GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING  #ISSUE 8

In GWS #7 I said that we had received 2700 letters as a result of the TV show with Phil Donahue, and might get 1000 more. The total is now about 7500, and though the flood has slowed down a good deal, it has not stopped.

Of these letters, about half expressed some kind of sympathy and support, from mild to ecstatic. Perhaps 1000 or so said they definitely wanted to subscribe to GWS. (Had I guessed how much mail there would be, I would have tried to give the price on the air!). Another 1000 seemed strongly interested. As far as we can, I plan to follow up these people until they either subscribe or say, leave me alone!

Only  eight letters were critical and/or hostile, and none of them were what you could call hate mail. Of the eight, four or five did not so much defend the schools as criticize me for not trying to make them better.

Hundreds of the supporting letters (and about four of the critical) were from teachers or ex-teachers. Some of the latter had retired,  many had quit in despair and disgust, or been fired. Many of those who are still teaching said things like,I work in the schools, and I know what they’re like, and I don’t want that for my child.

Only one letter strongly defended the schools.

While doing the show, I said to Linda Sessions during a station/commercial break, and after we had heard some fairly hostile comment from the audience, that we were not there so much to convince the audience as to send out a signal. Later I read that about four and a half million families (mostly mothers, since it is a daytime show) regularly watch it. That’s a lot of people. But there are a great many more still to be reached. We have much more signal sending left to do.

CBS 60 Minutes wanted to do a show on the same subject, but was told by higher-ups that the number of unschoolers was not big enough to justify it. But another CBS TV show, called Magazine, definitely plans to do a program on unschooling. At least one other big national show is looking into it.

The monthly magazine Mother Jones has a very good article on unschooling coming out. I have had long conversations about it with people from The Ladies’ Home Journal.  Omni, a new magazine of science and science fiction, has said they want to interview me. An interview with me, which I have not yet seen, has been published in the Libertarian Review. And all over the country the newspapers have been full of stories about unschoolers.

NEW RECORDS

The group subscription record has moved to a Southeastern state (for the time being, I can’t say which one), where readers have taken out–hold onto your hats–a 74X subscription, for 12 issues! (Each reader will get GWS for about $1.32 per year, or $.23 per issue.)

The next largest group subscription is in Great Britain, where a group of people connected with the British unschooling movement called Education Otherwise have taken out a 40X subscription for 18 issues.

A GOOD INVENTION

From the Amherst Record (MA)

University of Massachusetts School of Education Dean Mario Fantini provided the idea of the Ôportfolio approach’ to evaluate the education of Richard and Keith Perchemlides, sons of Peter and Susan Perchemlides.

The portfolio approach is acceptable to Schools Supt. Donald Frizzle and to the family.

According to Fantini, video and cassette tapes, actual art works and photographs can be used to evaluate the children’s learning instead of the weekly paper and pencil test. The portfolio becomes Ôan archive of each child’ he said.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Fantini said the Perchemlides asked his advice in developing an education program for their children. He said he spent countless hours’ with the couple discussing their philosophy of education and their goals in educating their children at home.

Fantini, who specializes in different approaches to learning and teaching, approves the option of parents educating their children at home. But he said it is important to assess the benefits of this education to the child.

Fantini said it makes sense to have an outside evaluation by an individual or panel in a home education situation.’ He said this third party review would be impartial and acceptable to school administrators.

FROM KY.

Mil D., Berea KY writes:

…Bill and I have two sons, Graham 4 and Ian 3 [as of 10/78], who are full of curiosity and eagerness about the world. Since they were infants they have had books to hold and study and listen to–and lately their attention span for story or poem listening seems almost without limits. They love ‘how things work’ books and books that describe Indians’ life styles and history. When we read books with more words than pictures (like WIND IN THE WILLOWS or CHARLOTTE’S WEB or A.A. Milne) they are still and attentive, and interrupt to comment on the story or to ask about words or expressions. They have the patience now to hear non-plot-like prose–to listen  about the wind rustling in the trees and pouring over the characters’ skin or fur–and to enjoy those descriptions as well…

In his AUTOBIOGRAPHY John Stuart Mill describes his unique education that his father provided him: (p21)

There was one cardinal point, of which I have already given some indication, and which, more than anything else, was the cause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own…Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself…’

Out of the blue last month Graham began to multiply. He said, Mil, I know what 2 threes are,’ and so forth…arranging with fingers or objects so that he can pose problems and solve them. Discovery fills every hour, doesn’t it!

UNSCHOOLERS

From the Daily Review (Hayward CA, May 1976):

GOING TO COLLEGE AT 16 IS NO PROBLEM FOR HIM

San Leandro–Though he is only 16, Mark Edwards has had no difficulty in adjusting to campus life in California State University, Hayward, where he is a full-time student this quarter…

[He] was able to enroll at Cal State…at the age of 16 because of the California High School Proficiency Examination for 16 and 17-year-olds given for the first time last Dec. 20.

The exam is designed for 16 and 17-year-olds who want to terminate their high school education before they become 18. Those who take the examination and pass it are awarded a Certificate of Proficiency which is the legal equivalent of a high school diploma and allows them to drop out of high school with parental permission.

Mark took the proficiency test Dec. 20 which was also his 16th birthday. He had no difficulty passing the test which he found to be simple’ and trivial.’ …

Mark was accepted at Cal State on the basis of his scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the American College Testing exam.

It was because of the proficiency examination that Mark was able to enroll in the California State College system.
Without  [it], Mark’s only alternatives would have been private colleges.
Mark is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Scott  Edwards of San Leandro. His father is a professor of political science at  Cal State and his mother is a junior high school teacher…

Mid-way through the eighth grade [Mark] decided to drop out of school, preferring to be tutored at home by his parents. …being more advanced academically than his fellow students, he was often referred to an an egg head.’

He enrolled in Moreau High School in the ninth grade in 1974, but dropped out early in 1975 and completed his high school education at home. …

At Cal State, Hayward, Mark is taking 17 units. He has already challenged one class, English 1001, written the test and received the credits. …
———————–

Mr. and Mrs. Edwards sent me that clipping, and along with it one from the San Francisco Examiner, Jan. 10, 1979.

THIS FAMILY LEARNED ITS LESSON–KIDS STUDY AT HOME

…Five years ago [the Edwardses] decided to yank their children from the formal classroom atmosphere and have them attend class at home in San Leandro. …

The Edwards children, aged 13 to 18, speak in glowing terms of their home-based schooling and claim it’s given them poise and an insatiable appetite for learning that  they wouldn’t otherwise have had at their age. …

The results are remarkable. Mark, the eldest at 18, is a junior at the University of California at Berkeley. Cliff is a sophomore at Chabot College, and 14-year-old Matthew is a freshman at Holy Name College in Oakland…The parents currently teach daughters Jennifer, 14, and Diane, 13. …

The ongoing education, however, isn’t as regimented as the usual day’s schedule at a school. The father begins each day with a brisk morning jog, leading the children. Following that the daughters are given the day’s assignment from their mother…One subject at a time–such as geography–is tackled for a few months…But if a daughter simply doesn’t want to study one day, preferring instead to tend other chores, the studies are generally continued the next day.  …And the parents insist that relatively little time and money are spent for such an education…
————————-

With the clippings Mrs. Edwards sent this information:

Mark and Cliff, 19 & 17, work almost a full week as well as attend classes. Mark works in a credit office and Cliff is a salesman for a radio store. They had no problems getting part time work. Matt, 14, is a paid organist and pianist helping to defray his school expenses. …

A NEEDED LAW

The State of California has done something that I suggested in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION. (I don’t mean to imply that they necessarily got the idea from me–though they may have.) In it I wrote:

To further reduce the power of the schools and their tickets, we might also extend the idea of the high-school equivalency exam. In all states and territories, people who have never finished high school can, by passing an examination, get the equivalent of a high school diploma.  Today, people may not take this exam until they reach a given age, varying  from state to state between seventeen and twenty-one …Clearly, the law does not mean to let any young person get out of school merely by showing that he has already learned what the school is supposed to teach him. But we might before long be able in many states to pass laws that one could take the equivalency exam at any age–or even laws that anyone who passed the exam no longer had to go to high school, and if below the school leaving age, must be admitted without cost to his choice of the state colleges. …

This could be a great help to many poor or nonwhite children who would like to be doctors or lawyers or work in other professions. What keeps them out…now, as much as any other thing, is the extraordinary amount of time it takes to get the needed school credentials. …

A year or two ago someone introduced into the Massachusetts legislature a bill to lower the age at which students could take the high school equivalency exam. Public educators turned out in force to oppose it–as it turned out, successfully. But the political climate is changing,and today it might be possible in many states to persuade the legislatures to pass a law like the one in California.

SHERLOCK’S TRIUMPH

Merritt Clifton, editor/publisher of  SAMISDAT (Box 231, Richford VT 05476), author of novels 24X12 and A BASEBALL FANTASY, writes:

…consider Sir Conan Doyle’s remarks quoted in GWS#7 in context with his own greatest literary accomplishment, the creation of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle advocates formal education; Holmes is self-educated. Doyle suggests learning is best accomplished in school, during childhood; Holmes experiments, toys & questions like an intelligent child on into adulthood, & conspicuously avoids any institutional connections. Doyle would lock children up; Holmes lets curious boys and girls play with his most precious equipment. Holmes’s arch-enemy is the institutionally- educated Professor Moriarty, who stands for everything Conan Doyle does–and Holmes triumphs, while Doyle died considering himself an abysmal failure. Doyle hated Holmes, as is well-known, and tried to kill him off in mid-career. Yet Holmes survived, as voice for the real, repressed man inside Conan Doyle. The outer Conan Doyle was afraid of his own true inner convictions. Fortunately, inner convictions overcame outer image. Sherlock Holmes, for instance, has taught more children to enjoy reading than all the institutional texts ever written. …
——————–

Makes me want to read Holmes again, haven’t since I was a kid, when I read all of him, and how I loved it.

ELECTRICITY

Theo Giesy writes:

During the holidays while we had the tree up, Susie was wondering why all the bulbs go out on the series strings and only the burned out one goes off on parallel strings. (I still cling to and insist on using four series strings from my childhood)  Darrin gave her a very nice explanation of the difference  between series and parallel wiring. I have no idea where he picked it up.  He said, where he learned everything. I asked what he meant by that. He said, from me. I know he only learned it from me in that I gave him time to learn what he was interested in.

ON INFINITY

A mother wrote me a wonderful letter, which has disappeared in my filing system (I was sure I knew where it was), talking partly about the problems she had with the letters B and D when she was little, and partly about her six-year-old’s thinking and questions about numbers. One of his questions was, what was the number next to infinity. To this I wrote, in part:

There is no number before infinity.’ Kids talk about infinity’ as if it were a number, but it isn’t. The word infinite’ means endless’ or boundless.’ You can’t get to the end, or the edge, because there isn’t one; no matter how far you go, you can keep on going. Not an easy idea, maybe, for a six-year-old, or even most adults, to grasp.

The family, or as mathematicians would say the class’ of whole numbers, i.e., 1,2,3,4,5 …has no biggest number. No matter how big a number we think of, we can always add some other number to it, or multiply it by another number. Mathematicians call this kind of class of numbers not infinite’ but transfinite.’

There’s a good chapter about transfinite numbers in a fascinating book which you may be able to get from a library, or perhaps from a university, called MATHEMATICS AND THE IMAGINATION,  by Kastner and Newman. We learn that one transfinite class, such as the class of even numbers, is the same size as another transfinite class, the class of all  whole numbers. It seems crazy at first, how can there be as many even numbers as there are numbers, since half the numbers are odd. Well, we can say that one class of things is the same size as another class of things if for every item in the first class we can match one and just one item in the second class. If for each right shoe we have one and only one left shoe, then we have just as many right shoes as left shoes, even if we don’t know exactly how many we have. For every number in the class of whole numbers, 1,2,3,… we can make one and only one even number, by multiplying the first number times 2. 1 matches with 2, 2 matches with 4, 3 matches with 6, 4 with 8,  5 with 10, and so on no matter how far we go. So we can say those two classes are the same size.

There is a wonderful proof, what mathematicians call elegant’ (and it is , too), that the class of fractions is the same size as the class of whole numbers. That really is hard to believe, since between any two whole numbers you can put as many fractions as you want. But there is a way to do that matching game again, so it must be true. There is another elegant proof that the class of decimals is larger than the class of whole numbers. But I won’t say more about this now. Let me know if you can’t find the book; I still have a copy and could make a copy of those pages.

The mathematician who did a lot of the early work on this was Georg Kantor. He showed that some transfinite numbers are bigger than others. Indeed, I think he found four or five different transfinite numbers, each bigger than the one before. The class of whole numbers was the smallest, the class of decimals the next smallest. Then a still larger one which represented (among other things) the class of all functions.

These are big ideas for a six-year-old (or anyone) to grapple with. Try them out, see what happens, don’t be surprised or disappointed if he suddenly turns away from numbers and starts to look at something else. Meanwhile, see if you can encourage him to talk about infinite’ instead of infinity.’ There is no such thing, or mathematical  idea, as infinity.’ There is just the adjective infinite,’ meaning, as I said before, without an end or an edge..

FROM NEWARK

Dean S.,Newark, NJ , writes:

…at a workshop the other day the speaker was talking about her experiences with unschooling in Newark. She, a member of a city poverty agency and former teacher, had a friend who actually never registered her child for school. When her child was six or seven and had not yet been to school, she started being hassled and threatened by the school authorities (I don’t know how they became aware of the offense’ in the first place). Despite her repeated defense that she was effectively teaching her child at home, the powers that be turned their screws. But rather than submit, the mother took her child and moved out of state. This was around 1974 or 1975.

After the meeting, I inquired as to other cases she knew about of parents, in Newark, taking their children out of schools altogether and teaching them at home. She said she had five or six friends who are thinking seriously about it. They are single parents (the number of mother-centered households in Newark runs about 50%) who had, themselves, gone through the Newark public schools and wanted nothing of the sort for their children. They were far-sighted enough to plan their work lives and finances so they could take three or more years off, or at least juggle their time, to be at home to teach their children. Whether or not they too will encounter official resistance or pressure is unknown. In 1967, home study became legal in New Jersey under State v. Massa, 95 NJ Super, 382, 231 A 2nd 252 (1967).  But this ruling, in itself, does not prevent legal or political maneuvering as has been seen in other states where home study is supposedly legal.

I have recently heard of other instances of parents unschooling their children in Newark and New York City. My next door neighbor seriously contemplated keeping her daughter at home last year, but then decided to enter her at the alternative school  right up the street.

It appears that far from inhibiting attempts at unschooling, big city life is getting so rotten as to encourage it. When in one week one hears of half a dozen cases of actual or contemplated unschooling in a city with the dismal reputation of Newark, it becomes clearer that there is a willingness to pull out of public schools should conditions become desperate enough–even if this means arranging work lives to make it feasible, relying on friends or relatives, or training children for early independence and self-reliance (as you mention in GWS#4). This also appears to counter the claim that only middle class whites can afford to get their kids out of public schools. …

…Even when children are in schools that parents find suspect, you hear of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and parents chipping in at night or on weekends trying to teach at home to reverse or minimize the damage wrought by the public schools. A student at my school last year, when asked, How are you ever going to learn this stuff if you don’t listen? replied, My uncle teaches me at home. Another former student in our third grade had very irregular attendance and this was considered a problem. Yet I tutored her during the summer and she picked things up very quickly, and is in fact ahead in her studies compared to other third graders (who have been more regular in attending school). From what she told me, it was evident that her mother made home instruction a regular part of daily life (after school). Another student told me today that she has a tutor come to her house from time to time….

In Newark, some parents have started their own schools while others have selected schools which are at least better, which can mean stronger academically,’ more relaxed or more disciplined, happier or stricter. But in any case, creating or selecting their own school is an act by parents to acquire some say in their own lives and the lives of their children. And one way these alternative schools could support parents in unschooling is to offer to supervise or help develop home study programs for a small fee.  This could be to provide just paper legitimacy or to actually work with parents to devise a plan of action.  I know you mention this for parents using an alternative school outside their own state (INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, and New Schools Exchange Newsletter #131). This is a prospect I’m keeping my eye on in Newark.

Even a dismal city like Newark has a real world outside the school doors, and much to be learned from people in or out of schools. There’s a good library system, a good museum with a number workshops and programs, parks, zoos, airports, shipping ports, etc.–all things to learn from. Also, there is easy access to all New York City has to offer. …Should unschooling happen more in Newark, there’s a city out there to be used profitably. And if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.
——————–

At the moment, I know of only five schools in the country that are willing, so to speak, to provide cover for unschooling families. One is, of course, the Santa Fe Community School, which has already helped a number of families in this way. The others I will write about in GWS as soon as I have their permission to do so. Meanwhile, we need to know of more such schools. If any readers are part of a school which would be willing to do this–act as legal cover for unschooling families and/or  help them with a home study program–please let me know. Thanks.

A SHELTER SCHOOL

No sooner had I written the above than I had a letter from Ed Nagel (P.O. Box 2823, Santa Fe, NM 87501–Tel. (505) 471-6928) on just this subject:

…Re home-study students enrolled at Santa Fe Community School, since 1974-75 we have enrolled about 100 students, from different states, of whom only 3 that I know of were ever challenged. One was Erik Sessions (still enrolled). Another was the child of a lady from Pa., on whose behalf Wm. Ball wrote a letter, obtaining a substantial delay of any action against her. Later she returned her child to prison. (Actually the child was never formally enrolled at SFCS during this period.) The third parent was fairly mobile; when her child’s  attendance  was challenged  in Pa., SFCS wrote a letter verifying her employment with the school as a supervisor of off-campus travel-study. This satisfied the local superintendent and ended any further queries.

There are others, occasionally, who attempt to obtain a legal guarantee from the local public school officials–asking the boss in effect if they can undermine his operation–and, who, failing in this, become intimidated and soon retreat from their position. Or, they may move , literally, to another area/state where they may then proceed less conspicuously to provide an educational alternative, in some cases, at least, thru SFCS.

As I write, it occurs to me that there may have been another challenge, but NONE of the parents whose children enrolled at SFCS have ever had to go to jail or paid a fine (the unenrolled child’s parent from Pa. paid a find, as I recall, prior to Ball’s intervention), or lost a challenge throughout this five-year period.

Currently, there are between 40 and 50 students enrolled in home-study programs through SFCS, several within our own state. Of these, I would estimate about 1/3 have been enrolled for more than 2 years now. Of the many alternative schools doing this in other states which have been made known to me–roughly 30–only 3 have given me permission to put searching parents in touch with them, and then only under certain conditions; everyone is paranoid.  No one wants to go to court; not the parents, not the schools; not the public officials who can manage to keep the news/noise down about the few unusual’ arrangements they allow/tolerate within their district…
————————–

Good news about SFSC. If I were planning to take children out of school, one of the first things I would do would be to enroll them at SFSC, or make such an arrangement with another school if  I knew of one that  would do it. I would do other things as well, but I would certainly do this.

As for school officials, several people have told me that they have had their children out of school, and that the schools, even though they had not formally approved this, were willing to let it go on, as long as nobody complained.  But as soon as some nosy neighbor reported to the schools that such-and-such children were not in school, the schools had to make a big show of disapproval, start talking about law, courts, etc. What the officials are afraid of is that someone will say publicly, How come you let those people get away with not sending their kids to school?

What we need (among other things) is an answer for the schools to give to the nosy neighbors. Maybe if the schools can say, That child is enrolled in a private school and we have nothing to say about him, it would solve their problem, and so, our problem.

ON RELIGIOUS BELIEF

A Canadian parent, writing about the Sessions case (GWS#7), discussed the part of the ruling that said that parents’ claims to constitutional protection on religious grounds of the right to teach at home must be rooted in religious belief. The court did not say what it would or would not consider religious belief. About this, the parent went on to say:

I see religion’ as a concept that can be manipulated for unschoolers’ benefit just as can the concepts of school,’ teach,’ educate,’ etc.  As you pointed out, unschoolers should say, Yes, our child goes to school,’ and Yes, I am teaching my kids,’ even if the method of teaching is simply allowing them to learn. …

For religious belief,’ what just about anybody could feel comfortable with is… the feeling that one’s children are divine beings to be protected and nurtured to best of the parents’ ability. …I’d say something like this: I believe that my children are Divine Beings and that it is my Divine Responsibility to educate my children according to God’s Plan.’ ….The trick is that God  and religion’ can mean whatever one wants them to. God’ doesn’t have to be Judaeo-Christian; it can be Universal Energy, or Nature, or simply Love. …

I replied that this isn’t what I meant at all. Such a statement might work in Canada (though I doubt it), but not in the U.S. What the framers of the Constitution wished to prevent, and what the Constitution itself forbade, has happened anyway. Judaeo-Christianity has to all intents and purposes become the official, state religion of the U.S. When the Constitution was amended to put the words under God into the Pledge of Allegiance, it was not just any God, anyone’s personal definition of God, that people had in mind. It was the God of Christians and Jews.

Any people who are asking on religious grounds for the right to teach their own children will have a much better chance if they use the word Christian. To defend home schooling on the grounds that children are some kind of Divine Beings would almost certainly be a disastrous mistake. In many parts of the U.S., people would consider that statement itself to be irreligious or blasphemous.

I would instead suggest that people say that what happens in schools offends their Christian beliefs about the way to teach and bring up children, as indeed I would think it would offend, and deeply, anyone who understood the word Christian to mean based on the teachings of Christ. That is to say, on the New Testament as opposed to the Old, where those with a mind to have always been able to find excuses for greed, racism, hatred, violence, and cruelty.

It is of course possible that the courts might one day uphold the right of Moslem or Buddhist or Hindu parents to teach their children at home, on the grounds that both the daily life and the subject matter and values (both taught and untaught) of the average school classroom seriously violated their religious beliefs. I hope someone will make such a test case, and will follow it closely if they do. But as for such parents winning–I’ll believe it only when I see it.

Meanwhile, if we can in good conscience apply the word Christian to our beliefs, it seems to me to make good sense to do so.

FROM QUEBEC

Helen F. St. Clet, Quebec, writes:

We are solving the school problem for our  daughters (12, 8, & 3) in a combination of ways–home teaching before they are 6 so they read well and love math before they see a classroom. Then French school, which in our little village here in Quebec is friendly, relaxed, even joyful (Ed. note–certainly not true of many or most schools in France), and for some reason much emphasis is put on sports (they tan in winter from skiing and skating every day) and public speaking. All we hope for them to learn at school…that we cannot teach them better at home… is French and a total immersion in a culture and life-style different from ours. They seem unaffected by geography books from 1947 (we read maps, go places & talk, after school) and the other idiocies that are so debilitating in the suburbs, and elsewhere.

They love school, & do well. I think they love the chance to live a completely different life that the one we live here, at home … even a new personality is born in another language. I marvel at them, as I stumble along talking to their friends.

Interesting to note, though, that the older two much prefer reading in English (in which they’ve had no school training) than in French. They (esp. the older one) say it’s because there’s nothing good to read in French … no action & adventure’ but I imagine there’s less action and adventure in the act of reading that was taught methodically.

These schools, by the way, are not great for French children. A large number repeat a grade, and many get disgusted in high  school & quit to work on the farm (illegally). Class, in elementary school, is often a madhouse–but it’s endured, even enjoyed, I suspect, by the teachers who, like most French Canadians I have met, really like kids & want to be with them.

In a later letter:

French school … is working so well that my 8-yr-old is reading a paperback called Preparez Votre Enfant a l’Ecole’ (Ed. note-’Get Your Child Ready for School’)
in order to get ideas for her own school that she conducts for the neighborhood 3-6 yr. olds, in French. She also cooks dinner for 5 and writes short stories in English. …
—————————

It is now the law in Quebec that children from English-speaking families must go to French schools. (Quite a few were going even before that law was passed) These children are taught to read, in French. Except perhaps in a few families, no one teaches them to read in English. But I have seen more than one report saying that where such tests have been made, these children have been found to read much better in English than in French.

LEARNING AND LANGUAGE

Young children who come into contact with people who speak more than one language will learn to speak all of those languages, and usually without much trouble.
Older people, who have a lot of trouble, are amazed at this, and cook up a lot of fancy theories about the child having a special aptitude, or the child’s brain being somehow different form the adult’s, to explain why the child learns so much easier and faster.

The real explanation is simpler than this. The child, who speaks language A in his home, but who meets outside the home other people, especially other children, who speak language B, does not in any way set himself the task of learning language B. In fact, he does not think of himself as speaking language A, or indeed any language. He just speaks, learns to understand what other people say, and to make them understand what he wants to say.

Now, all of a sudden, he meets some people whom he can’t understand at all, and who can’t understand him. What he wants and what he tries to do, is to understand those people, right now, and to make them  understand him, right now. That is what he works at, and since he is smart, tireless, and ingenious, and not easily discouraged by difficulties, and since he gets instant feedback to tell him whether or not he is understanding or being understood, he very quickly gets good at it.

His parents think how wonderful it is that he is learning language B so quickly. But he is not trying to do that, would not understand what it meant to learn a language, would not know how to do such a task even if people could explain to him what the task was. He is just trying to communicate with people.

I saw a most vivid example of this difference when, after my father had retired from business, he and my mother began to spend the winter half of each year in Mexico. My father, who had graduated from a good college (not a good student, but good enough to graduate), told himself sternly, and kept telling himself for six years and more, that he ought to learn Spanish. My mother, who had not gone to college, and had been a very poor student–she had always been terribly nearsighted, but beyond that, probably bored to death–could not have cared less about learning Spanish. What she wanted, like the little child, was to be able to talk to these people around her, who were very different from any people she had known, and who interested her very much. So, like a very young child–she always had a small child’s keenness of observation and sharpness of mind–she began to try to talk to the people around her, to ask the names of things, to ask how to ask the names of things. The people she talked to, enchanted as people always are by someone who makes a real effort to speak their language–I discovered this on my travels in Italy–talked back, showed her things and told her their names (as they did to me when I visited), gently corrected her mistakes in pronunciation or usage, not so that she would speak correctly but only so that she would be better understood, and helped her in every way they could. The result was that very soon she was able to talk easily and fluently with people on a variety of subjects.

At the same time, my  father, who thought of himself as trying to learn Spanish, which meant to learn to speak it correctly, so that then he could talk to the people around him, never learned more than twenty or so words in all the years he lived there. Now and then my mother tried to get him to say a few words to the people he met. He couldn’t do it, was paralyzed by his school-learned fear of doing it wrong, making a mistake, looking foolish and stupid. He backed away from all these human contacts, all the while telling himself that he really ought to learn Spanish but just couldn’t, was too old, did not have the aptitude, and so on.

Since then I have learned something from Ivan Illich, which seemed surprising until I thought about it, when it stopped being surprising at all. He had been traveling a lot in the polyglot, i.e., multi-language, cultures of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. What he found was that the people who grew up in these cultures before schools were widespread, and therefore, before people began to think that important things, including foreign languages, had to be learned in school, did in fact learn to speak many languages, just from the experience of daily life. This was true of even very poor, humble, ordinary people. Such people, if they came regularly into contact with people who spoke other languages, and if they had good reason–business, or whatever–to talk with them, learned to talk with them. But among the younger people, who grew up going to school, and so learned–even if they learned nothing else–that important things can only be learned in school, and then only when they are taught, very few learn more than one language.

In short, schools not only make knowledge scarce and expensive, but they make it difficult, by making it abstract, and cutting it off from the powerful motives, incentives, and rewards of daily life.  They  make the vast majority of people, not more informed or learned, but more ignorant, less eager and less able to learn new things than they would otherwise have been.

ON UNDERSTANDING

The friend I mentioned, in Life In School in GWS#6, once wrote to say that many children in her science class had not understood a talk she had given about asteroids, and asked what she might do about it. I wrote back, saying in part:

… I decided that when we don’t understand something, one (or more) of three things are happening. 1) We have heard a word/words or seen a sign, for which we don’t know the referent–which just means, the object, thing, experience that the word or sign refers to. Thus the referent of the word ‘dog’ is a four-legged furry animal, usually with tail, etc. If you had never seen a dog, and someone mentioned the name in conversation, you’d be a little puzzled. Or if you were an Eskimo, and someone mentioned a giraffe (I can’t imagine why), again, you’d be puzzled. If you had only lived in the far North, it would be very hard to explain’ to you what a tree was. Or a mountain, if you lived on flat tundra. People who have never seen snow, even though they have heard of it and even seen photos of it, are usually bowled over when they see the real thing.

If you had seen some animals, say a horse or a cat, I could explain a dog pretty easily, could say it was smaller than a horse but about the same size or bigger than a cat, with four legs, head, and tail in the same position.  If you had never seen a four-legged animal at all, it might be a little bit hard to explain how a four-legged animal is put together. You could perhaps draw a picture. But people who have had no experience of pictures, primitive tribes, cannot connect in their minds pictures of things with the real things, cannot even recognize a picture of themselves or their own house.

Part of your problem in explaining asteroids may have been that many of your classmates didn’t have the feel for the distances and emptiness of space. They can perhaps imagine what something is like a mile away, but tens or hundreds or thousands of miles don’t mean much to them, in which case words won’t help.

The second thing that can cause us not to understand is when we hear one thing, and then another, and the two seem to contradict each other. If you had been told that ducks fly in the air, and that snapping turtles live in the water, and later heard someone say that a duck had been caught by a snapping turtle (which happens), you would be confused. How could that be possible? Someone would then have to say that ducks also live some of the time in the water, at which point you would understand.

And the third thing that causes us not to understand is when someone tells us one thing, which seems to make sense, and then some other thing, which also seems to make sense, but we can’t see how they are connected, what they have to do with each other. Or someone may tell us something, that we think we understand, but it doesn’t seem to connect with anything, we think, Why are you telling me that?’

Knowing this about understanding can be useful for people trying to learn things. If you find, reading, or hearing someone talk, that you don’t understand something, don’t  panic. Take a few moments to ask yourself which of those three cases you are in.   If you are reading, and are not sure what the referent of a word or phrase is,  what thing is being described, you can ask someone, or look it up in a dictionary, or if the book is a textbook, look it up in the index in the back of the book, see on what page the word first appears, and then see what it says about the word on that page. In a math or science textbook, you can usually find the word earlier in the chapter you’re reading.

If your problem is that two things seem to contradict each other, it will help to say as accurately as you can what the contradiction is, thus, It says that ducks fly in the air, and that snapping turtles live in the water, so how could a snapping turtle catch a duck?’ That is an easy question for someone else to answer. When a student says to a teacher, I don’t get it,’ there isn’t much the teacher can do about it.

The more precisely we can say what it is that confuses us, the easier it will be for us, or someone, to clear up the confusion.

SEATWORK

A mother–not an unschooler, she was interviewing me for a newspaper–told me the other day about some of the reading problems her child is having at school. His problem is that he loves to read and regularly reads books several years ahead of his so-called grade-level. His teacher complained to his mother that the boy was falling behind in his reading seatwork. This work consists of copying out vocabulary and spelling lists, reading sample paragraphs and answering questions about them, filling out various workbooks, and doing similar exercises–the kind that people invent who think that the ability to read well consists of hundreds of separate and measurable skills.

When the children were supposed to be doing this seatwork, this boy held books in his lap and read them instead. The teacher said that if he did not catch up with his seatwork she was going to give him a C in reading. The mother said, How can you do that? You know he is a good reader? You know he reads books, for his own pleasure, that are way ahead of his grade level. How can you give such a boy a C in reading?  The teacher admitted that she knew the boy was a good reader, probably the best in the class. But she still insisted that he had to do his seatwork. The mother than said, But the reason for the seatwork is to get the children to the point where they can read and understand the kind of books my son is already reading. Why should he have to get ready to do what he already knows how to do?  The teacher would not budge. The children were supposed to be doing seatwork, he had to do seatwork.

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

From MANAS (see GWS#3) of 12/20/78, this quote:

… a month or so ago, a public school official in Los Angeles declared on TV that the child, until he graduates from high school, belongs to the state.’

THE SCHOOLS CONFESS

A recent issue of Case and Comment, for which I have no address, reprinted an article on Teacher Malpractice which originally appeared in the American Educator, journal of the American Federation of Teachers. The article said, in part:

In 1972, parents of a graduate of the public school system in San Francisco brought a $500,000 suit against the school district charging that after a total of 13 years of regular attendance, their son was not able to read.

During his years in school, according to information compiled on the case, he was in the middle of his classes, maintained average grades and was never involved in anything which resulted in major disciplinary action. His parents claimed that during their son’s years in the public school they were rebuffed in their attempts to get information on the progress of their son, but were assured by school officials and teachers he was moving along at grade level.

Shortly after the youth’s graduation, he was given a reading test by specialists who concluded the youth was only reading on a fifth grade level…

…the California State Court of Appeals rejected the parents’ claim of the school system’s failure to educate their son. The court declared it was impossible for any person, most of all the courts, to set guidelines for proper’ academic procedures which must be followed by all schools and teachers.

Unlike the activity of the highway, or the marketplace, classroom methodology affords no readily acceptable standards of care, or cause, or injury. The science of pedagogy itself is fraught with different and conflicting theories of how or what a child should be taught, and any layman might, and commonly does, have his own emphatic views of the subject,’ read the court’s opinion.
————————–

The court was, of course, quite right in saying this. But what then becomes of the claim, which the schools make all the time, that they alone know how to teach children? It might not be a bad idea for parents, fighting in court for the right to teach their own children, to quote those words from the California decision.

SMOKING

Every now and then, in the subway or some public place, I see young people, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, sometimes even as young as ten, smoking cigarettes. It is a comic and pitiful sight. They have obviously practiced (as I once did) all the mechanics of holding the cigarette, taking a puff, inhaling the smoke (if they can), blowing it out casually, flicking the ashes off the end, etc. They want to look as if they had been smoking for years, yet they give themselves away every second. They dart nervous glances in every direction, half wanting to be seen (and admired) by everyone, half fearing that they may be seen by someone who will get them in trouble. Above all, they can’t let the cigarette alone for a second. They take puff after puff, one right after another. The smoke they are breathing must be as hot as a burning building.

It is an ordeal. The smoke tastes awful. Children have sensitive taste buds, and that smoke must taste even worse to them than to most non-smoking adults, which is saying a lot. They have to struggle not to choke, not to cough, maybe even not to get sick. Why do they do it? Because all the other kids’ are doing it, or soon will be, and they have to stay ahead of them, or at least not fall behind. In short, wanting to smoke, or feeling one has to smoke whether one wants to or not, is one of the many fringe benefits of that great social life at school that people talk about.

Some people, when they learn I don’t smoke, say, I wish I had your will power.
I tell them they have it backwards. I tried to smoke, but I didn’t have enough will power to keep at it. The taste of the smoke itself I could just barely stand, but the taste it left in my mouth–for days–was too much for me. I gave it up.

I was able to give it up only because I was so far on the outside edge of the peer group that being a little farther out made no difference. I had nothing to lose. I longed to be an insider, but smoking, even if I could make myself learn to stand it, was not going to make me one. So why put  myself through it. I had already learned, a little bit, and only because I had to, to say, The heck with them. So I said it. For a few years I smoked only when I got drunk, which meant I had a double penalty to pay the next day. Years later, thinking it might help me fight off drowsiness on a long driving trip, I inhaled a big puff of a cigarette. It almost knocked me down–I thought the tip of my head had lifted clean off. Wow, what a drug! Since then, no more.

I feel sorry for all the children who think they have to smoke, and even sorrier for any non-smoking parents who may desperately wish they could persuade them not to. If the children have lived in the peer group long enough to become enslaved to it, addicted to it–we might call them peer group junkies — then they are going to smoke, and do anything and everything else the peer group does. If Mom and Pop make a fuss, then they will lie about it and do it behind their backs.  The evidence on this is clear. In some age groups, fewer people are smoking. But more children are smoking every year, especially girls, and they start earlier.

One remedy, of course, is for children to feel themselves full members of a human group or groups whose example and good opinion they value enough so that they don’t worry about what the peer group is doing. I don’t know any other.

GROWING WITH TREES

A mother writes:

… I read HOW CHILDREN LEARN when A was 2 and felt helped by it to see ways of playing and communicating that I’d been missing. I heard part of a lecture you gave on public radio about kids having the right to work and be part of the real’ world. But I didn’t know until GWS#1 came out that you’d gone all the way to no school. At that time A was 8 and had never gone to school. It was so exciting to hear that there even were any others. GWS has filled a real need, helping us feel less alone and more faith in what we are doing.

T, A, and I … earn almost all of our money by seasonal orchard work–picking apples. 2 months in the fall and pruning apple trees 2 months in the late winter. We leave home and work in various parts of [apple country].

I’ve been doing this since I was four months pregnant with A. She is almost 10. The other 8 months we are home, in a neighborhood with 6 or so other couples who also live in the woods, are building their own houses. Most garden, most are self-employed doing crafts or odd jobs. A’s best friend–M (8)–is also her cousin and also has never been to school. She’s enrolled in the Santa Fe Community School. We are keeping a low profile.’ Neither of our families have been bothered by the law. A and M play with other kids in the area who do go to school. We don’t hide what we’re doing but we don’t advertise it either. I don’t really know how much the local school board knows and whether or not they’re purposely looking the other way. (Ed.–this is often the case) Since we three leave home Sept. 1st and March 1st each time for 2 months, it is possible they just assume she goes to school somewhere else.

…A started picking of her own accord one day when she was 5. She put her raincoat on backwards, using the hood as a bucket to hold the fruit until she emptied into the boxes. She was very proud of herself. She worked all day and picked 3 bushels. The next rainy day we made a quarter size bucket out of a plastic waste basket and a pant leg. The cloth bottom opened up for emptying like our buckets. T made her a 10 foot ladder (he makes and sells apple picking ladders). She picked from the bottoms of our trees and we paid her what we earned per bushel before deducting for food and rent.

Now, 5 years later, she has a custom-made 1/2 size bucket and a 14 foot ladder. She works 2 hours or more most days, picking to the same quality standards we use. She keeps her own tally. She pays about 1/2 of her own living expenses from her earnings when we’re on the crew. She handles the ladder well, picks as much of the tops as she can.

How  much to pay her and how much to expect her to work have been areas of confusion. It didn’t seem right to continue to pay her, in effect, more per bushel than anyone else by not deducting any expenses. But if we deducted her full expenses, she wouldn’t earn anything (yet). So we compromised. Earning money is not her main motivation but she likes to get paid and it seems good for her to have money to spend.

If she continues to increase her production she’ll soon be able to pay her full expenses on the crew and have a good amount left over.

In many poor cultures the kids’ earnings help support the whole family. We have to earn enough to live on the rest of the year. So it seems possible that as she gets older she might pay her expenses the rest of the year too, or contribute toward things we’ll all use. We are not part of a tradition where the kids work a lot or contribute much to the family’s survival. And we are not so close to the line that our survival depends upon her contributions. So when we’re in doubt we take the more regular (like our own upbringing) course. I believe she’s working a good amount of her own accord when we’re on crews. She says she wants to get so she’s paying all of her expenses on the crews.

I don’t believe in compelling kids to study some subject they don’t want to, but I do believe in insisting they do some work, in relation to their abilities and the needs of the family. Since they start with a compelling desire to do what the older family members do, this is no problem. Now sometimes she objects to some chores (It’s boring, so-and-so doesn’t have to). We insist. If you want to be warm, too, you have to carry firewood, too. She seems to see the justice of it and gives in pretty easily.

She helps with pruning, too. Has her own saw and with direction will sometimes prune a whole tree. But it is a harder skill to learn.

I think living on a work crew has been really good for our family. It helped me set limits and encouraged us to accept time away from each other, but still allowed us to be together when we needed it.  Very young, A accepted that I had to work and learned to amuse herself very well. I think that kind of solitude is very important for everyone. She became less clinging and demanding and I learned I could choose which demands I would meet. Before crew life I felt I should give her everything she was asking for. As a result of working with her near I learned that she could accept it and benefited when I sometimes let her work it out herself. This led to both of us feeling our own individuality and made our close times closer. And brought my way of being with her into accord with T’s way.

Spending a good part of every day outside is another important benefit. There are so many more things to do outside, such good things to choose from. She did not amuse herself outside in the cold part of the pruning season when she was 3 and younger. When it was too cold for her to keep herself warm in deep hard-to-move-in snow, we took turns not working to stay with her. But I remember days when it was snowy but fairly warm and she dug, went sliding, climbed trees, bounced on springy limbs and found a deer antler.

Her attitude toward work (and mine) have benefited from the work situation. Most of the crew, most of the time, are working with a willing attitude and there’s a lot of enthusiasm that is catching. She works harder and longer with T, who enjoys pushing himself, than with me. She and I talk a lot and concentrate less. Everyone is paid by how much they do and there are a lot of other kinds of companionship fit in around the work. Some people return year after year and some don’t, but one season is enough to get very close in a situation like that. Working with someone makes it easy. …

Even though there’s a gap of 7 1/2 years, A and E enjoy each other a lot and play together really well. A is an accomplished baby-sitter, patient, full of good ideas when something goes wrong, a playmate. We make sure they visit during the 8 months we’re not on crews because they miss each other. A started babysitting on the pruning crew when E was 7 months old. One hour a day in exchange for lessons and a trip to the library one morning a week with E’s mother. That concept of the time with an adult being a privilege put lessons in a wholly different light. They made booklets about aspects of apple trees, like insects that live on them, and pruning. This last picking season it was recorder playing for 1/2 hour or so when she wanted it in exchange for one evening a week baby-sitting.

Another thing that’s become a regular tradition is that M and A each spend a week with each family during each work season. She spends a week at home with them and M spends a week on the crew with the 3 of us. M is 2 years younger and the swap was a little hard for her at first but it gets better each time she does it.

How much time we’ve had for lessons has varied. It’s less on crews than the rest of the year but they tend to be more regular since our life is more the same every day.We’ve done math and word games with me picking and her sitting on the grass under the tree. A favorite pre-reading game went with a book of all the mammals. I would name one. She’d guess what letter it started with and look it up alphabetically, verifying the word with picture, and then write it down. She also wrote lists of things around her. Another favorite was writing a word like clover or dandelion and then finding the other words inside the big one. i strongly believe in answering a question If I know the answer rather than saying, You can figure that out, Sound it out, etc. We were amazed to see that with no drill to speak of she got better from lesson to lesson. The lessons were showing us that she was learning, rather than doing the teaching. I have noticed more and learned a lot about the English language by being involved with her learning to read and write.  It’s been exciting and interesting, the hardest part learning to shut up, not to push. All along we’ve read aloud, gone for nature walks and discussed numbers. …

Since I have been the bookkeeper on the last few crews her interest in math has grown sharply. She helps with the payroll and counts out everyone’s final net pay. She seems to have a good solid concept of reading and math. She doesn’t gobble them up in quantity but when she’s interested in something she follows it through.

Here some of my insecurity about her comes cropping up. How does she compare with other kids her age? I can remember doing more at her age with school stuff (naturally) and being more interested in reading and music and kids’ games. But I lived in a city neighborhood, went to school and had 2 sisters, and my parents were more intellectual.

ll in all the hardest thing about not sending A to school is the unknown. Since school was such a big part of my life, I can’t imagine what it would have been like without it (especially ages 13-18). It’s hard to imagine what her life will be without it. Looking back–so far, so good, but looking ahead is one big question mark. Will she be equipped with what she needs to be independent of us? Will she have friends enough during adolescence? She doesn’t ask to go to school, will she try it later?

I  think we need to do more to help her have access to other parts of the world and help her follow through with more of her interest. Pottery, sewing, cooking,  and French are some.These aren’t my strong interests or skills and so it will be with friends that she pursues them. We’ll continue sending her over to our potter friend’s house. We’ve just found a French woman living not too far away. Maybe she’ll tutor A in French.

I’d like for her to try out more extra-curricular but school-type things. She was in a swimming class last summer. 4-H?
I sometimes feel unsure in how much to encourage or make things happen for her and how much to wait and let her initiate.
I wonder if we’ll get hassled by the law  sometime in the future….
A, M, and I went on bike trips last summer. I want to do that more and perhaps include more of the kids in the neighborhood.
We have recently found 2 families, 15 miles away in two different directions, who recently got school board approval for home instruction for their kids. We are meeting one day a week, bringing the kids together and getting to know each other.

REPLY

…You wonder how A compares with other kids her age? My guess would be that she compares very well, probably smarter, more self-reliant, more serious, more considerate, more self-motivated, more independent, more honest, etc.

I think of the exclusive and expensive school where I first taught fifth grade. My students were the children of many of the leading business, professional, and academic families in this area. I would guess that the average family income must have been at least $40,000 a year, and the average IQ of the children over 120. I worked with three fifth grade classes there, sixty children, grew fond of them, came to know them well. But I felt very strongly that of that group of children not one in four, if even that many, had the kind of health of mind and spirit that I would have wanted for a child of my own. And I suspect they were better than their counterparts at that same school today, for these are harder and more anxious times for children to grow up in.

You say that as a kid her age you were more interested in reading. I was too. But in the school I just mentioned, I can’t remember more than a handful of those super-bright children who ever read for fun. At 10 and 11, I read a great deal, on my own. By the time I was 13, away at boarding school, this had stopped . I had plenty of time at school, since I found the work easy, but I can’t remember ever, not even once, reading a book that had not been assigned. Many of those that were assigned, I loved–Joseph Conrad, for instance. But I never read any of his other books, just for my own pleasure. Neither did anyone else. We would have been astonished if anyone had suggested it. (No one did.) Reading had become one of those (many) things that you did when, and because, and only because, They  told you to.

With any luck at all, A should escape that way of looking at reading–and at life.

I suspect A is in any important sense a great deal smarter than most kids, and far more likely to adapt, and adapt well, to any new and difficult environment she might meet. See Jud Jerome’s piece in GWS#1 about his daughter who quit school for years, and when she went back found herself way ahead of the kids who had stayed in.

Ever since he wrote, I’ve been meaning to do a follow-up piece for  GWS about How People Get Smart.  They get smart by giving constant attention and thought to the concrete details of daily life , by having to solve problems which are real and important, where getting a good answer makes a real difference, and where Life or Nature tells them quickly whether their answer is any good or not. The woods are such a place; so is the sea; so is any place where real, skilled work is being done–like the small farm where Jud’s daughter worked, like your own orchards.

Like GWS for that matter. In putting out this magazine we do a great deal of what most people would call routine clerical work. But in doing this work we have hundreds of little, immediate problems to solve. Every time we put out a new issue we find ways to do the work a little better and more efficiently. There is nothing like it for sharpening wits.

Two summers ago I spent some time working with a small farmer in Nova Scotia, the neighbor and friend of the friends I was visiting. He had a large garden where he grew almost all his own vegetables, had about 20 acres in hay, raised Christmas trees. He also owned woodlots, from which he cut wood, for his own use and to sell. He was 72 years old, and did all this work himself, with the help of two horses. The skill, precision, judgment, and economy of effort he displayed in his daily work were a marvel to see.  The friend I was visiting, a highly intelligent and educated man, no city slicker but a countryman himself, who had long raised much of his own food and killed, butchered, and cured or frozen much of his own meat, said with no false modesty at all that if he farmed for fifteen or twenty years he might–with plenty of luck and good advice–eventually learn to farm as well as this old neighbor.

No use trying to answer all those questions about the future. The future is a mystery and a gamble whether you send her to school or take her out. One thing we are sure of–school is a very destructive experience for most of the children who go through it. Keep her out of it if you can. As for access to the world, as she gets older she will want to see more of it, and will find ways to do it. If she needs your help she will ask for it.

Meanwhile, if your own life and the lives of other adults around you that she knows are rich and satisfying, that will be the best possible example and encouragement for her. And unlike most children, she will not only have seen but shared most of the best parts of your lives.

THE WORK ETHIC

Poster (advertising a savings bank) in the Boston subways:

WON’T IT BE GREAT WHEN YOU FINALLY QUIT WORKING?

CHILDREN AND PLAY

Candy M. (Van Etten, NY 14889) wrote us two interesting letters earlier this year, saying in part:

One of the strongest revelations I have experienced in my life was during the first September out of S-chool since age 5. i was 22, and had plodded along all the proper channels for seventeen years, without questions. I was a winner.’ But for some reason I dared to not take my designated course (to be a social worker, or some such thing) and decided to travel. Life was real! Never had I experienced such exhilaration. And all those  compartments-chemistry, math, psychology, philosophy–were real questions and answers about the world.  They were living. For the first time for me, the world was whole. And there were so many things to do!

I eventually took a job as a Head Start T-eacher in a rural area where I wanted to live. I wanted to work with young children because it seemed like it would be an enjoyable job. And in many ways it was.   …I left teaching to try my hand at farming, building, and many other interesting activities. I returned four years later to two programs that I was more excited about: one, a cooperative nursery school organized and run by mothers, the other a home-based Head Start program where mother, child and I sit at the kitchen table once a week to engage in an hour’s worth of activities. Both, I felt strongly, could work us away from the expert-worshipping that exists in education, because the premise was that parents are teachers and play is learning.

Three major stumbling blocks I have come to in this work are: 1) Most parents’ goals are to prepare their children as best they can for S-chool, so that they can be winners (Ed. note–or at least, not among the worst losers). 2) Although there was progress, most parents see learning as something you get in school…given by experts who know best. 3) Most parents are not willing to get on the floor. I mean this literally and figuratively. That’s where these children are most of the time–and that’s where you have to be willing to go if you want to really hear what they have to say.  Also, perhaps it is a matter of letting go,’ or being interested or excited about the world, and getting your hands dirty exploring it. In your words, DOING. To too many people, teaching is lecturing–telling facts to deaf ears. In the realm of Doing, there is something very strange and unnatural about having a place and time solely for the purpose of teaching children.

When parents were active, and creative–DOING–in their own right, that’s when things began to flow with the children. During one home-based session we made paper bag puppets. L, her mother, and her grandmother were there. It began with L’s mother R instructing her how to make her puppet until I finally convinced R to join us and make one also. This she did, and it met with sarcasm and ridicule from grandma. Finally grandma was convinced to join us too, and when everyone relaxed and let their creativity flow a bit, we created some wonderful characters, and had a nice play.

I’m not going to continue this work after June. There are other things I would like to do, and I’m finding that early childhood education is getting too S-chooled…falling more and more into testing, labeling, ranking, and preparing children for S-chool, and in the process has lost much.

One other thing I’d like to share with you. A four year-old friend explained to me how she was learning to read. She told me that she has a Little Red Riding Hood record and a Little Red Riding Hood book. She listens to the record and looks through the book at the same time, and sometimes, when the record goes slow, she can match the words. She was not only learning to read on her own, but she was perfectly aware of how she was doing it.  (Ed. italics)

C and I are living examples of the effects of Education. I went obediently through 16 years of schooling, doing what I should (never more), and won gold medals for it. C, for the most part, went to school only when he wanted to. (He remembers first skipping school in kindergarten.) His father wasn’t at home, and his mother wasn’t around very much (going to college and working)  and, too, there was an intellectual environment in the family–lots of reading–and plenty of trips and day excursions to botanical gardens, museums, etc.

In ninth grade, C avoided school 90 days out of 180–finding effective ways to beat the system without them realizing. He always did fine on tests and was always in the top’ classes. Often, in Science, he was way ahead of the class curriculum.

At home, C would pick up his older sisters’ Chemistry book and read it cover to cover. Most of his learning was done this way–on his own.
Also he began taking responsibility for maintenance of the house–using tools, puttering around. He put in a new bathroom when he was 13.

C’s understanding of things, and how everything relates to everything else, is so much greater than mine.

Another amazing part of his learning (one I’d eventually like to write more about) is the game Atlas.  The family didn’t have much money, and did have plenty of German thriftiness–hence the children were not swamped with plastic toys and gadgets…They had to create their own play, so C and his brother and two sisters (all older) played this on-going game (invented mostly by his brother) for 8 years or more. It was a game of the World. Each child had tribes of people made from:  toothpaste caps glued to marbles (the Lilliputians); Hi-Q game pieces (the Microscopians); used magic markers with toothpick swords and aluminum foil shields (the Sudanis); cooking oil bottles decorated with paper (the Criscoeans), etc. The tribes fought battles in the garden, conquered territories, kept maps and records, held art shows, had a newspaper, and had their own languages and money systems.

It was an ingenious invention of play, which the children created entirely by themselves, and which lasted through time, always encompassing new interests and ideas as the children grew.
————–

Tx for fine letters. When I visit (now rarely) classrooms of little children (whom I would rather watch playing in the Public Garden), I always find an out of the way spot and sit down on the floor.  Soon children come up and start talking to me, showing me things, asking who I am, etc. Can I be sure that the same children might not have come up to me even if I had remained standing? No. But I think they would probably have waited a lot longer before doing it.

SPORTS

An article by Mark Sarner in the Winnipeg Tribune,  about the physical un-fitness of Canadian children (probably very like U.S. children in that respect), said, Children are certainly not as active as they used to be.  …Increased organization and supervision of sports such as hockey have resulted in players spending much more time on the sidelines than they did when games were spontaneous and unstructured.

Well, they never were unstructured. The difference is that they were structured by children, not adults.  The further difference is that when children structure a game, they want to get the most activity for everyone, not just imitate an adult game. If some kind of rule in a truly child’s game stops the action, someone will say after a while, Aw, this is no fun, and they will change the rule. The adults who run children’s sports rarely ever think of this.

I seldom see Little League baseball. When I do, what strikes me most of all is not the famous pressure form parents, but that so little baseball is being played. Most of the time, the pitcher is the biggest and strongest kid on the team, and blazes the ball past most of the little kids on the other team. There is very little hitting, base running, or fielding–so kids don’t learn how to do them. If children were running their own sports, those big, strong, precocious kids would be out playing with bigger and older kids, where they could get some good competition, and the little kids would be facing pitchers their own size, and there would be lots of action.

In another Peewee League game, the pitchers were so little that they couldn’t get the ball over the plate. Some fool adult was calling balls and strikes, and most batters walked.  A pitcher might walk seven, eight, ten batters in a row, while kids slowly walked around the bases and some other solemn adult kept score. Sensible kids running their own game would tell the pitcher to get up close enough to get the ball over, and would tell the batters to stay up there till they struck out or hit something. Bases on balls make sense for adult baseball, but not for little kids–no kids playing ball for fun would ever think up such a rule.

The best remark I ever heard about Little League was made by former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra. He went right to the heart of the matter, said that when he was a kid he used to count a day lost when he didn’t get in about 150 at bats, but that he had seen Little League games lasting for hours in which kids only got up to bat three or four times–and then, like as not, walked or struck out.

One year, when I was teaching at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, still very small and informal, we had about half an hour between lunch and the first afternoon class. In the spring a great game evolved to fill up this half hour. Boys and girls would rush out to a little odd-shaped pasture with a small irrigation ditch running right thru it. Not having enough players to make teams, we played four-a-cat. In strict four-a-cat, four people bat in rotation, the other players are in the field. The batters hit and run the bases just as in a regular ball game.  A batter stays on the batting team until s/he is put out. If s/he hits a fly ball which is caught, the fielder who caught the fly comes in and takes the batter’s place. If the batter strikes out or grounds out, s/he goes out to left field, and the fielding team rotates positions–pitcher goes to the end of the batting rotation, former first base becomes pitcher, second base becomes first base, and so on.

One trouble with this game was that the best batters were almost never put out, so most players didn’t get a chance to hit. Also, the teen-age pitchers (who had lost a lot of their children’s sense about games) were trying to strike out everyone, so the batters had to stand around for a long time waiting for a good pitch to hit. The first problem we solved with a rule–after three hits a batter had to go out into left field, just as if s/he had struck out or grounded out, the fielders rotated their positions, and the former pitcher would join the batters.  The fielders naturally kept close track of the batters, and when a batter made a third hit, a great cry of Rotate! would go up.

The second problem I solved by making myself the permanent pitcher. What I was able to do, and did, was make every pitch easy to hit. One day, which I still fondly and proudly remember, batters hit–hard–fourteen consecutive pitches. Action and excitement for everyone! The sluggers would blast triples and home runs till their three hits were used up.  The weak hitters got at least one turn at bat in each full rotation–in a half-hour game everyone would bat at least two or three times. And everyone got to play all the positions. No one kept score–there was no way to–though the sluggers probably remembered their home runs for a day or two. (My friend Hugh McKay hit one off me that I still remember.)

Wonderful games! It makes me feel good just to write about them.

A HOME MADE FABLE

The author of  The World At Two (GWS#6) told me that she had made up a story for her 2+ year-old boy, in which he was the hero, and all the other characters the animals on their small farm. He loved the story. Later she wrote it down and sent me a copy, saying, You may find it a bit cute but a 5 year-old boy wondered–in a whisper–all the way through, Is it true?’

When I asked her if I might print it in GWS, she said OK, but that she thought it didn’t fit and that people might think I was crazy for putting it in. I think it does fit. Many of our readers have very young children who, like the 5 year-old, might just enjoy hearing the story. But it also makes a larger point, that children, whether in city or country, are more likely to be interested in stories in which they play a part, and which are full of things drawn from their everyday life. Parents, or other people who know the children well, are the ideal people to make up such stories. Even if they are not very polished, such stories are likely to be more interesting than most of the stories in books for little children.

A.S. Neill, at Summerhill, used to make up stories for the children there, in which they were the leading characters, chasing or being chased by various spies, crooks, and villains. And as many know, ALICE IN WONDERLAND was made up for the real child who was the Alice in the story. So, take a shot at making up stories for your children. As with everything else, as you do it you’ll get better at it. Here is my friend’s story:

PIG IN THE BED

On Tuesday last week a strange thing went on;
Jack came home early and his parents were gone.
He knew right away that something was up
When he took a look at his friend the pup.
(He was drinking a coke, taking sips as he spoke.)

Hey Jack! Look out! Better step aside.
The horse and her colt are going for a ride!

Jack turned around when the pickup truck
Made the sound that it makes when it’s just starting up.

The horse put it in gear and sputtered past,
Then before she started going too fast,
She yelled, Sorry, Jack, to be taking your car,
But it’s been a long time since we’ve gone very far.

Jack stared, then he wondered, then he said, O.K.,
But will you try to get back by the end of the day?

He shrugged and went on down to the kitchen,
But when he got there it was full of his chickens!
Just fixing a little mid-day treat.
We get awfully tired of old corn to eat,
Said the hens as they mixed and blended and baked
Until they came up with banana spice cake.

Jack looked at that cake and said, Best let them be.
I’ll go in the living room and watch some T.V.
But there was the billy goat stretched out on the couch,
And when Jack tried to move him he started to grouch.
I barely sit down for my favorite show
When along you come and tell me to go!
The nanny and kids were there at his feet
Eating pretzels and popcorn, watching Sesame Street.
Finally Jack said, O.K., I’ll see you around,
But do you think you could please turn the volume down?

Instead Jack went in to take a quick bath,
But once in the bathroom he started to laugh.
For there quite relaxed in the big bathtub
Was the fat mother cow, having a scrub.

Then Jack got mad.  What do you mean!
Using my tub!  You’re not very clean!

Just the point, Jack.  It’s been quite a spell
Since I’ve had a good bath.  I was starting to smell.
Jack slammed the door.  He was angry and red.
Let me think. I’d better stretch out on my bed.

He went into his bedroom and shut the door,
But stopped when he heard a loud ugly snore.
From his blankets a wiggly tail stuck out,
And on his pillow he saw a big pig snout!
A pig in my bed! In between clean sheets!
The pig rolled over and begged, Let  me sleep.
There’s no bed as soft as this in the barn.
I’m sure I’m not doing your bed any harm.

Poor Jack let out a sad long groan.
What can I do? My parents aren’t home.
These animals have to go live in the barn.
This isn’t a nut house. This is a farm!

Then his dog came along and said, Listen, Jack,
You get rid of these animals before your parents come back.
You’ve got to act tough. Play the part of the boss.
Else this house and your truck will be a big loss.

I’ve got it! said Jack, and he started to scream:
Up in the barn there’s chocolate ice cream!
The chickens took wing, the pig climbed out of bed.
The cow left the tub and the goats quickly fled.
Up the road the horse was parking the truck.
Jack ran to the freezer. Whew! I’m in luck!

He got out two gallons of chocolate ice.
Plenty for everyone! As long as you’re nice.
He passed it out fairly to all on the farm,
To the pig in the pig pen and the cow in the barn.
Thank heavens you knew just what to do,
Said the dog, passing his plate. May I have some too?
Certainly, said Jack. But what will mom say
When she sees I ate two gallons of ice cream today?
————————————

TYPING

When I was in the Navy, I taught myself to touch type.  It was one of the best things I ever did.

I had been typing, hunt-and-peck style, since i was 10, when my Grandmother had given me a child’s typewriter (only capital letters).  At 10, I wrote long stories, or beginnings of stories, on it.  In college, I used it to type up class notes. I could type much faster than I could write. But in the Navy much of my typing was copying, where hunt-and-peck doesn’t work so well.  I had time on my hands (after the war ended), I knew how touch typing worked, and I decided to learn it.  I made a diagram of the keyboard, stuck it on the wall over the typewriter, and began to do all my typing looking only at the diagram, not at the keys. I also invented exercises to strengthen the weaker fingers of my left hand, words like waxed, crazed, sweater, or for the right hand, monopoly, million, etc. In a few months I could touch type much faster than I could do hunt-and-peck. By the time I left the Navy I was a skilled typist.

No skill I have ever learned (except possibly reading itself) has been more useful to me. I used it all the time in my work with the World Federalists. A few years later, when I came to Boston and began teaching elementary school, I typed all the letters that later made up much of HOW CHILDREN FAIL and HOW CHILDREN LEARN. I typed the manuscripts of my first three books, and the rough drafts of all the rest. I usually compose at the typewriter. Except for the first two issues, and a few stories in the third, I have typed everything in GWS. Without this skill, I could not have done, or do, any of the work that has been so important to me.

It is not a hard thing to learn. All you need is a typewriter, a keyboard diagram (which usually comes with the machine, or which you can buy at a stationery store or make yourself), some time, and practice. It is certainly nothing you need go to a school or class to learn. All the young children I have known have been fascinated with typewriters, and Omar Moore found that children five years old or even younger could easily learn touch typing and liked to do it. With electrics, finger strength is no longer a problem.

If I had a child learning at home, I would certainly get a portable electric typewriter. If I could not afford a new one, I would look for a second-hand machine, of which there are many. If that was still too expensive, I would try (using the Directory) to share the cost with one or more unschooling families, with each family having the machine for a certain number of months.

When Omar Moore taught young children to touch type (as a way of teaching reading), he chose a different color for each typing finger. Thus index fingers and all the keys they hit) might be marked blue, second fingers green, ring fingers orange, little fingers red. He marked each child’s fingers with a little dab of paint or magic marker on the fingernail. He made colored caps for the typewriter keys, so that the children had to look at the chart to know which key was which (a good trick in teaching yourself). He found they very quickly learned the keyboard, and that their fingers soon became agile.

I would guess that a child who had learned to type rapidly might have a lot of fun writing stories, certainly much more than if he had to go through the slow and painful business of writing them by hand. (Though parents of children learning at home might also do well to look into Italic handwriting, which was for a while at least taught in many British schools–it is easier to learn, quicker, and more stable, handsome, and legible.) Another advantage of being able to type neatly is that a child can write letters (asking questions, etc.) to adults without giving away the fact that he is a child, and so be reasonably sure of getting a courteous and sensible reply. It is, in short, another path into the adult world.

Many years ago I was talking to a 20-yr-old friend, then looking for a job. I asked if she could type. She said No. I said it might be useful to learn. She said, I don’t want to learn it, because if I know how to type then they’ll just give me some job where I have to type. Well, I suppose that way of looking at things is OK if you are thinking only of good jobs and bad jobs, or about what they are going to make or let you do. But if you are thinking instead of finding meaningful work, then it makes sense to think of making yourself as useful as possible to the people who are already doing the work. Being a good typist is one way. Also, if you are a fast and accurate typist, you will almost always and everywhere be able to find some kind of money-making job, if that is what you need order to do something else that you want.

I would also recommend very strongly to parents who would like to or are trying to take children out of school that if they do not know how to type, at least one of them learn. It will be much better if  all letters to school people and/or other officials are typed. For one thing, it is faster,and there may be times when you will want to write very long letters and proposals. For another, it is easier to copy. Most important of all, it is impressive and even a little intimidating to the schools. This is important; it helps to give them the impression, without your actually ever having to say it, that if they get into a battle with you, they are going to lose.

A CASE LOST

GWS#3 reported briefly the case of Tom and Martha Lippitt, who were convicted by a Cleveland Juvenile Court Judge, Angelo Gagliardo, of the charge of civil neglect of their children, because they had taken them out of a church school and were teaching them at home. Recently, a friend has sent us a more complete summary of that case. It says, in part:

On June 20, 1977, the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Board of Education took the Lippitts to Juvenile Court on a charge of civil neglect. (There is no such charge as civil neglect in Juvenile Court). Judge Angelo J. Gagliardo presided over this court . Mr. Lippitt was not permitted to consult with his attorney under penalty of contempt of court, witnesses were not permitted to testify on Lippitt’s behalf, and the Judge continually lost his temper. Therefore, the record does not include the Lippitts’ reasons for refusing to send their children to either a public or a private chartered school. These reasons include: Immoral teachers, bad textbooks, the teaching of Secular Humanism… In the chambers the judge also ordered the plaintiff to bring both criminal and civil actions against the Lippitts for the same charge, neglect of their children. The Lippitts lost the civil neglect case and were ordered to enroll their children in either a private or public chartered school.

On November 2, 1977, Tom was brought to trial on criminal neglect charges. Tom demanded a jury trial. By this action the case was taken out of Judge Gagliardo’s hands. The evidence proving Alice and Amy Lippitt were receiving a proper’ and necessary’ education was so overwhelming that Judge Murray from Madison County ordered a directed verdict of not guilty and said:

There has been no showing that what was taught, the methods or subjects,
was anything other than what was proper and necessary… The testing of the
children would indicate that they are at grade level and are being taught in
accordance with religious beliefs which their parents are in a position
to determine.

On December 7, 1977 Judge Gagliardo stayed the proceedings against Martha Lippitt pending the outcome of the civil neglect appeal. …The Lippitt case was then placed before a three-judge panel: Judges Stillman, Krenzler, and Wasserman. The judges denied Tom and Martha’s appeal. The Lippitts had listed twelve errors in the appeal; however, the judges addressed themselves to only six of the errors…it was not until about two months later that the last six errors of the appeals were ruled on, and then not completely, just as on the first ruling. The judges’ opinion was mailed to the Lippitts without being journalized and Judge Gagliardo immediately issued a warrant for Mrs. Lippitt’s arrest. The law allows a ten day rest period to present a Motion for Reconsideration.

On March 10, 1978 Martha Lippitt was physically dragged out of her own house and her children were taken…to the Metzenbaum Home for Children and deprived of any visitation rights. Martha was taken to jail and released on a $500 bond.  …The parents had to put up a $1000 guarantee that they would send their children permanently  to the Heritage Christian School (a non-chartered school) or another school with an approved educational’ program. A fine of $100 a day will be levied against the parents for every day they do not send the children to the Christian School. …The Lippitts appealed their case to the Ohio Supreme Court, but the Court has refused to hear it. Next step? The United States Supreme Court.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN?

I have left out some other horrifying details about the way in which this judge runs his court, which would not have been out of place in Nazi Germany. If this report sent to me is accurate, the judge is an incompetent bully and tyrant. There are such judges in many jurisdictions, often appointed in return for political favors and support. The point is that where such judges exist, lawyers know about them. They also know whether or not they can be avoided, and how.

Any unschoolers thinking seriously about a court battle with the local schools would do well to find out in what court or courts, and before what judge or judges, they might have to appear. This is the kind of thing lawyers know. GWS has said in earlier issues that about school law itself we may know, and can surely find out, as much as or more than the lawyers. But about judges and courts, a good local lawyer probably knows a great deal more than we could find out. Of course, we should ask some questions, to find out what s/he knows. And it might be a good idea, if it can be done, to make a few visits to the courtrooms of whatever judges we might have to deal with.

One other thing. During the midst of these proceedings, Mrs. Lippitt left town with the children and went into hiding for two months. Understandable enough, but probably not a good idea. I have no objection to people getting their children out of school by whatever tricks they can think up. But if we are going into court, we had probably better do things by the book.

This is by no means the only such mistake the Lippitts made. Indeed, their whole way of bringing this issue before the court can be seen as practically a textbook example of How Not To Do It. Early in the proceedings, Mr. Lippitt said loudly and publicly, perhaps in court, perhaps outside, perhaps both–it makes little difference which, since his remarks (as he surely intended) received wide publicity–that the public schools were cesspools. In saying this, he needlessly attacked the beliefs and prejudices of a judge who was probably conventional and certainly (as the record shows) highly inflammable. The moral might be, if you are going to have to deal with a judge with a bad temper, find out what things make him angry, and don’t say them if you can avoid it. Beyond that, in attacking such a well-established and powerful institution as the public schools, Mr. Lippitt could only have been seen by the judge as inviting him to agree with him. Now there might, somewhere, be a judge or two who might secretly admit to a trusted friend that they thought the public schools were cesspools. But no judge is going to be willing to make, or even risk appearing to make, such a statement from the bench. There is no use asking judges to agree that the public schools are bad places. They will not, and asking them to do so will only drive them into the position of having to defend the public schools, a position they might not otherwise have chosen to take.

To this mistake the Lippitts, or one of their supporters, added another. At some point in the proceedings she began to picket the courthouse, marching up and down angrily, loudly, and obscenely denouncing the judge. The judge, as might have been expected, overreacted, and (no doubt breaking the law in half a dozen different ways) had her dragged into his courtroom, handcuffed, and forced her to repeat what she had said outside. This bit of 1960’s style courthouse drama may well have seriously prejudiced the Lippitts’ chances of winning their appeal to a higher court. The courts, rightly enough, think of themselves as not only settling disputes and trying cases, but beyond that, as upholding an entire system of law and justice. They are likely to react very strongly and negatively when they feel that the system as such, the very dignity of the courts and the judges, are being attacked, as they clearly were in this case.

Now there might be times when defendants in court, like the famous Chicago Seven, might choose to use courtroom drama as a way of making certain kinds of political statements to the general public. That is OK if you have already decided that you cannot possibly get a favorable ruling from that court, and therefore, that your purpose in court is not to get a favorable ruling but to do something else, whatever that might be. But if you want a court to rule in your favor, above all in a matter as radical as unschooling–far more radical than opposition to the Vietnam war–it would be wiser to treat judges and courts with all possible deference and courtesy.

The summary of the Appeals Court ruling says, in part:

Among a number of assignments of error, Mr. Lippitt, citing State v. Whisner… argued that had he been criminally charged…the state would not have prevailed.  In Whisner the court held that the elementary minimum standards of the state board of education should never be so comprehensive in scope and effect as to abrogate a citizen’s fundamental right of religious freedom. In the present case, however, the court of appeals found that the minimum standards concerned do not present the same constitutional problem in that the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Board of Education merely expects the Lippitts to provide their children with an adequate education taught by a properly qualified teacher. Mrs. Lippitt does not possess an elementary teaching certificate, and without it her qualification to teach was not demonstrated to the Juvenile Court. (Ed. italics)

The court of appeals, therefore, held that the interest of the state in insuring (Ed. italics) that the teachers of its school-aged citizens are reasonably competent and knowledgeable must be protected and enhanced. The court further stated that a certification requirement does not in any way conflict with the Lippitts’ stated beliefs, nor does it render instruction at home impossible since Mrs. Lippitt could perform tasks necessary to qualify herself for elementary school teaching. In the present case the Lippitts claimed religious reasons for failing to send their children to both a private and a public school, yet they failed to demonstrate how a public or private education would undermine their religious values. They did not establish that they belonged to an accepted religious group which offered a well-structured alternative to school education.

The court of appeals concluded, therefore, that the Lippitts’ First Amendment rights had neither been impaired nor unduly burdened by the provisions of the compulsory education laws of Ohio. The judgment of the juvenile court was affirmed.

Without the full ruling of the appeals court, we cannot tell how fair or unfair that ruling may have been, nor what are the chances that it may be overruled in a higher court. Certainly the Lippitts were able to convince Judge Murray in criminal court that they were qualified to teach and were in fact doing as good a job as the schools. But this was not part of the record of the juvenile court trial, and it was this trial that was being appealed. I don’t know whether the findings of Judge Murray were submitted as evidence to the appeals court, or whether they considered it, or if they did not, on what grounds, or whether their failure to consider it may be regarded by a still higher court as possible grounds for reversal. What little I have seen makes me suspect that the appeals court had grounds enough for taking the Lippitts’ side, if they wished to do so, but that, perhaps for the reasons I suggested, they did not wish to do so.

It also looks as if Mr. Lippitt and his attorneys relied too heavily on Whisner, and did not prepare enough of a case to show that what they were doing at home was at least as good as what the schools were doing. It is not enough, in short, for parents to say what they don’t like about the schools; they have to make a strong case that what they are doing will be better or at least no worse.

I underlined the word insuring in the summary of the appeals court  ruling to make this point, that it may someday be wise or even necessary for an unschooling family to show in court that the requirement that teachers have a certificate does not insure competence at all, and indeed, that there is no evidence whatever to show that people with such certificates are, by whatever measure, more competent than those without them. It could probably also be shown that much of what people have to learn or do in order to get such certificates has only to do with the problems of teaching children in large groups, and is wholly irrelevant to the task of teaching at home.

Beyond that, it might still further be shown that much of what people have to study, and presumably, to appear to agree with, in order to pass education courses and receive a certificate, would and does indeed offend and outrage the religious convictions of a great many people. I have in mind here much of behaviorist psychology, which holds that such ideas as freedom, dignity, choice, and will are illusions and that we are basically like rats, responding automatically to changes in our environment. Many state courts might be ready to rule, if asked, that no one should be required to believe, or pretend to believe, or even to study, such ideas, in order to have the right to teach, whether at school or at home.

And we could add still further that to say to parents who are deeply distressed by things being said or done to their children in school that all they have to do is spend three years of time and $7500+ of money–assuming that there is a school of education near them and that they can get into it–in order to get the teaching certificate that will allow them to teach their own children, is hardly a reasonable remedy for what many people will feel are sharp and immediate wrongs.

A CASE WON

From The New York Times, Jan. 26, 1979:

An estimated 5,000 Christian fundamentalist schools that have sprung up in the past few years are claiming the right to keep the state completely out of their affairs… They do not want to be told what textbooks to use, what educational policies to adopt or even that they must be licensed. …

Representatives of 20 non-accredited Christian schools in Kentucky fought a 1977 ruling by the State Board of Education that parents who used such schools were liable to prosecution and their children subject to being listed as habitual truants. They hired William B. Ball of Harrisburg, PA, a lawyer who is a frequent defender of religious freedom.

At least for the moment, they have won. Despite powerful opposition from many political leaders, a Kentucky Circuit Court Judge, Henry Meigs, ruled on Oct. 3 that the state had no right to make its regulations mandatory. Judge Meigs said the board must refrain from limiting the schools’ choice of textbooks and from forcing teachers to be certified. The state has appealed. …

———
I am trying to get a copy of Judge Meigs’ ruling, in which, I have been told, he made a point that as far as I know has not been made in any previous court ruling on compulsory education. He said that no one has been able to show that teachers with certificates are any better at teaching than those without them. This is of course true, and a very good point for unschoolers to make. But this is the first time that a judge has said it. Perhaps we now can get some other judges to say it.
If Judge Meigs’ ruling stands, it may be much easier for parents, certainly in Kentucky and probably in many other states, to get their children out of school by calling their own home a Christian school. There is no reason, after all, why the word Christian could not just as easily be applied to schools which preach and practice tolerance, brotherhood, kindness, generosity, and love, as to schools which preach and practice (as some at least do) intolerance, racism, cruelty, greed, and hate.

THE RULING

FRANKLIN CIRCUIT COURT
CIVIL ACTION NO. 88314

DIVISION 1

Filed Oct. 4, 1978

Reverend C.C. Hinton, Jr. et al (Plaintiffs) vs. Kentucky State Board of Education, et al (Defendants)

It would not be difficult to find in the record of this case abundant support for a conclusion that the regulatory scheme fashioned by the State Board, and sought by it to be imposed upon these plaintiff schools under the dubious authority of approval (KRS 156.160) is far beyond Constitutional limits of legislative delegation. …

[Plaintiffs’] incontrovertible proof shows–and the demeanor of the witnesses confirms–irreconcilable philosophical differences between their educational concepts, notions of textbook and curriculum content and teacher qualification. These differences are not fanciful or arbitrary, but very real and substantial, having a foundation in firmly held religious belief. … Expert testimony in this case certainly established that there is not the slightest connection between teacher certification and  enhanced educational quality in State schools …

The State is unable to demonstrate that its regulatory scheme applied to the public schools has any reasonable relationship to the supposed objective of advancing educational quality … Plaintiffs, on the other hand, have shown that without benefit of the State’s ministrations their educational product is at least equal to if not somewhat better than that of the public schools, in pure secular competence.

The rights of the plaintiffs named herein should be declared in accordance with the reasons herein set forth, and upon the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law annexed hereto; action and threatened action of the State against these plaintiffs or any of them heretofore enjoined temporarily, is now hereby enjoined (i.e., forbidden–Ed.) permanently, all at defendants’ costs.

Given under my hand this 4th day of October 1978.
Henry Meigs
Judge, Franklin Circuit Court.
—–

I hope in the near future to be able to obtain a copy of Judge Meigs’ Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. I hope also to learn more about the specific kind of expert testimony that established that there is no connection between teacher certification and other state regulations, and educational quality. Meanwhile, I should think that unschoolers, either in their home teaching proposals to schools or, if they are in a legal contest, in their briefs, could make good use of these words of Judge Meigs.

(Note: the Kentucky State Board of Education is appealing this ruling to the State Supreme Court, and has said that if it loses there it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. This will not, of course, be a test of compulsory schooling as such, but only of the right of the State to apply certain standards and requirements to private religious schools.)

LEGAL PROCEDURES

At the risk of explaining the obvious, a word on legal procedure. If someone–a private citizen, a corporation, or a government agency or agent, is doing or trying to do something to you that you think is against the law and violates your legal rights, you can appeal to the courts for what is called injunctive relief.  That is, you can ask the court to enjoin, i.e., forbid that private citizen, corporation, government agent, or whatever, from doing to you whatever they have been doing. Such a statement from the court, saying in effect, Stop doing that, is called an injunction.

In two or three places in the country the schools and their attorneys have tried a new, and under the circumstances, perfectly sensible, legal trick. Fearing that if they charge the parents with truancy they, the State, will bear the burden of showing beyond reasonable doubt, as in the Sessions case, that the parents’ proposed teaching plan is not adequate or equivalent, they have instead charged the children themselves with truancy, thus putting the matter into Juvenile Court, where the ordinary rules and safeguards of due process do not apply, and where, as in the Lippitt case, the parents may not be allowed to present any evidence to show that their home teaching is in fact adequate.

My guess, which I will check out with those more experienced, is that if and when the schools do this, the best counter move by the parents would be to ask for injunctive relief, i.e. to sue the schools in regular court for attempting to deny them the company and custody of their children without due process. My guess, again, is that many or most courts would enjoin the Juvenile Court from having anything further to do with the matter. The schools could then decide either to charge the parents with truancy in a regular court or to drop the matter and let them teach their children at home.

ASK YOUR LIBRARY

A public library recently subscribed to GWS, saying that they were doing so at the request of one of their (what’s the word?) users/subscribers/members).

Quite often libraries will order books and/or publications on request. Readers might ask any libraries near them to subscribe to GWS. More people will learn about unschooling–and the money will help GWS. Thanks.

A TEACHER WRITES

L.M. has written us from N.C., saying, in part:

As a former school teacher, a part-time teacher of my own children, and as a present day violin teacher, I agree with your general ideas. S-chools are inhumane, in their continual testing, ranking, and grading of children and in their rigid rules, and especially in their perpetual, secret, damaging record keeping …

Reading always seemed easy to teach, a matter of a few months’ instruction. My oldest daughter learned to print words and copy letters from her brother’s old alphabet blocks. I told her the sounds, got her to practice writing words a bit, maybe a half-hour a day. In a few months she could read her brother’s 6th grade books. I did not care about that. What I liked was the wide reading she did by choice at the age of 5, and the imaginative stories she wrote. Nobody told her to write or gave her gold stars. Whatever satisfaction there is about teaching for me is to see a child using reading, writing or violin playing for her own reasons.

The younger daughter also learned to read–supposedly impossible because her IQ was tested at 40 or so! She also learned from those old blocks.

About the peculiar Learning Disability theory that these children see letters upside down, etc. how can this be? The test chart for illiterates looks like this [              ]and the person tested points out the direction of the figures, thus:  [                  ]. How could such a test mean anything if 1/3 of the population sees letters every which way? This letter is running longer than intended. Please let me know if you find any of it of use. (Ed. note–indeed we do!)

I write a great deal, keep a diary, etc. So much involves the youngest daughter,and I really do not want publicity for her. She is a pleasant young person, spends a lot of time reading, and is not like the people usually described as retarded. … She is doing about 100 times as well as all the dismal predictions which were made when she was 4 years old. I suppose she is the reason I become so unhappy about all this ranking and classifying of young children, even when it is done by doctors, as in her case. It is even worse when by S-chools, as you call them.
—–

S-chools refers to a distinction I made, in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, between S-chools and s-chools. S-chools are places where people have to go, either because the law tells them to, or because they believe (with some reason) that without the tickets they can only get from schools they can’t get decent work. What I call s-chools, on the other hand, are places like cooking schools, ski schools, schools of dance or martial arts, craft schools, etc. which, since they are not compulsory,and since they don’t give credits, diplomas, etc., people only go to because they want to.
—–

From a later letter:

In the 1940s I taught in a Nebraska country school. We were required to teach the Dick and Jane’ reading texts. But actually I used some little old-fashioned primers which were at the back of the school book cupboard. I can no longer recall title, author, or publisher, but the books appealed to young children. Each page showed a picture illustrating a letter sound, such as a baby reaching for an apple and making the first sound of the word. Also, there were a few other short words containing the sound. I would show and at first read the words to the child, and soon he or she would grasp the two ideas that letters meant sounds and that words are written and sounded from left to right.

In two or three months, without any long drawn out amount of drill, the children were able to read whatever appealed to them. Little children do want to read, and they do not need 500 rules. As you say, 2 principles will suffice.
The old-fashioned school was not so bad. The children had more freedom than they do now. We had fun, did quite a lot of singing, and I used to read aloud to them quite a bit. Perhaps because these farm children were needed at home to do household and farm chores, they were usually responsible youngsters.

Regarding attention span of young children, on Sunday I had a good time watching little J who is 9 months old, cheerful and busy. He crawls about on hands and knees, stands up by chairs. He likes doors, opening and closing them. he pushed a bedroom door almost shut and pulled it open over and over, very carefully so it would not latch. He knew if it did latch, then he could not get it open. He pays attention to his projects for ten minutes or longer. As you have observed, little children are good learners without any teacher at all.

LEARNING EXCHANGES

A friend wrote to say that many of the Learning Exchanges that started in the past few years have closed because of lack of money. I replied in part:

One reason, maybe the main reason they got in trouble is that they almost instantly got too fancy. They missed Illich’s point about being passive networks, and began to think of themselves as active organizations that had to plan and promote something. When Illich spoke of a card file, he meant literally just that, not programs, meetings, newsletters.

Here’s a model. To the Learning Exchange in Anytown, Ms  Smith sends a letter and a return postcard. In the letter she says, (for example), I want to learn something about Home Appliance Repair. The Exchange files her card under Home Appliance Repair (or however it wants to index it). One day Ms Brown sends in a card saying that she knows something about repairing appliances that she is willing to share. The Exchange looks under home Appliance Repair in its files, takes out Ms Smith’s card (and any others), puts down Ms Brown’s name and address, and mails them back to Ms Smith and others who sent them in. They can then get in touch with Ms Brown and work out some sort of plan. But that isn’t the Exchange’s business. Its work is done when it sends back those cards.

If Ms Smith is happy with what she can learn from Ms Brown, fine. If not, and she wants to look for more information, she sends a new letter and card and repeats the process. If she also wants to find out about something else, say Chinese Cooking, she sends in another letter and card for that. Ms Brown’s card stays in the Have Information half of the file. Once every year or two–maybe, if it feels like it–the Exchange prints up, cheaply, a list of the people in its Have Information file, and maybe gives it away, maybe sells it for $1 or so, more if it is fairly large.

How do people hear of it? Perhaps a few announcements on bulletin boards. People tell other people. A slow process? No doubt. But what’s the big hurry? Being in a big hurry is why all those Learning Exchanges have had to fold up.

Hard to see anything here that would $10,000+ a year, need government grants, etc. No office, no rent, no phone, nothing but–literally–two card files and a mailing address, which might best be a post office box number. If people write in asking how to use the learning exchange, a form postcard could tell them that.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

We need three kinds of volunteer help.
1) People who live in or near Boston who, either during weekdays or on weekends could do some work in the office. Some of this work might involve typing, some not.
2) People who live in or near Boston who could do typing work for us at home.
3) People in other parts of the country who would be willing to help us by writing, or better yet telephoning, some of the 8000 or so people who wrote to us after the Donahue show, or perhaps people whose subscriptions have expired and who have not yet renewed them. People tend to be busy and forgetful, and need to be reminded now and then to do what they really mean to do. We can do some of this reminding from the office, but by no means all.

We are probably going to depend to some extent on such volunteer help for a long time to come. For anything you may be able to do, we will be grateful.

NEW BOOKS ON OUR LIST

We have added three books to the list that we sell here.

The first is my own newest book, NEVER TOO LATE. This is the story of how, in spite of a non-musical background, I became interested in music, and eventually decided to learn first the flute and later the cello, and the trials, problems, dangers, discoveries, and joys of that experience. it is a book about music, about finding out what one wants most, about starting something new, about struggling and coping with fear, about learning, about teaching, and probably about some other things as well. It was fun to write, and I think will be fun to read.

The second is GNOMES. This is a charming, funny beautifully written and illustrated scientific study of gnomes, for children of any age, but not just for children. A wonderful book to read aloud. For fuller description, see GWS#3.

The third is a new book by Herbert Kohl, GROWING WITH YOUR CHILDREN . The jacket describes it well:

This is a book on child-raising unlike any other, a book that speaks in direct practical terms of the parents we wish we were and the parents we hope to become. It confronts the basic questions that underlie the daily issues of bedtimes and manners, schoolwork and messy rooms, broken toys and talking back,’ questions that parents, in one way or another, find themselves asking over and over again: How can I help my child be strong in a world that saps strength? … How can I pass on values to my children when no one seems to agree on what’s right or wrong?

What is important and different about this book is that it is not simply a book of tricks or techniques, unlike too many others one might name. There are tricks and techniques in it, many of them, things to say, things to do. But these tricks are useful and practical because they arise out of the ways in which Kohl thinks and feels about his children, and himself, and the world around them. He is not just a clever trickster, but a humane and intelligent person and parent who things about the meanings of things. I know of no book to compare with it. Unlike the trick books, it could make a real difference in the way we see and live with children.

OLD FAVORITE

Most GWS readers have probably seen the National Geographic Magazine, or know what it is. For any who may not, it is a monthly magazine, crammed full of beautiful color photographs, about all parts of the earth–land, air, sea, under the sea. The contents of the Sept. 1978 issue give a rough idea: Solo To The Pole, about the first person to reach the North Pole alone; Syria Tests A New Stability;  Undersea Wonders of the Galapagos ; A Most Uncommon Town, about outstanding modern buildings in Columbus, Indiana; The Joy of Pigs ; New Mexico’s Mountains of Mystery. Another recent issue had an article about the two men who first crossed the Atlantic in a balloon. And so on.

Over the years I have seen the National Geographic often at the homes of friends. This last year I subscribed for the first time, to report on it for GWS. It was always good, but has become much better. There is a wider range of stories, and the photography, which used to tend to look like the kind of photos tourists take, has become very dramatic and beautiful. The writing is clear and easy for children. A wonderful magazine.

You can buy the magazine without joining the National Geographic Society, but since this costs $11 a year, while membership, which includes the magazine, costs only $9.50/yr (U.S.), $12/yr. (Canada), $13.80 elsewhere (U.S.$), it makes more sense to become a member. People with little money can share a subscription with others. This is a magazine all children should have a chance to see. (Write The Sec’y, Nat’l Geographic Society, P.O. Box 2895, Washington DC 20013)

The National Geographic also publishes many beautiful and interesting books for children (and others). Also maps, including a map of the oceans showing all the deepest points, which is something that fascinated me as a kid and still does.

Editor–John Holt
Managing Editor–Peg Durkee