GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING 18

We are trying out a lighter grade of paper for this issue; it allows us to increase the number of pages without costing us more in postage.
My home-schooling book is going to be called TEACH YOUR OWN; publication date is set at June 12, 1981. We will of course be selling it here, and we hope that as many readers as possible will buy it directly from us - but then again, we also hope you inquire for it at your local bookstore and try to get them to carry it. Not sure of the price yet.

I am about to leave on my California trip, which now includes stops in Santa Rosa, Mill Valley, Santa Cruz, San Jose, San Francisco, and Redlands. Our thanks to the GWS readers who helped put this trip together. And to those who were interested in having me speak but who could not be fit into the schedule: perhaps we could work on arranging another West Coast trip.
When I spoke at Normal, Ill. Oct. 29, I was surprised and delighted to see an overflow crowd of more than 700 people in the room. It seems to me, from talking with people on my travels as well as from the mail I get, that there are quite a lot of people in this country who are seriously considering teaching their own children; they may not be quite ready to do so, but they’re on the verge of deciding.
Mary Bergman (MO Dir.) tells us she has gotten “hundreds and hundreds” of letters in response to Paul Harvey’s newspaper column and radio show on the National Association of Home Educators.
The state legislatures in Louisiana and Wisconsin have recently passed new laws that mention the option of home education - more details in this issue. And a Colorado home schooling family told me on the phone the other day that they had a great deal of cooperation and support from the State Dept. of Education, even though their local school district had been giving them trouble. They said they would write us about it soon.

About the move in the Virginia legislature to tighten the private school “loophole” (see GWS #16), Abbey Lawrence writes: “…The subcommittee has met twice thus far. Rose Jones tells me that, according to the reporter who covered the fist, half the members seem to want to leave well enough alone, and half seem to want to do something, but don’t know what. I’m optimistic.”
A volunteer has just made an index to Issues #1-8 of GWS, and we should have copies available soon. Also, other volunteers are putting together a resource list of all the addresses of the organizations, periodicals, material, etc. that have been mentioned in GWS. If it’s short enough, we may include a copy of this list with GWS #19. - John Holt

COMING LECTURES

March 18, 1981: William Rainey Harper College, Palatine IL 60067; aft mtgs, 8 PM lecture. Contact Jeanne Pankanin, Stu. Act., 312-397-3000 ext. 242.
Apr 24: Music Educator’s Nat’l Conference, Arena, Minneapolis MN. 11 AM mtg, Minneapolis Convention Hall. Contact: Gene Morlan, 1902 Assoc. Dr, Reston VA 22091.
May 9: Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation Conf., Airport Holiday Inn, Lancaster, Ontario. Contact Bob Morrow, 416-627-3685.

MAKING OF AN UNSCHOOLER

From Karen Franklin (AL):

…My 5th grade class was very interested in the Bicentennial in 1976. After several days of discussing the American Revolution, Boston Tea Party, Stamp Act, etc, I gave the required quiz. One of the questions was: “What is a boycott?” Now, this was a 5th grade in an all black school in Birmingham, Alabama. Out of 30 kids, only two explained the word in terms of the Stamp Act and American boycott of English imports. The other 28 said - and I quote - “It’s when you ain’t gonna ride the bus no more.”
For about two minutes that answer puzzled me, then it hit me - what else would you expect black Alabama 11-year-olds to say? They have heard about the Montgomery bus boycotts that helped start the Civil Rights movement since they were born. Of course that’s what it means. I grabbed the chance to use it and we compared the 1770’s to the 1960’s and I saw eyes all over the room light up - the ah-hah! look. It was wonderful.
I was so excited about it, I told the whole story in the afternoon faculty meeting. Everyone, including the black principal, was much more concerned that the students didn’t answer the question “RIGHT.” I was instructed to mark 28 answers wrong so they would learn to pay attention and “get their lessons.”
I didn’t do it; instead I quit in January before the birth of our first child and decided then and there both of us would stay home. We’ve been learning together ever since…

TRAVEL NETWORKS

From Elaine Andres, 2120 W. Cashman Ct, Peoria IL 61604:

…My husband John and I would like to offer another idea for unschoolers which is similar to the Learning Exchange idea in GWS #16. We would like to start a Network for Educational Travel (NET) for unschoolers. Anyone interested in having some other home-schooling family visit their part of the country can send us their name and address. We will put this information on a card. When a family wants to visit some place they can write to us for names of families who are willing to host them during their visit. The two families can then work out the details of the visit.
We are willing to provide floor space for sleeping bags, a kitchen for cooking their own meals (each family furnishes its own food), a bathroom (bring own towels, soap, etc.) and our ideas on what to do and where to go in Central Illinois.
Our area has many interesting places to visit and experiences to offer. I’m sure every part of our country has unique sights to see and places to explore. We hope others would be willing to share their homes with us as this would be an inexpensive way to educate our children together. It would be a lot of fun sharing ideas, too!…

Many thanks to Elaine for her good offer. It will be exciting to see what comes of it.
We have also heard of a similar on-going organization for world travel: U.S. SERVAS, 11 John St, Rm 406, New York NY 10038. With the dollar in decline, many people from other countries are visiting the US, and this might be a good way for GWS readers to make friends with them and perhaps learn their language. From the SERVAS brochure:

SERVAS is an international cooperative system of hosts and travelers established to help build world peace, good will, and understanding by providing opportunities for deeper, more personal contacts among people of diverse cultures and backgrounds.
…Have you ever wished you could get beyond the tourist attractions and know the people where you travel? SERVAS may be the answer… You plan your own trip using lists of hosts in the countries where you wish to go. These lists give the hosts’ addresses, phone numbers, languages spoken, activities, and interests. You share the everyday life of the family whom you visit. Stays are usually 2 or 3 days. …There is a small contribution to cover SERVAS expenses. No money is exchanged between travelers and hosts.
SERVAS invites you to be a host. …”For those of us who can’t travel,” says one host, “SERVAS brings the world into our living rooms through the visits of friendly, enthusiastic people from every continent.”
Hosts share their family meals with travelers and provide accommodations that will fill simple needs. SERVAS travelers …are expected to arrange the visit with you beforehand by letter or phone. Hosts are urged to avoid accepting travelers when they are planning to be away, or if the arrangements would interfere with important plans.
To obtain a traveler and/or host application, send SERVAS a long-sized self-addressed stamped envelope…

AN UNSCHOOLING CO-OP

From Laurie Davis (MI):

…We have been unschoolers for nearly three years, and have recently become part of a group of “home” schoolers with the addition of four families.
Perhaps you would like to know how we are operating on a group level. We five families take turns meeting one day a week at alternating homes for a “school day” which consists of a variety of activities hosted by one or more adults and usually includes eight children ages 5-11. We have done things like potato-printing art, writing or dictating autobiographies, fruit harvesting at a commercial orchard, having a sandwich concession at a local art fair, and opening a bank account with the money well-earned. (The money will be used for supplies or for future field trips, possibly to the Chicago Museum of Natural History, which is quite a trek for 22 of us from northern Michigan!) We try to focus on developing and maintaining positive self-images; to do quiet, thoughtful things together like yoga and brief meditation; to talk about feelings and interests - really trying to notice what goes on inside as well as outside of ourselves.
One trip to a small local zoo prompted a follow-up trip to the library where we did research on a chosen animal, discovering its real habitat, how natural life differed from zoo life, how the zoo could be changed to be more accommodating. The children really enjoy the field trips and the chance at interaction, sharing fun and learning. The once-a-week socializing is far superior to what they would get in school on a daily basis.
Other main focuses are environment, health, and conservation, and there is always lots to do as a group in those areas: visiting Michigan’s last remaining virgin forest, or preparing a meal from scratch, or recycling old clothing into new garments. A few of these we haven’t done yet - we have such a long exciting list! Basically, we as a group have resolved to do reading/math-type work at home on an individual basis, and group or community projects weekly or whenever something special comes up which would be enjoyed by most. We find by remaining fairly informal, open, and honest, there is very little concern with group dynamics or decision-making type stuff.
We may be able to use our local elementary school gym for playing in the winter time. It is open for public use as long as advance notice is given and it’s not already being used. Same goes for the school library, audio-visual aids, etc.
As far as how we have all managed to take our kids out of school: we are very fortunate to have amongst us three certified teachers, so the question of where do we get our tutors is automatically answered. There have not been many questions by local authorities concerning this arrangement… We’ll be sure to let you know of further developments in this area.
…We try to have regular meetings with the adults of the group to discuss our home-schooling experiences, and to share ideas, support, doubts, and fears. We are all getting to know each other better and find the “safety in numbers” element a definite plus, as opposed to being unschooler alone.
Some of us have our doubtful moments: “Am I doing the right thing?” “Is X really going to learn how to read all by herself?” It really helps to have each other (and GWS) for reassurance. And we have to remind ourselves not to come on as in the traditional teacher-student situation. You can tell when you’re getting “structured” - the kids clam right up! You have to stop and think why the kids are at home instead of in school. If you really trust them, I think they can feel that and it really adds to their self-confidence.
The Middletons (see Dir.) would be interested in exchanging letters with other home schoolers who might consider a kid exchange in the future. They have pre-teen and teenage daughters. Maybe an exchange could be initiated by “pen-pals” getting to know one another and eventually arranging a meeting… Most of the parents I have talked to seem to have reservations about actually sending one of their kids to the home a stranger, unschoolers or not. Maybe the whole thing does need to be tossed around awhile before anything positive comes of it.
…We may be building our house next summer and it would be fun to share the whole experience with someone to whom it would mean a lot. We would probably live in a tent or other makeshift shelter during the building process. We will be anxious to share ideas with others out there - anybody could write us.
…Also, I think it would be wonderful - at our house at least - if we could get a foster grandparent somewhere, part- or full-time. It is something we have given thought to many times; we are so limited within our nuclear families. Children (as well as myself) always seem to be in awe of older people, and there would be so much to share. I’m sure there must be many lonely and talented older people out there who would just love to have a family! In all the advertising and recruiting I have seen for intentional communities, there have never been any requests for grandparently types…
Even a teenager who likes younger kids and would be interested in spending time with us as a mother’s/ kids’ helper in exchange for room and board or something equitable would be considered. It could be for a week or two or a month or more…

LIVE-INS WANTED: NC…

From Shelly Dameron in NC (GWS #17, “Learning Exchanges”):

…Two articles in GWS #17 caught my eye. …First, I read “Live-in Babysitters.” You may remember that I wrote that it was difficult to find a job where my baby would be welcome. Having a live-in babysitter would be a good solution, but the problem would still be money. The article following that one on the idea of a Kids Exchange, sparked my thought: How about a combination of both? That is, teenagers living with a different family for whatever reason, might be willing to help out with the babysitting.
We live in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. In the winter months, I’m told we have good skiing, and in the summer there are many outdoor activities. I would be interested to know if any young people or parents among the GWS readers would be interested our particular situation. Perhaps someone could come to be in this area for a week or month or whatever and stay with us. The babysitting itself would be minimal…

…AND VA…

From Connie Schwartz, Golden Horseshoe Inn, Stanardsville VA 22973:

…After 16 issues of GWS, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps we have something very valuable to offer to others. First, we teach our four sons at home (ages 1-1/2, 3, 5, & 6-1/2). Second, home is an old brick/ frame house located on the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, adjacent to the Shenandoah National Park. We own approximately 20 acres and a motorcycle sales and repair shop. We live a life as nearly self-sufficient as possible. We raise sheep, ducks, rabbits, bees, chickens, fatten some pigs and just recently acquired a milk cow - a long desired dream. We breed, raise, fatten, slaughter, butcher, and preserve all our own animals. We also do extensive gardening, starting our own plants and preserving all we don’t eat.
I feel we have a large variety of experience to offer. Mechanical, farming chores of all kinds (fencing, worming, feeding, loving, etc.), gardening ( we practice organic), food preservation and storage, cooking (we make most things from scratch including bread and butter), complete building construction, logging and wood cutting, beekeeping, homemaking, actually the list goes on and on. We are currently looking for a spinning wheel and floor loom so we can spin and weave our own wool.
Our children are included in all of this and we’d like to share it with others who haven’t the chance otherwise. No age limits, but they’ll either have to do enough work for their keep, or pay some room and board. We have no TV or radio, but lots of books and the bookmobile comes literally to our front door twice monthly. We have an endless list of projects to be done and never enough time.
We are willing to share our home and the life we love in return for the labor and knowledge of another. Witnessing the reaction of a newcomer to this type of life will also be enriching. This would have to be arranged on a personal basis with anyone interested, of course, but we are looking for people of clean living habits. We feel a bit shaky making this offer, as there are all kinds of kooks and weirdos in the world, but we still feel that there would be many benefits to all parties. For further information please contact us at the above address…

…AND WISC.

From Gretchen Spicer, RT 1 Box 85, New Lisbon WI 53950:

…We would be interested in both a live-in babysitter and the kids exchange. We live on a farm with two other families. Altogether there are nine children at the farm ranging in age from 6 weeks to 10 years. We have goats (for milk) and a very large garden, apple trees, grapes, raspberries, etc. We also have a T-shirt screening business. We do maple-sugaring in the spring. We would be glad to have kids of any age on an exchange basis.
We could offer a live-in babysitter room and board and $50 a month for about 10 hours of babysitting per week. We have four children ages 10, 7, 6 and 2. The 2-year-old is the only one that actually needs to be “watched.” The three older children only need someone around if they need help. A young person living with us could also make additional money babysitting on an hourly basis for the other two families here, besides some part-time work in the T-Shirt business. Other part-tine work on neighboring farms might be available from time to time. Anyone interested could call us collect at 608-562-3969.
…I was interested in the comment from Louise Andrieshyn (GWS #17, “A Singing Painter”). She mentioned that her daughter did not start singing until she left her alone. I noticed recently that when I was helping my kids with their reading that I sometimes found myself getting up and doing household chores, in which case I did not hear their requests for help, or I would try to put them off until I was finished with what I was doing. On the other hand, if I sat right by them and watched what they were doing, I found myself jumping to explain things that they could surely have figured out and worse yet, becoming bossy and impatient.
Quite by accident I found the perfect solution one day when I was engrossed in a novel that I couldn’t put down and they wanted help with their work books. I just sat close at hand and continued reading. I was right there and available when they wanted help, but not so bored that I was sticking my nose into their business all the time. Best of all, there I was actively enjoying the very skill that they were working to master. Now I really look forward to sitting down with them to work on reading…

WHAT GENIUSES NEED

A reader sent us an article, “The Childhood Pattern of Genius,” which appeared in Horizon Magazine, May 1960. The writer, Harold G McCurdy, describes the childhood of twenty notable “geniuses,” including John Stuart Mill, Goethe, Pascal, Coleridge, and Voltaire. The article concludes:
…In summary, the present survey of biographical information on a sample of twenty men of genius suggests that the typical developmental pattern includes as important aspects: (1) a high degree of attention focused upon the child by parents and other adults, expressed in intensive education measures and, usually, abundant love; (2) isolation from other children, especially outside the family; and (3) a rich efflorescence of fantasy as a reaction to the preceding conditions. It might be remarked that the mass education of our public school system is, in its way, a vast experiment on the effect of reducing all three factors to a minimum; accordingly, it should tend to suppress the occurrence of genius…

INFO SOURCE: NY…

From Harold Ingraham, INDEPENDENT FAMILY SCHOOLS RESOURCE CENTER (RD 1, Smyrna NY 13464; 607-627-6670):

…Please feel free to refer any family to us. A few of those who read of our center in the Directory of GWS #15 called us just to chat and lift their spirits. I think sometimes this is the best part of the services we provide. There is nothing like talking to a trusted colleague.
…The resource center is far from being like the standard social world. We just feel that our experience can be a help to parents getting their feet wet. Since we won our case in the courts, there has been a steady stream of cases that we have helped.
I have listed what we have done in the way of helping families. The experiences go like this:
1. How to meet with a public school official
2. Dealing with lawyers
3. A run-down on NY education laws
4. Recognizing the unique individuality of a child
5. Help in writing up a curriculum to present to a Board of Education
6. Referral to legal help
7. Simply a shoulder to lean on when the going gets tough
8. Training workshop in using a library
9. Correspondence with family-school students who like to write and be written to on interesting topics
10. Suggesting a reading study list in classical literature
11. A do and don’t list of how to break the news of new-found educational independence to society
12. How to use the news media effectively when in court
13. A list of available correspondence, private, and Christian schools
14. Referral to good private tutors
15. Workshops in teaching reading and math skills
16. Textbook selection and resources for good books (like the GWS list)
17. Publications that help a family-school get started and give good advice, like GWS
18. Planning and preparation before starting a family-school, such as getting the idea across to the children

And here are a few things we would like to do:
1. To finish our NY educational law manual which states the law and how to comply as a family school, with practical advice on how to deal with public school officials
2. Provide a guideline for writing a curriculum
3. Provide more workshops for parents who want training in teaching skills to their children..

…AND NJ

Meg Johnson (337 Downs St, Ridgewood NJ 07450; 201-447-4044) writes:

…I established the HOME EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER this summer, at the request of several friends around the country. I have a considerable amount of information and ideas on home schooling and wish to share it. (The only problem being I can’t afford this venture.)
I’m offering a booklet including “A Preliminary Guide for Preparing to Teach Children at Home,” and “Do Children Really Need Peer Group Socialization?” for $3.00. I also have a list of books for people interested in home schooling, a list of home study courses, and address list for sources of material, a packet on how to set up a support group, a sample of an academic program accepted by a local school district…
Donations of any amount would be appreciated as materials will only be sent out as there are sufficient funds. Handling, printing, and distribution costs 20¢ per page or more…

SCHOOL IN PA.

From Sandy Hurst at UPATTINAS SCHOOL, RD 1, Box 378, Glenmoore PA 19343 (215-458-5138):

…We are willing to have ourselves listed as a school which takes home study students. We are developing independent study courses which have been successful with some students, and others use the Pa. State University extension courses for high school. We like to work with each student individually according to his/ her needs.
One child is severely brain damaged and his mother works so well with him that we do not interfere. We simply keep him on our rolls. This way his public school doesn’t have to cope with him and his family can have him at home. This particular mother had all sorts of difficulty with the schools until she told them that the child was enrolled here, and I wrote them an official letter. Neither of us has heard from them since.
Last year we had a waiting list for our school and had several students doing work at home so that they could get out of bad situations in their local schools while waiting for space in our school. One girl just needed to get a few credits so that she could save face to go back to her old school. So you see, we are pretty flexible as to what goes. We do recommend that students become minimally involved in the school if it seems possible - they come to meetings sometimes and help out with special affairs. We charge $75.00.
So far we do not feel any pressure to be secretive. We feel that we will simply continue to do what we’re doing and if the authorities ask questions we’ll deal with that when it happens…

CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL

From Mrs. Carol A. Christopher of the BETHANY HOMESTEAD CHRISTIAN RESOURCE CENTER (RFD 1 Box 220, Taylor Rd, Thompson CT 06277; 203-928-0453):

…We have heard of your work and have read some of the recent magazine interviews concerning your program. The Bethany Homestead Christian Resource Center is also an organization supporting home schooling. We are a small Seventh-day Adventist self-supporting group providing school books, materials, schedule helps and, when necessary, a support umbrella if school authorities inquire.
Our curriculum is a combination work-study program set according to individual student needs. We offer two correspondence-type programs to aid parents who teach at home. We serve families all across the United States, Canada, and a few foreign countries.
…The cost for enrollment is $100 per family for one year - September through June. If more than one family has joined together to form a school, the cost is the same, since all information is being sent to one location…

MORE “COVER SCHOOL” NEWS

From the Michigan Coalition of Alternative Schools Newsletter:

…The HOME BASED EDUCATION PROGRAM was started officially in August, using office space at Clonlara (1289 Jewett, Ann Arbor MI 48104; phone 313-769-4515) and directed by Pat Montgomery (Dr. Pat Montgomery now, mind you!) Of course, there is no way of knowing how many Michigan families are doing home study but the number who are actually enrolled in H.B.E.P. now is 32 students. Another 115 have made inquiries…

From Bonnie Williams, OAK MEADOW SCHOOL (PO Box 1051, Ojai CA 93023, 805-646-4510):

…We presently have 55 students enrolled from all over the US and so far so good. We recently had a case in Northern Calif. where the sheriff visited a mother and told her to report to school. She approached the Superintendent of schools and told him that she was enrolled in our home study program and wanted to make it legal. He merely sent her down the hall to fill out an affidavit and the people in the office even helped her to fill it out…

Ed Nagel tells us that the SANTA FE COMMUNITY SCHOOL (PO Box 2241, Santa Fe NM 87501) has enrolled over 200 home-study students since 1976 - 115 in 1980-81 so far.

Other schools that have told us recently that they are willing to help home-schoolers:

HOME SCHOOL, Manuela Schreiner, 849 Drake St, Cambria CA 93428; (805) 927-4137.
JONATHAN’S PLACE, Pat & Marshall Martin, 4301 Harrison, Kansas City MO 64112; (816) 753-5392 or 444-3168.
HOLT SCHOOL, Ann Bodine, Box 866, New Providence NJ 07974.
HALVI SCHOOL, H. Baer, 124 N Paredes Line Rd, Brownsville TX 78520; (512) 546-1449.
THE JOHN HOLT LEARNING CENTER, James Salisbury, 8446 S Harrison St, Midvale UT 84047.

HOME STUDY IN ALASKA

A reader in Alaska writes:

…There is an elaborate homeschooling correspondence course in Fairbanks. When we enrolled our daughter this spring, they offered no objections - in filling out her forms, we were simply asked to give a reason for using the correspondence school and I had the feeling that they would have accepted any reasonable-sounding explanation. They took the form and handed us five big boxes of materials - workbooks, art materials, books to read. The workbooks are boring and stupid but required. According to the correspondence teachers, there are about 50 children (all grades) in the Fairbanks school district who use the program. This Fairbanks office is only for students within the school district - the “bush” students work through Juneau, the head office…

L.D. ARTICLE

My friend Merritt Clifton, who publishes a small literary magazine, Samisdat, recently wrote a long article called, “Learning Disabilities: What the Publicity Doesn’t Tell.” It is quite extensive, thorough, and skeptical of the whole notion of “LD” - good ammunition for any who are concerned with fighting this battle. It was printed in two issues of The Townships Sun (Box 28, Lennoxville, Que. J1M 1Z3), which Merritt says, “is a good, family-oriented monthly news-magazine focusing on alternative energy, handicrafts, back-to-the-earth, and almanac-type historical curiosities.” For $1.50, Merritt will send you clips of the article; for $2.50, the complete issue of The Townships Sun. Send US or Canadian money to him at Box 129, Richford VT 05476, or Box 10, Brigham, Quebec, J0E 1J0.

CONN. HOME-SCHOOLERS

The Tromblys (CT) sent this story from their local paper:

…David Cole, assistant superintendent of East Lynne Schools, admitted the Trombly’s request “took some getting used to,” but that now a “very positive relationship” exists between the two sides.
What Cole and other educators don’t say, however, is that home education is available to practically any family who wishes to give it a try. For instance, there are no requirements that parents be certified instructors. Even the state law, which education department spokesmen declined to comment on, is so vague it is almost impossible to prevent anyone from educating their children at home, as long as they have the time.
Under Section 10-184 of the Conn. General Statutes, children between the ages of 7 and 16 must attend a public school “unless the parent…is able to show that the children are elsewhere receiving equivalent instructions in the studies taught in the public schools.” Thus far, no cases have gone to court regarding the home education issue in Connecticut.
…Where there used to be only a few correspondence schools for the interested parent to choose from, there now are many, which perhaps better than any other yardstick, measures the growth of home education programs…

Eileen Trombly added:

…You might be relieved to know that, although as yet unlisted in GWS, there are many interested people preparing to “home-instruct.” The many we have spoken with all have pre-school children and want to “get it all together” ahead of time. We do recommend to them that they draw up their plans before meeting with any officials, and have a plan of action ready to submit, but not to do so until the necessary time (age 6 in Conn.).
We also have suggested agreeing to allow their children to be given standardized tests twice a year, and agreeing to instruct 180 days per year, minimum 4 hours per day. The testing is to satisfy local and state boards. This, along with a curriculum, seems to be all that’s necessary to turn in to the superintendent.
As you are aware - the standardized testing is almost worthless, but it satisfies them. We do not agree to any other type of testing. Several years back an incident came up whereby a teacher administrating the tests gave her own type of test - asking the girls questions that indicated to her that they were “unhappy because they missed their school friends.” Her personal opinion on this whole idea was given at the conclusion of the test in writing. We stopped this.
Anyway - as more people get involved in the actual instruction process, they will include their names in the directory. They are anxious to…

LETTER FROM CALIF.

From a reader in California:

…After five years in the Orient, we decided to educate our children ourselves.  My husband is a writer and artist with an in M.A. in Philosophy, and I have a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence.  Sam and Sara spent most of their childhood traveling in Asia and only returned to America when they were seven (1975).
We bought land in an isolated part of northern California, started building our solar house and growing our own food.  It never occurred to us to notify any authorities, as our place is over forty miles from the county seat and we have no neighbors to complain about the children not going to school.
I’d never taught (though my husband has taught painting and History of Art) but decided to start our “school” by exposing Sara and Sam to everything we loved:  good literature, art, and music.  During the long rainy winter I spent most of the day reading out loud:  The Greek, Norse, Celtic, and Egyptian myths; the Ramayana and Mahabarata; Homer, Shakespeare, Tolkien, Keats, and Shelley.  We constantly played tapes of Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Vivaldi, and Indian ragas, and brought home books from the library on painting, sculpture, archaeology, and architecture, which we all looked at together.  The children used to snuggle close and look over my shoulder as I read aloud, and within two years were reading on their own “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, Howard Pyle, and Robert Louis Stevenson.  We subscribe to several magazines that they eagerly read:  National Geographic, Natural History, World, Ranger Rick, and the Sunday New York Times.  Whenever they were interested in a topic (King Tut, dinosaurs, Columbus) we’d find a book at the library and read up on that particular subject…
We had no system for teaching math, but noticed that the children quickly taught themselves how to count money, make change, and add up the cost of groceries when we made our weekly shopping trip to town.  Sam and Sara drew and painted a lot, wrote stories and poems and made up their own plays with beautiful costumes.  We supplemented the indoor activities with daily work on the farm:  gardening, carpentry, chopping wood, cooking, and caring for our animals.
The children seemed healthy and happy except for one thing - they longed for other children and we just didn’t know any, living so far out from town.  Finally in October 1978 we rented a house in the town and enrolled them in a small private school so they could enjoy the social life they were begging for.
In a short time we knew we had made a mistake.  The joy went out of their faces, they were constantly tired and irritable, and all creative energy evaporated to be replaced by television, “Buck Rogers,” and “Star Wars.”  Their conversations at home was mostly how mean or crazy the other kids were, and who did what nasty thing to whom that day at school.  We hated the change but stuck it out for two winters because this “social” life seemed so important and we thought we would all adjust.
To get an inside view of the school, I volunteered as a History teacher so I could get to know the other children, but what I saw really made me sad, and strengthened our feelings that there is something seriously wrong with American families to produce such neurotic children.  There were only a few I found to be normal, happy children.
Now we’ve spent the summer months back on our farm and have definitely decided to give up school and the house in town.  Sara is painting, baking, sewing, and writing poems again.  Sam is sleeping well and putting on weight, losing his cranky, irritable look he got in town, and once more is singing, writing stories, and whistling as helps us around the farm.
…I hope to solve the need for other children by inviting kids from town up on weekends and I’ll let you know that works out…

PERSONAL POLITICS

Norma Luce wrote in the Oct. ‘80 Home Educators Newsletter (PO Box 623, Logan, UT 84321;  $17.50 / yr.):
…What would happen if each of you, in your various and separate states, became personally acquainted with the legislative representative in your area, not your state, just your area?  These men [ed. - & women] need to be educated.  They need to hear about what you are doing.  They need to meet your children.  They need to hear your views on your inalienable constitutional rights.  They need to see your effectiveness.  Then, when adverse legislation comes up they’ll stand and say “I don’t see any need for it.  I PERSONALLY KNOW PEOPLE WHO ARE EDUCATING THEIR CHILDREN AT HOME.  THEY ARE DOING A WONDERFUL JOB.  I believe they should be left alone.”
What if, after this legislator speaks, seventeen others from different areas in the state stand and say the same thing.  What if three-fourths of the state House of Representatives and two-thirds of the state Senate personally know families who are successfully educating their children?…  It’s so simple.  No traveling, no big amounts of money expended.  Just talk to your neighbor, the one that you have elected to represent your area in the state legislature…

DEVELOPING SKILLS

From Lori Smith (NY):
…I have been intending to write in praise of GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING but never got around to it until this evening.  Though I am thoroughly fascinated by the information and ideas contained in each issue, the fact that my husband I have no children (yet) made me feel more like an observer, not a participant.  However, Issue #17 spoke directly to me, especially “The Process of Work.”
I am 25 years old and have been grappling with the problem:  what do I do with my life now that I have a BA degree in English but no idea of what WORK I should do?  The struggle has been deciding between a career in “”EDUCATION” (because it is a “respectable” profession) or simply puttering around learning all I can about embroidery, weaving, and textile arts in general (because I love thread, yarn, needle, fabric, and sewing).
Even though I suffered through a few education classes in college and decided that I wanted nothing to do with schools, I have recently questioned that decision, wondering if I quit because I was just too cowardly to cope with the unpleasantness of herding children through their lives.
Then I read:  “…Six adult ‘teachers’ had all done many kinds of work before they began teaching, and all brought to the school a number of visible and interesting skills.”
And, “Adults must use the skills they have where children can see them.”
I realized that for me, it is important to develop the skills that will enable me to do the work that I love.  I also realize how much I have been brainwashed by my own schooling (which I hated) to fit into society - doing something “respectable” like teaching.
Thank you for the encouragement I needed to finally decided in favor of learning real skills.
As far as teaching, the most rewarding teaching experience I’ve had was when my nine year old niece saw me sewing and asked me to teach her.  We rummaged around for a scrap of cloth, thread, and needle, and I showed her how to make a draw-string bag for her doll.  We worked for hours; she had great difficulty getting accustomed to holding the needle.  Her hand began to hurt and she pricked herself many times, but I was amazed at how deliberate and careful she was to make the stitches small and even - ripping out those that were unsuitable and doing them over and over.  When the bag was finished she was so thrilled and excited that she decided to keep it for herself to carry change and tissue.
As I said before, I have only praise for what GWS is doing for children and parents, but I am even more grateful for what I am learning about myself and my own education.  I guess it amounts to un-schooling myself after 25 years…

UNUSUAL SCIENTIST

A UPI story from Eight Dollar Mountain, OR:

…You wouldn’t expect to find a space-age scientist living with computers and telescopes atop a roadless hill on the edge of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, 30 miles southwest of Grants Pass, Oregon.
But then, Paul Lutus is a man who’s spent his 33 years doing things in different ways.
…As a bookwormish “extremely precocious and arrogant 12-year-old,” he idolized Albert Einstein.  Believing school would “lead to ruin,” the 7th grader dropped out to study astronomy and electronics on his own.
When his parents didn’t accept that decision, he moved out.  Under the wing of a foster family, the 12-year-old became a television repairman.  A 16 he qualified for a Federal Communications Commission radio-television license and later worked as a radio announcer in San Jose, Cal.
At 20 he launched a career as a “street person.”  He earned a panhandler’s living in San Francisco by sketching portraits, singing folk song, strumming his guitar, holding bubble-blowing classes.
He switched to a research associate position at Mt. Sinai Medical School In New York.  Then he pedaled his bicycle from New York to Colorado where he took a job designing research equipment for the molecular biology department at the University of Colorado.
In 1974 Lutus began work as a NASA consultant in San Francisco.  He moved to his hill at the base of Eight Dollar Mountain a year later.  He designed computer programs that helped the Viking spacecraft fly to Mars, and he’s the electronics engineer who invented a new kind of lighting for the space shuttle.
His lifestyle (no running water, no telephones, no roads) may seem unconventional, but he says, “I do a lot better work up here.”…

SHE LEARNED AT HOME…

From Ruth Stewart (KS):

…You might be interested to know that I was myself an “unschooler.”  My parents became missionaries in Colombia when I was six.  There were five of us children at the time (and I was the second oldest, so you can see how close in age we were!) and a few months after we arrived in Colombia we adopted an infant who was brought to our doorstep half-starved.
For our meager resources the Calvert courses were too expensive, and my parents felt strongly about not wanting to place their work before their children, hence they did not wish to send us away to boarding school as is a common practice for missionary families in remote areas.  My mother had done some school teaching in the States and before we moved she procured an assortment of new and used textbooks for first through sixth grade - English, arithmetic, science, geography, history, health, writing.
She would make out a list of daily assignments for each of us, sometimes weeks in advance.  We worked almost entirely on our own, coming to her only if we had questions we couldn’t find answers for by ourselves.  Almost immediately I moved up to my older sister’s level, and that made things a bit easier for Mom because there was one fewer set of assignments to make.  Mom would check our written work and show us any errors she had found, but she never graded.
My parents are both great readers and we all inherited it.  I loved doing my reading and grammar assignments.  When I was seven, one day I completed the third grade grammar book and my mother gave me the fourth grade one to look at.  I glanced through it and realized that it was all review of things I already knew.  Mom took my word for it and the next day I started the fifth grade book.  It was that kind of flexibility that I particularly value in looking back.
Our lessons didn’t take us very long most days and then we were free to play.  Needless to say, there was no television and we had few of the toys most modern American parents consider vital for a child’s stimulation.  We made trains out of packing boxes and then set them on their sides and they were dollhouses.  We were given some puppets and we wrote our own puppet shows.  We pored through children’s crafts books to find things that we could make to amuse ourselves.  We rode bikes, played in the park, participated in church activities, made friends with neighborhood children.
Most of all, we read and made up stories.  My younger sister and I wrote our own little books of poems, stories, drawings, puzzles, and jokes.  We lay awake in bed at night sharing spontaneous fantasies.  My mother enrolled us in various book clubs and children magazines, and we devoured each month’s offering hungrily.  We found penpals all over the world and wrote innumerable letters.
Our learning in science was a bit sketchy.  My parents are more interested in the “humanities” end of learning than in the scientific end.  Still, I remember a good many hours I enjoyed browsing through numerous natural history books for children.  Recently I was amused to find one of these and read on the fly-leaf, written laboriously in my eight-year-old cursive, “This is my favorite book.  I wish it had ALL science in it!”
By the time I was 10 and my older sister barely 11, we had finished all the sixth-grade texts.  My parents decided to send us to stay with my grandmother in Kansas City and attend a private Christian school…  I had eagerly anticipated returning to the U.S. - after all, the textbooks I had studied eulogized the American way as if it were unquestionably the best way of life.  It wasn’t long after I began school, though, that I realized everything wasn’t quite as I had expected.  I was 10 years old, coming straight from the jungle, in a classroom of 12- and 13-year-old kids.  Academically I was practically at the head of my class, but that wasn’t very important in a setting where one had to dress right and talk right in order to be accepted.  I wasn’t ready to care about make-up, hose, hairstyles, and boyfriends.  So I associated principally with the other misfits.  I developed an awkward shyness, spent much time watching TV, grew chubby, read romances from the public library, and scored at 11th grade level on achievement tests.  The next year, when my family was reunited, was better; I went to a different school and developed a few of the social graces necessary to survive in American early-teen culture.
At the end of my 8th grade year, my parents presented me with the choice of staying with Grandma or returning to Colombia…  With no question I chose the latter…
We lived in the jungle one more year and I studied University of Nebraska Extension courses - I was glad to see their letter in GWS #14.  It is a good program, offering a broad range of subjects.  …I whizzed through English and social studies and dallied over math and science.  In fact, biology was the only course that I remember as being thoroughly unsatisfactory for me.  The study of living things is of course much best done in direct interaction with those things; working from a book, for lack of a personal guide, is utterly uninteresting.
When we moved to the city I also continued the piano lessons I had begun in Kansas, and my sisters and I had opportunities to participate in choirs from time to time and to attend concerts.  I even took a harmony (basic music theory) course by correspondence.
Prior to my senior year we returned to Kansas City…  This time I found American school boring rather that frightening.  I had been used to scheduling my own time and I resented having to sit through study halls even when I had no homework.  The thought that every other person my age over the entire U.S. was rising about the same time I did, eating at the same time, trundling off to school and waiting for the sound of the bell over and over again every day, until he could finally go home again - well, it nauseated me.  I wrote a poem beginning “I feel like I’m wearing someone else’s life.”  Graduation was simply a relief.  College was much more enjoyable because of the freedom to make many of my own decisions about what I wished to pursue in studies and lifestyle.
As I look back, I particularly appreciate two things about my home schooling:  (1) the unstructured environment that, while providing me with set goals (completion of my text), allowed me ample freedom to  read, express my thought, and try my hand at numerous creative ventures; (2) the family bond.  E.F. Schumacher in SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL speaks of the dedicated man as being “truly in touch with the centre.  He will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his view on the meaning and purpose of his life… the conduct of his life will show a certain sureness of touch which stems from his inner clarity.”  I think it is our families who can best provide what we need for “inner clarity,” and mine certainly gave me a strong, stable sense of personal identity.  Of course home schooling was just one of many factors there, others being the type of work my parents did, their love for God which they communicated clearly to us, and my father’s beautiful, loving “fatherliness.”  As far as I can tell, he was a member of a rare breed among American men.  Most of my American friends remember their fathers as detached, remote.  Mine adored us and made sure each of us know he or she was very special in his eyes.
…My husband I began seriously talking about home schooling after hearing the interview with you, Mr. Holt, on NPR’s Options in Education.  J.D. went through a very traditional education in western Kansas but asserted that evening, “Well, if you’re a typical product of home schooling then I’m all for it.”  Sweet, eh?  J.D., by the way, is a paleontologist, a real nature-lover, and our daughter Claire and I have already learned a great deal from him.  I will certainly have no doubts regarding the quality of my children’s opportunities to “do” science!…

…AND SO DID HE

From David Baker (NY):

…It was with particular interest that I read the feature in The Mother Earth News.  I am now 35 years old and I grew up entirely without schooling.
I come from England, and just before I was born a bill became law that required all children between the ages of 5 and 15 (now 16) to receive full-time education.  My mother had very definite views on the matter.  Believing that children learn best at their own pace, that it was only necessary to make knowledge available to them, not push it down their throats, she refused to send any of her seven children to school.  (My parents were separated at that time - they are now divorced.)  Her action resulted in legal proceedings being taken against her by the Education Board, and she appealed on various counts over a period of about 10 years.  Finally, in 1961, she won the right to educate her own children.
The case generated a lot of publicity.  It was said that she had make legal and educational history.  Certainly the attitude of the authorities has changed considerably toward people who wish to educate their children other than by sending them to school.  In the book CHILDREN BY CHANCERY, my mother, Joy Baker, told the story of her legal battles which, because of financial difficulties, she conducted herself.
I believe that for a large number of children, school is far from the best way of equipping them for adult life.  But even more I believe in the right of the individual to decide how his or her children will be educated.  A child’s education is the single most important factor in deciding what sort of person he will become.
And that must surely be a parent’s responsibility…

INVENTOR

From the Nov-Dec. ‘79 Chip Chats, a magazine on woodcarving:

…When my father died, he had 105 American and Canadian patents, most dealing with components of railroad freight cars and some still in use.  He was unlettered and unsung, never having progressed beyond the fourth grade in school nor beyond a superintendency in a railroad-car plant.  He always felt hampered by his lack of formal education - which is a major reason why I, as his eldest son, have two degrees in engineering (but no patents).  His very lack of education may have been a blessing in disguise; he hadn’t been taught all the things that cannot be done, so his imagination was unfettered.
I can remember that he would sit and fish - or just  sit - and suddenly burst out with some new concept, the obvious result of his musing.  Other men, without patents, smiled over the time he “wasted,” kept asking “Where do you get these ideas?”  Some of the ideas were well ahead of their time, and some, I or others, on the basis of education, convinced him were impractical - until someone else invented them later and made a fortune…

ESCAPE FROM HIGH SCHOOL

From Lavonna Bennett, 637 Bennett Rd, Ionia MI 48846:

…As the years flew by, friends and neighbors proclaimed my son a mechanical and electronics genius, but his high school teacher called him a “stupid dummy.”
Rather than tolerate the name-calling, we sought alternatives to that particular class for our son.  When he was 14, he began taking a college class at the community college.  There, he found that instructors did not find it necessary to call students belittling names.  From then on, high school became intolerable because he’d seen how good learning can be!
…Many afternoons, he came home from high school angry at the verbal and physical abuse by teachers to other students as well as to himself.  Rebuilding his self-esteem after each high school day became a monumental task.
We took him out of high school in the middle of his junior year…  He’s 17 now and has managed two stores for an electronics-product firm, parlayed a $150 clunker car up to a classic sports car, has bought equipment for his recording studio, has been a mentor for an eight year old boy, helping him to organize model-train layouts, and has given guitar lessons.
All those wasted, institutionalized years!  He learned from private lessons, college classes, role-modeling and from life the skill he’s using now…

WHAT SCHOOL IS LIKE

From New England:

…I’ve never been to school before and I just went last week for a three-day visit.
The teacher’s name is Miss C.  The teacher was a pretty good teacher and I learned some interesting things.  (But she was a little odd.)  She wasn’t a very strict teacher but she did get mad when the kids fooled around too much.  We passed notes but she never caught us.  One day there was a substitute named Mrs. N. because Miss C. was sick.  She wasn’t such a good teacher and she was way too strict!  Everyone in the class hated her.
Everyone thought I was weird because I was new and didn’t go to school and didn’t eat meat.  The kids weren’t being very good to the teacher.  They were back-talking and wise-mouthing her.  They fooled around a lot too.  They never bothered me much.
There was one girl that played with me all the time.  I met her at a friend’s party.  Then met her at school again.  Now she is a good friend!  We are hoping that she can come over to my house or I can come to her house.
At school they taught spelling, math, social studies and we did reading and writing.  A kid and I were the best readers in the class.  I think that the work was very easy!
Each day there were six hours of school.  There was a recess at 10:30 a.m. then there was a recess from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and the last recess was at 2:00 until 2:30 so we only ended up doing 4 hours of school.  Sometimes you’d get done early and have to wait for the other kids to get done…

WHAT SCHOOLS COULD BE

From the Boston Globe:

WAYLAND TO RECYCLE A SCHOOL - With public school enrollment dropping dramatically in Wayland (Mass.) from 4100 students in 1971 to 2600 this year, it was inevitable that yet another elementary school would be closed.
But while school closings in Massachusetts are no longer unusual, the action of the local school board and selectmen regarding the Loker School, closed in June, is a novel approach to the reuse of a public school in an era of declining enrollment.
Instead of accommodating more than 350 students this fall, the Loker School, now the property of the Board of Selectmen, is about to become a cultural center for the town.
The school will be leased to four groups, with the largest tenant an organization called Art-Wayland.  Mardee Nordberg, chairman of Arts-Wayland’s space development committee, says availability of the Loker School will enable approximately 40 group members to set up studios, galleries, and classroom to practice and teach visual, performing, and literary arts.
Also renting space at the 21-year-old facility are an after-school day care center, a dance and gymnastics school, and The Education Collaborative, of which the Wayland school system is a member, and which would rent office space and provide some classes for special needs students.
“I think the whole concept is exciting and challenging and it’s a creative use for an abandoned school building,” said Wayland School Supt. William Zimmerman.  “It puts the emphasis on serving the local community - but in a different way than an elementary school would…
Herbert Odell, chairman of the Board of Selectmen … added:  “If we boarded up the school and didn’t use it for anything, it would still cost about $20,000 just to insure the building.”…

TESTING COMPROMISE

From Nancy Wallace (NH):

…For the past two years, the school people insisted that Ishmael take the Stanford achievement test.  They acted as though they couldn’t possibly understand why I was so opposed to this method of evaluation, since after all, it only tested kids on the bare minimums and everyone knows that Ishmael is very advanced for his age.  Through vocal outrage and obstinacy I did manage to get them to allow me to administer the test Ishmael at the school, which made things a bit nicer, but that’s as far as they would go.
This summer, though, we got a new superintendent and some other new staff and so once again we raised our objections to the standardized test.  This time the superintendent listened more closely and he even seemed to agree with us.  He nodded when I said that the test only measured how good you were at taking tests; that from the  test, I couldn’t discover Ishmael’s areas of strength and weakness since there were too many variables involved in the actual phrasing of the questions and the process a child must go through in order to mark the correct answer on the answer sheet; etc.
When I was done, he told me that not only did he agree with me, but that many of the teachers in the school district agree with me.  And then he added, “But I think Ishmael should take the test anyway.” …It dawned on me that the school people are primarily concerned with Ishmael’s ability to be like everyone else, if need be.
…I proposed a compromise, which the superintendent happily accepted.  Ishmael would take the test once a year, but I’d give it to him, here at the kitchen table, and it would be used only as test-taking practice, a little dose of “reality.”  The school people would see the results of the test and would get an idea of how ordinary Ishmael was, but they couldn’t use this information against us.  Our evaluation would be based solely on our portfolio (My daily log, a list of the books Ishmael reads from Sept.-June, his stories, etc.)  As an extra touch of normality, I asked that I be shown a copy of the test whenever I felt like it, since all classroom teachers have that privilege, and the superintendent agree to that too.  So if I feel like it, I can prepare Ishmael in advance…

TWO PUNISHMENT VICTORIES

An A.P. story from Albany, NY:

…The state’s education commissioner ruled Friday that schools cannot discipline students by lowering grades unless there is a definite connection between a student’s misconduct and academic performance.
In his ruling, Commissioner Gordon Ambach charged that the Galway Central School District had reduced the grades of one of its junior high school students purely as a disciplinary measure.
“A grade is intended as an educational evaluation,” Ambach said.  “In view of the other disciplinary measures available, the school board may not subvert the purpose of grading by arbitrarily reducing a student’s grades as a means of imposing discipline.”
However, Ambach said there were instances, such as cheating on an examination, where grade reductions might be acceptable.
…The commissioner said that on March 7, 1980, a 7th grader at the Saratoga County school “was involved in an incident in one of the boy’s lavatories” and was subsequently suspended for five days.  The student was allowed back into school, but school authorities, in accordance with district policy, ordered that he not be given any grade above 75% for the term … [even though] he actually had achieved grades of 90, 79, and 78…  Ambach ordered the grades restored.

From The Last Resort, Sept. ‘80 (977 Keeler Av, Berkeley CA 94708;  $10/yr):

…In 1977, headlines across the country screamed “SUPREME COURT OK’S SCHOOL SPANKING.”  Whether this was greeted with groans or grins, few doubted the finality of the decision.
We were wrong.
…Gertrude M. Bacon of Parents Anonymous of New York … said at the time and still believes that the case of Ingraham v. Wright was inadequately argued and was lost, essentially, by the attorney for the children, Bruce S. Rogow.  …”He continually and persistently narrowed his argument to one issue - cruel and unusual punishment - and did not allow himself to be led by the pertinent questions posed by Justices Marshall, Stevens, Rehnquist, and Brennan.  They kept opening the door, and he kept closing it - or I should say slamming it shut.”
…James Wallerstein said:  “There were a number of positive implications in the majority decision which the Civil Liberties groups should have jumped on:
‘Where school authorities acting under color of State Law, deliberately decide to punish a child for misconduct by restraining the child and inflicting appreciable physical pain, we hold that the Fourteenth Amendment liberty interests are implicated (p. 22).

“This means that school corporal punishment is a federal question, and not just a state one.”
The 1980 decision Hall v. Tawney which, in effect, reversed the Supreme Court’s decision of 1977, was greeted by the news media with a dull thud.  Education newsletters and journals carried the information but made little of it.
The three children of the Hall family, Mervin, Linda, and Naomi, each in turn were severely hurt by 7th grade teacher G. Garrison Tawney.  He had a handmade paddle fashioned from a hard rubber home-plate used in playground ball games.  He swung this vicious weapon indiscriminately and with such force as to put Naomi in the hospital for ten days.
The lawyer, Daniel F. Hodges of the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Charleston, WV, did his homework.  He went to the Federal Courts.  When the case was dismissed on the basis of Ingraham, he appealed and the 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals upheld his contention that the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment, in its substantive aspects, did protect children against brutality even though it was administered in school and in the name of discipline.
“Substantive due process” is a difficult concept for non-lawyers to grasp.  There are rather rigid rules about the rights of a suspect and the manner in which he may be taken into custody.  For example, forcible use of a stomach pump by police, and the unprovoked beating of a pretrial detainee by a guard … have been held to be unconstitutional … Teacher brutality was held comparable to police brutality.  The judgment states:

The existence of this right to ultimate bodily security - the most fundamental aspect of personal privacy - is unmistakably established in our constitutional decisions as an attribute of the ordered liberty that is the concern of substantive due process.

The decision is a landmark in that cases may be tried in Federal courts when there has been an injury or when the punishment is demonstrably greater than necessary to maintain order…

TONE-DEAF CHOIR

In regard to the “Tone Deaf” section in NEVER TOO LATE (GWS #16), Lisa C. Coffey, 2128 Memorial Av, Las Vegas NV 89119, wrote:
…Every year on the anniversary of the founding of the school I went to, it was traditional, among many festive activities, for the junior class to present a humorous skit.  When I was a junior, we decided to do a skit which was a parody on “chapel.”  We impersonated the headmaster, the teachers, etc, and burlesqued the whole routine.
Our chapel services always included a choral response sung by the choir, a very select and prestigious organization consisting of twelve of the best (or the twelve best) singers among the students.  Naturally, for our humorous skit, we put together a choir composed of the twelve “tone deaf” students.
I can remember very little of the skit (which was a smash hit) but I will always remember the choral response.  It didn’t occur to me that it was a rare event to hear twelve “tone-deaf” people sing together unabashedly a piece of music from start to finish.  There was a strange organic beauty to that song and my memory of having been privileged to hear it is a treasured gem.
Whenever I meet someone who claims to be “tone deaf” I try to get them to sing for me, but they never will.  Maybe they would if they thought I wanted to laugh at them, but I guess the thought that I find it unusual and beautiful throws them for the proverbial loop.  Oh, well, at least I got to hear it once, and it really was glorious…

FROM J.P.’S MOM

More from Kathy Mingl (IL) [”Meet J.P.”, GWS #16]:

…The discussion of art materials in GWS #16 interested me.  After reading about acrylics in GWS #9, I had dug out some old paints I used to mess around with in the old days when I had time for such things, and presented them to J.P. (age 2).  He was very enthusiastic about the whole business; his mother mostly came out feeling rueful and philosophical.  That kid has some kind of natural talent, all right, but I think it’s for housepainting.  His technique involves mixing all the colors thoroughly together, scrubbing them on industriously, and covering up every bare spot of paper.  His favorite color seem to be black.  I felt obliged to offer some diplomatic suggestions, but it’s not easy - he may not be a Michelangelo, but he’s awfully touchy.  (One time when he was using his watercolors, I interfered somehow - insisted he wash out his brush or something - and he got upset.  When I asked him if he was going to paint some more, he said, “No, I’m too sad of it.”)
What I finally got him to do was to paint gently, which seems to just about cover the situation, and I told him that you look at what you’re doing as you go along, and when it’s pretty, you stop.  I wouldn’t insist on that “pretty” bit, of course, but that’s what J.P. is into right now.  It’s probably something more like “when it looks like what you want it to.”
My excuse for imposing my notions of order on J.P. is that I’m the one who has to clean up after him if he makes a mess.  I tell him that when he can clean up after himself he can make all the messes he wants, but in the meantime he can learn to do it my way.  He does accept that, in general, unless I get too heavy about it.
By the way, one thing J.P. loves is soap paint.  I mix Ivory soap flakes with water to make a paste, and them combine it with food coloring in a plastic ice-cube tray to make as many different colors as I can.  J.P. glops it all over himself and the bathtub, and then sluices everything down with the shower hose.  He gets to make “pretties” and gets praised for cleaning up the bathtub all at one shot.  I don’t have to wash him at all, and it keeps him occupied and out of trouble for an entire afternoon.  I don’t put any water in the tub, so I can go off and do other things and not worry about him.  I do have to come back and admire his artwork periodically, and sometimes I make him rinse the bottom of the tub if it looks like it’s getting too slippery, although he’s usually pretty careful about that.
Another thing I’ve used food coloring for is ink for a toy stamp-pad set.  I cut a piece of foam rubber to fit in a covered soap dish and soaked it with several colors.  They work real well, and they should be pretty well non-toxic, although I don’t use them in food for the most part.
I get most of J.P.’s art materials from garage sales, especially paint and paper.  I just paid 50¢ for a slightly used set of artist’s water colors in tubes.  I like them better than acrylics because the colors are reusable after they dry in the mixing pan.  We’ve thrown out most of the little-kid cheapie sets J.P. had though - once you’ve used the real thing, those colors look yukky.
One thing I’ve noticed about correcting J.P. is that it’s easy to overdo it because there’s no instant response to show he’s gotten it, and you think he’s not listening.  If I force it on him he gets crazy, and if I persist beyond that, he cries.  If I just matter-of-factly mention that this is how you do that thing, he’ll apparently ignore it, but then spontaneously come up with it later, and get it right.  I think it’s really a lot easier to explain things to little children than you think - it’s just that it takes much longer for it to sift through to them than you’d expect, especially if they’ve got a lot on their minds just then.  It doesn’t speed up the process any if you get them all upset, either.
Another thing that interested me in GWS #16 was the section on music.  It reminded me that when J.P. was smaller we used to sing together, especially in the car.  He would croon some sort of random tonal pattern - I hesitate to call it a tune - and we would admire his “song.” and then he’d really belt it out.  Maybe a true musician would have tossed him out of the window instead, but his doting parents liked it.  Then I’d get into the spirit of things and sing along with him, which mostly involved trying to anticipate and match his notes.  Gradually he got more predictable, and we also made up a game where he would suddenly hold some note and I’d have to match it and hold it with him.  Just now he’s more interested in the words of songs than the music, but I notice that when he sings, the tunes are getting more recognizable.  I fully expect that one of these days he’ll find out that he can match the notes other people sing.
J.P. has gotten very thoughtful these days.  He asks, “What is a ____?” and “What do you call that?” a hundred times a day, and in between questions, he puts it all together as busily as a little computer.  I think the wheels go round in his head even when he’s sleeping because he’s been muttering to himself in his sleep lately.
I have trouble answering his questions clearly enough to satisfy him, without going into complications that create more mysteries than before.  Even when you think you’ve come up with the perfect reply and that’s the end of that, he mulls it over and two days later suddenly questions your answer.  Slow motion dialectic, right?
…J.P. has recently become interested in books.  He likes me to read to him before bedtime, and I think I can see a pattern emerging already.  During the day he’s busy doing things, and at night he likes to think it over.  If he’s come across something interesting, he likes to see a picture of it in a book, or hear about other people doing the same things.  I think evening is a much more natural time for study that sitting around in the daytime.  During the day, if J.P. picks up a book, he reads it to me (”Once upon a day…” upside down) - but he’s doing, he’s not interested in listening.
I had heard that you should read to children from the time they’re born, to “saturate” them with it and make them smart.  Well, that might work with some kids, but J.P. never cared for it.  He liked music, but he only started to respond to stories after he had begun to use his own imagination in playing, I think.  He’s vaguely interested in letters and number - I made him a set of large wooden numbers and the alphabet, and he traces the outlines with his crayons, but I think he mostly just enjoys the different shapes.
…I’m starting a special fund in my desk drawer for J.P.’s education - books and materials now, and any training he might want later - out of whatever money I can make myself.  …One idea I had was that your other GWS readers might be interested in the patterns and directions for making the wooden alphabet set out of 1×4.  It’s really neat, if I do say so myself.  I’ll sell a ready-made set, too, if anyone wants one, but I’d have to charge about $10, plus $2 shipping.  I could sell the plans for $2 - the idea they can have for free…  I also made J.P. a number set, 0-10, which I could sell ready-made for $5.  A simple cloth bag to hold the sets would be $1.50…

LEARNING ITALIC WRITING

Sherrie Lee Lovler (NY) writes out each issue of the Homesteaders News in calligraphy.  We asked her some questions about learning calligraphy, and she wrote out her reply so beautifully that we thought we’d reproduce it directly in GWS.  (This appears her reduced from the actual size.)

(In a later letter, Sherrie said she’d be happy to send the page of sample italic letter to anyone who sends a self-addressed stamped envelope.  She also suggested another good workbook, THE ITALIC WAY TO BEAUTIFUL HANDWRITING by Fred Eager, $3.95 from Pentalic Corp., 132 W 22 St, NY NY 10011.)

READING MUSIC

Folksinger Pete Seeger said, in the Music Educators Journal, 2/80:

…People should not learn to read music until they have a good repertoire of songs they like to sing under their belt.  When they know what kind of music they like and how they want to sing it, then they can learn to read.  One wouldn’t teach a child dance notation before the child can dance.  One never teaches a baby to read before it can talk.  Music notes tend to freeze the musician into thinking these notes are the way it MUST go…

TAPING BOOKS

From Ann Bodine (NJ):

…One idea I’ve worked out to cope with diverse reading interests of oldest and middle child - whenever I read my oldest a longish children’s novel that is beyond the comprehension of my middle child, I tape-record it so that my oldest can hear it again.  [See also “Tape Recorders,” GWS #17.]  I do the same with the books I read my youngest which are too young for my oldest.  Along the same line, I have just discovered the tape recordings of children’s novels which the library carries.  Listening to them makes up somewhat for the books I used to read my oldest which I no longer have time for…

NUMBERS AS OBJECTS

From Jeannette Baumgardner (CA):

…I now have further insights on math block - or numbers as gnomes [See “On Counting,” GWS #1]  I’ve tried to understand math in terms of analogies.  That’s why I stare and stare at an algebraic equation with total incomprehension.  It doesn’t look like anything.  Finally I get it… the letters are symbols for something else.  Could numbers be only symbols??  No wonder I have trouble adding; numbers are objects to me.  Multiplying is insane if “elevens” are noodles to you and “eights” are smug, fat, bald people…

THOSE EASY TABLES - 2

In GWS #17, we suggested one method for becoming more comfortable with the multiplication tables.  Another thing you could do is simply to give the child a 3 x 5 card with a grid with the table filled out in pencil, and let the child keep the card handy, and use it whenever s/he had multiplying to do.  You could say, “Whenever you don’t need a product on the card, erase it, so you only have the ones you’re not sure of.”  As time went on, more and more would be erased.  This would be a smart thing to do even in a school classroom.  Less worrying about remembering would result in more learning.
If I were working with children who had never learned to be afraid of numbers or to think that the tables were hard, I would let them discover the patterns in the tables themselves.  But with children (or adults) who had learned to think that the tables were hard and mysterious, I would probably make an extra effort to show them that the tables were easier that they thought.
For example, if you look at a filled-out multiplication table (or if you fill it out yourself), it’s pretty clear there’s a lot of repetition.  2 x 3 is the same as 3 x 2, 4 x 9 is the same as 9 x 4, etc.  In fact if you were to fold the table down a diagonal line from the top left corner to the bottom right, the two halves would be mirror images.  (And along the line itself are the “perfect squares,” 1 x 1, 2 x 2, 3 x 3, etc.)  This means we really only have to bother about roughly half as many products as it would appear at first glance - actually 55.

1      2     3    4      5     6     7     8     9    10

1      1      2     3    4      5     6     7     8     9    10
2      2      4     6    8    10   12   14   16   18    20
3      3      6     9   12   15   18   21   24   27    30
4      4      8   12   16   20   24   28   32   36    40
5      5    10   15   20   25   30   35   40   45    50
6      6    12   18   24   30   36   42   48   54    60
7      7    14   21   28   35   42   49   56   63    70
8      8    16   24   32   40   48   56   64   72    80
9      9    18   27   36   45   54   63   72   81    90
10  10    20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90  100

I would let the child be the one to decide whether or not to erase the penciled-in products.  But if s/he decided to, what a relief it would be to see almost half that chart disappear.  It might work best to have two filled-out tables, a permanent one for looking at patterns, and one for the child to erase.
And that’s just a start.  Next I might suggest, “Now we probably don’t need to worry about the 1 row or the 1 column, or the 2 row or column, or the 5’s , or the 10’s, right?  Because it’s easy to count by 1’s, or 2’s, or 5’s, or 10’s.  So we could leave them out.”  If s/he agrees, we’re down to 21 products left.
But it’s just about as easy to count by 3’s as it is by 2’s; you can do that in your head.  So we don’t really have to worry about the 3’s, we can leave them out.  Perhaps some children wouldn’t accept this at first, but with some time and practice, they would become confident about the 3’s.
And 4 row and column are even easier, because they are just twice as big as the 2 row, which is easy.  So all you have to do is double the products in the 2’s column.  If we know, say, 2 x 7 = 14, then 4 x 7 is just twice that much, or 28.  Nothing hard about that, so we can leave out the 4 row and column.  Only 10 products left to think about now.
But if you’re good at doubling numbers mentally, most of these are easy, too.  If to get from the 2 row to the 4 row we just double everything, to get from the 4 row to the 8 row we just double it again.  4 x 7 = 28, so 8 x 7 has to be twice that much, or 56.  In the same way, the 6 row is just twice as much as the 3 row.  3 x 7 = 21, so 6 x 7 must be twice as much, or 42.  So we can take out the 6 and 8 row and column, and that means there are just three products left.
Actually, the entire 9 column (or row) turns out to be pretty special.  For example, as you go down the column, the left-hand digit in each product gets one bigger each time, and the second, right-hand digit gets one smaller.  Another pattern:  The two digits in each product always add up to 9:  18, 27, 36, etc.  Furthermore, 3 x 9 is 27, 7 x 9 is 63, etc - the first digit is always one less that the number that is being multiplied by 9.  One way to understand that:  if 7 x 10 is 70, 7 x 9 will be a bit less than 70:  sixty-something.  Sixty what?  Well, it can’t be, say, 64 because 6 + 4 isn’t 9.  It must be 63.
So the only product left is 7 x 7 = 49.  There’s no particularly easy way to remember it.  Of course, you can always figure out 7 x 6, which is 42, and add 7 to that.  But you’ll probably find that after you’ve looked up 7 x 7 a few times, you’ll know it as well as all the others.
Let me repeat:  I would not do all this heavy-duty explaining to most children, because it is much more effective and exciting for them to discover these patterns themselves.  But for adults or older children who had never gotten to know the tables, these facts can make them a lot easier.
You’ll probably notice other things we haven’t mentioned here.  Work with the patterns; let the numbers help you. - JH & DR

AT HOME IN VA.

More from Connie Schwartz (VA):

…Actually none of our four boys have been in public school, although Bj. (Benjamin, 6) went to a Montessori school for a year when he was 3.  We have been working with the boys for the last two years, Bj. and Aedin (5), that is.  Baron (3) and Nathaniel (1-1/2) still do their own thing.
Bj. can read anything, does basic math including multiple column addition and subtraction, multiplication, division, and some fractions thrown in for kicks.  He can do the math himself and is improving his methods all the time, finding faster, easier ways of doing more of it in his head.  Aedin can read anything he wishes to, but at a slow pace yet, and does addition, subtraction, and some multiple column stuff.
I equate learning math with learning to reason.  …When I first started Benjamin on math, I used crayons or blocks, anything physical, to illustrate to him what was happening.  I firmly agree that children need to physically see the concrete before they can understand the abstract reasoning.  From this, Bj. went to a bit of finger counting and then to making dots or marks on scratch paper and using them to compute his work.  I was just beginning to get a bit concerned with his long use of these marks when he decided for himself that it was too slow and awkward.  One day I gave him 8 x 8 as a problem.  Instead of dots, he said, “8 plus 8 is 16, plus 8 is 24, plus 8 is 32,” etc., until he had the answer.  The very happy part of this is that he did each part in his head.
Now, just a few weeks later, he does nearly all his work in his head.  Things are a little bit different with Aedin; he has a child’s toy with beads which he uses as an abacus.  I know that they both understand what they are doing because I have heard them working together and with friends and explaining, not just the answer, but the reasons for getting there.
They also do lots of carpentry, building some pretty amazing things.  I let them do it all, the sawing, the measuring, the hammering, and even the salvage of nails to use from old things.  Bj. just recently spent some of his own money for the first time and bought some new nails.
They are also doing a lot of woodcutting this fall, with a pruning saw and clippers; they are cutting down 4-6 inch diameter trees about 10-15 feet tall and cutting them up to woodstove length.  They cart it in on their wagon and stack it on the porch to season and I know that they derive great satisfaction from this.
The sheep belong to them and as they get older they take over more of the care of them and are learning a great deal of animal husbandry.  They help us in all the chores and work in their own capacity.  We do insist that each one does what they are capable of, not just what they may happen to feel like doing.  The little ones carry little sticks of wood and the big one carry larger ones.
The older boys each look after those brothers who are younger than they, and are very responsible children.  My husband is a volunteer fireman and one day when I was out of the house the fire monitor went off.  Bj. got a stool, dialed the phone (I didn’t even know he knew our shop number), and told his father that there was a fire in a certain place and what type of fire it was.  He had never used the phone before, never been shown or told to do anything like that, but he knew that it was important and so pulled out the information from his computer-brain that fit the need and did an exceptional job.  We were both impressed!
We have been trying to be very low-key about keeping the boys home.  We live in a small mountain community though, and as three of the local women are bus drivers and two are teachers in the local school, we didn’t expect to get by too long.  Lots of folks knew that we were teaching the boys.  Someone, intentionally or otherwise, turned us in to the school this year.  The two oldest were supposed to be enrolled.  We wrote that we were keeping the boys home and educating them here as our religion prevented sending them to school and we also wished to protect their mental and moral well-being.  About the time we began to wonder if the letter had been lost in the mails, we heard from the school social worker.  She indicated that this was the first time the school had been confronted with this situation and they had contacted the state authorities before getting back to us.  …The school board decided that they wanted no trouble over this and as long as the boys were being educated at home they were happy.
I wasn’t easy in mind until we got it in writing.  Now I feel safe in letting others know what has happened to us.  We have not been asked to meet any criteria nor supply any information about the “curriculum” we’re following.  The social worker did make an “unofficial” visit to meet us and we showed her some of the material we had compiled from various sources; she asked to see some of the boys’ work and was visibly impressed.  I just hope that this attitude of “hands off” on their part continues.
…I firmly believe in letting the boys saturate themselves in something they are keen about.  Why kill the enthusiasm by making what they are interested in seem unimportant, by insisting they go on to something else now?
They love mazes and hidden words and often design their own.  They also make up math problems for us to do, and are very proud of us when we get the right answer.  My sons love to play games, but not just to win.  They play checkers for the sheer joy of being jumped and want you to give them some more men so they can move them and be jumped again!  A friend of theirs can’t understand or tolerate it.  He gets really frustrated that they aren’t out for blood as he is.  This friend goes to public school and has constant colds all school year, which drastically affects his hearing.
…Bj. helped me can all my peaches this year.  He stood at the sink all day for two days peeling peaches, and we were able to keep up with a 9-quart canner - while alone I was unable to keep up with a 7-qt. canner.  So you can measure the amount of help he truly was…

4-YEAR-OLD CARPENTERS

I found this clipping in my files, from the Toronto Star of 3/26/72:

…Carpentry is child’s play to the junior kindergarten class at Kew Beach Public School.  Adult-sized hammers and saws are deftly handled by the pint-sized 4 year old girls and boys as they build houses, trucks and airplanes from scrap lumber.
…The children create wonders in wood.  Many of their creations end up in principal Shirley Simons’ office, where they are proudly displayed to parents and friends.
Mrs. Simons, whose husband is a builder, supplies the wood and nails.  The children supply the muscle, and parents often come in to lend a hand with the heavy work..

YOUNG PROFESSIONAL

From the Boston Globe, 10/24/80:

…The opening concert of the 10th anniversary season of Jazz Celebrations É will have Roswell Rudd and the Flexible Flyers.  Rudd has played with Archie Shepp and several other groups, and has been named No. 1 trombonist in the Downbeat Critics’ Poll for 1975, 1978, and 1979 É His 10-year-old son, Chris, plays percussion in the bandÉ

SHARING ONE’S WORK

From Jenny Wright (NH):

ÉAs two families of our friends send their children back to school this year, I am struck by how important one’s profession and whether one’s children share it is to the home schooling picture.  If Vanessa wasn’t a real active member of our apple crews, appreciated by everyone, feeling herself responsible for getting in the crop, listening to and sharing her opinions in the discussions of problems that come up with group living, I doubt she’d feel as she does:  that her life, though different, is just as exciting as most other people’s livesÉ

KIDS ON THE JOB

Letters from two readers:

ÉI’m happy to have a job where I can bring my 6-year-old son.  He either helps me or finds activities.  I’m a janitor in the afternoon for a public school.  He also enjoyed going on truck runs with a friend of ours when she worked in a cooperative trucking company.  He thrives on being part of the work crewÉ

ÉI was glad to read about babies and children at work with parents.  We live on my in-laws’ Christmas tree farm and nursery.  Forest was born 9 months ago and has been out to the field with us on many different jobs including shearing trees, inventory, and sizing trees.
This fall we’re going to try baling and painting the trees with him along.  Before he was on our backs in a carrier.  But now he is quite active and I hope we’ll be able to continue to work with him nearbyÉ

A 3-YEAR-OLD LEARNER

More from Karen Franklin (AL):

ÉSince my children were born, I have gradually developed a way of life that fits in with all you’ve been saying for years.  Before you can teach anyone anything, they have to have the maturity to learn it (physical maturity and emotional maturity) and they have to have the need to learn.  ÉFor example, I decided long ago that I wouldn’t put a lot of effort into potty training.  I figured most people learn.  I wasn’t going to be the one trained (”Do you need to go to the potty, honey?”).  One day, Adam (now 3-1/2) announced that he wasn’t going to wear diapers, he was going to wear big boy pants.  He’s been trained since that moment.
He goes to bed when he’s tired, eats when he’s hungry.  Mealtime and bedtime is without conflict around here because we respect him and feel he can usually make these decisions himself.  I don’t mean that we don’t have any rules,  I just mean we don’t have arbitrary rules.  I think the ideas expressed in THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT fit here.
One thing that has worked well for us is to remove as many of the “NOs” as possible.  There are some things of mine that I feel special about; if they were broken I would be unhappy.  The obvious solution is to put them away for awhile until Adam or Jessica is old enough to hold, look at, or use them.  It makes no sense to have a crystal dish on the coffee table and be constantly saying “NO-NO.”  The things that are out are safe to play with and explore.
ÉAbout right and left (GWS #3).  I’m left handed.  I remember my fifth grade teacher telling me to raise my right hand.  I held up my write hand.  The one that I wrote with.  Everyone laughed, and I didn’t know why.  For some reason something was wrong - no one told me about “right” and “write.”  I still have trouble with right and left.  ÉAfter that day, I used to remember which was which by putting my hand over my heart as though I was going to “Pledge the Flag.”  I knew that was supposed to be my right hand.
When my son Adam was almost three, he told his father, “My cold leg hurts.”  His dad asked, “Is your leg cold?”  Adam said, “NO!  My cold leg has a scratch on it and it hurts right there!”  (He pointed to his right knee.)  If you don’t understand the logic of what he was trying to say, go to the bathroom sink and turn on the cold water.  Our bathroom is right by the hot water heater, and it is very important to know which hand turns on which faucet.  At times when he can’t understand right and left, we use “hot side” and “cold side” - he gets it every time.
ÉAdam has learned a lot about letters by “playing” with the typewriter.  He asks me to type a line, and he tries to copy it.
We play a rhyme game every time we get in the car.  I say, “I’m thinking of a word that rhymes with TREE, It’s part of your leg and it’s your É” and Adam shouts “KNEE.”  As many rhyming words as there are, this can go on forever.  The game has evolved another step:  I get as far as “It rhymes with É” and Adam tells what word to use.  Sometimes it’s pretty hard to think of another word and definition that fit his choice!
ÉAdam is coming to know that a library and book are where you can find out almost anything you want to know.  Mt. St. Helens prompted a recent study on volcanoes, which led to his latest interest, dinosaurs.  I personally am sick of dinosaurs since we’ve had every book out 3 or 4 times and bought a few at the book store.  I still don’t know which one is which, but Adam does.  At supper tonight, he told me he didn’t have to eat his vegetables because he was a Tyrannosaurus and they only eat meatÉ
We’ve also used the library to find out about chicken pox (for obvious reasons), bees (after a sting), dromedaries as opposed to camel (do you know the difference?), why the sky is blue, what is a half moon, do birds cry, and how do you make pretzels.  ÉOur family had become involved with recycling because we read a children’s book called WHAT HAPPENS TO GARBAGE?  ÉThe money we get when we go to the recycling center just barely pays the gas, but we feel we’re teaching moral responsibility.
ÉAdam doesn’t read yet, but he is beginning to figure it out.  He’s always asking what words say.  He has a favorite book or two memorized and if I skip a word, he knows.  He has begun to compare words, and wants always to be the one to turn the pages.  I feel like he’ll teach himself soon, but if he doesn’t, we’ll continue to read to him.  We haven’t done anything to teach him to read except expose him to lots of books and show him in subtle ways that reading is an important skill.
At our house we have a quiet time in the evening.  Usually Richard (my husband) and I read.  Adam is welcome to stay up, but must do something quiet if he is going to stay in the room with us.  Sometimes he chooses to play in his room, sometimes he lies on the couch and falls asleep, sometimes he plays with crayons or puzzles or blocks or other toys, sometimes he asks to be read to.  But more and more, he uses his quiet time to look at his books and ask questions.
Like you, I once tried running my finger under the words as I read.  Adam told me to “Just read.”  However, one day we were talking about signs, and Adam wanted me to make a sign that said ADAM’S ROOM.  Over the next few days we made signs for each room of the house, for the door, light, table, etc.  I don’t think I’d have done it if he hadn’t asked - a little too much like shoving it down his throat, if I had started it.
ÉWe take the kids to places where you usually don’t see kids; they usually do fine.  If one of them really talks too much or seems to be disturbing others, we can always take them out.  ÉWe have a small museum, a zoo, state parks, library, civic ballet, little theater, and farms, dairies, swimming holes, places to “pick your own” food, a friend who is a beekeeper, hot air balloon races, ice rink, antique shops, craft fairs, factories that give tours, free outdoor concerts, etc.  I don’t think where we live is especially uniqueÉ
We couldn’t afford to go to most places if we had to hire a babysitter.  The other reason we take them is because we’re all happier.  I obviously can’t leave Jessica, a nursing baby, for long.  Adam is old enough that he doesn’t misbehave (meaning that he can act like a “little man” so he doesn’t offend others - at least any more than by just being there).  The children like to be with us, and we like to be with themÉ
Richard and I aren’t really comfortable around people who don’t welcome our childrenÉ

TOOLS VS. TOYS

From Barry Kahn in Maine (”Another Teacher,” GWS #16):

ÉI don’t think Baby Joc (Jocelyn, our almost-one-year-old) is going to let me type very much, but I’ll give it a try.  What I need is a silent invisible typewriter.
Speaking of typewriters, last night Heather (3) called me over, pointed to the letters she had typed, and said, “Daddy, these [on the paper] aren’t the same as these [on the keys].”  She had discovered upper and lower case letters - and she wasn’t too pleased about it.  So I showed her the SHIFT and LOCK keys and she went happily back to work on her name.
ÉI think children instinctively recognize objects (and people, perhaps) of special power.  I am thinking of musical instruments in particular, but probably fine tools, etc., would evoke the same reaction.  I picked up my fiddle case this evening and Jocelyn, who has not seen the fiddle for at least two weeks, crawled across the floor like a sprinter before I had it half unzipped.  She communicates at a very high level both with noises and body language, and when she saw that violin come out of the case she was “shouting”:  SPECIAL TOY - Let me try it!!!  Which of course I did.  Then Heather had a turn, and then I got a chance.  They react to the guitar the same way.  Heather, being older, is now becoming more interested in subtleties:  how I hold the bow, how I strum the guitar strings.  But the basic reaction of intense interest is the same in both kids.  Believe me, they don’t react to plastic toys like that.
I think they know, somehow, that guitars and violins are in a special class of objects which last, which remain interesting forever, and also which demand something special of them.  Heather checks herself on the fiddle like she does with the doorknobs around the house which she still can’t turn by herself - just a quick little self-test to see if the previous day’s growth has made any difference.  She wants to be big, but she accepts that it will take time.  She’s clearly confident, however, that when she is big, she will be able to do anything and everything all the adults she knows can do.  It’s that confidence that I would like to keep alive and well.
Beneath the Himalayas of bull which the education industry produces every year, I perceive one fundamental belief: children can’t be trusted to learn; they must be taught.  And underlying the unschooling movement is the belief - which I fervently share - that children are curious, self-motivated learners-by-nature.  I have faith in my children.  A lot of folks  don’t.  After watching Heather for three years and Jocelyn for one, there isn’t a shred of doubt in my mind that my children not only are capable of directing their own learning, but that they have have been since birth.  We can help greatly, we can hinder terminally, but at least in the beginning the potential for children to learn and grow in tune with their own natural rhythms and readiness is present.
You have written about how hard it is to do no teaching, to let the learner, the child, direct things.  I agree completely.  We either have faith in children - or we don’t.  The consequences of no faith are visible everywhere.  The consequences of faith, I submit, are beyond the imagining of most adults because neither they nor anyone they know was allowed to grow up in trust and faith.  I certainly wasn’t.  In fact I can only imagine what my children will be like in ten or fifteen years if they pursue their own interests and aren’t forced to sit year after tedious year learning to be good test-takers, learning to psych out their teachers, etc., ad nauseam.  Life is too short to spend it in classroomsÉ

GOOD NEWS FROM TEXAS

From Sally Wilson (TX):

ÉAll the people who have contributed to GWS have mean a great deal to my family.  You have sparked our interest, given us faith in our project, supported us.  I would like to share our storyÉ
We moved to the country three months ago looking for “The Good Life,” fresh air, independence, hard work, freedom.  We found all these things.  Our boys, John (9), Jimmy (5), and Davey (3), have gained an inner peace, a beautiful sense of wonderment, and a freedom that was unobtainable in the heavily populated suburbia from where we came.
ÉJohn and Jimmy were eager to start school.  Determined to learn.  Excited to work.  The second week of school I received a mimeographed form letter from Jimmy’s kindergarten teacher which read:  “Your child has committed the following infraction of school rules:  Throwing a cookie at a boy who threw one at him.  As a result of this action, your child was reprimanded and spanked.”  This was his first infraction of the rules.  The spanking involved being taken from the classroom and swatted three times with a paddle in view of another adult witness.  The offense took place at recess time.
ÉRather than confront the teacher, I called around to see what other parent’ feelings were on this subject.  The poll was unanimous - whatever the school does is right.
I cautioned Jimmy, but told him that I did not agree with his teacher and would find some way to prevent this from happening again.
ÉI read John Holt’s article in Mother Earth News É Suddenly, it seemed important.  I ordered GWS and read all six issues É   My husband and I, well aware of the system’s resistance to change, decided the change had to be ours.  We had big plans to do thorough investigations of laws, children’s reaction to home schooling, our own skills.  We had experimented with small scale home learning.  The boys loved it, and so did we.  It worked.  But our plans were to be slow, careful, leaving no stones unturned.
Meanwhile, John had developed severe headaches and stomach pains.  He cried all one night because he had forgotten his homework book, and begged to stay home the next day.  We tried to find out the boys’ problems, but they would not open up their feelings.  About all we could do was give them some feeble reassurance.
ÉI was pleased when John’s teacher asked me for a conference; I thought this would be an insight to our problem.  I will let the conversation speak for itself:

Teacher:  I want to speak to you about John’s attitude.  He says you do not want him to be spanked in school.  If I am going to have any control I need your cooperation.
Me:  Are you asking if I will allow spanking?  I will not.
Teacher:  I cannot make the children do anything unless I spank themÉ
Me:  Are you saying the way to learn is through fear and punishment?
Teacher:  It’s school policy, you do not have anything to say about it.
Me:  I have something to say to the principal.  I want an appointment with you for me and my husband.

The principal was in the hall and I questioned him on leaving the classroom.  He said, “It is school law, state law, federal law.  There is nothing you can do about it.”
ÉOh, but there was something I could do.  We were not prepared.  The whole idea came to us suddenly and not much time has passed.  We grasped at straws, determined the boys would never go back to that school.
We knew so little about our state laws, as learning about them was a project we had intended for the future.  I called people in the GWS Directory; they were very concerned and helpful.  One man in particular led us to the decision we finally made.  My husband called lawyers, government agencies, anyone, everyone.
The Texas State School Board was helpful.  They said we could take our children out of public school at any time provided we enroll them in a private or parochial school.  There are none in this area.  This is a point in our favor.  My sister owns and operates a private school fifty miles away and has agreed to enroll my children and help us set up a home study curriculum.  She will advise us and we will go to her school once a week or as needed.  This is perfectly legal.  We must call the public school and advise them of what we are doing - and they cannot do anything about it.
All of this - the teacher conference, the phone calls - took place today.  It proves the “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” theory.  It proves there is a hope if we will not accept less than our dreams, if we help each other.  We are aware there will be setbacks and rough spots.  We are not afraid because we know this is right.
If there could ever be any regret for our actions, all I have to do is remember my son today when he came home.  I told him I knew what had been happening at school and he apologized for it.  Now I knew he couldn’t tell me before because he thought everything that happened at school was his fault.  I hugged him, loved him, and told him over and over, “It;s not your fault.  It never was your fault.  You will never have to feel that way again.”  And we cried together, for ourselves, for the poor creatures who run the school, for relief.
Please add us to the DirectoryÉ

AT HOME IN UTAH

From Patricia Gurley (UT):

ÉThe kids love the freedom of “no school.”  I am quite prone to lean toward unschooling as so many seem to be doing, but I still find myself with a tendency towards keeping the kids “on top” of math and grammar.  Otherwise their reins are pretty free.
Brendan (10) is teaching himself the recorder and guitar and has always been an avid reader.  Cindy (6) loves to learn, but loves to learn what she wants to learn when she wants to learn it.  I’m enjoying watching where their heads are taking them - and they’re so very much happier and carefree than are school kids.
I recently took a college course in sign language and finger spelling and of course, I’m teaching it to the children.  They love it.  We’re using the finger spelling to learn spelling - sneaky, hmm?  And they think more about what they’re spelling, it seems, than when they just write words.
Since we live 1500 miles from our families, letter writing has become quite a tool for language and writing skills, and the grandmas respond quickly enough to make writing worth the time and effort involved.
Since we are Jehovah’s Witnesses, we lack no companionship as we go out in the door-to-door work together almost every day, and Brendan and Cindy do enjoy that.  We also attend five hours’ worth of meetings per week where both of the children are enrolled in the theocratic school (as are we, their parents) and they are learning to give talks from the platform.
We are all enrolled in dancing and gymnastics classes, and go roller skating almost every week.  We live in Canyonlands country right near Arches National Monument (4 miles north).  We swim in a beautiful creek with every size pool imaginable, which runs for about 20 miles from Moab to the La Sal Mountains.  So - our lives are full and happy and we’re very thankful for your books and newsletter as a needed positive reinforcement.  Brendan is reading HOW CHILDREN LEARNÉ

ONTARIO COURSES

A reader writes:

ÉOntario parents may be interested to know that correspondence courses are available free of charge from the Education Ministry, Correspondence Education Branch, 909 George St, Toronto M4W 3G2.
To qualify for Elementary School courses, one needs a medical certificate if not well enough to attend school, or a recommendation from senior education area if distance is the reason (including travel and temporary residence outside Canada.)
These restrictions also apply to the high school courses.  Students in grade 11, 12, or 13 at public school can also take one of these courses with the principal’s permission.
What interested me is that these courses are also open to adults seeking further education or enrichment.  They are free of charge to Canadian citizens resident in Ontario.  Included in the high school courses are courses in Typewriting, Computer Fundamentals, Accounting, Creative Writing, Readings in Wilderness, Archaeology, Science Fiction, German, Latin, French, Investment Computations, Carpentry (lumber kit provided), Printmaking, Photography, Cinematography, Art History, and Practical Art (art kits provided or loaned.)
It seems a marvelous free opportunity for enrichment.  A younger person could be “fronted” by an adult who would apply for the course if the younger person could not qualify.
High school certificates issued by the Correspondence Education branch have the same validity as those issued by Ontario secondary schools.
ÉI have applied for French for myself and plan to include my 11 and 6 year olds in the lesson (cassette tapes, too).  The next one will be Typing, then some Art, and who knowsÉ

STATE AID

A Michigan reader writes:

ÉThe local superintendent says when our children return to public school they will refuse to promote them.  We are proceeding with our plans anyway and hope to keep them out of public school from now on.  He candidly told me it comes down to a choice between what’s best for my children and what’s best for the school system, and if they let me “get away with this” then all the other parents who are unhappy with school will pull their kids out and the school system couldn’t function if that happened.  In this state they lost as much as $1600 per childÉ

We need to do some research to find out, in as many states as possible, what are the specific laws and/or administrative regulations on state aid, so that we can find or invent ways in which schools can cooperate without losing state aid.  We’ll be grateful for any help readers can give us with this.

CALIF. UNSCHOOLERS

The Sacramento Bee, 9/7/80:

ÉLaura Joyce of Broderick, a big-eyed, intelligent 8-year-old, didn’t go back to school last week.  And her curious, livewire brother, 5-year-old Alex, didn’t start kindergarten.
Instead, Laura, a voracious reader, spent the day with her nose in “The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald.”  She built some miniature furniture for her Barbie doll and swung from trees.
Alex tinkered with the old clock he’s been trying to fix, zipped through several pages of a math workbook, and dug in the garden.
Together with their mother, they did some research to identify and study the Goliath beetle they had found.
Their mother, Jane Joyce, has strong beliefs that school is not a good place for children to learn the lessons she believes are important for them, lessons about respect and decision-making and cooperation and Goliath beetles.  She also has strong beliefs that home is a good place for the children to learn, a place where they can become proficient in all the school stuff known as basic skills, plus learn more thing than a school could hope to fit into a day, a whole range of subjects and skills that educators might describe as an enriched curriculum.
Joyce believes Laura and Alex should be able to become competent at everything from library skills to cooking, without being exposed to what she considers are negative messages about competition and violence, and the drudgery of learning she believes school teaches.
So this fall, after playing hide-and-seek with the compulsory education laws for much of the past three years, she decided to confront the issue head-on.  Rather than refuse to allow school officials in the door when they came to warn her that she was breaking the law by keeping Laura out of school, Joyce offered a compromise.
If she would enroll her children and keep standard attendance records so the district could claim them for financial purposes, and if the staff could test the youngsters as they wished, and if a teacher could make periodic home visits, Joyce asked, then could she teach them at home?
She petitioned the school board to approve the arrangement under a state law that allows for independent home study.
Thursday, the Washington Unified School District board made “independent study” a legitimate program at the elementary grade level within the district.  And Friday, Joyce negotiated with Rudy Jakosa, assistant superintendent of instruction, about the form independent study would take for the Joyce children.
Their mother wants them at home full time, perhaps with a teacher coming in twice a week to supervise their studies.  Jakosa still wants them in school 75% of the time.  Usually this would mean three hours a day, until noon, but Jakosa said there would be flexibility to allow for full days off.
ÉMonday, Joyce is supposed to report back to Jakosa about whether she will accept his offer, one she clearly doesn’t like.
Joyce first learned to distrust schools while teaching for five years in New York schools.  “I kept thinking the problem was the particular school,” she recalls.  “But it was the system.”
“The most loving teacher cannot possibly love 30 children,” she holds, “or know each time they are turned on or turned off.  In fact, the finest teachers I know are tortured by the system they must work in, get burned out, and leave.”
ÉHer children learn gardening and carpentry because of her involvement with those activities.  Laura helps her balance the checkbook.  When she goes to the library to read a rare book she’s ordered, the children find books and tapes there in their areas of interest.
ÉMany people who find school a limiting institution in terms of academic skills and the acquisition of knowledge still defend it for its role in socializing children.  But Joyce’s view of that socialization is critical.  “It’s one of the biggest reasons not to send them to school,” she said.  “I don’t want them to laugh at the weakness of others, to tease, even if that’s the norm.  I want them to be able to spot cruelty, and call it what it is.
“I don’t want them to be told they’re cheating if they help their neighbor.  Or to be in trouble if they talk to their friends, or think that tattling on their friend is OK.  I don’t want them to be trained to be good robots.  I want them to be aware, to have practice in making good decisions.  I want them to question authority, even if it’s mine, hard as that is.  If they’re immersed in a book, I don’t want them to feel they have to stop that to go to circle time, to deny their own reality that way.”
ÉShe is working to earn California teaching credentials, a move that the district says would allow her to educate her children at home legallyÉ

Jane Joyce (see Cal. Dir.) wrote us that the above arrangement with the local school did not work out, and she plans to establish her own private school.  Meanwhile, the same school district that would not let her teach her own children at home has hired her to tutor other people’s children.

YOUNG AND OLD

More from Eileen Trombly in Connecticut (”Back Home,” GWS #15):

Here we are into our seventh year of home-instruction and things are going along smoothly.
There always has been and still seems to be a great deal of concern over this socialization business.  Over the years I have observed enough with our own three children to feel entitled to voice my personal observations and opinions concerning the matter.  Spencer and I have always stressed quality of friendship rather than quantity of friends.  Our children have learned the value of having one or two close friends and the work involved in developing those relationships; as opposed to many superficial friendships.  We have seen how superficial friendships have served only to create disappointment, insecurity, and distrust in their peers.  Lori, Amy, and Sarah have all maintained a social life best suited to their individual needs, rather than living up to parental expectations, or the pressures and demands of a school-oriented social life.  They are comfortable with managing their own social programs and involvement and have developed a confidence around people of all age groups that is simply not visible in school-attending children.
For an example:  Amy, 14, has taken ballet lessons from an older woman in town and has developed a unique, warm relationship with her over the years.  The woman is now in her eighties, still participates in dance, and has a very interesting past which she shares with Amy.  The lesson is one-on-one so there is always much time for sharing and feeling relaxed in each other’s company.  The teacher was once a ballerina in the New York Ballet Troupe; owned a theater with her husband, who was in vaudeville; was daughter-in-law of a former Connecticut governor; and was acquainted with Anna Pavlova.  She has much to offer in the way of experiences, and her polished yet friendly manner has served to influence Amy in a very positive way.
Relationships with older people have affected all the girls in positive, creative ways.  There is a depth and sincerity in it that has taught them how important human relationships really are.  Trust and respect for the generations develops and the “gap” never gets a chance to start.  They enrich each other’s lives with the enthusiasm of the young combined with the wisdom and experience of the old.  This is not to say, however, that they don’t have friends their ages, but that they choose to develop relationships with people anywhere from 5 to 70 years older.  They feel secure in these friendships and do not fear rejection.
ÉLori has always been able to deal with people of all age groups and with the opposite sex, as well.  She is now sixteen and has problems with older people when she gets the feeling that they are trying to put her down due to her age.  ÉShe is often expected to function as a “normal” sixteen year old and becomes frustrated when not allowed to apply her knowledge or be respected as a person.
Sarah, although only ten, has also had the opportunity to establish relationships with older people and people of the opposite sex.  Her paper-route, consisting of many senior citizens, has enabled her to do this.  Many have reached out to her and she, in turn, has received them.  The time length of her route varies each day according to the needs of her “friends” that day.  She is able to sense their loneliness and they seem to have time to listen to each otherÉ apart from the pressures of the younger world of fast living and continual activity.  One of Sarah’s hobbies is making greeting cards.  Her thoughtfulness in remembering these neighbors with her cards has come back to her in many pleasant ways.  They have the time for her and she takes the time for them.  This is all by choice.
The girls each have their one or two “best friends” their own ages and these friends are truly sincereÉ

SUPERINTENDENT’S FEARS

A reader writes:

ÉThis was my first meeting with the school principal.  I had called him to make an appointment when he had “considerable time.”  I told him my objectives:  to take our children out school because I consider it an undesirable situation and to educate them at home, and that the reason for my meeting with him was to see if we could do this with cooperation and communication between the school and us or if outright war was the only alternative.  I made it very clear to him that it was not him personally or this particular school, but the system I reject.  We talked for several hours, but I got nowhere.
Finally he asked the superintendent of schools to join us to share this development with him and get his views.  Well, the Superintendent listened until he heard I intended to take the children out of school at which point he said, “Well, the law is very clear, we must report absences or we are fined.  Either you send your children to school or we have to turn it over to the district attorney because I’m not going to prison for you.”É

Until I read this parent’s letter I did not realize how genuine was the fear of some school officials that if they allowed a family to teach their own children they themselves might get in serious trouble.  This poor devil’s notion of the law boils down to this:  If you try to teach your kids, I have to put you in jail, and if I don’t, someone will put me in jail.  Untrue, and absurd - but he really believes it.
First of all, the laws of many states specifically provide for something other than attendance in school, whether this be called “home instruction” or “equivalent instruction” or whatever.  As I said in GWS #12, “They Have A Choice,” the power to approve or disapprove of home instruction rests in almost all states at the local level; the superintendent does not have to answer to any higher authority.
But even where the law speaks only of “school attendance,” the schools still have a legal right - not a duty, but a right - to approve home schooling.  As far as I know, schools have the right to define “attendance” can only mean bodily presence in some school building.  Under the law, schools have the right to assign students to field trips, apprenticeships, job training programs, travel, or instructional programs (like the Parkway Project in Philadelphia) where for months on end students do all their work outside of school buildings.  Under the laws as written, children are attending school whenever they are taking part in an instructional program, in whatever place and of whatever kind, that is approved by the school.  There is nothing either in the statutes or the case law (court rulings) to prevent a school district, if it wishes, from assigning certain children to study at home.
Before would-be home schoolers have any kind of meetings with the superintendent and/or school board, or begin to discuss any details of their own home schooling program, they should write the superintendent a letter making the points above.  In this letter, it might also be well to add, “If you know of anything in the statutes and/or the case law that contradicts what I have said above about the meaning of the law, please let me know as soon as possible.  Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I will assume that you agree in substance with my interpretation of the law.”  This puts the burden on them to show (if they can) that you are mistaken.  If they do not, and later try to take part in some kind of legal action against you, they will be in a weak position.  You can show that you tried to find out what the law was, and that, despite their legal obligation to do so, they did not tell you.
It might also be well to send the same letter not only to the members of the school board but also (1) the county attorney (2) the state department of education (3) your state legislators (4) the local welfare and/or child-service organizations, since the schools often use these to press charges of child neglect, and (5) the judges of the juvenile court.
After you have sent out such a letter, and waited (not very long) for a response, you can begin to talk to school people, in person or by mail, about teaching your children at home, and the ways in which you intend to do this.
If and when you write such a letter/s, please let us know what responses and results you get.  Let me say once more that the point of all this is not that the law says that schools must cooperate with home schoolers, but only that they can if they want.

NEW LAWS:  WISCÉ

The Wisconsin legislature recently passed some amendments to the education laws, which formerly made no mention of home instruction.  In part:

ASSEMBLY SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT 1, TO 1979 ASSEMBLY BILL 1075

ÉSection 10.  118.15 (1) (d) and (e) of the statutes are repealed and recreated to read:
118.15 (1) (d) Any child’s parent or guardian is notified, may request the school board to provide the child with program or curriculum modifications, including but not limited to:
É 5.  Home-bound study, including nonsectarian correspondence courses or other courses of study approved by the school board or non-sectarian tutoring provided by the school in which the child is enrolled.
6.  Enrollment in any public educational program located outside the school district in which the child resides.  Enrollment of a child under this subdivision may be pursuant to a contractual agreement between school districts.
(e)  Any decision made by a school board or a designee of the school board in response to a request for program or curriculum modifications under paragraph (d) shall be reviewed by the school board upon request of the child’s parents or guardian.  The school board shall render its determination upon review in writing, if the child’s parents or guardian so requestsÉ

AND LOUISIANA

Mrs. Raymond (Hazel) Anderson, 1420 Prentiss, New Orleans LA 70122, writes:

ÉA great victory has been won for parents in the state of Louisiana.  Act 828 [complete text follows] is now a law which allows parents to teach their children at home.  As of this writing, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education of the state of Louisiana is in the process of formulation how the home study curricula will be approved.
ÉSo a parent no longer has to face harassment by authorities, fines, and/or imprisonment (as one mother experienced in Monroe, La. this year).  It’s amazing how criminals are free to roam our cities and parents are being imprisoned nationwide for caring enough to see that their children receive a good education!
State Representative Louis “Woody” Jenkins (Baton Rouge district) sponsored the bill.  I asked him to co-author it when my husband and I met him at a Pro-Family Forum conference at which he spoke in Monroe, La. in February, 1980.  Since our own representative was not able to sponsor it for us, Mr. Jenkins agreed to do so as he had already considered writing such a bill himself.
We withdrew our own son from a terrible public school situation (6th grade) at the end of December, 1979, and used the Home Study Program of the Christian Liberty Academy (203 E. McDonald Rd, Prospect Hts IL 60070).
ÉWe are thrilled that “average” citizens can get a law passed under our system of government.  Until this year, we didn’t even know who our legislators were!  ÉIf you need any more info, please writeÉ

1980 REGULAR SESSION
DEFINITION OF A SCHOOL UNDER GENERAL SCHOOL LAW
Act. No. 828
House Bill No. 1782

Be it enacted by the Legislature of Louisiana:
Section 1.  Section 236 of Title 17 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950 is hereby amended and reenacted as follows:
S. 236.  Definition of a school.  For the purposes of this Chapter, a school is defined as an Institution for the teaching of children, consisting of an adequate physical plant, whether owned or leased, instructional staff members, and students.  For such an institution to be classified as a school, within the meaning of this Chapter, instructional staff members shall meet the following requirements:  if a public day school or a nonpublic school which receives local, state, or federal funds or support, directly or indirectly, they shall be certified in accordance with rules established by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education; if a nonpublic school which receives no local, state, or federal funds or support, directly or indirectly, they shall meet such requirements as may be prescribed by the school or the church.  In addition, any such institution, to be classified as a school, shall operate a minimum session of not less that one hundred eighty days.  Solely for purposes of compulsory attendance in a nonpublic school, a child who participates in a home study program approved by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education shall be considered in attendance at a day school; a home study program shall be approved if it offers a sustained curriculum of a quality at least equal to that offered by public schools at the same grade level.
Section 2.  If any provision or item of this Act or the application thereof is held invalid, such invalidity shall not affect other provisions, items, or applications of this Act which can be given effect without the invalid provisions, items, or applications, and to this end the provisions of this Act are hereby declared severable.
Section 3.  All laws or parts of laws in conflict herewith are hereby repealed.
Approved Aug. 1, 1980.

CLASS ACTION SUITS

People in several states have talked about filing “class action” suits on behalf of home schoolers.  I think these people may have mistaken ideas about what class action suits are, and if so may wind up wasting a lot of time, energy, and money.
Class action suits are used, as far as I know exclusively, in cases where monetary damages are sought.  They don’t fit our situation at all.  For example, the families of babies deformed by Thalidomide filed a class-action suit against the drug manufacturers, asking for (and getting) considerable amounts of money for the care and treatment of the victims.
The impression I get is that these folks who talk about “class action” are trying to get a court to rule in favor of home schooling in such a way that it will be binding in all future cases in the state.  They’d like a court to say, “Not only can this family appearing before us teach on any family who wants can teach their children at home, and it is none of the schools’ or the state’s business.”
There is no way to do this.  That isn’t the way our legal system works.  In our system of law, there is no such thing as a “binding precedent.”  Judges may be and usually are very strongly influenced by precedents, since they like the law to be consistent.  But they are not and cannot be bound by them.
However, if a court makes a strong decision in favor a home schooling family, as in Perchemlides here in Mass., this will do a great deal to dissuade other school boards from trying to make trouble for home schoolers.  What those concerned “class-action” people could do instead is to prepare the strongest possible case for one intelligent, dedicated, and articulate family with a very well worked-out educational plan which they are prepared to defend at length, with all manner of quotes from educators, legal decisions, etc.  If this family wins, later families, even those less well prepared, can then draw on that as a precedent.  It doesn’t guarantee success, but makes it much more likely.
But there is no way to get a court to make a decision that will permanently bind other courts.  If a case comes along which is sufficiently different from the case that set the precedent, there is nothing to prevent a court from saying, or a lawyer from trying to get a court to say, “The former ruling does not apply here.”  Courts have said such things thousands of times.

HOME-BOUND EQUIVALENT

From an Indiana reader:

ÉI’ve noticed something to be true you mentioned in your article in Mother Earth News.  Our 8th grade boy broke his left arm and injured his left leg, and has them both in casts.  He is to be home from school until the 1st of December, so we have a home-bound teacher coming each day.  She doesn’t come until 3:30 p.m. each day and is only here half an hour to help him with a whole day of school work.  She grades the papers he’s done and makes new assignments and leaves…

In other words, not only is this teacher in the boy’s presence for 2-1/2 hours a week, but during that time she gives zero hours of assistance or instruction.  Nothing is shown or explained, no questions are answered.  There is nothing done here that could not just as easily be done by mail.  Indeed, many of the schools that now work with parents from a distance, such as Calvert, Santa Fe Community School, etc, do a great deal more.  Yet in the eyes of the local school district, the compulsory education law is being satisfied by this sketchy treatment.
Once again, we ask and urge readers to find out all they can about what public schools in their district and state actually do with children who are home sick.  This information can be very useful to families for whom the schools are trying to make trouble.

MORE COLLEGE AT HOME

From Quest, Feb/Mar. ‘80:

ÉLast March, Emil Berendt became a college graduate by earning a B.S. degree from the University of the State of New York.  Not for another three months did he receive what usually comes first - a high school diploma.
At 16, Berendt was the youngest of more than 9,000 people who have won college degrees, through USNY’s pioneering Regents External Degree Program.  While going to high school full-time in Katonah, NY, he had managed to earn 126 college credits (six more than he needed) solely by studying at home and passing a series of exams in different subjects.  His B.S. degree cost him only $320, plus the expense of a few booksÉ
Students can earn credits toward these external degrees in three ways.  Some, like Emil Berendt, choose to sit for rigorous multiple choice exams, which are given several times a year at test centers across the country and at military bases around the world.  There are minimum acceptable scores for each test.
Other students, like John Hagan of Williamsburg, Va., may have studied at several colleges or universities over the years but were never in one place long enough to meet the residence requirements for a degreeÉ  Last January, Hagan had the transcripts of all his prior college work sent to the New York Regents program for evaluation.  (Any classroom or correspondence course taken at any time, from any accredited institution, is acceptable if the student has maintained a C average.)  Since Hagan had more credits than a B.A. requires, he got his degree in June - at a total cost of $106.
ÉJames Enright learned Vietnamese during his four years as a U.S. Army code breaker and interpreter.  A widower with two small children, he managed to complete a Regents B.A. last March.  He combined credits from three schools, one correspondence course, some college-proficiency exams, and a special assessment of his fluency in Vietnamese…  “The program was a breakthrough for me,” says Enright.  “After a lapse of nine years, I completed all the requirements for a bachelor’s degree in about 13 months.”
ÉNew Jersey’s Edison College uses individual assessments whenever possible as an integral part of its program.  George R. Meisler got his bachelor’s degree at 65, partly on the strength of his 40 years as a labor leader and editor of a trade union journal.
ÉThe Council for the Advancement of Experiential Learning in Columbia MD offers free telephone information about schools all over the country that evaluate and give credit for “prior learning.”  Call 800-638-7813.
ÉIn the University Without Walls program of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, students earn bachelor’s degrees largely by designing their own courses.  Most are working people who plan and carry out a project on the job, guided by university faculty and perhaps by a community adviser with special knowledge of their field.  To graduate, the student must meet certain general criteria ( a command of written English and the methods of scientific inquiry, for instance) and must prepare a dossier to prove his mastery of his major subject.
UWW students register for full-time study and pay full tuition rates ($307 a quarter), but they also qualify for standard financial aid.  They do not have to spend any time on campus.  Students of the Minnesota program live in many other states as well as other countries.  One British woman earned her B.A. from Minnesota while teaching in Zambia.
ÉOne of the important new ventures in off-campus education is the University of Mid-American, based in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Its radio and TV courses for home study can lead to a degree from one of 11 participating Midwestern universities located in seven statesÉ
[For more about College At Home, see GWS #9 & 14.]

POSSIBLE RESOURCES

Issue #66 of The Mother Earth News (PO Box 70, Hendersonville NC 28791), page 122, announces the formation of local chapters of Mother subscribers.  It seems to us that many GWS readers might want to take part in this, as a way of getting in touch with people who are not only likely to be sympathetic to home schooling, but probably also skilled and resourceful.  Annual dues are $25, in addition to the cost of subscribing to the magazine ($15/yr).
Another group that may have people sympathetic to unschooling, as well as much valuable knowledge, is LA LECHE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL, 9616 Minneapolis Av, Franklin Park IL 60131.  They have local chapters, a national newsletter, and books and reprints on natural childbirth, breastfeeding, midwifery, nutrition, etc.
By the way, another source of information on these topics is the book catalog of the CHILDBIRTH EDUCATION SUPPLY CENTER, 10 Sol Drive, Carmel NY 10512.

OFFER

From Ken Maly, Rt 2 Box 78, Rushford MN 55971:

ÉI am a bookbinder É Anyone who wishes to have the GWS newsletters bound should simply send me the ones to be bound, $10.00, and name the color of cover they want, and I will bind them and send them back.  They should allow four weeks (not because it takes four weeks to do it, but because it may take me three weeks to get it!)É

WE NEED YOU

Discussing why some people don’t renew their GWS subscriptions, a reader writes:

ÉI wondered if it was that at least some of those folks don’t need GWS anymore.  I know that when my daughter first left public school my anxiety level was so high that I would literally grab GWS from the mailbox and read it from beginning to end before I went to bed that night.  That was almost two years ago - and it’s all been so easy, so smooth, so satisfying that I can’t imagine why I worried so much.  Now I scan GWS over a week’s timeÉ

I’m sure she’s right.  I think a lot of people did need GWS very much at first, and that after a while they reached a point where they felt they didn’t need it.  That’s good; all good teachers, and GWS is a kind of teacher, want to help their students get to the place where they don’t need them any more.  But even when our readers don’t need us, we need them, so that we can keep on putting out GWS for the people who do need it.  To people who no longer need GWS and feel they have too much to read, I’d say, instead of a subscription, why not send us a contribution?
Of course, there are many reasons for reading GWS that have nothing to do with need.  It’s a good place, probably the best place, to find out how the home school movement is going, and growing.  Also, we keep reviewing new books for our list, and parents who can’t afford to buy many of them can always look for these books in a library.  We have had much more stuff about music and art in recent issues, and will have still more about them, and many other subjects, in issues to come.  We will always be looking for ideas and information, and will print any we find, about ways in which young people can join adults in serious work.  Finally through the Directory and other kinds of networks that are beginning to spring up, home schoolers will be able to meet more and more people who feel as they do about children and schooling, and how to help young people make their way into the world.
Well, if people don’t want to read about all that, that’s fine.  Help us with contributions instead.  We have a very long way to go before home schooling, which has become easy for some, becomes easy for everyone.

ON ROY MASTERS

From Gary Arnett (NS):

ÉI was not surprised to see in GWS #15 one of the letter-writers [Valerie Hilligan, “At Home in Illinois”] mentioning that she practiced the meditation taught by Roy Masters and found this strengthened her convictions toward unschooling.  The group of parents who started the “school” I have written you about (GWS #13) practice this meditation also.  I am sure there must be other GWS readers and/or unschoolers who use this meditation, and have also gained insights concerning schools and the destruction of children by adults through listening to Roy Master’s radio programs and reading his writings.
Roy has written a number of articles concerning education (”Why Education Fails,” “The Deception of Education,” “The Letter Killeth”) that might be of interest to GWS readersÉ  I know of no one else on syndicated stations across the continent who so openly and forcefully advocates unschooling and explains the harm being done by the schools.  His address is The Foundation of Human Understanding, 8780 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90034É

IMPOSING VALUES

Stephen Arons (GWS #12), writing in 1978 about the Perchemlides case, put an important issue very well:

The family’s suit contends that the school committee’s standards for approval of home education must be minimal.  Since the family’s rights of privacy, conscience, and belief are at risk in government regulation of education, the suit seeks to require that any regulation of the right of home education in Massachusetts be justified by a compelling state interest.  Most important, the Perchemlides call for an end to the practice by which education standards and truancy laws are used to impose the educational philosophy and political and cultural values of the school bureaucracy upon individual families.

SEEKS COMMUNITY

From Christina Lloyd, 2369 Van Horn, Memphis TN 38112:

My husband is currently a senior medical student.  We are trying to figure out where to do a residency.  A large factor of where to do it is whether I can find other parents who believe as we do that we can share teaching in the home.
I think it is very important to have age peers to share learning with.  Other children learn best from group experiences of learning (some of the time anyway).  It’s more like sharing learning and teaching helps.  My six year old teaches a great deal to my 4 and 2 year olds, including reading and numbers to the 4 year old; the 4 year old teaches color names to the 2 year old, etc.
I like using games like Scrabble (with 5 and above) or Chutes and Ladders to teach numbers.  It has been frustrating at times, but it was really rewarding when my oldest read his first book to me.  He just turned six and recently read me an “I-Can-Read-It” book (60 pages!), Mitchell is Moving.  Science experiments are fun and easy to do.  My husband contributes with anatomy and medicine lessons.  Writing letters to friends is my best trick for practicing writing
Well, I can hardly wait to get the magazine.  Can I put an ad in it so we can find a favorable town to live in?

EXTRA BOOKLISTS

Now and then it happens that we have more booklists printed up than we need for our mailings, speaking engagements, etc.  If any GWS readers would like to have some of these booklists to mail to friends, distribute at meetings, etc., we would be happy to send them out.  Please tell us your name, address, and quantity desired (25, 50, 100, etc); we will keep you request on file and sent the booklists when we have extras to spare.

END-OF-YEAR SALE

We have seven hardbound copies of the GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS, 1980 edition, that we want to clear out as soon as possible, so we are making this special offer:  we will sell them for what we paid for them, only $5.97, plus postage (60¢ for 1 or 2; 25¢ each for 3 or more).  These books have a publisher’s retail price of $9.95.  Hurry - when these seven are gone, we will have to refund any other orders.

NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE

MARTIN LUTHER KING:  THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR, by Ed Clayton ($1.35 + post).  This is the story, told well and simply for young readers (and well illustrated by many pencil drawings), of the life and work of a great American and human being.  It begins with the story of his father, a remarkable man in his own right, who grew up the son of a poor sharecropper, went to Atlanta when he was fifteen, and after eleven years of heavy labor during the day and study at night, got his high school diploma.  Five years later he graduated from Morehouse College and became a minister.
The book goes on to tell the story of young Martin’s growing up in Atlanta, his struggle over his own impulsive nature, his love of language, his education and call to the ministry, and finally of his leadership of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement, his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, and his murder.
These heroic, hopeful, and in the end tragic years seem very far away today.  It is hard even for those of us who lived through the Civil Rights years to remember them clearly, and there may well be many children growing up who do not even know about them - which would be almost as much a tragedy as Dr. King’s death and the decline of his non-violent movement.  This book will help keep the memory of those days, and of that man and his vital work, alive.

JUST SO STORIES, by Rudyard Kipling (85¢ + post).  These famous stories are fables, written for English children and set against the exotic backgrounds of Asia, Africa, Australia, or the sea.  For those who may never have heard of them, they are about such things as “The Elephant’s Child,” “How The Leopard Got His Spots,” “How The Rhinoceros Got His Skin,” “Why The Sea Is Salt,” and so on.  They are delicious combination of story-with-moral, myth, and nonsense.  And (like ROOTABAGA STORIES) they are full of the kind of repeated rhythmical long words and phrases, like “the great gray-green greasy Limpopo river,” that children love to hear read aloud.
Mixed in are the original strange and fascination illustrations by the author, and some delightful light verse, of which I will quote a bit, for parents of young children:

I keep six honest serving men;
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest…

But different folk have different views;
I know a person small —
She keeps ten million serving men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends ‘em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes –
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!

VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, by C. S. Lewis ($1.75 + post).  I realize that I made a mistake in GWS #16, calling one of the Narnia books “The Voyage of Prince Caspian.”  The third book in the Narnia series is PRINCE CASPIAN ($1.75), in which the English children go back into Narnia in a different time and help a young prince escape his murderous guardian and regain his throne.  In this fourth book, THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, the children return to Narnia some time later, and go with Caspian (now King) on a long sea journey to the very edge of the world, with the usual exciting adventures on the way.  Another fine story.

A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, by Ursula LeGuin ($2.00 + post).  This is the first of three books (we will add the other two later) about Earthsea, an imagined world of islands in a huge ocean, in which magic is a widespread and accepted fact of life.  On these islands, young people with special talents and desires train to be wizards just as in our world they might train to be scientists or priests.  But with their special powers come special responsibilities and duties - wizards are assigned to duty in places that need them, places to which they might never have chosen to go.  And there are many limits to their magical powers.  One of the first things young wizards must learn (unlike so many modern scientists in our world) is to use their powers responsibly and sparingly, no more than necessary.
This book tells how a boy, Ged, finds out he has magical powers; how he goes to the school for wizards to get his training; what happens when he uses his new powers wrongly, boastfully, just to show he has them; and how he atones for this nearly fatal mistake.
I love the Earthsea books.  In some ways they are like the Tolkien books - the worlds they describe are pre-industrial, full of natural beauty and skillful work.  In other ways they are very different.  The Earthsea books are much shorter, there is little or no fighting in them, their world is an ocean world, not a land world, and they are much less crowded with creatures, speeches, and events than the Tolkien books - they are quieter, more reflective.  The Earthsea world is if anything even more real to me than the Tolkien world - I felt completely a part of it, and felt it as a real world long after I had finished the books.  I look forward eagerly to reading much more of LeGuin’s work.
Until recently, and perhaps even now, we had cultures on earth in which magic was a reality.  A very gook book about one of them is called WE CHOSE THE ISLANDS, written by a British colonial officer named Grimble.  See if you can find it in a library; it appears to be out of print.

FAMOUS GHOST STORIES, Ed. by Bennett Cerf ($2.65 + post).  This contains some of the great classic stories of the supernatural, including “The Beckoning Fair One,” probably the best of all haunted house stories, “The Monkey’s Paw, ” about magic wishes we would be better off without, and the very short story “August Heat,” which I (and many others) consider perhaps the finest of all ghost stories - though no ghost appears in it.  There are also two of the best stories by M. R., James and “Saki” (see our list), which will give a taste of their work to any who many not know them.

A POCKET BOOK OF SHORT STORIES, Ed. by Edmund Speare ($2.75 + post).  When I first taught English in a school, in 1953, I used this collection, and I’m delighted to see it still in print.  It still seems to me the best general collection of short stories I know.  Every story in it is a classic and a masterwork, many of them would be hard or impossible to find outside this collection, and they have great variety and range.
I am particularly glad to see saved in print three of my special favorites:  Anatole France’s “The Procurator Of Judea,” which is about Pontius Pilate, and whose last line is one of the great surprises in literature; Thomas Mann’s “Disorder And Early Sorrow,” a very touching portrait of a little girl and her adoring father; and my favorite of them all, R. L. Stevenson’s “A Lodging For The Night” (which I have not been able to find anywhere else), which is about the medieval French poet Francois Villon, who, at the end of the story, has a long argument with an old nobleman about right, wrong, honor, and duty, that raises questions that are still not easy to answer.
Wonderful stories - many of them good for reading aloud.

FIVE STORIES, by Willa Cather ($2.65 + post).  These stories are a good introduction to the work of an American woman who wrote a number of sensitive and living books about what might seem the harsh and unforgiving country of the Great Plains and the Southwest, and about the people who settled there.
One story, “Paul’s Case,” is about a teen-aged boy so overcome by the glamour and luxury of wealth that his everyday “real” life became unreal and intolerable to him.  Written before TV had brought the dream world of wealth and success right into everyone’s living room, the story seems more prophetic than Willa Cather may have realized.
Of the other stories, one is about the Southwest, the others about the Great Plains, all of them very gentle, slow-paced, and affectionate stories about “ordinary” people, the kind who are usually not much written about, but are here brought very strongly to life by her writing.

ROBERT FROST’S POEMS ($2.00 + post).  This is a collection of the best poems of a great American poet and my favorite of all poets who have written in English - I can’t think of any other who has written so many poems that I really love.
What appeals to me most about Frost’s poetry is the power and depth of thought and feeling that he gets from such simple words.  Take “Fire and Ice,” a special favorite of mine.  It is only 9 lines long - 49 words.  6 of these words have two syllables - all the rest have only one.  Yet with these short words Frost says as much about human life as most poems, or even books.  In “The Death Of The Hired Man,” an old farmhand, worn out by a life of hard work and too old to do any more, comes unexpectedly to the house of a young farm couple who used to hire him.  The man wonders why he has come there, instead of going to relatives who live close by.  In reply his wife says, “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.”  How could it be said better?
If some of the poems are somber, others are very tender and light-hearted, and some - like “Departmental,” very funny in Frost’s dry New England way.  I’ll close with a quote from another favorite, “At Woodward’s Gardens.”  In this a boy takes a burning (magnifying) glass to a zoo, and uses it to focus the sun’s rays to a pinpoint of heat with which he teases a couple of chimps.  One of them grabs the glass away from him, and the two of them take it back into their cage, where, trying without success to figure out what it’s for, they only demolish it.  Then they come to the front of the cage to look wryly at the boy again, and Frost ends the poem with these very useful words:

They might not understand a burning glass.
They might not understand the sun itself.
It’s knowing what to do with things that counts.

The book is illustrated with many beautiful woodcuts of the country about which Frost was writing.  A lovely collection.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, by Harper Lee ($2.65 + post).  The film of this book has made it so well known that some might think they don’t need or have no reason to read the book, since they already “know what it’s about.”  If so, they would miss one of the best novels ever written about children growing up, and perhaps the best about growing up against a background of social conflict and change.  The story is told by Jean Louse Finch - “Scout” - who is about six when the story begins, and who lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed lawyer father in a small town in the deep South in the 1930’s.  The author is unfailingly good at seeing the world as a child that age would have seen it;  Scout is not a wise adult disguised as a child, but a real child, who notices a lot of what the adults do but still can’t make much sense of it.
No need to say much here about the plot.  But there is much more in the book than the film.  Atticus Finch, like Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, is very much a man of his place and time.  He has lived almost all of his life in the same little town in Alabama, plans to live the rest of his life there, and hopes his children will do the same.  He is not itching to turn the place upside down.  He is willing and even glad to take his world much as he finds it, and again, he wants his children to do the same.  But there is a line he will not cross, even at the risk of his life.
The book is an important part about how a civilized parent (with the help of neighbors and friends) slowly civilizes his beloved but barbaric little daughter.  For Scout, like all healthy young children, is a barbarian, like a Homeric Greek:  brave, impulsive, fierce, proud, passionate, vengeful.  Not for anything would her father break her proud spirit - he knows that a truly civilized person is the very opposite of a cowed savage and resentful slave.  He civilizes his children, makes them more patient, generous, tolerant and compassionate, mostly by his own example.  His virtue is a magnet to his children even as it is a burden and nuisance to them - though it often makes their lives harder, it pulls them irresistibly in his direction.
I never get tired of reading this book.  What fun it would be to read aloud.

THE POCKET BOOK OF O. HENRY STORIES ($2.25 + post).  Here are many of the best and most famous of O. Henry’s unique and delightful stories - wry, witty, cynical yet sentimental, full of ingenious and convenient twists of plot.  No great studies of character here, but much pleasure, and great fun to read aloud.

GUIDE TO HOME ENERGY, by Mother Earth News ($3.60 + post).  This is a collection of many of the most important articles on home energy that The Mother Earth News has carried over the past few years.  It covers, among other things:  bio-gas plants, compost water heaters, wood stoves, hybrid poplars (this article alone is well worth the price of the book), heaters, different kinds of solar homes, solar furnaces, wind generators, small scale turbo-generators, the New Alchemists, etc.  An incredible bargain.

A REVERENCE FOR WOOD, by Eric Sloane ($3.60 + post).  This is another beautiful and informative book about a too-little known part of our history and heritage, a good sequel to DIARY OF AN EARLY AMERICAN BOY.  It is about wood and its uses and importance in the lives of earlier Americans, and how the colonists built or made almost everything they needed from it.
In these words Sloane says much about a quality of life and an attitude toward living that we seem largely to have lost - but that we may be starting to regain:

In 1765 everything that a man owned was made more valuable by the fact that he had made it himself or knew exactly from where it had come  That century of magnificent awareness preceding the Civil War was the age of wood.  Wood was not accepted simply as the material for building a new nation - it was an inspiration.  Gentle to the touch, exquisite to contemplate, tractable in creative hands, stronger by weight than iron, wood was, as William Penn had said, “a substance with a soul.”  We can see why the early American’s attitude toward the forest was reverent, and why when the colonies sought an emblem of independence for their flags, it was a tree.

Like his Diary, this book is filled with Sloane’s beautiful pen and ink illustrations, which often tell us far more than any photograph could.
Readers might be interested to know that for many  kinds of loads laminated wood beams are not only stronger than steel beams of the same weight, but are far more able to withstand fire.  And not long ago (and perhaps even now) a very small company in England built sports cars with a wooden chassis, which they claimed was stronger and more shock-resistant than a modern steel chassis of the same weight.

MUDDLING TOWARD FRUGALITY, by Warren Johnson ($2.65 + post).  Now that this book is in paperback, I’m happy to add it to our regular list (I’d been thinking for some time of adding the hard-cover edition to our On-Demand list).  It is a very hopeful book about the difficult times we are living through, which make so many people feel hopeless.  What we as humans and as Americans are going to have to learn - or rather, re-learn - is to live frugally, within our natural means.  Johnson says, first of all, that this a good thing in itself, that living more frugally will make our lives not worse but better.  He then points out that this change to a more frugal way of life is one that we are in fact already making.  And he shows very convincingly that the rather fumbling, bumbling, haphazard way we are doing this is not only the best way to do it - that if we tried to make this change happen through some giant, sudden, top-down plan we would create more problems than we solved.
In support of this it’s worth quoting an astonishing fact from an encouraging and important article by Amory Lovins in the Nov. “80 issue of NEW AGE.  He points out that in the years “72 - 78, of the new energy that became available to the countries of the European Economic Community, only 5% came from such well-publicized sources as nuclear plants, North sea oil, etc.  95% came from people using energy more efficiently.  The EEC energy bureaucrats to whom he pointed this out could hardly believe it, even though his figures came out of their own books - they had been working so hard to get that additional 5% of energy supply that they did not even notice that the people of their countries, acting quietly, individually, in small groups, or as organizations, were nineteen times as good at “finding” energy as they were.
In the U.S., for the same period, 72% of new energy came from conservation - and the figure is surely much higher now, as we are beginning to build much more energy-efficient houses, burn more wood, drive smaller cars, etc.
One of the ideas that would alone make this book well worth having is the idea of ecological history, of seeing the history of any given country or region in terms of the raw materials and energy sources available to it.  In some early chapters Johnson does that, and tells me many fascinating facts and connections between facts that I never knew and would never have guessed - and would certainly never found in any conventional history books.
There are a few ideas I don’t altogether agree with.  Johnson is 100% right in saying that as a country, we should be paying replacement cost for our oil - that is, for every barrel we use we should pay what it would cost to add an additional barrel to our capacity.  If we did this, it would greatly speed our move toward frugality.  But if we do this through “the market” alone, it will work the greatest hardship on the poorest people.  Not only is this unjust and unfair, it’s also politically unwise, for these people, in desperate self-defense, will find (indeed in such cases as returnable-bottle bills, already have found) ways to resist and block the changes that sooner or later we will have to make.
But this is a very minor criticism of a very good book.  Most books that help us see more clearly where we are, make us feel worse about it.  This one makes us feel better.

HIROSHIMA, by John Hersey ($1.75 + post).  Soon after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, John Hersey went there and wrote this report for THE NEW YORKER.  It may well be the most widely read piece of journalism ever written; the book is now in its 50th printing.
Instead of trying to describe the results of the bomb in any overall way, he let six survivors, five Japanese and one German Catholic priest, tell what happened to them when the bomb fell and in the days following.  He kept out of his story his own shock, horror, and fear, but simply told, as matter-of-factly as if he were describing an everyday event, what these six survivors saw, heard, thought, felt, and did.  This calm, detached, almost emotionless way of telling the story makes it all the more real and terrifying.
When I first read his article in The New Yorker I was horrified by the vastness of the destruction and my strong feeling - which still remains - that in dropping the bomb we had not only committed a kind of crime, but had created far worse problems than we had solved.  Insofar as I thought about the people of Hiroshima, it was only as pitiful victims.  Today, reading Hersey’s account again, and with the wisdom of hindsight, I am astonished at the patience, courage, unselfishness, and endurance shown by the Hiroshima survivors as they struggled to recover from their great disaster.  If an atom bomb were to destroy an American city, would the survivors here behave as well?  I hope we don’t have to find out.
At any rate, this account of the results of what by today’s standards is a very small and primitive atom bomb is something we all ought to read now and then, just to remind us of what we are messing around with.

THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST, by Ursula LeGuin ($1.60 + post).  In this story, a ruthless space colonizer - and we many be sure that if we ever colonize space, we will do it as ruthlessly as we have colonized Earth - invades a rain forest world of gentle tree-worshippers.  He uses them as slave labor to cut down all their trees to ship to Earth, which has destroyed all its own trees.  When this world is treeless and barren, he plans to abandon it and look for another.  But as this story shows, his plan does not work out as he hoped.
The story is in part based on fact.  As many of you know, the rich countries of Earth are right now clear-cutting the rain forest of the Amazon Basin and the East Indies, forests which, once cut down, will be destroyed forever.  The people who happen to live in these forests will be out of luck.  For they don’t have the powers of the people of LeGuin’s forest world.  If our colonizers are to be stopped from laying waste our world, we are going to have to stop them soon.
There’s some rough language and violence in this story, and we don’t recommend it for our younger readers.  But other sections are lyrical and beautiful, and they, as well as the message, make the book worth reading.

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, by James Agee ($2.25 + post).  This very perceptive and moving book, Agee’s only novel, is about a family - a young couple, their two little children, and their various relatives - and what happens to them in the few days following the sudden death of the father in an auto accident.
In part, the book is about families themselves:  the complicated tangle of their lives and emotions, their loves, likes, and dislikes, their envies and jealousies, their deep understandings of one another, and their equally deep misunderstandings.  In part it is about Mary, the young Catholic mother and widow, her heartbreaking struggle first to accept and then to bear the death of her loved husband, and the way in which her religious faith, which only her aunt shares and understands, helps her to do this.
But most of all the book is about the effect of his father’s death on six year old Rufus, who even more than his mother is the central character of this book.  Agee takes us into the inner world of this little boy, makes us see the world as he sees it, and feel as he feels.  In all the books I have read there are very few if any portraits of the inner life a young child to compare with this one.
School does not come into the book at all, but in one scene Agee shows us the pointless cruelty of the school-centered peer-group or child-mob.  In a flashback, we see the four-year-old Rufus, standing in his yard every morning enviously watching a group of older boys go to school.  Day after day this mob of children, any one of whom, by himself, might have been happy to be kind to Rufus, teases and humiliates him.  They do this in a particularly terrible way, by using his natural trust of people and his desire to be liked by them to get him to tell them things about himself, and then making fun of him, in a way that makes it impossible for him to be completely sure whether or not they are trying to hurt him.  The art and the fun of the game was to see how mean they could be to Rufus without killing his hope that they really like him.  It is a truly horrifying scene, and a powerful indictment of the “socializing” done by and in school.
In the book Agee also shows us something of the inner life of Rufus’ four-year-old sister Catherine, and it is remarkable how clearly he shows us the difference between a four-year-old and a six-year-old, and beyond that, the difference between Catherine and Rufus as people - for they are nothing alike.  From what we see of Rufus, we can guess that he may have a hard enough time growing up; but from the even less that we see of Catherine, we guess that she will have it much worse.
All in all, a most beautiful and remarkable book, for adults and older (13+?) children.  (If children younger than that read and enjoy it, I’d like very much to hear about it.)

THE FAMILY BED, by Tine Thevenin ($4.50 + post).  This book argues very persuasively for the “continuum” idea that children should not be left alone at night until they want to be.  When young, children should be able to sleep in the same bed with their parents, and even when they are older, at least until they want a private sleeping place of their own (which they will), they should be able to sleep in the same room.
Until very recently, and perhaps still, virtually all child “experts” furiously opposed this, using various Freudian arguments which never made much sense to me, since children have slept with adults in most human cultures that ever existed.  People who think that for children to sleep with their parents is a bad, immoral, unhealthy, dangerous, etc., idea will not have their minds changed by this book and should probably leave it alone.  But people whose instinct is to want to have their children close to them at night, but who may have been intimidated by the “experts,” may be encouraged by this book to let their children sleep with them.  And people who are already doing this, but are getting criticized by relatives or friends, will find here much useful argument and moral support.
Note that the book is not only written but published by the author.  I hope it has the success it deserves.

BOOK ORDER INFO

Postage charge:  for 1 or 2 books, 60¢; for 3 or more books, 25¢ per book (75¢ for 3 books, $1 for 4, etc.)
Make check (US bank) or money order for book orders payable to HOLT ASSOCIATES, INC.  (Payment for subscriptions or back issues of GWS should be made out separately to GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING.)  Address:  308 Boylston St, Boston MA 02116.
For your convenience, each entry on the booklist now includes the number of the GWS issue which reviews that book.
Sorry if we confused any readers with the “On-Demand” section in GWS #17.  The only “on-demand” book so far is THE TOOTHPASTE MILLIONAIRE.  Other books reviewed in #17 are available now.
WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? is out of stock until further notice.
New titles on our booklist include:  BY THE SHORES OF SILVER LAKE, THE STORY OF THE AMULET, THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET, THE BOOK OF SMALL, OUR TOWN, and THE IDES OF MARCH.

Editor - John Holt
Managing Editor - Peg Durkee
Associate Editor - Donna Richoux
Editorial Assistant - Jane O’Brien

Copyright (c) 1977 Holt Associates, Inc.