GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING - 87

When homeschooling parents talk to each other in support group meetings or through publications like GWS, they often discuss the challenge of raising children differently from the way they themselves were raised.  They have to unlearn what school taught them and trust that their children can learn in ways that they have never experienced themselves.

A teenaged homeschooler once said to me, “Won’t it be interesting to see what happens when kids who are homeschooling now grow up and have kids of their own?”  It sure will be, I told her, and I can just imagine all the writing and talking that will come of it.  In the meantime, her comment inspired me to invite several young GWS readers to imagine the future.  “Do you imagine that you will homeschool your own children, if and when you have them?” our letter asked.  “Do you think the fact that you were homeschooled as a child will make any difference in the way you homeschool your own children?  . . . The goal isn’t to come up with lots of criticisms of the way your parents do things, but rather to think about what difference it makes, and what difference it might make later on, that you don’t go to school and your parents did go.”

Several of the young people who responded said that they expected to have a different kind of experience as parents simply because their own parents blazed the trail for them.  The pioneering homeschooling parents worked to make homeschooling acceptable legally and socially, and the next generation of homeschoolers will feel this legacy.  Anita Giesy, whose family began homeschooling in the 1970s, said, “When my family was deciding whether to homeschool, part of the choice had to do with whether we would be willing to go to court over it.  For my children, it will just be a choice between two options and a matter of deciding which will be best for them.”  Jessica Spicer, another long-time homeschooler, likened her parents to people traveling unknown territory.  For Jessica, the terrain will be more familiar, and she will be able to ask her parents for advice when necessary, something that her parents couldn’t do.

The next generation of homeschoolers will be able to say, “I know this works” where their parents could only said, “I believe this will work.”  Both Olivia Baseman and Mylie Alrich described how their own experiences with learning to read at age 9 will prevent them from worrying, as their parents did, about a child who is an older reader.  Said Mylie, “I think that it was perfectly natural for my mother to worry, but it’s not something I would worry about because I know from firsthand experience that it doesn’t matter what age you learn things at.”  And Olivia says of today’s homeschooling parents, “Because they learned to read in a certain way they feel that that is the way.”  But because Olivia learned to read by a different method than the one her mother used, and because her good friend learned to read at 2 while Olivia learned at 9, she knows that there is no one way to learn.

Listening to homeschoolers speculate about the future isn’t just an exercise in imagination.  Their speculations and avowals help us to understand what they have learned from homeschooling and remind us that they are the ones who have direct experience with self-education. –Susannah Sheffer

Office News & Announcements

[SS:]  It’s conference season!  Since our last issue went to press, we held our second annual Holt Associates/GWS homeschooling information fair outside of Boston, with John Taylor Gatto giving a speech and Pat Farenga, Gene Burkart, and me conducting workshops.  The following week I went to the Northern California Homeschoolers Association conference in Sacramento, where I gave a talk and two workshops and met many GWS friends, including the Gingolds of Homeschoolers for Peace, Grace Llewellyn of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, David and Micki Colfax, and lots of other children and parents.  NCHA offered both a children’s and a teens’ conference alongside their regular conference, and it was nice to see so many young homeschoolers meeting, talking, and playing together.  (They didn’t look unsocialized . . .)

In early May, Pat and Day Farenga and others on our staff went to the Homeschool Associates of New England conference in Framingham, Mass., where Pat and Day gave a workshop and had a chance to meet many homeschoolers (among them Jo-Anne Beirne all the way from Australia).
On June 5-7 Pat will go to Toledo for the Libertarian Party of Ohio conference, where he will speak about homeschooling as social change.  On August 5th Pat will speak about homeschooling at the Bronson Alcott House in Concord, Mass. (that’s Louisa May Alcott’s father), and on August 14-16th I will give workshops at the Alliance for Parental Involvement in Education conference in Hamilton, NY.

Our complete 1993 Directory of Families and Organizations will be published in GWS #90.  Everyone who was listed in the 1992 Directory in GWS #84 and in the subsequent updates will be included, unless you tell us otherwise.  If you want to correct the wording of an address, add a new baby, add or delete a host listing, or take yourself out of the Directory entirely, now is the time to tell us.  (And as always, you can send us a new entry at any time.)  The deadline for changes is October 15th.  (If you’ve sent us a slight change or addition in recent months, such as the addition of a new baby, we are holding on to it and will include it in the complete 1993 Directory, so don’t worry that we havent’ received it.)

News & Reports

Reaching Kids in School

Grace Llewellyn, author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook (see interview, GWS #84), writes:

Last Wednesday I got a letter that carried me through the next two days of radio shows and talks in Portland.  The writer, Kyla Wetherell, had read my book on a Monday, quit school that Friday, and by the time she wrote the letter had been out for a month.  Before leaving she was the editor of her high school newspaper, and she wrote a terrific opinion piece for it on her way out.  She’s now teaching herself to play guitar, learning to take photographs, reading a lot, and mountain biking.  She plans to fly to South America and bike back up here.  She wants to write about her experiences.

In Portland I spoke on two radio shows, got lots of calls from listeners teenaged and adult, had fun.  None of the calls were hostile, most positive, some thoughtfully questioning.  Then, lo and behold, I got to speak in an ordinary urban public high school for two hours to a group of about fifty kids!  The teacher who brought me in had been to one of John Gatto’s seminars and heard about my book there.  He went on to have the students in his English class read a chapter from it, and then got permission from the administration to have me visit by arguing that if the kids’ educations had served them at all then they should have the critical faculties with which to evaluate my argument.  (I love that - how could they possibly disagree with that?)

I didn’t censor myself at all.  I talked briefly about the book’s main points and how I came to write it.  The kids started asking questions, and their questions and comments structured the discussion.  Even before I came in several of the kids had read the whole book and one was firmly committed to unschooling herself (but she was still working on her stubborn father).  Several were very interested but not yet committed.  Several were antagonistic and skeptical but I enjoyed dealing with their questions - nothing I hadn’t already thought carefully about.  By the end of the two hours there were probably about five kids who said they really wanted to give the whole thing a try, and who stayed after class a while to talk about some of their choices.  A lot of the kids sent their parents to a talk I gave later that night at a bookstore/cafe (and some showed up themselves).

I don’t know how many people were at the cafe in all - probably a hundred or so.  Some were homeschoolers, but most were interested teenagers and parents, plus a lot of college students and some apparently open-minded teachers.  Afterwards I met three more kids who had read my book and quit school, and about ten kids who said they were going to quit at the end of the semester or year.  I was beside myself.  I kept writing down my phone number and saying, “Please tell me what happens.”

From Kyla Wetherell’s’ newspaper piece:

For a good part of this year I have been mumbling to myself, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if I could drop out of school?”  Most fellow [students] who overheard me agreed, but it was always spoken of as some far-off fantasy.  As we all knew, to leave school without a diploma would be “throwing our lives away.”

Well, I did it anyway.  The moment I realized that the life I had been waiting for for so long could start as soon as I had the courage to determine my own success and refuse to accept school’s letter A’s and slips of paper as my artificial accomplishment, I threw my life right out the nearest classroom window!

This year (my junior year) I went along, unhappily submitting to school’s busywork, too aware of its redundancy and encouragement of mediocrity.  Signing up for classes, I remember being really interested, anticipating all that I would learn.  I should have guessed that school could make any subject into just another class to contemplate skipping every day.

English has always been my greatest interest so it was the subject I hated most in school.  I didn’t understand why teachers used multiple choice questions to gauge a student’s understanding of a poem, why most insisted that every student in the class come to the same conclusion regarding the theme of a play, or how writing could be graded on a number scale.  I found that even in advanced classes in subjects I was interested in, teachers spent a lot of time babysitting students and regurgitating text book drivel.

. . . I quit school because I would rather learn.  Grace Llewellyn’s book is based on the premise that life is wonderful and school is stifling.  My experiences thus far have convinced me that this is true.  I left the draining, alienating atmosphere at [my high school] and found myself in a world of opportunity, beauty, and education.  I do plan to get a GED, continue “academic” studies, and do the SAT mostly just to keep my options open.  What’s really exciting, though, about being out of school, is that life can be educational.  There are libraries, museums, and forests to explore, life-changing books to read . . .  Without school a person is free to discover his own interests and to learn about all facets of life through them.

This is not to say that all schools are inherently bad for all people.  There are wonderful resources in schools:  some really good teachers and an occasional worthwhile class, ceramics rooms, guitars, science labs, etc.  I also think there are some people who learn well in its environment and would choose to come were it optional.  For this reason I am advocating the elimination of compulsory education, replaced by a situation in which school is accepted as just one of many resources . . .

What Parents Learn from Homeschooling

Jon Wartes of the Washington Homeschool Research Project sent us a copy of a report called “Effects of Homeschooling Upon the Education of the Parents:  Comments from the Field.”  The report is a collection of 123 parents’ responses to a questionnaire that asked what they feel they have learned as a result of homeschooling.  The full report is available for $8 from the Washington Homeschool Research Project, 16109 NE 169 Pl., Woodinville WA 98072.  Some excerpts:

Parents were asked to list some of the things they feel they have learned that (1) they consider important, and (2) that they would probably not have learned if they had not been homeschooling:

( I always compared what I was doing with others and most of the time I didn’t come out the winner.  As I met more and more homeschooling families and saw that one differed from the next in many ways, I realized that our family and approach and emphasis were different.  Just as the other families had strong and weak points, so did ours and that was OK.

(  I have my master’s degree, so I am well schooled, but I didn’t have the zest or energy to learn new things.  Homeschooling has awakened in me a desire to discover and learn that I had never had (though I had always been a good student).

(  I have rediscovered a great love for science.  I get very excited as we discuss different scientific facts or principles.  This excitement is transferred to my children who also love and enjoy studying science.  We studied in-depth marine science this year, doing much reading, book work with a follow-up on beach field trip which was fabulous.  I found myself excited, enthusiastic, child-like in my wonder [at] what we were learning.

(  It’s hard to pin down just one thing.  I think I learned that learning is an ongoing process that continues for the rest of your life. Also that learning is enjoyable and not something you do just to pass a test or complete an assignment.
(  [My son and I] have laughed, worked, played, and gotten upset with each other.  Unlike the years when he went to school, we have been forced to work through problems, apologize, and find new ways to work out problems.
(  I have discovered many of the before-unknown effects of my own public school education - especially about peer dependency.  My children have friends of all ages, from our 85-year-old next door neighbor to our five-month-old nephew (cousin).  I see the delight they take in the variety of our friends and I remember the disdain I had for “boring” adults and “boring” babies (anyone two or more years younger than me).

(  We as a family have become more involved in our government and in voicing our thoughts.  We are learning to become participants in the making of history rather than despairing bystanders.  Homeschooling is the catalyst for this in my life.

(  I had been told that children who had never been to school learned all that they need to know at their own speed with no structured teaching.  At first I didn’t really believe this but after my children had been out of school for 3-4 years they began asking me things like, “Where could I go to learn more about the Civil War?”  When we would go to the library they would have a list of books that they wanted to check for or order.  They also had a list of questions they wanted to look up.  I was amazed.

(  I never had any interest in what happened before.  Now I feel like it is all so fascinating as I see the puzzle pieces fit together.  In school, history was taught by reading a chapter in a book, then answering questions at the end and taking a test.  Now we read interesting books and talk about it - it has come alive and it is exciting.

(  To begin with my [math] skills (or lack of skills) were an embarrassment to me.  When I would shop for groceries I would pray the checker wouldn’t cheat me because I wasn’t sure if I would know.  Playing card games was a challenge of how to act blasé as I let someone else add my score.  I worried about my ability to teach my children and how to go about getting help when I couldn’t keep up.  But now for the story of triumph.  My girls are fourth and fifth grade and I have done well.  My own skills have grown in leaps and bounds.  Having started at the beginning, I have an understanding of how and why that I missed as a child.  I love math!  I can figure out my change to be returned before the cashier rings it up.  And can even, on occasion, show them their mistake.  So homeschooling has been a blessing to me.

Using GWS Directory
Judith Allee (OH) writes:

I want you to know how much the GWS Directory has meant to us.  We have a photography business and we take out-of-town jobs whenever we can (even marginally profitable ones) so that we can afford to travel now and then.  We plan our route based on the host families we locate in the Directory, and camp or stay in motels in between.

The families we visit are the highlight of our trips.  We’ve been able to see some of the families several times, making it even more exciting when we’re able to visit.  We’re usually able to contact a family with a child close to our daughter’s age, and the kids so far have all been great.

We’ve visited ten families so far, and have received two visits ourselves from travelers.  My only complaint about our guests is that they were both on tight schedules and couldn’t stay as long as we would have liked, but the bonus is our house was cleaner when they arrived then it had been in a while!  (I use the “company’s coming” method of housecleaning.)

When we travel, we try to write a week or two ahead, telling the families a little about each of our interests.  I also offer to bring a covered dish or at least pitch in for groceries.  I enclose a SASE or offer to pay for a phone call.  Not everyone responds, and we’ve gotten some “not available” answers, but every “yes” has been a good experience.  (Our only bad experience was a family not listed as a host family.)

I’m hoping to find a way to close our business here after Christmas since the winter is a slow time for us, and find a way to make money while we travel for several months every year.  I’d love to hear from anyone who is successfully “snow-birding.”

By the way, we are starting a host network for adoptive and foster families and student-exchange host families as a sideline cottage industry, based on our good experiences with the GWS Directory.  We also sponsor a fall campout for homeschoolers, which gives our daughter some alternative to the back-to-school fever in the neighborhood.  We had 10-12 families from all over Ohio at each of our previous campouts, about half of which were GWS families.

News Briefs

For addresses of state and local organizations, see GWS #84 or our Homeschooling Resource List, available for $2.50.  Be sure to check updates in issues after #84, too.

New Law Limits School Boards’ Authority

Idaho:  Homeschooler Liz Cannon-Hubbell sent us a copy of House Bill #502, which recently became law.  The law makes it clear that local public school boards do not have authority over home schools or private schools.  The bill is described as “An act relating to compulsory school attendance; amending section 33-202, Idaho Code, to clarify that a board of school trustees does not have the responsibility for determining if a resident child of school age who is not in attendance at a public, private, or parochial school is receiving comparable instruction.”

Liz Cannon-Hubbell comments, “The House overwhelmingly voted in favor of this bill, and there were only ten Senators opposing.  They say there was never so much public input on one bill before.  And because of the letters they received, many of those in power now say they realize that homeschoolers are ‘not a bunch of ignorant people, and should be left alone.’”

Concern Over Language in Department of Education’s Rules

Maine:  The April 1992 issue of the ReMAINEing at Home newsletter reports that on March 28, 1992, the Maine Homeschool Association board of directors met with Gary Barrett of the Maine Department of Education to discuss concerns about the language in Chapter 130, the Department’s rules for home education in Maine.  Chapter 130 has recently been revised to conform with changes in the state law that were made in 1989 and 1991.  The state law says that homeschoolers must submit an application to the local board and to the commissioner, but “Notice provided to local boards . . . is only for informational purposes.  Local boards are not required to play any role in the application, review and approval, or oversight of home instruction programs.”

The part of Chapter 130 that was revised to conform to the new law says that school boards will adopt policies governing their role “in the review and oversight of application for equivalent instruction programs,” and “The policy may require an annual review of each equivalent instruction program, including the annual assessment . . .”

According to the MHA, some homeschoolers are concerned that although the law says school boards are not required to be involved in the homeschooling approval process, the revised Chapter 130 implies that they may be involved if they choose to.  One homeschooler has suggested that Chapter 130 should be changed to read, “Local school boards are not required to play any role in the application or review, and may not assert a role in the approval . . .”

At the meeting on March 28, Gary Barrett of the Department of Education affirmed that only the Department of Education has the power to approve or disapprove of homeschooling programs.  Homeschoolers offered suggestions about how to clarify the language of Chapter 130 and are now waiting to see how school boards actually respond to the language as it now stands.

Homeschoolers Oppose Bills

Maryland:  Two homeschooling bills were introduced into the state legislature this session, according to issue #56 of the Maryland Home Education Association newsletter.  House Bill 992 would create a committee to study home education and make specific recommendations for new regulations.  House Bill 1345 would turn the current by-law regulation into law.  Manfred Smith of the MHEA writes that the rationale of Delegate Hutchinson, who introduced this bill, is that if the regulation were law, schools would feel greater pressure to monitor homeschoolers in their districts.

On February 20, Gary Cox of the Maryland Association of Christian Home Schools, Mike Smith of the Home School Legal Defense Association, Barbara Klein of the Learning Community, and Manfred Smith testified against both bills, saying that the current regulation was sufficient and that while homeschoolers did not object to HB 1345 because it duplicates the current regulation, they would object to changes that made the regulation more restrictive.

Settlement Upholds Right to Begin Homeschooling Mid-Year

Pennsylvania:  “The right of parents to begin homeschooling during the school year was upheld in an out-of-court settlement of Deely v. Wallace, a civil rights suit filed by homeschoolers Dan and Kathleen Deely against Superintendent Wallace of the Pittsburgh Public Schools,” writes Howard Richman in the Spring 1992 issue of the Pennsylvania Homeschoolers newsletter.  Last spring, Superintendent Wallace filed truancy charges against the Deelys after they filed an affidavit to begin homeschooling in the middle of the school year.  He claimed that families could only begin homeschooling if they filed their affidavits by August 1st.  The out-of-court settlement resulted in a federal court consent decree which states in part, “All parties agree that 24 PA Statute 13-1327.1 allows families to begin homeschooling at any time if they give notice to the school district prior to the commencement of their homeschool program and annually thereafter on August 1.”

Flawed Test Questions

FairTest sent us this press release:

Responding to critics’ claims that multiple-choice tests cannot measure “higher-order thinking skills,” manufacturers of commercial K-12 exams have launched a public relations campaign to defend their tests’ format.  However, a review of sample items offered by test publishers to support their claims shows that their questions fall far short of their promotional promise.

The analysis by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) concluded, “Multiple-choice items fail to assess higher order thinking because they are constructed so that there is only one answer.  They only cover memorization, one-step application of rules or simple inferences.”

For example, FairTest examined a test item promoted by CTB MacMillan/McGraw-Hill, manufacturer of the widely-administered California Achievement Test, which asked how many vans carrying 8 people each are needed to transport 36 employees to a company picnic.  Answer choices are 3, 4, 5 and 6.  A test company spokesman claimed, “The item requires students to analyze information and interpret a numerical response as it relates to a practical situation.”

But FairTest Associate Director Dr. Monty Neill explained, “This is merely a variation on a common trick question.  All it requires is the student to do basic division (36/8 = 4 with a remainder of 4) and recognize that one more van will be needed to transport the remaining employees.  That’s hardly ‘higher-order thinking.’”  Neill added that a student who cleverly suggested that the extra employees squeeze into the four vans to save money would be marked wrong.

Another sample item asks students to select one of four choices explaining whether an infantry invasion of Japan was a viable alternative to the use of the atomic bomb to end World War II.  Neill notes, “Claiming there is one answer to this complex historical issue demonstrates how this sort of question short-circuits the thinking process it claims to measure.  Rarely in history is there one sole cause of an event or only one answer to a historical problem.  In fact, the wanted answer (that casualties from an invasion would have been higher) is the standard explanation in most high school text books for using the bomb.  Thus, the question measures simple recall or recognition, not thinking.”

FairTest’s Neill continued, “Instead of supporting the publishers’ claims, these items prove that multiple-choice tests do not assess the ability of students to solve real-world problems or engage in tasks they will ever have to perform in life beyond the tests.”

“Building a national assessment system on such items or allowing commercial test manufacturers to pretend that their products promote school reform can only further damage the quality of U.S. education,” Neill concluded.  “Genuine reform requires the careful development of performance-based assessments, not more multiple-choice testing - no matter how shrewdly it is promoted.”

Calendar

June 28-30, 1992:  Family Learning Organization’s Homeschooling and Family Learning Fair at Whitworth College, Spokane, WA.  For info:  509-468-2505 or 509-467-2552.

Aug. 14-16:  Alliance for Parental Involvement in Education’s Options in Learning family conference at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY.  Keynote speaker:  John Taylor Gatto, workshops by Susannah Sheffer and others.  Children’s program too.  For info:  ALLPIE, PO Box 59, E Chatham NY 12060; 518-392-6900.

Sept. 4-6:  Third Annual Virginia Homeschool Educational Camping Weekend near Richmond.  Activities and workshops for all ages.  For info:  Jacque Williamson, 804-823-1882.

Sept. 22-25:  Oregon Homeschool Chautauqua.  For info:  send SASE to Oregon Chautauqua, 5360 SW 192 Av. Aloha OR 97007.

We are happy to print announcements of major homeschooling events, but we need plenty of notice.  Deadline for GWS #88 (events in September or later) is 7/10.  Deadline for GWS #89 (events in November or later) is 9/10.

Latino Homeschoolers:  A Powerful Act of Resistance

Lucy Salcido Carter of California writes:

I am responding to your question about African-American and Latino homeschoolers.  We are new to homeschooling.  My husband, son, and I decided over the winter holidays that Danny would only go back to his class in January to say good-bye and would then stop attending the public elementary school in the area.  It has been wonderful for him to be free to follow his own interests and to believe in himself again - no more negative messages because he wasn’t doing certain things quickly enough or willingly enough.

I think for people of color, choosing to take our children out of school is a powerful act of resistance.  This fall I became very involved in the school Danny was attending after having finished my own studies - formal studies, anyway; I’m still “learning all the time.”  I had always been pleased that he attended a school in which there were children from all over the world (because it is on a university campus) and a number of children native to the U.S. from all different ethnic backgrounds.  I am mixed-race Chicana - my mother is from Mexico and my father is U.S.-born of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent.

What I observed in the classrooms, though, was extremely disappointing, though not surprising.  Though there was a lot of rhetoric by administrators about how this school was for “children around the world,” I saw children who were quietly speaking their native languages among themselves told to stop.  I saw their native cultures trivialized to worksheets and cute projects.  I saw sharp differences in how the children of white upper-middle-class families who lived in the expensive neighborhood next to campus and the children from other countries, particularly those of color, were treated.  I heard children with accents getting teased by other children.  I watched as some of these children whose parents wanted them in English as a Second Language classes were denied access to those classes because the school administrators wanted them “mainstreamed.”  These same administrators then turned around and took these children out of their “mainstream” classes at different times of the day so they could get help with their “learning disorders.”  I saw children from a neighboring poorer area be written off by teachers and only given attention (negative attention) when they were being disruptive.  (In many ways these children may fare best in the short run, because they were left to use the classroom as they chose.  But sooner or later they themselves will see what is happening to them in the classroom and they will either rage and rebel or give up on themselves, too.  And people wonder about young people of color rioting and looting?)

Much of this was done in subtle, what I call “middle-class” ways, so it was very difficult to get the people doing it to see it or acknowledge it.  Though my husband is white and my son is blond and blue-eyed, because I was very vocal in support of other Spanish-speaking families and my own son’s needs, made a point to bring Mexican culture into the school, and spoke Spanish or Portuguese to the Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking children whenever and wherever I was with them, we too were treated as outsiders.

At the same time I was automatically “volunteered” when somebody needed assistance with certain parents or children.  Though I was happy to do it for the families themselves, I got tired of hearing comments from school administrators like, “So-and-so young Latina is spoiled by her parents” or “So-and-so welfare mother is manipulative” or “We’ve tried to get them involved, but . . .”
In the end a few things broke the camel’s back.  One, the teacher wanted to put Danny in one of the “special groups” because though he read at a “fourth grade reading level” (whatever that means), his writing was “way behind.”  Danny felt so bad about his writing that he said alternately that he didn’t write well or that he didn’t like writing.  I thought it appalling that in second grade he already felt so bad about himself as a writer.

Second, as I got more directly involved with the children in the classroom, I noticed I was welcomed by the teacher less and less.  She became increasingly critical of my ideas and interactions with the children.  After a very successful Dia de los Muertos project in which I had gotten the children talking about death and different cultures’ mourning customs, I suggested coming in close to winter holiday time to do another Mexican traditional project making bread dough decorations.  The teacher responded by saying that she had worked on a Navajo Indian reservation and had learned that the Navajo consider food too sacred to make into art.  I reminded her that there were no Navajo children in her classroom now, but there were Mexican-American children and in our households we used what was available to make art.  She would not budge.  That was when I realized that the work to be done in this area was so large and that keeping my son in the school so that maybe we could change things in some small way was going to be at his expense, and perhaps at the expense of my own sanity.

I feel a sense of loss, too, now that we have taken Danny out of school.  I miss the children with whom I have gotten close.  I felt that my being there made a difference to them.  It is a privilege in this part of the country to be able to have a parent at home to be able to homeschool the younger children.  Many families either do not have that privilege, cannot figure out how to make it work, or cannot imagine doing it.  And, though we have met many lovely homeschooling families, I can count on only half a hand the number of those families who are African-American or Latino.

The oppression works to make us feel incapable.  It happened to us as children and it continues to happen in situations between parents of color and white school administrators who insist on knowing better than we do what is best for our children.  That is why I believe that it is a particularly important act against oppression for us to follow what is true:  we do know what is best for our children and they deserve nothing but the best.  They are extremely capable, already know how to learn, and can figure out, with our help if needed, what they need to do to learn what they want to learn.

As part of our learning at home, I am speaking more and more Spanish.  Danny told me he wants to learn it, so he can “understand” me.  My husband is learning with me.  (Because I was humiliated as a child for having an accent and because my mother was told by school administrators to stop speaking Spanish to us, it is only recently that I have been able to take enough pride in my native language to start speaking it with my son - and he is already 7!)  I have met other homeschoolers who, though not of these cultures themselves, are also interested in exposing their children to other cultures through art, language, music, song, dance, and stories.  We exchange resources.  I have kept and cultivated my friendships with non-homeschooling parents of color and Danny has their children as close friends.

I recently found in the book 500 Anos del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures reference to the fact that during the late ’60s and early ’70s Chicano parents in Texas and New Mexico took their children out of the public school system and set up alternative learning centers for them.  I gather strength knowing that by homeschooling my son, I am part of this proud tradition and I am hopeful that more of us will do the same.  My son is happy and blossoming at home.

Setting Up Apprenticeships
How Parents Can Help

Judy Garvey (ME) writes:

Matthew has had a great response to his “Wants Outdoor Apprenticeship” letter in GWS #84.  I wanted to let people know about the worlds that have opened up for him as a result.  He received many generous offers for apprenticeships or visits, and also some letters that were simply encouragements.

The first trip he took this past fall, before his letter was printed in GWS, was to visit his GWS pen-pal, Jacob Lange, on his farm in Nebraska.  Although Matthew was primarily a guest there, he did get to help out with the work of the farm and learned a great deal while also having a wonderful time.  Pen-pals who closely share the same interests can become good friends over time and also offer each other an opportunity for travel.

Matt just left for Mexico, where he will be working on a ranch in the Sonora high desert area for two months.  This first apprenticeship actually came about from contacting Donn Reed, author of The Home School Source Book, who happened to know the homeschooling family who owns the ranch.  Matthew will be using many of the skills he has learned already, plus he will be working as a cowboy and general ranch hand.  He is very happy there, making friends with the Mexican people he works with and in awe of the beautiful country around him.

In July, he will be leaving for at least a three-month stay in Alaska.  He will work with a homeschooling family who has a hunting guide business both on the peninsula and north on the Yukon border.  This family apprentices a young person every couple of years who could eventually be trained as an Alaskan guide.  Since that is Matthew’s goal at this point in his life, this opportunity is a great one for him.  When his time with them comes to an end, he may go to stay with another family closer to Anchorage but also quite remote.  They raise huskies and, in fact, their 16 year old just won the Junior Iditarod.

That’s as far as Matthew has planned things at this point.  But more chances for apprenticeships or travel exist in the future.  This whole experience has opened our eyes to the possibilities that exist for young people who are seeking independence.  It has also shown us how many really generous and self-sufficient families there are in the homeschooling network.  Almost everyone who responded to Matt has an outdoor business or homestead of some sort, but that is because Matt was asking for that kind of work.  If a teenager had other interests, he or she might get similar responses from adults in those lines of work.

Besides the letter which was printed in GWS, Matt prepared a resume in which he listed all of his experience, skills, and interests, his size (which was important to his work), date of birth, parents’ names, and a couple of references.  He has had to write many letters to his prospective mentors to make arrangements.  The
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This whole experience has opened our eyes to the possibilities that exist for young people who are seeking independence.
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result of all this is first-hand experience in how to go about finding work in his chosen field.

We collected some very helpful ideas from Grace Llewellyn’s The Teenage Liberation Handbook.  We also wrote many letters to people we knew or didn’t yet know, and searched out addresses for people we had read or heard about who we thought might help Matthew.

Because of space limitations, not every teenager can write a letter to be printed in GWS.  If anyone wants to write to me, I would be very happy to respond to questions about how to get started with finding apprenticeships away from home (or near home, too).  We’ve compiled quite a lot of information and would like to share it with other families.  I would also like to encourage more families to consider taking on an apprentice.  The arrangements can be very flexible, and the length of stay could be anywhere from a few days to as long as the family and teenager wish it to continue.  Of course, the host family should expect real help in exchange for whatever they are offering to provide.  Teens seeking apprenticeships should understand that they will be employees of a sort.  There has to be a mutual benefit.

Perhaps families willing to host an apprentice could put a small ad in GWS such as the one in GWS #85 from the Ainslie-Hamblin family.  I would also be glad to hear from anyone offering an apprenticeship of any type.  Then if I receive letters from teens looking for situations, perhaps I could put people in touch with each other.

This has all been a real maturing process for Matthew (and for his parents, too!)  It’s been very hard to let go of him to this extent, but the benefits to him are simply immeasurable.  We are all very grateful to everyone who has helped him during the past few months.
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[SS:] Judy is right about space limitations, but we don’t want to discourage anyone from writing to us.  Often we are able to help even if we can’t print the letter.

I spoke to Judy on the phone several times while she and Matthew were working on finding apprenticeships, and I asked her if I could describe some of what we talked about so that readers could get an idea of the process behind Matthew’s ultimate success.  At first, Judy had been unsure about how much help to give to Matthew.  She knew that he very much wanted an apprenticeship - in fact, he had tried school for a while and had said that he wasn’t sure if he would homeschool again unless he knew he had an apprenticeship waiting for him.  But Judy didn’t know if Matthew would be willing or able to do all the work of researching opportunities and writing letters.  Should she do that work for him, Judy wondered?  Should she set up an apprenticeship for him and then announce it to him when it was all arranged?
We spoke for a while about how Matthew could be involved in the process of researching and making connections with people.  Later, Judy told me that it had helped to hear me say that if Matthew really wanted to do this fairly grown-up thing, he ought to participate in the work necessary to set it up.  On the other hand, Judy said, it also helped to hear that she didn’t have to leave Matthew to this daunting task all by himself - that she could help.  In the end, Judy sat down with Matthew and he listed all his skills and talked about what kind of apprenticeship he was looking for.  Judy then drafted a letter based on this information, and Matthew went over the letter and changed some parts of it to make it sound more like him or to clarify the meaning.  When the responses to his letter began coming in, Matthew was able to write back himself, although Judy helped him with spelling and sometimes reminded him to write back to people whose offers didn’t interest him at the time.

Judy helped Matthew to achieve his own goal, which is different from chiding or forcing him to achieve one of her goals and different from leaving him to work toward his own goal without any help at all.  She told me that she wants people to understand that the wonderful and varied apprenticeship opportunities that Matthew has gotten didn’t come about because he is exceptionally good at researching opportunities or writing letters on his own behalf.  In other words, if you’re thinking to yourself, “But my child wouldn’t be able to do all the work necessary to set up opportunities like Matthew’s,” realize that you can help your child just as Judy helped Matthew, and it won’t make the resulting opportunities any less wonderful or the process of obtaining them any less authentic.

These issues came up at the workshop on older homeschoolers that I led at our Holt Associates fair, and again in a talk I gave at the Northern California Homeschoolers Association conference about how adults can be helpful to self-directed learners, so they are very much on my mind.  I wonder if our school experiences make us confuse legitimate uses of help with cheating - if we ask for help, did we not really do the job ourselves?  But in the world of work there are so many legitimate ways to ask for help and to make use of it.  I know from my own experience, for example, that all those acknowledgments writers list at the front of their books are real - it really does take lots of help to write a book.

I’m glad that Judy gave permission to include her whole story here - not just the story of the great opportunities Matthew now has, but the story of how he worked to get them - so that other parents may realize that it’s OK to offer their children the kind of help that Judy offered Matthew.  When I talked to Judy I was able to tell her several stories about how I had helped kids in similar situations.  I’ll tell just one of them here (with the subject’s permission!).

Last fall, my friend Kim Kopel, who is 17, was beginning to think seriously about what she would do when she left her home in Missouri.  She was feeling ready to leave in the near future, but she wasn’t sure what exactly she wanted to do.  Even though she knew intellectually that this wasn’t necessary, she often found herself getting stuck on the notion that she would have to choose the one perfect thing to do, and this made it hard for her to think clearly about her options.

Knowing Kim as well as I did, and knowing that this was her point of vulnerability, so to speak, I suggested that she make a list of everything she could imagine herself doing.  “Try to list as many things as possible, instead of trying to narrow it down to one thing,” I wrote to Kim.  “It might help to divide it up into things you’re doing now that you want to do more of, or pursue in greater depth, and things you want to try that you’ve never tried.  The list can include things you can imagine doing soon, right where you are, and things that seem farther down the road, for when you may be living elsewhere.  Throw them all in, although you can note for yourself which category they fall under if that seems helpful.”  I told Kim that she didn’t have to show me the list, but if it generated any ideas that she then wanted to follow up on, I’d be happy to help.

After a couple of months Kim wrote and said that she’d followed my assignment (which, of course, we both knew hadn’t been an assignment at all, but simply a suggestion that arose out of our mutual trust and understanding) and that, lo and behold, making the long list had in fact helped her to focus in on the specific opportunity that she wanted to pursue right away.  She had decided that she wanted to try working at a living history village where she would be able to demonstrate her knowledge of weaving and at the same time learn new crafts and skills and meet new people.  She was willing to work as a volunteer if she could find some way to live at the village or live with a family nearby.  By the time Kim wrote to me she had already begun to research some of the villages that she knew about.  She was learning what distinguished one from the other and beginning to evaluate her own preferences.  I told her about Strawberry Banke, one such village in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and when Kim received information about this place, it seemed to be just what she was looking for.  It was big enough to have a range of activities to try and other interns to meet, but small enough that she would likely be able to make a real contribution.  It had a choir, one of Kim’s strong interests, and was close enough to Boston for Kim to be able to visit her friends here occasionally.

Once Kim settled on Strawberry Banke as her first choice, both her mother and I talked with her about what she might say in her letter to the director and helped her think through various logistical details.  Kim wasn’t sure what sort of living arrangements would be available to her, and she was afraid that she couldn’t let the director know that she was interested in working at Strawberry Banke until she knew for sure that it would be possible for her to live there.  Her mother and I suggested that she could write to the director explaining that she would need a place to live; she didn’t have to have all the details figured out before she presented herself, in other words.  When Kim had drafted a letter she sent it to me, asking if I thought she needed to add or change anything.  If she gets a positive response, she will want to visit once to be absolutely sure that this is where she wants to spend the next several months, and I will likely go with her just so she has a companion and someone with whom to check out impressions and any possible concerns.  These days I often think about what a good thing it is that Kim and I have maintained our long distance friendship for so many years.  Now that her interests are taking her to another part of the country, it’s nice that she has an adult friend in that part of the country who can smooth the way for her a bit.

So, again:  Kim asked for and made use of my and her mother’s help throughout this process, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t in charge of the process or that either of us created the opportunity for her.

Kids’ Work Experiences

Family Business
Audrey Dittberner (MN) writes:

I was very happy to read how the Clarke family works together (”Involving Kids in Work,” GWS #85).  How enriching and rewarding for all of them.

A few years ago, when friends were contemplating taking their children out of public school to homeschool, they asked our school principal what he thought of homeschooling and he replied, “I think of two reasons why parents homeschool - sexual abuse and child labor.”

We live on and operate a Christmas tree farm and nursery.  Our homeschooled children, Forest (12) and Selena (9), are an integral part of our family business.  But because we know the school authorities are watching us, and we are in the public eye because we have local employees, I feel we have to be very careful not to be seen working during school hours.

My husband Lowell is in the field most of April through December, much of the time using heavy machinery, from digging trees with a hydraulic tractor to cutting Christmas trees down with a chainsaw.  Selena, Forest, and I work year-round, from spring planting to weeding and mulching with newspaper, pruning, tying up ball and burlap trees, making fresh wreaths and garlands, selling Christmas trees, doing computer work with the wholesale and retail nursery, and doing mailings.  The children also set up and tend to our booths at trade shows, and enter Christmas trees and wreaths in competitions at the Minnesota State Fair.

For years now, Forest has known more about the trees than I do.  He is a more reliable, responsible worker than most teenagers and adults we employ.

Raising Animals
Cindi Trunk of Florida writes:

I believe the need for real work for children is very important.  I also think it is a little tricky thinking of ways to do this.  We happened upon one way almost accidentally.  We became interested in 4-H and the thing my boys wanted to do most was the animal projects.  We only live on an acre and have never had any farming experience.  But we decided to try it.

Now we have three pigs, two destined to be mothers, two dairy goats (same destiny), several chickens, and some rabbits (on the way).  The 4-H concept is that everything the children do in 4-H is to help them make a decision about work later on.  They are encouraged to keep accurate records of profit and loss and to make management decisions that can increase profit.  These animals are all a part of our income now, and the children view the work as very real and take their responsibility very seriously.  (They are 8 and 10 years old.)  It is amazing what they are able to do.

This is not accomplished without effort on our part, of course.  Animal shelters, fencing, initial purchases, and feed costs are all very real.  We even had to apply for a zoning exception to be allowed the animals in the first place.  This was a good thing for the children to attend, as they got to see a little of how our government works, and of course, the board questioned them and their motives.

My suggestion is not that everyone get into raising their own farm animals, as this is certainly not feasible for all people.  It has been tremendously worthwhile for us to produce our own food, too.  We had been gardening for years, but not trying to exist off of it.  I think that any family who gets into the production of their own food will benefit tremendously, and will reap the benefits of the real work.  All children are able to participate in some way in this.

It occurs to me that the 4-H concept of work is good in all areas, whether the children are learning about photography, child development, gardening, forestry, etc.  For us, mentors have not presented themselves, so this is the best alternative we have found.  We also have a home-based business, selling baseball cards, which helps the children see how the business world works.  So far they think producing their own goods is a lot more profitable in our present economy.

I would welcome letters from other mothers working towards self-sufficiency as their real work.  My children would enjoy corresponding with others doing this too.

Benefits of 4-H
Lisa Hodge Kander (MI) writes:

Our group of home educators has formed a 4-H group, the Vikings.  This has been for us a wonderful experience that has unlimited potential.  At first, our group got together basically for field trips.  As the group has grown, and as we learn more about 4-H and about our own interests, we have expanded our involvement steadily.  We have written, produced, and performed our own plays, done art classes, gym classes, health and safety projects, personal appearances projects, dog training, numerous field trips, fund raising, livestock and animal projects, to name only a few.

The 4-H we have discovered has come a long way from cows and corn.  Youth find opportunities in dozens of project areas, from computers or space and rocketry to foods and nutrition, to fine arts, to wherever your interests lead you.  If none of the project areas listed appeals to you, you can crate your own under the “self-determined” listing.  Kids can work independently on individual projects, or cooperatively on group projects.  The 4-H county fair offers a chance to show your work, exchange ideas, and compete.  4-H is open to kids 5-19 years old, although competition at the fair is limited to 9-19 year olds.
We have many resources to draw from in 4-H, all at very low cost or free - leader training, speakers and tapes, books and pamphlets, on hundreds of topics.  Another benefit to home educators is that 4-H is a well-known organization.  Setting up field trips or community service work for your 4-H group is sometimes easier than setting up for your home education group or your family group.

The Kander children added comments to Lisa’s letter.  First from Beth Kander:

I love 4-H, and especially all the privileges.  I love the fair and I love 4-H dog shows and I love dog obedience school, which 4-Hers attend free, meetings, and - oh my!  I love everything about it.

Homeschooling is great too.  I once attended a day at my friend’s school, and (though the teacher was nice) I hated it.  I mean, I’m an author (I’ve written tons of books) so I should have liked “prose time.”  I was all set to write a long chapter book, but you know what?  They only gave you ten minutes of time.  I finished my book at home.  The thing is, I can’t have limited time.  If you read off a long list of things to do, like they did at my friend’s school, my mind would boggle.  But if you said, “Beth, today we are doing writing, art, and social studies,” I’d be fine.

I love animals, writing, and art.  In fact, my 4-H group attends classes at the Flint Institute of Arts.  My other loves are cooking, reading, piano and friends.

Just because I don’t go to school doesn’t mean I’m a lazy nobody.  In fact, if I ever saw a blank day on our calendar, I’d freak!  That’s because my family also does day care.  I’ve been in four dog shows, two (with an audience) plays, and the 4-H fair.  I’ve attended dozens of classes and field trips and zoo trips.  It’s a little mind boggling at times, but I love it.
Sound busy?  Well, we also have on top of that two pregnant dairy goats, three guinea pigs, a dog, and a cat.

Next, from Jacob Kander:

I like everything about 4-H except we usually only do it once a week.  I like wood carving, art class, seeing my friends.  I like field trips and programs about space.  This year I want to do camping, rockets, and maybe softball.  4-H is good for homeschoolers because you can meet lots of new friends every year.

I like homeschooling because I can see my family and friends more often.  I wouldn’t like sitting in a schoolroom all day five days a week.

And from Adam Kander:

4-H is nice because I can play in the gym and do field trips.  I like getting together with friends.

TV Station Volunteer
Luba Karpynka of California writes:

My 12-year-old son, Joaquin Gray, has volunteered at our public access TV station, KCTV, for about a year now, about twelve or more hours weekly.  And he has just completed a six-month internship (among adults!).  His prime interest is computer graphics, but his functions are directing (the entire crew as well as audio, technical, and floor directing), and doing computer graphics, camera, and lights.  He produces a show for a local political group, meetings of which he attends with his dad.  And he’s in the process of creating his own science fiction mini-series.

All this has been possible because of his having been always homeschooled and having the time to focus on his various interests.  He virtually taught himself everything about the Commodores 20 and 64, and as we can’t afford an Amiga 2000, he familiarized himself with it at the station.  Now he’ll be giving paid lessons to crew volunteers (adults) on this Amiga.

Works in Pottery Shop

The February 1992 issue of Mentor, the newsletter of Home Education League of Parents of Ohio, has several good stories about kids apprenticing and doing volunteer work.  Here’s one of them, by Krista Sommer:

For some time, I had been wanting to work at a greenhouse or someplace where I could learn to ring up sales, inventory stock, arrange displays, and run errands.  Maybe you think I am asking too much for a 13 year old, but I didn’t.

I told my mom about this interest and a few days later my mother’s friend, Val, asked Mom if I would like to work in her shop.  My mom told me about this offer, and you can imagine my response!  It was just what I had been looking for.

Val’s son is a potter who makes wood-fired salt-glazed pottery.  Val was opening a Christmas gift shop to sell her son’s pottery and to take on consignment other items, such as watercolor paintings, quilts, wood crafts, and plants.

Many exciting days later, I had learned to handle customers, arrange displays, fill out credit card forms, price items, inventory stock, open shop and close shop.  One time, when Val had to be away, I ran the shop for five hours on my own.

On top of all this experience, I earned a Cadette Girl Scout badge for my hours of volunteer work!
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In another article, Krista’s mother, Barb Sommer, writes about a system of hooking up mentors and students that her support group has organized:

We realized that within our O-HEN (Ohio Home Educators’ Network) families, there was a tremendous wealth of knowledge, expertise, and access to equipment, all untapped due to lack of a communication network.

So we organized a Mentor & Student File.  Here, parents and kids can let others know what they are willing to share in the way of skills and/or information, and students can advertise what experience and help they need.  For example, if a mom or dad has a particular hobby that might be of interest, they send us the times they are available, which age groups they are willing to work with, any expenses that there might be, and what equipment the students are to bring.  O-HEN then makes it known through our network that this mentoring activity is available.  This also applies to apprenticing.  If someone is able to have a student spend time with him at his place of work or if someone needs a helper at work, he can advertise with O-HEN.  We then check our computer files for students seeking such an experience or advertise the need and put interested parties together.

Wants Carpentry Apprenticeship
Jacob Lange (NE) writes:

I am 15 and have been homeschooling since second grade.  I am the oldest of six children and consider myself responsible.  My parents have been trying to find someone to teach me woodworking/carpentry for a couple of years.  (I am also interested in woodcarving.)  What I’d like to find is a two or three week intensive apprenticeship in this area of interest next December, January, February or March.

During the spring, summer, and fall I help my dad on our 2000-acre farm.  I plant soy beans, windrow hay, stack bales, ditch corn, v-plow, field cultivate, irrigate and level bins, and many other things.  My dad has taught me how to weld, drive all kinds of farm machinery, fix tractors, feed cattle, grind hay, and understand basic electricity.  I wired the addition to our house.

In February I went to Mexico for two weeks with a missionary group to help them build a church.  I worked on building the trusses and mixing and pouring cement.  It was a great experience and I hope I can do it again some day.

For academics we use the helpful services of the Clonlara Home Based Education Program and we really like their outlook on education.  If I was going to school in town, none of the things I learn on our farm would count toward my education or toward a diploma.  With Clonlara I can fit my studies around my farm work and accomplish a lot with both.  Then I can get credit for everything I’m learning.  Filling out Clonlara’s time grids has been good for me.  Learning to be accountable for my time is an education in itself!

My brothers and I are proficient horsemen.  I bought and trained my first colt when I was 11 and I just bought another one to train.  This is another area my 13-year-old brother Joey and I would like to apprentice in.  He, too, is training his second colt and is an excellent rider.  We both love to read Western Horseman magazine and go to horse club.  Joey would especially like to learn about trick riding as he is an avid gymnast, too.

We also like to fish, hunt, go on trail rides, and bowl.  We’ve run in some races and have done well.  We are hard workers, work well with others, and are good with kids as we have had much babysitting experience!  We know how to wash our own clothes and clean up a kitchen.

We would appreciate hearing from anyone who would be willing to teach us more about woodworking or horses or who has similar interests and would like to correspond.

Challenges & Concerns

Further Thoughts on Boredom
Catherine King (MI) writes:

I thought the boredom question [Focus, GWS #86] was right on target and the responses were great.  I loved how consistently every child said, “Don’t ask Mom.”  It really gave me insight into homeschooling families across the country - with homeschooling moms involved and accessible but busy and not able to provide full-time stimulation and entertainment.  And so the children draw from their own resources - which is a vital tool for creating a meaningful life - and all thanks to letting them be bored for a while!
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Judy Scandora (WA) writes:

In response to the Focus in GWS #86 on kids coping with boredom:  as many of the contributors point out, kids do not want adult suggestions.  They need to figure out for themselves how to fill the day.  I think adults are bothered by children doing nothing with their time, so they do their best to get the kids doing something, anything.  But we should hold back.  A few months ago I found my usually active 7 year old lying on the couch.  “Bored?” I asked her.  “No,” was the reply.  “Can’t think of what to do?”  I tried again.  “No,” she said impatiently.  “I know what to do; I just have to figure out how.”

It’s incredibly hard to do nothing (without the aid of the TV); we need to give the children more credit.  An idle body doesn’t necessarily mean an idle mind.
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Laurie Huffman wrote in the May 1992 issue of the Utah Home Education Association newsletter:

Yesterday, Alex got bored.  He lay on his bedroom floor, positioned strategically where I could see him, and moaned loudly, begging to be rescued.  He was casually ignored.  I went on reading.  How many times have we gone through this routine, only to have it swept away on a wave of new exploration?  I’ve lost count.  I’ve also learned the importance of maintaining my own line of pursuit, not caving in under the pressure, and especially not feeling guilty about it.

. . . The problem may not be the kids and the boredom so much as that of parents who feel trapped by an awkward conformity to traditional, but false, educational standards, i.e. kids can’t be trusted to learn on their own, and their time needs to be planned and managed by adult supervisors to avoid - you guessed it - boredom.  It’s as though boredom is some kind of diabolical evil.  But it isn’t.  Without a little occasional boredom, no one, child or adult, would ever think to pursue anything in this life.  A popular show tune informs us that “an idle mind is the devil’s playground,” and we’ve bought the message, never bothering to examine the premise.  The truth may be just the opposite, that the shackled, managed mind, the mind hemmed in by other-directed activities, filled and flowing over with abstract nonsense, will eventually rebel.

. . . In his book Free At Last, Daniel Greenberg discusses the plight of children entering the Sudbury Valley School from surrounding public schools, where they have been other-directed from the start, and can’t figure out how to function at SVS, where no one tells them what to do and no one judges their decisions.  They are left to decide for themselves.  They tend to drift and then stand still, waiting to be guided, feeling resentful.  Greenberg says, “Often the best medicine is a heavy dose of boredom . . .  We tell them that when the boredom becomes intolerable, they will rouse themselves, out of sheer desperation, to create their own framework.”

. . . Alex eventually “roused himself” when the “boredom became intolerable.”  He made a mental list of six things he wanted to do, wrote each on a small piece of paper (my suggestion), folded them, put them into a dish, and then drew them out one at a time to determine which one he would do first, second, third, and so on.  A couple of the items were amazingly complex, requiring hours of effort and attention to detail, but he’s doing them happily, because he chose them.  It’s absolutely astonishing what a little boredom can do.

Responses to “Struggling,” “Critical Relative”
Suki Baldwin (IL) writes:

In GWS #86 (Struggling with Ambivalence”) Ken Lipman-Stern writes, “And yet I wonder if I’m too involved, since I work with him a lot and offer adult ideas.”  Homeschooling, to me, is just as much about allowing the children the chance to do things you like along with you as it is about their pursuing their own interests.  How wonderful that Ken and Sam work on and enjoy their electrical work/play together!  Continue “to trust the natural unfolding of our children’s own inquisitiveness” (as Ken says so beautifully) and we may find that Mom and Dad are their favorite resources.

And to Gail Sichel (”When a Relative Disagrees”), who wrote about her father’s criticisms of the family’s homeschooling decision:  Grandpa may become less critical as he begins to take advantage of opportunities with Corianna that are not possible with a granddaughter who is in school every day.  She could go to work with him for a day or meet for lunch, go skating or to a ballgame, or the old playing hookey standby, fishing.  A grandpa who is against homeschooling for philosophical reasons may discover that he is for homeschooling for strictly grandfatherly reasons.  Corianna has so much she can learn from her grandfather that would never even be touched on in the classroom.

Like Gail, I also devour my GWS as soon as it arrives.  The series on how parents of young children find time for themselves was sorely needed in this house, for my girls are 4 and 1.  I have now rearranged my priorities slightly, and also take heart in the belief that their demands on my time will ease.  I cherish the babyhood I am allowed to share in so intensely, and I know I will mourn its passing as much as I look forward to regaining time to pursue my own interests.

More on Time Alone
Nancy Deaver of Washington writes:

Some of the recent letters about alone-time have sparked a lot of thought and some discussion in our house.  I fiercely guard my sacred two hours after the kids (ages 1-1/2, 4, 6-1/2, and 10) are in bed and can often be heard telling them that I’m off-duty.  As I’ve consistently said this for the past few years, they seem to understand that I mean it and generally I can count on a little peace.  My biggest problem is that it never seems long enough and I often stay up later than I wanted and don’t get the sleep I need.  But this too will pass.

My bigger frustration is the near-constant interruptions to whatever I’m doing. Since sitting down to write this I’ve had to sweep up a spill, pour juice, find a calendar and a sticker, and there will no doubt be more interruptions.  I feel like I live my life in ten-minute segments.  Often the issue is not so much wanting to be alone (I like my family around) as being able to finish a task (even a five-minute task) without having to stop halfway through.  Often the younger children don’t respond well to, “I’ll help you as soon as I finish this job.”  Sometimes even the older ones don’t respond well.  I guess it has to do with how long I’ll be. I often try to direct the needy person to the next older one.  Sometimes this works, sometimes not.  Does anyone else have any good ways to deal with this?

I agree with Kristin Williams (GWS #84) that my patience level is directly related to whether my task is interruptable.  With regard to that I’ve found that one afternoon a week with all four kids at a babysitting neighbor’s has helped immensely.  I can then concentrate on the bookkeeping I do for our business or other uninterruptable tasks.

Something else that is increasingly becoming an issue is the kids’ need for alone-time from each other.  As homeschoolers, being together so much, they do pretty well, but of course we have our bad days.  Diana (10) has her room to retreat to, but the two oldest boys share a room so it’s harder for them to be alone.  Also, sometimes Diana doesn’t like having to be stuck in her room to be alone (it’s upstairs and gets hot).  She sometimes wants to climb our favorite tree or be in another common area by herself and of course as soon as someone thinks of something, everyone else wants to do it.

We haven’t yet come up with the right balance between individual needs and family responsibilities.  And of course, what to do about those common areas?  I’d like to hear about how other families have dealt with these issues.  We had four children so they could grow up feeling part of a close-knit, supportive family group, but I also feel that forced togetherness can breed resentment.  We need some balance.
__________

From Andrea Rosenberg (ME):

I want to enter the discussion of homeschooling parents getting time for themselves.  With four children 2 through 12, this has definitely been a problem for me.  I finally decided to hire M., a 16-year-old homeschooling friend, two afternoons a week to help me out.  It is hard to afford this help, but after five weeks of having her I am convinced it is worth it. I can write letters, sew, nap, or take a walk alone without feeling that my children are neglected (she pays very good and loving attention to them).  If it occurs to me that I need to do an errand, I don’t feel the rising panic that I used to when wondering, “How am I ever going to get that done?”  Instead, I think, “I’ll do that on Friday, when M. is here.”  I relax.  I enjoy my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays more because she comes on Fridays, and my Saturdays and Sundays more because she comes on Mondays.

Trying School
Holly Shaltz writes from Germany:

We moved to Germany last July, and Christopher (12) and Jonathan (10) decided to try a semester of the military school near us.  I was surprised and, to be honest, not very pleased.  It was more Jon’s idea than Christopher’s, but both boys decided to try it.  I think I felt a little rejected, but mostly I was afraid all the emotional difficulties that had led me to take them out of school eighteen months earlier would come back.  And they did, but more so in Jon than in Christopher, which was a surprise as it has been the other way around before.

Christopher actually settled into the routine apparently easily, aside from constant grumbling about having to get up at 6:00, and having homework, and irritation at the arbitrary, often meaningless rules the teachers made up.  Jon didn’t like those things either, and also felt overwhelmed by the level of organization that he felt was expected of him.  He did his usual acting out of his frustrations that is emotionally healthier than Christopher’s holding in of his feelings but is more disruptive.

They decided to homeschool again after the one semester, and I was glad to have them home.  They are (usually!) good company, and are very helpful with the new baby, and are so much happier.  I recently put an ad in the local military paper for homeschoolers.  I’ve had three responses, one of whom is a GWS/John Holt fan like me.
__________

Barbara Nye (VT) wrote a year and a half ago:

Cameran decided to try school this fall.  Unfortunately, she waited until school had already been in session for one and a half months which made it harder for her to understand what the kids were doing.  However, she only wanted to try it on her terms - she wanted to go into seventh grade and only go three days a week.  I had figured that sixth grade was more her level and since she would have so much to adjust to, it would be easier not to push it, but she was adamant about being in seventh grade.

The school has been very cooperative.  The principal said testing wasn’t appropriate and he’d just put her in seventh grade with her peers and see how she did.  When we brought up the three days a week schedule, he conditionally agreed on a short-term basis and said he’d decide later if that could continue.

The teachers found her math to be behind grade level but accommodated by putting her in the sixth grade math.  They worried about what would happen next year.  I assured them that things would work out and not to worry.  When the teacher suggested that Cameran was more on a sixth grade level, I agreed but said she didn’t want to go to school if she couldn’t be in seventh grade.  The teacher said, “My, my!  We don’t want that to happen!”

Cameran’s moods were up and down.  She blamed me for the fact that she had missed out all these years when school turned out to be so much fun.  And she said I wasn’t supporting her decision by saying she didn’t have to go.  Finally, we had a long talk.  I told her one of the reasons I didn’t want her to go to public school was that children started thinking they were no longer a part of the family, and that she is an important part of our family and we didn’t need to be treated like we were worthless.  If she could not act pleasant and treat us right, she could not go to school.  She thought about this for five minutes and then ran into her older brother Jeremy’s bedroom telling him about something, acting her old self.  She has been fine since then.

The stories she brings home!  No wonder she likes it.  It’s thoroughly entertaining to her.  One classmate got tired of the teacher asking him a question, so he tipped over his desk and kicked his books all over.  Two difficult boys constantly mimic the teacher.  It sounds like there’s little or no discipline, especially in the one class.  At the beginning the principal warned Cameran that some kids didn’t know how to get along with people and if she found it frustrating she should just take some time off and come see him.

I don’t see how Cameran could emotionally or physically handle more than three days a week.  Last week she only went one day because she was so exhausted.  Today was her third day of attending school.  We’ll see how it goes.

[One week later:]  Cameran quit school.  She attended only four days over a three week period.  The day she decided to quit, she’d gone to her dance class and babysat until 8:00 PM, then had four chapters to do in Civics, some homework in English, and preparation for a spelling test.  That night she had a headache and felt sick. She asked me what stress was.  When I told her it was how a person felt when he or she was overworked or worried too much, she said that’s what she had.  She said she didn’t know what was going on in class and everyone else understood and it was too much work and she’d never catch up.  She felt like a failure.  She enjoyed being around the other kids and thought a lot of school was fun, but she wished everyone only went three days a week and didn’t have homework.  We discussed trying it a little longer until she caught on to what was happening or waiting until next year when she could start at the beginning of the semester, but neither option sounded appealing at that point.  She was relieved just to make the decision to stay home.  I told her to make a list of all the things she wanted to do.  She made the distinction between staying home and homeschooling.  Homeschooling was what she did not like to do.  If she had to do Calvert (we were doing a watered down version of Calvert fifth grade) and all the homework, she might as well go to school.

Her list was two and a half pages long and included writing and reading, photography, skiing, and swimming.  She had just started photography using one of her father’s old 35 mm cameras and checking out books from the library on nature photography.  In two days she shot 72 pictures.

It seems like months since she went to school, yet at the time, it seemed like she had been going for months.  It was an exhausting schedule that totally monopolized our time and thoughts and energy.  Now we’re back to our relaxed non-schedule.  One thing I have changed due to this experience is Cameran’s studies.  I don’t know if other homeschoolers have this problem, but I tend to think a person should have a solid background in something before going on.  For example, in math, before Cameran was to go on to something more intricate she needed to know multiplication proficiently.  To prepare her in case she does want to try school next year, I started her on Harold Jacobs’s Algebra.  She’ll be introduced to variables and will use her multiplication and division.  We’re taking it very slowly, of course, and if I see she’s getting frustrated, we’ll stop.  Now she announced that she loves algebra, she just hates that other math.  I’ve also started her in Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition.  Now she can say she’s doing seventh and eighth grade work.  (That was a point she kept making - how could she do seventh grade work when she was only in fifth grade Calvert?  I kept telling her Calvert was much more advanced than public school.)

Barbara now writes:

Cameran is 13 now and laments the fact that she has few friends and not much to do.  But she enjoys her free time and, after her bout in seventh grade, does not consider going to school to alleviate her boredom.  I have no doubt that homeschooling is the right thing to do versus public schooling; however, sometimes the children are not exposed to enough experiences up here in isolated northern Vermont.  There are more and more families homeschooling, but few have children as old as ours.  Enrolling Jeremy in vocational education solved this problem for him.  He took Industrial Mechanics and Typing last year and takes a Science, Engineering, Technology, and Skills course this year.  He has an intelligent, interesting teacher who appreciates his willingness to learn.  Through this teacher he got involved in building a solar car and welding.  He is also a junior ski patroller and is continuing with his piano.  He is very self-motivated and keeps busy.

I just finished reading Nancy Wallace’s Better Than School and agreed with her the whole way through the book.  I felt somewhat betrayed, though, when the family moved to the city.  Putting myself in Nancy’s place, I identified with the country living - somewhat like we are living in the country after leaving a city.  But then they moved!  How could they leave that bucolic setting and expose their children to the corrupt city, right?  Analyzing my feelings, I realize that I am rather jealous that they had the option to move when they outgrew the country.  That is what I’ve felt for some years with our children.  This beautiful rural setting just does not supply the stimulation a city would with the availability of libraries, museums, teachers, lessons, etc.  Cameron would love to get into dance, but we would have to travel sixty miles to a good teacher.  Jeremy found his niche with the solar car but has no interest in staying here.

A point Nancy made was that even after the family moved to Ithaca, her children still did not find many friends their ages.  I realize this and see that even with Jeremy going to vocational education with children his age, his friends are his teacher and one girl his age.  It is just hard for these children to find other serious children - not serious in humor, because both my kids have a terrific sense of humor, but serious in life.  So, even though Cameran laments her lack of friends, the problem is that there are few children with her sensibilities.

Watching Children learn

Learning Russian Together
From Jane Dwinell (VT):

This past January we had the special opportunity of going to Russia.  My brother was marrying a Russian and we had been chosen to represent the family at a wedding celebration party in Moscow.  We had very little time to prepare for the trip, but during the second week of December (when we were all in bed with the flu) we decided it was time to start learning Russian.

We ordered a set of Russian “Learnables” tapes.  When they arrived Dana (5) was as excited as Sky and I were to look at the pictures and listen to the words.  We knew Russian was very different from English - that there were different sounds and a completely different alphabet - but even the voice on the tape seemed hard to understand.  We plugged along, following the instructions - just listening, not trying to repeat the words, passing the test at the end of the tape and then waiting twenty minutes before we listened to the next one.  Over and over we listened and gradually it began to make sense.

When the words changed to phrases and then to sentences, Dana was right there looking at the picture trying to figure out what the words might mean.  She was very amused at some of the scenarios.  What she lacked was Sky’s and my “adult” conviction that the words we were learning were going to be useless when it came to asking directions, what something cost, or where the public toilets were.  She just learned and began using many of the words every day, calling her brother a “rebyonick” (baby), calling herself “Dana devoshkah” (girl), asking for “morozhehnoe” (ice cream).

Two weeks later my brother gave us a copy of the “Living Language” Russian course on tape, the one designed for diplomats and those in the foreign service.  Taking a look at the Cyrillic alphabet and the way the words we had already learned were spelled was overwhelming.  We knew we had to learn the alphabet to be able to read signs and find our way, so we moved into high gear.  I wrote out the alphabet and its equivalent English sounds on a large piece of paper and hung it on the living room wall.  Sky made flash cards.  It was time to memorize - no more learning by osmosis.
Over the first weekend in January while Sky was recovering from minor surgery, he and Dana sat in bed and went through the flash cards over and over.  Dana got a big kick out of being the teacher, flipping the cards and correcting Sky when he was wrong.  By the end of the day Dana knew the alphabet better than Sky did (and I had hardly learned it - I was too busy keeping up with 16-month-old Sayer).  We sent for the script of “The Learnables” as a way to reinforce the alphabet and I found I relied on Dana to help me with letters I didn’t know.

In the midst of all this, Dana had been trying to learn how to read English.  She has loved books all her life and by age 4 1/2 had been attempting to read her brother’s toddler books to him.  She mostly read by memorization and was frustrated when she was unable to read her own books.  We did not interfere in any way but continued to read to her as always, knowing that one day she’d get it.

The trip grew closer and soon we were off.  We had decided to travel by train through Europe, flying to Frankfurt, stopping in Budapest on the way to Moscow and in Amsterdam on the way back.  Tucked away in Dana’s backpack were these significant items:  five “learn to read” books given to her by her grandmother and a large sketch pad and markers given to her by a friend specifically for the trip, along with a few of Sayer’s board books, a doll, a small ball, a book of fifteen board games and a pack of cards.

On the train from Budapest to Moscow we had to share our small compartment with a Russian couple about our age.  We were just settling down for an afternoon nap halfway through the 36-hour trip when they arrived.  Even though I was frustrated by their “invasion” I was so exhausted I fell asleep cuddled up with Sayer on the bottom bunk.  I awoke several hours later to see one of the most magical scenes of the entire trip:  Dana sitting in between Sky and Nadia (the Russian woman) with her paper and markers, busy at work.  Dana and Nadia were drawing pictures and labeling them in Russian and English,  Dana meticulously copying what Nadia wrote.  Sky and Nadia were passing our Russian-English dictionary back and forth as they attempted to ask and answer questions about each other’s lives.

Then Sky and Dana recounted to Nadia the funny vignettes of “The Learnables” - especially the scenario of the baby hiding from the mother, under the table, under the bed, throwing the egg, when finally the mother, exhausted from chasing the baby, goes to sleep and father arrives home to find mother, baby, and dog all asleep.  Nadia had a good laugh about the way we had learned her language.  Then we discovered how useful it had been.  Earlier, when Sky, Sayer, and I were asleep, Dana had started down the ladder to see me.  Nadia (not yet having been introduced to all of us), said to Dana, “Matz speet” (mother is sleeping).  Because of that silly scenario from the tape Dana knew what Nadia had said and she returned to Sky on the top bunk, settled down and went to sleep.

Then Dana began reading the “learn to read” books, which were much harder than your basic Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham.  They were written in paragraphs, without rhyming, and had few pictures.  Yet there was Dana, reading along, sounding out unfamiliar words, speaking with drama and appropriate inflection.  I was amazed.  Then I realized what Dana had witnessed during the six weeks before our trip:  she had been watching Sky and me learn a new alphabet and a new language, and she realized that each letter has a certain sound (much clearer in a language like Russian than in our difficult English) and that to pronounce a word you need to sound out each letter.  Plus, with the amazing memorization skills of a 5 year old, she had learned the alphabet and language as well as, if not better than, we had.

I could write pages about the rest of our trip, but suffice it to say that Dana helped read signs at Metro stations and on the street, had patience with us when we failed at our sign-reading and got lost in the city, and had the courage to play with Russian children, holding hands and giggling while sliding on the ice.  She was not afraid to speak what little Russian she knew (while I was more embarrassed about my lack of knowledge and possible wrong pronunciation) to my brother’s wife’s family, with whom we stayed for two weeks.  And now that she’s home she reads everything, from junk mail to song lyrics, newspaper headlines, and computer game instruction books.  In fact, she was just standing behind me reading this letter and here it is April, only three months after she learned Russian and started with her “learn to read” books.  She herself acknowledges that learning Russian helped her learn English.

Setting Goals in Math
From Kathy Dolezal (MN)

Frequently I’m asked how our girls learn math when we don’t formally do school.  When they were younger we played games, shopped, measured, etc., and at about age 7 or 8 all three girls enjoyed doing math out of workbooks.  As they got older, in spite of my convictions about learning by living and allowing the girls to pursue their own interests, I often worried about their math skills when they hadn’t done any formal math for a few years.  So I invested in a math text every now and then.  I simply didn’t have the time or the interest to pursue math with the girls in any other way, and I don’t think they would have done any math beyond basic arithmetic if we hadn’t had texts and talked about the usefulness of learning higher math and if I hadn’t to a certain extent pushed (not shoved) math.  Sometimes I get the impression that those of us who don’t “do” school are almost embarrassed to say that we attempt to interest our children in math.  None of us, I’m sure, would even think of not having a variety of books and magazines available and using them, so why not do the same with math books?

After an initial early love of math followed by a few years of indifference, each of the girls, at about age 11, started to feel that they needed to know more math, though they never really wanted to work at it.  At this age Katrina, Maryrose, and now Theresa caught up to their peers.  They often set goals for themselves.  In fact, they still do.  For example, one of them might decide to finish a math book by the end of April.  I often encourage the girls to work at meeting their goals.  Sometimes they feel I am intruding and tell me so.  Other times they want me to push them.  They are obviously pleased if and when they accomplish goals they’ve set.

Maryrose learned her facts easily by doing arithmetic, but concepts were much more difficult for her.  Then, at about age 14, things she hadn’t understood before suddenly made sense.  She’s currently doing math from a text about once a week because she wants to learn it even though she would prefer to do something she enjoys.

Katrina was schooled until fourth grade.  She didn’t do any math for two years after she came home.  Though she caught on quickly, math never excited her.  She didn’t know the facts thoroughly until she was at least 13.  But, in seventh grade she completed Saxon Algebra 1/2.  Next, she worked sporadically on Algebra 1 and occasionally did some geometry.  This year as a junior she’s having no trouble with physics at the public school.  Any math she doesn’t know she learns by asking questions.  Largely because of her excellent physics instructor, Katrina is thinking of pursuing a career in engineering.

Even though she didn’t follow a traditional math curriculum and often didn’t do formal math for years at a time, she scored at the 96th percentile in math on the PSAT last fall.  The wonder for me is not that she scored this high but that so many kids score as low as they do on this test after studying math daily in school for 10 or 11 years.

Not all children have the math aptitude that Katrina does, but I’m thoroughly convinced that most of school math is repetitive and unnecessary.  Once again I’ve been shown that children will learn what they need to know when they have a reason for learning it.  When they’re younger that reason might be to change money confidently.  When they’re older they might just be curious or want to know what others their age know.  Later, they might study math for its usefulness in a career they’re considering.  I see my role as a parent to encourage my kids when they show even a spark of interest, and to keep all options open for them.

Learning Through Play

From Gail Sichel (NJ):

Since July we have been reading the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It has opened up a whole new area of play and study for us all.  We have a dress-up box which Corianna (6) has always used, but now everything has taken on a new purpose.  In the morning, she chooses what to wear based upon whether she will be playing Laura, Mary, or Carrie, and which book she is reenacting.  Our fireplace, which was previously cosmetic and nonfunctional, is now hers and “functional.”  When I need kitchen tools - my soup ladle, the frying pan, pot holders, aprons, and other things - I have to go to the kitchen Corianna has created in the living room near the fireplace.  She uses the tools to make her kitchen as real as possible.  The front porch has become a stable with a wooden horse and hay (onion grass).

Amarynth, who is 2, plays with Corianna as Baby Carrie.  She does very well playing the role for a while, until she needs me, or until they meet an impasse they can’t ford because of misunderstandings or because their negotiating and compromising skills are still rudimentary.  The play goes on longer when I join in as Ma.  I can ease the rough spots better in the role of Ma than as myself.  I’m enjoying pretend games more than I ever have.  I’m learning to play again!

Corianna will often correct me about details from the book.  I am amazed at how much detail she picks up as I read aloud to her.  (I wonder if this will change once she can read to herself.)
Another interesting development that has come from reading this series, and my willingness to play, is that Corianna, who never before wanted to help out with chores, now offers to help.  If it is something that Laura would have had to do, she throws herself into the task even more wholeheartedly.  The other day she was holding Baby Grace (a doll), talking on the phone to her grandparents, and chopping zucchini.  It was all part of being Laura.

OK Not to Finish Things
More from Holly Shaltz (Germany):

When we decided to homeschool, two years ago, I asked the boys to tell me what they’d like to learn.  One of Christopher’s top priorities was computer programming and the electronics side of computers.  Unfortunately, Jon started playing around with graphics and sound effects on the computer very early on, and Christopher, as he did with math, backed off from trying to develop his interest in something that looked to him as if his brother had aced.

While Jon has continued to mess around with graphics, designing the opening sequences to a myriad of adventure or D&D computer games, that’s as much as he has ever done.  But Christopher has very recently decided to go into programming more seriously, and after reading a little about machine code in one of the books we have with our Commodore 64, he has been trying to program in machine code.  He needed a little initial help from me in understanding the book’s explanation of hexadecimal numbers, but then he took off on his own and quickly lost me entirely.  His persistence and patience with books that aren’t written for our computer and are written for adults with some knowledge of machine code and programming languages other than BASIC has amazed me.  He even invented a language that he uses on paper.  I think it helps him clarify how different languages compare.  He has also made computers with both index cards and legos - he still turns to legos to help himself interpret the world.

We have only been able to find one book in the library on assembly language and machine code.  If any GWS readers who have knowledge in this area would be interested in writing us, we’d appreciate it greatly.  Or if anyone knows of any good books and where they are available, we’d be grateful for that information as well.

Jon still loves D&D but lately has been spending more time working on various projects that involve a lot of research about the military, political, and economic history of most of the countries of the world at various times.  He often does this to develop war games, which I’m not crazy about, but I can see the value in the research, and he almost never ends up playing them as war games, so I don’t worry about it too much.  He always ends up with a beautifully drawn and colored map of whatever part of the world he’s working on, which would make any Social Studies teacher very happy!

He recently began to express concern that he never finishes the projects he plans.  It occurred to me that while both school and the real world strongly emphasize a finished product, we may learn more about ourselves when we are free to examine what gets finished and what doesn’t when there’s no one with a report card hovering in the background.  I have been one of the people with the proverbial closet full of unfinished needlework projects, and for years I viewed myself as a person who couldn’t finish a project, completely ignoring all the things I did finish during that time.  Now I have the perspective to see that those projects showed a trend through those years, eventually leading me to what I really love to do, weaving with my handspun yarn.  I love every detail of it, no matter how tedious it may seem to others (of course, I love some details better than others).  I pointed out to Jon that his many computer games that never go past the opening graphics stage could tell him that his strength is in graphics, not in programming the body of a game.  His many war games that seldom get past the historical research/map drawing stage also show a very real strength, not a weakness.  When we have the freedom to choose and to discard our activities according to the enjoyment we get out of them, we are free to find what we are really gifted at doing.  Activities imposed on us don’t give us self-knowledge.  Although I have cherished homeschooling for the freedom it has given my kids to be themselves, I never before realized it could also help me learn more about myself!

JOHN HOLT’S
BOOK AND MUSIC STORE

Children Learning at Home
by Julie Webb #1586 $22

This is a study of home education in Great Britain, but it has much information that will benefit homeschoolers in the United States, too.  Writing in an accessible, narrative style, Julie Webb traces the theoretical and historical background of homeschooling in England, and then explains how she chose and structured her research model.  Her interviews over an 18-month period were primarily with homeschoolers associated with the British group Education Otherwise and with school officials who handled homeschooling issues.  Webb uses an ethnographic approach, presenting people’s own words in transcripts from interviews and tying them together with her commentary and observations.  This approach makes the book accessible to the general reader, and by presenting the wide variety of motivations and characteristics of homeschoolers in their own words, it allows readers to garner specific ideas about how children learn and how parents can help them.

Many of the families interviewed came to home education as a last resort.  Their decision was not based on wholehearted belief in homeschooling as a positive alternative, but rather on the belief that it was better than the alternative of school.  Julie Webb writes, “Those I interviewed had generally been forced to look for an alternative by the inflexibility or other unsuitability of available schools, in particular, usually, the one their children attended.  This was so even where the parents had a predisposition to consider alternative education by reason of their personal background.”

An interesting section of the book shows how some families actively involved their children in the homeschooling decision, “giving the child some power over his own future education.”  Another section focuses on “Family Influence on the Choice of What to Learn,” examining qualifications and credentials of homeschooling parents and children, both self-imposed and state-imposed.  Interesting interviews and later follow-ups with families who don’t follow set curricula show that their children are not at a disadvantage when it comes to going to college or entering the world of adult work:

The home-educated child’s option to disregard academic criteria and set his own standards in terms of attainment of skills is a valuable alternative . . .  This extract from an adviser’s report about a teenage boy whose parents decided to complete his education at home illustrates the variety of job-oriented skills that may be obtained this way:  “Schools cannot always provide ideal conditions for all learning and certainly cannot provide the context in which Peter is operating.  He is looking after a sizable vegetable garden single-handed and has plans to extend considerably onto other land owned by the family.  He has numerous animals to care for, he is playing the organ in the next-door church and the piano at home, and he also does some composing.  He reads a lot, both for pleasure and factual books about farming and natural studies, and is following a correspondence course in gardening for adults with comparative ease.”

Julie Webb ends her work with some interesting ideas about how homeschooling bears upon orthodox educational systems.  It may require a little effort, however, for Americans to think of equivalents of the specific British programs to which she refers.

Children Learning at Home is based on research done using the 1984 Education Otherwise contact list, which at the time had roughly 200 families on it.  A recent visitor to our office from Great Britain told us that there are now considerably more families homeschooling in Great Britain, so this study is based on a small sample compared to what could be done today.  Nevertheless, this book provides useful qualitative descriptions and is a good example of a type of academic research that is very different from the quantitative surveys and test score studies that dominate research in the U.S.  —Pat Farenga

A Time to Fly Free
by Stephanie Tolan #1634 $3.95

Years ago Jon Holt read A Time to Fly Free, Stephanie Tolan’s fictional story about a fifth grade boy who becomes a homeschooler, and went so far as to make notes for a review of the book before he learned that it had gone out of print.  When the book came back in print last year, we immediately added it to our catalog and interviewed the author for GWS #83 to learn about how her own experiences had led her to write the book.

John’s notes give a lot of clues about why he thought so highly of the book.  He wrote:

This is the first book I have read that really looks into the mind of a child, a 10-year-old boy, who hates school - is bored by it, puzzled by it, angered by its deliberate failure, indeed refusal, to think responsibly about what it does, to make distinctions between what is and what is not important.

Schools, at the very least school texts, treat children as if they were all stupid.  The result is to make many of them act stupid, and many more feel stupid.  Those who will neither feel nor pretend to be stupid, like Joshua, the hero of this book, go almost crazy with boredom, anger, despair.

I ask myself, why was I, a supposedly fairly bright kid, able to stand school as Josh could not.  I was bored with school from the age of 8 on.  Why did I not worry about it or resist it more?  One reason is that there were so few other things I was interested in or cared about.  At the age of 9 and 10 I did only two things I cared about - making model airplanes (at home) and playing football with a small group of other boys, not in school.  By two years later, when I was young for my grade and small for my age, I was clearly not going to be a football player.  For the rest of my schooling I did only two things with all my heart - listen to jazz music, and play squash racquets.  If I had had a real life, as Josh did, and if school had taken me away from it, it would have driven me crazy.  But I did not, so I adjusted, as schools are supposed to make you adjust, to the boredom.

Now that I have a real life, now that I have known real work, real thought, real learning, to have to spend time in a school would drive me as crazy as it did Josh.  What happens to kids like Josh who, unlike him, cannot escape from school?  Many of them find their real life in fighting school.

In the years since A Time to Fly Free was published and John Holt made these notes, very few other books have been published that take a child’s dislike of school seriously.  A Time to Fly Free still stands out in this respect.  The book doesn’t betray Josh or the readers who identify with him by having some adult convince him that staying in school is better than leaving or even that he ought to go back once he has left.  Although his mother has many of the usual concerns about homeschooling, his stepfather joins Josh in convincing her to let him try it.  By the end of the book it has become so clear that Josh is thriving outside of school that his mother can’t ignore it, and I doubt skeptical readers will be able to, either.

After only a couple of days of being out of school, Josh has this realization:

The time didn’t matter!  There was no bus waiting for him.  No bell would ring.  He was free!  His schedule was no more demanding than the tides.  He had what he’d always wanted more than anything in the world - time.

And in answer to the question of what this boy will do with so much time, Stephanie Tolan manages to show us Josh’s specific choices without suggesting that he is the prototype homeschooler who speaks for everyone.  At the same time, Josh’s particular example conveys enough of what is possible for everyone that other kids will be able to imagine their own choices.

Josh ends up spending much of his time apprenticing to a man who helps wounded wildlife.  He learns a great deal while doing this, of course, and also teaches readers that children who can’t bear meaningless schoolwork do thrive on the chance to do real, important work.

For the next hour, under Rafferty’s exacting eye, Josh cleaned cages, learned the names of the birds, and read their charts.  He listened eagerly to the stories of their injuries, their illnesses, their capture.  When Rafferty looked at his watch and announced that it was well past lunchtime, Josh was surprised.  He couldn’t remember a morning that had passed so quickly.

I would give A Time to Fly Free to homeschoolers who long to see a homeschooling character in a novel.  Kids who turned to homeschooling because of difficult school experiences will probably find Josh’s story particularly appealing.  I would also give the book to kids who are suffering in school, as Josh was.  Josh - and, implicitly, the adult author who created him - lets kids know that they can fly free, that a life without school really is possible.  –Susannah Sheffer

My Life as a Traveling Homeschooler
by Jenifer Goldman #1614  $8.95

Like A Time to Fly Free, My Life as a Traveling Homeschooler is the story of a child who acts on her dislike of school and manages to make a viable life outside of it.  My Life as a Traveling Homeschooler is autobiography rather than fiction, however.  In it Jenifer Goldman chronicles her unhappy experiences in school and her adventures as a homeschooler who spends most of her time traveling with her uncle.  Of her decision to try homeschooling, Jenifer writes:

Through most of my life school’s been pretty miserable.  When I started homeschooling, everything got better.  . . . I’ve been living in the same house with my nana and my uncle Jerry for many years . . . Jerry used to run an alternative school in Vermont.  Then Jerry became the director of a company called the NCACS (National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools).  So, when I was having trouble in school, Jerry thought that it might be a good idea for me to homeschool for a while.  . . . Jerry suggested that maybe we could try homeschooling for a few months.  I thought it was a good idea, but we had a time trying to get my mom and dad to agree.  Finally, we decided that I would try it, for just a few months.

Though Jenifer doesn’t devote a lot of space to the question of what it’s like to homeschool primarily with an uncle, instead of with one’s parents, just the fact that this is what she did may help other families imagine different ways to arrange homeschooling for themselves.  Maybe this will help more families feel that homeschooling is a real option.

Meanwhile, Jenifer demonstrates very clearly that homeschooling doesn’t have to go on in the home!  She learns from what she sees as she rides the train across the country, from the people she meets at homeschooling and alternative schooling conferences, from the conversations she and her uncle have as they travel.  At the end of the book she concludes:

. . . Learning while traveling sure beats sitting in an old classroom any time, or sitting around the house.  . . . You get to explore the world and what it really is.  In school they teach math on a piece of paper.  But through my travels I got to experience how to use math in real life.  Not only math, but just about anything else that I’ll need for life, like how to understand people and get along, and how to use language in communication to make contact with people, how to help people with their problems, and how to solve problems.  I also learned about current events and what’s going on in the world.

Earlier in Jenifer’s homeschooling she and Jerry held a “Question Class” - Jenifer brainstormed all the questions she could think of and then rated those she was most interested in.  She and Jerry used those questions as starting points for further study and exploration.  Some of Jenifer’s questions were, “How does a TV work?”  “Who thought of putting pockets in pants?”  “Why can’t people get along more easily?”  “Who invented written music?”  “Why do I always dislike my art work, and other people always like it?”  “Where did the first languages come from?  If they couldn’t communicate with each other, how could they tell people what they meant?”  “How come most grown-ups never understand us kids?”

I love the way Jenifer mingles questions about language, history, science, and music with questions about human behavior and her own emotions.  She doesn’t separate academic concerns from concerns about being understood by grown-ups or making friends; all her questions have to do with understanding the world in one way or another.  No two children’s question lists would be the same, but all would contain perfectly good places from which to begin exploring.  If only schools would realize that there are as many ways to approach the study of the world as there are children, and would let children begin with their own concerns, interests, and questions.  –SS

Dumbing Us Down
by John Taylor Gatto #1588 $9.95

John Gatto is an award-winning teacher who toiled in Manhattan’s public schools for 26 years.  At the height of his career, after receiving the New York State Teacher of the Year Award in 1990 from the New York State Senate, John Gatto stunned his audience with his acceptance speech.  He said in part:

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 25 years of teaching:  that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. . .  Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic; it has no conscience.

John worked one more year as a public school teacher and then resigned.  During that year his acceptance speech was widely circulated and talked about and he was invited to speak at all sorts of events:  homeschool, private school, political and industrial.  After he resigned from teaching in 1991 he staged “The Exhausted School:  A Speakout on Parent-Choice Schools” at Carnegie Hall (see GWS #85), an event he continues to present wherever he can in addition to speaking at other events across the country.

Dumbing Us Down collects four of his most dynamic speeches and his essay about why he became a teacher, “The Green Monongahela.”  Packed with insight, full of John’s personal experiences and his keen knowledge of history, this modest-sized book will engage your thoughts long after you finish it.

Going from public school teacher to the public lectern thrust John into the public spotlight, a role that he claims to be uncomfortable with due to his essentially shy nature.  But his shrewd talent with words, and the conviction and power of his thoughts, are what make him so in demand as a speaker:

Networks like school are not communities, just as school training is not education.  By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables - and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways - network schools steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism.  No one survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, not parents.

John stands out among school reformers because of his ability to synthesize the historical and social antecedents of compulsory schooling and democracy while keeping us aware of the intrinsic tension between these two poles.  This is a distinguishing feature of his thought, since most school people think democracy cannot exist without compulsory schooling.  John also shows us the variety of choices we have for getting an education and strengthening democracy without coercively schooling people.

Let me leave you with one last quote, from the speech “The Psychopathic School”:

What can be done?  First, we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year, the kind of continuous debate that journalism finds boring.  We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other.  If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot, then the success of homeschooling shows a different road that has great promise.  Pouring the money we now pour into schooling back into family education might cure two ailments with one medicine, repairing families as it repairs children.

–Pat Farenga

The Long Haul
by Myles Horton #1606 $10.95

Before I read The Long Haul (on the recommendation of a GWS reader), I had only a vague idea of what the Highlander Center was - someplace that promoted Appalachian culture, I thought - and knew nothing of its founder, whose autobiography this book is.  In fact, Horton says he consciously decided to avoid becoming a celebrity, as he found that charismatic leaders tended to create disciples and followers instead of other leaders.

With so little to go on, I was surprised and delighted to find the book to be stirring, funny, readable, eye-opening, and thought-provoking.  Myles Horton dedicated his life to promoting humane social change and acting in accordance with his theories, with some notable successes to his credit.

Born in 1905, Horton grew up in Tennessee with parents who, he said, “taught me by their actions that you are supposed to serve your fellow men, you’re supposed to do something worthwhile with your life and education is meant to help you do something for others.”  His first paying jobs led to a growing dissatisfaction with social and economic injustice, and he eventually left Appalachia for a few years in search of ways to live a moral life in what he perceived to be an immoral society.

He pursued this education on his own terms - he spent most of his college years reading in the library and ignored the graduation requirements, and he studied world religions, philosophy, and education always with the idea of what he could bring back to his home region.  His inquisitiveness finally led him to Denmark to see the “folk schools,” a form of adult education in which the students set up the agenda and run the program.  He realized here was a practical, small-scale model consistent with his values that he could bring home and use to encourage his fellow Southerners to solve their problems.

He and some friends started the Highlander Center in 1932 on a shoestring.  They invited people from the labor movement to short workshops; the school provided food, folk dancing, singing, and a chance to share ideas and ask for information.  As the school was racially integrated, unusual and even illegal in the South at that time, it also became a starting place for the Civil Rights movement and a major influence in its development.  Though the Highlander staff faced dangers (death threats, accusations of being Communists, firebombs, etc.), the school survived to, in Horton’s phrase, “multiply leadership for radical social change.”

Some notable examples of the staff’s success in civil rights:  (1) Horton, along with Septima Clark, invented the notion of “Citizenship Schools,” where thousands of blacks taught each other to read in small groups, in homes or back rooms of stores, in order to pass voting tests.  (2) Rosa Parks attended a Highlander workshop shortly before she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus, launching the civil rights movement.  She had gained the strength during the workshop to act in accordance with her convictions.  (3) “We Shall Overcome,” the famous anthem of the movement, was adapted by Horton’s wife Zilphia from a hymn, and later added to by many others.

Although Horton acknowledged that Highlander has not since been involved with any social movements as large and fast-moving as civil rights, it continues to help grassroots organizations form and strengthen.  For example, it aided a group of welfare women in West Virginia to organize, help each other, and eventually get an improved welfare law passed in the state.  In another project, it encouraged ordinary people to dig through mounds of paperwork to discover who really owned Appalachia and was letting it be strip-mined.

I’ll end with a few of the many observations and conclusions Horton made about his experiences:

It made no sense, however, to work with poor people who had given up hope.  Only people with hope will struggle . . .  If people are suffering and exploited and want to get out from under the heel of oppression, if they have hope that it can be done, if they can see a path that leads to a solution, a path that makes sense to them and is consistent with their beliefs and their experience, then they’ll move.  But it must be a path that they’ve started clearing . . .

You couldn’t through mere discussion, persuade people to have a change of heart and to give up their biases . . .  But the civil rights movement started forcing people to change their actions . . .  People were forced to adjust their minds to what they had to do.  And their hearts came poking along later . . .

Instead of thinking that you put pieces together that will add up to a whole, I think you have to start with the premise that they are already together and you try to keep from destroying life by segmenting it, overorganizing it and dehumanizing it.

[On the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force:]  To my way of thinking, the most important thing was that these people got a sense of their own power to do something, and could then use that method to research any kind of problem.

Anybody who has spent his life in this blend of action and thoughtfulness has much to say from which we can all profit.
–Donna Richoux

FOCUS:
Imagining the Future

What will it be like when today’s homeschoolers grow up and have children of their own?  How will the fact that they themselves were homeschoolers contribute to their understanding of homeschooling and their decisions about how to practice it?  We asked several young GWS readers to speculate about answers to these questions.

Won’t Have to Worry about Reading
From Mylie Alrich of California:

I will definitely homeschool my kids if and when I have them.  I would hope that by then, because those of us who are being homeschooled now will have managed to survive even after we’ve had to enter the “real world,” they will be more readily accepted by society and won’t have to answer as many questions about socialization and everything else people tend to be worried about right now.

I think that it will be easier for us as parents because we will be less apt to worry about learning particular things at certain times than our parents are.  For example, I didn’t learn to read until I was almost 10.  My mother tried to teach me when I was younger, but I wasn’t interested then so she gave up but still worried a little bit.  When I did learn to read I did it mostly by myself, and now at 14 I can read just as well as other kids my age.

I think that it was perfectly natural for my mother to worry, but it’s not something I would worry about because I know from firsthand experience that it doesn’t matter what age you learn things at.

I also think that by the time any of us would be having kids of our own there will be more homeschoolers, and that will make it easier to find other homeschooled kids so that our kids will be more likely to have homeschooled friends, which is something I wish that I had.

I wonder what it will be like when one parent went to school and the other one didn’t.

No Mental Roadblocks
From Olivia Baseman (PA):

I’ve talked to a lot of people about this question. When I talk with friends my age who are homeschoolers, we often talk about how we’re going to deal with our children when we grow up and if we’re going to homeschool.  We usually decide that we do want to homeschool.  I really like the way my parents did it, and I think I would probably want to do it that way with my children.  Most of my friends say the same thing.

Sometimes I think about how hard homeschooling is, though, and how it makes you feel different.  When I was little I used to say, “When I grow up I’m going to be normal.  I’m going to have one child who goes to school, and we’re going to eat junk food and do all the normal American things.”  In the past two years or so I’ve really started valuing my individuality, valuing that I am different.  I know that teenagers in our society usually want to conform, but for me it’s been the opposite:  the older I get, the more I want to be different.  I see people falling into a pattern of dependency, of wanting to be just like everybody else, and I see the peer pressure in my friends who go to school.

But sometimes I worry about whether it will be hard to feel different as an adult.  I’ve seen my parents face this, having to be the only one on the block who isn’t buying a new school wardrobe and making school lunches.  I know it can be hard.  On the other hand, I think that when I’m an adult I’ll have more confidence than a lot of people do.  I won’t have the scars that people have - like people who always remember being teased in first grade.  I’ve never had a problem with making friends and I’m not afraid to ask questions.  I think that will help me in adulthood.

I go to a lot of my parents’ homeschooling support group meetings, and I can see roadblocks in these parents’ brains that aren’t in my brain.  For example, because they learned to read in a certain way they feel that that is the way.  My mother learned to sight read.  I didn’t learn to read until I was 9, and sight reading didn’t work for me at all.  When I used phonics, that was how I finally did learn to read.  It was hard for my mother to try to transmit her knowledge through a way that was different from the way she had learned.  I think school hammered into parents’ brains that there’s one right way to do something or it won’t work.  I’ve heard parents say they’re trying to unlearn what they learned in school, especially those who were teachers or psychologists.  Another thing they worry about is whether they have the right curriculum or the right materials.  I don’t believe there’s any one best material.  I can see that when I have kids, I won’t think they have to use this or that particular book.

When my mother tells other adults that I didn’t learn to read until I was 9 but that in three months I went from a second grade to an eighth grade level, they can’t believe it.  But when I tell this to other homeschoolers, they don’t bat an eye.  My best friend is 15, and she’s a homeschooler who learned to read when she was 2.  I don’t think she thinks there’s anything strange about my learning to read at 9.  I don’t think it would bother me if my child learned to read at 9 - in fact, I would probably be more surprised if they learned earlier, because that would be different from me.

My mother has talked to me a lot about how parents are so unsure of themselves.  She tries to explain to me why they’re so unsure, because I have trouble understanding why you need someone else to tell you how your kid is doing, why you can’t judge that yourself.  And I know that some kids need someone else to tell them how they’re doing, too.  I don’t think I’ll ever have that problem of needing constant approval.

I know that lots of homeschooling parents worry about teenagers and college, and I might have a little trouble with this too because it’s something I’m not sure about now.  But I think I won’t have the block that so many parents have where they think if you don’t go to college you won’t get a decent job.  I know that there are so many people who didn’t go to college who are doing perfectly well in the world.

Helping younger siblings is good training for working with my own children.  My 6-year-old brother wants to learn to read now, and every now and then my mother or I will sit down with him and help him, but that’s very different from telling him, “OK, you have to do this now.”  When I work with my younger siblings I have to remember that they have to be the ones to initiate things.

I’m just about completely in charge of my own education now.  It took my parents quite a while to get to the point of letting me be in charge.  There were times when our relationship was virtually destroyed by them trying to force me to learn things.  I know that forcing people to learn things doesn’t work and I’m so excited by the prospect of having kids and being able to be to them what my parents would have been to me if they hadn’t been to school.

There are so many homeschoolers now, of every race and creed and background.  I can’t wait to see what happens when all the homeschoolers who are my age grow up and have kids.

Will Ask Her Own Parents For Advice
From Jessica Spicer (WI):

Imagine, if you will, two people setting out on a journey with only written philosophy to back up their inner knowledge, nothing they could refer to or see, to reassure them that learning is human nature, that without formal education their children would grow into normal adults.  These travelers might have been my parents, or the parents of many other homeschooled young adults.  Because of their courage to travel unknown territory, when I set out to homeschool my children I will have intelligent, happy, hardworking, self-assured homeschooled adults to refer to.  This reassurance can only help to make me a better homeschooling parent.

About three months ago, my older brother and I sat on the sofa discussing homeschooling.  I asked him if he planned on homeschooling his children.  Having grown up in home education, I imagined his answer to be, “Need you ask?”  Much to my surprise, he said he was not sure.  His argument was quite valid, and I’m still without an answer for it.  He explained that the decision is not all your own.  The values and judgments of the person you marry must be taken into consideration when choosing educational options for your children.

Having been to public school briefly, I know what a detrimental effect my attending school had on our family.  I had one set of values when I was a homeschooler and another when attending public school.  The most important thing in my life as a school girl was having the right friends, clothing, hairstyle, and personality.  This distortion of my values put my family, home, community, and learning at the bottom of my list when they belong at the top.  I could only see this distortion when I was removed from the school situation and able to look at myself.  Through this experience, I was able to understand the inner reasons for homeschooling.  As a homeschooling parent, I will have the knowledge of public school and homeschool to assist my children in making the best decision for our family.

I have always been homeschooled without a curriculum.  I have had very few, if any, formal classes at home.  My parents left me free to ask for structure but never pressured me into any formal learning.  I know the unschooling approach to homeschooling works, yet totally trusting my children to know what they need to learn will still be most difficult for me.  I can imagine myself in a state of panic when my 12 year old is not reading or my 16 year old has to use a dictionary to write a letter.  At that point, I would call my own parents for reassurance.  My mother would say, “If your son can read one word, then he can read.”  She would remind me that my son can do many other things that are just as important as reading.  She would ask, “Are your daughter’s letters interesting?  Does she like to write?  Does your daughter care that she uses a dictionary?  Are your children happy?”  My father would sum up what my mother said by reading a quote from The Horse in the Furrow by George Ewart Evans:  “Who is the truly educated man:  the one who can grow onions or the man who can only spell ‘em?”  I will have my parents to ask for advice, as my parents did not.

Let Kids Choose
From Cameran Nye (VT):

I would let my children choose if they want to stay at home or go to school.  In first grade, I’d let them go to public school, then private school in second grade.  That way they could choose what they like best.

Yes, I think it makes a difference in the way my children would be homeschooled because I’ve already homeschooled.  I wouldn’t be mean to them and I wouldn’t spoil them.  I think I would know how to take care of homeschoolers because I was a homeschooler myself.

Looking at Things Differently
Maggie Sadoway (MA) taped a discussion with Solon Sadoway and his friend Cathy Rezac in response to this issue’s Focus question:

Solon:  I think I will most definitely homeschool my children.  I don’t see why I wouldn’t.  I just find that homeschooling kids who have never been to school in their lives are so much different than kids who have, much more understanding about a lot of things.

Cathy:  I’d try as hard as I could to homeschool my kids, but there are circumstances where I couldn’t.  It might depend on the situation.

Solon:  I think if I ran into a circumstance where I had to send my kids to school, I would do anything in my power to be able not to have to send them to school.  I might even consider moving to a new state if it meant I wouldn’t have to send my children to school.  If both me and my wife worked all day long from 9 to 5, I would consider sending them to school or getting them more activities they could do during the day.

I think that if I never go to school, my children will grow up very differently from children who have parents who have gone to school, because I find homeschoolers are much more open minded about things - they’ll try new experiences much more easily and think things through more thoroughly and not just say, “Well, it has to be done this way.”  When we homeschoolers grow up we will think about things like, “Well, the obvious thing is to do it this way, but what if we did it a different way, we’d get a different result and things might turn out a bit better.”  I think growing up in a family with parents who have been raised that way will be nice.

Cathy:  Yeah, I have no idea what my parents think because they’ve been to school and I’ve never been to school.  And I think that’s going to make a difference.

Solon:  The thing about parents now is that they have to learn that their children are different.  They look at things a whole different way than school kids do.  I think it’d be very interesting to have a parent who already knew all that, who had never gone to school.  Some adults now who never went to school didn’t go because they didn’t get the chance to and they may have liked to, it wasn’t a homeschooling choice.  They would have liked to go to school, whereas we have chosen not to go to school, we have chosen that our lives are going to be different.  I think that having a parent who had decided not to go to school and decided to learn without lessons would be interesting.

I know lots of homeschool families where the parents are teachers and teach the kids at home because they think the schools aren’t good enough for their children.  Whereas with me and Cathy, we didn’t choose not to go because the schools couldn’t teach us well enough.  We chose not to go because we didn’t want to learn that way.  I think learning from experience is better than anything.  We baked a cake this morning.  We learned how to separate egg yolks, and we learned from experience.  You don’t learn from someone sitting there, showing you, saying, “Now you take it, you put it on the thing and you crack it.”  You learn from figuring out how to do it on your own.

Cathy:  I think some of the things you learn in school you don’t really use in real life.

Maggie:  If you had children of your own would you leave it completely up to them what they learn and how and when, or would you encourage them to take lessons or go to the library or do certain things?

Solon:  I think I would encourage my children in learning some basic skills like reading and writing and spelling.

Cathy:  I learn those on my own.

Solon:  I think I would encourage my children to learn that earlier on and to read a lot more.

Maggie:  Because you learned when you were 10?

Solon:  I still can’t spell very well.

Maggie:  How would you encourage your child to learn spelling at this stage, for example?

Solon:  I would start actually teaching my child more about spelling earlier.  If a child really didn’t want to do it, I don’t think I would keep trying, but if my child was kind of interested in learning more about spelling earlier on I would teach him.

Maggie:  Do you think you were interested earlier on and would have preferred that we had done something more to help you learn reading and spelling earlier?

Solon:  I would have liked to be able to read and spell better earlier.

Maggie:  Is that because you wish you knew how to do those things even better than you do now and you wish the struggle were all over?

Solon:  A little bit.  I think reading is rather easy to learn.  I learned to read within six months or so.  Now I’m an excellent reader.  I’m not the fastest in the world but I’m very good.  I rarely ever miss words.  But as far as spelling goes, I can read things but I don’t pick them up in my head.  One thing I want my kids to understand is how vowels work.  I don’t understand anything about vowels at all.

Cathy:  The way I learned to read was, I couldn’t tell the sounds apart but I did beginner books, and then I found interesting chapter books I liked.  Then, most of the way I learned to spell was by reading.  If we’re driving and there’s a restaurant at the end of the road, I look at the word “restaurant” and memorize it.  I try to memorize hard words.

But I think how I’d get my kids to read would be to give them something interesting to read.  You’re not going to learn to read if you don’t want to.  It just doesn’t work.

Solon:  I would read to my child constantly, let them know how much fun books can be.

Cathy:  In homeschooling you learn in your own time.  I think that’s the best way to learn.

Solon:  Some homeschoolers don’t learn in their own time because their parents say, “I’m not sending my child to school to be taught by some second-rate teacher.  I’m going to do it my way.  My kid is going to learn how I want, not how some school wants him to learn.”  And then they’re going to teach him exactly what a school would:  you have to learn this, you have to be good at this.

Cathy:  That’s almost worse than a school.

Solon:  I think it is worse than a school.  If it’s your own parent forcing you to learn, that is worse.

Cathy:  Your relationship is going to be really crummy.

Solon:  But it wouldn’t really be the parents’ fault, it’s just how they learn, how they want you to learn.

Cathy:  They feel it’s their responsibility, but really, it’s worse than school that way.  If my parents forced it on me, I don’t know what I’d do.

Won’t Do Things the School Way
From Hannah Wilson of Tennessee:

I’ve always wanted people to know how I would homeschool my children.  I definitely will homeschool my children.  When I grow up I will probably do things mostly the way my parents do.  Of course, I may do things differently, but I won’t do things the “school” way.

One thing I won’t do is grill my children on math and how to hold a pen and things like that.  And I won’t make them sit at a desk and learn how to write cursive correctly.  I won’t make them take showers when they don’t want to (it’s probably just now while I’m 11 that I don’t like taking showers:  probably when I’m a parent I’ll make my kids take showers too).

But I will take them to history places like Colonial Williamsburg and Plymouth Plantation and the Museum of Appalachia - and I won’t make them go if they don’t want to.

My parents don’t make me sit down at a desk, and they let me go outside when I want to.  Since my parents didn’t teach me how to read (but just read to me instead), I love to read.  At lunch time instead of watching TV I go back in my room and get a book to read.

Basically, my parents have done very good things.  I don’t want anybody to think that homeschooling is bad.  It’s the best kind of school I’ve seen.  I learn more than I would in school.  Most everybody who has gone to school grows up and forgets what they’ve learned in school.  And why can they not remember?  Because it was taught to them.  As Oscar Wilde says, “Anything worth learning cannot be taught.”  Another reason people have forgotten their learning is because they have been humiliated in school by the teachers and the kids.  There would not be any fights anywhere probably if people did not go to school because fighting is what school has taught them.  And surely that is not anything to be taught - and neither is the right way to hold a pen!  I’ll never do any of that stuff to my kids.

And what about grades?  In the Peanuts comic strip, Sally (Charlie Brown’s sister) and Peppermint Patty get C’s and D’s (and F’s and even Z’s) and they think it’s the end of the world.  Also, Peppermint Patty gets in trouble about the dress code because she isn’t allowed to wear her sandals anymore.  When she tells her friend she misses her sandals, she cries.  Her friend says, “All I know is, any rule that makes a little girl cry has to be a bad rule.”  Schools don’t have respect for kids’ feelings, but homeschooling does.

Won’t Impose Himself
From Ethan Wilson of Tennessee:

When I homeschool my kids, I will not have a structure.  I expect that they will ask me questions and I will answer them.  The reason I wouldn’t have structure is because there is no feeling for individuals in a structured setting.  I won’t make my kids go to “educational” places if they don’t want to since I feel that seeing things is not all of life.  And I wouldn’t sit my kids down and teach them math because I didn’t learn it that way.

My mom started out in a structured way with me, but, as she says, I taught her the right way to homeschool.   She started off trying to give me learning-to-read books when I wasn’t ready to read.  At first I didn’t like doing it.  Then I started smarting off with it, messing up the words purposely, and I obviously didn’t learn anything from that.  After a while, my mom realized she couldn’t teach that way because it wasn’t going to work.  So she left me alone and let me learn in my own time.  By age 11 I was able to read a full-length novel.

I expect my kids will ask me what certain words say and I will tell them.  When they need my help, they can ask me for it.  I’m not going to impose myself upon them.  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a pushy parent.

We Know it Can Be Done
From Anita Giesy (VA):

I’ve always assumed that just as it was our choice to homeschool, I would give my children that same option, although I would strongly encourage them towards homeschooling.  I was talking with my mom about how things will be different for the next generation of homeschoolers, and it struck us that the big difference will be the legality.  When my family was deciding whether to homeschool, part of the choice had to do with whether we would be willing to go to court over it.  For my children, it will just be a choice between two options and a matter of deciding which will be best for them.

As a second generation homeschooling parent, I will have the model of my mother and how she did things.  I will have the example of the freedom she gave us.  I’m a strong believer in apprenticeships, and that comes from the freedom my mother let us have when we were teenagers to explore whatever kind of jobs we were interested in.

When I traveled across the country visiting homeschooling families last year, I saw that the kids had so much freedom to do things with their parents and to do things on their own.  I remember that with one family, one day the 11 year old girl took me to the library, and the next day the 8 year old boy took me to a baseball game where he explained all of the rules to me.  I remember how the daughter enjoyed going with her father to the college classes he taught.  I want to be able to give my kids that freedom to do things with me and to be able to do things on their own also - to be able to live the way they want to.

A lot of the parents I met on the trip seemed relieved to meet me.  They would say, “I’ve thought all along that homeschooling was a good idea and would work out, but I wasn’t sure, and now I can see that you went through it and came out well, so I can relax.”  Many families were especially curious about the fact that I had been a late reader.  They would ask me to tell that to their child who was nervous about not reading yet.  It reassured them to talk to somebody who had gone through it and had come out on the other side.

Even though homeschooling is well known now, it’s still not a given.  But for those of us who were homeschooled, it is a given, it’s the natural order of life.  It’s not something we have to figure out.  We know it can be done because we’ve done it.

Hardest the First Time Around
From Amber Clifford (MO):

I’m 17 years old and trying to get ready for college.  I’ve thought about how I would school my children.  I was in public school until 4th grade, and I have been homeschooled since then.  My parents and I have talked about what decision they made when I left school.  I have decided to homeschool my children.

One example is math.  My mother made straight A’s in math throughout high school.  I made A’s in math class throughout school, too.  When I left school, my mom started reading math books.  She finally began to understand algebra and geometry years after she supposedly learned them.  When I left school, I started doing math with Mom.  I discovered that I knew elementary mechanics, but I had no idea why I did what I did.  It took months for me to understand what I was doing.  In school I had perfect grades, but after I left school, I learned how math works.  Maybe my kids will have it easier because they won’t have to go through this.  They’ll be able to learn the way they want to right from the beginning.

Another reason that my children will be homeschooled is grades.  In school I had excellent grades.  When I started homeschooling I didn’t have grades.  It was kind of a culture shock but I got used to it.  In school I got my grade and went on.  At home if I have a problem I get help.  If I get something wrong, I go over it again.  I’m never failing.  I’m just misunderstanding.

I love being taught at home.  I love it because I know I’m ready for college and whatever else comes my way.  I don’t believe that schools prepare you for a life after graduation.  No one in real life gives you a grade for your work.  In school, students spend eight hours a day doing page after page of regular work.  At home, I do my science by going outside and testing soil or digging for fossils.  I write, read, and play music.  I feel that my parents took me out of school to prepare and educate me for life.  This is what I want to do for my children.

I think that since homeschooling is getting more acceptable, I’ll be better able to help my kids if they have a hard time.  I’ll know how to explain homeschooling to other adults and I’ll be able to help my kids explain it to other kids.  I’ll be able to say that it does work because it worked for me.  Now, there are kids who think I sit around all day in my pajamas watching cartoons.

When we started homeschooling, Mom worried about whether she’d be able to teach us math, and how we would apply to college.  Even now, she still worries sometimes about whether we want to go back to school, and she wonders if she’s doing everything right.  I think that when I homeschool my kids, I’ll have less to worry about.  It’s always hardest for people the first time around.

Helping Young Activists:
Interview with Barbara A. Lewis

We like books that take young people seriously, and Barbara Lewis’s The Kid’s Guide to Social Action [#1602, $14.95 + shipping] certainly does that.  Serena Gingold wrote in her review of the book, “It is for kids who want to do things that only adults usually do.  Kids who read and use it will get their foot in the door of the adult world.”  We interviewed Barbara Lewis to find out more about the kids she describes in her book and how they convinced adults to listen to their concerns and take action.

Susannah Sheffer:  How did you get interested in socially active kids?

Barbara Lewis:  I went back to teaching about six years ago, and at that time the thought occurred to me, “Why is everything we do in education imaginary?”  We were studying ground water at the time, and I thought, there must surely be some problems with ground water right here in this area.  It’s a highly industrial area.  We had learned that hazardous waste could contaminate ground water, and we discovered that there was a hazardous waste site three blocks from the school.  There were 50,000 barrels that had stockpiled over a period of forty years that contained residues of everything from molasses to hazardous chemicals.  It was only a small residue, but we learned from the health department that even an inch of residue at the bottom of a barrel can rust, corrode, leak out, and potentially contaminate ground water.  So that’s how we began, with the project of getting this hazardous waste cleaned up.

One thing we learned, that a lot of people ignore, is that it’s important to work with your opposition.  You can’t back someone into a corner and make them look stupid.  When the kids started the hazardous waste project, initially the opposition was the health department.  Now, would you expect that?  It wasn’t because they were unkind, it was because they had no funding, and no staffing, and they really believed nothing could be done.  If we had made them look stupid by saying, “Why isn’t the health department doing something here?” they would have tried to prove that the site wasn’t important.  They would have tried to save face.  But instead we said, “We understand that you have no funding and no personnel.  What can we do to help?  Can you come to our room and at least teach us about what’s going on?  Well, they totally changed and became very generous with their information.  Within three months they were saying, “This is a high priority for us and we’re going to make sure that something gets done.”

SS:  That’s interesting to think about.  How did you find the other kids in the book, who weren’t kids in your classroom?

BL:  In the process of researching all the things I researched, and making phone calls to national organizations, I tracked down other children who were involved in similar projects.

SS:  I think to some people, social action suggests only working directly with the government or the political process.  When we were evaluating your book here, it interested us that you talked about so many different kinds of activities - the girl who worked to get a non-alcoholic prom, for example.  I imagine a lot of kids would think, “I could do that,” even if they hadn’t thought of themselves as interested in politics.

BL:  I made a conscious decision to include all ages and to include different types of kids, to let readers know that there isn’t a specific personality type or a model of the kind of person who does this or of the kinds of activity you do.  Social action can be as simple as reaching out and helping your neighbor on the bus, and it can go from that all the way to the example in the book of the kids in New Jersey who were trying to amend the United States Constitution.

SS:  What makes you feel that kids can be effective?

BL:  Children don’t know all the reasons why something won’t work.  Adults often know ahead of time that they’re not going to succeed:  “I can’t do this because of this and this and this.”  Kids see a problem and don’t worry about why their solution won’t work:  they just do it.  They keep hitting away at the problem, and the greatest rule for success in any of this is perseverance - if you’re willing to hit at something long enough, eventually you make some dents in it.

Another reason children succeed so well is they’re charming - it’s refreshing, it’s nice to hear of their views.  Adults often respond in a nurturing way to children:  they naturally want to help them.

A third reason children are effective is that they often have a fresh way of looking at things.  They think of solutions that adults often overlook.

SS:  Can you give some examples of ways that adults have taken kids seriously?

BL:  Children have applied for grants and received them, they have changed laws, they’ve gone through city government to change ordinances, they’ve incorporated, they’ve become non-profit organizations.  Kids are planting trees, tutoring, one girl is feeding something like 280 homeless people every Sunday.  Kids are doing all sorts of things, coming up with their own projects.  That’s the essential ingredient:  the kids have to brainstorm their own problems and their own solutions, with the adult, if an adult is involved, acting just as a facilitator.

SS:  Some kids say that they’re perceived as cute, that they’re condescended to, that it’s hard to be taken seriously in the adult world.  Do you see those obstacles?

BL:  Yes.  I think we’re still fighting the tradition that says kids should be seen and not heard.  We’re still fighting the tradition that says, “Protect them while they’re little, let them dream and be kids, why should they bother with problems like this.”  To that I say, anyone who can remember how powerless you feel when you’re young, with parents speaking about problems in hushed tones, would realize that kids want to be involved in things.  You grow up being fearful, feeling that life acts upon you instead of feeling in charge of it.  I think children are more worried when they’re not included in solutions than when they are allowed to brainstorm about solutions, to feel that they can control the future.  I have yet to find one child, in all these years, who has been fearful when included in a problems-and-solutions brainstorming session.  They’re terrified when they just sit and watch the news, when they can’t do anything about what they’re seeing or hearing.

SS:  I’ve sometimes wondered about the issue of kids being exploited by adults who think they will help a cause by looking cute, maybe by being a kind of mascot or symbol.

BL:  I think that will happen.  When adults see that children can be effective, they will use them, which I consider to be child exploitation.  Kids can guard against this by not accepting projects from others but instead sticking to projects that they initiate themselves.  Adults have to exercise self-control and realize that using kids in this way is exploitation, that you can’t give a child a problem to solve.  That doesn’t help them to become empowered.  They really become empowered, I believe, when they initiate their own projects and carry them out.

SS:  When we interviewed kids who had testified about homeschooling legislation, we talked about how it can help to begin with an issue which clearly affects kids’ lives, so that legislators can see that kids have a real reason to be involved and won’t imagine that the adults are making them testify.

BL:  If the issue relates to the kids’ lives, the adult listening to them will be able to tell from the things they say that it’s not an adult-written speech.  If the parent is imposing the activity on the child, often the parent will write the speech, and then it doesn’t come across in the same way.  I think it’s very important for speeches to be in kids’ own words, or if they’ve made up a flyer, for example, there should be something about it that makes it clear that it comes from them.  It should have something of their own personality in it.

SS:  I very much liked that you included samples of handwritten letters in your book, because it showed that kids could take action without everything having to look perfect.  On the other hand, I’ve noticed that when kids type letters, for example, it gives them a chance not to have their image affected by the fact that their handwriting is childish.

BL:  Right.  But I think kids shouldn’t be afraid to have something look like it came from them.  They shouldn’t think everything has to look clean and sterile.

SS:  What kind of adult help is appropriate, rather than exploitative, when kids want to get involved in social action?

BL:  Facilitating.  You give them the skills they need when they ask for them.  A
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Anyone who can remember how powerless you feel when you’re young, with parents speaking about problems in hushed tones, would realize that kids want to be involved in things.
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child might want to do something but not know exactly how to go about it.  Or suppose an adult knows an issue that needs addressing in the community.  That adult could say, “Here’s something that really bothers me, but I don’t know if it will bother you.  I’m not sure what the right thing is to do, but sometimes young people have fresh ideas, and maybe you could help me.”  As long as they’re not imposing their ideas at this stage, but are truly asking, “I’m really mystified about what to do.  If you were in charge, what would you do about this?”  The child might come up with a vague idea at first, like, “Maybe we could talk to some people,” and the adult in this case might have a clearer idea of who to talk to.  It’s OK to make suggestions if the child doesn’t know exactly what he or she means.

SS:  Do you think kids are handicapped by not having the vote?  Does it make them less effective lobbyists, for example?

BL:  I think lawmakers are beginning to learn that they have a whole new constituency, that even though kids aren’t voting now, they will be voting soon, and how lawmakers react to kids now might have a big effect in the future.  Lawmakers used to ignore women;  they can’t do that anymore.  I suspect that children are the last major minority that we have failed to look at.

Resources & Recommendations

Low-Cost LP’s

John Langstaff is offering LP’s of his recordings of folksongs for children for only the cost of shipping and handling ($3 for two records) because his group is phasing out their LP’s and replacing them with cassettes and CD’s.  The records - Songs for Singing Children and Let’s Make Music with John Langstaff - feature a chorus of children and orchestra.  Available from Revels Records, One Kendall Square, Bldg 600, Cambridge MA 02139; 617-621-0505.

For Spacious Skies
Suzanne Gibbs of Virginia writes:

I purchased a teacher’s guide and a couple of cloud charts from For Spacious Skies (54 Webb St. Lexington MA 02173) when my three children were in school.  My oldest son, at that time an 8th grader, took a big interest in the projects described in the teacher’s guide and spent his own money to purchase a rain gauge, thermometer, etc., to set up his own weather station.  This year he took one of the cloud charts to school to show his science teacher when they were studying weather.

Currently I am teaching my youngest, almost 7, at home.  In the fall I used some of this material with her to help her identify different types of clouds.  It was very rewarding for me when one morning after arising, Amber looked out the window and exclaimed, “Mommy, look!  We have stratus clouds today!”  She was correct in her identification.

I am very excited about the FSS material and its fresh approach in helping our children be more observant of their surroundings and in helping them look up and appreciate the beauty of the skies.

Russian Pen-Pals
Susan Holovaty writes from Moscow:

We were homeschoolers when we lived in the States, until we moved to Moscow a year ago, where my husband is working.  Now our 11-year-old son is still learning at home, and our 8-year-old daughter goes to a Russian school.  The mother of her deskmate, with whom I have become friends, is a high school English teacher.  Several times she has made contact with teachers in America, and her students have written letters to students in the classes of these teachers.  But not once have they had any response.  I thought that perhaps homeschoolers would be interested in writing to her, and she could write back.  She has students from the ages of 11 through 17.  Younger children could also write, and we could find pen-pals for them, as well, from other classes.

It has been the experience of my family that the most reliable way to receive mail here is if the letter is written on an airform.  Every letter we’ve received in an
(continued on page 28)

Discussion:
The Video Game Dilemma

Margie Lesch (TN) writes:

I feel such a struggle about whether to allow the boys, Aaron (12), Seth (9), and Caleb (6) to choose the amount of time they spend on computer games and video games.  (TV is not really a problem - we watch very little.)  We’ve done everything from letting them play any day they want between 3 PM and 6 PM, to letting them play only one afternoon a week, to packing the Nintendo away and not letting them play at all for months on end.  I know families who would not have a Nintendo in the house and families who allow their children to play video games whenever they want.

The struggle comes first from the knowledge we have about video games and TV not being good for children and second from our belief in allowing children to control their own free time.  I believe children will choose healthy food most of the time if that is what is available, or at least enough so that they remain healthy.  I do trust in children’s ability to know what they want and I encourage them to go with their own instincts all the time, but I don’t think a steady diet of video games is healthy.

When they were allowed to play whenever they wanted between 3 and 6 PM, they did eventually play less and some days not at all.  But there have been times when they played so much that it really bothered me.  Perhaps older children can regulate how much they play video games, but I’m not so sure about younger ones.

I’ve heard people say that video games bridge the age gap.  I don’t believe that.  They occupy all ages, but that’s all I can see.  Computer games are somewhat better.  But I find that when I come down hard on video games, the boys want to play more (forbidden fruit theory).  On the other hand, when I packed the Nintendo away last March, when we were getting ready to move, and said that I would bring it out at a later date (I did), Seth said, “Thanks, Mom.  I needed it put away.”

I find that the boys are content when I make a decision and stay with it, whether it be no video games or one afternoon a week or any day from 3-6, but we all struggle when I just complain about them playing or act uninterested when they want to talk about it.  They love when I am interested and read to them from their video game magazine (although they can read it from cover to cover on their own) and come in and watch them play, but I can’t maintain that attitude for very long because I don’t believe it and it’s a real stretch for me.  More, perhaps, than I care to stretch.  And yet I want them to be able to choose their own free-time activities and I want to be able to accept it when they choose something that I don’t think is good.

From time to time we receive letters echoing Margie Lesch’s dilemma about whether or not to regulate her kids’ playing of video games.  This time, we decided to invite three people whose work has brought them into contact with kids and video games, and who have spent considerable time thinking about the issues Margie raises, to respond to Margie’s letter.  Natalie Rusk heads the education department at Boston’s Computer Museum, Mitchel Resnick has been a member of Seymour Papert’s Learning and Epistemology group for several years and will become an assistant professor there this fall, and Aaron Falbel is a frequent contributor to GWS and was also a member of Papert’s group for several years.  All three stress that they wrestle with the issue of kids and video games just as Margie and others do.  This discussion isn’t meant to provide firm answers or explicit advice; rather, it’s a way of exploring some of the questions that Margie’s letter raises and perhaps giving readers some helpful ways in which to frame their own thinking on the subject.  As always, we welcome further discussion.

Susannah Sheffer:  I think Margie’s dilemma resonates with GWS readers because unlike families that would just forbid video games or whatever else they didn’t like, our readers place a lot of value on letting kids make their own choices.  On the other hand, people wonder whether there are things that get in the way of kids being able to choose well.  Margie uses the analogy of kids choosing healthy food for themselves, but then some people argue that sugar, for example, interferes with our ability to make healthy food choices, so that if sugar is very available to us we may not in fact always make healthy choices.  So I think that what Margie and others like her are wondering is, are video games like sugar in this respect?  Are they so seductive or even addictive that they impair kids’ judgment, or are they not at all like that, and should we instead respect this choice just as we respect so many other choices?

Natalie Rusk:  My immediate feeling is that video games are like sugar, but then what do you do about that?  I try to compare this situation to how we act when people we are close to - other adults, not just kids - have vices, or just do things we don’t necessarily like.

Mitchel Resnick:  There are many things that could fit in this category.  I can imagine people having a similar reaction about a child playing basketball too much, or reading comic books too much.  How do you deal with that situation, when someone becomes very involved in something that you don’t care that much about?

Aaron Falbel:  I believe people have to be given the right to abuse themselves, but the question is, what constitutes abuse?  For me, one criterion is that you know what you’re doing to yourself.  Damaging yourself without realizing it isn’t self-abuse, it’s ignorance, and in that case I think parents or friends have the right to protect kids by saying, “Hey, look what you’re doing!”  But then, if the child (or another adult) still continues doing that thing, well, then it becomes their right to keep on doing it.
But I don’t think it’s a good idea for parents to have inner tension and nervousness about kids doing things that the parents don’t think are good for them and pretending that everything’s fine and they aren’t concerned.  That dishonesty can only be unhealthy.

SS:  Mitchel, you said that the video games issue is similar to a concern that a parent would feel about a child’s pursuing any one interest very intensely.  We’ve had discussion in GWS about young people with intense interests.  Usually, though, the child’s interest is something that adults find easier to approve of than video games - music or ice skating, for example.  So do you think adults should try harder to understand the value of playing video games as one possible intense interest that kids can have?

MR:  Part of me wants to say that it’s not even necessary to come up with a rationale for why playing video games is worthwhile.  An analogy that comes to mind is parents in the 1960s who complained about their kids listening to rock music.  I do tend to place a lot of value on letting kids make these kinds of decisions if they’re aware of other things they might be doing.  Of course there are some caveats - they shouldn’t impinge on the rights of others, for example, so if a child is playing Nintendo with the volume up loud and disturbing others in the family, that’s a different story.

But another part of me feels that it is worth thinking about video games themselves, because having a better understanding of what video games are about might give parents a different perspective or help them react differently to them.  There are actually lots of things you can do that would fall under the category of “video games,” and maybe that’s one thing that parents can do - make sure that both they and their kids are aware of the different possibilities.  Margie mentions the video game magazines, for example.  Some kids get very involved in forming a community of discussing and sharing ideas about video games, and some people might be unaware that this could be an aspect of a child’s involvement with video games.  So I do think it’s worth having some knowledge of what the culture of video games is like.

SS:  Some kids who defend video games to adults defend them in just that way.  They’ll say, “You don’t understand everything that’s involved in playing video games, you don’t understand everything we’re getting out of it.”  We published such a letter in GWS from a teenaged boy.  In his case, his interest in video games had reached such a level that he was interested in designing his own games and getting into other related things like composing music, so it was probably easier for adults to see the value in the activity.

MR:  Yes, I think if kids are getting things out of playing video games that adults can appreciate, their parents’ concern might just dissolve.  But in some cases, kids aren’t pursuing video games in such a way that those concerns will dissolve.  So even though I think it’s important to look at the options kids have and to understand more about video games, this won’t resolve the issue in all cases.  A child might know about the option of designing his own video games - something his parents would probably like better than if he just played Super Mario Brothers all day - but might reject that option, and then the issue comes back to the question of whether kids should be allowed to make their own choices regardless of how parents feel about those choices.

SS:  Should kids have to justify their choices by talking about them in ways their parents can appreciate?

MR:  Right, that’s another point.  I think it’s fine for parents to make kids aware of some of these other ways of working with video games that the parents might find more desirable.  But obviously kids shouldn’t be forced to justify themselves by using video games only in ways that their parents like.

SS:  I want to go back for a minute to what Aaron said about people having the right to abuse themselves if they know what they’re doing.  Does your saying that mean that you think video games are definitely harmful in some ways that users might not be aware of?

AF:  It’s hard to say for sure, of course, but I think there are certainly possibilities for harm - the violence involved, for
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Should kids be allowed to make their own choices regardless of how parents feel about those choices?
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one thing.  Now, I’m not going to say that anyone who plays video games will necessarily be violent, just as kids who use toy guns don’t necessarily use real guns when they grow up.  But I can’t help thinking about how, during the Persian Gulf War, so many analogies were made between Nintendo and what those bomber pilots were doing.  I think that’s scary.  I worry about kids who grow up habitually firing missiles, even if the missiles are just images on the screen - well, what those pilots had were also just images on a screen.  So I do think this is something to be concerned about.

SS:  So here’s an example of the sort of thing many parents worry about, even if, as you say, no one knows for sure whether there’s really any reason to worry.  If a parent worries about the effects of the violence in video games and wants to give a child information about those possible effects, as you suggested, how would she do that?

AF:  Probably just by saying, “This bothers me, and here’s why.”  Sometimes a child will dismiss the concern by saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not having that effect on me.”  Sometimes a child may disagree with the concern but out of respect and love for the parents will stop doing what bothers them.

NR:  There are actually many video games and computer games that don’t have any violence in them, so a parent could say, “This is why I like this game better, and this is why this other one bothers me.”

AF:  When you think about those types of games, though, other concerns can arise.  Think about Tetris - a geometric game with no violence in it whatsoever, just a puzzle involving the rotation of shapes.  What could be harmful about that?  Well, some people play it for hours on end.  How would you talk about your concerns in that case?  I suppose you could walk up to a friend and say, “You seem to be glued to this game, and I’m a little concerned - do you want to do this, or do you feel you’re just using it to fill time and playing it more than you would really like to?”

When we talk about kids choosing healthy foods or making wise decisions, I think we have to take into account what they have to choose from.  A child will drink poisoned water if that’s all there is to drink.  I just believe - and I don’t have any data to support this - that if children have a range of healthy choices they won’t become involved with video games to a harmful degree.  I guess my belief rests on my own personal feeling that playing video games, like watching TV, is basically very boring in the larger scheme of things.

NR:  But healthy choices of what kind?  I know that when I play Tetris -

MR:  True confession time!

NR:  - I do it because I need a break from doing something constructive.  Stepping away helps me think about whatever constructive work I’m in the middle of doing.  So maybe children who play video games do have all sorts of constructive choices but they turn to video games when they need that kind of break.

SS:  Yes, people have talked about that in GWS in other contexts - the value of what in computer jargon is called “down time.”

AF:  There are different ways to use video games, and I think it’s important to ask, “What is the place of this activity in my life?  Am I using it to relax, to measure myself, to escape something, to gain some sort of power that I’m missing in the world, to get ideas for some other creative activity?”  These are all possibilities and they do make a difference in terms of whether we should be concerned.

SS:  We compared video games to comic books or rock music, but adults seem to have a harder time with kids playing video games (and watching television, too) than they have with a lot of other things kids do that adults don’t fully understand or appreciate.  I think this comes from the fear that somehow video games are different because they may be addictive, or at any rate seductive - that kids can’t always say no to them even if they want to.  Think of Margie’s son thanking her for putting the game away.  You don’t hear that sort of thing as much when the issue is comic books or stickers or other “kid culture” things like that.  There seems to be some evidence that kids don’t always feel they can control their use of video games or make other choices when video games are an option.  What do you make of that?

AF:  I have a theory about why computer games are so seductive, to boys of a certain age in particular.  I think it has to do with power and control.  In that little world on the screen, you can control what happens, you can steer around danger, you can kill the bad guys, you can master certain strategies.  So particularly for kids who don’t feel as if they have power in the outside world, video games become a world they can retreat into.  At just the age when kids are beginning to wrestle with making their own decisions and perhaps realizing that they don’t have as much power as they would like, video games can be very seductive.

MR:  And if the world seems to be full of things you want but can’t have, video games can be a way of controlling things so that you get exactly what you want.

SS:  I think you can imagine where this is going, though - should a parent of a child who loves video games now worry that this means there’s something lacking in that child’s life?

AF:  Not necessarily.  I was just offering one possible explanation of why video games become so attractive.

MR:  Even if a child does feel powerless or full of uncertainties, I don’t think that necessarily means there’s something wrong with his family environment - to some extent I think these feelings are a natural part of growing up in our society, and video games may be one way of reacting to them.

NR:  But if someone retreats into a little world, what about the person who has to watch them do it?  I know what it’s like for me, watching people watch sports on television - in a way, it’s as if they’re in a world that I’m not in, yelling about things that don’t have to do with what’s going on around them.  But then I wonder, “what should I do about it?”, which I guess is like the parent wondering how to respond to her child who’s off in another world.  I find Aaron’s suggestion helpful - that you can just say what bothers you, that you don’t have to pretend that you like it when you don’t, and also that you can try to find out more about what the other person is getting out of the activity.

MR:  When someone you’re close to is interested in something, it’s probably always worthwhile to try to understand it better, but I agree, you shouldn’t fake enjoyment.  Also, I suppose that a parent’s making an effort to be involved in video games could backfire, because maybe the kids like video games precisely because they like having their own private world.

NR:  I was also interested in Margie’s comment that her children like it when she takes a stand and controls how much time they spend on video games.  I can really understand how that would be more comfortable and easier for everyone in some ways, and how because there would be less tension everyone would feel better.  But in a way I think we all need to learn to control ourselves, to make decisions for ourselves, and maybe there simply are always tensions between people who live together about things one does that the other doesn’t like.  Maybe it’s important to live with those tensions even if it’s less comfortable that way.  On the other hand, maybe video games are somehow different, as Susannah suggested.

SS:  If parents and children are talking together about the effects of video games, it does seem possible to me that a child would be able to realize, much as adults often do, that he has a hard time controlling his use of video games, that he sometimes needs help with it.  Maybe Margie’s son was realizing this when he thanked her for putting the game away.  In Marie Winn’s book The Plug-in Drug, which is primarily about TV, not video games, there are many examples of kids who feel unable to regulate their own TV viewing but who like what happens when the family tries the experiment of going without TV for a period of time.  And think about adults who say things to each other like, “Take these potato chips away from me, I can’t stop eating them.”  We do ask each other to help us control ourselves sometimes.

NR:  I think giving kids that example would be very helpful, saying, “I sometimes feel that I need someone to help me stop eating junk food.  Do you ever feel that way about Nintendo?”  But I would still put it in the child’s hands as much as possible by asking, “Do you want my help with this?”  In my own case, I eventually deleted Tetris from my computer’s hard drive because I wanted to stop playing it.  I later put it on again but I don’t play it anymore.  I felt a certain satisfaction that I had been able to deal with this myself.

MR:  I like the idea of letting kids see adults dealing with their own obsessions or vices so it doesn’t just seem that the adult is saying in a condescending way, “I know that you need help with this.”

SS:  We talked earlier about parents bringing up general concerns about video games, saying they’ve heard about the violence in them or whatever.  But what if the parent’s concerns have to do with the effects that they already see video games having on their child?  What if they want to talk about behavior changes that bother them, for example?

NR:  Even there, though, you’re talking about what bothers you, not what you think should be bothering the child.

SS:  And the child could say, “Well, that bothers you, but it doesn’t bother me.”

NR:  I don’t think there’s much more the adult can do in that situation.

MR:  Even if someone - a child or another adult - reacts dismissively or negatively at first to someone else’s concern, the concern may plant a seed in their mind that they’ll reflect on later.

SS:  Back to the question of kids making choices.  I often wonder what it means to say that a choice is available, because, again thinking of the television examples in The Plug-in Drug, often when people get rid of their TV they say, “Now we read more, we play more, we talk to each other more, we spend more time outside.” etc.  Well, they could have done all those things even when they had the TV, but they’re saying that somehow they didn’t think of doing those things or found it hard to choose them over watching TV.

AF:  Well, one way to avoid the problem of Nintendo addiction is not to have Nintendo in the first place.  But that brings up other issues, such as how the family makes decisions about what to buy.  In many families a child wouldn’t be able to afford to buy Nintendo himself and wouldn’t be able to get it if his parents didn’t buy it.  In a more ideal world in which kids had more ways of earning money, they would have more control over what they bought and families might not be able to go the route of not having Nintendo at all.

Another possibility is that a family doesn’t have Nintendo at home so the child spends enormous amounts of time playing it at a friend’s house.  So even parents who wanted to protect their children from Nintendo completely might not be able to do that.  You have to live a fairly isolated life these days to escape it.

Again, in my mind, I come back to these questions:  is the parent trying to control the child’s behavior?  Is the parent trying to protect the child from harm?  Does the child agree that harm is taking place?  These are the things that I think need to be sorted out.

SS:  And even when the child doesn’t agree that harm is taking place, I can easily imagine a parent saying, “One of my jobs as a parent is to see harm where you may not, and therefore -:  Therefore what?  Therefore I will make some decisions that you may not like?

AF:  Yes, I do think parents have the duty to protect kids from harm that kids don’t recognize - like stopping a child from running out into the street, the classic example.  But I would tend to think that video games are a less drastic situation . . .

SS:  Even in less drastic situations parents do wrestle with this issue.  In the question of whether to let homeschoolers try school, for example, some parents want to say, “I know some of the harm that may come from this, and you don’t”

NR:  Even if the parent does feel that way about video games, feels so strongly that they’re bad and wants to go so far as to stop the child from playing, I still think there’s a difference between saying, “I know you may not like what I’m doing, but here’s why I feel so strongly about it” and saying “You have to appreciate this because I’m protecting you.”

AF:  My family may be unusual in this regard, but I remember my mother forbidding toy weapons in the house, and I don’t know whether we had any strong urge to use those toys, but I know that because we knew that our mother felt so strongly about this, we didn’t do what we knew would upset her.

SS:  I suspect that isn’t so unusual, but I wonder about those situations in which, for whatever complex reasons, a child is strongly drawn to exactly the thing that the parent doesn’t want to allow.  What if the child’s urge to play with video games or toy guns or whatever is (even just temporarily) stronger than his desire not to upset his mother?  Then it becomes a harder situation for the child.

MR:  I wouldn’t want parents to feel guilty if things don’t work out the way they did in Aaron’s family -

AF:  - Right, because even if the parents and child have a good relationship, it might not be as easy for the children to do what their parents prefer.

We haven’t yet talked about gender - why are boys as a group so much more drawn to video games than girls are?

SS:  In fact, thinking of your theory, girls, who have even less power than boys, might be even more drawn.

NR:  But our culture emphasizes to boys that they should be in control and have power.  Sherry Turkle at MIT talks about the different ways that kids relate to Nintendo - some try to get power over it and to rack up as many points as possible, and others, often girls, explore the world of the game without trying to get points.

AF:  Also, I think a lot of kids who are fascinated by video games at a certain age - often around 12 or so - end up outgrowing it.

SS:  Why do you think that is?

AF:   Partly because they just get tired of the game.  They master it and don’t have anywhere else to go with it.  Also, there may be some things about video games that appeal to kids at certain ages, as we said before.

SS:  Here’s a radical thought:  if in fact most kids who spend a lot of time on video games just outgrow it, why should anyone worry at all?

AF:  Well, there are lots of things we all spent time doing as children - like going to school! - and we can argue about whether or not we were harmed.  If we think things are harmful, then we do have cause to worry about kids spending lots of time at them, even if they eventually stop spending so much time.

MR:  But I spent a lot of time watching television as a child, and I do look back and say, “What a waste of time,” yet if my parents had forbidden me from watching, I would consider that worse.

NR:  At The Computer Museum, we had a symposium about Nintendo, looking at whether or not it was educational, and we had some parents there who were so opposed to it, but often their reasons seemed to have more to do with general problems they were having with their child - “He won’t listen to me, he never cleans his room, and he plays Nintendo” - and they were channeling all of that into an objection to Nintendo, specifically.

AF:  I hear that as having a lot to do with what I said before about power and control and relationships within the family.

NR:  That’s why, in general, I think the struggle over video games can be a good opportunity for parents to reflect.  One thing I find interesting in reading GWS is that the parents are not only looking at their kids’ learning, but also at their own learning - they’re being self-reflective.  So I think the video game issue can offer another chance to do that.  Margie is already reflecting about what bothers her about video games and how she deals with that, and I think a parent could also ask, “What are similar things in my own life that I do and wish I didn’t do, or that other people have concerns about?” and invite the children to engage in that reflection as we said before.

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