GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING      #15

Lots of news this month.  First of all, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that the state could not impose regulations about
curricula, teacher certification, etc. on private schools.  Details this issue.

The July issue of Mother Earth News, which will be in their subscribers’ hands
or on newsstands by the time you read this, has a long interview with me about home
schooling.  I saw the copy, and Pat Stone, who interviewed me and prepared and
edited the transcript, has done a great job.  This is by far the best and most complete
article that has yet appeared about our work.  I hope you will tell as many people as
possible about it — or better yet, show it to them.  For those who don’t receive Mother
Earth News or can’t find it, we are selling individual copies of that issue here for $3.00.

Mother (as it’s called) has about a million paid subscribers, as well as large
newsstand sales.  Perhaps as many as two million people will read that issue.  Since
Mother readers believe in and in many ways practice independence and self-reliance,
we should find many new friends there.

Psychology Today will soon (probably July issue) have an article written by me
about children and work.  The article doesn’t say much about home schooling, but the
brief biography of me mentions GWS and gives the address, so perhaps we will find
some new friends there as well.

Donna and I, after a conference in Keene, N.H., dropped in on the annual
meeting of the National Conference of Alternative Community Schools.  We saw Ed
Nagel, Peter Van Daam, and many other friends there, and learned some interesting
things.  Mr. Gonzalez, executive director of the Pacific Region Assoc. of Alternative
Schools (119 Geary Blvd., San Francisco CA 94109), told us that a recent poll of
Californians showed that 75% favor some kind of voucher plan.  He says the only
reason the voucher plan people didn’t get enough signatures to put their proposition
on the ballot was that they simply didn’t have enough people out with petitions.  Next
time, which will be soon, they won’t make that mistake again, and he feels confident
the proposal will get on the ballot and will pass.

Dr. Raymond Moore, author of BETTER LATE THAN EARLY and SCHOOL CAN
WAIT, told me on the phone the other day that he has recently asked a number of
organizations that have home study materials — Calvert, Home Study Institute, U. of
Nebraska, U. of Missouri, etc. — how many people are using their materials.  On the
basis of their replies, he estimates that the number of families using some kind of
elementary or secondary home study materials is more than a quarter of a million!  Of
course, probably not many of these have taken their children out of school altogether.
But it is still an impressive and encouraging figure.

Nancy Plent of NJ will be offering a home-schooling workshop in Addison, NY,
at the Homesteaders’ Festival, July 23-27, organized by Sherrie & Norm Lee, who
publish Homesteaders’ News (see NY Dir.)

Thanks to the more than thirty volunteers who are helping us type names and
addresses from letters we’ve received since the Phil Donahue show.  One volunteer,
Dana Purser of Charlotte NC, is 11 years old and taught herself to type only a couple
of months ago.  (She says, I have never been to school a day in my life, and don’t
want to, ever.)

We now have over 100 titles on our booklist.  Those of you who have seen our
little office may wonder where we put all those books.  Well, they are everywhere.  The
big question is, where will we put the next 100?  A year from now we should have that
many more.  You can get our latest list at any time by sending a self-addressed
stamped envelope.
— John Holt

COMING LECTURES

Sept. 16, 1980:  Rio Grande College, Rio Grande, OH 45674; 8 pm. Contact
Doris Ross, Student Activities, (614) 245-5353.

On Nov. 21-22, I will be at a conference for educational writers in San
Francisco, CA, sponsored by the Center for Independent Education.  It will not be open
to the public, but it could be a good opportunity for others in the area to arrange fee-
paying engagements, before or after the conference.

FROM BARNSTABLE SCHOOLS

From Jane Sheckells, Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction,
Barnstable Public Schools, 230 South St., Hyannis MA 02601 (see Good News from
Cape Cod,  GWS #13):

. . . We receive approximately one contact a month requesting home-schooling
information.  They appear to be equally divided between school departments and
parents.  School departments are concerned with how the Barnstable Schools district
is handling requests for such home learning opportunities since they have heard we
are cooperating in such a situation.  Parents who are in touch with us are ones
interested in finding out more about home-schooling; we have Elaine Mahoney’s
permission to put them in touch with her.

As a school department, we feel that home-schooling is indeed a two-way
street; we are gaining information and insights as are the parents and children
involved.  We respect the honesty and integrity of Mrs. Mahoney as she is searching
for what she feels is the best learning opportunities for her two girls.  In turn she is most
cooperative and willing to discuss with us concerns which we raise.  Certainly better
attitudes and relationships evolve as parents and schools work in cooperation, with
our children being the beneficiaries of such endeavors.  The Barnstable Schools
district attempts to cooperate with parents in many, many ways; home-schooling is just
one specific way . . .

YOUNG WRITERS WANTED

Pat Stone, who did the Plowboy interview with me, writes from MOTHER
EARTH NEWS (PO Box 70, Hendersonville NC 28739):

. . . Being a kid-interested person, I’ve been wanting to make sure MOTHER
EARTH NEWS continues to run articles aimed towards children (or parents).
Generally, we’ve been doing things you can make for your youngster to play with, and
those pieces do seem to go over well.  What I’d like to do now is see if we can build up
some pieces written by children for children.  They’d have to be of a practical how-to
nature (like the rest of the mag) but could cover things you can make to play with . . .
nature or outdoor projects a youngster could do and might be interested in doing . . .
perhaps a story of a youth’s livestock raising experiences (and profits) . . . ?

I figure that you probably have access to a select group of youngsters who
would be most likely to be interested in and capable of this.  So if you’re interested in
promoting this effort, how about giving it a good plug in GWS as an idea we want to try
and telling any kids who think they may have a good idea for such a piece to write me
a letter telling me exactly what they’d want to write about (giving me enough details or
illustrations so I can make a guess at whether or not to encourage them).  I’ll give them
feedback, writing guidelines, and we’ll see what happens . . .

LEARNING ON TOUR

From a reader:

. . . As a certified primary teacher (currently on leave from my job) I hold a job
teaching an eight-year-old who spends most of her time traveling with her parents.
She attended school only three days in October, but according to current reports from
her teachers, is doing a fine job of keeping up with the rest of her third grade class.
Her father is a recording star who takes his family with him from city to city on tour,
coming home approximately once a week, during which time I work with his daughter…

AN UNSCHOOLING FAMILY

From Rosalie Megli (IL):

. . . I find GWS extremely helpful in living and growing with my children, ages 10,
12, 14, out of school for over a year now.  Because unschoolers are choosing so many
modes of living, I am made aware of many avenues of living/growing that I might
otherwise fail to consider.

We expected to carry out a program of academics and presented a
comprehensive educational plan to our Regional Superintendent, which gained
approval.  Though in the plan we stated that we would follow a loosely structured
schedule and study largely areas of interest to the children, we did list many textbooks
we have and gave the impression we would cover basics as defined by public
schools, which we in fact planned to do.  I was unprepared for my children’s lack of
cooperation in my plans for them.  They resist being taught and do not like to have
activities turned into learning experiences.  My 12 year old is teaching herself to play
the piano and I have hindered her by offering help when it wasn’t asked for.  Now that I
have learned to leave her alone, she occasionally asks for help figuring out a rough
spot.  I am slowly developing trust in the children’s ability to choose for themselves
how to conduct their lives.  After all, one cannot separate living and being from
learning, so education takes place every day of our lives.

It came to me recently that we are no longer home-schoolers, but unschoolers.
Not only are we not trying to duplicate a school education, we are not interested in
education per se, at all.  We are interested in finding significance in our lives each day,
in setting goals and working toward them, in developing ways to live responsibly in our
world.

Our ten year old said, No one can say I haven’t learned lots this year; my
head’s always getting full of stuff!  He then enumerated some of his recent
involvement: helping a friend in his produce store; traveling south for the first time with
that same friend; doing farm chores; gardening; helping build our own solar house;
accompanying his father on trips to haul food, a family business; going on weekly trips
to the library; reading many books.  I am confident that all my children are preparing
themselves adequately to live meaningful lives in the future, and more importantly,
they are living meaningfully now.

I appreciate the low cost of books offered by Holt Associates.  They are to find
their way into homes of many of our friends and relatives this year as gifts. . .

_____________

We hope many other readers will follow this good example.  Buying our books
to give to friends gives pleasure to the friends, helps us, and helps keep good books
alive.  Many of the books that are now on our list, or that I plan to add, are not even in
any of the biggest bookstores here.  Good books are only going to be kept alive by the
people who know and love them, which is one reason I like being, even in a very small
way, in the book business.

LIVE-IN TEENAGERS

From Sandy Sapello (NJ):

. . . Several people have written you with the problem of what to do with their
young child at home — especially single parents.  I found a solution to this problem
which might help some of these people.  I advertised in the newspaper for a live-in
babysitter and I now have two teenage (19) girls living with me.  I have been very lucky
that they get along very well with the children and with me and they are both
trustworthy (although I find most people can be when treated with respect).  One girl is
working and pays for her room and board; the other just had a baby boy and she
babysits for me for her room and board.  It solved my problem also of how to keep a
house that was much too large and expensive just for my two boys (who did not want
to move) and me.  It has had many side benefits and few real problems . . .

UNDERGROUND

A reader writes:

. . . How about an underground of interested families who may take a child to
live with them while the heat’s on?  The family could say to trouble-making
authorities, Our child doesn’t live with us.  If pressed, then say, He/she lives with
his/her aunt.  I actually lived with my grandparents for ten years and my parents were
never even asked where I was, even at the time my parents were enrolling my brother
and sister in the local school.

To make this arrangement easy for the child, unschooling families should know
each other (by meetings, visits, phone calls) and become friends.  In our case, we
have become friends with a nearby unschooling family whom we met through the
GWS Directory.

HELPFUL PROF IN ACTION

From the bulletin of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, Pittsburgh
PA 15260:

. . . Dr. David Campbell, associate professor in Foundations of Education, has
been acting as consultant in the Pittsburgh area to the alternative program started
approximately two years ago by the noted educator and author, John Holt . . .

In spite of compulsory school attendance laws, parents in many areas
throughout the country are fighting in courts and winning the right to teach their
children at home. . . I get two to three inquiries a week from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
West Virginia, said Campbell.  He has already advised some 20 sets of parents
regarding the alternative home study program.  Most programs range from
kindergarten through sixth grade.

At the parents’ request, Campbell sets up a curriculum that will meet state
requirements, or evaluates a home study plan.  The curricula are prepared, according
to Campbell, in line with Pennsylvania guidelines for teaching in private elementary
schools.  Many school districts have accepted Campbell’s suggestion that home study
students keep a portfolio of all their work to be used for evaluation rather than be given
standardized tests.

Dr. Campbell has given court testimony as to the validity of curricula and at
times has acted as evaluator.  He testified in the precedent-setting Amherst, Mass.
case which allowed home study with the school’s right to examine the program. . .

AT HOME IN ILLINOIS

Valerie Hilligan (IL) writes:

. . . I want to tell you a little about our motivation for teaching three of our four
children at home.

We came to the decision painfully after much soul-searching and research (your
books were one source) and viewing of the classrooms our children attended last
year.  We had discussions with administrators in which we candidly expressed our
views as to the unreasonable and destructive pressures the teachers were laying on
the students.  Finally we saw that, although sympathetic, the superintendent either
could not or would not control the actions of his teachers regarding excessive work
loads put upon first and second graders, humiliation and punishment for busywork
incompleted and of course the general atmosphere of impatience and intolerance in
the classroom.

My husband then wrote the superintendent a rather official but brief letter stating
that the children were hereby withdrawn and would be taught at home by us according
to our views.  Simultaneously, I called the children’s principal and said the same thing.
The superintendent then wrote us back assigning a teacher/liaison between us and
promising us any assistance he could offer.  I should say that my husband’s letter had
prudently asked for their assistance in materials, though we rarely use them up to this
point.  The liaison person has only been out to the house two or three times in a year
and is very non-pressuring.  At her request, we submitted a two-page report on our
goals for the children and current evaluation of their progress, which she keeps on file
should legal problems arise.  When the children had been out of school only three
months I refused to have them take standardized tests in spite of the liaison’s strong
suggestion.  She did not force the issue.  In all, our relationship with the
superintendent’s office is cordial though a bit uneasy on both sides.  I believe we are
the only ones doing this in the district and I suspect he is cooperating quietly to avoid
publicity.  I doubt he would like to be known for this.

. . . An influence and inspiration to me was and is the work of Roy Masters of
The Foundation of Human Understanding.  I know very well that if I hadn’t begun his
twice daily meditation technique five years ago, I would not today have the inner
strength to deal with my own and others’ conditioning which screams so insistently that
the status quo must be right because everybody does it.  His meditation and teaching
also was the prime thrust in helping me realize the great harm my own well motivated
(I thought) impatient ambitions were doing to my children’s characters, not to mention
their happiness. . .

The children (13, 9, and 7) are literally becoming smarter, funnier, happier and
healthier before our eyes since they left school.  They are showing interests and
initiatives we never knew they had.  When at school they came home so tired, drained
and upset, all they could do was fight together or conk out in front of the TV.  The first
year hasn’t been easy, however.  And I would counsel any parent taking this on to
seriously consider the state of his/her own equilibrium and the depth of his patience.
Non-pressuring but attentive, loving patience is the number one prerequisite for
educating one’s own or anybody’s children.  I feel this is the essential quality most
lacking in the teachers and parents I meet.  Of course, this is a quality we all need to
improve upon.  I don’t know of any way to do that except to learn to be still and calmly
look inside oneself regularly, i.e. Masters’ meditation.

My oldest daughter still goes to school, 8th grade. . . She is handling the
pressures from both teachers and peers nicely and so is gaining from the varied
experience this school offers.  I don’t hesitate to step in when she seems to be
overwhelmed.   She knows that and understands that she cannot blindly conform to
teacher or friend just because others do it.  She reads your books on her own initiative,
with great interest and indignation at recognizing her own and other children’s
outrageous predicaments under the guise of institutionalized learning. . . .

LEFT OUT

A parent wrote that her unschooled child who loves home study feels somewhat
left out in spite of going to Sunday school, choir, piano lessons, soccer, swimming,
theatre group, etc.  I wrote in reply:

. . . Home schooled children are certainly, by definition, out of the mainstream of
their culture, no two ways about it.  This will still be true a generation from now, even if
my prediction that 10% of children will be home schooled comes true.

I can see how your child would feel left out, but I do want to say that from the
age of 11 I felt left out, and never more so than when I was in school.  I think that for
most children in our society the experience of growing up is an experience of being left
out, partly because of our worship of beauty, wealth, power, athletic skill, etc.

Being an outsider was somewhat tough on me during my growing up, and I
think I would have been better off if I had felt, and been, somewhat less left out than I
was.  But it gave me the independence and moral courage I needed to do things in my
adult life that most people weren’t doing, to follow work that seemed important.

My point, then, is not only that children would not escape the feeling of being left
out even if they went to school, but that if children operate, as yours seem to, from a
base of love and support, it doesn’t do them any harm to feel a little unusual and may
indeed prove to be an asset.

I think that many of the children at the Ny Lille Skole (see INSTEAD OF
EDUCATION) feel left out some or much of the time.  That school, or club, also had its
leaders and its followers, its stars and its minor part players, its extroverts and
introverts.  The school did not cure the ordinary and difficult problems of growing up
and getting a sense of one’s own identity and worth.  All we could say is that it didn’t
make this difficult problem any worse.  I would say the same of unschooling.  It isn’t
and can’t be a solution for many of the problems of being young, or growing up in an
anxious and confused world, or in a society that generally has no use for young
people.  But at least home schooling doesn’t make those problems worse. . .

SCHOOL LIFE

A mother recently called me from Bloomington, Indiana (seat of the main
campus of the Indiana University) to say that she had just found out that the school her
children attend, and several others, have for some years now had a policy of no
recess.  Her child leaves home at 7 AM and does not get back until after 4 PM, totally
exhausted.  She tells me that she knows of other schools in the state, and other states,
that have also cut out recess.  It is apparently a growing trend in schools.  So where
and when in such schools does all that great social life take place?

If any GWS readers know of other schools that have cut out recess, please let
us know.

The Boston Globe, 5/20/80:

. . . Despite stereotypes depicting the homes of delinquent children as broken,
uncaring places dominated by marital stress, child psychologists and police say there
is another profile of the parents of delinquents.  These are people who try to do
everything right in raising their children, who care and get involved with schools and
sports and still lose control.  Bewildered, they too wind up in a court, asking that their
child be barred from their home.

While there is no single cause or easy solution, parents and counselors
interviewed by The Globe say the general pattern shows problems evolve slowly and
explode all at once, generally triggered by drug abuse and peer pressure. . .

In Massachusetts courts during 1979, 1664 children were taken out of their
homes and placed in foster care, drug rehabilitation programs or, in some cases, a
series of temporary housing arrangements.  The number of youths in the program now
exceeds 2000.

. . . A common thread among several parents who have gone through the
wrenching process of legally removing their child from the family is the suddenness
with which bad things happen.

One day it’s a child who can be comforted and then, seemingly overnight, it’s an
adolescent who won’t listen.  The drift apart, parents say, is nearly imperceptible and
clearly evident only when it may be too late.

Counselors say the children usually share certain similarities:
– Their behavior gradually becomes dominated by alcohol or drug use.
– They drift into anti-authority peer groups at school who become a self-
proclaimed band of outlaws abusing drugs and alcohol. . .

Newsweek, 5/26/80:

. . . The growing problem of cheating exists on almost every campus — cheating
on tests and papers appears to involve a substantial minority of undergraduates,
observed a recent Carnegie Council report on higher education.  In anonymous
campus surveys, one-third of the students at Princeton, Dartmouth, Amherst and Johns
Hopkins admitted to cheating at least once.  Two-thirds of the undergraduates at
Stanford confessed to plagiarizing papers or padding bibliographies.

Not content with old-fashioned methods, like peeking at a neighbor’s paper,
modern cheaters have adopted sophisticated techniques.  One Maryland student
jiggered the university’s computer cards and changed the grades of 40 fraternity
brothers from B to A.  His brothers gave him a set of ski equipment as a thank-you gift
– just before he was expelled.  Companies selling pre-written term papers operate
openly around many campuses and even advertise in student newspapers.  Many
professors here have stopped assigning term papers because they can’t tell who
writes them, says University of Missouri sociologist John Galliher.

. . . Colleges are beginning to take serious steps to curb cheating.  Johns
Hopkins, Notre Dame and the University of Illinois have reluctantly abandoned their
honor codes and monitor exams with proctors. . .

BRITISH UNSCHOOLERS

From Resurgence, the magazine of the E. F. Schumacher Society in England
(Address: Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon):

. . . Geoffrey and Iris Harrison, who quit the business world to live on a small-
holding, were taken to court by Hereford and Worcester County Council for allegedly
refusing to send their three children to school.

They have defied attendance orders served by the county council and on Jan.
14 pleaded not guilty at Great Witley magistrates’ court to three charges of refusing to
ensure the attendance at school of their daughter Andrea, 15, and their sons Grant, 14,
and Newall, 10.

. . . Magistrates were told by Mr. Roland Meighan (lecturer in education at
Birmingham University and editor of two national educational magazines) in his
evidence for Harrison that he had spent two days assessing the children at the family
smallholding and found they were being taught under a system where the priorities
were instilling confidence, the ability to solve problems, arousing intellectual curiosity,
imparting self reliance and the use of first-hand learning experiences.

Earlier, Andrea Harrison told the court she had taught herself to read music and
to play the violin to orchestral standard and hopes to become professional.  She had
also taught herself shorthand and touch typing.

However, the Harrisons were convicted by magistrates at Great Witley for failing
to comply with school attendance orders in respect of three of their children.  They
were granted an absolute discharge.

Mrs. Harrison, who has been leading a campaign for the right to educate
children without interference from the local authority, said she would appeal.

[From an interview with Mrs. Harrison:]

. . . Wanda [the oldest daughter] is planning a trip alone to Denmark to see the
Peoples College.  She will take her bicycle and possibly her tent.  It is her intention to
become a student at this college.

Andrea has become a member of Ludlow Orchestra.  She plans to go on to
Dartington to study music when she is 18.  Until recently she has run a small business
from one of the buildings.  She obtained organic whole wheat from a neighbor friend,
made bread and sold it from her little shop, but has now found that the demands were
too great on her energy and time for her to do justice to her musical study.  Some days
this can be in the region of 8 to 10 hours of intensive study.

Grant — well, he is a tremendous person.  He has a small business running 100
head of poultry, selling the eggs to callers who come to his egg-grading room.
Surplus cocks, etc., he will calculate to the last pence for their rearing costs and add
his percentage for his time, and these are sold to the house.  He has 10 different pure
breeds.  He experiments with cross breeding.  He is in need of a metal turning lathe
which we will help him obtain.  He wants to make parts for the clocks which he mends,
make a steam engine, parts for spinning wheels, etc.  Already he has shown that he
has tremendous aptitude in wood turning.

Newall — the best way I can explain where he is, is from a question made by
him to me last November.  He asked me to help him find out who the monarch and
Prime Minister were at the time of Guy Fawkes as he wanted to try and destroy the
Houses of Parliament.  He felt that he could understand it more if he knew what kind of
people were governing at that time.

. . . I had been teaching a gypsy girl to read by tape recorder and she phoned to
say Me Dad has got some second-hand wood block flooring.  The children and Geoff
went to see this.  It consisted of two floors, both used as car show rooms.  They brought
some of the wood blocks back with them but previously had measured the area of
flooring to be lifted.  They weighed a wood block and set about working out the total
number that would be lifted, then found the total weight.  We then owned an old lorry
with a certain capacity both for weight and height.  The children worked out how many
blocks per load could be carried, the number of trips, etc., and also the area of storage
space needed in the barn.  They then calculated how many we would need for our
own use and then the price that they would have to sell the remainder in order to cover
the total cost and give themselves something for their work.  I would like to stress that
although I did maths at grammar school I was totally out of my depth to do these
calculations.  The whole project worked out to their calculations.

. . . They have not been withdrawn from the world.  They are very aware of the
problems of our world today and realise that it is the responsibility of each one of us to
create meaningful lives not dependent upon old ideals.

. . . On one occasion Grant was assessed by the educational psychiatrist.  He
was then 10.  Although he has had a great desire to learn to read and write, because
of inherited tendencies this has been a very slow, but on the other hand sure,
procedure.  Because of this he was allocated to an Educational Sub-normal School.
We did not take up this offer.  At the time of this assessment Grant showed his ability to
be far from sub-normal.  He had taken clocks apart when a very small boy and these
had been put into a box.  At 10 years old he went off to a room alone and reassembled
three clocks, two chiming, which all worked by the end of that day. . .

LEARNING FROM LIFE

A former teacher writes:

. . . We live in a house with other single parents and children, so I’ve had a
chance to experience children in the wild and see what happens then.  A lot, and it’s
very sustaining to me that this is so.  I’ve had a much more exciting and satisfying
experience living with children than I ever had in any school setting.  It works.  It really
works!  I love it.  Very clear to me now that Life is the only teacher we really need, and
all the people, circumstances, events, accidents, places, etc. that Life brings our way.
And most of the children I know are more open to what their life teaches, what their
genuine needs are, and what other children need too, than most of the adults I know.
Maybe that’s why they are locked up in such deadening environments. . .

TWO YEAR OLD AT WORK

From the Boston Herald, 8/25/79:

. . . The chair at Silverglate, Shapiro, and Gertner is such a departure from the
old leather lounger that it makes you wonder what kind of law gets practiced in these
Broad Street offices.  It’s blond, and stepped to two levels, so that someone very, very
small can sit on the upper level and rest his feet on what will someday be the seat.

And under a small oak desk is a toy box, filled with stuffed animals, blocks and
the other usual paraphernalia that you would find in a . . . law office?

The chair belongs to Mr. Silverglate: Isaac Dorfman Silverglate, 2-1/2 years old
who comes to work every Friday with his father from their Cambridge home.

. . . When Harvey Silverglate and his wife, photographer Elsa Dorfman, decided
to have a child, they also decided they would share their time with him.  Silverglate
took four months off when Isaac was born and soon afterward began carrying the
infant, in his little sleeping pouch, to the office.  It was easier then, he recalled.

Ms. Dorfman (author of Elsa’s Housebook, published in Boston by David R.
Godine) who works mainly at home, cares for Isaac the other four week days, but this
summer she has spent more time in her darkroom and Isaac has been coming to work
with Dad for as much as a whole week at a time.  The couple has hired a male
babysitter (He drives a cab, takes courses, and is writing a novel, too, Silverglate
said) to care for Isaac for three hours every morning.  And sometimes their teen-age
babysitter from Cambridge, Kelly Williams, will come to the office with Isaac.

But most of the time, the father-son partners go it alone, and that includes
changing diapers.

Silverglate’s office is notably different from his partners.  When the 13-person
law firm moved to an office on Broad Street in February, they had a whole floor with
which to work.  Silverglate hired Fort Hill Contractors, a combination architectural firm
and commune in Roxbury, to design his office.  A long skinny oak desk runs almost the
whole length of one wall.  Part of it is cut so that it is even narrower, and this is Isaac’s
desk.  The desk is divided by only a large stack of papers, but Silverglate said that
Isaac has never crossed over this wall and disturbed anything on his side of the
desk.

Like Dad, Isaac has his own phone, a Sesame Street model.  Crayons fill
Isaac’s pencil holder and toys stack up in the open shelves under the desk.  Beside it
is a blackboard with plenty of chalk.  A stack of old IBM copy rolls, some with and
without paper, provide Isaac with cubbyholes, bracelets or telescopes according to his
mood.  Babar and His Travels is lined up next to West’s Federal Annual Rules
Handbook.

Isaac, who has no typewriter, uses his father’s, a monstrous electric hulk on a
rolling table that can block off another section of the office.  In this section is a big,
comfortable, Army green, cotton couch — Isaac’s napping place.  Isaac has never
caused the typewriter any harm; in fact, the only visible sign that the child has
overstepped his boundaries is the lawyer’s daily calendar, which has been stamped
Important! on many pages.  Isaac likes rubber stamps.

. . . Isaac looks forward to his work days, packing his tote bag eagerly and
getting up extra early to be ready.  Silverglate enjoys the company, although his own
business life has changed considerably.

I used to work 18-hour days for sometimes seven days at a time, he said.
Now, I take more cases that involve more research outside the courtroom, more
writing and less trial work.  Isaac has come to court with me only once, and that was for
a 15-minute period.

I’m glad we had a child later in life.  If I’d had a young child around when I was
just starting a law practice, it would have been much more difficult, Silverglate said.
You need a very flexible life to do what we’re doing.  The world isn’t set up for it.

I don’t think Americans like children as much as other cultures do.  They
certainly make fewer allowances for them during the work day.  I do notice, though, on
the subway now, people here and there who look like they’re going to work with a
child in tow.  I hope it changes that way. . . .

JEAN LIEDLOFF WRITES

Carolyn Dixon (AK), the reader who first told me about THE CONTINUUM
CONCEPT, wrote to its author, Jean Liedloff, and sent me a copy of Ms. Liedloff’s
reply.  Part of it reads:

. . . Since the book first appeared in 1975, an increasing number of parents
have used it, not, I hope as yet another guide to child care by yet another expert, but
as a way of finding and recognizing their own innate expertise and gaining confidence
through experience of it.

I have no idea, even approximately, of the numbers of continuum babies, as
they tend to be called, that there are in the Commonwealth Kingdom, Australia, New
Zealand and some other countries.  But I have had enough reports from individuals
and groups to know that, for example, every baby who has been slept with until it is
ready to leave voluntarily, and carried about all the time until it begins to crawl, and
even some who have not been in arms the whole time, but far more than normal
babies, are all distinguished by a complete lack of aggressive behavior.  Most of them
have never screamed and their body tone is far softer than their deprived counterparts.
They also do not suffer from colic, which is a word for acute indigestion caused by
stress, but considered normal, as I’m sure you know.

Naturally, some parents have understood the principles better than others and
some have been better able because of their own backgrounds to identify and adopt
an attitude of respect toward their own continuum sense.  Two difficulties have been
encountered by many parents because, I think, I did not emphasize those aspects
strongly enough.

The most prevalent mistake has been child-centering, giving the child the
impression that he is the constant center of attention of his caretaker and/or others.
This comes about when people regard baby care as a full time occupation.  It is at this
time that children get the feeling of how things are and if how things are is
misrepresented, they will be at a disadvantage, perhaps for the rest of their lives.  A
caretaker who is busy doing some other activity like working, playing, cleaning,
shopping, gardening, or anything else, but in the company of others who are suitable
companions for her intellectual age group, should be carrying the baby with her with a
minimum of attention, which is all that is needed when it is done right.

The other problem I’ve seen a lot is insufficient discharging of the baby’s excess
energy because the man, woman, or child who is carrying him is not active enough.  It
has become clearer than ever that the caretaker shares an energy field with the baby,
and in civilized life a great many of us are not physically active enough to keep our
own and a baby’s energy at a comfortable level, so babies fuss, flex their muscles
and make signals, by bouncing and waving their arms, that they want more action.
Once this is understood, many parents have quickly resolved the problem by dancing
while holding the baby, giving the baby to the busiest person around, not the one who
has nothing else to do, or simply running around with the baby when it signals for
action or throwing it up in the air or rough-housing until it signals all-clear.

In no case has anyone with one continuum baby ever been sorry or brought
subsequent babies up in any other way, because problems notwithstanding, their
children are incomparably more independent, happier, and healthier than non-
continuum children. . .

REACTIONS TO CONTINUUM

Letters from two readers:

. . . I was interested of late to read in GWS #13 your review of THE CONTINUUM
CONCEPT, (and also to learn of the availability of BORN TO LOVE and THE FACTS
OF LIFE), especially your comments about the profound significance of the way we
treat children, and above all babies.

Many of us, at least those of us GWS readers of this city, do not have children
old enough yet to be of age for compulsory public schooling, but we are looking ahead
to the time when we will.  What has happened to us is that we’ve seen unschooling as
a natural (and perhaps inevitable?) outgrowth of an interest in the family, in natural
childbirth and natural mothering (parenting), etc.  Many of us have delivered our
children at alternative birthing centers and/or at home, have breastfed our babies and
toddlers, and have been strongly influenced by the type of child-rearing practices
Liedloff describes.

One resource that may be of interest to other GWS readers (indeed, to anyone
interested in children) is IMPRINTS, PO Box 70625, Seattle WA 98107, Lynn Moin,
president.  IMPRINTS is the review newsletter and catalog of the Birth and Life
Bookstore, Inc.  The Bookstore is a service, only recently begun, but with a remarkable
selection of the best books on the subjects of pregnancy, childbirth, childcare,
breastfeeding, family living, and related subjects (e.g. parenthood, food and nutrition
books for children, women and health, texts and reference books related to obstetrics,
child growth and development). . .

_________________

. . . I am excited to see you writing about THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT.  I care
about how babies are born in this country.  Because of dependence on the medical
profession, so many babies, mothers, fathers, and families are torn violently from the
normal, safe, everyday, miraculous birthing process.  There is so much terrible
brainwashing of people in the United States about birth.

I work with couples prenatally and attend their births at home.  These people
have taken the responsibility for their pregnancies and births.  There is quiet, respect,
privacy, and happiness at these births.  Bonding takes place. . .  These babies are
connected with their mothers.  The fathers are there.  The babies are breastfed.  Their
siblings share in the birth or are there within minutes.

I am a mother and wife and I am a self-educated (always in the process) lay
midwife.  I think home birth people are special.  Many are also prime candidates for
unschooling.  It just naturally follows. . .

PS — My children, ages 5 and 2, really like coming to births with me. . .

DEALING WITH HOSPITALS

From a reader in New Jersey:

. . . I recently learned of several organizations you may or may not know about,
and I hope you will get the word out about them.  These are organizations made up of
parents and concerned health professionals to deal with the problem of children who
must stay for any length of time in a hospital.

My son will undergo minor surgery in a few months (he’s 15 months old) and I
am currently in a process of requesting permission (you know that’s how you have to
phrase things sometimes when talking to institutions about one’s rights) to stay with my
son at all times when he is awake, including during the administration of anaesthesia
and going to him in the recovery room directly after surgery, so he will see me upon
awakening.  This may sound reasonable to you, but many hospitals do not permit it. . .

At Rainbow Babies’ and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland where Drs. Kennell
and Klaus, authors of Maternal-Infant Bonding practice and have had influences, it is
routine for parents to participate closely in this way, in fact, encouraged.

Many people whose children must go in the hospital are not aware that they can
be in control to a large extent, if they prepare ahead of time rather than be swept
uncontrollably into a maze of bureaucratic snangles (that’s a combination of snare
and tangle) by doctors, nurses, and other hospital personnel who often don’t realize
how terrifying the whole experience can be for the parents and the child.

I have written to the two organizations below in the hopes that they can help me
– I have not heard from them yet:

Association for the Care of Children in Hospitals, 3615 Wisconsin Av NW,
Washington, DC 20016.

Children in Hospitals, Inc., 31 Wilshire Park, Needham MA 02192. . .

CHARITY BY CHILDREN

From New Age, May 1980:

CHILDREN’S CRUSADE — In Great Britain an appeal was made recently
during a popular children’s TV program, Blue Peter, asking children to take
unwanted toys and books to be sold at their local Oxfam charity shop and to spend
their pocket money on items from the same shop in order to raise money for the
Cambodian refugees.
Blue Peter had set the target for the appeal at 100,000 pounds (about
$220,000).

Great Britain’s World Goodwill organization reports that the day after the appeal
was made, Oxfam shops were crowded with children all intent on the same mission.
Within two days the children, by their own efforts, had raised 100,000 pounds.

Within three weeks of the appeal, the children of England had raised 1,049,831
pounds for the starving Cambodians. . .

APPEAL

From Janine Beichman in Japan (see Dir.):

. . . I work as a volunteer native speaker at an informal library that is open once
a week for 3 hours.  Members of the library are Japanese elementary school children
(age 5-12, as some are actually in kindergarten) who have lived in English-speaking
countries and speak English fluently as well as Japanese.  Most also read and write
English.  There are about 25 children in our library (there are 4 or 5 other such
libraries in the Tokyo area, each with about the same number of kids).  The idea
behind the library is that  if a child continues to read in English, their mastery of the
language will continue to grow.

However, it is difficult and expensive for most Japanese people to obtain
English books in Tokyo (public libraries have no children’s books in English).  So, our
library’s primary function is to lend books.  Initial donations of books have been made
by the British Council. . .  but we need more.

Five Japanese women and three American and British ones work for the library
(it gives us a terrific adult-child ratio!) but all of us are volunteer workers.  The children
pay a small membership fee — about $10 a year — so there isn’t an awful lot of money
for books after money for snacks, rental of a room (we use government facilities and
rent is minimal) and various other costs are deducted.

So — if you know of any person or company that would donate storybooks,
reading workbooks, or other books and materials, we’d be most grateful.  They could
be sent to my address and I would bring them to the library.
And, if you know of any kids who might want to exchange letters, I think some of
our kids might be interested in that. . .

______________

According to the latest US Postage Service Information, the rate to send books
overseas is relatively cheap: 59¢ for 1 lb, 81¢ for 2 lbs, $1.25 for 4, $1.69 for 6, $2.02
for 8, $2.52 for 10, $3.02 for 11 (limit).

WHISTLE

Nancy Raymer (OH), who writes the Children at Home column of OCEAN’s
newsletter, printed this poem, Whistle, by her daughter Sarah (age 7):

The Tongue
goes back
the lips make a kiss
blow easy
and the Whistle
comes out
I can Whistle
like a thistle
in the wind
I can Whistle
Like a bird
I can.

JAZZ WHISTLING

I wrote in NEVER TOO LATE (available here, $4.50 + postage):

. . . Sometime during my third year at school I began a new part of my musical
life.  One day, as I was whistling one of the many swing records I had learned by heart,
the thought came to me, Why not make up some jazz solos of your own?  I decided to
try it.  I may have thought it would be easy.  It turned out not to be.  The first results
were terrible.  I could whistle only a few notes of the simplest, most banal kind of blues.
But I kept at it, and the solos slowly became better.  They tended (and still tend) to stay
within the basic metrical and harmonic pattern of blues and swing that I was used to:
eight bars of solo in a given key, and then eight closing bars in the original key.  Most
jazz arrangements and solos, and most of the popular songs of the times, were in this
pattern.  The harmonic pattern, too, was simple, though I still don’t know enough
musical theory to say what it was.  But within those simple patterns the great musicians
of the thirties did some wonderful things.

Inspired by them, my own jazz whistling became freer, more melodic and
inventive.  Some of the time it was still rather labored and predictable, but every now
and then I would surprise myself.  I would hear in my mind, or whistle soundlessly or
even out loud, a solo so varied, unexpected and just all-around right that it was if I had
not thought of it at all, but it had been made somewhere else and just happened to
come out through me.  This sometimes happened when I had been listening to a lot of
good jazz and swing and had been inspired by it.  But it quite often happened when I
had not been whistling jazz for some time, or even hearing it or thinking about it.  It was
as if the sub- or unconscious creative music-making part of my mind had been busy for
some time making something good, and was now ready to show it to me.

One winter evening around 1948, when I had not heard any jazz or swing, live
or recorded, in some time, I was going with my sister and her husband to a little night
spot in Poughkeepsie.  As we went in, a jazz trio — piano, drums, and bass — were
playing.  Even though we could hardly hear them over the din of voices in the packed
little room, I could tell they were good.  Something in the lightness and crispness of
their rhythm touched a musical button in me, and as we stood in the lobby taking off
and checking coats, hats, boots, etc., and waiting for a table, I began to whistle a long
solo that absolutely amazed me.  To the critical mind inside me it seemed the best I
had ever done, and a very good solo even by the standards of the music I listened to.
Another voice inside was saying, Holy Smoke!  Where in the world is this coming
from?  For two full choruses, sixty-four bars’ worth, the music poured out of me.  Then
it was over, and I could not remember a note of it.  But it was a fine moment.. .

FAMILY ECONOMICS

When we were growing up, one of the things my father used to say with real
conviction was, The most important thing in the world is the business of earning a
living.  Except for that, money was never mentioned in our family.  I didn’t know then,
and don’t know to this day, how much my father earned, or what other income he may
have had, or what taxes we paid, or what rent, or how much my schooling cost, or what
our medical bills were, or insurance, or anything.  I don’t remember that I was
particularly curious about these matters, but even if I had been, I would never have
dared to ask about them.

I now feel strongly that children should  know, or be able to know, the facts
about their families’ finances — how much money there is, how it is earned or
otherwise received, and how it is spent or saved.  Children are interested in these
things.  Money is one of the most mysterious and attractive parts of the adult world they
live in and want to find out about.   It is obviously important — the grown-ups talk about
it all the time.

For another thing, the family finances, the economics of the family, are a small
and simple version of the economics of the town, state, country, or world.  The more
you understand about the economics of your own family, the more you are likely to
understand about the economics of larger places.

Also, family economics is a way of talking about numbers and arithmetic in a
real context.  Instead of learning to use numbers in the abstract, in a kind of vacuum,
so that later (at least in theory) they can use them to think about something real,
children can begin to think and talk right now about what is real, and as they do it learn
to use numbers.  Family economics will bring in such ideas as interest, percentage,
loans, mortgages, installments, insurance, and so on, the children learning math in
school would not meet for years.  And in talking about money we can use different
kinds of graphs — bar graphs or circle graphs, to show how income and expenses are
divided up, or graphs of various quantities against time, to show how various
quantities against time, to show how various expenses vary through the year (more
heat in the winter), or from year to year.

Families with little money — certainly many families that read GWS — often find it
hard to explain to their children why they don’t have or can’t have something they
want.  One family wrote that they were having a terrible time convincing their child that
at that moment they couldn’t get him a ten-speed bike.  I suggested that they show him
exactly how much money the family earned, what it had to spend money on, what it
had to save money for, and let the child see for himself that the bicycle money wasn’t
there.  They said they would.  How this worked out, they never told me.  At any rate, the
child learned something worth knowing.

The Ny Lille Skole near Copenhagen (see INSTEAD OF EDUCATION) used to
make money decisions in general meetings, at which all the children (aged 7 thru 14)
had a vote.  Even the youngest children took an active and informed part in these
discussions.  They soon learned that if you spend money for one thing you can’t spend
it on another, and so, learned to make serious choices.  Though the average age of
these children was not much over 10, I never heard that either the children or the
teachers thought later that they had made any really bad choices.

As in everything else, some children will be much more interested in these
money matters than others.  If children are not interested, let it go, and just keep the
information where they can get it if they want to.  But some other children may even
want, at least for a while, to keep the family books, records of all the money that comes
in and goes out.  Here again, I wouldn’t turn such a project into a compulsory chore.
Some quite young children might well start such a project, only to lose interest in it
after a while.  Let them drop it.  Others would be willing and even eager to do the
project over a long period of time.  In that case, offer them even more responsibility, let
them write checks and pay bills, balance the checkbook, and so on.

We might even introduce these children to simple double-entry bookkeeping.
Knowing at least the basics of double-entry bookkeeping seems to me as valuable a
life-skill as knowing how to type.  One of the reasons why almost all small businesses
fail, and why so many families make a mess of their own finances, is that they don’t
understand bookkeeping and the economic ideas behind it.  Double-entry
bookkeeping is a very good way to learn much more about economics — indeed, I
think that any formal study of economics might well begin there.  Aside from that, like
skill in typing, it is a very valuable skill in the job market.

In later issues of GWS I will talk more about double-entry bookkeeping.
Meanwhile, I will look for a good simple text about it.  If any readers know of one, or a
good book for children about economics, please let me know.

SIMPLE ADDING MACHINE

For about fifteen years now I have been saying to teachers that they would help
their students more, and save themselves much time and trouble, if instead of
correcting arithmetic papers (and any others where for each question there is only one
right answer) they would give their students the answer sheets and let them correct
their papers themselves.  No teachers that I actually know of ever took this suggestion,
which I now offer to home schoolers.  With calculators so cheap, we don’t even need
answer sheets, for arithmetic at least.  Just show children how to do problems on the
calculator, and then let them check their own answers.  Even better if they make up
their own problems.

For addition and subtraction, we don’t need anything even as fancy as a
calculator.  We can make for children, or show them how to make, a simple adding and
subtracting machine out of two rulers, or even out of two pieces of paper marked off
like rulers.
Suppose we have two rulers or pieces of paper like this:
____________________________
1    2    3    4    5
____________________________

Here’s how we use them to add 4 + 3.
We put the left hand end of one ruler against the 4 mark on the other, like this:
____________________
1    2    3
_________________________________________
1    2    3    4    5    6    7
_________________________________________

Then we look at the 3 mark on the second ruler, and we see that it is against the
7 mark on the first ruler.  This shows us that 4 + 3 = 7.  Though not all children might
see this at first, it is clear that by using our rulers this way we had added a 4 unit length
to a 3 unit length to make a 7 unit length.  If our rulers are long enough, we can do this
with any two numbers.

Children using this cheap adding machine may soon notice some things that
flash cards might never reveal to them.  One would be that when, as in our figure, the
left end of one ruler is against the 4 on the other, we can see just be looking at the
ruler that
4 + 1 = 5
4 + 2 = 6
4 + 3 = 7
4 + 4 = 8 and so on.

In other words, each time we increase by 1 the number we are adding to 4, our
answer increases by 1.  This may seem simple enough to those of us who know it.  But
it isn’t simple to a lot of school-taught children, even those who know their addition
facts.  Many of these children might know very well, for example, that 6 + 6 = 12, but
might have to struggle hard to remember what 6 + 7 equaled.  Plenty of them would
get it wrong — I have seen it myself many times.

Anyway, the first time a child discovers that when you add 1 to one of two
numbers that you are adding together, it is an exciting discovery, and no less important
just because many people know it already.  Later on the child might discover that
when you add 2 to one of two numbers you are adding together, it makes your answer
2 bigger.  More excitement.  And the same is true for 3, or 4, and so on.
In algebra, we would write this discovery like this:

x + (y + a) = (x + y) + a

But I don’t think I would tell this to a young child, unless s/he was already
familiar with the idea that x or y could stand for any number.  This, by the way, is
probably an idea that most six-year-olds can grasp faster than most ninth graders — at
least, ninth graders who have had eight years of school math.  But I am going to save
talk about Algebra for later articles.

If we use yardsticks (get them from hardware stores) or meter sticks, or simply
make our paper or cardboard rules 40 or 50 units long, or longer, children may notice
many more things, such as this sequence and others like it:

4 + 3 = 7
14 + 3 = 17
24 + 3 = 27
34 + 3 = 37 and so on.

Again, I have known plenty of school taught children for whom 4 + 3, 14 + 3, 24
+ 3, 34 + 3, etc. were completely different problems.  They might say that 4 + 3 = 7 and
then turn around and say that 24 + 3 = 29, or something even more ridiculous.  This is
what happens when people teach arithmetic as a pile of disconnected facts to be
memorized.  Children have no sense of the logic or order of numbers against which
they can check their memory, or which they can use if memory is uncertain.

Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the schools in our homes.

A SENSIBLE SCHOOL

Many parents of children who learned to read before they went to school have
written that the schools and teachers were angered and threatened by this.  Happily,
there are some exceptions to this don’t-let-your-children-learn-to-read, it-will-only-
confuse-them rule.  From Voorhees NJ comes a school newsletter in which the
superintendent, LeRoy Swoyer, gives this sensible advice:

. . . Preschool children should be talked to, read to, listened to and their
questions should be answered.

. . . Do not discourage spontaneous attempts at learning to read.  It will not harm
vision nor cause confusion later.

. . . If children write spontaneously with non-standard spelling, encourage them
by reading their stories and messages.  It will not make standard spelling any more
difficult for them to learn later. . .

ADVICE ON READING

Dean Schneider (NJ), who runs a Kids School Literacy Project in Newark,
wrote about his experiences teaching reading:

. . . This is a weird little article, but it will show you how to teach someone to
read.  You’ll need three books to supplement this outline: James Herndon’s HOW TO
SURVIVE IN YOUR NATIVE LAND, John Holt’s HOW CHILDREN LEARN, and Herb
Kohl’s READING, HOW TO.

. . . Rather than write a scholarly, well-footnoted thesis on reading, I’ll outline
how I teach reading and refer you as often as possible to specific spots in the above
books — no sense in me rehashing what’s already been said better elsewhere!  So,
here goes:

1)  I work with kids who are 6-13 years old, so I assume they have some prior
knowledge of print.  See Kohl, pp. 24-27; Holt, 83-84.

2)  Beginning Reading: See Herndon, 143-144; Holt 81-87.  Whether in a
classroom or in tutoring, I simply read with kids one-to-one.  With beginners who are
ready to get into books, I mostly just read to them — lots of Seuss, Berenstain, Eastman
(books that have a few easy words per page).  Gradually, kids begin to know these
books and begin to focus on words, and become able to read all or parts of the books.
Gradually, kids get into other books and just start reading more and more.  When a
child comes to an unknown word, I usually just tell her the word so she’ll keep going.
But occasionally I’ll encourage her to figure it out for herself.  I say things like It’s the
same as this word here, or It rhymes with CAT, or You know this part of it, (such as
GO in GOES), or Skip it and see if you can figure it out later, (through context), or
Take a guess (kids often guess correctly when they see it’s OK to guess), or Nope,
try again, or You’re close, or I’ll just say to skip the word altogether (there’s no need
to get every word right).  I say whatever seems appropriate, and I try not to say too
much; I don’t want to detract from her just getting on with the story.

Some other, very minimal work may be done here, if necessary.  See Kohl, 41-42, 47-48.

3)  Readers with a little more experience:  Later, when a reader has a large
number of books he or she can read, you can do two main things:

– Continue the same minimal input as described above;

– Help the reader develop the skill of relating an unknown word to a known
word in order to figure it out.  For example, if she doesn’t know the word cheat, she
may know the word eat if you point it out; then she can figure out the whole word.  I
either cover parts of words with my finger to leave the known part showing, or I’ll write
the known part of paper and expand it till the whole word is figured out.  More
examples:

Unknown word        Known parts
bleacher            each  –  bleach
appear            ear  –  pear
traffic                af  –  traf

This should be done very quickly and not become a formal exercise.  In
addition, see Kohl, 178 (#24).

4)  Phonics:  I believe phonics can be a useful tool in reading, but I don’t make a
big deal out of it.  Most kids pick up a good sense of phonics simply by reading.  On the
occasions where some attention to phonics seems necessary, I’ve developed a
simple, quick, direct way to give kids a good base in phonics.  This is a variation on an
idea in Kohl’s READING, HOW TO (p. 54).  I make up a chart of sounds like this:

ab    eb    ib    ob    ub
ac    ec    ic    oc    uc
ad    ed    id    od    ud
af    ef    if    of    uf

etc., etc., etc., a vowel with a consonant.

I spend a few minutes a day working on these sounds, many of which are
nonsense sounds.  As the child gets good at saying these sounds, I show how these
sounds make up lots of other words.  For example, ac/back, en/ten, tent, tender; el/fell,
elbow; il/pill; ef/left.  Despite the many exceptions to phonic rules, the few variations on
the above list can be used to create thousands of words.  A similar chart might be
created for the silent e rule:

abe    ete    ile    ole    ule
ale    eke    ine    ope    une

But I stress that any phonics work, including the above and things like vowel
combinations (house, jail, noise) and compound words (hot/dog, mail/man) is picked
up pretty well through just reading.  When phonics work does seem called for, the
above stuff as well as quick games or Kohl, p. 178, can help.

I don’t think phonics should be done at all until kids are already reading fairly
well.  For example, if you have grade levels in your school, the whole first grade
reading program should include little if any phonics; students should spend their time
simply learning to read lots of books they like.  I can teach kids everything they need to
know about phonics in about ten hours total teaching time, so this is a very minimal
thing despite all the fuss about it (and this whole page devoted to it!).

5)  Other skills:  If you think you have to work on comprehension skills, just
read together as described in section 2.  And just discuss the story as you go along;
that’s all there is to it.  If a child’s reading is choppy, or he or she is reading one word at
a time with no rhythm, simply read to the child more often as a model of how to read
with flow and expression.  If he or she gets lost in the middle of a complicated
sentence, re-read that sentence to model how it should be read.  You don’t even have
to explain what you’re doing; kids have a good ear and will pick up fluency in reading
from a good model.  And, even when children read in a monotone, they often do
understand what they’re reading.

I do very little questioning for comprehension; I’ve found that if children are
reading without too much faltering, the chances are they are also understanding
what’s happening.  If not, simply discuss things a little bit as you go along.  I won’t
discuss test-taking skills here; I consider them to be a separate set of skills that should
not be confused with read reading.

6)  Summary:  See Herndon, 143-144; Holt, 81-87.  From experience, I know it’s
easier to teach someone how to read than it is to write an article on how easy it is to
teach reading.  What I’ve tried to do is give a sense of how I have taught children to
read; I’ve tried to do this through this outline that refers you to the sources I owe the
greatest debt to.

Kids learn to read by reading.  There are a few ways an experienced reader can
lend a helping hand; but there are also many ways to discourage and frustrate kids.
Basically, if kids learn to use context and look for meaning, to relate unknown words to
known words, to sound out words, to skip words rather than get hung up on them,
and most of all to love reading, they will become good readers.  And you will have
offered the best thing a teacher can offer — the tools learners can use to teach
themselves further.  I can’t emphasize enough the importance of what Herndon talks
about (pages 143-144).

In addition to everything I’ve said here, if you want your children to read well,
have good books around, don’t let standardized tests rule the way your child learns to
read, and unplug the TV set! . . .

TUTORING DROP-OUTS

From Bob Sessions (IA):

I work with high school drop outs, the bad kids of their schools and
communities.

. . . Usually, contrary to how our program is done in other places, we encourage
the youths to shop around in the job market for a while. . .  The majority of our youths
have chosen to upgrade their abilities — most of them have chosen to study for the
high school equivalency (GED) degree, several of them are going to college, and
many of them either are seeking on-the-job training or vocational school training.

Our experience with tutoring has been most striking.  To a person, our clients
have been failures in school.  Initially, most of them are very uninterested in studying
for the GED (not a fun process by any stretch of the imagination — very tedious review
of grammar, basic math, science, etc.), and of course, most of them have not learned
their basics in school.  Typically, it takes from four to six weeks to tutor these chronic
failures to where they can pass the tests (which 1/3 of high school graduates would
fail); four to six weeks of one-on-one, one hour per day, four days per week.  That’s all!
Sixteen to twenty-four hours of tutoring.  Abilities which had seemed impossible after
9, 10, or 11 years of schooling usually are achieved in a month of personalized,
concentrated learning. . .

THE RIGHT PATH

Manfred Smith (MD) writes:

. . . Even though I am very aware of the way children grow and learn (I have
considered myself a Summerhillian since 1968), it was not until reading GWS that I
consciously observed children (including my own).  The difference is great, because
now I am able to stop myself from trying to teach, an instead allow children the
opportunity to discover the world on their own terms.

But there is more.  The best way I can describe what has happened to me is by
saying that the huge chunk of ice, accumulated over years of schooling, is melting.  I
mean in my mind, of course.  Recently I came across an old discarded algebra book.
Having understood little of it when I was taking the course in school (I received a D), I
decided to take it home with me and give it a try.  Within three hours of work, which I
LOVED, I covered 70 pages of that text.  Being a very old book, it was all business:
few diagrams and pictures, very few examples, no answers.  I had to do all the work
myself.  And it was EASY!

A whole new world has opened to me because of my different attitude towards
the world.  Talk about MOTIVATION!  Every step I take convinces me that you, we, us,
are taking the right path.

PRINTING

From Jean Leonard, who runs a small school in Frankfort, Germany (see
Directory):

. . . Many parents here take their children to the Gutenberg museum to see the
first book ever printed and the first printing machine.  After that they ask lots of
questions about how, why, and when, so we discuss creative invention and we print
and print and print.  The children like to roll snakes out of clay, form them into letters,
place them on the table, paint them with acrylic paint, then print them on paper towels.
From just this limited experience they often discover writing but we print in other ways
too, so much so often that I call the children my little Gutenbergs.

I have some kind of hang-up regarding neatness and ordnung, maybe I have
been in Germany too long.  Anyhow in order to do a beautiful neat job when exposing
the children to letters I always used a stencil.  One day the children saw me and asked
May we try that?  So I bought a lot of stencils.  Not a day goes by without someone
asking to use a stencil.  I tape it onto their paper with masking tape and they go to work
with magic markers.  They all love to use the stencils.  The result is that when they
discover writing it is unusually neat and uniform. . .

OWING A PRESS

Carol Kent (VA) writes:

. . . Recently we bought a hand printing press.  I cannot imagine a more suitable
acquisition for unschoolers of any age.  We have had it in operation one month, and it
is a great excitement and pleasure for the whole family.

We began by reading a couple of library books and ordering catalogs from type
companies listed in Popular Mechanics.  Then we dealt with the Kelsey Company, PO
Box 491, Meriden CT 06450, and bought our entire outfit from them.  They provide
information and supplies for even the rawest novice and are very efficient.  Our total
expenditure was about $1000, though we could have economized, made or made-do
in many ways.  The smallest presses start at $130 (shipping weight 35 lbs.), and most
type is available in small, medium or large fonts.  We selected one of the larger
presses, and another major portion of our investment was in a type stand and type
cases.  Small fonts of type would easily fit in milk cartons, for instance.  There is no
quality difference among Kelsey products — prices are based entirely on size.  Printing
takes very little space.  Our whole operation is contained in about four square feet.

We take the press seriously.  We are meticulous about spelling, grammar,
punctuation, and design.  Our four year old (the oldest) is archivist for the press.  He
gathers all the test impressions after we have printed, punches holes, and files them in
a loose-leaf binder.  He is acutely interested in reading the galleys with a mirror and
finding out what everything says even before it is printed up.

Printing does require discipline: type is made of lead and cleaners are toxic.
Printing procedures are simple but essential.  A slight oversight can severely damage
the press or type.  Yet young children can print and learn that the reward comes not
from larking around, but from doing a careful, responsible job. . .

As a bonus, we’ve already found the press handy for making official forms,
such as this letterhead for our unschool.  Some of the more interesting book and
school supplies catalogs (e.g., Platt & Munk, Sargent-Welch) are available only to
requesters using organization or institution letterhead. . .

_______________

The Kents also printed handsome birth announcements for their new baby and
sent us one.  The text reads:

KNOW That by His first Act of Will
Zachary Miller Kent
Joined His Mother Carol in Life
At twelve fifty-four by Moonlight
On the sixteenth Day of April
In this eightieth Year
Of the twentieth Century
Being attended on His Journey
By His Father David
And welcomed by His Brother Robert
And His Sister Susannah

Carol added in a note, . . . As to the birth, we’ve learned in three tries to do it all
by ourselves.  Anyone interested in free-lance birthing is welcome to contact us.  Like
unschooling, it’s the only rational approach. . .

BUYING TEXTS

To a mother who asked how to buy textbooks, Donna wrote:

. . . From my experience as a classroom teacher, it is not particularly easy to find
textbooks; there certainly isn’t any friendly neighborhood textbook store where you can
pick out what you want and pay for it.  Regular bookstores don’t want to touch
textbooks, except for a few of the self-help kind, and even the few teacher stores I
have seen carry a lot more games and gadgets than texts.  If teachers are really
determined to investigate new textbooks, they usually have to write and ask for
samples.  This takes a lot of time and energy and usually teachers just make do with
whatever their schools give them.

First, I would suggest looking for a place that actually has different textbooks on
hand, so you can browse through them a bit.  Places where you might do this: (1) a
school, especially if you are on good terms with a teacher or staff person (2) a public
library — they often have at least a shelf of textbooks (3) a college library, or their
department of education (4) the curriculum department of your school district central
offices.  Make a note of titles, publishers, and addresses.

Next (or do this directly, if you haven’t been able to locate any texts to look at),
write to publishers, describing what you’re looking for, and asking for catalogs and
prices.  Almost any publisher you can think of sells textbooks — McGraw Hill, Holt
Rinehart Winston, Prentice Hall, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Houghton Mifflin, etc.
There are a few that specialize in texts like Allyn & Bacon, Charles E. Merrill, Addison
Wesley.  For a little less traditional texts, try SRA (Science Research Associates), and
CEMREL.  You can find addresses for all these from your librarian or in the back of the
BOOKS IN PRINT catalog.  Most publishers seem quite willing to handle small orders
by mail, if they get your check first.

By the way, the big publishers are usually generous in spending free samples
to schools if they think it might bring on a large order.  If you word your letter right and
maybe have some kind of letter-head stationery, you might be able to take advantage
of this.  But only as far as your own scruples allow, of course.

Another idea:  there are a few catalogs of educational materials.  Personally, I
think much of the stuff in these catalogs is useful only to a classroom teacher trying to
pacify the kids, reward them for having done the textbook assignment, and maybe
keep them from jumping out the windows.  But there are some really great gems
scattered among the junk, and these catalogs are worth looking at.  Try (1) SEE (story
following); (2) Creative Publications, PO Box 10328, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (3)
EDUCAT, PO Box 2158, Berkeley CA 94702  . .

_______________
Two months later the mother wrote with thanks for the advice.  . . . Because of
your help, I was able to locate publishers, order textbooks, and investigate
correspondence schools. . .

We’d like to hear from anyone else who tries these ideas, or has other
suggestions to offer.

S.E.E. CATALOG

One of the best catalogs of educational equipment I have seen is put out by
SEE (Selective Educational Equipment), 3 Bridge St., Newton MA 02195.  Most of the
materials are about math, but some are about other kinds of science.

Some particularly useful items include:

Set of 74 plastic Cuisenaire rods, $3.50.

Transparent SEE calculator — you can actually see how this simple calculating
machine works.  $3.25

Some calculators, including Data-Man (made by Texas Instruments, $24.95, a
very good gadget, fun to use).

A variety of Tangram puzzles.  In these you put together seven shapes — a
square, a parallelogram, and five triangles — to make other shapes.  Almost infinite
variety here.

An inexpensive stopwatch, $13.50.  A stopwatch is a fine measuring instrument
and learning tool (see WHAT DO I DO MONDAY?), and you probably won’t find a
cheaper one.

Rulers and measuring tapes, including a very useful 30 meter/100 foot tape for
$10.75.

A 50X elementary microscope for $4.50 (Wonderful buy!).  Also a hand lens for
20¢.

A simple camera (uses 120 film) for $3.75.  Also, simple developing and
enlarging kits.

All in all, an interesting catalog, well worth having.

BATTLING IN GA.

The Atlanta, Ga., Constitution, 4/3/80:

. . . Patty Blankenship’s children are right at home in school.  That’s the problem.

At least, DeKalb County school authorities see it as a problem.  They believe
her children ought to be present and accounted for in the classroom when the morning
school bells ring.

Hoping for stern disciplinary action, the authorities took the stalemate to DeKalb
State Court last week, but in a landmark indecision, the jury of one man and five
women split right down the middle.  It was justice at its most ironic: the defendant went
free; the jury was hung.

. . . There’s a possibility the case will be retried.  But hold on there.  What is a
nice woman like Patty Blankenship doing in a story like this in the first place?  Does
the state have nothing better to do than haul before the bar of justice — on criminal
charges, no less — a 39 year old mother of two, a deeply religious woman who takes in
sewing to support herself and her fatherless children?  Holy corpus delecti!

It’s not as one-sided as it seems, though Mrs. Blankenship’s prosecutors found
out in a hurry that their adversary was as far from meek and defenseless.  She’s not
only tough as tarpaper, she’s an amateur political scientist who studies the U.S.
Constitution for fun and can cite you chapter and verse as to why the state can take its
case against her and put it where the moon don’t shine.

Last week in court, she gave Assistant Solicitor William E. Mumford and Judge
J. Oscar Mitchell a refresher course in law, showing from the witness stand that the
Fifth Amendment is not a cubbyhole for the cornered and desperate but a many-
chambered mansion of individual liberty.

They thought the Fifth Amendment says a person can’t be compelled to testify
against himself, she explained.  What it says is that you can’t be compelled to be a
witness against yourself.  Blankenship 1, State 0.

. . . As for her clash with the law, that was inevitable, given her early predilection
and later circumstances.

I never wanted to send my children to public schools, she said.  I went to
public school myself and hated it.

She hated public school even more when her first son, Mark, now 14, trooped
off to the first grade.  As soon as she could afford it, she enrolled him in a private
school, but she wasn’t happy with that arrangement, either.

There are some good private schools, she said.  I’m not totally against them.  I
just feel that I have the full right and responsibility to choose what’s best for my
children, and what’s best for them is for me to teach them at home.

. . . Also a factor in her decision was the expense of sending two children to
private school.  I couldn’t afford it, she said.  Then I heard this man on the radio.  He
ran a correspondence school in Prospect Heights, Ill., for teaching at home.  I said to
myself: That’s just what I want for my children.’

Next day, she called the DeKalb Board of Education for the law pertaining to
private schools.

There were only two requirements:  a vending license and approval of the
building by the state fire marshall, she said.  I knew from having read the Georgia
Code that the second requirement had been repealed.  As for the first requirement, I
wasn’t selling anything, so I figured I didn’t need a vending license.

At the time, Mrs. Blankenship was living in Cobb County. . . Her new venture
went along fine for about three months, she said.  But then a Cobb County juvenile
probation officer, the police and a school principal came to my door and threatened to
put me in jail, take away my children and fine me $100 a day for every day they were
not in school.

Georgia law says only that every child between the ages of 7 and 16 must be
enrolled in a public or private school, she explained. Well, I was a private school.

Mrs. Blankenship apparently solved that problem with the law by moving to
DeKalb County, though she says she moved to get nearer to her son’s hospital, not to
elude the authorities.  No matter.  She soon ran afoul of DeKalb officials for the same
reason — alleged failure to comply with the compulsory attendance law.

. . . But DeKalb authorities found her just as elusive a quarry as their Cobb
counterparts had.  She spirited her children out of the county and went into hiding
herself, emerging only when her case went to court.

That was October 1979, but the case was heaved out of Magistrate’s Court
when Magistrate Hopkins Kidd ruled that her children could not give testimony about
their schooling because it could incriminate them.  Since they were the only witnesses
Mumford could call, their mother went free, sprung by the Fabulous Fifth.

. . . DeKalb officials . . . went after her with renewed vigor.

Ever resourceful, Mrs. Blankenship hid her boys again and dropped from public
view.  They were reunited at home after last week’s legal episode ended in a mistrial.

. . . There very well might be another episode to this seemingly interminable
sequel.  Following the mistrial, Mumford said the case would be back in court within 30
days.

There are some, however, who believe that heads more temperate might
prevail, reasoning that the case has become a political hot potato and that the state
has also begun to appear vindictive rather than conscientious.

But a more compelling reason perhaps for dropping the charges is that there is
legal precedent for what Mrs. Blankenship is doing and that airing her case points up,
not a defective parent, but defective laws — to say nothing of aggravating widespread
suspicion that the public school systems are just as bad as Patty Blankenship and
other private school advocates contend.

At the trial, Mrs. Blankenship’s lawyer [Teddy Ray Price] spoke of those
paganistic public schools and depicted them as infested with Quaaludes and
marijuana in a climate where lax morals are tolerated and teen-age girls often get
pregnant.

Price also hammered at the state law, saying it does not define a private school.
That’s the state’s fault, he said.  It’s not her fault.  She complies with the law because
the law is silent. . .

LIEDLOFF ON COMMUNES

More from Jean Liedloff’s letter:

. . . I feel very wary of communes because the little that I know of them seems
pretty unsatisfactory, because, I think, although the clan, or extended family, or tribal
form is certainly correct for our species, we as individuals are so far off our continuum
trollies that they do not work.

For example, the first thing one might see in a commune is a list on the kitchen
wall saying who has to wash the dishes on Tuesday, cook lunch on Wednesday, etc,
with perhaps weekly meetings to discuss frictions that have arisen out of someone
thought not to be doing his or her share, or imposing one way or another on someone
else.  The whole secret of success of the evolved community, as opposed to an
intellectually initiated one superimposed upon a group of intellectually motivated
seekers for change from their unsatisfactory lives, is that all work and cooperation are
100% emotionally voluntary.  I don’t see how one can possibly expect people brought
up as we are to attain the easy, happy, utterly unforced feeling of being at home
together that people like the Yequana have, even with the best of intentions and years
of effort.  However, a group of continuum-minded people, perhaps with separate
houses so that a cooperation could grow with experience without being burdensome
at any stage, might be a good breeding ground for useful research into putting
continuum principles back to work.

. . . I think it’s important to avoid the hippy, or drop-out, image if our message is
to be effective to others, but I can see the value, for example, if there were enough
people without normal jobs, or starting a business which would be run efficiently and
at a good profit without distorting the personalities of the people working in it (by
boredom, competitiveness, requirements to conform to a company policy of petty
dishonesty, making low quality products or services in which one cannot take pride,
etc.) and showing how babies, toddlers, and school children after school hours can be
present without disturbing anyone, from the earliest days, and positively helpful from
the age of about three or four years.

EXPLOITING COLLEGE

From Adam Levine (PA):

Here at the University of Pennsylvania . . . I’ve molded the school to fit my own
education.  In other words, I’m doing what interests me and getting credit for it.

Example 1:  I became interested in photography in high school, when I put
together a slide show about the history of my home town, Stamford, CT.  This was part
of an independent study project that the school allowed qualified seniors to
undertake instead of a regular course in the second half of the year.  By that time I was
sick of high school, having been accepted into college early, and I had been bitten by
the Bicentennial Bug, which infected me with an interest in America’s past.  When I got
into college I wanted to learn more about photography — printing, developing,
composition, etc.  Luckily, I heard through word of mouth about a photography course
the University offered for credit.  The course is not listed in any catalogs or course
guides because the lone instructor would be swamped with people.  As it was, she
already had a waiting list in the hundreds.

I got into the course, took the beginning and advanced classes, and have just
finished my third semester in the advanced class.  The teacher is now one of my
closest friends, and photography has become part of my future plans.

Few if any courses in this University offer any practical skills.  This photography
class is a fluke, and I would not be surprised if it is discontinued in the future.  I was
lucky to find it.  I can’t even remember the names of most of my other courses, let alone
anything that I learned from them.  But this course gave me something more than
brainy busywork for a grade: it gave me something tangible, a skill.  I have become a
very competent photographer, and nothing I have ever done in any school has been
so good for my self-esteem as having been recognized and praised for what I’ve
created with the skills I learned in this course.

Example 2:  I became interested in solar energy when I was a freshman here,
and this interest (through my own efforts, not coursework) has expanded into a general
environmental awareness, so I decided to add to my American Civilization major one
in Environmental Studies.

Example 3:  As another part of the high school independent study project I
mentioned before, I interviewed an old Stamford resident (now 94) about the history of
the town.  In the four years since then I have done a lot of thinking about this woman,
interviewed her several times, and I now am working on a book of words and
pictures about her life, the life of the town, and the problems of old people.  And in the
past four semesters here, I have used various aspects of this project, one that I
originated in my head and one that I really want to do, to meet the requirements of four
separate courses.

Which brings me to the point of this letter.  by working my interests into my
course work, and thereby getting credit for them, and by worrying only about passing
courses instead of getting A’s, I have learned more from school and I’m happier here.
The courses that I have a real interest in I do well in grade-wise; the others I devote
only enough time to get a passing mark.  I’ve learned more this way because I spend
most of my time doing what I’m interested in, and I’m happier because I’m finally
educating myself, instead of being educated. . .

GETTING CERTIFIED

. . . Last summer after profuse study, GWS included, we made the decision to
educate our three children at home (nth grade boy, nth grade boy, rd grade girl).  My
husband and I are ex-teachers, four years each in the early 1960’s.  (We hesitate to
add that fact as we don’t feel being a teacher is necessary.  In this state, it helps.)

We approached the administration with our plan — Calvert Home Study.
According to the state’s definition, Calvert isn’t a school.  Administration suggested we
become a school by becoming recertified teachers.  Then as we travel about (which
we do a lot) our school could go with us.

Thankful to have the chance to educate our own children without legal hassle,
we decided one of us would take classes (6 hours) for recertification.

Desiring to be consistent in our philosophy of education, we wanted to be able
to have some choices in what we studied.  We feel you can educate yourself better
than any institution but I (not my husband) would have been willing to be led back into
the herd to avoid hassles and just take standard courses.

I was told to take 800’s courses as these would qualify for re-certification.
Among these classes we found Independent Study Courses.  I was excited.  I could
decide what I really wanted to learn, get a faculty member to guide me and allow me to
pick his or her brain, and become legal, all at once!

It all worked out beautifully except for a slight problem.  When I went to register, I
found Independent Study Classes wouldn’t be acceptable for recertification.

At the onset of our inquiries we had already spoken with the Dean of the
Teachers College and he supported our ideas by sending us to like-minded faculty
members.  (Note:  we have often found the people at the top to be very open and
understanding.  Don’t overlook them if you have a problem with an institution or the
like.)  A phone call to the Dean at this time resulted in settling the problem of having
independent study accepted for recertification.

I am now registered to take six hours of Ind. Study with two professors.  My
areas are adolescent development with a reading courses set up to develop as we go
along.  My second area is computer use in education.  My goals at this time are to
become computer-literate and determine the strengths and weaknesses of computers
for educating our three children at home.

Right now, I truly feel This is the first day of the best of our lives. . . .

VT HOME-SCHOOLERS

From the Rutland (VT) Herald, 3/30/80:

HOME SCHOOLING, A FAMILY CHOICE — Like many girls her age, Krystal
Lytton, 11, of Concord, takes ballet lessons, attends class in weaving and likes to meet
people.  She is different from most girls her age in one important respect: she does not
go to school.  Krystal, like several dozen other Vermont children, studies at home.

We’ve always been hesitant about sending her to public school, said Barbara
Lytton, Krystal’s mother.  We feel we can do a better job.

Lytton’s neighbors Joseph and Julie Riggie also decided to keep their 8-year-
old daughter Kyra at home.

We had mixed feelings about keeping her home, said Julie, but once you start
doing it, it seems so right.

. . . Vermont law, compared to many other states, is fairly liberal concerning
home teaching.

Parents who wish to teach their children at home must first present a home
education plan to the district superintendent of schools.  They must then fill out a two-
page form that outlines the planned course of study.  A committee of the Department of
Education reviews the proposal and rules on the application.

Last year 72 families submitted applications for home teaching certificates.  Fifty
got approval, according to Dr. Karlene Russell, director of elementary and secondary
education in the state Department of Education.

The final decision, according to Russell, is based on an assessment by the
committee of whether a home education plan meets minimum state education
requirements.  Basic skills, in reading, writing, mathematics, history, government and
natural sciences are included.

. . . The school day for Rowan and Ami Price usually starts with a social studies
lesson and a geography check with a small blue globe.  Reading, spelling,
mathematics and science follow, although not necessarily in the same order every
day.

The subjects the two boys study are about all their school day has in common
with children who attend public school.  The two boys study at home with their parents,
Truman and Suzi Price.

Rowan, 6, Ami, 5, and their step-sister Deirdre Buchanan, 13, study at home
instead of attending public school in Saxton’s River.  Another sister, Jessica
Buchanan, 12, does attend public school in town because she wants to be with her
friends.

Truman and Suzi Price decided not to send their children to school because
they think, at least for the elementary grades, that they can do a better job.

I have nothing against the schools here.  In fact, Saxton’s River has a very
good school, Suzi said.  We just feel we can do a better job at home.  Besides, I just
like being with my children.

Suzi handles most of the teaching in the living room around their wood stove.
The family lives in a big house in the center of town that they bought three years ago
when they moved to Vermont from Minnesota.

Suzi has a teaching degree and attends an Antioch College branch in Keene,
NH, one day each week.

School officials in Saxton’s River were very helpful helping her set up her home
teaching program, Suzi says, and continue to provide materials and assistance. . .

Suzi, who has worked for the Head Start and the 5-C Child Care program, has
a variety of materials in her home, including a complete beginning reading series, an
individualized science program, art materials, and hundreds of books.

Although she has plenty of materials, Suzi says prepackaged teaching
materials are not as important as working one on one with the children:  The only
thing you really need is lots of paper and pencils.

Books can always be borrowed from town libraries, and school officials, at least
in Saxton’s River, helped Price develop a home program by assisting with equipment
and advice. . .

BACK TO SCHOOL

Susan Dickey (Access to DC, GWS #5), who during several years of home
tutoring was able to take advantage of Washington’s museums and activities, is now
back in school.  From a Washington Post story last fall on her unschooling:

Susan’s parents . . . value home schooling as an option they may use again.

. . . She reached the psychological stage where she wanted to be part of a
group, says Susan’s mother.  She loves school now, but that is because her three
years out allowed her to develop her individuality.  She has the maturity to keep her
own style and still follow the group’s rules.

Susan’s transition into the public school system, reports her mother, has been
smooth except for a spelling problem.  Socially she is doing fine.  I see children who
are shuffling around in groups and are clannish among strangers.  But Susan is open
with people.

School for most children is mandatory, she adds.  But for Susan it is a
privilege, because she knows that anytime she needs to be out, I will help her stay
out. . . .

_______________

And from June Sanders, PO Box 193, Central Valley CA 96019:

. . . Since we moved to California, Michelle, 13, has started back to school, her
own decision and insistence.  I enrolled her in seventh grade, without having to give
any explanation of her last few years — the previous schooling was the name and
address of last school attended.  She started right in making A’s and B’s, apparently
didn’t miss anything the last two years.  She confided in her home room teacher — a
man — that she had been out of school since 77.  He said, It doesn’t show . . .

AND BACK HOME

Spence and Eileen Trombly (CT) wrote earlier this year:

. . . Well, after five years of home-schooling and three months in a private,
Christian school, we are back to square one.  We are once again involved with our
home program after withdrawing our three girls only last week.

We did have high hopes concerning this newly developing school and their
ideas were , indeed, great.  However, the enthusiasm the girls all showed back in
September quickly diminished and finally died shortly thereafter.  We heard the same
old tapes playing as they once did back when they attended public school. . .

Once again, they were caught up in and extremely offended by the viciousness
of their peers . . . in the form of malicious gossip, cliques, deliberate meanness, etc,
etc.  Both of the older girls are well-adjusted and have always been able to relate to
and converse easily with people of all ages.  During the last three months we have
once again seen a good deal of irritability, tears (a rarity for our second child), and just
plain discontentment and unhappiness.  They have been unaccepted by their peers
because of their unwillingness to participate in the gossip and other things I have
mentioned above. . .

SUPREME COURT ACTION

From the Louisville, KY Courier-Journal:

The U.S. Supreme Court declined yesterday [5/20/80] to review a Kentucky
Supreme Court decision prohibiting state regulation of private schools, an action that
came as no surprise to officials of Christian schools.

. . . Without comment, the justices left intact the state court’s October ruling
relieving private schools of the obligation of gaining state accreditation.

. . . State education officials are upset.  I’m very disappointed, said the Rev.
Bob Brown, vice chairman of the state Board for Elementary and Secondary
Education. . . It seems that anybody can teach anything any place and call it a school.
He added that he has carried on a one-man campaign to raise standards.  Now they
said in effect there can be no standards.

Brown believes that the state’s compulsory attendance law, requiring children to
attend school 185 days a year, is now unenforceable.

Brown said that under the ruling, parents who claimed to have a disagreement
over a matter of conscience with a local public school teacher or system could remove
their child from school and teach the child at home without violating the attendance
law.

However, Robert Chenoweth, assistant attorney general, said the question of
what a school is must still be resolved.  Can a family, he asked, declare itself a
religious body and restrict education of its children to the home?  No one has the
answer, Chenoweth said.  There are a lot of loose ends.

. . . But William Ball, the Harrisburg, Pa., lawyer who represented the Christian
schools, said This is the absolute end of the road for state molestation of these
schools.

The attorneys for the plaintiffs in the suit argued that the ruling of Kentucky’s
high court was based on the state constitution, which gave the U.S. Supreme Court
justices no authority to review it. . .

A GOOD TEACHER

More from Adam Levine:

. . . The head of the department is one of the best teachers I’ve ever met.  His
motto is, Once you get to college I figure you’re an adult, and you’ll get things done
when you’re ready.  He goes by this motto to the point of avoiding or flaunting (in legal
ways, of course) any school rules that get in its way.  In this vein he has a corollary to
the main motto:  I’ll sign anything!

. . . He goes out of his way to be helpful, and he lets people learn what they
want at their speed, because he knows they will learn more that way.

. . . He always has time to sit and talk, if you can find him, which is not always an
easy task.   . . . When I went to talk to him about a paper I’m going to write, he made
three phone calls for me (two long distance) and later that day left a message at my
house (because he had gotten more info after I left him) and left his home phone
number in case I had any questions!

He has given me an extra six months to finish the paper.  It’s nice to have a
professor who does not make you worry about artificial school rules and deadlines. . .

AND ANOTHER

I wrote in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION (available here, $3.50 + postage):

. . . The man who taught me to drive was an old man, unschooled, not a good
driver himself, and with no other great talent or skill that I knew of.  But he was a great
teacher of driving, and ordered the task perfectly.  He had seen that many drivers,
particularly beginners, were nervous and prone to panic because they did not
understand the relationship between engine, gears, clutch, the nature of the road, and
the acceleration or speed of the car.  He decided that before he would let me on the
road I must master these relationships.  Master them in action, that is; he probably
could not have put them into words, and I would not have understood if he had.  He
drove the car up a little-used road on a quite steep hill, pulled it to the side, put on the
hand brake, and told me to get in the driver’s seat and drive away, slowly, smoothly,
with no jerks and no slipping back.  He showed me once or twice how to do this; then it
was my turn.  After many hours on that hill I was eventually able to pull away smoothly
every time, as often as he wanted.  Clutch, gears, and throttle have never troubled me
since; indeed, using the gears well is one of the things I enjoy most about driving.

The task was ideal for still another reason.  The car itself gave me the feedback
and correction I needed.  For a few times he had to say, You gave it too much gas, or
You let the clutch pedal out too fast.  After that I could tell from what the car did what I
had done wrong and how I needed to change.  I had the criteria I needed to correct my
actions.  He had no need to say anything, and left me to do the task without
interference.  Later, on the highway, when seeing other cars coming I began like all
beginners to twitch the wheel this way and that, he would say in a deep slow voice,
Just stay on your side, and don’t pay any attention to them.  This is another task of the
teacher, to give the student moral support until his new-found skills become automatic
and he no longer has to think or worry about them.  All in all he was a splendid
teacher. . .

OUTDOOR SCHOOL

The Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center, PO Box 67, Breckenridge CO
80424, sent us this newspaper story on its program.  Teachers who cannot stand the
schools any longer, or young people looking for work worth doing, might be interested
in it.

. . . He has never spent a night away from home.  Tonight, he will sleep in the
wilderness in a tent he put up himself.

He stares in awe at the tall pine trees that surround him.

He is a special child.  He is developmentally disabled, and, since birth, his
environment has been limited to the indoors.

He is now enrolled in the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center program, a
program founded by Gene Dayton, for physically and developmentally disabled
persons, the only program of its kind in the country.

BOEC makes available to the disabled person outdoor activities that focus on
building confidence and independence.  Bruce Werber, executive director of BOEC,
says they don’t just try to teach outdoor skills and techniques, but the theory behind the
whole process is therapeutic.

They learn a facet of independence outdoors.  They learn by having immediate
consequences, said Werber.  An example he uses is if a student builds a tent, and the
tent falls down, he learns by immediate consequences that he did something wrong.
He doesn’t have to wait for an adult to tell him.

A student gains confidence when he has made personal accomplishments,
such as if the tent doesn’t fall, said Werber.  He says that, through the program, the
student is also exposed to peer interaction.  He learns cooperation as a means of
getting a job done.

The BOEC cabin is surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery, which is new to
many of the students.  A cabin, built by Gene Dayton and Karl Mohr, has a lake for a
front yard and a stream in the back.  In the cabin, materials represent the activities
offered in the program.  A guitar hangs on the wall, canoes are strapped to the ceiling,
backpacks line the corners, and snowshoes are stuffed in a closet.  Other activities not
represented in the cabin are horseback riding, desert hiking, fishing, ski touring, and
rafting.

The ages of the students range anywhere from 4 to 74 years.  The summer
programs have been averaging eight students per course.  All outdoor gear is
provided by BOEC.  Werber says they don’t feel it would be right to limit the program
only to the students who can afford expensive equipment.

In most cases, there is one staff member to every three students, sometimes one
staff to one student, depending on the extent of the students’ handicaps.  All of the staff
members are trained in the field of special education, and all have at least some type
of experience in first aid.  Werber says they are more interested in the staff having
more people skills than outdoor skills.  And understandably so.  Special people need
special people. . .

_______________

The Breckenridge Center also offers professional training courses.  From the
1980 announcement:

. . . A seven day introduction to outdoor skills, hiking, backpacking, wheelchair
camping, New Games, emergency care and safety, and low impact wilderness travel
for men and women working with physically and developmentally disabled young
people or adults.  Emphasis is on specific techniques for teaching the handicapped in
the wilderness.  College credit available. . . Fee:  7 Days - $235. . . Starting dates:  July
19, Aug. 2, Aug. 16, Sept. 13. . .

SWIMMING STORY

Susan Price (FL) wrote:

. . . Today we went swimming and the craziest thing happened.  Matt wears his
orange things all the time.  Before today he would never go in the deep end.  I thought
that it was just some irrational fear that I wouldn’t be able to talk him out of, but today I
said, Why don’t you go out in the deep end — the orange things will hold you up just
as well out there as here.  It doesn’t matter how deep the water is.  I thought this would
just be some typical parent-explaining that goes in one ear and out the other, but it
wasn’t at all.  He actually had thought that because it was deeper it was harder for the
orange things to hold him up, and after I said that he went right out with me.  I told him
they’d hold him up even if it were 2000 feet deep and he thought that was neat and
funny. . .

________________

Reminds me of an experience I had about twenty-five years ago, on a boat
returning from Europe, coming into Puerto Rico.  We stopped and took a swim in the
ocean right over the Puerto Rican Trench which is about 30,000 feet deep, and I had
the oddest feeling that all that water was going to pull me down, and that somehow I
was more likely to sink than if the depth were only a few feet.  I was amused at this
superstitious feeling but I couldn’t shake it.  So I think I know how Matt felt.

DANTES UNAVAILABLE

From Barbara Lafferty (NJ):

. . . I wrote to the Dept. of Defense requesting the DANTES GUIDE TO
EXTERNAL DEGREE PROGRAMS as you suggested (GWS #13, p. 7) because we
have a 14 and a 15 year old.  Guess what?  This is the answer I received:

The distribution of the DANTES Guide is limited to military education centers
and the participating colleges and universities because of budgetary restraints.
However, the American Council on Education, Office on Educational Credit and
Credentials, 1 Dupont Circle, Washington DC 20036, is in the process of publishing
the 1980 Guide to Undergraduate External Degree Programs in the United States
which may be of interest to you.  Also the National University Extension Association, 1
Dupont Circle, Suite 360, Washington DC 20036, publishes a book entitled On-
Campus Off-Campus Degree Programs for Part-Time Students which is available for
$4.00 per copy.

_______________

(Ed. note)  I suggested that she ask her U.S. Representatives or Senators to try
to get the DANTES guide for her.  We’ll see if that works.

ANOTHER GUIDE

The 1977-79 Guide to Independent Study Through Correspondence Instruction
(Nat’l University Extension Association, PO Box 2123, Princeton NJ 08540) says that
there are high school extension courses and/or college courses for gifted high school
students at the Universities of:  AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY,
MI, MN, MS, MO, NV, NM, ND, OH, OK, OR, SC, SD, TN, TX (Austin), WA, WI, WY; also
at Ariz. State, Ca State Sacramento, Colo State, Northern Colo, Ball State IN, Northern
IA, Murray State KY, Western KY, LA State, Miss State, Southern Miss, SUNY
Brockport, OK State, Penn State, Texas Tech, Brigham Young UT, UT State, WA State,
Western WA State.

The 1980 issue of this Guide ($4) gives the names and addresses to write to
about these courses, which may help unschoolers learn what is taught in school
without having to go there.

MAGAZINES

We have back issues of National Geographic, Audubon, Natural History, and
Smithsonian we would be happy to send to anyone who pays for the postage.  All of
these have great photos and lots of information on the sciences.  Send 60¢ (preferably
in stamps) for one, and 30¢ for each additional issue.  If we’re out of the magazine that
you request, we’ll use one stamp to return the rest.

RENEWAL BONUS

The same early renewal bonus we offered in the past is still available.  If you
renew your subscription any time before we send the final issue of your sub to the
mailing house, we’ll extend your subscription for one free issue.  Many subs now
expire with #18 and we’d like to see a lot of those renewed early.  It would help us a
great deal.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

Please remember to notify us of a change of address as soon as possible.  We
send GWS by third class mail, which the Post Office does not forward, even if you’ve
told them to forward magazines.  They don’t return the issues to us, either, but simply
throw them away.  This makes it very important to have the correct address on your
label.

NATIONAL VELVET

NATIONAL VELVET, by Enid Bagnold ($1.60 + post).  We had this book at
home when I was little.  It was not one of our books; it had not been given to us, and
no one mentioned it to us or urged us to read it; there were no pictures in it; it did not
seem — to us, anyway — to have been written for children at all.  I skimmed enough of it
to know that it was about a girl who pretends to be a boy so that she can ride in a big
horse race.  Not caring much about either girls or horses, I let it drop.  Years later I
suggested it to one of my fifth-grade students, even at that age an expert horsewoman,
but I never thought to read it myself.

The other day I began to read it, thinking perhaps to add it to our list.  Before I
had read twenty pages, I was caught.  In my whole life I have never been more
captured, delighted, and moved by a book.  It is not mainly a book about horses, but
about people — mostly the Brown family, father (butcher/slaughterer by trade),  mother
(who at nineteen swam the English Channel), four teen-age girls (Velvet the
youngest), one small boy, and friend and helper Mi Taylor, living in a small village in
the south of England.  By the end of the first chapter that close and loving family and its
daily life was as real and as dear to me as the world I live in.  I felt, and as I write still
feel very much a part of its cozy, protected, peaceful world.  Finishing the book was like
saying good-bye to dear friends that I might never see again, and indeed I had no
sooner finished it than I started to read it all over again, just to be back with them.

Many younger children will like the book just as a good story; somewhat older
children (I hope boys as well as girls) may see in it a portrait of a secret and treasured
part of themselves; anyone who loves language will have the added pleasure of Enid
Bagnold’s beautiful writing.  Here is Velvet, whose horses are pictures of horses cut
out of newspapers and magazines and fitted with tiny reins made of thread, who
gallops on her own thin legs up and down the lanes of her village, imagining that the
paper horse she holds in front of her is a real horse she is riding, who has never
ridden any horse except an old fat pony, and is now for the first time in her life riding a
well-bred and well-trained horse:

She had never felt reins that had a trained mouth at the end of them, and as
she cantered up the slope of the sunny field with the brow of the hill and the
height of the sky in front of her, Sir Pericles taught her in three minutes what she
had not known existed.  Her scraggy, childish fingers obtained results at a
pressure.  The living center bent to right or left at her touch.  He handed her the
glory of command.

Later she imagines herself riding Sir Pericles in a country horse show:

It was not the silver cup standing above the wind-blown tablecloth that Velvet
saw — but the perfection of accomplishment, the silken cooperation between
two actors, the horse and the human, the sense of the lifting of the horse-soul
into the sphere of human obedience, human effort, and the offering to it of the
taste of human applause.  All this she had learnt already from the trained mouth
and the kneeling will of Sir Pericles.

Though I have known well some expert riders and lovers of horses, I have never
really understood the horse-passion.  When I finally first rode a horse, at the age of
fifty, I found to my surprise that I liked riding (and the horse) very much.  but I could not
see how people with other choices could choose to spend most of their lives riding
and taking care of horses.  These two paragraphs about Velvet and Sir Pericles made
it seem possible and even reasonable.  It does not seem strange at all that some
people might love horses as deeply as I love music, or that a girl like Velvet might even
risk her life, as she knew very well she was doing, only so that her horse might be
forever famous, might have the kind of glory that the ancient Greeks risked or gave
their lives to get for themselves.

It is above all the purity of Velvet’s ambition that makes this fairy-tale, this day-
dream to end all day-dreams, so believable.  If something like this could be done, and
we can’t help believing (and hoping) that it could, then it would take someone like
Velvet to do it.  No selfishly ambitious or greedy person would have ever taken the
gamble and the risks that she and her friend Mi took.  Perhaps this is only to say that if
you can believe that there could be a person like Velvet, then you can believe in this
story.  The author makes it easy for us to believe, because she creates for us exactly
the kind of world, of life, and of family, above all Velvet’s mother, that could have
produced a Velvet.

After the race she comes home, utterly exhausted, and happy to be back.
Before she goes to bed she wants to see her four-year-old brother Donald asleep, and
to kiss him in his bed.  She had been aware that he was a beautiful child, and had
been eager to teach him to ride, but otherwise had not paid great attention to him.  But
when, as she sat alone at night in a hotel room and tried to prepare herself to ride the
great race, the thought came to her that she might be killed, what seemed most terrible
about it was that she would not see Donald again.  So she goes in to look at him:

Donald lay flung out in an abandoned and charming attitude.  His eyelashes
were tender, bronze and shadowy; his hair a touch damp.  The strangeness of
his youth and exposed face, his battle for power by day and his abdication by
night were something that Velvet had hardly expected.  A gateway drew open
within her and the misery and wild alarm of life rushed in.

Velvet’s crying over Donald! said Mally aghast, running down to the living
room.

Carry her to bed, father, said Mrs. Brown calmly.  It’s to be expected.

As foolish as this may seem, since it is, after all, only a book, I cannot put out of
my mind the question, What happened to Velvet, what did she do, when she grew
up?  If I knew the author, I would say to her, Please, even if you have to make it up
right here on the spot, tell me about Velvet’s later life.  Like a child, I want to be told, I
want to know, that she lived happily ever after.

Meanwhile, please don’t think that you have to be a child, or like horses, to read
this book.

BOOKS OF FACTS AND SCIENCE

SCOTT FORESMAN BEGINNING DICTIONARY, BY E. L. Thorndike and
Clarence Barnhart ($12.00 + post).  This is the latest and much improved edition of
what has long been the best dictionary for children.  I like everything about it.  It is
handsome, clear, easy to use, and fun to read.  There are enough entries in it so that
by the time children outgrow it they will be ready for any adult dictionary.  The
definitions are clear and up-to-date, and each is used in a phrase or sentence.
Definitions are numbered, and illustrations are also numbered, to show which
definition they refer to.  On most facing pages (what you see when you open the book)
there are two or three illustrations.  Many of these are in beautiful color, all really make
the definition clearer, and many of them are very funny.  I might not have noticed if a
review hadn’t pointed it out, but the dictionary is much less sexist than others; thus, a
soldier is a person who serves in an army, a pilot a person who steers a ship or boat,
etc.  And the illustrations are very often of girls or women.  The type faces and page
headings are bold, legible, and handsome.  Every page has its own vowel
pronouncing guide, so that you can find out quickly how a word is pronounced, and
the full pronouncing guides are on the inside front and back covers, where you don’t
have to hunt for them.  In the front of the book are forty-nine pages of helpful ideas
about how to use it.  All in all, a joy to use or just to browse through, a wonderful piece
of work.  I recommend it highly.

THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER BOOK OF WORLD HISTORIES ($1.75 + post).  This
book lists over 600 English words and tells us where they came from and how they
changed over many years.  It tells us more about many words than even the biggest
dictionaries.  Children and adults who are interested in words will find this handy little
book fun to browse through.  Would you have guessed that the word dunce first came
from the name of a great scholar, or that coward comes from an old word for an
animal’s tail, or that the word porcelain comes from the word for pig, or that bug first
meant a scarecrow, or . . .

PS from Donna:  School people, and also writers of self-help books, worry a lot
about building vocabularies, and devise many drills, tricks, tests, etc, as if the only
way to learn new words was through repetition and sheer memory.  But I think that
being curious about where words come from, learning to notice the root parts of a
word, and getting a sense that words have histories and logical developments, can do
much more for building vocabularies.

For example, the book shows the relationship, derived from the Latin volvere (to
roll), among volume (books used to be on rolls of papyrus), voluminous, voluble (a
tongue that rolls easily), convoluted, evolve, involve, revolve, devolve, and
volute.  That last word happens to be strange to me, but if I saw it being used, I’m
sure that the context plus the knowledge that the vol- root implies roll or turn would
allow me to guess its meaning with little trouble.

ARITHMETIC MADE SIMPLE, by Sperling and Levison ($3.15 + postage).  This
book is neither beautiful nor very exciting, but it is exceedingly useful, and will be very
helpful to many parents.  What it is, to quote from the back cover, is a step-by-step
presentation of all the arithmetic material traditionally covered in eight school years –
now in one convenient volume.  Addition, subtraction, multiplication, long division;
fractions, decimals, percentage and interest; measurement of time, distance, and
weight: measurement of lines, angles, and perimeter of plane figures, area, and
volume; ratios and proportions; graphs; signed numbers.

The book is not written for young children to read, but for adults (or older
children) to use with younger ones.  It is, however, well and simply written.  The
authors’ explanations are short and clear, certainly as good as, and probably better
than the explanations that most children will hear in most classrooms or read in most
textbooks.  the few black-and-white illustrations are helpful.  For each new idea taught
the authors give a few problems (answers given at the end of the book), just enough to
illustrate the idea.  But they don’t clutter up the book with pages of busywork problems.

One of the many ways in which this book can help parents is this.  Parents who
are writing up a home education plan for their local schools can simply copy the table
of contents of the book.  It will be very impressive, certainly to a judge if the schools
push things that far.

I don’t particularly recommend using this book slavishly as a textbook, going
through a page at a time.  As I wrote in earlier issues of GWS, there are better ways of
introducing children to numbers and their properties and operations than the ways
used in schools and in this book.  But if you want to know what the schools are doing,
or want to be sure from time to time that your children can do what they are doing in
schools, this book will help you do that.  In other words, it will do everything that a
correspondence course in arithmetic will do, and for much less money.

Though the book is too hard for beginning readers, most home-schooled
children of eight or older will be able to read it themselves, with perhaps an occasional
question.  I would recommend letting such children browse through the book in any
order they like.  I would guess that any confident children, working through the book as
a kind of challenge, would be able to cover all the material in a year and perhaps
much less.  (I’d like to hear about any such experiences.)

The beginning of the book is nice; the first three paragraphs:

From the very beginning of time man has been in need of a method of
expressing how many, whether it be sheep, plants, fish, etc.  At first man
needed only a few ways to express small quantities.  But as time went on, his
requirements increased and a system of numbers became essential.

Did you ever stop to wonder how the cave men indicated that they wanted or
needed one, two, or three items?  Judging from what we have observed among
uncivilized tribes in recent times, we know that they used parts of their bodies to
indicate quantities.  For example, they indicated the number one by pointing to
their noses, the number two by pointing to their eyes, and as time went on they
learned to use their fingers to express amounts up to ten.

When primitive men wanted to describe the number of sheep in a large herd,
they found it difficult to do so because they lacked a number system such as we
have today.  Their methods were simple but intelligent, since they had no
system for counting above ten.  As the flock passed by they placed one stone or
stick in a pile for each sheep as it passed.  The number of stones or sticks in the
pile then indicated the number of sheep in the flock.  This was inadequate since
there was no way of telling anyone else how large the flock was or for writing it
on paper.

The book was written in 1960, so it doesn’t contain any New Math (greater
than, less than, commutative property, etc.)  However, one of the many other
textbooks in this series is NEW MATH MADE SIMPLE.  We will be looking at that, and
some of the others, to see if they may be useful to parents.  Meanwhile, I strongly
recommend this one.

PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS FOR CHILDREN, by Muriel Mandell ($1.80 + post).
This is a book of simple physics experiments that can be done by children, using
materials that are either already in most homes or that are expensive and easy to get.
They are grouped under seven headings:  1) Matter: Air  2) Matter: Water  3)
Mechanical Energy and Machines  4) Heat  5) Sound  6) Light  7) Magnetism and
Electricity.  The experiments are clearly described and illustrated, and Ms. Mandell’s
explanations of what happens are also clear.

Here is one of the simpler experiments:

How to Compress Air

Hold a glass with its mouth down and push it into a deep bowl of water.

You will see that:  The water enters the glass a little way.  No bubbles of air
escape.

Explanation:  The water forces the air into a smaller space.  The small
particles of air — the air molecules — are forced closer together, or compressed.
Releasing compressed air furnishes power, and many machines work on this
principle.

A useful little book.  It may help you and your children to think of other simple
physics experiments using things found at home.  If you do think of some, please let us
know.   We can put them in GWS, and someday we might have enough to publish
another collection of them.

OTHER NEW BOOKS HERE

HELEN KELLER, by Stewart and Polly Anne Graff (85¢ + post).  This book for
young children is about a child, blind and deaf from birth, without words to talk to
others or to understand their talk, and the teacher who gave her those words.  It is one
of the most exciting and inspiring stories in the whole history of the human race, and
the Graffs tell it simply and well.  Here they write about the great turning point in
Helen’s life.

Whatever they did Annie spelled letters into Helen’s hand.  When they petted
the cat Annie spelled C-A-T.  Helen quickly learned to imitate Annie’s fingers.
She could make the letters for C-A-K-E when she wanted a treat, and M-I-L-K
when she was thirsty.

Helen is like a clever little monkey, Annie wrote.  She has learned the
signs to ask for what she wants but she has no idea that she is spelling words.
. . .

One morning during her lesson Helen was especially bad.  She slammed
her new doll on the floor and broke it.  Annie was too tired to go on with the
lesson.  Her eyes ached.  She took Helen by the hand and led her outdoors.
They stopped at the pump for a drink.

Then something happened that changed Helen’s whole life.

Helen held her hand under the spout while Annie pumped.  As cold water
poured over Helen’s hand, Annie spelled in her other hand W-A-T-E-R.  A new
expression came into Helen’s face.  She spelled water several times herself.
Then she pointed to the ground.  Annie quickly spelled G-R-O-U-N-D.

Helen jumped up.  She suddenly realized that she was understanding
words.  She pointed to Annie, and Annie spelled T-E-A-C-H-E-R.  Helen never
called Annie by any other name.

Then Helen pointed to herself and Annie slowly spelled out H-E-L-E-N
K-E-L-L-E-R.

Helen’s face broke into a wide smile.  It was the first time she knew that she
had a name.

All I can say is, if you can read that with dry eye, you’re made of sterner stuff
than I am.  The book tells the story of Annie’s and Helen’s lives — how Helen learned
to read Braille, eventually went to college, and in time became famous and helped
blind people all over the world.  There are many lovely pencil illustrations by Paul
Frame, who has drawn Helen as she was, not pretty but full of intelligence, excitement,
and energy.  A beautiful book for any age.  and it makes me wonder, in passing, what
Helen and Annie Sullivan would have said if anyone had ever told them that millions
of children could not learn to read because they had learning disabilities.

WINNIE-THE-POOH, by A. A. Milne, ($1.15 + post).  This is a collection of stories
that Milne made up for his five-year-old son, Christopher Robin, in which the principal
characters are the boy’s stuffed teddy bear Pooh, some of his other toy animals, and
the boy himself.  These stories have been favorites of young children ever since they
were written, with good reason — Pooh, and his close friend the timid Piglet, are very
comic and appealing figures.  I can remember, when little, laughing myself almost sick
at the story of their trying to trap a heffalump.  This edition has the lovely original
illustrations.

PIPPI LONGSTOCKING, by Astrid Lindgren, translated from Swedish ($1.75 +
post).  These are perhaps the most popular of all children’s books in Sweden, and it is
easy to see why.   Pippi is a nine-year-old Swedish supergirl.  her mother died when
she was little, her father, a sea captain, was lost in the South Seas, and Pippi lives by
herself in an old house, with a pet monkey and horse for companions, and does
exactly as she likes.  Since she is so strong that she can — as she does in one story –
lift large policemen up by the belt with one hand, who is to stop her?  The books tells of
her adventures with two friends, both very proper and respectable Swedish children,
who are awed, fascinated, horrified, and delighted by the free-spirited Pippi.  I should
add that Pippi is very capable and self-sufficient, as well as very generous, kindly, and
happy.  She never abuses her great power, but only uses it to foil bad people, or to
prevent well-meaning busybodies from interfering with her life.  A delightful and
subversive book, sure to please many children, who know all too well they are not like
Pippi.

FIVE CHILDREN AND IT, by E. Nesbit ($1.35 + post).  Two boys and two girls,
while spending the summer in the countryside of turn-of-the-century England, meet a
sand-fairy, a strange creature who has the power to grant them one wish a day.  They
are naturally excited and overjoyed by what this seems to promise.  But they soon find
that none of these wishes, even the ones they plan most carefully, turn out the way
they had hoped and expected.  Far from bringing blessings, the wishes almost
instantly bring serious problems, which the children must solve as best they can, for
once the sand-fairy has granted their day’s wish (which lasts until sundown), it can
give them no further help.

A rule of all the best fantasy or science fiction is that once you have put into the
story your fantastic idea — invisibility, or immortality, or in this case the daily wish — you
must make the rest of the story as true-to-life as possible.  Nesbit does this, and it
makes these good stories exciting and believable.  A minor false note is the baby talk
of the family’s two-year-old; apparently, when these stories were written, adults never
really heard what two-year-olds said.  But since the baby hardly ever speaks in these
stories, this is not important.  The four older children are very well drawn — lively,
energetic, imaginative, adventurous, brothers and sisters who are good friends and
good companions.  Very nice illustrations.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, by Howard Pyle ($3.60 + post).  This
was the version of these fine old tales that I read as a child, and it is still by far the best,
full of unashamedly poetic language and much fine talk about Thou saucy varlet and
the like.  Although they were robbers, Robin and his fellow outlaws were in most ways
honorable and admirable men.  They stole only from the rich, who themselves had
grown rich by stealing from the poor.  Most of what they stole, Robin and his friends
gave back to the poor.  They rarely killed, and then only in defense of their lives.  They
never killed a captured or defeated enemy; even the Sheriff of Nottingham, who had
sworn to hang them all if he could, was safe in their hands.  Though they were in effect
immune from the law, and could have stolen enough to live in luxury, they lived simply.
In short, they were not a bad example for our time.  But the main reason for reading
these old stories that they are full of courage, energy, exuberance, and joy in living.
This edition has Pyle’s original black-and-white illustrations.

THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, by C. S. Lewis ($1.75 + post).
In this, the first of a series of seven books (we plan to add the others later), two
brothers and two sisters slip through a wardrobe (British closet) into an ancient and
magical country called Narnia, full of dwarves, giants, fairies, witches, and talking
animals, where they have exciting and dangerous adventures, and finally free the land
from the rule of a cruel witch.  A wonderful story, with many levels of meaning — for
younger children, a good adventure; for older children, something more than that.  A
modern classic.

DUNE, by Frank Herbert ($2.45 + post).  Readers of science fiction and fantasy
think this is one of the greatest books of that kind ever written, and I agree.  For sheer
power of invention, it equals any tale I have ever read.  It is partly an old-fashioned
Three Musketeers type swashbuckling, sword-fighting adventure and romance, and
partly science fiction — a serious attempt to imagine how human beings might live
under certain conditions.  In other words, it is both a very old-fashioned and very
modern book.  The author has created a huge and complicated civilization, in the most
elaborate detail, and he achieves what has been called the suspension of disbelief –
we accept his world as possible and fall into his story without resistance.

The science part of the story would have stood on its own.  Out of his
imagination Herbert has created a planet and an environment so harsh and hostile
that one would say that human beings would not live in it for more than a few minutes.
Part of this environment is a monster to end all monsters — it makes Godzilla, King
Kong, and all other monsters of fiction look like fluffy Pekinese pups.  Then he shows
us a civilization of human beings living in that environment, mastering it, thriving in it,
and with enormous effort, discipline, and patience (unlike us humans on Earth) slowly
changing it to make it more favorable.  The ultimate Space Western, a whole week of
STAR WARS — a huge, fascinating, can’t-put-it-down book.

A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, by Walter Miller, Jr.  ($2.25 + post).  This is a
science fiction novel that can be read and enjoyed as serious fiction, and not just a
clever-gimmick story.  It is set in a monastery in desert country in Utah.  The first part of
the novel takes place six hundred years after World War III, when the few survivors are
still sunk in the savagery and barbarism that followed the destruction of all civilization.
The main work of the monastery is to find and keep alive such fragments of
knowledge, whether in the form of artifacts, tools, or books or other writings, as
survived the war.  They haven’t the faintest idea of what any of this stuff means.  They
only hope that if they can find and preserve enough of it, someone, someday, may be
able to use it to recreate what was destroyed.

The next part of the novel begins many hundreds of years later, when humanity
has moved from its long Dark Age into the rough beginnings of organized society.  The
monastery is now surrounded by small and fierce kingdoms (the ruler of one of these
calls himself Mayor), fighting to see who will control the country.  Meanwhile, people
are slowly beginning to put together and re-create the knowledge destroyed by the
nuclear war.  One monk has even made a simple dynamo (driven by human leg
power) and with it given the monastery electric light, in the form of a crude arc lamp.  In
the Mayor’s city or kingdom, another scholar has unearthed some of the equations of
Einstein, and is struggling to make some kind of sense of them.

The final section of the novel takes place long afterwards.  Humanity has
created a new technological society, complete with nuclear power and nuclear
weapons, and has once again found the way into space.  But, in spite of knowing what
nuclear war meant before and will surely mean again, it stands once more at the brink
of war.  What happens then, you must read to find out.

When I call this a serious work of fiction, I mean that as in all serious fiction the
characters are not just cardboard figures, moved this way and that by the machinery of
the plot, or preaching whatever sermons the author wants to preach.  They are real
people, with lives of their own.  The book is very much about a monastery and its
monks, what kind of people they are, how they live and work, how they see the world,
what problems and conflicts arise among them, what it means to rule and run a
monastery, how such an organization lives and protects itself in a hostile world.
Millers makes a very strong case that only such organizations will have the courage,
the resolve, the discipline, the patience, and the endurance, to bring humanity back
from an atomic holocaust, if we should be stupid and wicked enough to let such a thing
happen.

In a sense this is a historical novel.  Only, it is about a history that has not yet
happened, and that we must do all we can to keep from happening.  All in all, a
fascinating story, hard to put down once you have started reading it.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, by Robert Bolt ($1.75 + post).  This play, published
in 1960 and the first of many we will add to our list, is about Thomas More, who was
executed by King Henry the Eighth of England because he would not sign an oath
saying that the King’s marriage to Ann Boleyn was legal.  It is a witty, eloquent, moving
play, certainly one of the finest of this or any generation.  Not all plays that stage well,
read well, and vice versa; this is equally good to stage or to read.  It is about a man, no
single-minded and bitter fanatic, but happy, well-adjusted, and brilliantly successful,
who was perfectly willing to bend his principles to the realities of politics, and in
particular the whims of his king — up to a point.  Beyond that point he would not budge,
at the cost of his life.

This play might be great fun for a group of people to read aloud together (with
some taking several minor parts).  As in Shaw’s plays, all the minor characters have
good lines — indeed, there are no bad lines, no dull pages where the play chugs
along, so to speak, gathering up energy for the next big scene.  Every word spoken
leads us further into the play and its people, and closer to its final point.  It remains
exciting even when we know how it will end.

There have been many good plays written in the past thirty years, but most have
in one way or another been about corruption, evil, defeat, and despair.  There is plenty
of that here.  The young man Rich is corrupted by weakness and greed; the handsome
and talented King Harry is corrupted by frivolousness and vanity; while Cromwell is the
kind of amoral, practical, coldly evil man so common in our times, all the more
frightening because so common.  But this is one of the few plays I know that also, and
convincingly, shows us courage, kindness, steadfastness, and virtue, that makes the
good men and women at least as believable as the bad.  A wonderful play.

A ZOO IN MY LUGGAGE, by Gerald Durrell ($1.75 + post).  The author says,
This is the chronicle of a six-month trip that my wife and I made [in 1948] to Bafut, a
mountain grassland kingdom in the British Cameroons in West Africa.  Our reason for
going there was, to say the least, a trifle unusual.  We wanted to collect our own zoo.
It is a most interesting and amusing story.  Durrell, a scientist and naturalist, has a
keen eye, is a very clear, vivid, and comic writer, and loves animals, human beings, his
work, adventure, a good party, and life in general.  He makes us wish we could go with
him on an expedition, or at the very least, have him show us around his zoo.  One of
the extra pleasures of this particular trip would have been meeting the Fon of Bafut, six
feet four inches tall and surely the most jolly, hospitable, and fun-loving monarch on
the face of the earth.  There are many beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations by Ralph
Thompson.  For all people who like animals, a real treat.

PARKINSON’S LAW, by C. N. Parkinson ($2.00 + post).  This book, quite
serious and even scholarly in tone, is an extremely funny and terrifyingly accurate
description of how administration works (or rather, does not work), in business,
government, or whatever.  It begins with the sentence, Work expands so as to fill the
time available for its completion, and goes on to state many other pointed truths.

At one point Parkinson is discussing how to word announcements of job
openings so that only one person, and the right person, will apply.  He offers this
example:

Wanted — An archaeologist with high academic qualifications willing to
spend fifteen years in excavating the Inca tombs at Helsdump on the Alligator
River.  Knighthood or equivalent honor guaranteed.  Pension payable but never
yet claimed.  Salary of $10,000 a year.  Apply in triplicate to the Director of the
Grubbenburrow Institute, Sickdale, Ill., U.S.A.

Here the advantages and drawbacks are neatly balanced.  There is no
need to insist that candidates must be patient, tough, intrepid, and single.  The
terms of the advertisement have eliminated all who are not.  It is unnecessary to
require that candidates be mad on excavating tombs.  Mad is just what they will
certainly be. . . . The result is a single candidate.  He is off his head but that does
not matter.  He is the man we want.

A very funny book, and a very true statement about why big organizations don’t
work.  Wonderful pen-and-ink illustrations by Robert Osborn.

ONE MAN’S MEAT, by E. B. White ($1.75 + post).  This is a collection of short
essays or articles about White’s life and work on a small farm on the Maine coast, in
the late 30’s and early 40’s.  Though White is best known for his writing — he is one of
the great American essayists of modern times, or any time — he was a serious farmer;
after 1938, when he left the city and a full-time job as writer and editor, farming
became his principal work, and writing his part-time job.

His essays are personal, informal, light in tone though often profound in
meaning, and often very funny.  Almost all of them begin with something that
happened or was about to happen (lambing, buying a cow) on the farm.  They may
stay there — some essays are entirely about farming and Maine life and people.  Or,
they may move on to other things — liberty, or democratic government, or the coming
second World War.  Like all great essayists, White could without strain connect little
things to big things.  Not that he used little events as an excuse to preach sermons, for
he never preached; reading him is not like hearing an editorial or a political speech,
but like hearing the talk of an old friend.  I mean that since he saw life as a connected
whole, he could not help seeing the larger meanings of small things.

Though he never wrote like or pretended to be a prophet, he saw far and
clearly.  He saw, for example, that television, which was then just starting, would be
enormously important, and he very correctly guessed and feared that for many or most
people the world of the TV screen would come to seem more real than the actual world
around them.  At one point he says:

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were
moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves
waste deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them
unutterly sad.

And how much more true now than then.  In these essays he points out, just in
passing, what Ivan Illich and Wendell Berry (then young boys) were to say a more than
a generation later, that speed of movement does not lessen but increases the
distances between people, does not draw a society together but blows it apart; and
that in both the physical and spiritual sense our country would be in very serious
trouble unless many people learned to see farming, not simply as a way to make
money, but as a way to live.  We did not learn these lessons, and we are indeed in
serious trouble, with more to come.

But this is the furthest thing in the world from a gloomy, doom-laden book.
White loved his Maine farm and his life there, and the book shows us why.  Some of
the nicest things in it are his quick, affectionate, and very true portraits of his eight-
year-old boy.  All in all, and in many ways, a delightful book.

Editor — John Holt
Managing Editor — Peg Durkee
Associate Editor — Donna Richoux

Copyright © 1977 Holt Associates, Inc.