GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING  -  #7

Many things have happened since you received GWS#6.  Two unschooling families have won important rulings from state courts — more on this later.  Time magazine, after talking at length with a number of unschooling families, ran a fine story about this in their Dec. 4, 78 issue.  Soon after, I was invited to appear, with Linda and Bob Sessions and their children, on the Phil Donahue show in Chicago.  In the four weeks since the first airing of the show (it goes out in different cities on different days), we received 2700 letters!  Some of these sound only curious, but at least half sound really interested in our work.  Needless to say, for the two of us to read and answer that much mail has been quite a task.  And we expect another 1000 or so before we’re through.  If most of those who sound interested decide to subscribe, it should be a great boost to us.

The group subscription record has moved West again, this time to Lincoln, Neb., where readers have taken out a 22X subscription — and for 18 issues!

At the same time, the publishers of my newest book (NEVER TOO LATE - Delacorte) said that they were very interested in a possible book about unschooling.  Much of the material for this would come from GWS, but I have already written 10-15,000 words of new material and have more still to write.  All this action has delayed this issue of GWS.  But barring other avalanches of mail, we should have #8 out fairly soon.

GOOD NEWS

Since we wrote the story “Help Wanted” in this issue, a Massachusetts Superior Court has handed down a ruling favorable to the Perchemlides family.  It did not (as I did not think it would) say point blank to the School District, “Approve this family’s program.”  What it said was, in effect, “Take another look at this program, and this time, be reasonable.”  The family will probably have to (and will be wise to) make a few small concessions to the schools, probably in the area of curriculum, though I have strongly urged that they not yield an inch in the crucial matter of testing and evaluation.  But the effect of the ruling will almost certainly be that they will be able to teach their children at home.

The Judge’s decision is long and intricate, and a very good lesson in how judges think.  Since we are so late with this issue, I won’t try to quote it or discuss it much here.  (For $2, we will send you a copy of the complete ruling.)  But he made one novel and (to us) extremely important and useful point, that the Constitution guarantees to citizens many implied rights, rights which it does not specifically name, and that the right of parents to control the education of their children is one such implied right.  He did not put this right under the First Amendment, but under the Ninth, saying that the right to educate one’s children can be seen as a logical part of a general right to privacy, the right to control one’s private affairs.

But he also said that the right of the states to oversee the education of the young was itself a constitutionally protected right, falling under the general heading of police powers.  From this it follows that in this matter of education the rights of parents and the rights of states are competing rights, which must be balanced against each other.  The schools, therefore, may not arbitrarily reject, as they did in this case, a proposed home teaching plan, without giving any reasons.  They must give reasons, which must be compelling, and may not include such trivia as “the children will miss the social life,” or “it will set a bad precedent.”

This is the narrow line that we must try to (and I think can) persuade the courts to walk.  Yes, the States may oversee the education of the young, and Yes, to that end they may establish schools and even make them compulsory, but at the same time, No, they may not establish a monopoly of schools or even of methods of schooling (this is the meaning of Pierce and other cases), and No, they may not say that for people to educate their own children is in and of itself a crime, or arbitrarily and without due process deny them the right to do so.

HELP NEEDED

Mr. and Mrs. Perchemlides (GWS#4), when they told the local school board that they wanted to take their child out of school, were told by them to submit a home teaching program.  They did — twenty pages long, detailed and thorough.  The school board (as often happens) called it “inadequate,” without giving any reasons, or saying how they would have to change it to make it adequate.

In some states where the law makes home instruction a legal alternative, such action by school boards can, I believe, be attacked in court on two grounds: 1) It denies due process 2) It sets aside the stated will of the legislature.  As I have said, I do not think we should try to get courts to rule that compulsory schooling, or things done in and by schools, are un-Constitutional.  All such arguments lead to the Supreme Court, which if they hear such cases at all are for some time to come likely to rule against us.

Beyond that, I think we would be unwise to make it part of our legal strategy to ask local or state courts to overrule school boards by specifically approving home teaching programs which the boards have turned down.  In the first place, the legislatures have specifically given that task to the school boards.  In the second place, the courts may very well say that they are not competent to make such decisions.  In the third place, they may fear (with good reason) that if in a few cases they do rule in favor of parents and against the local school board, they will soon be swamped with such cases.  Finally, there is no reason to expect that in matters of education most judges will be any more tolerant or enlightened than most school boards.

But I do think we may be able to get many courts to say that if state law makes home instruction a legal option (and gives school boards the right to approve or disapprove such programs), these boards are legally obliged 1) to make public some explicit and reasonable standards which such programs must meet in order to be approved 2) to approve all programs which meet such standards, and 3) where they claim that a given program does not meet them, to state explicitly in what respects it does not and how it would have to be changed in order to do so.

This, legally, is where the Perchemlides family is at the moment.  They are trying to convince the court that, in disapproving their program of home instruction, the local school board acted arbitrarily and unreasonably.  To do that, they must persuade the court, not necessarily to overrule the school board by approving their program, but only to say that the program has enough intrinsic merit so that the board could not turn it down out of hand, without reasons.  To help them, I have asked some Professors of Education I know to look at their program, and if they think it is good, or at least equivalent to what is done in most schools, to say so in writing.  So far, four have agreed to do so, and I believe others will join them.

Which brings me at last to the point of this particular article.  It would be very helpful if we had, from all parts of the country, a list of Professors of Education, and also, school administrators — Superintendents, Curriculum Supervisors, School Board Presidents or other officers and members — who would be willing from time to time to look over proposed home instruction programs of unschoolers, and if they think they are adequate and/or equivalent to what local schools provide, to put this in writing.  Will you, readers of GWS, please help us make such a list, either by asking any Professors of Education, etc. you know if they would agree to be on such a list, or, if you are a Professor of Education, etc., by giving us your name.  We would not publish these names in GWS (unless some people asked to have their names published).  But we would send the list to unschoolers who asked for it, and they could get in touch with such Professors, etc. directly.

A REMINDER

The label or address on your GWS (or envelope) will have on it a symbol like 1 07, 2 08, 3 12, etc.  The first of these two numerals tells us how many copies of each issue to send you.  The second numeral tells us, and you, the last issue of your present subscription.

If your subscription ends with this issue of GWS, and if you wish to continue to subscribe (we hope you do), please renew your subscription right away.  Otherwise we will have to send you a renewal notice, which will take time and money we would much rather use to make a better magazine, help unschoolers, and find new readers.  If for any reason you have decided that you do not wish to receive GWS any more, it will be a great help to us if you will drop us a card telling us that.  Thanks very much.

RULING FROM IOWA

In the case of The State of Iowa, plaintiff, vs. Robert Sessions and Linda Sessions, defendants, the following excerpts from the recent ruling of the District Court of Iowa in and for Winneshiek County may be of great interest to many GWS readers:

“The above cases, involving the filing of criminal charges and convictions thereon against Robert Sessions and Linda Sessions in Magistrate Court, now come before the Court upon appeals to District Court.  The matters as criminal matters, as contemplated by statute, were heard de novo by the Court on appeal.  . . . The Court, after reviewing the file, considering the evidence, statements of counsel, and the brief and arguments submitted, now enters the following:

FINDINGS OF FACT

1.  Robert Sessions and Linda Sessions were each charged under Section 299.1 in that each did unlawfully fail to have his or her 7-year-old son, Erik Sessions, attend a public school and/or obtain equivalent instruction elsewhere.

2.  They were tried under that charge in Magistrate’s Court.  They were each found guilty and were each sentenced to pay a fine of $50 and costs were assessed against them. . . . Appeal was thereafter filed.

6.  The defendants requested the board of directors of the Decorah Community School District to approve their home teaching program.  The board refused, and the matter was appealed to the State Department of Public Instruction, and a decision was rendered by the board . . . sustaining the position of the Decorah board and stating in substance (a) that the Sessions met the first test, that is, of an equivalent instruction program . . . (b) The Sessions did not meet the second test, that is, the requirement of  ,providing instruction by a certified teacher.’ . . .

7.  Thereafter, the Sessions filed a petition for declaratory ruling with the state board in which clarification and guidance or interpretation was asked in the following form: ,Precisely what must we do to comply with the “instruction by a certified teacher” clause of 299.1 of the 1977 Code of Iowa?

On May 10, 1978, the board answered the query in letter form [stating in substance] . . .  (c) , . . . the appropriate standard to be used to determine the amount of instruction required by a certified teacher is that portion of a normal day during which instruction occurs in the public school district of residence. . . . strongly imply the necessity of teacher presence or close proximity throughout the instructional process.’ . . . This letter and information reached the defendants some time after their conviction.

8.  Defendants assert the unconstitutionality of the charge in that: (a) the law is vague on standards of public instruction. (b) It violates the 1st and 14th Amendments. (c) Denial of due process by the action of the Decorah Community School District Board. . . .

The Court enters the following:

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

3.  Defendants further assert unconstitutionality by virtue of alleged violations of the 1st and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution.  Defendants in effect assert that their right to freedom of religion has been denied by denying the defendants their right to educate their child as they desire.  The defendants cite the compelling case of State of Wisconsin vs. Yoder, 406 US 205, 32 Lawyers Ed. 2d 15, 92 Supreme Court 1526, and other citations in substantiation of their position. . . . The Court feels that under the very concept of the Wisconsin vs. Yoder case cited by the defendants, that adequate showing has not been made to put the defendants’ opposition on a religious plane.  In the cited case the Court said in substance: , . . . a way of life, however virtuous and admirable, may not be interposed as a barrier to reasonable state regulation of education if it is based on purely secular considerations; to have the protection of the religious clauses of the 1st Amendment, the claims must be rooted in religious belief. . . . , (Ed. italics) . . .

This is not to say an individual or individuals must be a part of an organized religion to come under the concept of the cited case.  But rather under the record in this case the defendants have not presented to the Court sufficient evidence to sustain their argument under the 1st Amendment. . . .

6.  Defendants urge the position that truancy violation, being a criminal charge, that the burden is on the plaintiff [sic] to prove all the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.  This proposition is surely an accurate statement of the law.  Applying this to the case before the Court, the burden would be on the State to show each of the following elements: (1) That the defendants failed to have their child attend school in a public school district; and (2) Failing to have the child attend public school, they did not cause said child to attend upon equivalent instruction by a certified teacher elsewhere.

The first element was proved.  As to the second element, the State held that the parents did procure a program indicating an equivalent education.  The query remaining then: Was the equivalent instruction provided by a certified teacher elsewhere?

. . . The Court’s ruling in this case is not to be construed as the Court’s passing upon the quality of education in the Decorah school system. . . . The Court’s function is essentially to determine whether or not the defendants have committed the crime alleged and are guilty thereof.

7.  Finally the Court legally concludes that the burden is above set forth under the second element, failing to have child attend public school, did they cause said child to attend upon equivalent instruction by a certified teacher elsewhere?’  In this connection the Court must conclude that based upon the entire record, the State has failed to prove the alternate or second element, that is, that the schooling for Erik is not the equivalent by a certified teacher elsewhere [sic].  The Court concludes that there is a reasonable doubt as to the question of the certified teacher, and that as a consequence the defendants should be acquitted of the criminal charge.

In so ruling the Court has considered of great significance the element of equivalency (Ed. italics), the sincere effort on the part of the defendants to comply, the difficulties and long delay in their getting a response to their query on a certified teacher (in fact no response was received until after their conviction), the inherent nature of the statutes contemplating a private tutorial situation as an alternate [sic] to public school attendance (Ed. italics), but if the statute is to have a viable Constitutional aspect of validity, it must be a determinable, workable statute with the opportunity for a legitimate exception.

The Court can understand the concern over the propriety of ,opening the door’ for many attempted exceptions (Ed. note - the State made much of this point in all its dealings with the Sessions).  However, the Court feels that this is not a real threat under the statute and reasonably within the spirit of the statute.  Exception as contemplated by the statute adds strength, not weakness, to the law.

8.  Finally the Court merely concludes that the second and alternate element of the crime has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS THE JUDGMENT AND DECREE OF THE COURT:

1.  The judgment and sentence of the Magistrate is reversed.
2.  The defendants are hereby acquitted of the charges filed against them.
3.  Costs are assessed to the plaintiff.

Frank D. Elwood, Judge
First Judicial District, Iowa

A LANDMARK CASE

This seems to me an extremely important decision, in some ways the most important decision on compulsory schooling that has yet appeared.  To be sure, the court made its ruling on very narrow grounds.  But that is why the ruling is so important.  There is very little in it that most judges, whatever might be their views on compulsory schooling, would be likely to disagree with.  It is, in short, a decision which we can expect many courts, at least in states where the law provides specifically for alternatives to schooling, to accept as a reasonable precedent.

What it boils down to is this.  In all such cases 1) the burden of proof is on the schools 2) to show beyond reasonable doubt 3) that what the parents propose to do at home will be worse than what the schools are actually doing (not just talking about doing).  There are very few school systems which will in fact be able to show this, either to a judge or a jury.

This gives us very good reason to believe that in most jurisdictions, in states whose laws provide for an alternative to schooling (unlike, say NH, which does not), any parents who prepare and present their case thoroughly and wisely can probably win a favorable ruling from a court.

It is worth noting, too, that Judge Elwood in Iowa held it very much against the State (i.e. the schools) that they did not cooperate with the Sessions in their efforts to find out precisely what the schools would accept as “equivalent.”  This means that when we ask schools what we must do to make our program equivalent, they have to answer.  If we then do what they tell us we have to do, they are not likely to be able to show beyond a reasonable doubt  that our program is not equivalent.

Not only will these arguments probably seem weighty to other courts, or juries, but they may well convince a good many school boards and their attorneys that bringing unschoolers to court will be far more trouble than it is worth.  As a general rule, lawyers do not advise their clients to go to court unless they think they have an excellent chance to win.

Bob Sessions, writing about the decision in the North Country Anvil (a good publication, $7.50 for 6 issues, Box 37, Millville, MN 55957), says, “Judge Elwood . . . ruled in our favor on two counts: 1) he does not think the state proved our guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because they offered no good arguments that ,certified instruction’ requires the identical number of hours of contact found in local schools, and 2) he believes that our providing an equivalent education to that to be got in schools satisfies the intent of Iowa law (Ed. italics).  His decision does not specify how much certified instruction is adequate (Ed. note - thank goodness that question is left open) nor does he say that anyone with a program like ours should be exempted (Ed. note - but thanks to his ruling, most will be).  The Iowa Department of Public Instruction still has review power regarding the adequacy of anyone’s program, and all such programs must have ,significant’ involvement of a certified instructor.”

Later he says, “The county attorney has filed a motion for a re-hearing with the district judge, and he has said publicly that he is strongly predisposed to appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court.  We have good reason to believe his motion for a re-hearing will be rejected, and we’re also convinced that he will appeal.

To date we have spent about $3,000 on this case, $700 of which came in the form of mostly small donations from people like yourselves.  Our reserves have been exhausted, and although working through the Supreme Court takes much time (a year to a year and a half), consequently allowing us to again save some money, it is also much more costly. . . . the only way we will be able to continue is through support from you.”

I hope any GWS readers in a position to do so will give some of this support

LEGAL STRATEGIES

A few general observations.  Judges, in making their rulings, take into account a number of things - legal principle, legal precedent, the will of the legislature, and the possible or probable social effect of their ruling.  Thus, parents who have sued the schools for damages because their children did not learn anything there have so far been turned down by the courts, on the grounds that this would lead to a rash of lawsuits that would bankrupt the schools.  We may take it as certain that the courts will not in any foreseeable future make rulings which they think may lead to the speedy destruction of the public schools or the overturn of compulsory schooling.  If we ask for such broad rulings, we will be turned down.  But beyond that, either in asking for narrow rulings, or speaking of any we may be able to win, we must be careful not to make large public boasts and outcries to the effect that “this means the end of compulsory schooling.”  Judge Elwood’s ruling may or may not be upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court.  Almost certainly, it would not be if it had said that anyone with a program like the Sessions should be exempted from compulsory schooling, or that the Iowa Department of Public Instruction should not have the power to review such programs.  The fact that the Sessions are willing to go to such trouble and expense to teach their children at home will be seen by the courts as part of the proof they must have that the Sessions will be serious and conscientious teachers.  The courts may be ready to give the same permission to any others who can show that they too are willing to go to this amount of trouble.  But they are probably not yet ready to give blanket permission to anyone just because they can put the right words down on a piece of paper.

In GWS #6, in a short piece entitled “Equivalent,” we told about an injured boy, unable to go to school, to whom the schools sent a tutor - for an hour and a half a week!  This was all he needed to keep up with his studies.

We didn’t print that just to make one more joke against the schools.  The Iowa case shows that this matter of equivalency is crucial.  Any parents who are considering a court battle against the schools need to find out exactly what the schools are doing, including what they are doing about sick and/or injured children.  How much home instruction by a certified instructor do the schools themselves provide?  Are all tutors used by the schools in fact certified?  Ask the schools, and the State Department of Public Instruction.  But also, check up on their answers.  People who work in large organizations may not know what is actually going on, and even when they do, may not always tell the truth about it.

In GWS #4, in the article “Testing the Schools,” we suggested a number of questions that parents might ask schools.  (We will add more questions soon.)  We don’t suggest these questions as a kind of school-baiting.   They are serious, and have to do with the matter of equivalency.

Furthermore, when you ask these questions, or any others you may think of, put them in writing.  Send copies to all members of the school board, to the school’s attorneys, to all top administrators, curriculum planners, etc.  If the school board has recently won, or is facing, a close election, send copies of these questions to their opponents.

The idea is not to spring these questions on the schools in the midst of a court battle.  Ask the questions well in advance, and to as many people as possible.  Give them plenty of time to answer.  For they have no answers!  In almost all schools, good or bad, the children who are behind grade level, in reading, math, or whatever, never catch up, but fall further behind.  And the number of those who have fallen behind rises every year.  At the high-powered boarding school I went to, C students did not become B and A students; they became D students.  It’s the same story everywhere.

FRACTIONS

Theo Giesy tells us a nice story:

“When Danile was 6 or 7, she was lying in my bed thinking about money and wondered how $1 would divide among 3 children.  She thought about it awhile and said, ,You could break it into dimes and give each one 3, that leaves 1 dime, you break that into pennies and give each one 3, and I get the extra penny.’  That was all her own, I made no comments or suggestions.”

————–

When I first taught fifth grade, before I had “taught” the children anything about fractions, or even mentioned the word, I used to ask them questions like this:  “If you had three candy bars, and wanted to divide them evenly among five people, how would you do it?”  Most of them could think of one or more ways to do this.  But after they had “had” fractions, and had learned to think of this as a problem that you had to use fractions to solve, most of them couldn’t do it.  Instead of reality, and their own common sense and ingenuity, they now had “rules,” which they could never keep straight or remember how to apply.

THE SOCIAL LIFE

Many people write that they would like to take their children out of school, but worry that this may hurt their social life, or social development.  About this, a reader writes:

” . . . My mother tells me that after the first day in kindergarten I told her that I didn’t need to go to school any more because I knew everything already.  Great arrogance?  Not really.  I knew how to be quiet, how to listen to children’s stories, and how to sing.  I wanted to learn about the adult world but was restricted to a world which adults believe children wanted.  My great pre-school enthusiasm died an early death.  . . .
Shame was one of the first lessons that I learned.  In the first grade I was told to color a picture of a mother and daughter working in a kitchen.  It struck me that if I were to color the entire picture yellow, then it would be different from all the other pictures.  When I handed it to the teacher I expected her to be pleased, if not genuinely excited.  She, instead, glared at me for what seemed to be a long time and caused me to feel the deepest shame and self-contempt. . . . I was six years old.

Since spontaneity was dangerous - it conflicted with the teacher’s view of how children should act - lying was a valuable survival technique . . . In first grade, the class was sent to the kindergarten room to do some work without supervision.  I used this opportunity to take a plastic doll and stick the head into a plastic toilet in one of the furnished doll houses in the room.  No one was sure who did it, but everyone thought it was amusing - except the teacher.  She was red with anger (she was a nun, and working class Catholic schools in the early 1960’s were not the most humane institutions) and I feared a severe beating.  Suspicion was eventually focused on me and I lied with complete success, at least for me; another boy was blamed for the incident.  I wish that I had said, ,Yes, I did it, so what.’  But I was afraid . . .

Other incidents occurred to other people and were much more serious.  I saw a boy of thirteen, seventh grade, try to explain why he did not have an assignment.  His crime was that he spoke with indignation.  Before he said three words the teacher stopped him and with a who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are tone of voice called him to the desk and slapped him across the face with a rubber strap which was about 6 to 8 inches long and 1/4 inch thick.  He cried; they always did when it was in the face.  He never did get the chance the explain why he did not have the assignment.  I’m not so sure that he didn’t have it.  It may have been that he could not find it quickly enough.
. . . This teacher, the principal, was a textbook authoritarian.  Every violation of her largely unwritten rules would lead her to deliver the same angry statement: ,Don’t challenge me.’  She saw challenges in virtually everything even though we would never have challenged her.  I’ll just give you two of her biggest challenges.

Challenge number one involved misbehavior which the teacher present did not see, but the principal looking into the room did.  The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades (it was a small school) were in this room to practice singing.  She was furious, talked about challenges, and scolded the student vehemently.  Then she proceeded to slap him halfway across the room.  She gave him about eight or ten real haymaker slaps.  I was standing only a few feet away at the time. . . . One fact about this event showed how much in awe of authority we were: the victim of this violence did not raise his hands to protect his face.  When it was over, all I could hear was the boy crying and my own heart beating.

Challenge number two involved the same boy.  This time he urinated, or defecated, or both, in his pants.  Perhaps he was ill or maybe he had a mental problem (Ed. note - Or perhaps he had merely been denied permission to go to the bathroom, which happens quite often in school).  He didn’t do this regularly.  He was about twelve years old.  Naturally, this called for punishment.  He was forced to stand in front of each class in school while the teacher explained to the class his crime.  When he came to our classroom the principal named him the school’s stinker and told us why.  But what I remember most clearly is the pained smile (Ed. italics - this is scary) on his face.

There were many incidents of fear and humiliation.  Even though there were not many savage beatings, the point is that we lived in an environment where this could happen anytime.  And we knew that.  I had no clear idea that there was anything wrong with the school; I only had a vague feeling that things didn’t have to be the way they were.  I wasn’t a noble child resisting tyrannical teachers.  No, I loved the game of fear and humiliation and played like the masters.

‘We can hardly wait to make someone pay for our humiliation, yield to us as we were once made to yield.’  (FREEDOM AND BEYOND, p. 114)

I’m not sure when it started, but in the eighth grade a number of us would terrorize some of the timid boys in the school.  We would push the victim around, ridicule him, pull his shirt out, spin him around, dust the chalk erasers on his clothes, mess up his hair, and chase him on the playground.  It was easy to be friends with these boys when I was alone with them.  But when there was a group of us the teasing would begin.  Since we were always in groups (Ed. italics), the teasing of these boys, two in particular, was nearly unending.  On the playground they had to avoid being seen.  One of the boys would go home for lunch and not return until the last minute of recess.  We did it without thought and it seemed to be only boyish pranks.  It was sadism and I found it to be almost irresistible.

We then started to turn on the group members and practice our arts on the selected victim.  I remember coming home with sore sides from laughing so hard at another’s humiliation, but I felt empty and actually unhappy.  The next day I would do it again.  This only stopped when I became the victim.  It was pure hell.  Everyone you knew devoted all his time to your being humiliated.  Any one act was insignificant; slapping an unaware student in the back of the head was popular.  But it happened all day long in a multitude of ways.  Christmas vacation came and one of my prime torturers transferred to another school.  Things cooled off for me, but not for the timid boys or the younger children in the school.  We almost had serious violence with the male students several years younger than us.

I don’t remember the beginning or the end of this sadistic behavior.  I know that I didn’t act this way before my last two years in grade school or since then.

I believe that I was lucky in not turning out to be an ignorant brutal person who delights in being such a person.  My last two years in grade school show that I could have been.  Fortunately, I had asthma and was able to stay home a great deal.  While at home I would spend all day reading an encyclopedia for children.  This gave me a love of learning which I never would have acquired at school.  In my last two years in grade school I missed about sixty days of school, thirty each year.  This allowed me to preserve what little sanity I had.  In high school I started to read Erich Fromm, and in my second year I read SUMMERHILL.  By then it was clear to me what had been the source of my suffering.  And my cruelty.

When I was at home and not in school because of illness (often I wasn’t really sick), I was able to explore the world through reading.  This could be done solely out of personal interest and at my desired pace.  What a wonderful feeling to have an interest which one can freely nurture.  To act out of personal conviction was a  feeling totally different from my feelings in school.  (Ed. italics) . . .”

—————

Thanks for a most moving letter, and confession.  It reminds me of a part of my own schooling.  At one point I was in a public elementary school, in a class in which almost all the boys were bigger and older than I was; most of them from working class Italian or Polish families.  One by one, the toughest ones first, then the others, more or less in order of toughness, they beat me up at recess.  Which is to say, they punched me until they knocked me down and/or made me cry.  Once a given boy had beaten me up, he didn’t bother to do it again.  There didn’t seem to me to be much malice in it; it was as if this had to be done in order to find my proper place in the class.  Finally everyone had beat me except a boy named Henry.  One day the bigger boys hemmed us in and announced that Henry and I had to have a fight to find who was the biggest sissy in the sixth grade.  Henry and I didn’t want to fight, but they told us that if we didn’t they would beat up on both of us.  So for a while Henry and I circled around, swinging  wildly at each other, the bigger boys laughing and urging us on.  Nothing happened for some time, until one of my wild swings hit Henry’s nose.  It began to bleed, Henry began to cry, and so did I.  But the bigger boys were satisfied; they declared that Henry was now the official biggest sissy in the class, and on the whole, they didn’t pick on me much any more if they could find Henry.  How he survived all this, I don’t know.

I am also reminded of something a good deal more sinister, that I read in the program notes of the recording of Benjamin Britten’s opera BILLY BUDD.  At the time in which the opera is set, large ships used to go to sea with a number of cabin boys, perhaps twelve, thirteen years old.  Now and then the crew - all this with the approval of the ship’s officers - would use the cabin boys for some free entertainment.  They would tie the left hands of each of the cabin boys to a mast, so that they were arranged round the mast like the spokes of a wheel.  In the right hand of each cabin boy they would put a marlinspike.  In effect a short wooden club.  Then they would explain the rules of the “game.”   For every blow that a cabin boy was struck from behind, he could strike one blow - only one - at the boy ahead of him.  If he was not struck, he could not strike.  Then, to start things going, a crew member would strike one of the cabin boys.  He would in turn strike the boy ahead of him, who would strike the boy ahead of him, and so on, blow after blow, round and round the mast, until they all, or all but one, lay senseless on the deck.  The joy of the game, for the crew, lay not just in the sadism of it, but even more in knowing that any boy could stop the circle of blows, end the game, and save himself and his companions, just by refusing to do what was done to him.  But apparently, this never happened, and the experienced and hardened older members of the crew knew that it was not going to happen.

The writer of the letter says, “to act out of personal conviction was a feeling totally different from my feelings in school.”  It is a very important part of the real and serious purposes of school to kill that feeling.  The vast majority of the general public, and of the parents and teachers of most children in schools, feels that to act out of personal conviction is a luxury and an indulgence that they, and most other people, cannot afford.  As one of the New York hardhats who violently assaulted a peaceful and legal anti-war demonstration later said to an interviewer, “I’ve got plenty of things I’d like to protest about, but I keep my mouth shut.”  And I have long since lost track of the number of schoolteachers and/or administrators who, defending coercion in schools, have said to me, “If I wasn’t made to do things, I wouldn’t do anything.”

NO COMMENT

The Boston Globe of Sept. 1, 78 carried an AP story, saying in part:

BACK-TO-SCHOOL BOOSTS RETAILERS

NEW YORK - Many of the nation’s leading retail chains reported record sales in August yesterday, sales they said were sparked by end-of-summer and back-to-school promotions.

GOOD NEWS FROM MO.

Albert Hobart writes:

“For the past four years we have been teaching our nine year old son at home rather than sending him to school.  It’s been a pleasant and memorable experience for all of us.  Our son is learning quickly and easily, and he seems to be a happy, good-natured, well-adjusted boy.  The only thing we regret is that we haven’t had more contact with other families whose children are learning at home.

Thus recently we decided to see what we could do to bring together a group of parents who are committed to helping their children learn without schooling.  As we picture it, several ,unschooling’ families would live in the same vicinity and get together from time to time for mutual support, good times, and the sharing of ideas.  One of our most important goals would be to insure that our children have an ongoing opportunity to play and grow together and develop lasting friendships.

We’ve been interested in this idea for several years, but our home near Boston, Mass. never seemed like the appropriate setting.  Our suburban neighbors were usually too involved with the school way of raising their children to even consider the kind of informal learning arrangement we had in mind.  We soon discovered, moreover, that many parents who were teaching their own children shared our desire to live in a more rural environment where they could garden, raise farm animals, and, in general, live a more self-sufficient life.

As a result we decided to move to the Missouri Ozarks.  I grew up in St. Louis, so I was already familiar with the area, but the main reason we chose to settle in the Show Me State was that it’s legal in Missouri to teach your own children.  We’ve met a number of families in this vicinity whose children are learning at home, and none of them have had any problems with the school authorities.

We particularly like the Ozarks because the people who live here have an admiration for self-reliance and a distrust of government interference in their private lives.  Thus they seem more sympathetic towards home education than people we’ve met elsewhere.

(As a word of warning, however, I think I should repeat an excellent point made in GWS #2; regardless of what the law says, school authorities anywhere can make trouble for you if they want to.  We think there are ways to avoid this difficulty, and we hope we’ve found an area where this sort of problem is least likely to occur.  But should worse come to worst, we are prepared to work together with other parents to organize some kind of minimal private school.  My wife is a certified teacher, and I’ve had some teaching experience.)

Another reason we like the Ozarks is that the cost of land is relatively low compared to other regions.  Prices range from $300 to $400 an acre for a 40 acre plot, although the cost goes up for smaller parcels, high quality farmland, or places with creeks or springs.  There’s plenty of land available, so it should be easy for families to buy property within driving distance of each other.
The opportunities for employment in the Ozarks are probably similar to what they would be in most rural areas.  There are certainly jobs available, but at comparatively lower salaries.  On the other hand, it doesn’t cost much to live here either.  For instance, the property taxes on a 40 acre farm are usually less than $100 a year and sometimes less than $50.

If the ideas I’ve described sound appealing to you and you think your family might enjoy living in the Ozarks, please write.  We’d be happy to give you more information.”

(From a later letter)  “Last week we held a pot-luck picnic at the campground where we’ve been staying.  We think it was quite a success.  47 people attended, 21 adults and 26 children . . . many more than we expected.  The parents discussed their various experiences and exchanged information, and everybody seemed to have a good time, especially the children.  We’re going to meet again in a few weeks, and we plan to invite more people.  We don’t know if it will turn into a regular get-together or not.  We hope so.  But we’re certain that the parents who came feel more positive about what they’re doing, and that some who were uncertain about home education are now committed to the idea.
Our son Robert continues to thrive.  He met boys from three ‘unschooling’ families who live nearby.  He really enjoys playing with these new friends, especially because he has so much in common with them.  In fact, our son seems to enjoy everything about his life here in the Ozarks.  He’s so happy, so full of life and curiosity, that it’s always a joy for us to be with him.”

SCHOOL STORY

A recent UPI release from Providence, RI, says, in part:

“A 14-year-old boy who skipped high school and has been pulling straight A’s at Rhode Island Junior College Thursday was allowed to stay in school while authorities test him to see if he is smart enough for college.  (Ed. note - this is how the story is worded; I assume they mean that the decision to allow him to stay was made on Thursday.)

Jonathan Dellinger graduated from Cranston (RI) Junior High in June.  The state said an education law prohibits the boy from leaving high school until he is 16.

But the boy enrolled in the college’s continuing education program this fall and was getting A’s in Spanish, introductory Chemistry, algebra, and fundamentals of writing when the college forced him to withdraw Oct. 8.

Jonathan and his mother sued the college, contending his constitutional rights were violated when he was expelled because of his age.

Under the agreement announced in Superior Court Thursday by the State Education Department and the boy’s lawyer, Jonathan will be allowed to take courses at the college for one semester.

In the meantime, he will undergo tests at the University of Rhode Island and lawyers for both sides will file written arguments within two weeks on whether the case (Ed. note - I assume this means his mother’s suit) should be dismissed.

,I can’t wait to get back to classes,’ the youth said after the court settlement.  ,All my friends are there.  It’s the first school I’ve gone to where I felt I really belonged.’

Jonathan’s mother, Barbara McKinney, said the boy has an IQ of 155, 15 points above the theoretical ,genius’ margin of 140.

Mrs. McKinney said the Cranston public school system ,virtually ignored my son’s intelligence.  He was always bored with his age group.’  But she says she’s ,content for the time being’ with the state college. . . .

Jonathan said he plans to apply to Brown University next year.
After the agreement was reached, the boy’s lawyer, Stephen J. Fortuato, Jr. moved to dismiss the case.

‘We got what we wanted,’ he said.  ,Jonathan goes back to RIJC tomorrow and he’ll be tested to see if he belongs in high school or college.’

But J. Peter Dougherty, a state lawyer representing the college, asked the court to continue hearing the case.

‘The president of the college is getting calls from parents all over Rhode Island who say they have gifted high-school age children,’ he said.

—————

School people are unbelievable.  They have some test which they say is a “good predictor of college success.”  That means, most of the people who have scored well on the test have later on got good grades in college, which suggests that any other kid who scores well on it will also get good grades in college.  So now, with perfectly straight faces, they are going to give this test to this boy who is already getting straight A’s in college, to find out whether he is smart enough to go to college!

It’s like something out of ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

What is that junior college president so afraid of?  Suppose there are many other young people in Rhode Island like Jonathan, perfectly capable of doing outstanding college work though only of high school age.  Wouldn’t that be a good thing?  One would suppose that a sensible man, a man really interested in learning, would be delighted, would say, “By all means send them here, no use having them waste their time in high school.”

Unless, of course, the real purpose of high school is to waste their time, and to have them get used to having their time wasted.  Unless, in short, the purpose of school is not to speed them into useful life in adult society, but to hold them out of it.

The story suggests another way in which children who are good at school (know how to play the school game) might get out of one or more years of high school.  Indeed, one reader of GWS has told me that during her high school years she was able to get out of going to high school by taking extension courses at the state university.  It seems to me very likely that most courts would agree that a child who was taking college courses and getting good marks was getting an education “equivalent” to that provided by the local high school, and therefore need not attend that high school.

On the whole, I don’t think it would be wise to make a constitutional issue out of this.  Nothing in the U.S. Constitution says that people may not have various rights and privileges withheld because of age.  Many such laws exist in every state - laws about drinking, driving, voting, etc..  Not for a very long time to come are the Federal Courts going to overturn all such laws by declaring all age discrimination unconstitutional.  But most state courts, as I said before, can probably be persuaded to rule, on one ground or another, that a child forbidden by the schools to do work that he has proved himself capable of doing is being denied some kind of educational opportunity guaranteed him by the laws of the state.

SENSIBLE PHONICS

Elsewhere in GWS I have said (and will probably say many times again) that most children, if there was interesting stuff around to read, would figure out for themselves how to read it even if we did not “teach” them anything, and only told them what words said if and when they asked us.  To those who may disagree with this, and insist that some teaching is necessary or at least helpful, I would say that if we are going to try to “teach” children something about reading, we ought at least (unlike almost all schools and teachers) to do it in ways that will make their learning easier and not harder.  That is, we should try to avoid telling them things that are inconsistent, self-contradictory, or just plain false.

Two small examples.  In many first, second, etc. grade classrooms I used to see signs on the walls - and people tell me they are still up there - saying, “When two vowels go out walking, the first one does the talking.”  (Typical of the cutesy-wootsy way in which schools talk to young children)  What this means, of course, is that there are many vowel pairs - bAIt, bEAt, bOAt, etc. - in which the first of the two vowels makes the sound.  OK to point that out to children, though the best way to do this would simply be to give examples.  But the trouble with the cute little sentence that the schools have cooked up to tell children this is that it contains two vowel pairs, both of which violate this rule.  This might not bother some children, either because they already understand what the rule is telling them or (more likely) because they don’t think about anything they hear in school.  But some children do think about what they see and hear, and it is just such thoughtful and intelligent children who might very well be thrown for a loop by this dumb sentence on the wall.

Other example.  Among the sounds which vowels make is one which is the same as the name of the vowel, as in bAke, bEEt, rOse, etc.  The schools have traditionally called these sounds the “long” vowel sounds.  By contrast, they give the name “short” to the vowel sounds in “bAck, bEt, bIt, etc.  Now the fact is that there is nothing longer about the sound of A in bAke than its sound in bAck.  We can say either word quickly or slowly, make either vowel sound as long or short as we wish.  Again, calling one of these vowel sounds “long” and the other one “short,” though it makes no sense - one might as well call one blue and the other green - might not bother the kind of children who (as I was) are ready to parrot back to the teacher whatever they hear, never mind what it means or whether it means anything.  But it might be extremely confusing and even frightening to other kinds of children, including many of the most truly intelligent.

It might not even do any harm to call the sounds of bAck, bIt, pOt, etc. “short” vowels, as long as we made it clear that there was nothing really any shorter about those sounds, and that we just used this word because we had to use some word, and people had been using this one for quite a while, so we decided we’d stick to it.  After all,  that’s why we call dogs “dogs”; there is no particular sense to it, it’s just that we’ve been doing it that way for a long time.  But to say to children things which make no sense, as if they did make sense, is stupid, and will surely cause some of them great and needless confusion.

I have to insist that these two small and perhaps not very damaging pieces of nonsense, and other and much larger and more damaging ones I will talk about in a second, were not invented and never would have been invented by parents teaching their own children.  They were invented by people trying to turn a casual, natural, everyday act into a “science” and a mystery.

Let’s now take a broader look at the teaching of reading, more specifically, what most people call “phonics.”

In “Reading, Chicago Style” (GWS #2), I pointed out that, according to a newspaper report, a Board of Education “reading expert” had made a list of 500 reading skills (later cut to 273, to be “taught” in grades 1 through 8) that children needed to learn in elementary school.  What those lists could be made up of I cannot imagine and do not want to know.  In a word, they are nonsense.

The fact is that there are only two general ideas that one needs to grasp in order to be able to read a phonic language like English (or French, German, Italian, etc. - as opposed to, say, Chinese).  1) Written letters stand for spoken sounds.  2) The order of the letters on the page, from our left to our right, corresponds to the order in time of the spoken sounds.

It is not necessary for children to be able to say these rules in order to understand and be able to use them.  Nor is it a good idea to try to teach them these rules by saying and then explaining them.  The way to teach them - that is, if you insist on teaching them - is to demonstrate it through very simple and clear examples.

Aside from that, what children have to learn are, the connections between the 45 or so sounds that make up spoken English and the 380 or so letters or combinations of letters that represent these sounds in written English.  This is not a large or hard task.  But, as in everything else, the schools do a great deal to make it larger and harder.

The first mistake they make is to teach or try to teach the children the sounds of each individual letter.  In the case of consonants, this amounts to telling the children what is not true.  Of the consonants, there are only six or seven which can be said all by themselves - S (or the C in niCe), Z (or the S in riSe), M, N, V, F, J (or the G in George) - plus the pair SH.  There are the borderline cases of L, R, W, and Y, but it seems wiser to let children meet these sounds in syllables and words.  As for the rest, we cannot say the sounds that B, or D, or K, or P, or T, etc. make all by themselves.  B does not say “buh,” nor D “duh,” etc.  BIG does not say “buh-ig,” nor RUB “ruh-buh.”  These letters don’t make any sounds, except perhaps the faintest puff of air, except when they are combined with a vowel in a word or syllable.  Therefore, it is misleading and absurd, as well as false, to try to teach them in isolation.

It is equally foolish and mistaken to try to teach the vowel sounds in isolation, in this case because each vowel makes a number of different sounds, depending on what consonants it is combined with.  Since we can’t tell what the letter A says except as we see it joined with consonants, then it makes sense to introduce the sounds of A (or any other vowel) only in the context of words or syllables.

All we have to do then is to expose children to the two basic ideas of phonics, that written letters stand for and “make” spoken sounds, and that the order of the written letters matches the order of the spoken sounds.  The first we can do very easily by any kind of reading aloud, whether of words in books, or signs, or whatever.  The second we can do by writing down, and saying as we write them, words which use the six or seven consonants that we can sound alone, and so can stretch out in time.  Thus we could write SAM, saying the S as we write the S, the A as we write it, the M as we write it.  Same with MAN, FAN, VAN, or MIS, or US, or IF.  It is neither necessary nor a good idea to be too thorough about this.  It is not a lesson to be completely learned and digested the first or second time.  That is not how children learn things.  They have to live with an idea or insight for a while, turn it around in some part of their minds, before they can, in a very real sense, discover it, say, “I see,” take possession of the idea, make it their own - and unless they do this, the idea will never be more than surface, parrot learning, they will never really be able to make use of it.

Then, as children slowly take possession of these ideas about reading, we can introduce them to more words, and so more sounds, and the connections between the words and the sounds.  In GWS #3 I mentioned a book LET’S READ, which lists all the one-syllable words that can be made from different combinations of consonants and vowels.  But it wouldn’t take parents very long to make such lists for themselves - BAT, FAT, CAT, RAT, BIN, DIN, FIN, GIN, TIN, etc.  There is no need for such lists to be complete, just long enough to expose the child to the idea that words that look mostly alike will probably sound mostly alike.

In any case, hardly any children will want to spend much time with what are so obviously teaching materials.  They will want to get busy reading (and writing) real words, words in a context of life and meaning.  No need to talk here about ways to do that - any people who read this are sure to have many ideas of their own.  If we read and write, the children will want to; if we don’t, they won’t.

Let me say once again that I don’t think even the very limited amount of teaching I have described here is really necessary or in most cases even helpful.  All I say is, if you feel you must do some teaching, or if your child somehow expects and demands this of you (most won’t), then try to avoid, in ways I have suggested here, the crippling mistakes of the schools.

A P.S. to the above.  Another very common school mistake is to ask children to learn and memorize which letters are vowels and which are consonants.  Schools usually do this by trying to teach the children some definition of “vowel” and “consonant.”  These definitions are almost always inconsistent and self-contradictory, such as “A vowel is a sound that you can say all by itself.”  As I have said, this is equally true of some of the consonants.  I have thought about this from time to time, and have never been able to think of a definition of vowels and consonants which was clear, distinct, and allowed no exceptions.

In any case, this is a bad way to teach children anything.  They think best (as I suspect we all do) when they can move from the particular to the general.  Beyond that, there is no good reason why children learning to read should learn the words “vowel” and “consonant.”  Knowing or not knowing those words has nothing whatever to do with reading.

I have written elsewhere about playing a game with children in which they ask me to write a word, and I write it.  Next time I do this, I may use one color pen to write consonants, and another to write vowels.  Though I can imagine that some children, suspecting that I was trying to sneak in some teaching, might tell me not to do even that.  If anyone tries this out, please let me know what happens.

A better variation of that game might go like this.  We could write each letter on a separate card or piece of paper, vowels in one color, consonants in another.  Then we could say to the child, “Put together any two, or three, or four (or more) of these cards, and I will tell you what they say.”  If a child gave us BSRX, we would do our best to make those sounds.  The child would begin to notice after a while that the only combination of letters that make sounds that sounded like the words he heard around him were the ones that had both colors in them, and that these were very often in the form of consonant-color + vowel-color + consonant-color.  If he ever asked, “What do you call this kind of letter, and what do you call this kind?”  (I can’t guess whether a child would be likely to do this), I would say, “We call these kinds of letters ,vowels’ and these ,consonants.’”  (If he asked why, I would tell him I didn’t know.)

Mind you, I am not saying that any of these tricks or games are necessary, or even that they will help a child learn to read faster or better.  But for people who for whatever reasons feel they want to do something, I suggest these as things that it might be fun (for both adult and child) to do, and as long as they are fun, possibly useful, and probably not harmful.

TEACHING

The other day a memory popped up that I had completely forgotten.  Some years ago I was reading aloud to a small child, as yet a non-reader, perhaps three or four years old.  As I read aloud I had the bright idea that by moving a finger along under the words as I read them I might make more clear the connections between the written and the spoken words.  A chance to get in a little subtle teaching.  Without saying anything about it, and as casually as possible, I began to do this.

It didn’t take the child very long to figure out that what had begun as a nice, friendly cozy sharing of a story had turned into something else, that her/his project had by some magic turned into my project.  After a while, and without saying a word, s/he reached up a hand, took hold of my hand, and very gently moved it off the page and down by my side - where it belonged.  I gave up “teaching” and went back to doing what I had been asked to do, which was to read the story.

MORE ON “NO”

The author of “Her Own Money” (GWS #6) writes, in part:

” . . . You’ve made an excellent point about the difference between ,No’ the angry signal and ,No’ the meaningful word. . . . I think of some people who recently visited us - constantly slapping (lightly) their kids - No, No, bad boy, say ,please,’ don’t do that, etc.  About drove me crazy.  And as you say, meaningless to the kids.  I watched them totally tune out everything their parents did and said.  Rightly so, too, for the kids weren’t doing anything that I could see needed warning or reprimanding.

. . . there is a third kind of ,No,” perhaps the most common of all, neither an angry explosion nor a meaningful word - the no, no, no that goes on all day with some parents.  This constant hassling is simply a running, ineffective banter.  The parents don’t even mean it; there’s no anger or even much reprimand in their voices. . . . our cultural expectation is that kids are bad, always getting into trouble, and parents must be dictators controlling their kids (in the name of ,protection’).

How to cope with these 3 kinds of ,No’ is much more difficult, tho, than you make it sound.

You’re saying, if we can become aware of how we use ,No’ we can change our use of it.  And I agree with you in two cases.  First, as parents, we can simply SHUT UP!  If we can sit back and listen to ourselves, we can hear how much negative harassment we throw at our kids.  If a parent would seriously and objectively listen to what he says (thru his child’s ears), he would be appalled and could probably with some effort change that kind of ,No.’

I think here of L (recently 3) who was pouring herself a glass of milk yesterday.  She had gotten it from the fridge, opened it, poured from a fat 2-qt. carton a very small juice-glass of milk, had drunk it, then had gotten a paper towel and was wiping up the milk spilt on the table.  There was more milk spilt than the towel could absorb so as she wiped now, the milk was being pushed off the table onto the floor.

I walked in at this point and started with the running ,No No’ commentary in a whiny voice: ,Ooooh no L, you should have asked someone to pour you a glass of milk - no, don’t wipe it up, it’s going on the floor, now stop, don’t do it, I’ll do it, it’s bad enough on the table - look, now you’ve got it on the floor - you’re making more work for me.’

Happily at this point I was struck by a rare beam of sanity and it said to me, ,Oh, quit being such a bitch, L has just poured her first glass of milk all by herself and you’re ruining the whole thing for her.’

And suddenly I looked and saw a very little girl trying very hard to grow up - trying to wipe up herself the mess she had made getting herself a drink of milk.  And I said, ,L, I think Sparkle (dog) would like this extra milk.’

L stopped and looked at me.  I had finally said something of meaning.  All the negative harassment up till then she had been trying to ignore.

I said, ,If you get Sparkle’s dish we can put the milk in it.’

She got it and we did.

AND immediately she began an animated chatter about how Sparkle would like this milk and how she had poured them both a drink of milk, etc.  Until then, she had barely said one word.  In fact, if I had pushed her far enough - ,OK, L, get out of the kitchen while I clean up your mess’ - she would have probably ended up crying (over spilt milk!).

But the happy ending here did not require too much effort on my part because I wasn’t very emotionally involved.  My mind could still be objective about the situation to the extent of being able to control and change it.

I think this is also why your suggestion would work, for teachers.  On the whole, they are not emotionally involved with their students and could therefore make a successful intellectual effort to change their way of saying ,No’ to children. . . . Parents are so emotionally interlocked (as well as emotionally open) with their kids that they are both trapped into destructive ways of relating to each other.  The smallest trigger can set off the largest explosion . . . Children become scapegoats on whom their parents vent the worst of feelings (usually unconsciously).  Of course, this also happens in school, or anyplace else.  An adult in a bad mood will dump his frustrations on those under him in the pecking order, esp. on kids who are felt to be so much weaker.  And then on it goes, kids pick on weaker kids, etc.  It is within the nuclear family that this pecking order is at its worst.  And that’s why I disagree strongly with your theory that we can easily change the use of the word ,No’ from an explosive signal to a gentle word.  You say ,There is no reason why, except in rare times of great stress or danger . . . ,

Aha!  There’s the problem.  Yes, ,rare times of danger.’  But certainly not ,rare times of great stress’ - not when you’re speaking of parents with their own children esp. when they are in their own home. . . . ”

—————

A very good point, in a very good letter.  Actually, I said much the same thing in ESCAPE FROM CHILDHOOD, that children, even if a great burden in every other way, are still useful to adults in that they give them someone below them in the pecking order, on whom they can take out all their frustrations.

As for teachers, they may not be emotionally linked with children in quite the same way parents are, but many of them are linked with them in another very powerful way i.e. they are afraid of them, afraid of losing their control over them, afraid the children will do things that will get them in trouble or even cost them their jobs.  Such teachers treat students with (as Silberman said) “appalling incivility,” harshly and rudely, as a matter of principle, the only way to keep their control over them.  Many of them (see THE WAY IT SPOZED TO BE) advise young teachers to do the same.  “Get the upper hand right at the start, etc.”  As long as schools are jails i.e. compulsory, and work primarily on the basis of bribes and threats i.e. grades, get-into-college, etc. this is not very likely to change.

In writing my earlier piece on ,No’ I guess I was really thinking about, and aiming at, those people who believe, as a matter of principle, that unless children hear the word ,No’ with a lot of anger in it, they won’t pay any attention to it.

STARTING A SCHOOL

To a parent who wrote about joining a few other parents in forming their own school, I said,

“Thanks for news of your school.  One piece of heartfelt advice.  People sending their kids to your school must be made to understand that if there is something they think those children must be taught or must learn, basics or whatever, it must be their responsibility to do that teaching, and to do it in their own home - or at any rate, away from the school.  The school must be a place where people come together to do the things that interest and excite them most.  Otherwise, you will be torn to pieces with arguments about whether the school should teach reading or arithmetic, or teach it one or four hours a week, or whatever.  Believe me, I speak from the bitter experience of many people.”

And this would be my very strong advice to any group of unschoolers who want to start a school as a way of escaping compulsory attendance laws, or giving their children a place to meet and be with other children, or for whatever reasons.  OK to have rules which say, more or less, no fair hurting or bothering other people.  Every human society has these, and children expect them and understand them.  But the school must not try to compel learning, if for no other reason than this, that people will argue forever, and with increasing bitterness and anger, about what kinds of learning must be compelled.

PARENTS’ RIGHTS

The Manchester, N.H.  Union Leader, on Oct. 31, 1978, reported a decision of the NH State Supreme Court that may have great importance to unschoolers, not least of all because 1) NH is a politically “conservative” state 2) NH law does not mention home schooling as a legal alternative.

The story, reads, in part (I use quotes only as they appear in the story):

SUPREME COURT VACATES PARENTAL RIGHTS ORDER

. . . Noting that in an “ideal world, children would not be brought up in inadequate homes,” the state Supreme Court yesterday declared that this “is not an ideal world, and to merely hold that inadequate parenting, absent specific harm to the children (Ed. note - italics mine), is sufficient to terminate parental rights in the best interest  of the child is too vague a concept and places undue emphasis on the parental conduct rather than any harm to the child.”

The high court thus vacated a 1977 order of the Merrimack County Probate Court which had terminated the parental rights of a 32-year-old father, identified only as “Robert H.,” over his three minor children on the grounds of failure to correct the conditions leading to a finding of neglect..

We outline the standard to be applied in such cases and remand,” noted the Supreme Court.  It said RSA chapter 170-C was enacted to provide for the involuntary termination of the parent-child relationship by a judicial process which will safeguard the rights and interests of all parties, and that a termination order must be based upon “clear and convincing evidence.”

The high court determined that the government must “prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt before the permanent termination of liberty and natural rights of parents guaranteed under the N.H. Constitution, Part I, Article 2, can occur.”

“We hold that absent a showing of specific harm to the children (Ed. italics), growing up in a so-called disadvantaged home is not a sufficient basis for coercive intervention.  Robert H. may not be a model parent, but he is as entitled to help from the division [of welfare] as anyone else, and maybe more so,” said the Supreme Court.
”
. . . any termination petition under chapter 170-C must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to meet the requirements of the N.H. Constitution,” ordered the Supreme Court.

The high court noted that the father can neither read nor write, suffers serious heart problems, and because of limited job skills, is rarely steadily employed.  The children are six, seven, and nine and “they are very much a family unit with strong sibling ties.”

——————-

The legal point is obvious.  If (as is the case) the courts will not allow welfare, etc. agencies to take children from such a parent, or even (as is also often the case) from parents who abuse their children up to the point of causing serious injury, they are not likely (if all the above is pointed out to them in a legal brief) to allow agencies to take children away from otherwise competent and loving parents simply because these parents refuse to send their children to school.  As in the case cited above, the burden of proof will be on the state to show beyond reasonable doubt that in such cases the children are being specifically harmed by not being sent to school.  This will be exceedingly difficult to prove, particularly if parents (having read GWS) go into court well prepared, and well armed with hard questions for the schools.

It might also be a good idea for unschoolers in all states to read their respective state constitutions, to see what these may have to say about the rights of parents with respect to their children and their children’s education.  Some of them, at least, like the constitution of N.H. (which I have not read), may be much more explicit about this than the U.S. Constitution.  I have said before and will say again that I think we would be very unwise to go into the Federal Courts with a broad Constitutional attack on compulsory schooling as such.  This does not mean that we should not make the fullest possible use of anything we can find in state constitutions about parents’ rights to influence or control the education of their children.

THE WORLD AT TWO (cont.)

The mother of J (see GWS #6, “The World at Two”), writes:

“J is great.  No naps now which means he is super go-power all day with a huge collapse about 7:30.  He has his room all to himself now . . . and he really likes to hang out in there alone for an hour and a half most days, driving trucks around mostly.  I’ve never seen a kid more into organizing things.  He plays with dominoes and calls them either adobes, for building houses, or bales of hay, and has them stacked, lined up, or otherwise arranged in some perfect order; same with the trucks; he’ll scream and yell, as per your theory of two year old behavior, if you snatch him up from a group of trucks and carry him off to lunch.  But if you give him a couple of minutes to park them all in a straight line then he’ll come willingly.  Your theory (treat them like big people) works out over and over again; brush past him, leave him behind in the snow when you’re hustling up to feed the goats and you get a black and blue screaming pass out tantrum.  Treat them “Big” and things roll along.  Only hangup is the occasional times you have to take advantage of your superior size and pull a power play.  The trick is to learn to avoid the situations that once in a while make that a necessity, like not getting in a rush, and not letting them get so tired they break down completely - like letting dinner be late.”

“As J gets near to, although still fairly far from, school age, I worry about trying to go it on our own; not at all about trying to teach him the basics but about what this little town is going to think because in a way it becomes a put down to them; we’re not going to send our child to that crummy school; while they’re more or less stuck with it.  Already people say, ,When J goes to school, etc.’  I just smile and shut up.  Also J gets so desperate for kids I’m pretty sure he’s going to want to go to that big building that always has a passel of children running around in front.  Sometimes, just driving by houses where he suspects there might be kids, he say, ,I wanna see some kids, mommy.’  Actually, we’re working harder on it and he’s getting to be around more but there are still long gaps.”

I wrote back, suggesting, more or less, that when people talk about J going to school she say, “He’s already going to school,” and that when people ask where, she say, “Right at home.”  This in turn made me think of something so obvious that I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it long ago.  In GWS #1, I said that if unschoolers are asked by neighbors or other people where their children are going to school, they should reply that the children “are in a special program.”  I now think this is a mistake.  Unschoolers should never say, or admit, that their children are not “going to school.”  They should insist that they are going to school.  If people say, “Where?” they should say, “Right here in our own home.”

My strong hunch is that this will satisfy a large number of otherwise critical people.  In these days, most people believe in word magic.  Not for them the wise advice of Justice Holmes:  “Think things, not words.”  For them, the word is the thing, the label on the package is the contents.  If the label says “New! Fresh! Pure!” it must be new, etc.

Many of these folks have in their minds, among other slogans and rules, the rule that children should “go to school.”  If we say that our children are “going to school,” most of them will not get into complicated arguments about what is or is not a school,” or whether our home is really a school, but will be satisfied that the rule is being obeyed.  Some, of course, will not be satisfied, will say, “Why aren’t they going to the same school as the other children?”  But nothing we said or might say could satisfy these people.  For them, school is the Army for kids, a bad experience that they do not want any child to escape.

In saying that our children who are learning at home are “in school,” we are not just tricking people - though we may be doing that.  We are also putting into their minds the important and very true idea that children (like everyone else) are always learning, no matter where they are or what they are doing, that the whole world is a learning place for them, that “school” does not have to mean only that big brick building with the cyclone fence and (usually) padlocked gates, but could mean any place at all.  It will be much earlier for such people, unless they are real Blue Meanies, to understand and accept later that some of the time - perhaps very little or none - our children may be in the red brick building, but that most of the time they will be “in school” somewhere else.

What I meant by “treat them like big people” was, of course, to treat them in the courteous and respectful way that we big people like to be treated.  To snatch any child away from what s/he is doing, in order to do what we want done, is to say to that child, “Your interests and purposes are not serious and do not count.”  In the many years I have been watching children and adults together, in homes and in public places, I have seen many two-year-old “tantrums.”  Of those I have seen from the beginning (but who knows where anything “begins”?), except for a few that were brought on by exhaustion, almost all seemed to me to have been caused by a needless affront, often unintentional, to the child’s dignity, that is, by someone treating the child as if what s/he was doing, or what s/he thought or wanted, did not count.  I have felt and still feel very strongly that most of these tantrums could have been avoided by taking a few extra seconds to show the child the kind of courtesy we would routinely show to another adult.

This mother’s words show once again what nonsense it is to talk about children’s “short attention span.”  In HOW CHILDREN LEARN I wrote about an eighteen-month-old child trying to put together a ballpoint pen that she had taken apart.  Though the task was much too hard for her small and unpracticed fingers, she worked steadily and patiently at it for at least forty-five minutes.  When some of the schools in Great Britain began the unheard-of experiment of letting school children direct and control their own learning, they found that five and six-year-olds would often work on a single task for an entire morning or afternoon, and often for several days at a stretch.  Most young children (at least when they are not dreaming, which is also important to them) pay a lot closer attention to the world around them than most adults.  Their problem - at least it looks to us like a problem - is that almost everything in the world around them is interesting to them.  Also, they see that world as all of a piece; it never occurs to them, as to us, that if they pay attention to this it means that they have stopped paying attention to that..  They don’t think in terms of paying attention to only one thing at a time.

What we really mean when we say that children have short attention spans is that they will not pay attention for very long to the things that we want them to pay attention to.  A sensitive and concerned mother has just written me - I get many such letters - to say that she is worried because when she tries to teach her young child letters (or whatever) the child only pays attention for a couple of minutes.  She fears there may be something wrong with the child.  From the little she has told me, I doubt that there is anything wrong at all.  The problem (if we have to think of it as a problem) is that most healthy and curious children don’t like to be taught.  The reason is not that they don’t like to learn - they like nothing better.  The reason is that they understand very well the unspoken (sometimes unconscious) assumption behind all uninvited teaching: “You are too stupid to understand why this is important, and/or too stupid to see it or find it or figure it out for yourself.  Children refuse this kind of teaching as long as they can.  If the time comes (as in school) when they can no longer find ways to refuse or escape it, they may soon decide that they are no longer capable of figuring things out, and can only learn when they are made to learn, told what to learn, and shown how.  In short, they may soon become as stupid as the parents or teachers or schools believed they were all along.  But they don’t start out that way.

SCIENTISTS

Hanna Kirchner, writing in Poland about the work of Janusz Korczak, said, in part:

“He always stressed that by means of learning the everyday expressions from the obscure language of adults, the child tries to fathom the mystery of life.  The child’s fragmentary and incomplete knowledge of the world, welded together by imagination, creates a specific ,magic consciousness’ which, as has been discovered in the twentieth century, exists among children and primitive people and may be associated with the origins of poetry.”

She then gives this wonderful quote from Korczak’s book HOW TO LOVE A CHILD:

“[one child says], ,They say there is one moon and yet one can see it everywhere.’
,Listen, I’ll stand behind the fence and you stay in the garden.’  They lock the gate.
,Well, is there a moon in the garden?’,Yes.’,Here too.’They change places and check once again.  Now they are sure there must be two moons.”

—————-

And yet they figure out, sooner or later, and by themselves, that there is only one moon.  Forgive me for saying what must be obvious to so many GWS readers.  Yet I know from experience that there will be many adults, including some who may one day, somewhere, read this piece, who will insist that children only learn there is one moon because adults tell them, and that if we didn’t tell them they would never be able to figure it out.

A SELF-TEACHER

A mother writes from British Columbia:

“My daughter, T, for instance, who is eight, has been very interested in rocks, fossils and Indian artifacts for several years now.  I don’t know a great deal about these subjects, but we found some good books at second-hand stores, borrowed some from the library and were even given a pile of lapidary magazines about to be discarded.  She has an enormous collection of specimens now (all collected herself), by no means all identified.  We packed a box of fossils and pseudo-fossils (Ed. note - have no idea what a pseudo-fossil is) and took them to the Provincial Museum where some very friendly (and slightly bemused) curators did their best to identify them.  She has found one artifact which we are pretty sure is the handle of a stone tool of some sort and we will take it to an expert for an opinion.  We are also working on a plan for a water-wheel-powered rock tumbler that she can polish stones in.  The result has been a lot of learning and I doubt we’ve spent $10.00.

The children follow their interests where they lead and never refer to it as learning or school, and I don’t either.  T was interested in Indians and what foods they ate in the old days.  Now she horrifies parents when she goes to town and feeds her friends roots from the licorice fern or peeled salmonberry shoots.  But she knows much better than the parents, I suspect, what plants and berries shouldn’t be eaten and why.

As far as reading goes, you say that it isn’t difficult to learn to read and compared to some other things we learn I imagine you are right.  Still I found it very confusing to explain to my daughter why the letter sounds changed like quicksilver from one word to the next.  (Ed. note - but there’s no need to “explain” it, and indeed, no way to explain it.)  That’s why I was relieved to find the Open Court 1st grade reading program.  I learned a lot of phonetics from it!  You need two workbooks, reader 1:1:1 and 1:1:2, each $2.35, and either the Teacher’s Guide for $12.66 or a phono. record of Millie’s story for $6.64.  The story introduces and ties together the phonetic sounds.  The teacher’s guide has other useful information besides the story but it’s not absolutely necessary.  With the books and record, a child could learn by himself.

We don’t use any regular course material now.  The books for elementary grades seem terribly superficial - a little bit about lots of things and not very much about anything.  I find even young children like to learn about things in detail.  T is up to grade level in most aspects of the three R’s - definitely not spelling (taking after her mother, no doubt).  (Ed. note - there were no spelling mistakes in this mother’s letter)  I would say that we haven’t invested more than one hour a week in the last three years to maintain this level.

T spent a long time choosing a Cricket magazine to send you and I’ve got a feeling she wasn’t looking for the best one.  That’s what makes the magazine worth $15, to us anyway.  The stories are good and the binding is good, and the children save them carefully and read them again and again.  Anyway she was glad to send it as long as it wasn’t a favorite.  I read her pieces out of your books sometimes and she’s always interested.  She and M, 5, thought the 62 item kindergarten check list (Ed. note - from INSTEAD OF EDUCATION) was very amusing.  M said he didn’t use bathroom habits - he likes the tub and the bath toys.

———————-

What I mean about explaining sounds is this - there’ s no more way of explaining why the letter a sounds one way in “cat,” another way in “car,” and still another in “call,” then there is of explaining why we call a dog a “dog” and not a “blif” or “mub.”  We just do, that’s all.  Pressed, we might say to a child that our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents all said it this way for a long, long time back.  Pressed still harder yet, we might say that some people make it their work to try to figure out how people talked a long time ago, but that they have to do a lot of guessing, since of course the people aren’t around any more to ask, and didn’t leave any records like tapes or recordings.

I just read from cover to cover the issue of Cricket that T sent, and think it’s wonderful!  Stories, poems, articles, illustrations, puzzles - all seem to me just right.  Cricket is a monthly ($15/yr., $27.50/2 yrs., $36/3 yrs., from Open Court Publishing Co., 1058 8th St., LaSalle, IL 61301), and a good bargain - there is more material in one issue than in many children’s books.

As for phonics, you don’t need all those materials.  (See “Sensible Phonics” in this issue of GWS.)

N.Y. LAW

One of our readers from New York State sent us a letter, which she received from the office of the counsel of the State Education Department in Albany, and which may be of interest to other readers, both in NY and other states.  It says, in full:

“Senator Javits has referred your letter of June 26, 1978 to this Department for response.

Pursuant to subdivision 1 of section 3204 of the Education Law, a student may satisfy the compulsory education law by attending upon instruction in “a public school or elsewhere.”  In cases such as People v. Turner, 277 App. Div. 317 and In Re Meyer, 203 Misc. 549 (to learn the meaning of those numbers, see ,More From D’ in GWS #3, or ask any lawyer, law student, law librarian, or perhaps the librarian in the reference part of the Public Library), the courts have upheld a parent’s right to instruct his children at home.  It is necessary, however, that the local school officials review the proposed course of study to determine whether it is substantially equivalent to that offered in the public schools.  I would, therefore, suggest that you contact your chief school officer and arrange to discuss your plan to instruct your child at home.

Enclosed is a Law Pamphlet 9 which describes the process by which the Board of Regents charters an educational corporation.  If you wish to operate a school on a profit-making basis, you would follow the provisions of the Business Corporation Law.  A further alternative is not to establish a corporation.

Sincerely,
(name)
Associate Attorney

cc: Senator Javits”

———————

This letter suggests, first, that if you can get your U.S. Senator (or perhaps Representative) to write a letter about home schooling to the state educational authorities, they will respond fairly promptly (in this case, 2 1/2 months, which is probably quite good for state government), and secondly, that they will give you quite complete information.  It might be worth finding out, sometime and somewhere, whether the kind of letter a state department of education sends out in response to a letter from a citizen is exactly the same as the letter they send in response to a letter from a U.S. Senator - and if there is a difference, what it is.  If some readers make this political mini-experiment, do let us know what you find out.

What may be more important, the letter also suggests that, in New York State at least, the Board of Regents, the chief educational authorities of the state, have nothing to do with chartering profit-making schools.  It would be interesting to find out how hard or easy it is, in NY or any other state, to set up a “profit-making” school.  We might find out that this was a much easier way for parents to call their own home a school.  Readers in NY and elsewhere may want to look into this - if so, again, let us know what you find out.

POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE

Here are some interesting words about education from one of its earliest and strongest supporters.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame), in the foreword of a book CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN BODY, by Eugen Sandow, published in London in 1907, wrote, in part:

“The strength of a nation is measured by the sum total of the strength of all the units that form it.  It is a truism that anything which raises any portion of a man, his body, his character, his intelligence, increases to that extent the strength of the country to which he belongs.  Therefore, since the State is so interested in these matters, it has every reason to examine into them and to regulate them.  The truth is an obvious one, but it is only within our own lifetimes that it has been practically applied.  ,Parents may do what they like with their children, a man may do what he likes with himself.’  So ran the old heresy, which ignored the fact that the State must look after the health of its own component parts.  Then came the Education Act of 1870.  It was a great new departure.  What it said was, ,No, your mind is not your own.  (Ed. italics)  You may wish to keep it ignorant.  But ignorant minds are a danger to the State.  Therefore we must force you to keep yourself in better order.’  That is as far as we have got yet in State ownership of the individual.”

Most of those who first pushed through compulsory education thought this way.  There were very few Jeffersons among them.  But I want to look more closely at another part of Conan Doyle’s thought.  “You may wish to keep it ignorant.”  What did he mean by “ignorant”?

What he meant was almost certainly that this “you” might not want to learn the kinds of things that rich people knew in those days i.e. Greek, Latin, Ancient History (which they saw as a kind of morality play), Classical Literature, perhaps a little Mathematics.  One of the many fringe benefits of being rich and powerful, in any society, is that you are able to say that some kinds of knowledge, i.e. the kind of things you know, are much more important than others, and therefore, that the people who have this knowledge i.e. you and your friends, are much more important and deserving than people who know other things.  It is not hard to see why in any society powerful people, whether the rich or simply high government officials, should want to say that the kind of knowledge that most people pick up from everyday life and work is worth less than the kind that can only be picked up in special places.

AN “IGNORANT” MAN

Let’s take a look at one of those “ignorant” men that Conan Doyle was worried about.  In his book TRAVELS THROUGH AMERICA, first published in Esquire magazine, Feb. 76, Harrison Salisbury described his efforts to trace the Westward path of some of his ancestors.  He describes one of them thus:

” . . . He [Hiram Salisbury] was a man of his time [1815] . . . I scan the journal for clues and reconstruct the post-Revolutionary American.  I list his skills, one sheet of scratch paper after another.  He knew every farm chore.  He milked cows and attended the calves in birth.  He physicked his horse.  He plowed, he planted, he cultivated, hayed, picked apples, grafted fruit trees, cut wheat with a scythe, cradled oats, threshed grain with a flail on a clay floor.  He chopped the corn and put down his vegetables for winter.  He made cider and built cider mills.  He made cheese and fashioned cheese tongs.  He butchered the hogs and sheared the sheep.  He churned butter and salted it.  He made soap and candles, thatched barns and built smokehouses.  He butchered oxen and constructed ox sledges.  He fought forest fires and marked out the land.  He repaired the crane at Smith’s mill and forged a crane for his own fireplace to hang the kettle on.  He collected iron in the countryside and smelted it.  He tapped (mended) his children’s shoes and his own. He built trundle beds, oxcarts, sleighs, wagons, wagon wheels and wheel spokes.  He turned logs into boards an cut locust wood for picket fences.  He made house frames, beams, mortised and pegged.  With six men’s help he raised the frames and built the houses.  He made a neat cherry stand with a drawer for a cousin, fixed clocks and went fishing.  He carved his own board measures (yardsticks) and sold them for a dollar apiece.  He fitted window cases, mended locks, and fixed compasses.  He hewed timber, surveyed the forest, wrote deeds and shaved shingles.  He inspected the town records and audited the books of the Friendship Lodge, the oldest freshwater Masonic lodge in the country (still running).  He chipped plows, constructed carding machines, carved gunstocks and built looms.  He set gravestones and fashioned wagon hubs.  He ran a bookstore and could make a fine coffin in half a day.  He was a member of the state’s General Assembly, overseer of the poor, appraiser of property and fellow of the town council.  He made hoops by the thousand and also pewter faucets.  For many years he collected the town taxes . . .

I have not listed all of Hiram’s skills but enough.  I do not think he was an unusual man.  Put me in Hiram’s world and I would not last long.  Put Hiram down in our world.  He might have a little trouble with a computer, but he’d get the hang of it faster than I could cradle a bushel of oats.”

———————

I tend to agree with Harrison Salisbury that Hiram, though perhaps not an unusual man in his time, would be a most unusual one in ours, far more knowing, skillful, intelligent, resourceful, adaptive, inventive, and competent than most people we could find today, in either city or country, and no matter how schooled.

But the real question I want to raise, and answer, is how Hiram learned all those skills.  To be sure, he did not learn them in school.  Nor did he learn them in workshops or any other school-like activity.  Almost certainly, he learned how to do all those kinds of work, many of them highly skilled, by being around when other people were doing them.  Nor were these other people doing the work in order to teach Hiram something.  Nobody raised a barn just so that Hiram could see how barns were raised.  They raised it because they needed the barn.  Nor did they say to him, “Hiram, as long as I have to raise this barn, you may as well come around and learn how it is done.”  They said, “Hiram, I’m raising a barn and I need your help.”  He was there to help, not to learn - but as he helped, he learned.

Almost a century later John Dewey was to talk about “learning by doing.”  The way for students to learn (for example) how pottery is made is not read about it in a book but to make pots.   Well, OK, no doubt about it’s being better.  But making pots just to learn how it is done still doesn’t seem to me anywhere near as good as making pots (and learning from it) because someone needs the pots.  The incentive to learn how to do good work, and to do it, is surely much greater when you know that the work has to be done, that it is going to be of real use to someone.

FINDING OUT

Since to so many people “learning” means what happens in school, or what is supposed to happen, I would rather use other words to describe what we humans do as a natural part of our living. “Finding out” seems to fit pretty well. Here, a reader talks about it:

“I am almost a caricature of the congenital unteachable. It may have been something I picked up from imitating my father, for I notice he shares the trait to this day. He is very quick to learn, but utterly resists being taught.

I began to see how much this unteachability pervaded my life when I began about a year ago to see how much of my childhood I could remember distinctly. Probably the extreme example was learning to play the piano. I am told that I started banging away on the family upright at about age four. One day my dad got tired of the noise and said something to the effect of ,If you’re going to play, why don’t you play something?’ Well, I quit until my parents left the house, and when they came back that afternoon I was already picking out tunes. In a year I played ,Silent Night’ at church Christmas ceremonies.
When we moved to a larger town, my parents resolved that I should go to a piano teacher. But I didn’t want to practice scales, for I was already playing songs - and the teacher would not explain why I should practice. In three months she told my parents that I was the worst student she’d ever had and that I would never learn to play. This did leave me with a somewhat irrational (Ed. note - and very common) fear of the musical notation system (at least until I began to discover its logic myself) but to make a long story short I went on to become a good piano player and composer and have off and on supported myself in this way, playing all kinds of music. I still can’t read notes (a common phenomenon among good musicians in their younger years, by the way) but now I want to learn so as to build a logical structure which could point the way to further improvement in my playing. A major goal in my life is to achieve the ability to spend large amounts of time working on this - in the meantime I’m working on fingerwork, doing things I only dreamed about a couple of years back. All absolutely self taught.

So much has been like this, I started drawing at about four, also holding the pencil the wrong way. People said that I would never be able to draw that way. After selling dozens of paintings and drawings, I still hold it that way - I don’t like the other way, as it produces a more unsteady hand for me. When, at about twelve, I wanted to write books, my dad gave me an old Royal and left me alone. I learned to type at good speed with one right hand finger. When I get going I can type faster this way than some secretaries with their ten fingers. More recently, when I was typing the manuscript for my first ,real’ book, I taught myself to use the index finger on my left hand, as a way to beat the boredom.

Then there was swimming lessons, which almost permanently made me hate swimming. A couple of years afterward, when I wanted to swim with my friends, I jumped in and swam as if I had always done so.

And there was writing. My father broke his usual hands-off stance to urge me to learn to write, when I was seventeen. I would not do so while being urged. In senior composition class I turned in pieces designed to meet the assignment, and no more - tortured pieces. When I had the chance to say something in a graduation address, the speech teacher (also the composition teacher) panned the address as ,terrible,’ but it went over well. In that same last semester in high school, I poured my energies into writing (with a friend) an underground newspaper attacking compulsory education and poking fun at the pretenses of the school world. No one panned the writing here - they took it very seriously. And somehow the same year I won a statewide writing contest award.

I taught myself auto mechanics on my first car, after being told for years that I was low in mechanical ability. I became a good carpenter’s apprentice in two months, building one and a half houses with just one carpenter working at the same time. I surprised them all (except my parents - who had been listening) when I switched from an undergraduate education in pre-law to master’s work in engineering, putting to rest the old thing about how artsy-booksy types cannot cope with numbers.

How did I get through schools? Only one way - by taking the offensive. Way back around fifth grade, my parents supplied us kids with the Golden Book Encyclopedia. I lapped up each book as it came home from the supermarket. Not long after that I was tested for reading at school and was found to be reading five years ahead of my grade. What is more, the Golden Book Encyclopedia gave me two invaluable things which freed me from much of the meaningless work the schools had cut out for me. One, I acquired from the encyclopedia a working familiarity with many aspects of science, history, geography, and art - such that I still ,leaned on’ this knowledge during exams as late as, say, tenth grade. Moreover, it taught me an understanding of how the world works, so that I could figure out what I did not actually know.

I recall what I did in fifth grade to free up more time to study airplanes, which I was then immersed in as a subject. The teacher wanted us to come up with five new words a week which we were supposed to define as a vocabulary lesson. (Ed. note - as if anyone ever learned words this way) Trouble was, words did not come to me at this steady pace. So, one day, I reached into the dictionary for two hundred-odd words and did a year’s assignment in one bored stroke. Then I went back to gobbling up new and historical words as part of the new book I was writing on airplanes.

It was like this throughout college as well. In undergraduate school I took political science and philosophy because I wanted to understand the mystery of government. The political science department wanted to talk about voting behavior studies and the philosophy department wanted to talk about mathematics, so I played the incorrigible in my second year and obtained an understanding which allowed me to graduate with a program in ethical philosophy and constitutional theory. The understanding was quite explicit: I offered a couple of professors the opportunity to ,supervise’ the development of publishable work if they would only stay off my back with their extraneous demands. I wanted to get economics from this same school but found it so unintelligible that I was driven into home study, which has resulted in a good knowledge of (a different school of) economic theory.

When I went back to grad school I again entered on the explicit understanding that I would take some required courses and do some required research for the chance to be allowed hunks of free time to pursue an area that no one at the school even understood. It worked. So well, in fact, that I literally walked into a job working with the guy who my previous research had shown to be tops in the field.

And now I find some strange truths. With the top-notch people that make up our company, what counts is the ability to teach oneself (Ed. italics). As my employer puts it, ,Though we may seem to know a lot around here, we succeed because we start out by admitting our ignorance, and then setting out to overcome it.’

This points up one important idea noted in GWS #4: the ,need to know.’ People often say of me that I ,know’ a great deal about this or that; but often I have only average knowledge or less. In any given context, however, I can identify what I need to know next, and self reliance has taught me to immediately acquire the knowledge in ways which do not essentially differ from one case to the next. Thus it occurs to me that if people recognized knowledge as being important only in relation to actual goals - narrow or broad in scope - rather than being some kind of unquestionable goal in itself, they might better know how to go about acquiring it.

I know more than a few individuals who share my experience. Their existence assures me that a market exists for free schools offering not ,teachers’ but the resources necessary for self-teaching (Ed. italics). . . .”

CREDENTIALS

The Washington Monthly recently reported: “The Washington Post expressed outrage at the fact that lots of people were getting into law school with false credentials, passing the courses, and going into law practice. . . . Gabrielle Ann Scott Elliott was one example. With only a tenth-grade education, she used false credentials to get into the University of South Carolina Law School, from which she graduated with above-average grades and then passed the South Carolina bar examination. Instead of being outraged by Ms. Elliott, shouldn’t we be outraged by the phony system of credentials that deprives people of ability of the right to use their talent?”

ON LEARNING

The writer of the letter quoted in “Finding Out” later wrote again, saying in part:

“. . . I find that GWS has done for me exactly what I wanted it to do. I wanted it to open up some crevices in my thinking into which the stream of experience could deposit memories, insights, sayings, and other little gems.”

(Ed. note - I have to interrupt just long enough to say that I have never heard anyone say better what one person’s words (written or spoken) can, at best, do for another. We cannot give each other our experiences, but we can help each other to find new meanings from our own experiences. This is the true work of all serious writers and writing.)

“Until I read GWS it had not really dawned on me how possible it was for children to grow up by themselves without a great deal of aid/supervision. No matter that I had done this myself. Yes, I had already concluded that the ideal thing would be for children just to live - either alongside their parents or not, as they wished - and that this would be the best possible education. But as I now, through GWS, see many other people thinking the same thing and I visualize a world of such children, it dawns on me how very artificial it is to think in terms of schools at all, and how very accustomed we might become to having our institutions - all of them - open and accessible to children, instead of schools. I always thought the best school was a library, or perhaps a marketplace. I now think the single idea which symbolizes best this new education is the idea of a large number of adults all committed to being accessible to questions from children about their field of endeavor. It occurs to me that I have learned a great deal from merchants in this way, and in any auto-parts store they’re prepared to educate in this fashion. (Ed. note - also hardware store, lumberyard, greenhouse, music store, etc.)

I think introspection is one of the great self-educational tools. One can be a scientist with one’s own subconscious, testing and probing by means of imaginatively placing oneself in a certain position and then asking, ,How do I like (or dislike) that?’ All you get, of course, is a reading of your feelings, but this leads to asking why one feels as one does, which in turn leads to identification of hidden experiences and implicit principles, which can then be questioned. I was fortunate that for the larger part of my childhood, both parents worked and I was left large chunks of time to introspect. (Ed. italics) I loved doing it and still do.

. . . Almost all the activities I have undertaken in life began with imitation. There was a time in adolescence when I even worried whether I had anything original to say or paint or play. But worrying did no good and I went ahead producing for my own gratification. Then later on I got a better perspective on the world and became aware that I was already pushing the limits in some things. How and when does imitation lead to originality? Why does some imitation always remain that? An interesting question.

I went through the first four or five grades being pretty much as cowed as everyone else when I could not understand phonics or the new math or any of the rest of it. For the longest time I could not remember multiplication or division and successfully hid it like virtually everyone else. But what overcame my fear was exasperation (and that names the feeling as well as the concept!); I could not stand being bored and this communal silence was certainly boring. I also began to get skeptical about schools after fifth grade and began to conceive of my ignorant questions as a way to find out if these were real teachers in front of me or not. I developed a kind of come-on in which I would raise my hand, openly apologize for my ignorance (Ed. note - a good move), and then ask questions no one else asked. As I got sharper I would start to probe the limits of the teacher; this was to relieve the boredom. It had the added advantage that it kept teacher unsure about my intent (which was unfortunately the best I could want from my high-school teachers) until I knew it. On the one hand I would ask a ,dumb’ question and on the other I’d turn around with a tough one. If the teacher were relatively open-minded and good-hearted, the dumb question would be seen and welcomed as a sign of classroom comprehension, and the tough question would be seen and welcomed as an intellectual challenge. If the teacher were mean-spirited, the dumb question would be an opening to intimidate and the tough question would be dismissed casually. I entertained myself like this all through high school and learned a great deal. I won’t say the ,method’ was worked out in quite this Machiavellian way but this was its logic.

. . . When children are exhorted to show initiative they learn guilt about procrastination. Yet often people just want to think things out. Many people I know, who have a prodigal ability to do things, are creative procrastinators. That is, faced with large numbers of things to do, they delay doing things until they’ve had plenty of time to damn well feel like doing them. They delay until they’ve had time to plumb their subconscious on the subject, to look at all the alternatives, to question their assumptions, to fantasize about the subject, to sleep on it. Executives do this; why not children?”

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One reason why not is that most children are not going to be executives, but people doing boring work. It is one of the chief tasks of schools (see GWS #6) to prepare them to do such work, and what’s more, to do it as soon as someone else tells them to do it.

On imitation, the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams once said or wrote that when he was very young, studying composition with Maurice Ravel, he said to Ravel one day that he was worried because everything he wrote sounded like imitation Ravel. Ravel said, in effect, “Don’t worry about it, go right on imitating me, if you have anything original to say it will come out.” Which it did - Vaughan William’s later music sounds about as unlike Ravel’s as one could imagine.

USEFUL BOOK

MATHEMATICS - A HUMAN ENDEAVOR, by Harold R. Jacobs (pub. by W. H. Freeman & Co., San Francisco CA), is about the best book on mathematics, for beginners, that I have seen. What Jacobs tries to do, and does very well, is give the beginner, or even the math-hater, an idea of what mathematical thinking is about, why human beings have found it so interesting, and how (to some extent) it has grown over the centuries. It is a delightful book, for people of almost any age. People who (like me) have done school math (and even gotten good grades) without ever having the slightest idea of what math is really all about, may find it interesting and exciting. People who have always feared and hated math may find there is no reason to fear and hate it. And I can’t think of any book on math that would be more fun to read to and work on with even quite young children. I believe that it was written for high-school or even college students, but I would guess that quite young children would like it if they could work on it with an adult, perhaps to help them with some of the long words.

The book is laid out somewhat like a conventional text, in chapters, with questions and problems. But, unlike most texts, it begins by looking at the path of billiard balls on a table, and the ways in which we might think about that. From there it goes on to many other fascinating and unfamiliar topics. The mathematical illustrations are clear and well-chosen, and the book is sprinkled with pertinent and very funny cartoons from “Peanuts,” “B.C.,” and other sources. I can’t recommend it too highly. My copy (cloth) says that there is also a paperback edition, but doesn’t mention the price of either - but W. H. Freeman would tell you.

TEXTBOOKS

Jud Jerome (GWS #1, 2) writes:

“. . . I was teaching Topher algebra that day from a college text. I’ve got to tell you about this text. It is one of these programmed learning things, with a column of ,answers’ you are supposed to cover up so that you are reading along and testing your comprehension all the while. Completely boring. Now the reason I am using it is that Topher has had all he can take without boring himself to death of fractions, decimals, all the ,arithmetic’ processes. He is NOT an exceptional student, NOT especially interested in mathematics, but just a normal 11-year old who hasn’t had his brain dulled by school, and it doesn’t take more than a few hours of attention over 11 years to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, to get the basic ideas of fractions, and to learn that you can substitute letters or other symbols for numbers you don’t know and go through the same processes. So far as I can figure out that’s all there is to arithmetic and algebra (Ed. note - at least, school algebra) beyond practice, learning a few symbols, etc. at least up to quadratics and complicated exponents and roots.

Anyhow, this text. I wanted something to work on algebra with him, so asked Marty to pick up a college text. We are finding that, in general, though they are in themselves pretty terrible, college texts are about at the level that ,elementary’ students find the material interesting. (Ed. italics) There is enough in the content to engage them so that they can concentrate on the processes. This is true even of literature. Sandy read and discussed a Hawthorne story recently with two 7-year olds and an 11-year old and found they had the important ideas even though they didn’t know all the vocabulary. I could give many examples of how this works at various ages with various subjects, but, anyway, I wanted some college algebra book that didn’t look too forbidding, and Marty came back with this two-volume programmed text on Algebra. Topher started and got bored working alone, and by working with him I could easily see why, as the text is endlessly repetitious, going over the same thing again and again with slightly different wording, apparently in the effort to drum it into heads of young people being cattle-prodded through junior colleges. It wasn’t appropriate for Topher, who still takes adults and learning seriously. (Ed. italics) So by working with him I showed him how to skip ahead ten or twenty pages at a time, read a question, see if it was still obvious, and if it wasn’t, go back a few questions to see where the necessary information was included. In a couple of hours we were able to cover a hundred pages this way. (Ed. italics)

But I got stumped when they started throwing around terms such as Commutative Law, Associative Law, Distributive Law. Now I remembered being embarrassed by those terms somewhere back in college math and I was ashamed that I had never learned what they meant. So I went through that part of the book with Topher with some care. And I still couldn’t see why it mattered, or why such a fancy name had to be given to the obvious fact that it didn’t matter what order you added things up in or multiplied things. I figured I must be missing some subtlety that was crucial to further study of mathematics. Then, in GWS, you disposed of the problem for me by pointing out that we are not, after all, studying mathematics, but Nature, truth - and the labels, which someone some time or other thought might be helpful, often obscured simple truths. You didn’t say it exactly that way, but that’s what I got out of it. The result was I felt liberated suddenly, and realized that I could help liberate Topher.
Except that there is the further problem that as I go at text after text with him telling him the book is foolish he begins to wonder whether the books are, indeed, foolish, or whether his father is arrogant and self-justifying. He doesn’t say that he wonders, but I sense it. Eventually he is bound to wonder. For as I said, he takes adults, books, learning seriously, and it is probably very hard for him to believe that ,grown-ups’ are deliberately deceiving and misleading and absurd to the degree that I imply they are.

Of course, part of the answer is that I was foolish to think that there is a college text suitable for him, and that if I spent the time I could think up better ,problems’ and teach the subject better without texts, or if I were clever enough I could find examples in life which were more engaging and relevant than the problems in texts. But I am either not that clever or I won’t take that much time, . . . I would like something like workbooks, textbooks, to do some of this counseling and inventing for me. Eventually there may be such books. Some of our people may be writing them. Meanwhile, thanks for taking Commutative law, etc. off my back! . . . ”

——————

Some interesting and important questions here. I’m not sure that we need to say that any particular textbook is misleading or foolish. If we are able, over and over again, to make clear to children (or others) what this or that textbook has made unclear, the children will soon draw their own conclusions about the worth of textbooks. If a child said to me, “This textbook isn’t much good, is it?” I might agree that no, it wasn’t. If s/he went on to say, “Well, why did you get it for me then?” I might say that none of the ones I looked at seemed to me any better. From this the child might conclude that textbooks were generally not much good, or perhaps, that there might be some better textbooks somewhere but that s/he was probably going to have to find them. Or, maybe, write them.

Many things in the world around me seem to me ugly, wasteful, foolish, cruel, destructive, and wicked. How much of this should I talk to children about? I tend to feel, not much. I prefer to let, or help, children explore as much of the world as they can, and then make up their own minds about it. If they ask me what I think about something, I will tell them. But if I have to criticize the world in their hearing, I prefer to do it in specifics, rather than give the idea that I think the world, in general, is a bad place. I don’t think it is, and for all the bad that is in it, I would much rather be in it than out of it. I am in no hurry to leave. Even if I thought the world, and the people in it, was more bad than good, I don’t think I would tell children so. Time enough for them to learn all that is bad. I would not have wanted to know, when I was young, all that I now know about what is wrong with the world. I’m not sure that I could have stood to know it. Time, and experience, and many friends and pleasures, have given me many assets to balance against that knowledge, things to put in the other side of the scales. Children don’t have many of these. They need time to learn about some of the good things while they are learning (as they are bound to) about the bad.

TREE PLANTERS

The Nov. 8, 1978 issue of Manas (see GWS #3 and others) says in part:

“Five or six years ago a fifteen-year-old boy . . . learned that the trees in Southern California are dying (Ed. - because of smog) at the rate of about 50,000 a year. . . . He couldn’t stand the idea of the forest fading away. What a picture - the mountains turned to wasteland, a moonscape without trees! . . . This youth - the Sierra Club has published a book about him, TREE BOY, by Shirley Nagel - went to work to replant the forests with smog-resistant seedlings. He organized help wherever he could find it - children, old men and women, handicapped people - and they all worked together to replant trees. He made friends with county, state, and national forest people - which requires a lot of doing for a lad in his teens - so that they took him seriously, valuing the help of his crews of earnest youngsters.

Today the Tree People go on planting trees, and telling about planting trees to school children, running education classes and workshops at their environmental center (some old fire department buildings with ten acres for growing things, and being reinhabited and rehabilitated by the Tree People). Now and then, the ,older’ Tree People - hardly one of them yet twenty-five - go on speaking dates. . . . And they plant five to ten thousand trees a year, some in the cities, some in parks where a lot of people see them and see them being planted . . . Other people ask how do they do what they do. How do they fan this spark of theirs to a flame so that several thousand youngsters want to help plant trees every year? . . . ”

A RECORD

The Boston Globe also reported that on opening day this fall (1978) attendance in the Boston public schools was at a record high. They didn’t say whether it was a record for opening day or for any day. Nor did they say whether it was a record for the past five years, or ten, or twenty, or what. But it was a record, and they were mighty proud of it.

And what was this record? How many of the students signed up for school and supposed to be there on this opening day were actually there? You’ll never guess.

74.5%.

Editor - John Holt
Managing Editor - Peg Durkee

Copyright © 1977 Holt Associates, Inc.