book?”‘

…Ms. McCutchen doesn’t believe a flood of parents will follow her example, although she knows about two dozen in the metropolitan Louisville area with small children who are interested,

But many families can’t handle it, especially with two parents in a family working. Ms. McCucchen is divorced but does not work outside the home because her ex-husband supports the family. Other families wouldn’t want to have their children around them all day, she says.

But Ms. McCucchen says she’s having a ball, learning right along with them. Their work room is filled with planets books, encyclopedias, a typewriter, a sewing machine. The walls are lined with maps of the West Indies, Newfoundland and the Americas, and crayon pictures of every description. In the bedroom, a globe sits on the hearth. Maps and homemade posters cover the bedroom walls too.

Ms. McCucchen believes their lifestyle is teaching her daughters to grow up creative, curious, and independent. She’s never been worried about what they’re missing in school.

She says her children tested out at about grade level in the standard tests used to measure achievement of public-school children. For example, tests placed Deborah, 12, at a sixth grade, fifth-month level. She was above her grade on fractions in the mach test - even though she has never had a sit-down class in fractions. She learned it all in the kitchen, Ms. McCucchen said. “I thought that was hysterical.”

And Rebekah’s comprehension of reading passages was measured at a seventh-grade, second-month level. She didn’t do too well oh letter identification, however, says Ms. McCucchen, because she had no idea what a cursive capital “Q” looks like a style she never uses, Ms. McCucchen says. Overall, tests put Rebekah at a fourth-grade, fifth-month level…

AND GOOD NEWS FROM VA.

Attorney Peter W. D. Wright sent us this story from the Richmond, Va., News Leader, 5/19/81. It is the first case we’ve heard about that uses this particular legal argument, and we hope that it will be a help to other GWS readers. Mr. Wright, who acted for the Hawkins family, says he’s willing to help other home-schoolers.

COUNTY PARENTS WIN BATTLE OVER CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL - Tammy and Eddie Hawkins … go to school at their home in the Clarendon subdivision [in Chesterfield Couney, Va.]

It took a court hearing late last month to prove to Chesterfield school administrators that what Mr. and Mrs. Hollis Hawkins were doing with their children’s education is legal.

Judge John H. Thomas ruled that the mail correspondence school in which the teenagers are enrolled falls into the accepted description of a “private school” and, therefore, satisfies compulsory education laws.

…The Hawkinses had decided to take their children out of Richmond public schools, where they believed Tammy and Eddie were not getting a proper education and were being physically harassed by other children. After much discussion among Richmond school officials, Tammy and Eddie were allowed to stay home and study that year, but were warned that they would have to return to public school during the 1980-81 school year. Before the school year began [illegible], the Hawkinses moved to Chesterfield, a move they said they had been planning for years.

Tammy decided that she would remain at home in the American School accredited by [illegible - probably the National Home Study Council] and alma mater of Donnie and Marie Osmond. The four-year $519 tuition had been prepaid and besides, Mrs. Hawkins said, “She had gotten used to studying at home.”

Eddie, however, said he wanted to try Chesterfield Schools… Eddie’s problems began when Cheseerfield’s preliminary testing showed that he was eligible only for seventh, or possibly eighth grade. “He was supposed to be in ninth grade,” Mrs. Hawkins said, “and there was no way I was going to put him back.”

The Hawkinses decided to keep Eddie at home in the correspondence school. Chesterfield school officials did not agree with that move, and earlier this year, sued the Hawkinses on criminal charges of not providing a proper education for their children.

Mrs. Hawkins said she “was scared” at the thought of having to go to court but added, “I had decided that, no matter what, I wasn’t going to have Eddie go back to public school. We were ready to take it to the Supreme Court if we had to.”

That wasn’t necessary. After more than $1,400 in attorney’s fees and two days of work without pay for Hawkins, Eddie will be allowed to study at home. Mrs. Hawkins said the children probably never will attend public schools again… She said the family cannot afford to send their children to any of the area’s private schools.

Tammy, who works part-time in a local fast-food restaurant, said she may enroll in a college correspondence course to study English. “I want- to be a writer,” she said…

CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL RESULTS

From an article by T.E. Waueesee “Books on Home Education,” this issue) in the April-May 1979 Journal of Adventist Education Mr. Wade used to be the Director of Studies of the Home Study Institute):

…Home Study Institute has been successfully teaching young people at home since 1909… Two years ago we reported a study of more than one thousand standardized reading test scores from our files that showed our students reading better than 81% of students at the same grade levels.

But that information was not enough. We wanted the candid opinions of the parents of our students. So we found as many parents as we could from the 171 North American students promoted to various grades in 1976. Here are [some of] the statements and the percentages of people expressing an opinion who either agreed or strongly agreed:
_
…The parent functioning as both parent and instructor did not interfere with the child’s learning - 97%.
The home instructor’s background plus the information in the HSI program were sufficient for the teaching needed - 95%.
The child probably learned as well as (if not better than) he/she would have in a regular classroom - 95%.
The social development of the child (getting along with others, et cetera) has not been jeopardized by studying at home - 96%.

It is interesting to note that 23 of the 118 questionnaires returned indicated that the person giving the daily instruction - usually the mother - had no more than a high school education. Only 39 had any sort of teacher training.

…We wanted to know how well those students who had transferred to standard classroom schools for the following school year were doing. We mailed 57 questionnaires to the current school principals and received 53 responses. “How would you classify the current academic achievement of this student?” we asked. For 80%, the response was “excellent” or “above average.” Then we asked, “Compared to other new students at your school, how is this boy or girl developing socially?” 66-80% of the questionnaires were marked “mixes well with other children, relates well to teachers, is well-mannered and courteous, and contributes to the class discussion.”  Nine out of ten of the respondents indicated that from their viewpoint, the fact that the child studied through Home Study Institute caused no particular problems beyond what would have been expected as a result of changing from another school.

Most of the questionnaires from both parents and schools had encouraging comments…

PROBLEMS

From Ann Bodine (NJ):

…I am beginning to feel that GWS is too positive and glowing and doesn’t give enough recognition to the problems and hard work of home schooling… But what can you do if that’s what people write you? I’m not saying that I think you distort what people write, but perhaps a more open discussion of problems would encourage more people to write about their problems.

One parent I know had written several paragraphs in GWS - all glowing. When he told me about the problems they had had (I don’t mean with authorities, I mean within their own family), I asked him whether he had mentioned any of those problems in his letter to you. He said he didn’t think readers would have been interested.

…I have noticed with our monthly Family Schools Association meetings that if a discussion starts out with a “Isn’t home schooling wonderful” tone, it tends to stay that way for hours, as if people are intimidated and afraid to mention any difficulty they are having. On the other hand, if it starts out with a “Home schooling sure is exhausting for the parents” tone, it will stay that way for hours. Perhaps hearing others discuss their difficulties causes people to remember every difficulty they have ever had. I’ve only noticed this recently, after many, many repetitions. Now I consciously try to insert the opposite view after an hour or so. I think when the discussion goes back and forth between pleasures and problems, people get a much more realistic picture of what home schooling is actually like…

—-

[JH:] As I wrote to Ann, she’s quite right about it being important to print stories about problems and worries related to home-schooling. But we can’t do it if people don’t tell us. We certainly don’t censor out stories of problems, quite the reverse - we go out of our way to print such stories when we get them. Maybe this letter will stimulate more people to write us about such problems.

TWO COLO. GROUPS

From Betsie Weil, 2609 South Blvd, Colorado Springs CO 80904:

…We have formed a group called the Colorado Springs Home Schoolers and would be interested in having more folks join us. Calls can be made to Sherrie Simmerman at 630-8512 or me at 473-3898…
—-

And from Nancy and Fred Dumke, 1902 S Oneida, Denver CO 80222:

…Interested parents/parents-to-be in the Denver area have formed a group called the Colorado Home Schooling Network. We meet once a month to exchange ideas and support. I will be conducting a seminar in August about home schooling through Denver Free University. We hope to increase our membership through the seminar…

PA NEWSLETTER

From Janet Williams, RD 2 Box 181, York Springs PA 17372:

…In Pennsylvania we are beginning to reach out to each other. On May 3rd Joe and Lorraine Clark hosted a picnic (primarily for the greater Philadelphia area). On May 31 we had a picnic here (primarily for the greater Harrisburg area.) Both were well attended with children greatly outnumbering aduLts. Both times I was fascinated by the cooperation and friendliness of the kids. At one point there were seven 2-4 year olds in the sandbox at once. The older children organized themselves into a girls vs. boys ballgame. All this by supposedly “socially deprived” children!

…We will print a quarterly newsletter for the PA. UNSCHOOLERS NETWORK (PAUN)… I am committed to doing this for 4 issues (one year) … Beyond that I cannot see. We will charge no subscription fee - but donations would be gratefully accepted… We will gladly include anyone on the mailing list who takes the time to send a request.

PAUN will offer information about Pa. laws, new legislation, legal cases and history. Given the size of this state, we cannot have a statewide support group but must depend upon a network of smaller groups working independently. The initial purpose of the newsletter is to  reduce the sense of isolation affecting all of us. Once we have formed our grassroots groups, then we can reach out to (1) receive referrals from the Dept. of Education, GWS, etc; (2) provide moral (and financial?) support for families suffering legal hassles; (3) join into alternative “schools” if necessary or desirable; (4) develop an advocacy service…

MARYLAND GROUP

From Manfred Smith (9085 Flamepool Way, Columbia MD 21045):

…Just had an unschooling meeting last Sunday. A lot of new, committed people. After a period of general discussion, things began to
develop rapidly:
1) We are planning to incorporate as a non-profit educational alternative. The aim here is provide as much legal cover and tangible
support to home-schoolers as possible - I am in the process of lining up as many certified and qualified personnel as I can.
2) Have established a monetary fund ($10 per family) to help pay for incorporation, buy materials, legal fund (?), etc.
3) Meetings will include a rotating facilitator…
4) Decision by consensus… Common interests that are pressing should find easy consensus.  This promises to be an interesting
venture…

USEFUL CENTER IN CALF.

The MARIN COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER (Camino Aleo & Sycamore, Mill Valley CA 94941; 415-383-1233) is offering a place for home-schooling families to meet learn together, use or borrow material, arrange field trips, etc. The director, Jan Frangione, writes:

…I envision some families using the Center’s field trip program only, others taking part in the language program, others developing a tutoring situation, others having their children at the Center on a consistent 2-3 days a week basis: the combinations of time and-use of the Center, its materials and director are numerous. Fees will be kept as low as possible with an aim to making the Resource Center available to as many families as possible in the greater Bay Area… The Resource Center is registered with the State of California as a private school and participation in any of its activities means your child is a school student…

RESOURCE IN NY

From Anna Marie Fahey of the CHRISTIAN HOMESTEADING SCHOOL, RD 2, Oxford NY 13830:

..;Enclosed is information about the program we offer to parents interested in teaching their children at home. We invite anyone to write for further information…

he Homesteading School is 70 acres of hilltop woods and meadows in rural New York… We have chickens, ducks, cats, goats, cows, bees, a dog, and a horse. Buildings are small and are made of logs… We are living from the land much as we are teaching_

people to do.

…A Homesteading Week is an intensive week of instruction on homesteading subjects (7 to lO hours a day)… Basic Homesteading Week is limited to 15 and is required for our other programs except Carving, Homebirth, and Home Education weeks…One encouraging thing we have noticed is that at our Home Birth Association meetings, almost all the parents who have given birth at home are now teaching their children at home or are planning to do so. In fact, it has proved to be the most talked about subject other than home birth…

ALTERNATIVES IN ED.

Every time we get an issue of the Alternatives in Education newsletter from West Virginia, we mark all kinds of wonderful stories we’d like to quote in GWS. But each time something prevents us - generally, we run out of space, or we run out of time. So this time we are determined at least to remind people of the existence of this great little paper in hopes that many of our readers will also become their readers.  Like GWS Alternatives in Education is largely made up of reader contributions - letters, suggestions, announcements, resource lists, book reviews. Although some of the content would only interest those in West Virginia or neighboring states, there  still many letters about learning, living, and home-schooling that have much more than local appeal.  Definitely worth the money.

We asked Deirdre Purdy, one of the people who work on the newsletter, whether back issues were available. She wrote, “We have samples of the current issue we’d be glad to send for 50 cents. Back issues are all gone. If we run out of current issues, we will send the October issue.”  The paper’s new address is Rt 3, Box 305, Chloe WV 25235. - DR

REACTIONS TO BOOKS

We are thinking about putting together some kind of booklet reprinting the book reviews we’ve run in GWS. This is still very tentative we’re not sure how much work it would be, or whether it would be worth the time and effort, or what it would look like. But it’s still a real possibility and the main point would be to share with is many people as we can our thoughts and feelings about the books on our Mail-Order Booklist. Not everybody gets and reads the back issues of GWS (though we’re delighted at how many do), and even those who do may forget what’s in them, or lose them, and so on.  The reason we’re telling you about this now is that we thought some of you might like to contribute to such 3 booklet. We would be very interested in hearing your reactions to any of the books on our Mail-Order Booklist - what you got out of the book why you think other people would like it, what it was like to read the book for the first time what it’s like to read it to your kids, what long-lasting effect the book has had on your life, or anything else you’d like to share. The more spontaneous the better, the more specific the better.  Any length is OK, from one sentence to several pages. You don’t have to worry about spelling, punctuation, etc., - we can fix up little things like that.

By the way, since the ultimate purpose of this booklet is to get people to buy the books, and to keep the books alive, in print and in circulation, we will naturally be emphasizing the positive aspects of the books. If you don’t like a book and want to tell us why, welI, that’s fine, we’ll be interested in hearing it. But we don’t expect to print many of those kinds of comments. On the other hand, if you like a book but think it has certain limitations drawbacks, etc., feel free to tell about those things too.

One final note - of course, we welcome your response no matter what age you are. But because people are often concerned about what age of person can appreciate a particular book we would welcome hearing your age if you would like to tell us, or how old you were when you first read the book.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

HOMESCHOOLERS ON RADIO

Dave Van Manen (CO) writes:

…We are very excited about another big step made in finding other people believing in or sympathetic to home-schooling. At the last meeting of the Home Schooling Support Group, we all agreed to make phone calls to a listener-participation radio show this past Monday. It was a great success! For an hour and a half, 99% of all calls dealt with home-schooling. Helene started it off by calling and voicing some of our general philosophies of home-schooIing. The host, having a background in teaching, asked some probing and good questions. He was generally very accepting, and even seemed to agree with most of what we said. The rest of the show was carried by a handful of home-schoolers and a significant number of the steady listeners phoning in remarks and questions (which we would conveniently call in and answer). Almost every caller was supportive of the general concept of home-schooling - we were all very surprised.  At one point during a segment dealing with the legalities, a school administrator from the local district phoned in and stated that Colorado has made provisions within the laws to deal with the home-schooling “problem” by setting up a bunch of rules and regulations for home-schooling. Well, we certainly made a point of his use of the word “problem” - a reflection of how the schools view home-schoolers - as PROBLEMS. I’m sure he heard us loud and clear.  Our intention in doing this radio show was not to argue and scream and shout about the schools’ problems; we simply wanted to let the community know that we are here, we know what we are talking about, and we intend to exercise our right to educate our children the way we see fit.  After the show, we called up the host, asking about the possibility of having us on the show as guests…

HOME SCHOOL LETTERHEADS

A number of GWS readers have told us about the advantages of having official-looking letterhead stationery for their “home schools.” For example, Barbara Lafferty (NJ) wrote, “When purchasing textbooks, a school letterhead - which isn’t very expensive to have printed and can be very useful in correspondence - from a family’s home school affords you the benefit of receiving the school discount, which is anywhere from 10% to 39%. Also, a book of ‘Purchase Orders,’ which can be purchased at any business supply store, is helpful. Some book companies require a purchase order signed by a school ‘official.’”

We remembered Carol Kent’s letter in GWS #15 about buying a hand printing press, and asked the Kents if they could print letterhead stationery for other GWS readers. Carol wrote back:

…It would be pleasure to do so. The paper is 8 1/2 x ll” handsome white pebble-textured bond with matching #10 envelopes. I can provide 25 printed sheets, 15 plain, and 25 printed envelopes for 56 postpaid. Please print or type the name, address, and telephone number of the institution and the name and title of the director as they should appear on the letterhead. For an additional dollar I will print a slogan at the foot of all forty sheets. Make checks payable to Carol Kent, 115 West Koenig Lane #208, Austin TX 78751 [new address]…

FAMLY BOOKS & JOURNALS

Carol Kent also sent us a long lovely description about her son Robert’s fascination witn trains (both real and model trains), which we intend to run in a future GWS. She told us lt was from the “family book,” and when we asked her to tell us more about chat, she replied:

…Our family book is basically a story book, written by David and me. These stories are about the important events in the history of our family, written at the time they happened. I have also written some stories about my own childhood as I am reminded of them by what happens to my own children. These are personal, and not written for anyone in parcicular. There is no regularity about it, so it is not reallv a journal. Although we have our scrap-books, books of drawings, and photo albums, the family book is something else, a collective autobiography of our family, which the children can add to when they begin to write stories of their own…

—
Also, Norm Lee (NY) wrote:

…Enclosed is an article, “How to Write a Homestead Journal” that we put in Homesteaders News a year or so ago… You might suggest it for home schoolers.

A daily informal journal about things associated with the learning things that occured during that day … may help home-schooling people glue things together. At a minimum it aids in focussing on what’s important during the day, putting events in perspective, perhaps even learning from them, and - oh, yes - improving writing by the only method known to work: by writing.       TV can’t compete with a journal read three or four years later to the children, either. My own boys would sit enthralled as I read my journal  -_ sometimes about events that didn’t involve them, sometimes about things that did - an occasion that triggered discussion, renewal of forgotten projects, or hysterical laughter. But warning: a journal is great for the health - but terribly habit-forming. I’ve been hooked for many years.

[From Norm’s article:] …The journal records feelings, moods, joys, fears, events, views, and reactions to people, books, work, weather, everything. It’s not a secret diary, but an open letter to oneself - an open door for people to know you better. (The bonus is discovering that you know yourself better.)  Use a separate notebook, and a new page for each day - but don’t number the pages ahead. When you really warm up to a subject you won’t want to feel cramped for space. At first keep talking and let her roll. Choose the most outstanding feature or event of the day and talk about it as if writing to a friend. If it helps, write, “Dear ____ …

I do my writing during the peace and freshness of early morning. Others like to look back over the day and commune with pen and notebook in the hush of evening. A homestead journal can change your pace, change your views, and change your life…

CREDENTIAL THROUGH TV

From Iowa:

… We have not taken the “big step” yet, but are moving closer to it all the time. At present I am taking a course, the first of two I will need in order to renew my teaching certificate. This is a TV course two half-hour programs per week for 15 weeks; a study guide and child psychology text; plus three objective tests - a very painless and convenient means to an end for my situation.

Our son is in first grade now and is going through many of the things other GWS letters have mentioned. He taught himself to read before kindergarten (I mean completely - we had nothing to do with it directly, and it was real reading with understanding, not just recognizing a few words.) But now he’s convinced that he “learned to read” in school! There was no provision made for his needs in kindergarten or first grade until we finally went to the school and pleaded with them to at least try something different… He was given a dozen busywork pages each day (which the teacher admitted were only to keep the children busy while she worked with other groups) and getting into trouble because he didn’t get his work done… He’s the type of person who likes to have everything “just right.” His handwriting is beautiful - and he’d rather spend time making it look nice than rush through to get everything done. I can’t bring myself to tell him, “You must do sloppy work to get it all done and make them happy.”…

OFFERING SHELTER

An interesting offer from Ann Bodine (83 Knollwood Dr, New Providence NJ 07974):

…If you ever hear of any children who are in danger of being forced into school by local authorities, and if the parents would rather send the children away for a few weeks or months while they get the problem ironed out than to have the children go to school while the issue is being settled, I would be happy to take those children. I don’t really believe it will ever come to that for anyone, but if it did, or if the authorities were using the threat of taking children away until the plan was approved, it would get the parents out of hot water to be able to say that the children had moved out of state.  The real problem would be for a child too young to leave the parents. I wondered what I would do if they had told me to put Jonathan in school until they approved the plan. He is too little to be away from us, except for one or two nights with very good friends. I might have had to enroll him in the least offensive private school I could find and then keep him home as much as possible as sick…

MAVERICK L.D. EXPERT

Jennifer Seip (21 New Rd, North Hampton NH 03862) wrote in 1978:

…I have worked in education for the past seven years, since I got out of college. I had a B.A. in Sociology but was very interested in teaching “special” children, particularly emotionally disturbed. I was an educational counselor in a special camp, and a teacher’s assistant in a school for the emotionally disturbed. Then I moved to New Hampshire and worked as an aide in a “Learning Disabilities” classroom. 5 1/2 years ago I was hired as a Title I Director/Learning Disabilities specialist. I became certified in elementary education and learning disabilities.

…I have given you this (perhaps boring) background because I want you to know where I’m coming from and what experiences I base my statements on. I am probably the only L.D. specialist who despises the field of learning disabilities.

…I am supposed to test, label and correct children - make them better. My principal considers me a failure at this.  I will not test, I will not label, and I will not say there is something wrong with a child. I will not absolve the educational system of its guilt. I will not patch up its ever-increasing leaks.

I know a great deal about perceptual strengths and weaknesses and the falsity of these tests and the programs that are supposed to work. And I know this knowledge is worthless in teaching - except to help you find out that it’s worthless.

…I know even more about the teaching of reading - all the skills and latest remedial methods - and I know that all this knowledge too is useless. It’s great for wasting time with kids and making yourself feel like you’re doing something and “the kid must really have a problem if he still can’t learn.” I find that if I don’t garble my tutors’ minds with reading skills and “training” and just tell them to use their own intuition, that they are far better “teachers” than any reading specialist. And once they get over their lack of confidence from not being a trained professional, I think they come to see it’s true!

…A 12-year-old girl I worked with last year was many years below grade level, and nobody could teach reading to her. She had gotten stuck in the cycle of failure. After I stopped trying hard to teach her basic reading “skills,” we read from  a book of her choosing that was “too hard” for her. We took turns reading and when she got to words she didn’t know (there were many), I told her to simply ask me if she wanted to be told the word. It was sometimes very hard for me not to slip some teaching in - not to have her sound it out etc. We went on like that for perhaps a month. One day she came to me, obviously feeling very good about herself. We talked about the good things that had happened to her that day and how powerful she felt. We opened the book and she read the entire page correctly! I could see her lips moving to sound out words, her eyes moving ahead to get context clues - all on her own initiative. She exhibited all the reading skills that tests said she didn’t have. She didn’t need to be taught, she didn’t need to learn skills or how to apply them. She could read! All she needed to do was to do it…

You mention many times in GWS your interest in telling the truth about learning disabilities. I can help with this, and also with helping parents see how capable they already are of teaching their own children. I’m interested in being a resource person for such parents…
___

Jennifer’s letter turned up recently in a pile of old papers, and Donna wrote asking how things were going now. Jennifer answered:

…It was wonderful to get your letter. I had wondered what had ever happened to my letter John said he was going to quote from… It pleases me so much to watch the home schooling movement grow over these years. I can’t think of a better reason to have my letter overlooked!

…Yes, you can still put me down as a resource person for learning disabilities, and you no longer need to keep my name confidential. You see, I no longer work in education. I quit my job as Title I Director two years ago. And I will never work in a school again.

…Learning is one of the most beautiful parts of living and the schools are destroying it. How can that not be one of the most emotional issues to someone who sees that?? Especially when I made it my life’s work, when I spent eight years learning how to do it better, learning how people learn, and learning how I can help people who think they can’t learn see that they can. And then as my own personal values integrated with what I realized was happening in education, I had suddenly “idealized” myself out of a life’s work…

People don’t understand why I don’t just set up a better school - some friends of mine with money have even asked me to. But I know I would only be compromising - I would not be happy. They don’t see that the very premises behind setting up a school are against my values about learning. They believe kids won’t learn “enough” unless compelled to learn in a certain place at a certain time from certain people…

I tried private tutoring of kids with learning problems, but it was extremely frustrating. The kids and parents were still locked into the beliefs and value systems of the school. I’m not going to settle for less any more. I believe that when you settle for less (because you don’t think you can get what you want), you greatly decrease your opportunities for getting what you_ want.

…So right now I am waitressing. It gives me money to live on flexible hours, my days off!, and exercise - which teaching certainly doesn’t. So it isn’t too bad. But I want very much to do something with my expertise in learning. I believe there is some way it can be of value without my compromising. I just know I don’t want to fight people, to persuade them to my way of thinking. I want to be around people who already feel similar to me about learning or who are open and curious. Teachers are not open and curious! They are closed and scared and getting more scared all the time!

…When I was a teacher’s aide in a Cambridge private pre-school, we were supposed to go home at night and think up “learning activities” for kids. Now, I am a very creative person when it comes to formulating ideas and figuring out how to do things better, but I hated thinking up these activities - it just didn’t flow inside me. I loved watching the kids do what they thought up, and interacting with them. A part of me knew consciously that I was right but I had no support, and I was just out of college so I couldn’t go anywhere with it yet (or didn’t think I could).

I am learning a wonderful new skill this year - gardening! It’s so incredibly satisfying and enjoyable. Earlier this spring I read books over and over, relishing the way the experts disagreed and seeing how all the answers are tied to fundamental truths about nature and growth. I planted seeds indoors and now I am watching everything grow outside - it’s different every day. I have never been a hard-core nature person but sometimes I think that all the important truths, all the important knowledge to be gained is right here within nature. The school doesn’t cost a thing. Neither do the teachers.

I am amazed at how much I have learned about gardening in such a short time. I have had the opportunity before but this was the right time. It was all up to me - there was no one to lean on and that’s what has made the satisfaction so deep. This is also the first spring since I started school at age five that I have been free to be outside each and every day. Last year I had a daytime inside job and the 25 years before that I was either a teacher or a student!

I am also learning skills which have been frustrating to me all my life - mechanical (male) skills. I now understand the basics of my car and can do simple maintenance such as oil changes. I am learning to fix things around the house - even a plumbing probLem we had this winter! Each time something goes wrong with the house, I am finding that it can be seen as an annoying frustration or an opportunity to learn something new. We had a carpenter-ant problem and I did enough informal research to beat any term paper I ever did in school! I have found that in no time, I can know more than many of the people do who I used to consider “experts”!

…What I learned when I was teaching was that the most effective way is the simplest way. And what I always know was that no one is dumb - no one is learning disabled any more than anyone else (except for specific brain damage). We all have our strengths and weaknesses; we have just labeled certain skills as intellectual, as elitist.

For example, I had a first grader who was having a great deal of trouble learning to blend sounds together. Her teacher asked me to find out what was wrong. I gave her sounds to blend and she had a great deal of difficulty. I then told her not to say a word, to just listen - that I would give the answers this time. After about six words she was eagerly piping in with the correct answers! I kidded and played with her and told her that she couldn’t answer. We had great fun and soon (a 45-minute session) she could blend.

I had a delightful 3rd grader who would make all kinds of mistakes when she read and would just go on and not stop to correct herself. Her teacher and Title I tutor were having a terrible time trying to correct her at every mistake. Well, I enjoy being with this child a whole lot and know how smart she really is - she also loves to play games (mind games) with adults. So I sat down with her and told her to read to me. I didn’t look at the book or stop her when she made a mistake - I just listened. She loved it and in no time (one or two sessions) her mistakes dropped off. Her tutor did the same thing and also really started to enjoy her…

The kids I worked with (bottom of the class) weren’t dumb or disabled - they were just scared!

…Please let me know how I can help you and/or all the home-schoolers out there. I feel so good about my decision to not work in schools again but I am frustrated to be completely cut off from using the expertise and values I have to help others. I would like so much to be actively involved in some way. It is definitely a missing piece in my life.

[From a later letter:] …What I want is simply for people to respond who are touched in some way by my letters. Maybe that’s it, just encourage people to write to me, to tell me their thoughts as they read it. Their letters will trigger off ideas in me and I’ll begin to get a picture of the need out there and if it’s a need I can respond to… I think that if I try to be specific too soon I’ll shut doors that I don’t know exist…

SKEPTICAL HUSBAND - 2

[DR:] When Mary Maher (GWS #21, “Success Stories”) came into the office a while ago to pick up some volunteer work, she told us that her husband, Tom, who is a public school teacher, was against the idea of home schooling at first. Mary had asked him if she did al] the research, checking into the legalities, who’s doing it, etc, would he at least keep an open mind? He agreed.          Mary got some issues of GWS and Tom looked through them. She contacted some of the people in the Directory, and one family came over for an evening. Tom was impressed - they seemed to be nice people, not kooks. The home-schooling family gave the Mahers some advice on how to get approval from the school board, stressing that they shouldn’t try to antagonize anyone, that they should be as nice as they possibly could be.

Tom agreed to try home-schooling saying they could always change their minds. Both he and Mary had begun to feel that it was school that made their son Scott so cranky, fighting all the time - he wasn’t like that on vacations. Sundays were the worst; as soon as Scott woke up he began thinking “School tomorrow” and fought all day long. So both parents felt that if taking Scott out of school would clear up that problem, it was worth the try.        Mary said that now Tom thinks it’s terrific that Scott is home. She says that in the first few days, when she was discouraged because she couldn’t understand what some of the textbooks wanted, Tom was the one who said don’t give up, it was going to be worth it.  Tom works for a different school district than the one Scott was enrolled in, and he’s hardly told any one at work about the unschooling. But one fellow-teacher he did tell said, “Boy, you must have a lot of guts…”

IN THE MAIL

From several readers:

…We live in a small community where the kids go to school until they are in the 8th grade. Then they are shipped off to a big school in a nearby town. Everyone seems to do pretty well here, but when they reach the big school, they’re labelled as trash, trouble-makers, etc. In the end that’s what they become. In the past two years I’ve seen probably 5 kids out of 200 graduate. The rest drop out before even lOth grade…

—
…Your newsletter brings pleasure, ideas, and the knowledge that we are not as eccentric as we sometimes imagine - or, at least, that there are lots of others out there who are equally odd. I hold dialogues with you in my head all the time telling you of our remarkable and wonderful 4 1/2-year-old, explaining the school situation here, arguing a fine point. Too busy (read, lazy) to write, I admire those who do and enjoy reading their letters in GWS.  I will content myself with this, and maybe someday I’ll write the epic, and ever-growing, letter in myhead…

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…A short story about Christopher (4) - The other day I brought home a used bike for him. He’s been waiting for us to find one for him for a while and had been given a horn by a friend for the bike. As soon as we got home, he wanted to put on the horn but I had to get supper started. Before I knew it, he announced that the horn was attached - he had gotten the screwdriver, taken apart the band that holds the horn, and put it on the bike. We’ve always let him use tools (he sews also) and so now he’s very comfortable doing tasks on his own. It’s so much fun to watch it happen!…

LIVING WITH J.P.

From Kathy Mingl (IL):

…l thought I’d better get this letter typed before it turns into a book… Have you ever heard of the Procrastinators Club? I keep meaning to get in touch with them…

J.P. has been blossoming lately (a tiger-lily, I think). I always figured that most of his problems had to do with resisting being a baby, but I assumed that he’d get easier to deal with as he got older. Well, I haven’t abandoned hope on that, but it hasn’t_happened yet. What he has gotten is stronger, smarter, louder, and harder to help. The only help he’ll accept is to be shown how to do something for himself. He’s much more difficult to divert from anything he’s decided to do, and talking him out of something you think he’s too little to be messing with is practically a lost cause. All I can do is insist that he not hurt himself - I tell him that I’m allergic to emergencies. He really is good about that (as a concession to his mother’s nerves - he doesn’t care), and I admit that I’ve emphasized that angle a bit, in the name of diplomacy.

Another bit of strategy I’ve engineered (in the interests of peace, order, and getting the upper hand) is threatening to pick up after J.P. I don’t know if it would work for anyone else but I tell my errant offspring that if he’s old enough to have something, he’s old enough to take care of it and if he expects me to be responsible for his stuff, I put it where I think it should go, including up in the attic until he’s older. I admit that this is fighting dirty, and I wouldn’t care to have that sort of tactics used on me, but J.P. seems to find the logic acceptable. I never specify how long I intend to keep it from him… And of course, I do help him, providing he shows good intentions. The help he generally needs is to be told where to start, what to do next, and where to put it. He loves to be praised for finishing things (even if I had to fight him tooth and toenail to get him to do it)., so I think it’s not responsibility that he lacks, so much as organization. Well, I can certainly sympathize with that.

You know, you can’t imagine how interesting it is to be able to say, “J.P., you come and pick up this puzzle, or Mama will do it for you!” in a tone of dire threat, and have your child come running, bellowing outrage all the way. Considering I’ve hardly ever had to follow through on that, I think the thing that really makes him mad is the idea of not letting him do something for himself.

Actually, J.P. is shaping up to be a pretty nice person. I may be biased, but on the whole, I rather like him. He gets crazy now and then, and hard to live with, but that’s usually when he needs a nap (he’s beginning to see that for himself, now, too - some adults should have that much insight). He’s quick to catch on to things - even jokes, if they’re translated to terms he’s familiar with. He doesn’t “turn off” on things he doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t hold it against things if he happens to have hurt himself with them. It’s hard to pinpoint, but I find most kids his age sort of wispy and tentative in comparison. As a matter of fact, J.P.’s main trouble with objects is that he uses too much force on them, which makes them unwieldy and makes him mad.

…I read ESCAPE FROM CHILDHOOD recently, and I had it on my mind that people talk very differently to adults than to children. Just then, J.P. went off somewhere with his daddy, and I called to him, “You be a good boy, now,” and J.P. answered very seriously, “I will, and you be a good mommy.” I said I’d try. Let me tell you, this twerp keeps me honest (I call him Twerp, and he calls me Mommy-Twerp.) He’s very proud of me, and praises me when I do things all by myself… The fact of the matter is, this child doesn’t seem to have grasped the essential parent-child relationship - and neither have I.

…It embarrasses me to have so much control over someone else who wants so much to be able to do things without my help. Until GWS, I just assumed I was a bad mother, and didn’t say much about it. For one thing, shameful as it is to admit, I don’t like babies. I mean they’re cute and all that, but I just don’t find the infant personality attractive. (Fortunately, they improve quickly.) I don’t think babies like anyone, even themselves - they just want what they want, when they want it. I never expected to be a mother, really, but then, I never expected to get married, so I guess one is just as explainable as the other. I am not patient, and I am not the least bit saintly, and a solid stretch in the company of no one but a butterfly-brained boy can drive me to desperation. I don’t believe in violence toward children, but when I read about these terrible parents who throw their poor little babies out of the window and things like that, I think I can at least imagine what drove them to do it…

I have this cartoon, cut from a magazine many years ago. Two serious, worried-looking, middle-class, solid citizens are confronted by a school-principal type character, who is telling them, very seriously, “I’m glad to have this opportunity to talk to you, because I wonder if you have any idea of how disruptive it can be when a child comes to school determined to learn everything.”…

INSTEAD OF KINDERGARTEN

A mother wrote two years ago:

…We decided to keep our 5 year old out of kindergarten this year, after one year of pre-school, which he didn’t like, evidenced by dawdling in the mornings, asking the teacher every day when he could go home, and finally, flat out refusing to go at all. That was the beginning of my new understanding of him. Something clicked in my brain, and I suddenly saw there was no reason to push him out into this artificial experience in order for him to “develop his potential,” and that, in fact, this early schooling was preventing him from doing just that by taking up so much of his time and energy. His free time was then spent recovering from the overstimulation he got in school. I was highly criticized for keeping him home this year (most of my friends being in some form of education), but I stubbornly stuck to my convictions that he knew best what he needed.

I have given him lots of “space” this year, allowing him plenty of time to “do nothing.” In this “do nothing” time he’s gone through periods of boredom and loneliness, but usually comes out on the other side of that into discovering new interests or “bents.” It’s really neat to see him find something meaningful to him all by himself without anyone guiding, interpreting, or pressuring, him.

One great advantage of staying home has been a maximum amount of contact with his father, who is self-employed, and often takes him with him in the various facets of his work. He is learning a certain poise and confidence around strangers by going out with his dad, and also is developing a clear idea of how the  family is supported and what goes on out there “in the real world” - not to mention his deepening relationship with his dad.

I dread first grade. I’ve seen what first grade did to my first son and am very reluctant to see that happen to my second. What I have been doing to soften the impact of school for #1 son is to send him to the best private school I could find (one that especially appealed to him) and then make a standing policy that he could stay home whenever he wanted, which the school doesn’t seem to object to. This is the best I’ve come up with so far, but it’s far from satisfactory. I guess I’m not quite ready to buck the system, and yet I see it off on the horizon…

[DR:] The mother has just written us that they kept the second son out of school by being out of town a lot, and by keeping a low profile when home. The family is looking for a new home in a state more favorable to unschooling.

ON A MOUNTAINTOP

From Vicki Meyer (WV):

…When I wrote to you a couple of years ago, the local school board had denied our home schooling proposal for Jeremiah on the illicit grounds that it would “set a bad precedent.” We took him out of school anyway as we planned to leave the area, but we finally found a farm we could afford to buy and stayed. Jeremiah didn’t go to school at all last year. We did not keep a low profile; if it was a school day and we needed to go into town, he went with us. Any neighbor who asked why he wasn’t in school was told the truth. We don’t believe in teaching children to lie. Most of our neighbors were supportive; it seems they too, had troubles with the school system. They might not grasp that I didn’t see a need for schools at all, but they could share a concern with the things the kids were being taught.

For the first part of the year, Jeremiah read and re-read mysteries and comics, helped around the house, and played with his little brother and sister. He helped Ed take a roof off a house and sometimes cooked dinner. Eventually, though, he began to worry that he was “behind” other kids his age academically, and since he’s always been proud of being “smart,” he asked me start having “school” with him. We got out some workbooks and textbooks, which he basically breezed through. In fact, he got through the fourth grade books too last year without much effort on his part. (He spent about an hour and a half a day on “schoolwork.”) At first I felt like I should spend the time at least hovering over him, but the other kids wanted to have “school” too and pretty soon my time got preempted by them; they needed the attention and he didn’t really want me to help him. He was doing fine. After the boy across the street came home from school, they played together. We also often had other kids stay overnight and he had friends at church he spent time with. All in all, I’d say that socially he didn’t suffer - in comparison with public school, that is - and we do live in the country and didn’t really go out of our way to provide him with playmates.

Last summer, he went to church_camp for a week, helped Ed build our house, and joined some other kids in a weekly group adventure which an ex-teacher friend of ours initiated. There were several boys about his age involved; they would go swimming, climb a mountain, or sometimes just mess around the farm where our friend lives, for a day. Then all of them would go to one of the boys’ houses and sleep out, then back to our friend’s farm for another day. They “paid” for this by doing a share of the farm chores. Wish it could have gone on all year!

About two days before public school was due to open, Jeremiah decided he wanted to go back to school. I was kind of surprised, but agreed to enroll him. I think the fact that one of his summer companions would be at the same school influenced him. (They remain close friends.)

When I enrolled Jeremiah in school I said he was in the fourth grade, which corresponded to his age and not necessarily his achievement level. Under “previous school” I wrote, “studied at home.” The principal said nothing at the time. The next week I was sent an ominous little note requesting my presence to discuss Jeremiah’s placement with the superintendent and the principal. With all sorts of angry speeches well-rehearsed, I went in. Well, a friend of mine says usually if you expect a fight, you don’t get one. She was right this time. They stated their opposition to home-schooling, I told them I didn’t agree with them, and they said that according to Jeremiah’s teacher, he was performing fine at a fourth grade level. I said I would have been very surprised to hear differently. I’ve had no further trouble with them. What they put on his school records I’ve no idea.

We still plan to teach any of our other kids at home as they wish. Elisha, who is five, wanted to go to kindergarten next year, and we were prepared to (reluctantly) let him go, but he’s decided against it. Instead, a friend and I plan to start some sort of school, for the sake of getting some of these kids together regularly. Elisha is really excited about that, as he wants to share his bug-catching skills with some other kids. (His younger sister, Fairlight, will look for them and call him when she finds something good, but she won’t pick them up.) We’re pleased, of course, that he’s chosen not to go to school. Elisha has a strong interest in nature, knows how to look up plants, insects, etc., in identification books, though he then must bring them to an adult to find out the name given in the book. I suspect that one day he will learn to read in order to read the names for himself. He also helped Ed build the house last year and is a pretty competent layer of small scraps of cement block. Most of his time is spent doing very good art-work, especially primitive masks.

Elisha has learned to write by a rather interesting method, which Fairlight is now beginning to use also. At first, when he was three and a half, he often asked us how to spell things, but when told, of course he did not know what shapes to make the letters. At first we wrote the words for him to copy, but he wasn’t satisfied with this, plus he would often have to wait while I finished the dishes or Ed got out from under a car or off a roof. So we invented a kind of “picture description” of each letter, such as “A is a tepee with a line through it,” “B is a snowman  with a line next to it,” “C is a circle with a bit out of one side,” etc. Of course, this was accompanied by showing him the letter once or twice, too, and his first attempts were pretty unrecognizable. We usually didn’t correct his errors; he did that himself. Now, at five, he can write in upper case well, and occasionally attempts lower case. Until lately his words went backwards and forwards interchangeably, but recently he seems to have acquired some sense of direction. For someone who shows little interest in learning to read (Jeremiah was in the Oz books by this age), he sure is competent in other areas. This is of course part of our reason for not wanting him to go to a conventional school, where his other abilities would be ignored in favor of academic progress.

We are, however, worried that our children’s need to be with other kids their age will lead them to seek out public school. This happened, of course, with Jeremiah. With a five year age gap between him and Elisha he was hungry for baseball, board games, etc., to an extent that we couldn’t satisfy. He also is strongly competitive and values the kinds of rewards given in conventional schools - participation in the math fair, playing basketball, etc…

We live far out in the country on top of a mountain. No unschoolers live near us. The nearest towns are 45 minutes away. We go to church on Sunday, work at the co-op once a month, and have sporadically been involved in a playgroup. Yet our experiences as adults have convinced us that close friendships, so necessary to all of us, are formed with day-to-day contact in which people share their lives and work together. That has led us to seek out some way in which they can be together with other kids more often, at least as they get older. To this end, and to satisfy the legal requirements without a lot of trouble, a friend and I have found a usable building which we plan to fix up for a resource and meeting place for children. Legally we hope to satisfy on paper the requirements for a private school, so that more parents will feel free to involve their kids in this. We want to have a credentialed teacher (the same friend who sponsored Jeremiah’s summer adventures last year) be the “paper teacher” and several adults have volunteered their time as supervising/resource people to be there when they’re needed without actually “teaching.” I don’t know how many kids will come, and we’ll probably have to work out the financial side as we go along. None of us have much money, but we don’t feel like we need a lot of what money can buy in order to do this…

SUCCESS STORIES

From Oregon:

… I’ll enclose the letter I sent to the school district here in Portland. We were approved for home schooling, but my daughter has to take standardized achievement tests in May along with other 4th graders. I insisted we choose the environs of the test-taking and they were agreeable. It will be one-to-one and not with an intimidating crowd of other kids.

…I accept her unschooling as a positive force in our lives. I’m ready for any necessary changes even career, lifestyle (that, I’m sure of!), etc. How can I nurture and guide and teach my child from birth to 7 and then give her over to strangers, to the state really, until she is 18? I can’t. I won’t. And I’m not anymore … until and unless I see that it might work, or she desires to return.

…I have so many ideas and desires in envisioning this process - but I’m leaving it open-ended to be ready for any course change in midstream. I don’t wane to be too static. For now I’m going to let her have a healing period and play and relax and adjust to being free…

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Another letter from Oregon:

…We established a “home school” two years ago, and one year ago we incorporated into our own private school. This was our eventual goal and to realize it was a dream come true.

…We had a very supportive lawyer in our area of the Willamette Valley who has assisted several home schoolers. We simply paid incorporation fees (approximately $350); there was a lot of red tape in the form of letters from the lawyer to the Incorporation Commissioner to us - all very unthreatening, “for the record” stuff - and basically that was it. Then at tax time we were sent a tax declaration form by the state which our lawyer sent back stating we weren’t declaring any exemptions which the state acknowledged with another form letter. So far, so tidy.  [We know of] several home schools in Oregon. Though they (ourselves included) do lie low, There seem to be few problems. The National Parents League is very active and supportive here…

—

From Lynne Thunderstorm (BC):

…We have had no trouble here, and have not used the provincial correspondence course at all. We have a letter from the superintendent stating that while he has approved our plan, he hasn’t monitored us. It frees him from responsibility, and leaves us free as well. It could alter Leaf’s grade standing but since we don’t intend to take part in that anyway, we don’t care. Should she decide a campus might be able to teach her more than the whole world of mountains, farm, river, friends, and family, she’ll simply have to take some tests…

—

An Iowa reader writes:

…As we approach our third year of unschooling, all I can really say is that it has, without a doubt, been the most wonderful experience imaginable, which is really saying a great deal, huh? The first year was a struggle, especially for me, as I had to really change my thinking, and get away from traditional thought, busywork, and all that unpleasantness that lingered on from public and private school days. this past year, we got away from correspondence schools altogether, ordered our own texts (for math only), and really got unschooled.

My daughter (13) now studies totally independently, with only occasional help in algebra, or help with a Spanish conversation. Her progress is really astounding, too. She reads _more than ever, and does about three times the work that she did in regular school - by choice. I guess that once we eliminated all the busywork she discovered how much fun learning can really be. She is once again eager, sees her own schedule, and still manages to get so much done that it is truly astonishing. The changes in her have also been very beneficial because, as she controls and uses her own time, it has matured her and made her very responsible and sensible…

—

And from California:

…News of our home school is that we have abandoned the curriculum we were using, and are now using the worksheets at whatever time and rate Matthew decides he wants. It looks to me like he’s learning just as much on his own initiative as he did before with far less trouble and effort just like you said. I guess I was the one who had to learn. I sure am glad to be rid of those regular lessons - what a burden!  I now am the address for a joint subscription which is stimulating new friendships and creating a growing circle of like-minded acquaintances…

SISTERS AT HOME

A parent writes:

…The first two months at home were horrible. Amy (9) went from being lively and outgoing to a depression, sleeping round the clock. She was used to someone parceling out her time and couldn’t seem to find her own way. Though my husband and I are both at home, we seemed to be involved in our own work, neither of us giving her the attention she needed. She was justified in feeling bored and unhappy. I seemed not to understand then how we could be together and still find our individual time to work.  Toward the end of the first two months, Dorothy (6 1/2) dropped out too. She seemed to bring the fun back into the house that we were all looking for. Right from the beginning, Amy refused to have me teach her or to do standard school work. They had always been avid students, beyond other kids their age. Dorothy, of course, copied her sister’s refusal, so I dropped the whole idea of teaching! The first remarkable thing I should mention is that Dorothy had suffered an intestinal problem and colds from Day One of school. On Monday I told her she never had to go to school again. On Tuesday the intestinal problem and colds ended and have never returned.  These kids spent the next few months in endless play. Their fantasy mirrored life around them or from the eight to ten books they read each week. They took off on the most amazing journeys (in the living room of course), sometimes lasting for days. It was exciting to watch them in this play.  Dorothy and I began playing little math games with her fancy colored chalk and board. I’d make the problems and she’d solve them and beg for more. That opened me to think of other games. I showed them how to play “hangman.” They never tire of this spelling game. Another word game they love is making small words from large words. We played the picture graph suggested in GWS #17, and also did the multiplication grid. Both were big hits.       We’ve recently bought workbooks and they now enjoy them. They pick the books themselves and are free to work at their own pace. When they finish they can buy another. But what they like best are the pages of math geometry, and beginning algebra I create myself, much of it done in metrics which I know nothing about. I simply try to reason out problems by saying to myself, “How can I divide this triangle in three equal parts? How would I write an equation for this?” etc. I make these pages artistic and create similar problems but geared to their different ages. The amazing thing is that I try reading math books and don’t understand them yet this seems to work. How? Who knows.

Aside from the ABC’s, they’ve become nice children again, leaving their vicious teasing and cruelty in their old schools. The one thing lacking is peer friendships, and we’re working on that.

…Amy has become very interested in theater. I was able to get her an audition for a musical at a local college. She got the part and during the early rehearsals Dorothy was also placed in the show. It turned out to be an extremely positive experience for them. They got to work in a professional way, taking something from the beginning to end, seeing it develop from rehearsal jeans into beautiful costumes. They learned discipline, that others depended on them and their work. They gained patience from continuous staging and corrections. The college kids were wonderful toward the children. And Dorothy, who only seemed to hear bass sounds and had trouble reproducing pitches, can now sing in the soprano range and on pitch.  Dorothy’s reading zoomed way ahead in her desire to learn the entire script. Each day she read it aloud. Now she can read novels with a little larger print. Within the first week Amy memorized all the parts and songs, and Dorothy did the same a few weeks later. We’re presently looking for more opportunities in theater arts for them…

PENSACOLA SCHOOL

A mother writes:

…My husband is in the military and we are stationed in Germany. The Army does provide schools for the dependent children but … we were displeased with the classroom conditions here and the violent children in the school itself.

We are planning to enroll our oldest son in kindergarten (which is required by the military) but we will be teaching him at home. We will meet our legal obligations because he will be a student at Pensacola Christian Correspondence School (5409 Rawson Ln, Pensacola FL 32503). PCCS offers a complete Christian study program at home. Their regular school has been in operation since 1954 and has an enrollment of over 2500. The correspondence school began in 1975 and has an enrollment of over 900. I think this program was designed for the children of missionaries and people living outside the U.S. but it also offers a legal alternative for stateside people whose choices are limited.

The cost may be hard for some to swing. Kindergarten is $225 a year and Grades 1-6 are $285 a year. Actually, that averages 525-32 a month for 9 months. The problem is that it must be paid in advance. After 6th grade it goes up considerably.

…I just knew that school never did me any favors and that most of what I’ve remembered was what my parents taught me as I learned myself. I wane something better and less frightening for my own kids. Some of my most vivid memories of school are being scared to death of not being able to do the work. I’m not slow, I was a B student and I tested in the top 15% of my statewide exams, but I was still always scared. It’s not fair to do that to kids. I had ulcers in high school because of the pressure…

UNSCHOOLED TEEN-AGERS

A parent wrote:

…We live in a rural commune with five children, ages 9-16. “Children” is hardly the word, however especially for the older ones. They are simply community members. Two have learned to drive this summer. All the four teenagers participate in our community industry and substantially earn their own way. (The nine year-old is welcome to do so, but doesn’t work at it much.)… We expect our teenagers to take the high school equivalency examinations when and if they are interested in college or other opportunities requiring credentials.

We have had at least one child functioning under this arrangement since 1972. Ours is absolutely free-form education, entirely at the learner’s option. There are no “classes.” At this point the oldest girl (16) comes to me about twice a week for tutoring in Latin. We are studying together from a first-year Latin text for college classes. (I had a couple of years of Latin in junior high school forty years ago - and boned up on it about twenty-five years ago for a Ph.D. exam. So I am relearning as we go with the present text.) But the tutorial is entirely at her initiative and pacing. Similarly, the older people are available for instruction when the younger ones ask for it, but they don’t often do so. Mostly they read, play games, work, rearrange their rooms, watch TV, listen to records, tapes, the radio, go to movies, and, generally, manage their lives as the rest of us do. They live in a building away from their parents, room together or separately as they please (and they keep shifting around!) They do their own laundry, buy their own clothes, etc. (mostly at the Goodwill or Union Mission), get most of their own meals, and often (in teams or individually) cook for the community, which consists of six adults besides themselves.

I go through all manner of guilt trips and fears about their education, thinking, always, they should be doing more, should be more creative, more inquisitive, more involved. But the truth is that I don’t really know much about what they are learning, any more than I know what the other adults here are learning. Everyone always seems very busy. Lots of that is visible, physical busy-ness - much having to do with our craft industry, but also the garden, the animals, maintenance of house and machinery, care of the land, and, so forth. But also people will say they are busy when they are reading, playing a musical instrument, having a conversation, or doing other private things. The children are not noticeably different from the adults in these respects, except that they are relatively less involved in the industry and the garden. When I say I think they should be doing more, I have to remind myself that I think the same of the adults and of myself. They no doubt think the same of me. As a group we seem to be remarkably active and productive, our days too full, our time too short. We always fall short of our ideals and always generate enough ideals to keep us dissatisfied with what we actually accomplish. I believe that is called  the human condition.  The major thing I notice about  our young ones, in contrast to people of their age I see elsewhere or who visit here, is their maturity independence, their sense of dignity and self-worth. School children generally seem silly to me. Childish. Ours don’t. I don’t always adore or admire them, as I don’t always adore and admire the adults who live here, but we deal with one another as peers, and the children sometimes seem more mature than the adults.

I hate to put it this way, but the kids out there beyond the mailbox aren’t good enough for them. Our chief worry is what that means when they begin developing relationships, including mating, with others who come from more conventional backgrounds. Sometimes we take our gang into the small-town roller rink - and cringe as we see them relate (or, more often, fail to relate) to the locals. They do not yet seem much interested in pursuing relationships off the farm. Some go to a Unitarian youth group in a nearby city, but not much as developed in terms of relationships beyond the group meetings.

I don’t know of any other communes with teenagers, or any that have children out of school. Where are the counterparts of our children, the other young people with whom they can comfortably relate and contemplate making their lives? I think of starting a network, via correspondence, with other adolescents around the country, if they can be located.  Then I recognize this as another of my arrangements, my way of solving their problems. Maybe they don’t have problems. They aren’t complaining.  (They are in general very happy people.) I know they don’t go in for expressing themselves much in writing (though a couple of them write poetry: the nine-year-old has had two poems accepted by a new magazine of children’s poetry GWS readers might want to know about: Tigers and Lambs 2041 E. Waverly, Tucson AZ 85719.) I guess they’ll figure out how to find others when they feel the need. We’ll help - as best we can - but will try not to do so before our help is sought.

I have two recurring bad dreams,  dreams that leave me sometimes tossing sleepless in the night. One has to do with professional failure. Having left the conventional world, with its set of stresses and rewards, I dream I am missing out. I am always missing planes and meetings or finding myself professionally embarrassed, having to fake it, squirming  failure. The other dream has to do with failing the children, especially about not having done enough about their education. I should take more time with them. I should teach them  more.  By day these dreams resolve. I know that I do not want that professional life I left behind. I had good reasons for getting out, and the rewards of my present life are vivid and strong. This life feels like health; the memory of the other seems like sickness. And I believe the other dream is of the same category. When I think, by day, of actually taking one or more of the kids aside and saying, however subtly, “Well, let’s do some math today. Or some science. Or some Literature,” I feel suddenly foolish. When they want to do math or science or literature with me, they’ll let me know - and I would be as impertinent suggesting it to them before that as I would be in suggesting it to one of the adults sharing my life. By day I know this is right. I have faith in the need of people to develop themselves, to make-full use of their lives, and I know deeply the evils of unwarranted intervention. But the insecurities hang on and the dreams return.  I remember the summer of my adolescence when I read Ben Hur, mostly lying on my mother’s bed, which seemed the coolest place in the house. I girthed my loins with a scarf, my head with another for a turban. Sometimes I was Sabu, the Elephant Boy. I dropped huge purple grapes into my mouth, one-by-one, fantasizing life in ancient Palestine. I used a cardboard box for a stationary chariot, whipping my steeds on desperately, the tail of my turban flying (in the breeze from an  Our kids play Star Trek. They have mock control panels and computers in their rooms. They toss around electronic mumbo-jumbo. They will not be like me - and the hardest part of love is letting that happen…

“BAD” PARENTS
Janet Williams (PA) wrote:

…As I get more involved with other unschooling families, I have difficulty in accepting the diverse directions that families are headed in. There has been no difficulty in dealing gracefully with those who are not of like mind. I bite my tongue a lot… It is not my place to make judgements about other people - just as I don’t want them judging me.  But I have a memory that keeps resurfacing - acting like a bothersome fly buzzing around. Many years ago I was involved in Sunday School … One girl complained about having to come to church and Sunday School. I said that she could always stay home and have her parents do the work with her instead. She was HORRIFIED and insisted I not say a word to her father. Going one on one with him would be infinitely worse than coming to the class.

I am concerned that I might be making life harder for some kids by telling their parents how to keep them home. Have you seen this? Or am I being overly concerned? Does parental concern always provide the best atmosphere for the child?

…Since children do not yet have the right to self-determination, there is the chance for victimization. Do we just go with the odds? Do we put our money on the side of the parents rather than the state? Is that the best we can do at this point in time? Take our chances with the lesser evil?  Oh, that sounds horrid - describing parents as a lesser evil. But I hope you know what I mean.  I can learn to live with the risk involved, if I am sure I have to. I always want things in such nice neat little packages so I will try to find some way to gather up the dangling ribbons. ‘

…Maybe it’s just like having a baby - you never expect any problems but you know they are possible - and decide that the chance is worth it to bring forth new life…

John wrote back:

…Thanks for your good letter. People often ask me if there might not be some parents who, by keeping their children at home, would do them even more harm than the schools. I can only reply, sure, it’s possible but it’s not very likely. The kind of parents who might do such harm, whether because of too much ambition and pressure or simply too much harshness and cruelty, are very unlikely to take their children out of school in the first place - they don’t like or enjoy or trust them that much. And even if they did take them out, the work of teaching them at home would soon become so unpleasant, for the adults as well as the children, and the results so bad, that they would soon quit.  In other words, I think the activity of home schooling will tend to be both self-selecting and self-correcting. The people who choose to do it are likely to be the ones best fitted to do it; once doing it, they will tend either to get better at it or to give it up.

Is there any guarantee of this, any way to make sure that only “good” parents teach their children at home? No, none at all. You ask “Do we just go with the odds? Do we put our money on the side of the parents rather than the state?” Yes is my answer, and it would be my answer even if the state was doing a ten or a hundred times better job than it is doing.  As in your good example of the baby, we have to run the risk, trust our judgement, take the leap of faith. The schools, like most modern institutions, don’t believe in judgement or faith, and it is their pathetic attempts to put in their place some kind of fake “scientific” certainty that has done so much to make most of them the kind of places they are…

PRAISE JUNKIES
To a teacher who wrote that she thought it was important to praise students as encouragement, John wrote:

…I feel strongly on this issue, because my first elementary school teaching was at a school that believed in supporting children with lots of praise, for exactly the reasons you cite - and the result was that all but a few of the children by the time I came to know them in fifth grade, were so totally dependent on continued adult approval that they were terrified of not getting it, terrified of making mistakes. The practice of the school - and since then I have seen many others like it - had exactly the opposite results from those intended. Every teacher in that school would have agreed with what you said about nurturing, but despite their intentions, they had had an extremely destructive effect on most of the children, who, despite being affluent, high-IQ, and favored in all possible ways, were pathetically lacking in self-confidence. _

I have seen a great many adults working with children, in school and other teacher settings, and l would say that something like 99% of the praise I have observed was more harmful than helpful. I think of countless teenagers I have known who hated themselves despite having been praised all their lives. They say, “People just praised me to get me to do what they wanted.” The ten-year olds I knew were both cynical about praise and dependent on it, the worst possible mixture…

INDIAN WAY OF LEARNING

The Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald, 2/7/80:

…The North American education system conflicts with the Indian style of learning, [according to] Dr. Art Blue, director of native studies at the University of Brandon…

Indians learn in three steps. The first step is the observation phase. Blue said North American natives score higher than any other racial group in the world on tests in visual discrimination… The second step is supervised participation. It involves participating in an active meaningful process under the watchful eye of “someone who knows.” The student is given hints to help, not diminish confidence, said Blue. Skill mastery is the third step… The native way is to perform in private with little testing… Failures are not seen by others.

Modern-day education is highly influenced by the idea that a person learns by making mistakes in front of fellow students, said Blue. Students are given no opportunity to practice skills before performing before others.

Blue said Indian culture differs from the remainder of society’s methods of choosing teachers. Indian leaders (teachers) are chosen only after they have proven themselves before their people.

He said everyone is encouraged to participate in the decision-making process. Even children are given their say at tribe meetings “but are judged by what they say.” He said Indians who display intelligence when speaking are thought of as leaders no matter what their age. “But if you show that you have not thought your ideas through, others judge you superficial.”

In today’s education system, professors are chosen by an external group far removed from the classroom, said Blue. “Is it surprising that Indian people often decide not to follow the direction of the professor?”

Blue said the differences between Indian culture and the education system create a conflict between Indian students and teachers - “a conflict the teachers invariably win because of their power to enforce their will on students.”

The no-win situation faced by students violates the basic tenet of Indian philosophy, that no one should ever impose his beliefs on another person. Indians believe such control forces an individual to see the world through someone else, ending independence…

FAMILY OFFICE

From Patti Rowe (IA):

…My husband is a chiropractor with a literal “family practice” - we all have been part of the practice from the beginning. I act as assistant, bookkeeper, janitor, etc., baby in tow and little ones trailing behind. We have a playroom for the children, but they come and go freely through most of the office. It has developed a unique kind of practice, to say the least, and attracts a unique portion of the population namely, people who are children oriented. To those who complain “That’s no way to run a doctor’s office,” the reply is, “There are plenty of conventional doctors available!”…

PEOPLE/PLACES WANTED

…I’m an unschooling single parent with a 13-year-old daughter; we need room and board in exchange for doing gardening, teaching, babysitting, etc., for an unschooling family. Our interests include free-lance writing, gymnastics, swimming, martial arts, foreign languages, reading, nature, yoga, holistic health astronomy, you name it. We are healthy, versatile, and together. Would prefer to be located somewhere within driving distance of Chicago, either city or country. Please write to W.S.M.P. in care of GWS…

—

From Elizabeth Gravelos and Arthur Harvey (address, Weare NH 03281), who organize the apple-picking crews that one GWS reader wrote about in “Growing With Trees,” GWS #8:

…We would like to hear from would-be (and experienced) apple-pickers. We pick apples each fall in Maine with a group of about 15 friends. The season is Sept. 12 - October 20… We set aside 20% of the crew’s earnings for charitable and social reform work, and we also collectively pay for our rent, food, transportation, equipment, and medical costs. New members are carefully trained, and all members are subject to the crew’s quality-control system. No one is hired as an individual; we function in all ways as a cooperative.  We have definite ways of living and working together. Some of our traditions are: no alcohol, drugs, pets, or non-marital sex, no smoking indoors; each member works at least 45 hours per week. We welcome families with children. If you are interested, come for an interview, and write ahead to arrange it. Incidentally, we also have crews which harvest wild blueberries in July and August, and prune apple trees January - April…

HOME BUSINESSES

In the last few weeks, several GWS readers have told us about home-businesses they have started. For example, David Sowd (PO Box 9431, Canton OH 44711 ) has started a proofreading, copy-editing, and typing service; Wendy Pfaff (751 Cleveland Av, Dubuque IA 52001) is now running a small mail-order stamp dealership; Steve and Bobbie McCay (Rt 1 Box 488A, Lebanon VA 24266) sent us their catalog of “Olde Timey” wooden toys.

We find this all very exciting, and hope to hear more about the work that GWS readers do, especially about those who earn money in ways that they enjoy and that fit in well with their family life and unschooling (see following questionnaire.) Being self-employed, working out of your  home or close to it, certainly would make home schooling easier and better than having one parent away from home all day earning money while the other parent looks after the children, or both parents working while someone looks after the children.  For the time being we’ll be happy to print the addresses of such businesses in GWS, as long as they have some kind of widespread (not just local) appeal. Maybe this will get some money circulating among GWS readers. - DR

QUESTIONS ON WORK

Here are some of the questions we have about the work that you and the others in your family do. We hope that many GWS readers - and
not just those who are self-employed - will take the time to share their responses to these questions with us. You can answer these
questions briefly if you like, or use them as the starting point to tell us more about yourself and your work.
What kind of work do you do? Do you find it satisfying?
Do you live in the country? Small town? Suburbs? City?
Are you self-employed? Do you work at home - part time or full time? Who works ln this business one adult? two adults? Children?
If you have children, what is the relationship between them and your work?
How did you learn to do what you do?
How did you get your job or start your business?
Do you have some kind of mail-order service you would like to let GWS readers know about?
Are there any ways that other GWS readers (adults or children) could help you? Learn from you? Visit and watch? Work for you in their
homes?

SELF-TAUGHT ASTRONOMERS

From Debbie Schiffer in Georgia:

…I’m writing in reference to “Astronomy Without School,” GWS #19. I am a self-taught amateur astronomer using Astronomy magazine, the Astronomy Book Club, and most of all, the library. I’m 22 years old, a high school graduate, and oldest of five children. The three youngest are currently being unschooled. My brothers (ages 6 and 7) are as interested in astronomy as I am. They know all about the night sky and what’s “out there.” The 7-year-old is just out of first grade and all year he couldn’t believe his teacher didn’t care about astronomy (or any other branch of science). I’m so relieved he doesn’t have to go back next year…

Another good magazine for astronomers is Sky and Telescope (49-51 Bay State Rd, Cambridge MA 02138)…

[From a later letter:] …I have terrific news about something absolutely free! There’s a man in North Carolina who also is an amateur astronomer and he studies and plots the paths of asteroids. He then draws a chart of the asteroid’s path for the month and sends them FREE to anyone who sends a self-addressed stamped envelope. What he does has been called a “Labor of Love.”

I read an interview with him in the June issue of Astronomy. I immediately wrote and got my first issue, _which he personalized with a little note welcoming me to his publication. What can I say? What better gift than free information about something you wane to know?

The publication is called Tonight’s Asteroids. The man’s name is Dr. Jay U. Gunter, 1411 N. Mangum St., Durham NC 27701. He does all the plotting of asteroids, bookkeeping, stuffing envelopes, etc., because he just wants others to know the joys of “asteroiding.” He has really given me enthusiasm!

Recently he had a great honor bestowed on him - an asteroid was named JUGTA (His initials, and “T.A.” for “Tonight’s Asteroids.”)

Anyone who is interested can send a SASE and he will send a copy. In fact he would love knowing so many people are interested! Enclosed is a sample copy of T.A….

—

[DR:] The following article, written by Dr. Gunter, appeared in the May-June ‘81 Tonight’s Asteroids that Debbie sent us:

I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
- Walt Whitman

This is a very personal account, and so you will forgive me for writing about myself. It is the story of my efforts to share with other amateurs my keen enthusiasm for the asteroids. It begins with my first serious exposure to astronomy in the spring of 1968, when my wife Elizabeth and I enrolled in a fun course called “Introduction to Astronomy” at Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill. Our text was The Observer’s Handbook - 1968, published by the Royal Astronomy Society of Canada. In its store of information were finder charts for the Big Four asteroids. CERES was in season, and bright enough for binoculars, and I found it with no trouble at all. Tracking it for several nights, I became fascinated by its motion against the background of the stars. Another chart showed Uranus in the same constellation, and it too was easy to find.

So I was inspired to prepare a simple chart as a handout for the 30 or so other novices in our class. The chart plotted the path of CERES through a pattern of stars in Virgo, and the brief text explained how to find it. The position of Uranus was also shown. Our instructors thought this was great, and so did my classmates, several of whom reported success in finding these objects.

During subsequent months, Sky and Telescope published several charts for bright asteroids, and I enjoyed finding and tracking each of them… About this time there were some bright comets: Honda, Abe, Bennett, and Tago-Sato-Kosaka. I was much impressed by the dynamic nature of these objects - their changing position among the stars and their varying magnitude. But there just weren’t enough comets to keep me occupied, so for me the asteroids became the poor man’s comets.

In 1969, during a more advanced course at the Planetarium called “Observational Astronomy,” came my second attempt to popularize asteroids. I prepared a handout sheet to show the path of 9 METIS through Leo’s sickle. It illustrated how the combination of naked-eye, binoculars, and telescope enable one to find an  asteroid easily, and track it from night to night. Again several classmates reported success in finding this object, and nearly all of the class saw METIS at one of our star parties.

By 1970, my desire to find more asteroids exceeded the information available to me, so I acquired Ephemerides of Minor Planets. This volume, published annually by the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Leningrad, has ephemerides for all asteroids at opposition during the year. Most of them are too faint for amateurs, but many are within reach of small telescopes…

In Tonight’s Asteroids I have attempted to emphasize the benefits and pleasures of observing asteroids: 1. The satisfaction that comes from positive identification of a unit of the solar system only a 100 miles in diameter more or less, and a 100 million or so miles away. 2. A rapid improvement in one’s observing skills. 3. A rapid increase in one’s knowledge of the sky. 4. The fascination of the Earth Grazers as they fly past us at a distance of only a few million miles. 5. The thrilling close appulses of asteroids with each other, and with bright stars. 6. The magnitude fluctuations on which rotational periods and orientation are based. 7. The occasional occultation of a star with the potential of contributing valuable data toward accurate determination of size and shape, and the possibility of detecting satellites of asteroids. d. One final joy in asteroiding is the incentive it affords for getting out each night and having a look at the splendor of the sky. This may reward you, as it did me, with a rare spectacle like Nova Cygni 1975 on all three nights of its maximum brilliance. As I began, so I will close with some lines from Walt Whitman:

… I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night air,
and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

WRITING ON NUCLEAR WAR

Mabel Dennison passed along this flyer from the CHILDREN’S CAMPAIGN FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, Box 550 RD 1, Plainfield VT 05667:

…We are children who fear for the future of our world. The United States and the Soviet Union are building more and more human-killing weapons, and every day the threat of nuclear war becomes greater.

…The Children’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament asks children to write letters to President Reagan opposing the nuclear arms race… We will take these letters to the White House on October 17 and read them out loud in public, then try to present them personally to President Reagan. We hope to have hundreds, maybe thousands, of letters. Each one is important.

Most kids think they can do nothing about nuclear war. Each letter to President Reagan calling for nuclear disarmament can help make a difference. So write yours now, send it to us soon! Thank you…

—
Also, from Pat Farren, 2161 Mass. Ave, Cambridge MA 02140:

…What will it take to prevent nuclear war? I am asking thousands of people that question this summer, seeking a mix of responses that may add a new dimension to society’s understanding of this complex and central issue of human survival. Responses are solicited through November 1. They will be edited and a representative selection will be published in a book… Responses should not exceed 300 words, or the equivalent of one page. Contributions may be prose, poetry, photograph, line drawing or other form of expression. Contributors should include a one-sentence biographical note… There will be a special section of responses from children…

KIDS’ CONSUMER MAGAZINE

We have just received a copy of the magazine Penny Power, “A Consumer Reports Publication for Young People,” and John & I think it looks quite good. The writing is clear and lively without being too cute, and the magazine presents lots of useful information. This particular issue has an article on savings accounts, including on how to open one by yourself, and a long look at 10-speed bikes - who should get one, how they work, what features to look for, plus a chart rating the performance of 26 different models. There’s a piece on how different families handle allowances and a survey asking readers to tell their opinions on the subject; a rating of frozen pizzas; letters on the “Question of the Month” concerning TV commercials; a comic strip; some puzzles, etc.

The center section, an 8-page “Teaching Guide,” has workbook-type activities, suggested discussions, and mach problems. Although this is definitely written for the benefit of classroom teachers, and hence is a bit strained and artificial, some kids might like reading, thinking about, and doing these pages if they knew that - unlike in school - they didn’t have to.

Subscriptions are $7.50 for 6 issues per year, $8.50 in Canada. “Schools” can get a group sub of 10 or more issues at $4.50 per sub. A single issue costs $1.50. Write to PO Box 1906, Marion OH 43302. - DR

MADISON REVIEW OF BOOKS

Chris Wagner of BASIC CHOICES sent this reprint from the Capital Times of Madison, Wisc., 5/1/80:

…The long-dead literary critic who called his art “the most highly evolved evidence of culture” would turn over in his grave (or at least turn up his nose) at the operation of the Madison Review of Books.

The very idea. Everyone - even those without credentials, even children who are just learning how to read - reviewing new books without so much as a by-your-leave… That was the attack John Ohliger took when he started the Madison Review of Books three years ago. The idea of giving everyday people the opportunity to critique books, then keep the books they review, is “just one tiny step” in establishing the kind of society Ohliger believes in: a society in which there are no “stars,” no elite. Each person would contribute to the whole - each person would have a sense of self-worth.

And the only special “qualifications” reviewers need to have is the_desire to give their own opinion. And who doesn’t have that?  Reviewing is one way of getting involved; delivering the reviews to a larger audience is another. Some are taped and used in a weekly radio program on listener-sponsored WORT-FM, some video-taped for an hour-long television show on Public Access Cable 4. Engineering those ventures gets even more people involved in supposedly specialized pursuits.  One night a member of the Review staff called volunteer April Hoffman and asked if she could come down and work the camera. Hoffman begged off. “Well, can Suzanne (Hoffman’s 10 year-old daughter) come then? She’s tall enough to work the camera.” Suzanne went.

Hoffman’s 8-year-old son Langston even has reviewed two adult books on baseball “because he wanted them so much.”

…The books pour in - more than a dozen a day from about 400 publishers across the country, large and small. To get the project started, Ohliger wrote several small and alternative presses to ask for review copies. As the group gathered momentum, more publishers were contacted. Now the Review is receiving books on virtually every subject: health, the occult, children’s fiction, science, sociology, women’s issues, poetry, art.

…The Review provides a list of questions to serve as a guide to beginning reviewers, but there are no length or style requirements for the reviews. “Short ones work the best because they can be adapted for so many uses,” says Hank Luttrell, a longtime volunteer. “Personal rather than academic review seem to interest the audience more, so no one should be reluctant to react to a book in a subjective way.”…

—

[DR:] The address of the Madison Review of Books is 1121 University Av, Madison WI 53715, phone 608-256-1946. That is also the address of the organization BASIC CHOICES, and its journal Second Thoughts ($10/yr), which, as Chris Wagner says, “attempts to provide a forum for those who oppose mandatory continuing education and the extension of the ‘global classroom’ to everybody. Madison Review of Books is still in existence, but in a period of reorganization at a more modest level. It works best at a local level, but we’d be glad to send anyone who writes a sample issue of the MRB newsletter, the reviewer’s guidelines, and suggestions about how to start a community book review. A contribution to defray expenses would be helpful but is not necessary.”

MORE ON “FREE WRITING”

…John Holt mentioned in WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? a writing exercise in which the student writes for some period of time without care for spelling or punctuation [See GWS #21, “Free Writing At Home.”] Almost every day Jess (8) and Leah (10) write for fifteen minutes or so in a Daily Book which is a real treasure of poems, dreams, drawings, as well as spelling words and other school work.

When I first asked them to “free” write, they groaned until I told them it didn’t matter what they wrote - it could be the same word over and over if that’s what they wanted. Jess did just that and wrote the word NO, filling a complete page! Then she began playing with the sound and the rhythm of words, and continues to develop this idea. Here are some examples:

Look how fat the little pig is.
Look how fat
the little pig
the little pig
the little pig
the little pig is.
yes yes yes
Oh, no
don’t make him go
yes yes yes
Oh, no
don’t make him go.

cat dog pig
bog hog frog
six one
me oh my
I am hot
I am hot
Like red hot.
doo da doo da
me oh my
I am hot red hot

The Cat
meyou meyou
meyou goes the cat
meyou goes the funny cat
Oh no here comes a baby
Oh no here comes one more.
Oh no here comes one more.
Yeah for Kitty!

me you
me you
me you
me you
me you
Put it all together and what do you get
me-you
meyou
meyou

…She has also experimented with writing words without spaces between and then circling the various words which are created by the crowding together.

Her stories get longer and longer, sometimes running to six pages though she has totally abandoned, at times, the lines printed on the page. I asked her if she would prefer unlined paper and she replied that that wouldn’t make any difference…

PS - In response to one parent’s query about TV. We got rid of ours the same day we decided to homeschool. It’s a great freedom, for we’ve read to each other and also have all become more creative - drawing, making music, and writing in our “free” time…

READING & LIVING

From Rachel Solem (MA):

…Briana (almost 4) “read” a word on a menu that quite surprised me. It was simply - burgers. She said, “I want one of those.” I said, “What is it?” “Hamburger,” she told me. However did she know that? The only thing I can figure out is that Burger King must have a picture of a hamburger next to its name - somewhere she’s picked it up.
She has been learning to read some names of her friends since her father made her a little phone book. He put a friend’s name in block letters and the phone number right under it, each one on a separate small card. She dials the phone herself and has learned phone etiquette for both calling and receiving calls. In order to call the friend she wants, she has to know either the name or the number by sight…

—

From Frauke Buelow, who is German and living in Wales

…My brother, who is ten years older than me, learned to read all by himself when he was three and a half. At that time there were matchboxes with flags and the names of their countries. So by the sound of the words he found out how letters form words….

—

And from Kathy Johnson (NJ):

…My son is just turning five and he is reading and doing a lot more than other children we know that are his age. It may be because whenever he asks a question I take the time to answer him as best I can. I love taking him places and “showing and telling.” And his reading - I’ve been in the habit of reading him a book during meals since he was about one year old. He still loves it! It has given him a love of reading, the urge to read and no mealtime hassles!…

RECORDED BOOKS

From Mil Duncan (KY):

…I have been meaning for some time to recommend the CAEDMON recordings. They have excellent stories for children on records and tapes, and we find our kids will listen and relisten to them until they are reciting WIND IN THE WILLOWS, WILD THINGS or BABAR by heart. They are expensive (up to $6), but beautifully done with fine music and sound effects. Grandparents could be sent the catalog, anyway! We are non-TV folks, but big fans of Caedmon. The address is 1995 Broadway, NY NY 10023. The catalog is free…

EQUIPMENT, CHEAP

From Deirdre Purdy (WV):

…We finally bought a tape deck for us and the children. Through friends we found a mail-order house which promises to beat any price. They have a toll-free phone number, are willing to give advice and recommend models (and not the most expensive in your price range either). Their price on the one we bought was $150 less than the identical model in Charleston WV. You can order their flyer from: STEREO CORP. OF AMERICA, 1629 Flatbush Av, Brooklyn NY 11210.

We are using ours for, among other things, taping “Spider’s Web,” a marvelous children’s show on National Public Radio. Right now they’ve been reading WINNIE THE POOH and Milne poems all week and we have it all on tape, marvelously well read too. This prompted Jed (6) to read all of NOW WE ARE SIX to Hannah (4)…

GIVING THEM CHANCES

From Dawn Whitehead, 45 Tefft Av, Elgin IL 60120:

…I have two boys, Michael, 6, _and Andy, 2, and I do agree with you that they would be better off learning at home. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t agree and so my oldest son attends school. He doesn’t like to go (except days when they have parties, puppet shows, etc.) but for now I’m unable to do much about it.

…Michael has many interests. He is very excited about animals, especially insects. From the time he was about eighteen months old he was fascinated with them. He would spend practically all his time outside looking under rocks and logs and around the yard for them.

He enjoyed being read stories six or more at a time. So we have quite a collection of books from stores and garage sales. Well, one day when he was about 2 1/2, he came running in, got out his pocket guide to insects, went back outside, and was looking up the pictures of the bugs he had found! He now has many books on insects and knows quite a bit about them. He really enjoys finding caterpillars and sometimes cocoons, and leaves them in jars to watch them become monarchs or moths.

Both Michael and Andy enjoy painting; they have used watercolors, tempera paints, and home-made soap paint, which they help make. The soap paint is made with two capfuls of liquid dish soap, about a cup of water, three tablespoons of cornstarch, and one egg. They mix it all together with an egg beater, then pour it into cups and add different food coloring to each. They get very pretty colors and enjoy the sudsy pictures. Their art work is hung in their own special places, but only the pictures we like the best are later put in a folder to be kept forever.

Another thing they like to make is their own play dough. To make it you mix four cups of flour with one cup of salt, then add 1 1/2 cups of water a little at a time, then knead it until doughy. They mix food coloring into it, or they shape it, bake it in a 350-degree oven for about one hour and then paint it. It’s a lot of fun for them.

Andy likes music and loves to listen to the radio or records and dance or sing his own version of the song. We have an organ and Michael and Andy like to play with the keys and tabs and see what music they can come up with. I had put tape on the keys with the notes and then made up cards with songs on them like “Yankee Doodle” and “Merrily We Roll Along.” Michael seemed to enjoy it for a while and could almost play “Kumbaya” without the cards, but then he lost interest.

Michael has his own tools down in the basement, which he shares with Andy. We found most of his tools at garage sales for cheap. He now has hammers, screwdrivers, saws, wrenches, and a disc sander that he received as a gift for his last birthday. I also let him use my electric drill if he needs it. He has made helicopters, airplanes, boats, and bridges with his tools. Michael shares his tools with Andy and assists him when he needs help nailing or sawing. They have never had any injuries except for hammered thumbs, but I do that myself sometimes.

We live near a large park that has ponds, a creek, ducks, deer, a small museum, and lots of space. Frequently, we go for long walks. As a result, we have learned many things about nature. Aside from the insects,  we’ve also checked out books from the library on wild flowers. Many of these flowers we have picked, dried, or pressed.

I’ve found that when Michael has trouble understanding something, if I look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia and then demonstrate the word or concept with clay or blocks he can understand it better. For instance, I wasn’t sure Michael knew adding and subtracting, so we demonstrated them several times with clay and blocks and now I’m sure he knows what it’s all about.

…I guess one of the most important things I’ve noticed with my sons is not to assume that they can’t do something. No matter what it is, if you’ll give them the chance to try  - they will usually succeed at it. Andy loves to help wash dishes, fold laundry, and help put it in the correct drawers! Michael likes to help when I’m working on some project of my own like latch-hooking a rug or sanding an old rocking chair.  They both enjoy cooking and baking. It seems like whenever I’m in the kitchen, they’re right there ready to help. They like to measure, mix, and pour. Michael knew how to make French toast and scrambled eggs when he was about three just from watching me! They both like making muffins from a mix. Michael measures the milk and cracks the egg into the mix, and Andy uses the egg beater. They then scoop it into paper cupcake cups and bake. I always stay near by when the stove or oven are on to prevent any possible burns…

J.P. & TOYS

More from Kathy Mingl:

…Other than cars and trucks, J.P. prefers “grown-up toys.” We’ve hit the garage sales for things like kitchen utensils and plastic dishes (good for sand); an aluminum teakettle; an impressive, self-inking, adjustable office stamp (with food-color ink); art paints; a portable artist’s case; brushes; paper; shells, tools, a typewriter, a real telephone; broken cameras, radios, clocks, etc. for taking apart; and any number of other odds and ends that only J.P. knows the use of. Many things at garage sales are within a little boy’s price range, so he can bring along his personal hoard of sticky pennies and scrounged change, and make his own choices. At the “dime” (ha!) store, practically all he can afford is bubble gum. Best of all, even if I buy something for him, at garage-sale prices I don’t much care what he does with the stuff, as long as he picks the pieces up afterwards.

I’ve bought J.P. lots of cute toys - I have a weakness for Fisher-Price things - but it’s the junk that he treasures and plays with. (He also retrieves cancelled bills from the garbage, and “pays” them with voided checks. He collects “records” to keep in his “files,” too - I can’t imagine why he enjoys that! Do you think he could learn how to make out tax forms?) I always preferred raw materials to manufactured toys, myself, and I think that’s more or less true for most kids I’ve known. Finished toys are just that - finished. All the possibilities have been used up already, and about all a kid can do with it now is take it apart, which is hard on grownups.

When you invest a lot of thought and money into a toy for a child it’s actually hard to give it up, and you tend to feel bad if he doesn’t take care of it the way you think he should. The kid knows it doesn’t really belong to him, and he feels bad too… Whenever J.P. has gotten something like that - especially if he thought it was the one thing in the world he wanted and threw a big fuss over it, he’s gone crazy, had tantrums all over the place, and promptly ruined the thing. He just can’t take it, I guess. Now, if I wane to gee him something like a radio-controlled car, I tell him it’s for all of us to play with, and the thing isn’t so overwhelming.

Maybe the responsibility is too much for them - like the joke about having to fill out adoption papers before they’ll let you buy one of those do-everything dolls…

If I buy a toy because I like it, I have every right to insist that J.P. play nicely with it. I don’t quibble - it’s mine, and I’m willing to share it with him as long as he treats it right. I don’t nag J.P. about taking care of his own stuff - I might mention that toys often break if they’re hit with a hammer (just in case he didn’t want that to happen) or I might make him pick them up if company is coming, but otherwise they’re his.

Actually, I find that having a little boy is a great cover. You can do all sorts of things that you thought you had lost out on forever when you “grew up” - wading in mud puddles, playing in sand, building things with blocks - and everyone assumes it was the kid’s idea. Children and adults really make a perfect team - grownups supply the expertise, and kids the excuse.

…Do you know, I have a very realistic frog sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink, right now. Everyone assumes it’s J.P.’s, but he doesn’t even like it. It’s one of those squishy rubber ones, and I bought it long before J.P. was born, but I kept it out of sight. I like frogs.

J.P. and I are presently in the process of making “eleventeen” robots. I would never have thought of it on my own, but it seems that I’ve been saving robot parts for years - only I thought they were gears, washers, clock and music-box movements, and sewing machine parts. The ones we’ve made are really neat, and just about everyone who’s seen them has gotten interested in the project too. Tony made a good one - it was a double-computer switch for a face, and he made up a little flasher circuit for it so that it winks one eye when you push the top of its head. J.P.’s names for them so far are “Habrio,” “Hay-doo,” “Peeto,” “HanobiHan,” “Aeno,” “Ernio,” “Kikku,” and “St. Charles.” He thinks ‘em up and I spell ‘em…

HIS OWN GARDEN

From Diane Dondero (CA):

…When Amedeo was 2 and 3, I encouraged him to plant with me in the garden, pull weeds and share the experience of eating all the fresh food from the vine. He loved it, of course. When he was 4, we staked out his little garden (4′ x 4′) and I helped him plant the seeds “properly.” He did okay but I was doing most of the work. The following couple of years we did the same and he was _joined by his growing sister who is now 5. However, he lacked enthusiasm. He’d go days without watering and plants died. Something was not right. I refused to help him because he wasn’t doing anything.  We got the book WILLIE’S GARDEN by Myra McGee (Rodale Press) to encourage him. This spring he was all excited about growing his garden. Said he wanted to stake it out himself. So, I lee him have complete control over it. He chose the spot, staked it out, and began cultivating the ground. He was anxious to plant so in went radishes and lettuce. I felt good about what he was doing so I helped him weed and water when he couldn’t be there. Then one day he moved the stakes and made it bigger. This became a regular occurrence. He planted onions and spinach, carrots and flowers. When we put in the brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.) he asked for one of each. Now he is waiting for a tomato plant.  My point here is that I did not tell him how to plant anything. When he wanted to know when and to what vegetable he should apply ashes, he asked. When he was unsure of how much compost he needed for what, he asked. When he wanted to enlarge, we discussed in which direction he could grow.  For him it is his garden and he’s very proud of it, loves it and cares for it a great deal. For me, I have learned how to help him without being in control of the situation (keeping it neat and organized). I feel good about sharing in the care of his garden because I know he appreciates my help. And in turn he shares more in the family garden - weeding the flower beds and helping to plant and water…

I know so many mothers who do what I did with their children’s gardens and as a result the garden is more their little project than the child’s…

ACRYLICS AT TWO

From Marie Baker (WI):

…After reading the letters about acrylics in GWS, I got some for Sarah a couple of months ago when she was 26 months old. She really loves them. At first the fascination was with squeezing the tubes, then with adding water (too much), then with using right from the tube, then with using it for finger paint, then with mixing what seemed like yucky colors.

A few times after I got her cleaned up, she’d get smeared up again with what was on the table and her painting. The doll and floor and wall got it a few times, too. After these last episodes, I ended up screaming, and she crying. Acrylics are water base, but if you don’t wash them up right away, they do stain. Fortunately, our house is not finished yet. The floor is concrete and the walls are not painted, so eventually all her experiments will be covered. Anyway, I figure, even professional artists usually have studios with paine spatters all over the floor, so why shouldn’t a child too?

The paine isn’t as expensive as I at first thought it might be since it’s so concentrated. With a little water, a little goes a long way. The color and texture is far superior to poster paint which fades after being exposed to the light for a while.

I love the paintings Sarah’s been making. I have them covering two whole walls. I agree with Picasso’s statement that children should teach adults to paine, rather than the reverse. In my first year at the Art Institute of Chicago, an instructor said we should now try to unlearn all the “art” taught to us since kindergarten, and recapture the spontaneity and freedom we had as children before adults got to us.

…The paper I’m writing on is what Sarah paints on. It came in a huge 3-foot wide roll from a suburban newspaper office for $5.00. It will probably last at least a year, though we use it all the time. It takes the acrylic paints very well.  Sarah sometimes likes finger paints, too. We use the dull side of wet freezer paper for that.  We get paper off the big roll by letting it stand on end, then folding the amount we need. A table knife can then cut along the fold very easily. I then fold the big piece in half and cut it again so I have two large pieces. Sarah paints on a small kids’ table while standing. We haven’t made her an easel since some of the paine drips on the paper when it’s vertical. We may make her a larger table, though…

CRAY-PAS ART

From Penny Nesbit (IN):

…I want to tell you how much Peterson has enjoyed the Cray-pas crayons. He has an entire wall in the family-room covered with his bright and imaginative creations. Someone should make a study of the comparisons between schoolers’ and unschoolers’ art work. When I remember the drawings in the halls of Peterson’s former public school, I shudder. Always the same assigned subject, the same dull colors, the same lack of originality. An artist friend of our oldest son was visiting this past weekend and she asked Peterson if she could pick out a few of his drawings to put up on the walls of her studio. He was delighted!…

[DR: See GWS #16 for more about Cray-pas. We’ve had to raise the price to $1.75 for a box of 12, because of the hike in U.S. postal rates. By the way, we’ve sold over 225 boxes in the last ten months!]

LETTER TO SCHOOL BOARD

Verna Helmke-Scharf in New York (see GWS #19, “No Problems”) sent us the letter that she and her husband Bill presented to their school board. As with the Kendrick family’s “Letter to Schools” that we printed in GWS #12, we think that other GWS families may find this a useful model when writing their own home-schooling proposals.

…We would like to inform you that we have decided not to send our three school-age children, Judson Scharf (8th grade), Karleen Scharf (5th grade), and Martin Helmke (3rd grade) to public school this fall. After much thought and consideration we have decided to teach them at home. We have engaged a lawyer, Mr. J. Anthony Gaenslen, Ithaca, N.Y., and have the cooperation of the Susquehanna School, Binghamton, N.Y. We have thus assured that what we are doing is legal and we have also created courses of study which meet the New York State recommendations for school curricula.

We would like to tell you why we have made this decision and to assure you that we would not have made it if we did not think it a better way for our family. We make this statement as an affirmation of responsibility that of raising our children well, one which we take seriously. We wish to raise our children according to our own personal Quaker values and concerns, and as the years have passed we see that the public schools are not the place where these values reside.

Since we wish that our teaching at home be open and legal we have done much reading and research to find out whether this is possible in New York State. We and our lawyer are convinced that it is legal. We have found reassurance in both Federal and State Court rulings that our decision to educate our children at home is a constitutionally protected right and that our actions are within the law.

[Here the Scharfs quoted some of the same legal passages that appear in the Kendricks’ letter, followed by:]

New York State, relying on the position of the Federal Supreme Court, reaffirms the rights of parents. In 1950, in People v. Turner, a ruling was made in favor of a family who preferred to teach their child at home. It set a precedent by stating:

Provided instruction given is adequate and the sole purpose of nonattendance at school is not to evade this article, instruction given to a child at home by a parent, who is competent to teach, satisfies requirements of the compulsory education law.

Further,

There is no provision in the Education Law which prohibits instruction of children at home nor is there any provision requiring certification of a parent by the Commissioner of Education before she may teach her children at home.

Finally, in Meyers v. State [of NY]:

The flexibility of the Education Law of this state permits competent parents to teach their children at home if the standards required in the interest of the community are met. Thus the freedom of parents is safeguarded so long as they meet their responsibility as parents.

We would like to share with you in more detail just why we are setting off on this home education venture. We are not interested in writing a tirade against the public schools. Rather, we are hoping to take a step towards family education. We simply wish to continue teaching our children as we taught them before they went to public school. We feel that we know our children best and care about them more than anyone else. We are most willing to take the time to listen to them and guide them in learning. We feel that we can do as good a job teaching them and very possibly a better job of teaching them than a teacher who has 20 to 25 other children to claim his or her attention. We do feel that the public school experience has interfered with rather than enhanced their learning ability. There is simply not time for a teacher, no matter how much he or she may wish it otherwise, to give_the sensitive attention that real teaching and learning require at their best.

One of the first questions we have been asked as we have discussed our ideas of home school teaching with other people is what about the children’s social life - will they not be lonely or put into an environment separate from real life? Our response to that question is this. It is in part because of the social life at the school that we would rather teach our children at home. We are disturbed by the students’ attitudes towards each other and towards adults. We see that drugs are used covertly if not overtly and that the attitudes of the students in the junior high school in particular are those of non-cooperation and boredom. This is not right. We wish to provide a social life for our children where we know what is happening.

We feel that social development is important. We have four children and that provides a daily group experience within the family. We believe that family cooperation should be the model and the basis for broader relationships. In addition to family relationships, friends are important. Our children will continue to play and spend time with the children in the neighborhood and they will see ocher friends on the weekends as they have before. What we are most concerned about is the quality of our children’s friendships with other children, not simply the quantity. They will also be part of 4H activities and other social activities such as gymnastics, swimming, music, and ocher community events. We do not wish to draw away from the community; we still hope to attend plays, parades, concerts, lectures, and films.

What we will surely do is listen to and observe our children, and then provide what we see is necessary for them. We will exercise our natural rights as parents, but we listen, too. If our children really do wish to go to public school next fall we feel that they should have a say in that choice. What we are doing is creating an alternative to what they have experienced so far in schooling. If they decide to return to public school then they will have made the choice to do so and that will bring them into a different relationship to the experience. We would support them completely in that decision and would spend much time in the school itself as we did last year, helping in whatever way we might be asked. Please know chat we are sincere in this. It is difficult sometimes to walk both sides of the road, but when we consider our children first then it is possible to do it.

What we hope to do here at home is to create a classroom where real life experiences are good experiences. We do not believe in the idea that to be ready to face a real world of bad experience you must first have bad experiences. Rather, we believe the opposite. The best tools that we can give our children for facing the world in their adult lives is an unshakable sense of self-worth, competence, independence, sensitivity and a sense of humor. That is done by their living their lives now in ways which say life is good, as we believe it to be and as we make sure it is. In a classroom where children are expected to compete with each other for attention and grades, good feelings about oneself do not come about as easily as they do in a group where competitions arise naturally and spontaneously from the cooperative life of the group, such as in a family. In a classroom where children are measured against each other or against outside standards and are not given the opportunity to assess themselves against their own standards, they will not really know who they are or what they can do when they are out on their own. It is understandable that standards must be met when trying to educate large numbers of people; that seems a bureaucratic necessity. But that does not make it the best way to educate any given child. In a classroom where children learn by doing, they learn much better than when they learn by being told. We will be able to provide that, there will be time and space for that to happen.

We hope to provide a learning environment where learning is learned not bit by bit so that it takes years to get the whole picture. What we hope to do is to provide more of an immersion experience where learning is not done step by step but in leaps and bounds. We have observed our children learning effortlessly and enthusiastically when they are given these opportunities and they have retained that learning more completely than the learning they did at school. We feel that to meet life in its complexity children should learn to deal with situations as they are presented in real life, with our attention on the situation. Real learning comes about by doing real things and by having the results really matter to the person doing them.

With this in mind, we hope to supplement the basic curriculum with additional materials and experiences. We have books and encyclopedias and will make trips to the library and will provide materials for interests as they arise. We will also seek out people who know things that we do not. We hope that the children’s interests will lead them into what we really consider a truer learning, a learning where they are self-motivated, where they lose track of time because they are so engrossed in something that interests them. We see them doing this during the summer months and hope that the home school environment will foster this in addition to the mastery of the basic educational requirements.

We hope to provide opportunities for our children to become responsible persons and learn self-discipline. What we have observed in the classroom is that there are many children who are not responsible individuals and that the teacher must spend much of his or her time “disciplining” those children who do not have the inner resources to behave responsibly. The social interaction which says to a child you can responsibly solve your own problems is severely limited as order is often maintained by having the children remain quietly in their seats. We feel that our children will thrive better in an environment where they will achieve self-discipline by actively meeting real challenges and by taking on real responsibilities under our guidance.

Of the hundreds of children who have been taught at home, many children of diplomats and missionaries, it has been observed that they are more outgoing, friendlier, more self-confident, better conversationalists and stronger leaders than children who had attended schools. That statement may be difficult to substantiate but it does at least say that children being taught ac home do not seem to be harmed by the experience. The very opposite may be true. We have met some of these children and the words above do indeed describe them.

We do not believe that there are many parents in our community who are interested in doing what we are doing at this time. In many families both parents work outside the home. For some this is stark economic necessity. For some ie is not. But as the Industrial Revolution Era fades and the Technological Era emerges, ie seems we will see more families able to provide this opportunity for their children.

Our Quaker values say that there is that of God in every person and that the spirit of God is good and full of life. We want to show our children daily that we believe those values and that we try to live by them. We believe in simplicity, honesty, and humor. We’d like to share these values and our lives with our children as fully as possible for these few years that we have the privilege of having them with us…

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

[JH:] Parents preparing to submit to the schools a written home education plan for their children might find ie useful to include a few words more or less like this:

…In teaching our own children at home we intend to take full responsibility for the results of our work. If any of our ways of teaching prove ineffective, we will not blame this on the children, in whatever way. Instead, using the flexibility of curriculum and methods that our small numbers will allow us, we will stop using any materials or methods of instruction that do not work, and instead will try other methods until we find some that work better. We understand that ie might be very difficult to do this for large numbers of teachers and children, but ie will be easy for us.

LOGICAL ANSWERS

From Adele Garlick (VT), who is teaching in a public school:

…I usually make up my own word problems, but today I used some from the book. Here’s one problem:

In painting the window trim in one house, they used 1 1/2 cans of paint. How many half cans is that?

The answer is supposed to be three half cans. One of the “slow” kids that I was working with insisted that the answer was one half can. “How did you get one for an answer?” I asked. He answered, “There’s one half can, and there’s one full can.” And he was right!
This just proves that there are so many different ways to read contrived word problems. What a senseless activity it is to “solve” problems like the one here…

—

And from Susan Price (FL):

…We just finished working in Faith’s workbook. She has never gotten subtraction at all. It has bothered me that she couldn’t figure out the change from a nickel when you buy something that costs two cents. I would say, “Okay, you’ve got 5 pen-_nies and you take away 3. How many do you have now?” And she would always say, “5.” I thought I had a real dumb daughter! She wasn’t the dumb one. It was me. For she was only saying the truth. That you still did have 5 pennies, even if you took some away and put them somewhere else.

Today we were doing it with fingers and putting some down and how many are left up, and she finally got it. It really didn’t take long at all, even though she had already built up an idea that she didn’t like and couldn’t understand “subtract.'’ She was then able to do it with the pictures in the book, covering them up with her fingers, saying once, “You are only pretending that you take them away, they are still really there.” After doing some problems for a few pages, she was actually doing them in her head. The only thing that is amazing about all this is that I should be amazed…

OLD TEXTS WORK

Several readers sent this news clipping:

…When Stan Hartzler started using old math textbooks with his students at Crete-Monee (IL) High School his students began winning competitions. The older the texts, the more they won.

Hartzler recalled… “I started going to old bookstores and using the texts that I found with my team and my classes. It was quickly apparent that the older books were working.

“A great many of the older books - published around 1900 - were written by one-room teachers. The lessons and assignments were are fully constructed and easy to read. Students could learn by themselves and wouldn’t have a lot of questions. The teachers didn’t have time to lecture because they had to move on and teach other children reading. One of the first things I noticed was that my kids stopped coming in with a lot of questions about last night’s homework.

“The old books have a continuing sequence of problem-solving, and they continually challenge the students to use their minds. These days students are taught to rely on the text and the teacher, rather than using their own minds.”

…So Hartzler teaches, reads and prowls Salvation Army stores, garage sales, antique shops, used book stores…

DRIVER’S ED VICTORY

From Rosalie Megli (IL):

…Another matter we have taken up with the school authorities concerns Alan, who will turn 16 this summer. In Illinois, driver’s licenses are issued only at age 18 or older unless one has had driver’s education, offered only through schools. The local high school secretary told me it was offered only to registered students. I then quoted from the driving manual of our state that such courses are available to any young people regardless of their attendance at the school. My quotation was passed off and I was told the class was full already.

I went to the high school and talked with the superintendent there about the driver’s education class. He said Alan’s only requirement, other than age, was that he live in the district. Apparently the secretary to whom I talked earlier just had never known of a case like ours and was unfamiliar with school policy. I’ve learned one doesn’t seek information from whoever answers the phone, but can expect more informed help at the top levels of administration, at least in our district…

COLLEGE GRAD AT 15

The Tacoma, Wash., News Tribune 6/13/81:

SEATTLE (AP) - As most of her peers complete junior high school 15-year-old Eva Von Dassow will graduate today from the University of Washington.  Receiving a baccalaureate degree in classics, Eva is the first graduating student in the early entrance program of the UW’s Child Development Research Group, a program for students 12 to 18 years old.

…Eva entered the university at age, 12 in the summer of 1978 after completing the eighth grade… Carrying as many as 23 academic credit hours a quarter she has earned her degree in just little more than three years, graduating with a B+ average.

Although she didn’t get to participate in high school proms and other hoopla of the traditional American teen Eva says she wasn’t a bit deprived. When people spoke of her missing out on the dances and athletics that bring lifelong memories for other young people, “I had no conception of what they were talking about,” she said. “There was not a thing I regretted.”

Eva doesn’t think she would fit in too well in high school. “I wanted an academic challenge,” she said.  She thinks she “adjusted to (the university) pretty well.” By the time she was a sophomore and junior at the university, Eva said she more readily made friends with her collegiate classmates and “had coffee with them every day.”

While learning Latin, Greek, and other classic subjects, she studied ballet and had a part in “The Nutcracker” with the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

…”The performing arts are where my heart is,” she said. This summer she will dance in a program of the Northwest Repertory Dance Company at Reed College in Portland. In the fall, she will enroll in graduate studies in classics at the UW…

RESCUE OPERATIONS

In the Fall 1973 issue of the magazine Issues in Radical Therapy, Claude Steiner wrote a very interesting article called “The Rescue Triangle,” of which we print the following excerpts, which may be very useful to parents (home schoolers or otherwise) and teachers (working in or out of schools).

…People who are paid for helping others (ministers, probation officers, social workers, psychologists, doctors, psychiatrists, therapists) and other people who are simply devoted to other human beings, often come to experience their “helping” activities in a basically negative way. Rather than feeling satisfaction and joy in helping others, they experience frustration having to work against difficult odds, a sense of bottomless responsibility and heartbreak over failure… [and develop negative, persecutory attitudes about the people being helped, namely that they are lazy and unmotivated, or even that they are incurably ill…

When a person enters into a helping situation with the attitude that the endless numbers of those being helped are helpless and yet that they all, somehow, must be helped, the burden becomes increasingly large until soon it is overwhelming and likely to crush the helper, who will eventually feel powerless and victimized [JH - and will suffer what is now called “burnout.”]  The attitudes described above are cornerstones of the Rescue Triangle which involves three basic human roles: The Rescuer, The Victim and The Persecutor.

In a Rescue situation the person helping is the Rescuer and the person needing help is called the Victim. There are Victims and victims… Some people are “pure” or actual victims and are not contributing to their one-down position. As an example, a person being run over by a truck, or a person being robbed on the street, are actual victims. But most situations in which people are victimized include a certain collusion on the part of the Victim with the victimization…

To distinguish true oppression from oppression which involves some self-perpetuation or which is the result of lack of struggle against it, the word victim can be used with lower case (true victim) or capital letters (Victim).

The same device can be used with fireman or a lifeguard whose function is to help true victims. The main difference between a rescuer and a Rescuer is that the former expects to succeed and usually does while the latter expects to fail and usually does.

Another difference between Rescuers, Victims, rescuers and victims, is that rescuers are usually thanked by the victims they help while Rescuers usually are persecuted by the Victims they help.

The Persecuting role is the inevitable outcome of the Rescue and Victim roles. Any person who Rescues by helping someone else when that person is not helping himself is inevitably going to become angry with him…

Most of us have worked enthusiastically on behalf of persons who eventually proved to have been not only not interested in our help but actually disdainful of it. Most of us have had the experience of becoming more someone who subtly became more and more passive until it seemed that their welfare concerned us more than it did them. Most of us have, at one time or another, been lured into a false sense of accomplishment as therapists only to suddenly fall from our pedestals as our star “patient” got drunk, attempted suicide, or got arrested for shoplifting…

To the extent that children can do things such as love and understand the world and themselves, and to the extent that they are not allowed to do these things, they are forced into a Victim position with the parents either as Persecutors who oppress them in their abilities, or as Rescuers who then do for them what they have actually prevented them from doing for themselves. For instance… a seven year old could, if left alone to learn it, get out of bed, get dressed, cook some breakfast, make_some lunch… etc. or do chores such as cleaning the table, sweeping the floor, going to the store to buy things he needed.

All of these things that a seven year old can do are not usually allowed of seven year olds… Most households prevent a seven year old from freely using his powers to that full an extent, so that most seven year olds have to be awakened by their mothers, who then cook breakfast for them, take them to school, pick them up, cook dinner for them, and arrange for their entertainment and social life. In that situation the child is a Victim who is being Persecuted when he is kept powerless and who is being Rescued when things are done for him that he could do for himself.

Children who are trained as Victims grow up with varying degrees of disability or incapacity… As the children grow up and begin to acquire some power independent of the parents, they begin to cash in on their long time resentment for having been Victimized and become the parents’ Persecutors… In a home in which Rescuing and Persecuting is very prevalent, children are prone to set parents up in all manner of bad situations: middle class children often do this by doing badly in school, by refusing to work, by becoming drug addicts, and/or getting themselves arrested…

How can a person who wishes to help avoid falling into the roles of the Rescue Triangle, so as to be free to be truly helpful? In order for a helping transaction to be a mutually satisfying experience, certain requirements called a contract have to be satisfied: the helper receives a consideration in exchange for helping, the transaction has to be mutually agreed upon by both parties, and they are equally involved in the process. When one person helps another in the absence of the conditions stated above we call the situation a Rescue.

A helper is giving of herself. To avoid a Rescue the person helped needs to give something in return. This is called, in legal terms, the consideration.

Mr. Smith is an accomplished pianist. Charlie comes to Mr. Smith asking to be taught to play the piano. Mr. Smith may decide to teach Charlie to play the piano for a fee, or he may teach Charlie the piano in exchange for Charlie taking care of his garden. Mr. Smith was taught how to play the piano by someone who… taught him for free and made it clear to Mr. Smith that she expected her teachings to be passed on to other talented people. Therefore, Mr. Smith might teach Charlie… in repayment for the teaching he received from his own teacher. Or Mr. Smith may teach Charlie for free in exchange for the benefits that he receives from the community in which he and Charlie live. Finally, it is possible that Mr. Smith would have such pleasure teaching Charlie [that he would be] willing to… teach Charlie in exchange for being in Charlie’s company. Charlie may also be able to teach Mr. Smith something.

All of these arrangements are valid… as long as they are understood by both parties, and as long as the consideration truly exists between the helper and the person being helped.

If that consideration does not exist or ceases to exist, then the situation becomes a Rescue.

Mutuality is a very important feature of a helping situation. Mutual consent means that 1) Charlie, who needs help, asks for it, and that following his request Mr. Smith 2) agrees to help and states his conditions. Following this Charlie 3) accepts the help and the conditions attached to it. All three of these requirements are necessary for a good situation. If Charlie, for instance, did not ask to be taught how to play the piano, but Mr. Smith, after hearing him sing, decided that he was a very talented boy and offered his help, and Charlie was not really interested in it but accepted anyway, then this becomes a Rescue. If Charlie asked to be taught how to play the piano and Mr. Smith proceeded to teach without stating his conditions and without having Charlie accept them, then this too becomes a Rescue. If Charlie asks to be taught to play the piano and Mr. Smith agrees to do so and states his conditions but Charlie does not accept them [JH - or live up to them, then this also becomes a Rescue. In short, request, offer, and acceptance are three important features of a situation in which one person effectively helps another.

—

[JH:] Mr. Steiner’s very sensible words do not seem to have been much heeded. The problem of “burnout” has become so widespread and serious in all the “helping” professions, including teaching, that many conferences are devoted to it and books written about it. I skimmed through one of these books the other day, looking without success for traces of Mr. Steiner’s insight.  Steiner’s point about mutuality is the point I tried to make in the chapter “The True Authority of Teachers” in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, and the chapter “Authority,” in FREEDOM AND BEYOND. For schools are an almost perfect example of Steiner’s Rescue situation, and the better the intentions and the higher the hopes of the school, the worse the situation.

Many of the worst problems of the schools arise because they mistakenly believe and act as if they really could make students do things which the students don’t want to do. If groups of home schooling parents join to make some kinds of very informal schooling arrangements, they must be careful not to make this same mistake. (More on this in the following story.)

Of course, there are some kinds of helping situations in which there is no mutuality, no conditions asked or agreed on. The help that good parents give to babies and little children is of this kind. The question of where, in our dealings with children, we can reasonably expect and ask for mutuality, and where we can not and should not, is a difficult one. But once we understand what Rescue operations are and why they are generally bad, with a little thought we should be able to keep that aspect of our lives with children down to a minimum.

PARENT COOPERATIVES

[JH:] Many home schooling families are thinking about and working out ways in which they can get together with other families to make
some kind of cooperative meeting place and activity space for their children. In earlier issues of GWS I have urged:

1) Such places should be kept very small, probably not more than half a dozen or so families.
2) The model for such places should be the kind of club to which many adults belong, i.e. a place people go to, if and when they want to,
to do things they want to do, including nothing at all.
3) Families using such a club/center should have a firm understanding that if there is anything that a particular family wants their
child to be taught or made to do, it shall be their responsibility to do that themselves, and at home. There must be no coerced
learning in the club/center, for this reason among many others, that the families will get into terrible arguments about what kinds of
learning should be coerced.

Just after I edited and wrote the article about the Rescue Triangle, Nancy Plent wrote to say she was writing for her New Jersey newsletter an article about starting cooperative schools, and asking if I had any thoughts about them besides what I had already written in GWS. With Steiner’s ideas fresh in mind, I wrote more or less as follows:

…To what I said before I would now add this. The club/center must be run on another understanding, agreement, and rule, that all the children who go there go by choice only. Each child must be able to choose whether or not to go the center, and, equally important, the center must be able to choose whether they want to have him there. In other words, the center must always have the right to send a child away, for an hour or a day or as long as it wishes, if the child is not obeying whatever rules the center has set up for itself. If the child has to go to the center whether he wants to or not, because his parents have no other place to put him, and if for the same reason the center has to keep the child, no matter what he does, then the center has become, for that child at least, a child dump, and you are right back in the old compulsory school bag, trying to deal with children who don’t want to be there and who get their revenge by making trouble for everyone else.

These centers will be sorely tempted to carry out what Steiner calls Rescues. Working parents are going to come around saying, “Oh please take our children, we can’t stand the schools around us, but we have to work and we can’t keep the child at home.” What the center has to say is, “We will take the children, but only on this condition, that they do not have to come if they don’t want to, that there be someplace else to which you can send them if they don’t want to come here, or to which we can send them if they break our rules or cause trouble here. Each child has to be able to say No to us, and we have to be able to say No to him. Otherwise, no deal.”

Any centers that aren’t tough and realistic enough to make and stick to such conditions are going to fall into the business of Rescuing families who don’t like the available schools but (for reasons good or bad) won’t take the responsibility for teaching their own children. Such centers will soon find themselves plagued with all the usual troubles of schools. So once again I give this heartfelt warning: Don’t get into the child dump business, the babysitter business, the day-jail-for-kids business.

Some will ask, how will these_working parents solve their babysitter problems. I don’t know. Perhaps Some of the other parents in the center may be able to help with this. But making these babysitter arrangements must be the parent’s responsibility, not the center’s.  To return to Steiner, the center would be wise not to try to “help” people who don’t do anything to help it. If the center is truly cooperative, as it should be, then everyone involved must one way or another do a share of the work. People who can’t do things on weekdays must do things on evenings or weekends. But everyone contributes, no one is a free rider. Otherwise the center will start down the road to frustration, overwork for the dedicated few, resentment, and eventually… BURNOUT!

Burnout probably ended almost as many free schools as did quarrels about curriculum or lack of money. Let’s not fall into that old trap.

—

Nancy responded:

.
..Over the last ten years I’ve sorted through many of the things which I believe caused the downfall of the alternative schools I knew and spent time with. Nothing I’ve read, though, has made the events of those schools fall into place in my head more clearly than the Rescue idea.

Now that I look back, I see that my school was in the Rescue business full time! We “Rescued” one family with 12 children (fortunately only four went to our school). We agreed to let them pay only $200 tuition for the year because they couldn’t afford more. Nobody mentioned the fact that because of them, we needed to buy a van for transportation, rent a bigger place, etc., all stuff we couldn’t afford to do. We needed people in our school to impress other people that we had a school … so we Rescued.

The awful part of this is that I know that if I’m not careful, I could get carried away into a bad cooperative situation again. It’s tempting when you meet people you like and they want “something more” and you do, too. There’s still a yearning around for “something more” for the families and home-schooled kids I meet. I’m beginning to think it’s just a civilized disease. Not too many people are really happy with their lifestyles, but most of us can’t put our finger on why. We’re all in danger of leaping into something that sounds good without thinking it through.

Please! Keep plugging away in GWS with your ideas on this theme! I think there’s a real danger that many people will plunge into cooperative ventures, experience that burnout you speak of, and conclude, illogically, that “home schooling doesn’t work.’…

KY HOMESCHOOLERS

From Mil Duncan and Teri Mehler (KY):

…We are two Kentucky families with home schoolers, and since September we have been combining tutoring from former teachers and Berea College students with parent-initiated activities. Currently the three boys (6 1/2, 6 1/2, and 5) have individual reading lessons three mornings each week, math three mornings, and French three times. In addition an energetic young woman does “nature” with them on Tuesdays (they tapped a maple tree and made a windmill!) and a Berea College philosophy professor has “Philosophy for kids” with them and a few other children about twice a month. Our activities for the afternoon are open to other families, and so far have included woodworking (one of our fathers is a woodworker by profession, and the other as a hobby), embroidery, candle-making, baking, hikes, and puppetry.

We happen to live on the same street in town, and most of the formal instruction takes place in one home where a room is set aside for studying. The street itself is full of kids after the regular school lets out at 2 PM, and there is certainly no lack of socializing going on. I forgot to mention that the kids are having swimming lessons with a friend several times each week.

Both families have read FARMER BOY by Laura Ingalls Wilder, ROBIN HOOD, OLD YELLER, THE JUNGLE BOOK, and THE HOBBIT, among others, and as you can imagine, each one is a great new world of history and geography and other ways of living…

Although we all had a “no school” attitude before we had kids, the doing of it did seem like a big, and somehow risky, undertaking when it came time to begin. We have all noticed that doing it is much more natural and comfortable than we had anticipated. The kids are relaxed and energetic, and the individualized attention makes for some pretty remarkable progress in the skill areas. They get themselves around town on their bikes, take themselves to the movies on the weekends and handle all the necessary finances, and are forever embarking on ambitious projects of their own design and plan. Today while we planned our school activities for next year (in Kentucky, one can make a new school without too much fanfare, and so we hope to do so for next fall when the older boys must legally be in a school), the kids alternated their lessons with the construction of a big dugout clubhouse in the old garden space out back, bordered in a brick wall, carefully staggered like bricks in fireplaces.

Our biggest difficulty is the time necessary for all this planning and activities. Of the four parents involved none are home all the time. One family has a young business in fine-furniture making, and the other couple is involved in local economic development work, the father full-time, and the mother in full-time graduate study. We do have a fantastic woman who is our childcare person, and who fills in gaps and acts as the hub of it all. Which brings us to the second biggest difficulty, which is money. We are spending a good deal each week on the tutoring and the child care. Oh, for that $l000 the schools would get if our children attended!

[From a later letter:] …Although the Mehlers will be home schooling next fall, the Duncans will not due to a combination of financial reasons and the kids’ particular needs right now…

GROUP SUB LUNCH

From Mary Yost (OR):

…I used the last issue of our group subscription as an occasion to invite everyone to lunch, squeezing 11 people into our two-room hand-built house. We had a wonderful afternoon! Since it was our first meeting and many of us had never met, we had no set agenda. But before the soup was even served, the conversation went directly to analysis of the local schools, the peer issue, and the problems related to living in rural isolation.

There is an alternative to home schooling here: Neskowin Valley School, which is a fine, if not perfect place. Most of our “GWS children” are enrolled there. At age 12, they will have to either go on to a very traditional public school or be home-schoolers. Two children are at that point now. One of the families will send their daughter to the public school and set up an afternoon study group with the idea of supplementing or enriching her learning. The other family will keep their son at home. They did that the year before when they first moved to this area, they set up a simple program for the 3 R’s, and he spent his free time developing marvelous skills in drawing and woodworking. But, though his older brother was also at home, he was desperately lonely. They hope that now he has made friends at school, he can arrange to be with them.

Next year will be the test for most of us to see whether there may be some way to work with the public school to improve it, whether the Neskowin school should expand to include older children, or whether we should set up some way for unschoolers to be less isolated, short of an actual co-op. The group seemed to feel we should focus on all these things.

The other consensus of the meeting was to renew our group subscription. Enclosed is a check…

TRAVEL LETTER

Ann Bodine (NJ) sent copies of this letter to a number of other GWS readers:

Dear Friends: I found your name in the GWS Directory. I am Ann Bodine, formerly a professor of anthropology and linguistics at Rutgers Univ., now an enthusiastic home teacher-learner, along with our three children, Jonathan born 7/74, Karina 8/75, and Davie 6/79.

My children and I are planning an educational-pleasure trip down the East Coast during the month of April. I belong to the international host-traveler exchange SERVAS [GWS #18] and have enjoyed staying with families in other countries. I would like to try the same thing in the U.S.

I am looking for a couple of families along our route, preferably who have young home schooled children. I would hope that if we did find a couple of families willing to host us, at least one might result in a long term relationship including such things as return visits by you to our house, correspondence between our children, possibly our children might exchange photos, drawings or other written products, etc. Such a relationship could widen our childrens’ horizons.

I am sending this letter to everyone listed in the Directory who lives along our route and who states in the Directory that they have children in the 4-9 year old range. Our only restriction is that because of allergy we can’t stay with a family where there is smoking in the house.

I have no idea whether we will_get no invitations or more invitations than we can accept, but in case you are interested in hosting us I would like to discuss some specifics. We will be carrying one sleeping bag and air mattress in which Jonathan and Karina can sleep together. David and I can sleep together in a single bed or on a sofa. We will be carrying our own sheets, towels, blankets, and pillows. SERVAS suggests that a two day visit is best because one day is not enough to gee to know each other and more than two days can become a burden to the host, but we are flexible about length of stay.

We will contribute in whatever way you request to the running of your household so that you do not have extra work as a result of our visit. We can make any arrangement for meals that suits you - eating all of our meals out, sharing food purchasing and cooking, or whatever. (We practice good nutrition, so don’t worry that we might expose your children to junk food.)
During the day we can either join you in your usual daily life and routine, or we can leave you to your business while we go on an outing or sightseeing, or we can take your children with us on our outing while you stay home, or we can all go on sightseeing or on some outing together… [The rest of the letter had information on dates and addresses.]

—
Ann added in a letter to us:

…Our schedule permitted us to accept 5 of the 6 invitations we received. In addition to all the fun the children had playing together, my conversations with the parents and my participation in their lives gave me a great deal of perspective on my children and on myself as a parent-teacher. My children are beginning to correspond with several of the children we visited and we hope to receive return visits from all of them.

We are listed with the homeschoolers travel network organized by Elaine Andres (2120 W Cashman Court Peoria IL 61604) described in GWS #18, but have not yet received a single request for an invitation as a result of that listing. Perhaps many homeschoolers haven’t realized the benefits that can result from such visits, or what they’re missing in not taking advantage of the travel network…

The only thing I would do differently if I were doing it again is try to establish before we got there how the host family wanted me to contribute to the household work. With a few families I was able to slip naturally into a helping role, while with other families I was never very clear about what I could do to help…

FROM A MUSICIAN

A musical conductor writes from Switzerland:

…I spent four years at a well-esteemed public high school. During that time I found one teacher who truly loved her teaching and who encouraged me in my innate appreciation of literature and my beginning attempts at writing. By my 16th year, I had lost interest in the System and was in fact educating myself even though attending classes. I was something of a maverick - reading what I wanted to read (Dostoevsky) rather than the school assignments, writing poetry rather than doing grammatical exercises, working after school for Helen Gahagan Douglas’s senatorial campaign against Nixon rather than fulfilling “social science” homework requirements.

In 8th grade my class had done an outline of the Constitution - a thorough piece of work which required nearly a whole term. To my surprise, a similar assignment was given to the 12th grade class, the assumption no doubt being that nobody could possibly have remembered anything from the 8th grade. I found this a ridiculous waste of time, exhumed the 8th grade manuscript (which retained its original date), submitted it to the 12th grade teacher and received a B+. After all, he could not maintain that I had not done the work.

We have two children. My daughter went to school in a New York suburb. Every spring I had a 2-3 month European concert tour. We would therefore take her out of school (from grades 1-5) during this period, much to the amazement and chagrin of our friends. My daughter is not an “intellectual” person per se; her talents run more along the line of intuition and feeling. Nonetheless, we found that 45 minutes daily schoolwork with one of us was sufficient to put her near the head of her class each spring when she returned for the final few weeks of school. There was thus no academic loss, and of course an enormous gain in travelling throughout the world.  Our son, now 10 seems to be a budding cellist. I discussed his musical/educational future with my friend Paul Tortelier, whom I consider to be a truly great cellist [JH: My favorite among living cellists]. Tortelier told me that his mother took him out of school at the age of 11, not only so that he could practice his cello, but so that he could get a truly rounded education which, to say the least, he obtained…

STEWART AND SUZUKI

[JH:] The fact that I like the Stewart piano lessons so much [GWS #21] doesn’t mean I have lost any of my great enthusiasm for Suzuki methods of instruction, or at lease large pares of them, as I understand them. (I suspect that some things being done in the name of Suzuki might surprise Suzuki himself.) When I begin my own work on the piano, I plan to use a mixture of Stewart and Suzuki.

In the first place I agree very strongly with the fundamental insight of Suzuki, the living heart of his method, that just as children learn to speak by trying - at first very clumsily - to make some of the speech they hear others making around them, so children can best learn to make music by trying to play on their instruments tunes they have heard many times and already know.

Some Suzuki teachers may be in danger of losing the point of this fundamental insight. Children learning to speak do not learn to say one short word or phrase perfectly, then another word or phrase, and so on. They say a great many things, as many as they can, all very imperfectly, and slowly and with much use and practice learn to say them better and better. In their learning they advance not on a narrow front but on a very broad one, working on many different things at once. But it looks as if some Suzuki students, at lease on stringed instruments, are being taught to spend a long time learning to play one or two very simple tunes “correctly” before moving on to something else. When I hear children doggedly sawing away on their violins at “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little star,” all in the first position and using only the lower half of their bows, I don’t feel much of the spirit of excitement and adventure that I hear when children are learning to speak.

Another great advantage of Suzuki, certainly in piano, is that from the very beginning ie gives the students good music to play, small pieces and little fragments from the great composers.

Still another advantage of Suzuki is that they sell records of the music the children will learn to play, so that the children can hear and come to know these tunes before they begin to play them. Then, when they are playing them, they can check their playing against the records. Of course, if you have a tape recorder, you can record yourself (or someone) playing the piano tunes in the Stewart lessons, and thus accomplish the same thing.

So I can easily imagine using Stewart and Suzuki together, spending some time on one and some on the other. One of the great advantages of Stewart is that from the very beginning ie gives the students an easy way to write down any tunes they can pick out on the piano. Indeed, beginners might use Stewart to write down some of the music they learn in Suzuki - and what is even more important, some of the tunes or chords they made up themselves.

If I were teaching music, I would emphasize much more than either Stewart or Suzuki these two vital and fundamental parts of music making - improvisation and composition (I already do a great deal of these in my work on the cello.) I would encourage beginners to do two kinds of improvising: 1) A very free kind in which they just try to make the widest possible variety of sounds on their instruments 2) A more controlled kind in which they try to use the instrument to create tunes. And I would encourage students, when they had made on their instrument or in their minds a tune they really liked, to write it down, which Stewart makes it easy to do.

[DR: Suzuki materials are published by SUMMY BIRCHARD CO., Box CN-27, Princeton NJ 08540. If anyone knows of an easy way to find Suzuki instructors (a directory, association, etc.), please let us know.]

FRIENDS THROUGH MAIL

From Krystal Lytton (VT):

…I really like reading Growing Without Schooling when it comes in the mail… Just today I got a letter from a girl who had seen my name in GWS [#15, “Vt. Home-Schoolers”] who wants to write back and forth, which is neat because I like writing people and I’m now writing about 10 friends. I’m 12 years old, and I have been learning at home for three years now…

TWO INTERESTED PUBLISHERS

Charles Krinsky, of the publishing company CEDAR BOOKS (131 E 62nd St, New York NY 10021) called our office last March after seeing the_home-schooling article in the New York Times. He said he was interested in publishing a book on home-schooling or a related child-raising issue, and asked us if we knew of any such manuscripts.

Also, in June, we got this letter from Craig Caughlan, UNITY PRESS, 235 Hoover Rd, Santa Cruz CA 95065:

…It was with interest that I read your recent interview in Mothering Magazine. For some time Unity Press has been desirous of publishing a book on alternatives to public school that allow a better nurturing of a child, either as a complete alternative or as a supplement…

I would welcome reviewing any book proposals or projects you may have in mind. I’ve enclosed a recent catalog to show you the type of books we publish…
—

We know there are lots of GWS readers out there who are good at writing, so if you’ve ever thought of putting your experiences into a book, here’s evidence that at least someone might be interested in publishing it. Maybe you’ve never thought of yourself as “a writer,” as a person who could actually get a book published, but that doesn’t matter. As far as I can tell, as long as you can put down words on paper, and as long as you have something to say, you can be a writer. Sure, there are such questions as organization, focus, style, and pace - but once you have something written, you can always rewrite, cut, rearrange, or polish.

I also want to point out that one reason I think the quality of writing in the letters we get here at GWS is so delightful is that people are not self-consciously sitting down to write an article or a book. They are simply telling us what’s been going on because they want us to know. I suspect that writing that is done in the form of letters to friends, or as a diary or journal, will almost always be superior to writing done more formally. So if it helps, just think of your book as a collection of letters, or as a journal.

We certainly hope that some GWS readers will get in touch with these two publishers. And there’s no reason why you can’t consider the “big-name” publishers as well. Getting a first book published can be very hard, especially these days, but it can be done. - DR

PACIFIC TRIP

As we go to press, John’s schedule for the August/September(1981) trip to the Pacific looks like this:

Aug 14-15, 1981: Meeting with , Utah unschoolers. Arranged by Joyce Kinmont and Laurie & Ken Huffman.
Aug 16: Univ. of Calif. at Fullerton. Arr. by Cathy Levesque and Ginger Kemp.
Aug 18: 3 talks on the island of Hawaii - in Honalo, Waimea, and Hilo. Arr. by Terence Welch.
Aug 19: Child & Family Service Center, Honolulu. Arr. by Patti Lyons, Exec. Dir., and Kaqen Klein.
Aug 20-21: College of Continuing Ed., Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu. Arr. by Susan Bird Singh and Betty Sakata.
Aug 23-24: Auckland, New Zealand. Lectures, radio & TV. Arr. by Tricia Cheel and Rod MacKenzie.
Aug 25: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Arr. by John Thompson.
Aug 26-27: School of Education, Riverina College, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. Arr. by Helen Modra and A.J.D. Blake, Dean of Ed.
Aug 28-31: Australian Reading Conf., Darwin, Australia. Arr. by Bob Counahan.
Sept 2: Western Australia Reading Conference, Perth, Western Australia. Arr. by Frances Hardinge.
Sept 3-4: Alternative Education Resource Group, Victoria, Australia. Arr. by Dr. Christine Gajzago.
Sept 5: Pacific Institute of Consulting & Training, Sydney, Australia. Arr. by Diana Chapman.
Our thanks to all the people who have worked so hard to make this happen.

NEW ILLICH BOOK HERE

SHADOW WORK, by Ivan Illich ($5.35 + postage - See “Book Order Info.”) This is Illich’s latest book. It’s hard to write a short review of it, for though it has only 107 pages of text it has in it more new (and surprising) information and important ideas than I ordinarily find in half a dozen books, even good ones.

Illich begins with the idea of what he calls “externalities” and some other economists sometimes call “externalized costs.” When an auto company makes a car, they have to pay for the internal costs - the iron, copper, rubber, etc. that go into it, and the tools and work it takes to make it. But these are not the only costs of having cars around. Another is smog, which can spoil our pleasure and even damage our health and property. We can imagine a society in which people who make cars would somehow pay for the damage that these cars do to the community, which would mean, in turn, that people who owned cars would have to pay their fair share of this cost. People may differ about whether this would be a good thing or not. The fact is that nowhere in the world does it happen. Neither the people who make cars nor the people who buy and use them have to pay for the many kinds of damage that these cars do to the community - noise, destruction of land to make roads, parking lots, etc., pollution of air and soil. They have “externalized” these costs, created a situation in which other people have to pay them, even if they don’t own or never use a car.

Since nobody ever actually writes out a check for these costs, economists don’t know how to count them, and so act as if they did not exist. If we could put an accurate money value on these externalities, these unwanted side-effects of our industrial system, and if, as we should, we subtracted this figure from our Gross National Product, we might well find that the remaining Net National Product, the sum of true goods and benefits, has been declining for many years. Certainly this is the reality that more and more people experience. Never mind what official statistics say; in their own lives there are fewer things they want than there used to be and more things they don’t want.

In his introduction, Illich sums up what he has for some years now been saying about economic development:

Up to now economic development has always meant that people, instead of doing something, are enabled to buy it… Economic development has also meant that after a time people must buy the commodity, because the conditions under which they could get along without it had disappeared… And the environment could no longer be utilized by those who were unable to buy the good or service.

The example Illich cites here are streets, which people used for many purposes until the streets were taken away from them and given to cars. Housing is another good example. Once governments start to build houses for people who until then had been able to build their own, they soon start telling people (through elaborate building codes, etc.) that they may not build their own, even though there is not the remotest possibility of the government’s being able to build houses for everyone. Before long, few people even know any more how to build their own.

In other words, growth in the industrial or commodity sector, on top of whatever else it may do to us or for us, makes us more helpless, more dependent on the industrial economy itself. In a recent article Illich said that the history of the last five hundred years could very well be seen as a war against the subsistence economy. A subsistence economy is one in which most people know how, perhaps with the help of some friends and neighbors, to take care of themselves, and they learned this, not by being taught it in special places, but by growing up among and living with people who were doing the same.

Today this right to be more self-reliant or to refuse institutionalized compulsory help has become a luxury. Illich wisely and ironically remarks:

Defense against the damages inflicted by development, rather than giving access to some new ’satisfaction,’ has become the most sought-after privilege. You have arrived if you can commute outside the rush hour, have probably attended an elite school if you can give birth at home, are privy to rare and special knowledge if you can bypass the physician when you are ill; are rich and lucky if you can breathe fresh air, not really poor if you can build your own shack.

In airports all over the U.S. I see advertisements for expensive and exclusive country housing estates, saying things like “Give your children the benefit of an unspoiled natural environment…” As Illich points out, fresh air, pure water, quiet, uncrowded space, the chance to see things not made by people - things that not so long ago everyone had, even the people who didn’t have anything else, are now more and more the luxuries of a few. It won’t be long before we see ads selling some expensive resort or club by saying that there you can look at blue skies.

Elsewhere Illich has written about “the right to useful unemployment,” i.e. the right to do work that is useful, to yourself or others, but that does not bring in any money. Most people in developed countries define work as something that brings in money, whether it involves actually doing anything or not. Not long ago I heard a taxi-driver at a cab rank say to another, “What I’d really like to get is a nice easy job like one of those bank guards - just stand around all day.” More recently, walking by a building project, I heard a_construction worker say to a uniformed security guard, “How,do you get a good job like that, anyway - don’t have to do anything.” By contrast, as Illich points out:

For most toiling unemployed in Mexico, desempleado still means the unoccupied loafer on a well-paid job, not the unemployed whom the economist means by the term.

To make clear this vital distinction between pre-industrial work and work as it is now known, Illich, on page 24, introduces the word “vernacular” which lies at the heart of this book: “I propose… the ideas of ‘vernacular work,’ unpaid activities which provide and improve livelihood.” Growing some of your own food is vernacular work; so is making or repairing your own clothes or dwelling; so is walking to someplace you want to go, or making your own entertainment - playing games that don’t require elaborate equipment, or talking with friends, or making music.

Shadow work, on the other hand, which more and more people (more often women than men) have to do more and more of, is quite different. Like vernacular work, it brings in no money. But unlike vernacular work, it doesn’t reduce your need for money, by enabling you to make what otherwise you would have to buy. You don’t enjoy doing it. But still, you can’t get out of doing it - not and still stay in the industrial economy, either as worker or consumer. Driving to the job is one kind of shadow work; or taking the car (or TV, etc.) to be repaired; or driving children to a distant school or activity; or driving to the shopping center. When I tell people that I haven’t owned a car for years many say enviously, “Oh, I wish I didn’t have to own one.” For such people, driving is shadow work. Shadow work can be seen, then, as a kind of tax on our time and energy which we must pay just in order to avoid being dropped out of the industrial economy. And one measure of the decline in the true standard of living of many people is the increasing amounts of time they have to spend doing it. This enormously important distinction between wage labor, vernacular work, and shadow work has until now not been made.

In the chapter “Vernacular Values,” Illich tells us who first tried to plan, standardize, and freeze a language, by writing a dictionary and grammar which from then on would tell everyone how they must speak and write. He was a Spaniard, Nebrija, and he lived at the same time as Columbus. At first Queen Isabella resisted his project - the languages of her subjects belonged to them as much as their homes. The story of the arguments Sebrija used to change her mind is fascinating. The authorities did not want a standardized language to make it easier for them to teach the people to read. They were already reading tens of thousands of books printed in their own local, vernacular dialects, languages they learned just by living among people who spoke them. What bothered the authorities, who did not speak all these dialects, was that they could not know and control what people were reading. They wanted a single official language so that they could have a single official culture. (In much the same spirit, we hear plenty of people today saying that Standard English should be the official language of American culture.)

Along the way Illich-lays to rest, I hope once and for all the myth that the word “education” came from a Latin word meaning “to lead out.” It did no such thing; it meant something quite different.

There is much more, but I’ve said enough. At least, I hope I’ve said enough to make people wane to know this very important book. - JH

OTHER NEW BOOKS HERE

GARRETT-WADE TOOL CATALOG ($l + post). Tool catalog? Why is GWS adding a tool catalog to its book list? Well, one reason is that some or many of our readers are interested in woodworking and woodworking tools, and this company is famous for having the finest tools in the business. Also, the book has much information about how to use tools, and about woodworking itself.

But the main reason we are adding it to our list is that it is such a beautiful book, just as a book - one of the most beautifully designed, printed, and illustrated books I have ever seen. If it were published solely as a book, by a regular book publisher, it might well cost $15 or $20 instead of $1. Practically every one of its 128 pages has one or more photographs of tools, many of them in color. The tools in these photos are so carefully and artistically arranged and lighted that this book reminds me more than anything else of the kind of (expensive) books that great museums print to illustrate collections of their finest treasures like the catalogs of the exhibition of objects from Tutankhamen’s tomb that so many millions saw a few years ago.

Indeed, looking through this book is like taking a trip through a very exciting museum. On every page we can feel the thought and loving care that have gone into the designing and making of these tools. It’s enough to make you want to take up woodworking, just to get a chance to use them. I think many children will find this book - like the Eric Sloane books, which though different in form have much the same reverence for well-made things - a fascinating glimpse into the mysterious and exciting adult world.

GOODE’S WORLD ATLAS, 15th Edition, Edward Espenshade, editor ($12.95 + post). A fascinating and beautiful book. 227 pages of maps of every kind - geographic maps (showing the basic shapes of the land - mountains, rivers), economic maps (showing sources of raw materials, kinds of agriculture), maps of vegetation, rainfall, languages, population, maps of the ocean floors maps of cities. There’s an astonishing amount of information here, beautifully presented. The geographic maps are colored to show heights, and so realistically that the maps look three-dimensional - you almost reach out to feel the bumps. Along with the maps, many lists and indexes, of (among other things) populations of cities, heights of mountains, lengths of rivers, and other things that children (if they are not forced to) like to look into.

A great book to look things up in, but even more fun to browse in. Each time I start to work on this review, and look into the atlas to note what is in it, I get caught, and find myself looking for the highest mountains, or other pastimes equally pleasant and useless.

But the book gives much information even to the most idle browser. Maps of cities (whose shapes soon become as familiar as human faces) show that they tend to grow out along roads, railroads, and rivers - they look like plants putting out roots. Population maps show how densely crowded the world is in some places, and how empty in others. Rainfall maps give the reason - too much or too little rain makes places very hard or impossible to live in.

A beautiful book, and a wonderful bargain.

T
HE FARTHEST SHORE, by Ursula Le Guin ($2 + post). This is the last of the three Earthsea stories (others are A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA and THE TOMBS OF ATUAN). As the story begins Ged the magician, now in his fifties, has for five years been the Archmage, the chief of all the magicians. To him comes Prince Arren, seventeen years old, bringing bad news. All over the island world of Earthsea civilization and culture are falling apart. Magic no longer works, wizards are losing their spells, ancient crafts and skills are dying out, people do their work badly or not at all. Something has gone terribly wrong, and Ged the Archmage, restless after five years of inaction, and sure that at the heart of this evil lies a man, decides to go himself to the far islands of the Earthsea world to find out what has gone wrong. Young Arren, to his own great surprise, offers and begs to go with him, as servant, companion, helper, guard, or however he may be useful.

He had been an active boy, delighting in games, caking pride and pleasure in the skills of body and mind, apt at his duties of ceremony and governing, which were neither light nor simple. Yet he had never given himself entirely to anything. All had come easily to him, and he had done all easily; it had all been a game, and he had played at loving. But now the depths of him were wakened, not by a game or dream, but by honor, danger, wisdom, by a scarred face and a quiet voice and a dark hand holding, careless of its power, the staff of yew that bore near the grip, in silver set in the black wood, the Lost Rune of the Rings.

So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve,

Saying only that, Ursula Le Guin makes us feel how terrible it would be, is, to be young and to see nothing in life worth giving oneself to with a whole heart.

Later, at sea, on their way to a town where Ged hopes to pick up the trail of the mystery, he speaks to Arren:

“Nature is not unnatural. This is not a righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that.”
“A man?” said Arren, tentative.
“We men.”
“How?”
“By an unmeasured desire for life.”
“For life? But it isn’t wrong to want to live?”
“No. But when we crave power over life - endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality -_then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge
allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin lies heavy in the scale.”

It is a true sign of our times that on newsstands all over the country we can find “science” magazines that in almost every issue tell their readers, as a scientific fact, that soon human beings will be able, by taking the right drugs, etc., to make themselves immortal. For modern scientists have more and more turned themselves into magicians, makers of miracles, upsetters and re-writers of the laws of nature. But unlike the magicians of Earthsea, more and more of ours are without responsibility limits, or morals.  Their motto is “Any tricks we can do, we should do and will do, at whatever risk and cost.”

I have read the whole Earthsea trilogy several times now, each time with more pleasure. These are not just exciting, brilliant, and imaginative works of fantasy, though they are all of that. They are serious works of fiction, written to tell us something true and important. The theme of human beings wanting to have God-like powers and to deny death is an old one in myth and literature but few people have dealt with it more vividly and convincingly than Mrs. Le Guin in these stories.

HERLAND, by Charlotte Gilman ($2.65 + post). Written in 1915, this was a book far ahead of-its time, and may still be ahead of ours. It is a utopian novel, that is, a story about an “ideal” society. English literature is full of these; this one is unusual in three ways. First, the society it tells about is populated entirely by women. Secondly, this society, unlike those in many utopian novels, which are thinly disguised nightmares, is in fact a very attractive place that many people and I suspect many GWS readers would be happy to live in. I found it far more believable, and likeable, than the somewhat similar society described in the recent novel ECOTOPIA. And finally, unlike most books written to sell a set of ideas, this one is very gentle, good-natured, and often very comic. It may have some sermons (and good ones) to preach, but it does not hit us over the head with them.

The story begins when three men flying in a small airplane over remote South American jungles, discover this country, land in it, and set out to explore and study it. They soon find that the society for its own survival, is eager to learn all it can about them, and is very good (in a kindly way) at doing so. The men are very different (one is 100% macho), and their very different reactions to this society, and its reactions to them, make up the plot of this book. A very interesting, amusing, far-seeing, and hopeful tale.

OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, by C.S. Lewis ($1.75 + post.) This is the first part of a science-fiction trilogy written (unlike the Narnia books) for adults. Ransom, the narrator, is kidnapped by two ruthless and greedy men, a scientist and a wealthy businessman, who have built a machine that can travel through space. On this machine they have been once to Mars, which they hope to colonize and exploit. They plan to go again, this time taking Ransom with them to offer as a kind of sacrifice to the Martian natives. When they land, Ransom escapes them, and the book is about his travels on Mars, and how he meets, learns to speak with, and gets to know and love the three different kinds of intelligent beings who live there.

The book was written some time ago, I think in the 1930’s.  Lewis’s picture of Mars drew on the best scientific information and ideas about the planet of that time. But science changes, faster than we realize or than scientists (who tend to talk as if they were always a hair’s breadth away from final truth) like to admit. What we have since learned about Mars and space travel makes nonsense of the science pare of Lewis’s book. We used to think that Mars had a thin but breacheable atmosphere, oceans, and a network of interesting-looking canals. In their place our landing craft found a desert of red rocks. But no matter. If the Mars that Lewis believed in and wrote about does not exist, at least not in our solar system, we can wish that it did, for as Lewis described it, it is a most interesting and appealing planet, and the memory of it stuck vividly in my mind for many years.

Both before and after this book was written, people have written dozens or hundreds of science-fiction stories about human beings coming into contact with intelligent non-Earth beings. For the most part these have been what in the early days of science-fiction were called B.E.M.’s - Bug Eyed Monsters. One of the things I like most about this book is that his three Martian races are very vividly and believably drawn, all very different from us and from each other, and all very likeable. We feel very strongly the terror Ransom feels when, alone on a strange planet, fleeting for his life from his two Earth companions, he meets his first Martian, and we share his relief and later his excitement and joy as he overcomes his terror of him, becomes friends with him, and slowly learns to speak his language and understand his ideas. And the three Martian races, far more different from each other than any of we humans are from each other, like each other not just in spite of but because of their differences.

In short, Lewis is trying in this novel to give us a feel for what a world without evil might be like. He certainly makes it real and tempting. A wonderful story, and not just for adults - I would think that most children over twelve, and some younger, would like it very much. - JH

FLASH - we have just arranged to sell Kate Kerman’s excellent booklet, “Who Does What When - Curriculum Planning and Record keeping in the Home School.” Send $2 to Holt Assoc.

Editors - John Holt & Donna Richoux
Managing Editor - Peg Durkee
Subscriptions & Book Manager - Tim Chapman