GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #20

In GWS #17 we said that "Mother Earth News" had accepted Ishmael Wallace’s article about how he and his father built a raft.  The other day we got our March/April Issue of "Mother Earth News" (#68).Not only is the story in there, with a very nice photo of Ismael and his sister Vita sailing on the raft, but an artist’s rendition of the two children on the raft is on the magazine cover and also on a big promotional poster for TMEN that will probably be posted on the wall in many stores and other public places. We’re delighted.

I was a guest on a TV show in Toronto called "Speaking Out" the other night - one of the best shows I have ever been on.  The host, Harry Brown, had read and understood our materials and asked many friendly but thoughtful and probing questions.  The people who called in by phone (including two home-schooled children) also
asked good questions.  As is their usual custom, the show ran a poll of its audience, asking them to vote by phone on the question, "Do you think that our public schools are doing a good job?" When I left the studio that night, the No’s were leading by about four-to-one. And more than a thousand people had called wanting to ask
a question on the air. Since we were competing with the Ontario election returns, my hosts were very pleased about this.
John Holt

From Paula King (CA):
…This month our family is taking a vacation. We’ve brought Shannon, our 11-year old friend with us. She’s taking a month out of school to come on our trip. She is responsible for Lindy, our one-year-old. For this she gets room and board, $10/day plus ski equipment and lift tickets paid for when she skis. She is learning to ski on this trip (and doing great). She brought schoolwork with her and I assist her if necessary. It takes very little time. We play games, mainly Pente, a game requiring logic, patience, the ability to look ahead, and the ability to see many situations developing at one time.  I’ve introduced her to THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and Madeline L’Engle’s book A WRINKLE IN TIME, which she read in two days. She, in turn, is teaching me to play the flute. I’m excited to finally get my hands on an instrument. We are good teachers for each other because we have a close, loving relationship.One of the main things I think Shannon is gaining from this experience is that she is doing useful work in the real world. She’s exchanging her ability (she’s a good "mother" for Lindy) for money - that’s part of the real world. She’s giving me a break which allows me to be a better mother and improves our total family relationship. We’re having fun and I see lots of learning going on…[From a later letter:] …On our ski trip we treated Shannon as we would have treated any adult. She went to bed when she wanted, got up when she wanted, fixed herself a meal if cooking wasn’t going on when she was hungry, and so on. As a result, she responded to us as an adult and she was really fun to be with. When I say as an adult, I mean she didn’t try to manipulate us or whine or fuss if things weren’t going her way. There were times when Iknow she would rather have gone with us instead of babysitting but she never mentioned it. I feel we were all fair with each other and Shannon responded to that.

Our agreement was that Shannon would take care of the baby any time during the day when we didn’t feel like it. We always took care of Lindy at night and got up with her in the morning. Shannon took complete control of feeding Lindy, including food preparation, changing diapers and clothing, keeping her safe as she explored the house, and seeing that she got sleep when she was ready for it. That is a full-time job and physically very tiring. She never lapsed. Lindy was safe the whole time and I could leave knowing that Shannon was totally responsible. Knowing this let me have a good vacation…

SUCCESS STORIES

From Marti Mikl (AZ):..Things have worked out great… We wrote a letter to the Deer Valley District School Board requesting a meeting "to make the necessary arrangements to officially remove our son Darris from the public school system and educate him at home." We also sent letters to the school principal and 5th grade teacher informing them that Darris would be absent form school pending a meeting with the Board.For our meeting with the board, we prepared a written statement as to our reasons for removing Darris from public school. Some of our thoughts were borrowed from the Kendricks’ letter (GWS #12)… After a grueling (though friendly) "inquisition," the Board granted us permission to educate Darris at home. It was difficult not to shout "Hallelujah!"…We had expected the District to "wash their hands of us" regarding curriculum. We were pleasantly surprised and grateful that they were willing, even anxious, to have the Superintendent of Curriculum work with us. I met with him shortly after and, in effect, he simply approved of the way I was handling Darris’ studies and told me to keep up the good work. They are allowing us to continue using Darris’ books from school and have even supplied us with all of the corresponding teacher’s books.The Board is requiring that Darris take standardized achievement tests… Since ours is almost a landmark case inArizona, we feel this is a small price to pay in exchange for the approval… We will test him at home. Actually, we feel testing may be helpful in knowing the areas where he needs extra help…

From David and Ellen Dombek (PA):
…Last summer we placed a desperate call to your office
trying to find a way to teach our eight-year-old daughter at home again this year as we had been doing in the past. Donna gave us the
name of Mr. Boelhouwer in Harrisburg [See GWS #16, page 6]. He was most encouraging and said to have our superintendent call him and he would recommend that we be granted permission to teach under the Pa. tutoring law. This we did. Within a few days we had tentative permission pending our submission of a curriculum which would assure the authorities that we would include all subjects required by law. We are very grateful for Donna’s help and for the letters we received from several others in Pennsylvania who are also teaching their children at home…

From California:
…It is interesting to hear that you favor teaching children at home; this is what we have been doing for years with our daughters, ages 10 and 8. They both taught themselves to read and each read at least 7 thick books every week. The teaching here has been bordering on no teaching at all for the past year, but since they are unusually happy, healthy, creative, curious, and self-confident we feel comfortable with what we are doing (or not doing!) Because our house is very isolated, they often spend weeks playing only with each other. When they do see other children they are friendly and generous, behaving as well-adjusted human beings…

From Elaine Murchison, Glassville, New Brunswick EOJ ILO:…I have a seven-year-old son, Jonah, whom I am teaching at home. We sent him to public school for the first month of grade 1 and then decided to keep him home. Our reasons were mainly that we just didn’t approve of the way public schools operate. I felt that I could do a much better job and that Jonah would grow naturally in a natural environment.

We have had our visit with the Director of Elementary School Programs and received a letter from the Minister of Education, stating that he is willing to approve Jonah’s exemption from school, for the current school year. If we wish to continue homeªschooling next year, which we do, we have to approach the Minister again, before the next year begins. They are being very helpful, giving advice and recommending materials. The School Supervisor of our district, who has also been a teacher for 20 years, has offered his help whenever needed. He is an understanding, kind man, who believes very strongly in the family and its functions. We are satisfied and happy with the outcome…

A reader writes:

…When I moved to a rural setting and began to have children of my own in the early seventies, I planned to set up an alternative or "free" school. Instead, and because of the variety of laws set up to restrict the physical plant, I have been teaching my children at home. Michigan laws allow a person to teach their own child if they hold a valid Mich. teaching certificate. A child also does not have to attend a public school if they are enrolled in a regular course of instruction in a private school or under the direct supervision of a person holding a valid Mich. teaching certificate. Since my certificate is still valid until June 1981, our local school board did not argue with our decision (made jointly by parents and child) and has offered us instructional materials and assistance in setting up a regular program. The greatest difficulty I face in teaching my children (ages 5 and 7) is finding time for instruciton on a regular basis. Although we try to use the time between morning chores and my leaving for work at 11:00, other things have a way of cropping up and being given priority. Perhaps other subscribers could suggest ways they set up their programs on a regular basis. We try to involve our children in every activity we engage in. As a librarian, I often bring my children to work with me. My husband is self-employed as a cabinetmaker and teaches them woodworking and measurement skills. We feel that LIFE is an education and no part of it should be ignored when teaaching children…

From Ann Morris, SCHOOL OF THE ARTS, PO Box 114, Stillwater NJ:
…Ed Nagel (GWS #8) mentioned the Santa Fe Community School, which gave me an idea about using our incorporated School of the Arts as a vehicle/shelter for easing pressure on home teaching parents. Dick and I incorporated our school in 1953, eight years after we began teaching our children….We continued teaching our seven children until in 1958 we decided to enlarge our school family on a farm in rural New Jersey to the number of 16-18. We all llived as a big family, rebuilt the old farmhouse, tended the cows, goats, sheep chickens, horses, raised a huge garden, baked our own bread, cakes, pies, cleaned our home/school. Studies had to do with our immediate life interests, which we enlarged by extensive travels in our small buses, camping, cooking over the fire, visiting industries, unique environments talking with people. We believed, all of us, teachers/students should involve our SELVES with life on this earth. After 30 years, without good cohorts anymore, I’ve had to seek alternatives, which I’m developing in the form of advisory outlines for parents wishing to teach their own children. As you describe time and again, education is around us everywhere, waiting to be discovered. Any parents who would like to enroll their child/ren in an incorporated school could write to me at the address above. incidentally, our School of the ARts name refers to libral arts which we believe essential to all learning.  

Meg Johnson

ACTION IN N.J.

From Ann Bodine (NJ):…You ask what we do in our NJ gruops? Most of us consider ourselves a very loose association with focal points, rather than an organization with a hierarchy. Of the various focal points, I only know about the several in my vicinity. Norma Ritter organized a book-buying co-op so that people can buy the English "Ladybird" series of beginning readers at considerably less than the bookstore price. Norma also worked with Sue Pregger in organizing weekly field trips for home-schooled children. The trips continued through fall and early winter until Norma’s baby (her 3rd) was born and the snows fell. Sue Pregger and her 7-year-old daughter Becky also edit and print "Elsewhere News, a children’s newsletter. One woman calls school boards and school principals, pretends to be someone who is moving into that town, and discusses the law with them, even to reading them sections of couret interpretations favorable to home schoolers, trying to put them in a receptive frame of mind in case they ever discover the home schoolers. Meryl Feinsod and Jenny Nepon have organized a weekly ;activity day. It’s held in rotation in the homes of the seven member-children. They have hired a teacher to conduct the program and each child pays $4 per day for the teacher. You already know about Nancy Plent’s newsletter, Meg Johnson’s resource center, and my school/activity center. Meg also had a visit from Raymond Moore to which she invited many of the "focal point" people from central and northern NJ. There have been many support group meetings, public talks, newspaper interviews, and articles… A talk at the YWCA resulted in the most6 inquiries, but a talk to La Leche League leaders resulted in actual home-schooled kids…

GROUPS: Colorado & Connecticut

From Helene Van Manen, PO Box 43, Beulah CO 81023:…

On Saturday evening my husband David  and I had a meeting in Pueblo for persons interested in home schooling.  It was the first meeting of its kind in the area and we had 13 adults and 13 children (ranging from 6 weeks to 6 years old) attend. Take note that we did no advertising - this was solely on word-of-mouth. Dave and I gave an introduction and before long the place was really buzzing (any room with 13 small chhildren does BUZZ!!) It was very exciting for us all and we’ve decided to start a monthly support group and expand as needed.

…I wish you could have seen all the truly beautiful children there. They all interacted so well and enjoyed each second. It occured to me on the way home how each child was so unique and at his/her own stage of development. There were five children all around the same age (2) and I reflected on how we would never try to put them all in a situation and try to teach them all the same thing. What then gives us the right to do that at age 6? We used the booklists and JGWS handouts you sent to us plus other papers we had run off. Five families are getting together for a group subscription and are excited about receiving GWS. I’m sure there will be more families also in the future…

From A Connecticut paper:

…A Haddam mother who wrested permission from school officials to school her daughter at home is organizing a statewide organization to help other parents interested in at-home instruction….Roberta Perkins said her interest in creating the Connecticut Association of Home Educators began as a result of her personal experience in securing permission to teach her only child at home.  Publicity has prompted numerous inquiries from other parents who were already involved in at-home education or interested in pursuing this educational alternative, she said….The group will enable parents to exchange ideas and information. Guest lecturers who are experts in education will be invited to attend the group meetings, which will start next month. Another group objective will be to provide legal references, textbooks, and instructional materials suitable for teaching children at home, she said. The group will work with the State Department of Education to clarify guidelines governing at-home education…

[JH:] We’re always glad to hear about readers starting home-schooling groups in their communities.  But after much thought I’d like to ask that in naming such a group you not use the words GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING, but instead call it the Jonesville Association of Home Schoolers, or the Home Educators of Jonesville, or whatever else seems best.  We want to keep GWS out of these local names because we don’t want to give the impression that we have given a franchise or some kind of "official" approval to any of them. We don’t want to be, or even seem to be, in the business of deciding who is worthy, or best suited, to lead or represent the home schooling movement in any community. We would rather keep GWS just as the name of the magazine, and let readers and other unschoolers start any kind of local groups they want. If some people in a community for any reason don’t like whatever homeschooling groups may be there, they can start another of their own.
The more the merrier.

STARTING A SUPPORT GROUP
Nancy Plent (NJ) wrote down some thoughts for people who want to start home-schooling support groups. We quote some of her tips here;…Do a lot of reading first. Know the laws. Make lists of addresses and other resources. You’ll be asked a lot of questions. Your proposed group will be more helpful if you know at least some of the answers. Pick a place large enough for meetings. Even the largest living room can get crowded by the time you’ve reached your second or third meeting. Check out parks or the community rooms in large shopping malls….It helps to plan a series of three meetings. If people have to miss the first one, they won’t just dismiss the idea of seeing what your group is about. They’ll catch your second or third meetings. Saves postage on announcements, too. Advertise by putting flyers on bulletin boards in supermarkets, health food stores, college bookstores, etc. Send press releases to every newspaper within two hours (or more) traveling distance for the first meetings. Send postcards to people or groups you know. People are willing to travel for this information. They can start their own support group closer to home after meeting with your group. You can ask your librarian for the book which gives addresses of all the newspapers in the state… Check their deadlines. A sample press release can read something like this:

"PRESS RELEASE -The Smithburg Chapter of Home Schoolers will hold a series of three meetings.  The first, entitled "Educating Your Child At Home Legally," will be held March 25 in Plattstown. The second will be April 5 in Bloomsdale. It will be concerned with "How Your Child Learns At Home." The third, "Community Resources and Your Child’s Curriculum," will be held April 30,
location to be announced. -The Smithburg Home Schoolers is a support group for parents educating their children at home or considering doing so. Meetings are informal and children are welcome. For further information call Jane Doe at xxx-555-xxxx.

You can mail the above to all the newspapers you’re interested in without explanation. Most of them will call if they intend to print it….At least one paper which gets a press release will probably call you for an interview. Newspaper stories help you to find other families. After the first one, you won’t be nervous that you’ll say something dumb or not know how to answer a question. After the third one, you’ll know all of the questions they’re going to ask anyway, and you’ll have sharpened your answers so that they satisfy you. N.J. hasn’t had a single unfriendly home-schooling story. I don’t know of any state that has, come to think of it. You won’t always be quoted accurately, but it doesn’t matter. People will know that homeschooling is possible, and where to reach you….Have some materials to give out at meetings, but plan on mostly talking. Most potential home schoolers have felt isolated in their beliefs and want to talk about it. Having the basic legal stuff on paper will save you from answering the same questions for the same people a couple of weeks later….It works well to go around the room and ask each person to introduce themselves. They can also talk about their reasons for interest in home schooling. This is a good way to get to know each other. It also helps people with similar interests (starting a school, a playgroup, etc) get together….You might want to switch to social events or some format other than"introductory" meeetings.  This way you aren’t stuck with spending every meeting discussing the law for newcomers. New people can get their information while they swim, skate, camp, or picnic with your group….In N.J. we haven’t formed an "organization." There are no officers, group decisions, etc. We all live too far from each other to continue as one group.  A few people started groups close to home. Each group does something different…A single organization could get very cumbersome, especially in a large state….Ask for a SASE in any bulletins you send out. The postage adds up quickly, and you may feel you’re always out of envelopes and stationery…Try not to get into explaining things on the phone that you  Ä Äcan send in printed form. Some of us had the experience of having our child fall asleep by us with bedtime storybook in hand, waiting for us to get off the phone. It only takes once to get your priorities straight! Stay flexible about what you want to accomplish by having a support group. One group made an amiable decision to split into two when it became apparent that there was a "structured" segment and an "unstructured" segment…

CURRICULUM GUIDE

The Educational Services Department of Worldbook-Childcraft International "Typical Course of Study, Kindergarten through Grade 12" that GWS readers may find helpful. It lists topics for each year in school under such categories as Social Studies, Science, Language Arts, Health and Safety, and Mathematics. Would-be home schoolers who need to submit a curriculum to school authorities could borrow heavily from this pamphlet, using it as a general outline, or perhaps even copying it word for word. (originally listed with address and cost of 15 cents. Now available online at World Book: http://www.worldbook.com/wc/browse?id=pa/tcs

A note of caution though - don’t take this booklet too literally. There are many more topics listed under each category than "typical" classrooms ever have time to cover. And I’ve never heard of some of the topics being taught in schools at all - who talks about "Chemotherapy" in 7th grader Health class, for example? But anyway, a number of GWS readers have asked for some kind of help in putting together a curriculum on paper, and this booklet looks like it would be useful for that. - DR

CHANGING ATTITUDES

On Jan. 20 I appeared on a Springfield MA talk show called "Night Talk." There was a live audience in the studio, to whom the host now and then asked questions. A couple of nearby home schooling families, with whom I had had dinner before the show, were sitting in the front row, where the host could easily talk to them. In spite of the usual kind of loaded questions - "Don’t you miss your friends?" - the kids were very cool and gave sensible and convincing answers. Early in the show the host asked the audience, which was not stacked in favor of home schooling and indeed contained a number of teachers, how many of them thought that the idea of people taking their children out of school to teach them at home was a bad idea. Out of the 40 to 50 people there, only about four or five raised their hands. He then asked how many thought it was a good idea, and about half raised their hands. I was surprised and pleased; until quite recently the hands would probably have gone the other way. The station had only planned to do a half-hour live show, but it went so well and the audience was so lively and interested that, when the first half-hour was over, the host asked them if they would be willing to stay longer and tape another half-hour show for later release. Everyone was willing, and we did so. In the second segment the host - a different one - asked the same question about how many thought that home schooling was a bad idea, and this time got even fewer hands. On Feb. 2, I did a similar talk show, "People Are Talking," in Baltimore. It was raining hard, which the staff said usually meant a very small studio audience, but more people turned up than they had room for. Again, the show went very well. There were a number of black women in the audience, and I feared that I might hear the usual argument that instead of helping rich white people take their children out of school I should be working to improve the schools where poor black children had to go, etc. But no one said any such thing. Since most of the time I was looking at the hosts or into a camera, I could only take occasional glances at the audience, but a home schooler and GWS reader in the audience later told me that as I talked these black women, and many others as well, were nodding their heads in agreement. One woman, who did not appear to be rich or college-educated, got up and said that she had taught her little girl at home before the child went to school, and that when she reached school and was given the usual tests, she tested in the 97th percentile. Since I had already said, as I do every chance I get, that teaching is not
a mystery and that anyone who likes children and is interested in them can teach them, I was delighted to have this mother’s testimony to back me up. Two other mothers spoke about their success in teaching their children. After the show was over I spent at least another hour in the studio lobby talking to members of the studio audience. Since then we have had quite a few requests for information, and some subscriptions, from people in that area. From these experiences, and from many letters people send us, I get a strong impression that much of the newness and strangeness of the idea of home schoooling is wearing off, and that more and more people are able to hear and talk about it without the anger and fear I used to hear. They may not all or always agree with it, but they can talk about it in a calm, matter-of-fact way. This seems a good sign. - JH

ISOLATED

We have received several letters lately like this one:…I was wondering if you or the readers of GWS would have any suggestions for us. We have a son just over one year old, so unschooling is not an immediate problem for us yet. But I am anticipating one thing if we keep Luke out of school; we live rather isolated and so there won’t be a lot of chances for social contact with other kids. We have one family for a neighbor, who may also unschool, but no other neighbors for a few miles. Already Luke seems to need to be around other kids and he enjoys it. So far I’ve been trying to take him to visit people with children maybe once a week, as well as to church on Sunday. Once he’s of school age, I’d like to have a good relationship with the local schools so he can participate in activities there. Transportation will be a problem - taking Luke (as well as our other future children) often to places where other kids are. How have other people handled this so their kids are happy and "socially well-adjusted"? What advantages and disadvantages have other rural, isolated families found in their children’s lack of contact with other kids?..

EXPERIMENT IN WASH.

From Jerod Rosman, Granite Falls WA
…We live 36 miles from the nearest school - 26 miles from the end of the schoolbus line. Deep snow isolates  us for 4 to 5 months each year, and it is 12 miles to the start of a plowed road. For two years we tried to commute our three kids to school. During good weather we drove 104 miles a day to and from the bus. In the wintertime we either boarded the kids out, moved into town, or tried to use snowmobiles to commute them. It didn’t work! We were always dead tired; we used horrendous quantities of gas; and the kids suffered physically and educationally.

As the price of gas skyrocketed, and our confusion, exhaustion, and concern increased, we realized we had to do something. Either we had to move closer to town and bus line, or we had to figure out a way to teach the kids at home. The District compensated us up to 30 miles a day, maximum, and the cost of gas for the 104 miles we traveled was wiping us out. Last winter, we arranged to work with the children’s teachers and carry out their plans and lesson guides. What a disaster! First, the teachers didn’t like the idea, because it took time they were not being paid for. We didn’t like the idea because it was chaos trying to juggle 6 or 7 different lesson plans and approaches. The kids made it through, but they were penalized for absences, even though they were "approved" absences. Then the state offered to pay a boarding allowance if the children could live in town. When we threatened to sue for encouraging family break-ups, they retreated - in a hurry. Finally, this spring, we took the bull by the horns and wrote the school district to inform them we were taking the children out of school and teaching them via correspondence. …We wanted to continue to have the kids enrolled in Granite Falls, so the school would not lose the state aid per diem, but we also wanted the school to pay for the courses. Our main argument was that this plan seemed to be in the best interests of the children - and it was! Our letter was sent in June. We did not hear from the school district until fall, when the Supt. of Schools and the Elementary Principal visited us with bulging briefcases. After we presented our case, and listened to them recite Waashington State law, we were delighted to hear they were in complete sympathy with our situation and would do everything they could to get our proposal approved!
We didn’t hear anything for two weeks. We were beginning to think they were snowing us, when we got the word that they had approved the whole shebang! The School District pays for the courses, and makes their resources available to us. The children are carried on the rolls at Granite Falls, and the Calvert and University of Nebraska credits will be accepted by the District. They will not monitor us, and will accept any progress reports from the correspondence schools as indications of their progress. So.o.o…. we’re in business. Another family moved into the area this summer with three schoolkids, and went in with us on the proposal. The four parents take turns directing the kids, with the Moms doing the lion’s share. We are "all" learning from the
experience.

Our neighbor’s fifth grader, Michelle, had been shuffled into a "Specific Learning Disability" class three years ago because of trouble reading. After six tearful and tough weeks, she now is head over heels in love with reading, and gaining by leaps and bounds. The children’s main difficulty is lack of ability to read, understand, and apply directions. We refuse to answer questions that can be answered by reading, thinking, and reasoning. We direct them "to answers… In the public classroom, it looks as if they  never bothered to understand written directions - they asked the teacher for an explanation.
It is also hard for us "not to use pressure techniques used on us when we went to school. Sometimes, it seems to grind against our gears. We also try to eliminate any competition between the youngsters, but sometimes find ourselves using it to encourage perseverance. The school district considers this a pilot or experimental program, and future funding will depend on progress. So, we are "all doing our best to make it work…

1880′S FARM SCHOOL

After doing the "Speaking Out" TV show in Toronto, I had a nice visit with Jane Jacobs (author of ECONOMY OF CITIES), who told me some things about her father’s early schooling that might be very useful to many unschoolers today. Her father grew up in the 1880’s on a small family farm in Virginia. Many of his aunts and uncles lived on other small farms in the same area, within perhaps five or ten miles. Since there were no public schools in that part of the state, the families had to teach their own children. Neither fathers nor mothers could give much time to it, since running the farms was more than a full-time job for both of them, and the families could not afford to hire a special teacher for their children, as richer families did. So these families hit on a good solution. A family with an older child, a daughter not yet old enough to leave home, would make their farm the school for all the young children in the several families. Since roads were bad and travel slow, these children could not go from their own homes to the school farm and back every day. So the young children would all live at the school farm during the week, doing some work in exchange for their keep, study with whichever cousin was the "teacher," and go back to their own home farm over the weekends. Since they were staying with loved and loving relatives, and had cousins to study and play with, they did not get homesick.

When the older girl who had been acting as teacher married and left home, one of the older children in the other families would take over the schooling duty, and the children would live at that farm during the week. So the children knew that just as older cousins were now taking care of them and teaching them, so when they were older they in turn would take care of and teach younger cousins.

Jane Jacobs told me that at the farm where her father had most of his schooling, they built a little outbuilding to house their family school. It had a bell beside the door, and was still standing last time Jane visited, some years ago. It sounds like a lovely arrangement. The children must have enjoyed the long (for those days) trip to join their cousins at the beginning of each week, and enjoyed just as much the weekly trip back to their own parents. As far as education goes, the system certainly worked well; though the families had very little money, all of the children who wanted to go to college were able to do so, and some went on to law or medical school. This could be a very good way to unschool children in (1) families that live far from any other families, and who feel their children may not have enough company; and (2) families in the city (or anywhere) where the parents work away from home and cannot be with their children during the day. Thus we can imagine the Smiths and the Browns taking their young children over to the Jones’s house or apartment, where the oldest Jones child, perhaps 10 or 12, will take care of the younger ones during the day while they all study and learn together. Such arrangements could make home schooling possible for many working parents who might otherwise not be able to do it.

MULTICULTURAL HIGH SCHOOL

From Carl Hedman (U. of Wisconsin Philosophy Dept,
Milwaukee WI 53201 - see GWS #9, "A Useful School"):
…I was happy to see you say a few things about alternative schools in GWS #17, for I believe that in the long run "unschooling" must be based on new forms of cooperation between families… What we need, I think, are new forms of cooperation that transcend both the nuclear family and the artificial social forms (e.g., giant public schools). And what better place to begin than a group of families committed to providing, in your words, "some special places for kids." The model I favor is four or five families agreeing to have the young people at their house one day or a half-day a week, with each parent responsible for pulling things together on the day that they house the group. This way, every family will carry their own share of responsibility, and the group won’t be burdened with costs of rented space, inspectors, etc. It would also allow single parents and other families that have problems with work schedules to participate - since most people could find a way to get off from work one time a week.

…You’re absolutely right to stress that many people who say "I want to work with kids" really want to work "on kids, "to do things to or for them, usually without their consent, which they think will do them good." I saw this at our own alternative elementary school and I saw it in my own life as a parent. Somehow, we don’t trust the viability of our own lives to provide a context where younger people will find things they will freely join. At our "school" we tried to deal with this by having a daily sign-up sheet where the "students" wrote down things they would like to do on a particular day (adults did this too) hoping that others would join them. But, we stressed that, in your words, "they should not have to go to special kid places unless they want to." I remember how hard it was at first when my 10-year-old son signed up for a garbage collecting expedition in the neighborhood, especially when I had signed up for a math class. Turns out, however, that his present interest in anthropology and archaeology came out of these jaunts. By the way, I think there is an important difference between young people under 10 or so and older "students." Most younger people don’t really mind stopping by a place on a fairly regular basis. But the plot thickens considerably with adolescence. Here I would guess that most young people can’t be expected, without coercion, to show up each day at a particular place. In the case of my two sons, this was a time when they preferred to pick their own projects, completely on their own terms. One put all his energies into a paper-route… The other focused on a correspondence art course and Brewer baseball games.

To bring all this up-to-date by relating it to Multicultural Community High School - a ten year old, still developing "alternative school" here in Milwaukee:  We are still absolutely committed to voluntary attendance. Furthermore, the worthwhile activity we are engaged in is working in systematic ways on basic skills.  What we try to do at each of our six "storefront learning centers" (actually many are in church basements) is to create an atmosphere where anyone can feel comfortable about working on grammar, etc. A key to this, I’ve come to believe, is that we welcome mothers, and older and younger brothers and sisters, to come to our centers - so long as they are interested in this project. For example, the other day a mother came in with her 15ªyear-old son to check out the place. Before the day had ended, she was thinking about preparing for the high school equivalency exam herself - and we even had the 10-year-old brother working on our basic subtraction worksheets. As I said to him, "You know, we all work while we’re here - let me know what you’d like to do." We give no orders; that would get us back into all the public school games. We simply try to convey that for those who want, we’ve got a progression of work sheets that allows anyone to catch up on their basic skills. Again, one doesn’t have to come to any classes to be enrolled in our school. Historically, hundreds of young people have used their time at Multicultural to pursue a job or some other interest. In many cases the closest we come to a traditional "educational" role is when at the initial meeting we suggest that we will always be around when "they" decide they want to work on their basics. Many times it takes a year or so before we see them again - sometimes we never see them again. But often they will remember this possibility; perhaps as they begin thinking about a trade that requires the GED exam……Since this overriding project is incompatible with our providing young people with a place to hang around and discuss all sorts of things, we aren’t able to take on the task of setting up cooperative peer groups. I personally think this is as it should be; that, ultimately (following Paul Goodman) this has to be left up to the young people themselves. This is not to say that we don’t encourage young people to work together on the various issues that confront them. For example, we have a program with the local university whereby ex-Multi students come together Friday
afternoons to support each other as they deal with the hassles of college. And we encourage, say, single parents to get in touch with other Multi students who have worked through similar challenges.
Where the cooperative solidarity is most evident is with the volunteers who help hold Multicultural together. We learn constantly from our joint project, and the compromises and quarrels we experience seem somehow to make us stronger as a group… But with the "students" themselves, we must rely on the claim that self-respect (strengthened by their proving to themselves they aren’t "dumb") is a precondition of genuine social cooperation…

INDIANA HOME-SCHOOL

Penny Nesbit (IN) writes:
…It’s been two years since we took Peterson out of the first grade of a local public school. That first year I was required to send a monthly attendance report to the county attendance officer. I did so faithfully, but last year I did not bother to send in monthly records, although I kept one at home. The school authorities have not bothered us at all. Of course, we have kept a pretty low profile….For two years I used the Home Study Institute curriculum but I switched this year to the Calvert School, which is a little more interesting. I use it as a "guide" only and as a security blanket. We have "school" in the morning - but I am finally at a point where I can leave it up to Peterson as to whether or not we will have classes, and not panic if he has something better to do….About reading - I could kick myself for allowing the public school to teach him to read in kindergarten. He has developed an aversion to reading, especially textbooks, and I feel that he was too young at 5-1/2 for formal reading instruction. In order to encourage silent reading we told him he could stay up as late as he wanted, reading in bed at night. At first he chose all the easy Dr. Seuss type books and he couldn’t manage to read silently - and he ran to us constantly when he was stuck on a word. That was two months ago. Now he is reading pretty difficult books, silently. He no longer comes to us when he can’t figure out a word. If he can’t sound it out he just skips it and usually he can figure out what it was after finishing the sentence….Peterson continues to see a couple of children who went to kindergarten with him… With more children moving into our neighborhood there are plenty of playmates on weekends and after school. Our local library shows free movies and has arts and crafts activities every Tuesday afternoon and Peterson enjoys this. Also, he is still studying violin and meets with other Suzuki children every other week at least, sometimes more often. For two years he refused to attend Sunday School because they "did baby things." This year he was invited to join an older group of youngsters studying ethics and other religions. Now he looks forward to that experience each Sunday….In GWS #15 a mother inquired about whether it was possible to take on a child’s education without much help from the father.

This situation (one parent doing most of the teaching) is probably the more usual situation. In our family my husband travels a good deal and when he is in town he is away from home ten and eleven hours a day, sometimes more. This does not mean, however, that he is not involved in our son’s home schooling. When he is at home he takes on the nightly "read to me" routine. In September he took Peterson for a week long camping and canoeing trip. He has taught him how to play golf, backgammon, and chess. Whenever possible, we accompany him on trips. (We just returned from a week’s visit to Montreal and Quebec.) About practicing [GWS #14] - Peterson seldom practiced his violin but seemed to enjoy playing so I didn’t bug him about it and adjusted to the fact that other children were progressing much faster than he. In January, I joined a Suzuki parents’ violin class. After P. heard me play he began to practice a half hour or more a day. Although he never told me why he suddenly began to practice, I think that one of the reasons was he realized how good he was in comparison to my squeaky tones… [Fom a later letter:] We gathered up all the Calvert stuff and took it down into the basement. Since that time, Peterson made a detailed exhibit of rocks, pieces of arrowheads, and shells, found on our various trips. We went to the library for most of the research materials. To add a little zest to the exhibit, P. hung up some of Ruben’s prints. Every morning he maps out  his own work which includes practicing cursive, math, spelling, and science. Right now he’s into evolution, brought on by his study of rocks. He’s still not reading a lot - except for informatin about specific things - but on a recent trip to Puerto Rico he discovered "Mad Magazine" and had a ball reading it!..

A TROUBLED PARENT

A reader wrote:
…I have to get this feeling out - I feel dumb! In your newsletters most of the folks have their kids reading by five, and most everyone has “school” at home. For years now I had given up the idea of keeping my kids at home because I can’t teach academics. I hate them now as much as I did in school. Advanced math turns to mush in my head (yet I can cope and reason quite well). I read all the time (I have the hugest library, everªgrowing) but phonics will do me in every time… I’ve always felt so much guilt because I didn’t do a thing with my five kids except to let them play. I’ve finally coped with that guilt (sort of) and realized (but now I’m wondering again) that it was all okay. If all I want to do, or can do, is provide craft projects, or excursions, or talks about Spirit/God, or health education (I’m heavy into natural healing), then fine, I can still do it. But it’s so scary for me and I just don’t know if I’m the home-school type. I’d rather see them play and play and then play some more. Time enough to grow up. I know you have made it clear that you will judge no one’s method, but, look, I have no method or answers, just questions and
confusion. I’ve merely outlined all I can effectively give them. I love my kids and I want them to be magical; I have no desire for the “free time” school would give me….This school question creates whole areas of guilt for me -do I give them enough, am I fair, and on and on. Sending them to school would seem to absolve me of all this guilt - “There, I’ve done my duty.” Is it possible that I am making a wrong decision about our local school? …It is a wonderful one-room schoolhouse. Generally the kids are marvelous… The teachers are too, and are very much a part of the community. The parents are all very involved and even come to school to help. The parties are community events and there is much community caring. It warms my heart to see the close bonds of friendship my children have with their classmates and teachers. I find myself wondering if the community spirit the school represents is a worthwhile reason for them to be there. What I am trying to say is that the school is everything anyone could hope for in a school, the teachers even love the kids, but it still gives grades, and it’s still 7-5 (they take a bus), five days a week… I like being with my kids. I want to be their teacher… They teach me, too, and I want to be taught. I need an objective outside opinion. The kids love school, and they should, it’s a wonderful environment, this school (except for the social garbage - meanness, etc.) I don’t know if I would be doing them a favor by keeping them out. It’s mostly me, my heart aches when they are gone. I want them to be free and only freedom teaches freedom. There, I’ve said it.

I replied:
Thanks for your lovely letter, and for saying out clear and strong what so many people feel, but are afraid to say. My first message to you is, don’t worry. Don’t worry about “teaching academics.” The one idea I keep hammering away at in GWS, before all others, is not only that it isn’t teaching that makes learning, but that most teaching actually prevents learning. You don’t have to worry that if you don’t “teach” your kids this or that, they will never learn it. We all know thousands or millions of things that nobody ever “taught” us, but that we figured out by using our eyes and ears, thinking about what we saw, heard, read, or did, and asking questions if we needed to. The human race has been learning this way for about a million years now, and your children will, too. You say that you read all the time but that phonics does you in. If you can read a lot you already “know” phonics; you just don’t know how to talk about it, and there’s no important reason to know. The only point, supposedly, of “teaching” phonics is to help people learn to read. But if you already read well, obviously you don’t need to be taught, you already “own” that knowledge in the most useful possible way.
Same goes for grammar. Grammar means the structure of a language, the way it is put together and used If you can speak, read, and write fluently, as you obviously can, then you know the grammar of the language, to put labels on parts of speech is of no importance at all. The “grammar” that is taught in schools, which is really the grammar of Latin (a very different language) clumsily pasted onto English, was not invented when Shakespeare wrote, so if he took a modern day grammar test, he would flunk. But who in his right mind could say that Shakespeare did not know English grammar? It’s fine about letting your kids play - they learn more that way than any other way. If you keep reading, and reading to them if and when you, and they, feel like it, one day they are going to get curious about what Mom does with all those books, and are going to decide that they want to do it, and in no time at all they will be reading, no pain, no strain. They may do it next month, they may do it a couple of years from now. It doesn’t make any difference, as long as, whenever they do it, they do it “because they want to. When they do it in that spirit, they will cover four or five years of school reading in a matter of months.

Beyond that, the point about a lot of the people who write in to GWS about their kids’ reading is that they “didn’t” teach them, the kids just figured it out, a thing which the human animal is extremely good at doing.

If, as you are doing, you make available and accessible to the kids the things that are most interesting and important to you, they are going to become interested in at least some of those things. If they know other adults who will share their lives, interests, world with them, so much the better. Children are interested in what we grown-ups know, do, care about. I would say you are the perfect home school type. The people who have trouble with home schooling (at least at first) are the people who feel they have to “teach” their children everything. You say you have no “method.” What I keep trying to say in GWS is that you don’t “need” a method. It’s better that you “don’t” have a method. It’s all those “methods” that have killed learning in the schools. About “magical,” that word makes me nervous if it means drawing some kind of a line and putting children on one side and the rest of us on the other. Existence, life, thought, feeling, imagination, dreams - all are miraculous and magical, and adults and children share in that magic, it’s not something that belongs to the children alone. Your little school sounds nice, but if it’s as nice as it sounds, there’s no reason why they couldn’t make an agreement with you to let your children come if and when they wanted, and stay as long as they wanted. Let the school be just one more part of the world for them to use and explore, or not use and explore, as they see fit. Then it becomes the children’s decision, not yours. If the school won’t agree to that, then they’re not as great as you think. But if the children are happy in the school, and have good friends among the children and the teachers, they will go to school for as much as they need and want of that friendship, and will stay away when they need and want something else - solitude, privacy, time to think, play work on their own projects. Children, especially when young, have a very acute and accurate sense of what their needs are, and if the means to satisfy those needs, for friendship or whatever, are at hand, they will use those means. But as I say, if the school won’t let the kids come when they want, then it’s not as great as it seems, and there’s no reason to feel guilty about not sending the children. Of course, if the children “really” want to go, are determined to go, then you have a different problem, and if their feelings are strong enough on the matter, you would probably be wise to yield to them. But let’s not worry about that for the time being. See what you can work out with the school about the children coming when they want. You say you need an “objective” outside opinion. There are no such things as “objective” opinions. An opinion is by definition subjective, and people who say otherwise are kidding themselves or lying. If your heart aches when your children are gone, that’s the best reason in the world for having them around you, at least for as much time as they want. So see if you can work out a deal where the children go to school when they want. Let me know how that works out…

CRIPPLING ONE’S CHILDREN

From Nancy Boye, Girls Club of Dallas, Dallas TX:

..Some friends of mine told me this story on returning from an extended stay in India. They had been prepared, by their studies prior to the trip, for the numbers of beggars they would encounter. But they were not prepared for, and were deeply impacted by, the numbers of beggars who were in some way maimed or crippled. In their travels, they saw so many that they questioned their Indian hosts about the reasons for this situation. They were told (by many people) that the parents of these maimed beggars, having nothing else to give their children, would cut off their children’s hand or leg in the hope of making the child a better (i.e., more pitiful) beggar.

While we can easily recognize this as a horror, isn’t it much the same thing that we do to our children, spiritually and intellectually, when we say “This is the way it is, so the best I can do is prepare you for the worst!”? If we only knew what we were saying! If we could only see that it’s the SAME! Maybe we would be able to work our way out of our own despair for the sake of a future that DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY!!

…A teacher “caught” my 13-year-old son doing something that was against school rules. Her anger, and the fact that she was physically detaining him in the hallway, attracted a sizable group of curious students. They both ended up by screaming at each other, and (obviously!) it was my son who received the punishment. My son told me that he’d done what he was accused of doing, he knew it was against the rules, and he was willing to be lectured by this teacher. His complaint was that he’d asked to talk to her alone and not, as she insisted, in front of the other students. I agreed with my son about the unfairness of the teacher, but I reminded him that the way the system operates is that the teacher has all the power and that his only hope was to “play the game by their rules.” How did I keep myself from storming the school? Or at the very least, from commending my son’s refusal to be humiliated ªwithout a fight - in front of the other students? How, indeed!!

Could it be that, as a product of that same system, I am STILL intimidated by the authority of the school system? A friend told me of the problems that her 8-year-old son was having in school. He spent a lot of time in the principal’s office for “acting up” in class. She’d had several conferences with the teacher and the principal. They were all concerned about the boy’s inability to conform. My friend told me that she was embarrassed to have to go so often to the school for conferences and that she was very angry with her son for his obstinacy in refusing to behave in the prescribed manner….She and I both, and countless millions of other parents, were doing nothing better for our children than those parents in India. We were doing everything in our power (supposedly for the good of our children) to make them “better beggars.”…

J.P.’S SOCIAL LIFE

From Kathy Mingl (IL):…The library had some sort of weekly program for 2-yearªolds, a few months back, so a friend and I took J.P. and her little boy, Andy, there for some social exposure. The program was pretty obviously aimed at preparing them for school - sit down and listen to the nice lady, and then do what she tells you, all together -yech. We didn’t come back for “that”, again.

The next week we came later, after the program part was over, and J.P. and Andy got a “lot” of social exposure. All the 2-year-olds in the world, boiling all over the room, playing and pushing each other and yelling and fighting and grabbing everything in sight. A “very” maturing experience, all right - I think I aged a year or two in that hour, myself. J.P. loved it, didn’t want to leave and was very thoughtful all the way home.

What I noticed about all those properly school-prepared little kids is that they all seemed to go around in their own little bubbles and the parents tried to “keep” them there - “Leave that little boy alone - go find something else to play with,” etc. “I” told J.P. to look that kid in the eye and “tell” him he wasn’t finished with that toy (the boy had taken it away from J.P.). Do you know what happened? After a moment of shock, the kid lit up like a Christmas tree, and was J.P.’s friend for life. Another time we were there, a little girl pushed J.P. off a rocking horse. When he came blubbering back to me, I told him to go back and look that girl in the eye and tell her that wasn’t nice. Again, she was surprised, but she got off and played with J.P., and then didn’t want us to go home. I don’t think anyone talks to these kids as though they were real people. Amazing.

…J.P. just asked me what school is, and I’m darned if I could think of what to tell him. I finally said it’s a place where parents send their kids to get them out of the house all day, which he accepted, but I don’t think it will hold him for long. Got any ideas, quick? [JH: It’s a place where they teach you to sit still, be quiet, and do what you’re told.]

DAYCARE DADDY

From Barry Kahn (ME):

…I am presently a daycare daddy. My wife, Jean, began a two-year RN program in September, and rather than pay someone else to care for Heather and Jocelyn, I decided to try and make money by caring for other people’s kids. At present I have a two year old boy, a 3-1/2 year old girl, and her older brother who comes after school - he’s in the first grade. Quite a crew. I have absolutely no doubt that working for a living at a “regular” job is much easier than what I am doing. On the other hand, I’m getting to be an excellent cook (especially Chinese food), and the kids provide all the entertainment I could ever hope for. In addition to the 9 to 5 childcare I am still making an occasional wedding ring and also teaching English to Indo-Chinese refugees two evenings a week and Saturday mornings. I’ve had to retire from giving guitar lessons for the moment - there just isn’t any way to fit them in.

Out of morbid curiosity I asked Matthew, the first grader, if he gets to talk in school. After a glance which clearly said: “Are you crazy?” he said, “Of course not! If we talk, we have to stay after school!” “What about recess?” I asked. “Yeah, we can talk then.” “And at lunch?” “A little bit.” The next day - still morbid, I guess - I asked him why the teacher didn’t let them talk in class. “Cause if she let us talk we would scream and yell!” he replied instantly. “I let you talk and you don’t scream and yell,” I said. He shrugged eloquently and went off to play.

…My own kids, I’m happy to say, are thriving and delightful as ever. They do so many funny, perceptive, amazing things every day that it’s really hard for me to remember any particular event long enough to write it down… Half the time I forget before Jean even gets back from class! And even when I remember, there’s no way to reproduce the style, inflection, intonation, etc. Here’s a couple of samples: Heather, trying to console Jocelyn who was crying about something: “Joc Baby, Baby Joc, whatever your name is, don’t cry…” Heather, sitting in the car seat in the dark behind me as we drive to the mall, sings: “Eat cookies, eat cookies, eat cake, eat cake, eat sugar, eat sugar, eat raisins, eat raisins, eat buckwheat! Eat buckwheat!” (Repeat from beginning.) And on the way back from the mall, cries out in desperation, Daddy, my eyes keep closing and I “can’t” stop them!”

…The greatest thing about doing daycare is that I get to eavesdrop on the kids while I’m cleaning house or getting lunch together or whatever. The sophistication of 3-1/2 year old girls playing Mommy or Doctor is incredible, and the way they have learned to keep Jocelyn happy so she won’t harass them excessively is a marvel of child psychology. My only problem is that I don’t think I’m smart enough to truly grasp just how smart “they” really are! But I try.

…I would be curious to know how many GWS readers do not own a TV. We don’t. Who has the time! I find I agree with the folks who think television as a medium is basically harmful, regardless of the “quality” of the content. Radio, books, and of course live performances, make TV look like what it is: ____ (Fill in the blank).

…After one and a half years of procrastination I finally built the kids a sturdy easel for painting and drawing. I finished it last Saturday afternoon and that same evening Heather wrote her whole name by herself for the first time. Who could ask for a better thanks? Heather’s other great leap of recent weeks is a musical one: she can now carry a tune with pretty fair accuracy. Her favorite song - you’ll never guess - is “Paradise” by John Prine, which she has half memorized. The transition from atonal lack of interest to singing along and sounding good, like so many childhood jumps, seemed to take place overnight, although I’m sure some part of her brain has been carrying on a “music analysis project” since birth. Who knows? When they’re ready, they’re ready. The kids are calling me to begin bedtime rituals, so I’d best be off. First we play, then I read to Heather from an Oz book or a Narnia book, then Jocelyn crawls in between Heather and me and I tell her a story about a dog, a cat, a tree, and a bird while she makes the appropriate noises, then Joc goes back to Jean, and I tell Heather a story about Deedee an imaginary person who is usually about a half-inch high but sometimes is the size of a small elf depending on Heather’s mood. The Deedee stories always end with, “And then Deedee went to bed,” to which Heather always replies, “Just like I’m going to do.” And then we go to sleep…

BAD BOY

A friend writes:…Most people I encounter talk about an infant’s badness, and its desire to be dictator. A young friend told me about his baby boy. During the week before Christmas the parents kept the baby away from the gifts with plenty of hand-slapping. On the great day, they told him “now” he could open a package. He refused. In fact the child drew back and slapped his own little hand…

ACCEPTING NEW BABY

I wrote to a friend, at the birth of her second child:

…I’m sending along a copy of BEFORE YOU WERE THREE. I suggest that when the new baby is born - or if the baby arrives before the book, as soon as possible thereafter - you give it to D [Age 4] as a present. I think it would be fun to read to him, partly to remind him what he was like, and partly to remind him what the new baby will be going through. I guess like all older brothers and sisters, D will be thinking now and then that the little one gets more attention than he does, and is allowed to get away with a lot more. One thing that might help him (or any other older children) deal with this is to tell him, “Because you’re older, you’re going to do “everything” first. Everything the baby wants to do, you will already know how to do. Everything the baby learns to do, you will already know how to do better. That is very frustrating for the little one, so it’s only fair that younger children should get a little more attention. Besides, since they are newer in the world, and confused, and maybe a little bit scared, they need it more.” But the point is to remind the bigger kids of the huge advantages of always being bigger and always being first. It may help if they have a few specific privileges which they get just “becauseÄ” they are bigger…

The friend replied:…I want to thank you for BEFORE YOU WERE THREE, which arrived yesterday. It is a lovely book. I read part of it to D today and he acted out sections - where the authors write, “Lie flat and lift your head; this is how the baby views the world,” etc.

…Many of D’s grievances towards school seem to have disappeared or lessened considerably since A’s arrival. It’s as though a host of anxieties have been lifted from his shoulders. He no longer protests about going to school. He has stopped clinging to me and his father. And he seldom goes through the difficult bouts of babyishness interspersed with defiant independence that he’d throw in the weeks before the baby came. I think he’s relieved to have the mystery of a baby brother or sister solved at last. I imagine he was deeply uncertain what to expect. Would Mommy disappear for a while? Would Daddy too? Would this creature be bigger than he is, take his toys, make lots of noise?

He never asked these questions outright so I’m surmising with great license, but the confidence and happy peace which have reappeared in his personality and behavior are unmistakable…
CHILDREN & DEATH

From Art Harvey (NH):…Some time ago you asked about the reaction of our daughter Emily (then 2) to the death of her baby sister. It was a reasonable question but at the time rather a difficult topic for us to writeabout. Now over a year has passed. I would not call Rosemary’s death “a dreadful blow” as far as Emily was concerned. She has had some difficulty about it, partly because her mother was so upset. Emily continued to ask questions about Rosemary for several months. At first, where is Rosemary? Is she asleep? Is this Rosie’s dress? Every evening Elizabeth remembers Rosemary in her prayers, which Emily often hears. In our living room hangs a portrait of Rosemary drawn by a neighbor the day after she died. One time, when Emily was more than usual saddened by it all, she said, “We didn’t make her dead, did we?”…Emily was interested in her sister and had about the same affection toward Rosie as toward others she knows. If Emily had been a year older she would have been permitted to share in the care of Rosemary to a much greater extent, and so become more attached. As it was, she was usually frustrated when she wanted to hold Rosie or do some other thing with her for a long time. This, in my opinion, is a strong reason for having children at least three years apart.

I have heard that young children are not normally terrified at the fact of their own impending death, as in incurable illness, etc. Younger children do not seem to have a strong sense of individuality. I doubt whether a strong sense of it is a necessary part of human life. So Emily’s non-emotional reaction to Rosemary’s death, together with her continuing search for Rosemary’s proper place in her own world, satisfy my theories about the order of mankind…

Arthur, who wrote the above letter some time ago, tells us that in addition to Emily (now 4-1/2), the family also has Max (1). Another reader, Mark McGartland (IL), wrote:

…Sue and I thought it fortunate that we had taken Dawn and Nathan to a funeral home when an elderly neighbor died, for a few months later my mother died. We think that explaining death as it happened to a neighbor better prepared the children to accept the death of a grandparent, someone who meant so much to them….Some of your readers may be interested in the book DYING IS DIFFERENT by Phillis Rash Hughes (published by Mech Mentor, Box 394, Mahomet IL 61853). It uses a format of simple text and pictures, explaining death in plants, animals, and humans; it’s appropriate for even very young children…

EXTENDING UNDERSTANDING

Sasha Kariel (HI) writes:…From the time my son, Asa, was born I have included him in as many of my own activities as possible. It seemed to me that taking him to movies, restaurants, and parties was certainly more stimulating for him than a babysitter. At first it seemed like asacrifice for me since I had to spend considerable time interacting with him instead of enjoying the adult entertainment. But now I know how much I’ve gained in contrast to parents who “can’t manage” their child in similar situations. Asa and I have worked out a special relationship where learning and entertainment merge together.

Of course, including him in my life means no less than including myself in his life. When he ws an infant not yet able to crawl he often became animated and struggled while looking at a toy far across the room. When I left him alone to develop “spontaneously” he would easily lose interest in the toy and turn to something else. So I would make the toy slowly weave and hop its way over toward him. He watched the toy until it stopped just out of reach and then he struggled furiously until he grasped it. The smug look on his little face let me know that I had done something right.

Months later when he toddled over to me with a picturebook, I directed his attention to the alphabet letters and labeled them as well as the pictures. A few days later at the zoo he pointed to a letter T on a sign and said “Tee, tee!” with the same excitement he had when pointing out a monkey or a turtle.

Now Asa is three and we spend a great deal of time playing with his toy dishes. As we make pancakes I talk about each ingredient as he mixes it in, where it comes from, and how the pancakes would taste if we didn’t add it. One of his favorite jokes is staging an accident and spilling too much pretend salt into the batter. We then cough and sputter eating these “yuckie” pancakes. I have come to believe that consistently taking what Asa is doing and then deliberately extending it by adding new information - drawing him just barely beyond the edge of his understanding -has dramatically affected his ability to learn.

While I realize that many of the parents who speak in GWS about leaving their children alone to learn “by themselves” are actually participating in many ways, I think it is important to appreciate the parents’ role as a more positive one. Parents may well see themselves as facilitators of their child’s learning experiences. I would find it very helpful if more parents could write GWS about the strategies they use to facilitate their child’s learning, that is, how they amplify and elaborate on their child’s initial expression of interest without imposing the kind of predefined goals characteristic of formal schooling…

In my reply, I wrote:
…You speak of taking what Asa is doing and then deliberately extending it by adding new information. A wonderful idea. And yet there can be a danger in it, beyond a certain point. If everything we say or do around a child has some kind of conscious pedagogical intent, if our response to everything the child does is to think, “How can I “use” this to teach him something?” we run the risk of turning our home into a school. There doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a lesson in “everything”. The line is hard to find, harder yet to describe. I like my friends to tell me things that they are interested in and that I don’t know - it is part of any good conversation. Yet I don’t like being around people who act and talk as if their mission in life was to educate me, whose relation to me is always that of teacher to pupil. When your children are little enough, almost anything you say is fascinating. But as they get a little older they will become very aware of how you talk to your adult friends, and they will not like it if you have one way of talking for friends and another, different, more teacher-ish way for your children…

HER OWN LEARNING STYLE

Pat Helland (IA) writes:…We have been so well schooled ourselves that it has been difficult for us to trust our own point of view about schooling. Reading GWS and your writings has been greatly helpful to us in making our decision to continue with home learning, something that we realized we had been doing right along. Anna provided us with the motivation to come to this decision, as well as a real education by her example of self-directed learning. Giving Anna the freedom to learn and grow has often required that we put aside our conclusions about education, however “liberal,” and allow ourselves to become the students. We have learned that the ways Anna chooses to learn are important to her, that the “learning strategies” she chooses work, and that they are strategies that schools would not tolerate.

One of the things that we have learned is that Anna often prefers to do more than one thing at a time. We first paid attention to this when she was around two, because it affected us. Anna would ask us to read, cozy up to listen, then, after just a few minutes, she would get out some toys and get wrapped up in play. At first we found this really annoying. Since she was giving no visible attention to the story, we assumed she wasn’t listening. But, if we stopped reading or complained about her apparent lack of interest, Anna would insist that she wanted the reading. So we read. And she played with her toys, sometimes in elaborate, conversational fantasy. She really did hear the stories and often interrupted her play to ask questions or make comments about them. And she remembered the stories, too. We accepted this arrangement, although at times it seemed ridiculous, e.g., when she would read a comic while we read something else to her at her request. This liking for doing more than one thing at a time has not been limited to listening to stories or the only way Anna has liked to hear stories. But, whenever she has done things this way, it has seemed important to her as a way of learning.

Another thing that we learned is that “playing with” what she is learning is Anna’s way of taking possession of it, of making it her very own. I began to understand this when Anna and I were working a seed-growing project. When we planted the seeds, I suggested that we make a chart on which we could record what we saw as the seeds grew. Since Anna wanted to be a biologist, I thought this would give her a taste of scientific observation. She liked the idea.

When the first sprouts appeared, we eagerly got out our chart. Anna neatly filled in the data and drew a surprisingly accurate representation of a sprouted pea seed in just the right place. Then she began to make the whole business her own and I began to feel twinges of anxiety about our tidy chart. Under the sprouted seed she drew a hand, and then a rabbit person attached to the hand, and then two more rabbits looking at the seed in the hand of the first rabbit. In a stupid muddle of school-thinking I almost told her that she was messing up the chart. I bit my tongue and watched. Anna worked over the chart with further drawings and talked out her fantasy as she went. The first rabbit told the other two all the “ins” and “outs” of seed growing, covering all the things Anna and I had talked about when we planted the seeds and while we waited for them to grow.

Anna has continued to take possession of her learning in drawing, fantasy, games, and “one-woman plays.” After seeing an explanation of selection in the evolution of one crab species on PBS’s “Cosmos” this fall, Anna worked out a fantasy game using pennies and dimes from her counting jar to represent two species of crabs. Then she invited me to fish with her for crabs from a toy boat on our carpet sea. We always threw back the penny crabs to live and reproduce and we always kept the dime crabs to eat. She expanded the game, adding predators and ocean storms which each took their toll on the two populations. This fantasy game clarified the dynamics of selection for Anna and made the knowledge her own in a very real sense.

None of these incidents or the many similar ones that fill Anna’s days would have a place in school. We are certain that having Anna’s ways of learning reshaped to fit what schools think are the appropriate or right ways of learning would be as crippling and as stupid as having her feet bound to fit some notion of foot size…

MEMORIZING TOGETHER
From Anne Callaway, 1760 Elm St, El Cerrito CA 94530:…I find it’s easier to memorize something if I say it out loud “with” someone else. My 4-year-old and I have memorized poems and Bible verses almost effortlessly by reciting while looking at each other. When one of us makes a mistake, the other usually says it right and this way we keep going. Keeping going is the main thing. It’s like playing music. You don’t stop and go back everytime you make a mistake - you just pick it up again. The repetition will do the job of making it perfect. No need to struggle with it… [See “Choral Reading,” GWS #3.]

READING ON HIS OWN

LeeAnn Ellis (WA) writes:…I must admit that I have been intimidated at times when reading GWS to read about young children who have taught themselves to read at age 3 or 4… My daughter (9) is now a fine reader and enjoys the world of books as much as I do. But I have to admit that I helped her learn to read with all my sneaky little tricks of word cards, phonics games, etc. She was reading well by age 8, but a lot of my time and effort went into that accomplishment. Now I know that I could have saved all that time and effort for other pursuits, because my son has shown me the easy way to teach a child to read: just let the child see how much you enjoy reading, share the world of books with him, and let nature take its course. Bobby has been read to on almost a daily basis since he was an infant. This time and effort on my part I view as an integral part of mothering and wouldn’t exchange all those warm cuddly hours for anything. When I started sneaking in word cards, the lack of interest and then resentment made itself known, so I backed off. I tested the waters of his interest and readiness many times between the ages of 3 - 6, but he just wasn’t interested. He began to read during that period, but his interest was lukewarm. Now he is 8 and his reading ability astounds me. Not because it is much above grade level (if he were in school), but because his large reading and comprehension vocabulary grows so rapidly with no effort on anyone’s part. He recently read through a set of Dolch word cards that he had never seen before, and knew every one, even though those words have never been introduced to him. He has never been given any of those cute little vowel rules that are supposed to help you unlock words. I just can’t get over the miracle of his ability (and my daughter’s , too) to learn new words with no one teaching him! My teacher training dies hard, I guess. I thought that “I” would have to present all new thoughts, words, and concepts to him and then he would learn them. What a burden has fallen away as I come to understand that he will determine the timing and direction of his education, and my part is to provide him with an environment rich in opportunity, love, and acceptance..

SELF-TAUGHT READERS

From Pennsylvania:…My husband spent 12 years in school, received a high school diploma, and was not able to read. As an adult and while serving in the navy, he taught himself how to read and spell. He is now quite proficient. My husband and I are in complete agreement with your efforts…

Doug Anderson, San Francisco CA , writes:…When I had just turned four my sister would read to me; she was seven. Sometimes in the middle of a story she would have to go to bed for school the next day. I was extremely curious to find out how the fairy tale ended, so I asked her if she would teach me to read. She taught me prefixes and suffixes and how to use a child’s dictionary. I would try to read to her an hour a day and she would help me with mistakes and show me how words were pronounced. When she read to me I had always asked her the meaning of words. Two weeks after I had asked her to teach me I was reading by myself. I didn’t learn the alphabet, but I had a subconscious acquaintance with it from using the dictionary.

When I went to school, I had Dick and Jane sitting in front of me. Mr. Holt, if some teacher took you at your present age and experience, sat you in a desk and forced you to read Dick and Jane for countless months, what would be your reaction? My ability to read was extinguished…

…When I joined the service, I started reading again and now have a library of my own…

HUCK FINN, GENIUS READER

Nancy Wallace wrote:…When our family read TOM SAWYER and HUCK FINN, something wonderful struck me. Even though Tom skips school all the time, he has the Robin Hood stories memorized and is constantly reading adventure books like THE ARABIAN NIGHTS that most kids “can’t” read today! And when Huck Finn is adopted by the widow and sent to school, he learns to read “anything” fluently in less than three months. These days it’s supposed to take at least 8 years to learn all the skills necessary in order to read and even then a good number of the kids don’t make it. Oh, well. I don’t suppose school teachers have much time to read books like TOM SAWYER these days -they’re too busy getting their M.A.’s…

SCHOOL DISCOVERS READING!

From a newsletter of a Pennsylvania school district:…The silence is deafening! Every morning throughout the district teachers, students, principals and office personnel start the day by reading a book or magazine for 10 or 20 minutes. The mandatory reading period is part of SSR (Sustained Silent Reading), a new program designed to encourage students to read for pleasure. Although SSR is being practiced in several other communities, this is one of the few districts to have the program in effect system-wide, kindergarten through high school. The reading period is usually scheduled at the beginning of the day during an activity period. Doing homework is forbidden. Students, teachers and parents are enthusiastic about SSR. “I’m really hooked,” said one student. “I used only to read my homework assignments. I never had time for pleasure reading. Now I really look forward to SSR time. I hate to quit when the time is up.”

Apparently SSR is contagious! One parent commented, “My son’s new habit has rubbed off on me. Now as soon as the kids leave for school in the morning I sit down with a second cup of coffee for a half hour of pleasant reading.” Try it: you may like it…

[JH:] Imagine what might happen if these schools were to try the earth-shaking experiment of telling their students that they could read “as much as they wanted”. A revolution! But this is exactly what can and does happen in most home schools. After I appeared with him on a Boston TV show, I wrote the following letter to Dr. Gregory Anrig, the Mass. Commissioner of Education:

…Enjoyed our brief meeting at that rather chaotic TV show. Too many people for such a short time. I believe I can suggest, in only five words, a program that 1) will substantially improve student achievement in both urban and non-urban schools throughout the Commonwealth and 2) will not cost any money to put into effect. The five words are Unlimited Undirected Uninterrupted Silent Reading.

In other words, students in schools would be allowed and encouraged to read, for as long as they wanted, materials of their own choosing, without being interrupted by questions and tests and without being compelled to read aloud before their classmates and so run the risk of being humiliated and shamed by their mistakes. Such a program has not often been tried in schools, but where it has been tried, by a handful of teachers brave enough to run risks, it has produced quick and impressive results, often not only in the area of reading as such but in other parts of the curriculum as well.

It would be perhaps interesting and useful to find out how much time our schools allocate to this kind of silent reading by choice. I would be surprised if it was even as much as a half hour per week. It ought to be a minimum of six hours per week - in other words, there ought to be at least six hours in every school week during which this kind of reading would be given priority over all other academic activities.

Let me stress once again that such a program would not only not cost the schools more money but might well save them some of the money now wasted on workbooks, basal readers, etc. One of the many things discovered by people teaching their own children is that when these children are able to read what they want and as much as they want, they routinely read five, ten, or more books a week, and usually more difficult books than their ageªmates are reading in school. Surely the schools can profit from this experience…

I sent a copy of this letter to the chairman of the Boston School Committee and the editors of the two leading local papers. We shall see if anything happens.

KITCHEN SCHOOL

A friend wrote:
…From Nov. 1 to Jan. 1 our school system was on strike. Nov. 14 I received a call from a frantic mother remembering my skills as a substitute. Would I teach her two kids and a few others a couple days a week until the strike ended? At first I said "no."…Finally I took six kids (3 fourth grade boys, 3 fifth grade girls) Tuesdays and Thursdys, 9-11:30 AM. I was paid $10 every morning by every parent - please believe these parents were desperate. They didn’t care what I did as long as I "stimulated their minds."

The first morning, two boys literally wrestled with one another as they came up the steps to meet me… Fortunately I have learned a lot from you and also some techniques from Sid Simon about making children feel good about themselves so they don’t put down one another. The seven of us sat down on the kitchen floor and I just started talking. I told them this would not be a typical school set-up and we would do a lot of things differently. The only rule I had while we were together is that we would try to get along with one another and help one another and not hurt one another in the usual ways.

I can’t possibly tell you what a wonderful six weeks this turned out to be for me and apparently for the six kids. I got a lot of ideas from them about what they wanted to do here and we used that as our base. I had a lot of ideas for science experiments using their own bodies (breathing, pulse, hand folding, etc, etc, etc) which we did with a stopwatch and how they loved it! One day we did our finger prints. It was wild. We tried to categorize them to find out what types we had. Then we switched sets and like detectives, tried to find out whose set we had.

…We did creative writing. Two kids couldn’t put pencil to paper at first. I said, "Line up the alphabet down your paper and think of a word or words for as many letters as you can that tell us things you like to do or to eat or whatever."  One boy couldn’t think of one thing. I said, "Look over at Brian’s paper. If you see something he likes that you like, put it down." He looked at me like I was crazy. He asked me to tell him that again. I did. He said, "Isn’t that copying?" I said, "No, it is sharing." He couldn’t do it. I said, "Get up and walk around like I’m doing and read off everybody’s paper and take a word from anybody." He practically croaked. Then he got up and followed me around the table. Naturally once he got started, he began to think of his own words and came up with a good list. I had scraps of paper all over just to print out the spelling of any word, if anybody asked for it.

Another day we started to play the math game of Buzz on threes (1 - 2 - Buzz - 4 - 5 - Buzz). When one little boy made the first mistake saying 6 instead of Buzz he practically freaked out, he was so scared and embarrassed. I immediately sensed that this game was not going to be fun for him and said so, and said we would instantly switch to something that makes everybody feel good and happy. The next time they came, the rest of the kids wanted to try it again. I had helped Adam write out some old fashioned times tables on one of my 5 x 7 cards which he seemed to enjoy. You know,  1 x 3 = 3  2 x 3 = 6  3 x 3 = 9  4 x 3 = 12 etc.I thought perhaps he could play this time with the answers written down so he could follow along. Well, first round, he missed! He nearly flipped out. This time I quickly and cheerfully said, "Adam, come cuddle next to me, and every time it is your turn I’ll whisper you the answer." He looked at me like he was hearing things but he snuggled in next to me. We played for probably half an hour, buzzed on 3’s and 4’s. Others made mistakes. No one drops out when they make a mistake - we just start again. It was very exciting, the kids loved it. Adam never made one mistake, naturally, and "he" loved it. Later one of the boys asked me, "If you give Adam all the answers, what does he learn?" I said, "If I don’t give Adam the answers, what does he learn?" He thought about that and smiled. "This place sure isn’t like school," he said. And yet we were somewhat structured because we usually did everything together. We never had time for everything… The kids wanted to come five days a week. That came from them and so it made me feel good to know it was something they enjoyed and not had to do because their parents made them. Every day when they left, I felt in all good conscience that I had not done any kid any harm. They came to me like battered little children. More than anything else I spent time making them feel safe, encouraging each, building their confidence….It turned out the little boy, Adam, hated math, hated school, and hated his teacher. He wrote me a beautiful creative story and that is how I found out… I spoke to his parents after the strike ended… His parents went to school that week (very timid mother) and told the teacher to stop humiliating their son and to be patient and kind, etc. Believe it or not, Adam writes me a letter every week or two which I immediately answer. He told me, "My teacher is beginning to understand me. She is not making me feel bad any more." So perhaps this dear child will end up not dreading school so much…

MISPLACED ANGER
From Jenny Wright (NH):…I’ve been thinking about anger lately. I think sometimes anger is constructive, but often it is negative and destructive… One example of a time I’ve felt angry at kids that comes to mind is from 13 years ago when I last had a teacher’s job. I took kids on hikes at a school camp. Sound like fun? It was awful. I had all these rules that it was part of my job to enforce. Don’t run, stay on the path, don’t wade in the stream, don’t climb trees, stay together, discuss certain subjects to be quizzed on later back in school. I hated these rules. I loved the woods myself partly because they were free of all these awful rules. So on the job I was angry at the rules. Every time a kid quite naturally wanted to do something against the rules, and I had to stop it, I felt angrier. The anger came out on the kids. Very unfair. I knew something was wrong and got out of that situation. But I had started to doubt that I enjoyed being with kids after all. I can still remember my surprise hearing myself sound like the worst teacher I could remember…

SKEPTICAL HUSBAND

A reader wrote:…I wonder if you know just how close the philosophy of La Leche League [GWS #18] is to that of GWS. It is a fantastic organization. The only experts are the people who belong to it, and women are encouraged to make their own choices based on what is best for their own families. My husband has been very supportive of my beliefs up to this point. He is a wonderful, involved father who is willing to include his children in as much of his life as possible. He supported me with the home birth of our third child, although he had some deep reservations. However, when it comes to school, he does not agree with me at all. As a result, our six-year-old son is in public kindergarten. My husband is a public school teacher… There must be other people in my situation where one parent is a confirmed unschooler and the other is not. I certainly do not want to destroy our family life over this, but it cannot help but affect us. If you know how others have worked out this problem, I would appreciate hearing about it…
    `
I wrote in reply:…I do indeed know how close the philosophy of La Leche League is to that of GWS. I think of LLL as a rich source of very valuable allies, and hope that many of those mothers who bore their children naturally and nursed them wil later decide they want them to learn at home. It seems a natural consequence of what they have already been doing. Also, I feel that mothers who are closely bonded to their children will be unwilling, as you are, to allow the kind of mental and spiritual destruction that goes on in too many schools.

But I don’t know what to say about husbands who do not agree. When both parents are together, home schooling simply doesn’t and can’t work unless they both agree to it. I don’t know how openªminded your husband is on the subject. Would he be willing to read GWS, or parts of it, from time to time? Would he be willing, now and then, to see some other families who are teaching their own children, to see what their children are like? If so, it’s possible that in time he might change his mind. By the way, I know some home schooling families in which one parent is a working public school teacher. That might interest your husband. He may feel that if you taught your children at home, it might threaten his job - and in these times, that would be a real concern.

It’s also just barely possible that your children might be among the very few who thrive in school and even benefit from it. You should not rule out that possibility. And as long as your children are going to school, it might be better not tell them how you feel about it. Let them make up their own minds. As I say, they might like it (for good reasons, not bad) and do well at it. Or they  might come to dislike it, and for such good reasons that your husband would in time have to agree with them. After all, I don’t think he will put up with the schools actually being cruel to the children, which they too often are. And perhaps in time he will see with his own eyes that school is making your children into less nice, less intelligent, and less capable people…

TEACHER/HOME-SCHOOLER

From Art Horovitch (Alberta):…We presently are home-schooling our oldest daughter, Vivian, age 11. The change from an uptight, angry young girl to one who is much more at ease and self-confident has been remarkable in the five months of being out of school. We have had excellent coªoperation from the superintendent and local school principal. The school board was not keen on the idea, but generally went along with the superintendent’s recommendation that it be tried for one year. One thing which we did agree to was standardized testing in core subjects (math and communications skills). In the first set of tests last June, when Vivian had been out of school for three months, she had a score at or higher than grade level. Two things I would like to stress about these tests: (1) Get a statement of objectives outlining what is expected to be known and (2) Accompany the child to the testing situation and STAY WITH THEM during the test. It is too easy for a child to be intimidated by the situation and make mistakes or forget to do something. One problem that I have had with the whole question of home schooling is my own role as (a) a high school teacher (mathematics) and (b) parent of a child who is home schooling. I find that I get the most negative comments from teachers on my own staff. Their chief comment is "How can you work in a system if you don’t believe in it?" I also come under a great deal of criticism when I talk about the futility of counter-productive methods such as punishment and ridicule of students. I find it very hard to tolerate the constant putdowns the students in our school are subjected to, yet when I suggest changes, I’m told they will never work. The most positive comments about the home schooling come from some of the students themselves. We have gotten into some extremely interesting discussions and it is obvious that students are aware they are being manipulated by the system "right from grade one" to do things they don’t want to do. I wonder if there are any other home schooling parents who are also teachers in their local school system and how they cope with the stress generated from the problems I mentioned above. I’m really anxious to hear what they have to say about their position in the school system. Perhaps by  a mutual exploring of ideas we can relieve some of the stresses which  many of us in this position must feel..

WHY SCHOOLS WON’T CHANGE
I’d like to take a little GWS space to answer very briefly a question I am asked all the time: "Why aren’t you working to improve the schools?" or, as it often comes out,  "Why have you given up on the schools?" The answer is, in essence, because the schools have given up on themselves. I was recently invited to be on a Boston TV show with many school people - teachers, officials of teacher’s unions, superintendents, the state Commissioner of Education, a university president, and others. All sang the same song, the song I hear sung at school meetings all over the country: "There’s nothing wrong with the schools, we’re doing a better job than ever, and any problems that may exist are not our fault." Society. TV. Politicians. Voters. Above all, uncooperative and uncaring parents. The schools have a very special definition of "cooperative and caring parent." To be called that, you must meet these conditions: 1) You must not doubt, question, or challenge anything done by the schools, or make any suggestions for changes or improvements - all these, however small or specific, are lumped under the name of "criticism." 2) You must believe everything the school says about your children, and even yourselves. 3) You must make your children do everything the school tells them to do, and punish them if they don’t. 4) In any dispute between the school and your children, you must strongly and without reservation take the school’s side -school people talk longingly about the good old days when "a child knew that if he got in trouble in school, he would get in trouble at home." So, say the schools, if all parents would follow these rules,and if the public and the politicians would just shut up, stop criticizing, and give the schools all the money they ask for, everything would be fine. Say those words to a meeting of school people, and you are a friend; say anything else, and you are an enemy. The schools, in short, have shut themselves up in a fortress which cuts them off, not only from any new and useful ideas from outside, but even from their own experience. They do not say to each other, "Let’s forget those ignorant outsiders, but let’s discuss privately, among ourselves, how we can do our work better." No; since they insist they are doing their work perfectly, and all problems are the fault of someone else, there is no need and no way to talk about how to do their work better. All there is to talk about is how to hold off all those enemies surrounding them. As long as the schools remain in this present frame of mind, they "cannot" improve, and except for a few unusual schools and teachers here and there, there is no more constructive way to work with them than to help dissatisfied people to find some alternative - which is what we here are doing.

CURING THE INCURABLE

From an article by Ellen Frank in the "Boston Phoenix", 2/3/81:…There are seven Salem Children’s Villages in the western world; three in West Germany, one each in Switzerland, Israel, Maryland, and New Hampshire. They care for foster children, generally abused and neglected in the extreme… The Salem concept is simple, highly non-institutional, and three-fold: the children are treated as individuals within a family structure; they are fed an all-natural-foods diet, with no sugar or additives; they live in a rural environment and they engage in physical activities, such as horseback riding and, later, trade apprenticeships, that increase the child’s sense of self-control and self-esteem. In each of the Salem villages, children live in households of up to eight children with two "houseparents" or a "housemother," professionals trained in the care of neglected and abused children, many of whom have been labeled as "retarded, hyperactive, emotionally disturbed, or psychotic". The children relate to the houseparents, and to one another, as family. Older people, filling the role of grandparents, live in the Village in their own "Grandparents’ House." In some cases, they are retired tradespeople who take on the children as apprentices….Behavioral problems at Salem are further reduced by an emphasis on physical touch; children are given back rubs before they go to sleep, and hugs are frequent.  Physical contact is a reassurance to the 11 children now at Salem in New Hampshire (there are plans to take in 24 more). Most of them have spent their lives since infancy in institutions, or in a shuffle from one foster home to the next. Psychiatric facilities and group homes are a common experience, and the children achingly desire familial normality: they make a point of referring to their "brothers" and "sisters," and call their houseparents "Mom" and "Dad." Karen Price, 27, one of Salem’s houseparents, explained the system of discipline this way: "We do something called ‘logical consequences.’ Say a kid who can’t swim goes down to the lake without telling me - then she or he isn’t allowed to go there for three days. Three days is the standard. It seems to be exactly the right time and it’s a very, very long time to a child. We have a point system leading to the status of ‘mule,’ ‘pony,’ and ‘thoroughbred,’ which signify their ability to deal with the outside world, rather than punishment. The status indicates whether or how often they can do things like leaving the grounds, or going to the movies, or roller skating. "We never hit them", and if they hit another child, or an animal, they have to do an hour of work -the worst work we can find, like shoveling manure or mud. "You must realize that most of these children are highly disturbed when they come here, and they have a lot of anger. We’ll talk about it in family meetings. I have four children, two boys and two girls, between 11 and 15. Physical activities are the best way to get that anger out. We do a lot of hiking, horseback riding, and canoeing. And what they’re really big on is yelling - outside." According to all that I observed, read, or was told, the Salem system has scored remarkable successes with extremely difficult children. The case of 12-year-old Sally… is graphically typical.Sally was removed from her parents at the age of three, because of severe abuse. A younger sibling had recently died of starvation. She was hospitalized and then sent through a long series of foster homes and institutions. She was diagnosed as hyperactive and possibly retarded, and placed on Ritalin to control her behavior. When Sally arrived at Salem, last year, she still had her baby teeth, was unusually small for her age, and couldn’t do normal exercises such as running or swimming. She was totally illiterate. State authorities informed Salem that she could not be managed without Ritalin or other drugs. Sally was taken off drugs the day she arrived at Salem and put on the natural-foods diet. The hyperactivity rapidly receded, and within a week she had settled to a level of activity normal for her age. Over the past year she has grown six inches, her adult teeth have come in, and she swims and runs competitively. Sally is in sixth grade at the local Rumney School and tests above her grade level…

[JH:] One way to describe Salem is to say that they do for and with children all the things that regular schools and teachers are not allowed or, more often, do not choose to do. They do not keep a "professional distance" between themselves and the children; quite the reverse. They give the children many legitimate ways to express, use, and burn off their anger. They give the children a great deal of physical affection and contact, something that will get teachers, especially men teachers, fired in most schools. They
teach the children useful skills and give them real work to do.Above all, they do not hit the children, which seems to me all the
argument that is needed against the many adults, teachers and otherwise, who say that they can’t control even "normal" children without hitting them. And, unlike the learning disability "experts" of the schools, the Salem adults do not assume that the children’s troubles, problems, and handicaps are incurable and permanent. In short, they treat the children as Jean Liedloff urged in THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT  and as George Dennison described in THE LIVES OF CHILDREN. Under this kind of treatment the "retarded" and "illiterate" Sally (and presumably many others like her) not only became a "normal," active, healthy, and affectionate child, "but did six years worth of school work in one year". I think it is reasonable to assume, and this is my main reason for writing about the Salem Villages in GWS, that if these gentle and humane methods of dealing with children can, and in such a short time, make sick children well, the absence of these methods and they are absent in all but a few schools - can in just about an equally short time "make healthy children sick". If we want to find the root cause of all the anger and violence in our schools, here is the first place to look. Meanwhile, we all need to know much more about these people and their wonderful work.

HIGH SCHOOL GRAD AT 15

From southern California:…Almost four months ago, I took the California High School Proficiency test which is equivalent to being a high school graduate. I am now a 15-year-old high school graduate. I am going to Los Angeles Valley Junior College - I couldn’t afford to go to a university. I go at night and work part-time in the mornings as a tutor for retarded teenagers (they call them exceptional children). In the afternoon, I tutor 1st and 2nd graders at the local elementary school. Each job pays $300 a month so I end up with a decent salary when you consider I am only supporting myself….What I am doing is taking classes that sound interesting. I have no plans to get an A.A. or B.A. or whatever. I’m still living at home and probably will for a while so I don’t have to worry about income. I’m still doing some writing. The Santa Monica "Evening Outlook" printed a short story I wrote, and another will be in my college’s pamphlet on how to write, for which I am being paid $50…

10-YEAR-OLD WORKER

From Colorado:…I was commissioned to build a playground for a Head Start program in Colorado. The money was fairly good and I stayed at a friend’s house to cut costs. Trell, an old student of mine when I taught at an alternative school (now disbanded for lack of funds) asked if he could come to Colorado with me. He was 10. He hashelped build playgrounds in Kansas City, Mo. After I consulted his mother and communicated to Trell the hard work and long hours involved, we set off together. The flight to Colorado was the beginning of a month of working together. Trell slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of the room in which I slept, ate with me (paid for by his mother) and worked with me all day. Trell called home 2 times a week. When he became tired of cutting wood, banging in nails, and lifting tires, Trell joined one of the Head Start classes or went into the office to work on an art project, study his math, or work at his reading and writing books. Sometimes he would write home. With the bilingual, bicultural program, he danced Mexican dances, learned some Spanish, helped with painting, reading, and field trips….Many of the skills I myself use frequently today were learned outside of school. My skills needed to construct the Head Start playground were not learned at school. Neither were the dancing and carpentry skills I use to teach classes, the interªpersonal skills needed, my abilities in writing and photography… I acquired most of these through apprenticeship programs of the Society of Brothers. This communal organization requires young people - from about 8 years old - to work for part of the day within the community - the woodshop, gardening, children’s house, publishing, etc…

PROGRAMMERS

The Boston "Ledger, 2/13/81:…According to the staffer at the Boston Computer Society booth at the Microcomputer Fair, bright 11-year-old schoolboys are earning $8,000 or $9,000 a year in their spare time, free-lancing simple programs…

VET WORK

From Rosalie Megli (IL):…New opportunities are opening up for Lora, our 13-year-old daughter. She has made arrangements to begin part-time work at the local veterinary clinic, feeding animals and cleaning cages. She has also been made welcome to accompany the vets on farm runs and with office work. Since Lora loves animals and may be interested in veterinary science as a vocation, we are delighted with her arrangements. Lora got her work permit from the superintendent of schools with "no" stipulations regarding working hours… Lora also has a small craft business (she makes herb-filled potholder mits) and is going to buy a microscope with proceeds from pre-Christmas sales…

YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS

Rick Cohen (OR) writes:…We moved to this small town on the Oregon coast a year and a half ago. We realized that we would probably not be able to keep a low profile and we didn’t want to start out here alienating ourselves from the community unnecessarily, so we enrolled in a home study course for our three school-age kids. We chose the Home Study Institute with the idea that its being run by a Christian group might make it easier for the kids’ father to accept… Surprisingly the school board was not familiar with HSI, though there are some people using it here. They were more familiar with Calvert. Everything has worked out fine, though. We have to make a formal request each year and the kids have to take the same yearly evaluation tests that the rest of the kids in the district have to take. Their first exam was a few weeks after beginning to work on their program - they did fine! Following the program can be pretty demanding, until you figure out what is important and what is not. It’s hardly nonªschooling but the kids do have most of their time to themselves. When they’re not reading or doing household chores they are usually playing together. The boys, especially, have generally preferred playing together over playing with most other kids. Recently the three readers have read TOILET TRAINING IN LESS THAN A DAY to help with their little brother. Before we moved here they each became successful entrepreneurs and craftsfolk. It started with Aaron’s desire to make some money, about five years ago. Every Saturday he would set up his little display of hotpads next to his mother’s craft booth. Somehow he started drawing pictures with felt pens. Initially he was heavily influenced by his mother’s designs. Later, she borrowed at least one idea from him! To sell his pictures, he packaged them as cards with envelopes (with some assistance from his mother). He soon found this endeavor much easier and more lucrative than the hotpads so he discontinued that line. His sister and brother soon joined in and were also doing well. One by one they got tired of producing and they already had more money than they needed - so much more that we could no longer "bribe" them to do odd jobs at low pay. I don’t want to leave the mistaken impression that they just turned out pictures. They sometimes did, but Aaron received a couple of commissions from a former art student; and one of the local artists, who is pretty successful, was so intrigued by Aaron’s work that he borrowed one of his designs - with credit given. Their money and number consciousness was raised considerably by their business experience also. I remember Thorr’s teacher remarking how he seemed to have a mathematical intuition which was far more complex than his formal knowledge would suggest. They don’t seem to be doing much with their art these days, although a recent present of pipecleaners did spark up a creative
effort resulting in a beautiful bird sculpture, equipped with an opening for the eggs to fall out and a small entourage of chicks.

Our youngest daughter, Raven (5), has really enjoyed playing with pipecleaners. Initially all the kids were making self-styled "eyeglasses." Later, Raven discovered that she could make letters and numbers out of them. She enjoys being "tested," up to a point. We also play letter games with the SPEAK & SPELL that arrived recently. This game has something for everyone; I enjoy trying to find the mystery word. Oftentimes Raven will ask me to tell her how to write a letter to someone. She writes many letters, but they usually get lost… All of the kids have a good deal of interest in births and pregnancies, especially since two of their siblings were born at home. They’ve also attended a friend’s birth since Angela has been involved in midwifery…

UNSCHOOLING VALLEY

From Harold Dunn (OR):…Here’s a check for $168 for an 11X sub to GWS for 6 years… Actually I haven’t found anyone else with the cash to pay their share yet, though I’m confident I will, in time. My estimate is that there are about 30 families in this rural valley who are keeping or have kept their kids out of school. In just five minutes, Bunny and I thought of 13 such families, and guess we could come up with several more if we had time to think. And we certainly don’t know most of the families around here! Besides that there are three free schools here now, and there were four. And I hope to finally get a "kid center" going next summer, as an alternative to school - just a place kids can be together without adults. I’m donating one of these subs to our local library, and another to the library at our free clinic here in the valley…

A BRIEF TRIAL

From Pat Tennnant (CA: GWS #17):…I thought you might like hearing about Ginger’s experience with the local high school. Ginger has always been the one with a need for others to relate to and she began to feel, this summer, that a school was the answer. So, because we have faith that our children know what experiences they need to get where they are headed, we told her we would enroll her. She attended three weeks before deciding that the school had nothing to offer her. We knew it wasn’t working before that but she had gotten the part she wanted in the high school’s production of "Music Man" and we thought she would stick it out for that. But she didn’t feel good about how they approach drama either. Anyway, she didn’t tell us she was quitting - she wanted to handle that herself - so she went to school that day and started telling each teacher as she went to class that she wouldn’t be back and asked if they needed anything from her (to turn in books, etc.)But it didn’t take long for her to realize that wasn’t working. The teachers couldn’t accept "her" decision to quit (that is, transfer to our school). After one teacher took her aside, sat her down and wanted her to list all the pros and cons, and after she was taken from her class to meet with the school psychiatrist, she changed her approach. The rest of the day she told everyone her parents were transferring her to a private school. That they could accept! That whole thing took a lot of energy on our part - dealing with the school - but as we saw the change it made in her and listened to her tell us about it, we recognized that what she had was a short course in sociology. For those who need it, she also supplied some proof that she is learning - with learning defined by school standards, you understand. She qualified for Honors English with a 98 and 99 on the tests, and also made the highest grade in the class on the Geography test… At any rate, things are back to normal and she feels really good bout being here. We are spending quite a bit of time at the theater because that still supplies experiences the kids are wanting. Ginger is still performing and this coming year our family is in charge of the props, which means we get to attend every performance and be in on what’s happening. Joe and Doug just finished building a special flat (had an arch in it) and the founders of the theater said they couldn’t have done it better themselves. They tend to stand in awe of Doug’s carpentering ability but when he is building is when he is the happiest. I guess that’s why theater is such a good resource for us because you are constantly building, then tearing down and building again. We just spent a day inventorying the props and Ginger took hold on this. She organized the whole process and did all the paper work so we got to thinking that maybe she would like office work. We asked and the woman in the office is eager to teach her the office procedures in exchange for Ginger’s help and Ginger is excited about that. Also coming up this Saturday is a chance for Doug to work in the light-booth at the theater. They are redoing all the wiring and "he" is excited about "that"…

REASONS FOR SCHOOL

From Marlene Bumgarner (CA):…Upon being told that she was being skipped another grade and being recommended for the "mentally gifted minors" program at our local zoo (large school), my daughter, Dona Ana, 7-1/2, who has been in a two-room country school for the last six months, and home schooled before that, announced that she’d much rather stay home -there were so many more interesting things to do. So my husband John and I have just worked out a plan for the fall which will have him working with her in the morning on whatever he’s doing - he runs a computer systems business from our home - and me working with her in the afternoon….Dona Ana told us at Christmas that she wanted to go to public school "to learn how to jump rope, play jacks and do hopscotch." Well, she’s learned what she went for, which is, I suppose, why she’s not interested in going next year!… `    `
Patti Lawrence (OH) wrote:…Rich and I have been reading GWS for over a year now and have been involved with our first child coming up against public school. She insisted that she wanted to go so we allowed her to start. Four days into first grade and she decided home was better!…When we asked Rachael why she wanted to go to school, her response was that she wanted to use her new lunch box and she hoped there would be lots of recess…

AT HOME IN TEXAS

From Rose Ann Burkel (TX):…We enjoy GWS very much. It gave us the final incentive to keep our children home from school this year. We discussed our reasons with our superintendent and he was supportive. He knows us and he believed us when we told him we were doing this for us, our family. We said this was no protest against the school as we think the school was the best one our children have attended. He was satisfied with our correspondence schools and said he considered them to be private schools. I’m sure he doesn’t agree with our decision but does uphold our rights as parents to do what we believe to be in the best interest of our family. I am still in the PTA because I am still interested in all children. We don’t have a television but I still care about the content of TV. Two teachers at the school said the school couldn’t meet our children’s needs. We tried to convince them that this was not our reason for keeping them at home. All in all, they thought staying home and learning was a great idea… One woman said we were making a mistake because our daughter needed to be at school with youngsters her own age. She said she wouldn’t and couldn’t develop properly and she wouldn’t know how to cope and live in this world because she wasn’t in school. She also said Susan was a leader and could influence others, and she was right, there. But we had considered all these things. Basically she implied that we were being selfish and hiding from the world. Of course we feel that our family is a number one priority. It made no difference to this friend that we are active in church. Our daughter visits with her friends, does volunteer work and is learning to live and get along in a family. (As you well know, getting along with those you love most is much more difficult than being nice to strangers!) I mention this friend because I got nowhere explaining and I myself was exhausted and "never" intend to go through that again. Some people can only see one side….We can enjoy our nights and weekends without the "school thing" hanging over our heads. Our kids used to start feeling grumpy and sad about 6 o’clock on Sunday evenings. We can take trips or visit late in the evenings and never think of school hanging like a black cloud over us…

COMPUTER IN North Carolina

Philmore Rial (NC) writes:…We had been home schoolers in Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina. We had obtained approval from the public school officials in Texas and S.C; but we elected to be silent in N.C. since recently many widely publicized legal cases made it seem impossible to get permission… We contacted you when we received first a visit, then a letter suggesting that we enroll our eightªyear-old daughter in public school. We called the North Carolina Office of Non-public Schools and asked for a copy of all the laws which would pertain to opening a private school. After examining these laws, we decided to open a private religious school. The N.C. laws purposely limit the state’s authority over private religious schools, the only requirements being health, fire safety, teacher health certification, attendance records, and immunization records. [See GWS #13.] Some of our friends who were interested in what we were doing for our girl’s education have now enrolled in our school. The “New System School” has three classrooms conveniently located in three homes of its five students….Our two daughters, Jennifer and Jessica, are doing very well in the home schooling environment. They receive daily instruction from my wife, Linda, and Mr. Apple. Mr. Apple is an Apple brand computer….I purchased my computer to use as an educational tool for myself and then discovered its potential as a tool for educating my two daughters. My oldest daughter, Jennifer, has been using the touch-typing tutor on Mr. Apple. So far, her progress has been astounding to me. The computer can accomplish a function which no human can do and that is formulate practice exercises which are tailored to the keys she has problems with. The computer monitors each key twenty times per second. If the student is a small fracªtion of a second slower on a given key, then the next practice exercise will contain more words that contain that letter than any other….Jennifer has been working with the mathematics tutor program for the computer. Her math began as her worst subject and now has become her favortie. The math tutor finds the student’s threshold of understanding and then gives exercises at that level. As the student makes progress, the computer advances the level of difficulty. We also have a spelling tutor. I was disappointed when I first purchased this software package - I felt that it was much too advanced for Jennifer, who is 8. Much to my amazement, she has
grasped the impact of the teaching. She is going to begin a course in BASIC computer language soon. She will be instructed by the computer.

I have learned a great deal about computer language. The most important lesson is never to be afraid of the unknown. This fear prevents many intelligent people from tackling new subjects. I have learned three languages which the computer is fluent in. I have found that software experts no longer confuse me; software is not as mysterious as the software expert would have the layman believe. When we talked on the phone, I told you that I would be happy to assist any other unschoolers who would like help in getting started with a computer-assisted instruction program. Now that I have full word-processing capability, I am able to write letters with ease. My typing does not have to be perfect to produce minimal errors in my text. The computer allows me to correct my errors before printing…

HOME COMPUTERS

From Linda Collins, Prussia PA :
…I have started a new project called Educational Software Library, Inc., a nonprofit organization devoted to distributing educational computer software programs… I would be very interested in knowing how many GWS readers have home computers, and which ones might consider purchasing one if they knew such a program-lending service was available. I can foresee this becoming an alternative form of correspondence school. Also, if anyone is interested in volunteering their time to write instructional units or in programming, I have lots to keep them busy!…

A CHILD LEARNS FRENCH

From Helen Fox (Que.):

…When my daughter was two she spent a lot of time with some French children down the road. One was a little boy who took great delight in teaching her all the swear words in his vocabulary. She adored this child and was his attentive pupil. Naturally he fell over laughing whenever she repeated these forbidden words, and this was so rewarding to her efforts that she said them on every possible occasion. But she was always listening, and as soon as she caught on to a few more important words and phrases she discarded her sacrilegious vocabulary. One day she made a momentous discovery; there are two words for everything; he says it one way, I say it another. From that moment the language came more rapidly. If she didn’t know a French word, she’d try an English one pronounced with a French accent, just for effect. She began spending six hours a day with the boy’s sister, either at our place or at theirs. The girls were three now, and in between the swings and the sandpile they would argue interminably 1over the pronunciation of a word. They’d ride in the back seat of the car singing “Petit Papa Noel” on the hottest day of summer, their faaces an inch apart, their eyes glued to each other’s mouth. In this way my daughter learned to imitate her friend’s speech flawlessly. By age four, she could say anything she wanted to in both languages. She was completely at home. And this was accomplished without using a cent of the taxpayer’s money, without spending hours poring over books, without embarrassment. Magic!…

DISCOVERING FOR HERSELF
From Hanni Woolsey (CA):…Your multiplication math grid in GWS #17 was (is!) a great success with Nancy, our 7-year-old unschooled daughter. She wanted to make her own grid and filled it out right away. It took her until 10:00 PM; she couldn’t stop! I just sat there, having fun watching. She knew her 5’s and 10’s. When she did the 6’s she would do it like this: 5 times 6 is 30, plus 6 is 36. She likes numbers and seems to always figure out a way to get the correct answers….This past summer she also taught herself how to read and can now sit for hours at a time reading in books like HEIDIÐ Ð F. Her interest in reading started exactly at the point when I stopped my “clever” attempts to try to get her to read - when I realized I should leave her alone and just bear the embarrassment of having a 6-year-old daughter who couldn’t read anything besides Stop and Exit and her name. It amazes me how fast her progress happened and still does. It is so simple. The more I learn to stand back and keep my mouth shut, the more Nancy learns and the happier she is. The more I see her grow, the more confident I get. Like her spelling. She likes to write letters and at first, I could hardly figure out what she had written. Now each time she writes, her spelling gets better. Without tests and drills and spelling exercises. Neat! Looking back to my own childhood, the most fun times I had \were when I was free to do what seemed fun. Experimenting with wood, yarn, cooking, baking, fixing bicycles, etc. And watching my father do various projects, fixing everything in and around the house… I still like to learn from books better than from people. Like playing the guitar when I was 15, or baking, or making baskets, or, recently, typing. Books don’t get impatient and insist that I do it their way!…To give Nancy the freedom to learn and discover things by herself was in our case easy to do. (The technical part of it, I mean. To let go of all our imprinted programs about education and learning mentally, was not so easy at first.) Last fall we filled out the affidavit declaring our home a private school. We’ve never had any problems so far. We keep a low profile…

RICHES IN R.I.

Peter Van Daam (RI) writes:…The variety of constructive activity outside the home seems to be several magnitudes greater than what I had experienced in what I (then) thought was a full youth. Brigitta recently began training as a zoo docent (guide). Julia, 10, will be participating too. And Jessica, 8, and Percival, 4, will obviously be benefitting too, especially since Brigitta hopes to encourage an art (drawing) program for other children and adults during her tours of duty. She has also been helping organize a small Montessori school’s art curriculum in trade for some weekly one-on-one tutoring of all three children by the school’s director. They all have been using the public libraries rather intensively. Recently they asked for and got a special tour showing them how to utilize the main branch’s resources better. They are participating in a variety of free programs such as children’s reading hours, creative dramatics, poetry, and the like. Julia and Brigitta also take in a special film series and discussions dealing with the role of women in our society. I have always had a vision of our libraries becoming a multi-faceted learning center and it seems to be happening right before our eyes. Julia and Jessica have joined a state-supported sculpture class at the Pawtucket Children’s Museum. I’m enclosing a photo of Jessica and her work that was published in the Pawtucket “Times”. The sculptor really likes her work, her originality… Brigitta and Julia have also been taking public TV’s Speed Learning course. They attend plays and other events by ushering downtown at the main theaters. With Jessica, they are part of a stuffed toy sewing class. They play recorder together. An acquaintance, the chairman of R.I.’s Libertarian Party who happens to be an electrical engineering professor at Brown University, offered late last year to introduce Julia to electronics concepts. So she and Jessica and I have been learning how to put together transistors, capacitors, semi-conductor chips (impulse generators, multiplexers, and the like) to produce digital display outputs, working from commercial specification sheets. Fascinating how fast he is moving us through complex concepts close to the cutting edge of technology. They could bootleg their whole education at Brown. Julia is learning conversational French in a very small adult class at Brown’s International House, and learning modern Greek at their language lab. She still has her apprenticeship at a nearby health-food restaurant, having full responsibililty for preparing some of the dishes, serving, earning money equivalents. There is more, but no space or time to continue. There is an unbelievable richness all around us just waiting for us and anyone else who chooses to do so to absorb it…

FAMILY HISTORY

From Carol Kent (VA):…An activity never taught in school that would be of great learning value to children is genealogical research. A good researcher does some numerical figuring, uses reading and writing skills constantly, and understands geography and history. He learns what records our society keeps, why and where they are kept, and what they contain. A child working on his genealogy has a reason to correspond with many adults: family members, other researchers, libraries and historical societies, state offices and courthouses. The resulting knowledge of family traits and heritage may recapture much of the depth and richness of life which are lost in the nuclear family…

REMEDIAL MATH

The Winter 1980 issue of “Outlook” (2929 6th St, Boulder CO 80302; $12/yr), a quarterly about open education in schools, contains a very useful article by David Wheeler, Professor of Mathematics at Concordia University in Montreal, saying in part:…A while ago, for a talk I was due to give, I wrote down a few of the half-truths that get told about children and mathematics. (To be a little more accurate, I should say “school mathematics” and “school children” - that is, mathematics and children as they are supposed to be when in school.) “Mathematics” (1) is difficult to learn because it is

abstract; (2) is a linear subject, so if you miss something,

you’re lost; (3) trains the mind to think logically; (4) is a

deductive system; (5) requires a special cast of mind; (6) is the subject where you always know whether you’re right or

wrong. “Children” (1) have poor memories; (2) have short attention

spans; (3) learn by imitation and drill; (4) will not learn correctly if allowed to make mistakes; (5) need continual

success; (6) must be given praise to reinforce their learning.

It is tempting to have fun with some of these; I always like to remind people that “I” have a very poor memory for jokes, and an extremely short attention span for watching baseball. But there are much more serious things to say, like insisting on the sharp distinction between “drill” and “practice”, and pointing out that no one learns very much by imitation since the origins of most behaviors are invisible. The first three items in the “Children” list are over-generously described as half-truths: the first two are not specific to children and the third is largely false for everyone. So since the statements are, if anything, rather “less” than halfªtruths, I wonder why I hear them occasionally used as if they served some explanatory function? The fourth and fifth items on the “Children” list are, in my book, plain wrong. The sixth item is perhaps the only legitimate half-truth in the set; one can find some supporting evidence for it some of the time with some children. But I get very unhappy when I hear it put forward as a principle for teachers to use. It sounds patronizing, in the first place. In the second place, it can have damaging long-term effects. If in the short term success is always associated with praise some chldren will learn to work for praise rather than success, and I can’t see what good that will do them when they leave the school environment. The clincher, though, the argument that demolishes the “Children” list, is that each single statement fails if applied to children “before” they get to school. When they are learning to walk, to talk, and to master a great veriety of physical and social skills in their early years they show excellent memories for the things that matter, their attention spans are suited to the tasks, they practice a lot but don’t have to be drilled, they persist in learning to correct their mistakes, and they manage to learn a great deal when no one is there to praise them. I can’t believe, and I don’t know who could, that children suddenly acquire learning disabilities on entering the kindergarten door. If the statements aren’t true, why do they continue to circulate in the underground of educational folklore? I have to infer that many of children’s difficulties in school must be due either to the things they are required to learn or to the way they are required to learn them. If something in the content or methods of school mathematics is the cause - or a contributory cause - of their difficulties, we are not likely to be able to offer remediation to students without first standing aside and inspecting critically what it is we are asking them to be good at. Yet most of the advice about remediation that I’ve seen takes the content and “style” of school mathematics as unalterable “givens” and proceeds from there. Of course, if we want to provide remediation in mathematics the endpoint has got to be the mathematics that everyone recognizes, but it doesn’t follow that it has to be arrived at in the usual way. Unfortunately, many teachers don’t know other ways or don’t believe there could be other ways. I don’t blame them - at least, not much - because their schooling didn’t teach them mathematics; it only taught them rules for doing a few mathematical things. If rules are all you know, it doesn’t occur to you that you can achieve the same results with different rules, or perhaps without any rules at all. And if you believe, as apparently some teachers do, that the point of mathematics in school is that it teaches rule-obedience, then you won’t want to look for alternatives to the traditional rules even if you know they exist. My list of half-truths about mathematics looks a good deal more plausible than the “Children” list and I could probably smudge together a few arguments to make the statements look even more plausible. Nevertheless they are by no means as uncontroversial as they may seem, and two or three of them are downright misleading. Take the first, about mathematics being difficult because it is abstract. Mathematics “is” abstract, for sure, but so are many other human attainments, including language. Thinking is abstract yet no one bothers to say so. Why make a particular point of the abstractness of mathematics? Indeed, mathematics is a particular form of thought.

No one, not even the best of teachers, can “put” thoughts into students’ minds: but the good teacher knows how to set up situations that elicit, that trigger, even impel mathematical thinking. The criterion for efficacy relates to whether the situation “says something” to the student, “has meaning” for the student so that he can “enter into a dialogue” with it. The second statement in my “Mathematics” list is about the supposed linearity of mathematics, about its being built brick by brick, like a tall tower. There is no doubt that a student who misses something in an arithmetic class may get lost in a stonger sense than the student who misses something in a language or history class. The interrelationships between various mathematical ideas are generally much more crucial than they are in other subject areas, perhaps because they are more detailed and more specific in their interdependence. But there is no reason why the mathematical relationships that “can” be linearly ordered should be so displayed to sudents. This is false economy with a vengeance. It would be sounder pedagogical principle to allow for multiple connections and give students the possibility of multiple entries into each mathematical idea. I don’t know of any school textbooks which follow this procedure. But now I’d better get closer to my title (An Askance Look at Remediation in Mathematics), and the last item on my “Mathematics” list takes me there. Like all the other statements this one (”… is a subject where you always know whether you’re right or wrong”) needs to be qualified and put in context before one can say how far it is true; but by turning it around it seems to me I get a working criterion for deciding if a student needs remediation or not. If the student almost never knows whether what he or she is doing in mathematics is right or not then I would regard this as a distress signal calling for emergency measures…

[JH:] We will quote more from Prof. Wheeler’s good article in a later GWS.

SPELLING IN THE AIR

I wrote in THE UNDERACHIEVING SCHOOL:…Good spellers know what words look like and even, in their writing muscles, feel like. They have a good set of word images in their minds and are willing to trust these images. The things we do to “teach” spelling to children do little to develop these skills or talents, and much to destroy them or prevent them from developing….There are some tricks that might help children get sharper word images… One is the trick of air writing: that is, of “writing” a word in the air with a finger and “seeing” the image so formed. I did this quite a bit with fifth graders, using either the air or the top of a desk, on which the fingers left no mark. Many of them were tremendously excited by this. I can still hear them saying, “There’s nothing there, but I can see it!” It seemed like magic. I remember that when I was little I loved to write in the air. It was effortless, voluptuous, and satisfying, and it was fun to see the word appear in the air. I used to write “Money Money Money,” not so much because I didn’t have any as because I liked the way it felt, particularly that “y” at the end, with its swooping tail…

MORE ON HANDWRITING

In GWS #19 (”On Handwriting”) I wrote about children who, in my fifth grade class many years ago, could write faster in manuscript print than I could in what I had always thought of as very speedy cursive writing. The other day I decided to test myself, to see whether I could write faster in cursive or in the modified Italic-manuscript print which I some-times use to write little notes in the office. And I found to my surprise that though I have been writing cursive writing all my life, and until making this test had been doing much more writing than printing, “I” could print faster than I could write. The difference was not very great, but it was consistent. No matter how much I warmed up and practiced my cursive, I could never make it as fast as my printing. Why should this be so? The only reason I can think of is that when we move from the end of one letter to the beginning of another, we can move our pen a little bit faster through the air than across the paper, partly because the paper slows down the pen a tiny bit, and partly because when we move our pen through the air we don’t have to worry about what the joins or connections between the letters look like. So, at the tender age of 56, I am going to drop cursive (except for my signature) and do all my pen and pencil writing in my modified print. Since it is both faster and more legible, why not?

Why, in general, is print more legible than cursive? Or, to put it a little differently, why are unjoined letters easier to read than joined? Because there is no possibility of confusing the joins (”ligatures,” as one italics book calls them) with the letters themselves. This is one of the main problems of most illegible handwriting, you often can’t tell whether a particular mark on the paper is part of a letter or only a join between letters. So now we have two solid and convincing reasons for resisting, if we want to, the demand of the schools that our children learn cursive writing - print is more legible, and is demonstrably faster. Of course, if children want to learn cursive writing, because they like the way it looks, or because they see some grownup doing it, they can. But there is no sensible reason to make them. A word about my sample printing. Only a few basic shapes and pen strokes are needed to make all the letters, and all these pen strokes ƒare easily and quickly made by the hand and fingers. On the whole, I see no reason to make children waste time practicing these shapes. If they write, as they speak, in order to say things they want to say to people they want to say them to, and if they have good models of printing to look at, they will improve their writing just as they improve their speech. A possible exception - children who have learned to write cramped, awkward, illegible cursive may need “a little” practice on shapes just to loosen up their hands and give them the feeling that printing can feel as well as look good. But I wouldn’t push this if a child resisted, preferring to write “real” writing, i.e., writing meant for others to read.

STARTING EARLY

From an article in the “New York Times”, 2/8/81, about Kyra Nichols, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet:…There is little question that today, at 22, Miss Nichols belongs in that realm, a place in dance that she seems, in retrospect, to have aimed at all her life. Mrs. Nichols recalls the terrifyingly single-minded determination with which her daughter took to ballet from the age of 4, a determination that seems surprising, today, in view of Kyra Nichols’s serenity onstage and off. “I hated school because it got in the way of dance,” Miss Nichols says today. “I wanted to be in the studio working…” At four, Miss Nichols decided it was not enough to imitate from the sidelines as her mother taught ballet. “She took class holding onto a pool table across the room, then one day I noticed her at the end of the barre,” Mrs. Nichols remembers. “And, rather than have a fuss in front of the other children, I let her stay.” At nine, Miss Nichols began to take company classes with her mother at the San Francisco-based Pacific Ballet. “Everyone else in the class was an adult,” Mrs. Nichols recalled. “But no one thought of Kyra as a child. She was tall for her age and she always looked and acted mature…”
From the liner notes on an album of music by Harry James:…When he was ten years old, he was the leader of the number two band in Christy’s Circus, having mastered the trumpet after a couple of years of instruction from his father, who led the number one band.: That wasn’t his first musical experience either. At four he performed on drums (and doubled as the world’s youngest contortionist) in the Mighty Haag Circus, in which he had been born on the road, and from which he derived his middle name…

A quote from the great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, on a record album jacket, “Jazz Women: A Feminist Retrospective”:…I have to give my mother credit here. She used to tell the story that I was a nervous child. To keep me out of mischief, she held me on her lap while she played an old-fashioned pump organ that she had at home. One day my hands beat hers to the keyboard and I picked out a melody. She was so surprised she dropped me on the floor and ran to get the neighbors to come and hear me. That was the beginning and from that time on (I was three) I never left the piano. She never let a teacher near me. She had studied and all she could do was read. She couldn’t improvise on her own at all. So instead, she did a very good thing. She had professional playing musicians come to the house and play for me. That’s how Jack Howard came on the scene. Some days I’d stay at the piano twelve hours. I didn’t stop to eat or anything - sometimes I’d drink just a glass of water. It was my step-father, Fletcher Burley, who really encouraged me. He bought me a Seth player with piano rolls. I learned the classics for him from the rolls and he used to listen to Irish songs, as well. He was very proud of me, and used to take me everywhere with him. He’d hide me under his coat and bring me to his meeting places and have me play for all his friends. By the time I was six I was professional - playing for parties at $1 an hour. I played with the Union Band in Pittsburgh, Pa. where we had moved when I was four. And later on when musicians came to the city, they’d come out to the house and ask me to play with them: Earl Hines’ guys and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers I remember especially. When I was twelve or so, a revue came through town… It seems their pianist got hung up or something, and one of the stagehands said he knew where they could find a pianist for the show. The producer came out in his big car to East Liberty where we lived and got mad when I was pointed out playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. But he changed quickly when we went inside. They hummed the score to me and I played it through, and played the show that night, and then went out on the road for the first time in my life…

MORE FROM KATHY MINGL

…The quote by Pete Seeger in GWS #18 really hit me, because I’ve been thinking about that very thing myself. I’ve realized lately that I’ve had a mistaken idea all along about singing - I had this odd notion that there was a “right” way and a “wrong” way to do it… I enjoyed music classes in school, but no one seemed very excited about my performance… By the time I was grown up I more or less assumed that “songs” were notes and words on paper or nice sounds you listen to, and “music” properly belongs to people who do it “right.” Then I married Tony, and we had J.P. When I sang lullabies to the baby, Tony astonished me by thinking my singing was beautiful (the baby seemed to think it was OK, too). Tony never thought “he” could sing, but he gets these deep, mellow tones that go right through you… I think he sings great. When J.P. sings, I can tell that what he does isn’t up to Roger Wagner Chorale standards, but he’s happy, and it makes me happy to hear him. In fact, if Robert Wagner could hear the three of us belting out some fine old classic like “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad,” or “It’s the Meat, Meat, Meat that Smells like Dirty Feet” (one of J.P.’s favorites) as we ride in the truck, he’d probably throw himself in the nearest river, but it makes “me” feel so happy, I can hardly stand it. All of this gives me a different idea of what “singing” really is. J.P. sings when he’s happy and moving - dancing, driving, marching, etc. Watching, I think I would define singing as something you do when you feel spiritually lifted and moved along with some motion or emotion. It’s an expression of a “feeling”, not this note or that one, or any technique at all. Maybe when you feel an especially nice feeling, or you feel greatly moved by things and “need” to express yourself with music, the discipline of instruction would help you enlarge and refine your technique, but I can tell you from experience that it’s a waste if you have nothing to say……We made a lot of Christmas presents this year instead of buying them, and just before Christmas we got the idea of making rocking horses to sell. We didn’t have much time and we only sold two - for $45 each - but we felt encouraged enough by that that we’re thinking of going further with them. We came up with an especially good baby rocker that I think would sell well for $10 or $12, and I also made a really cute teddy-bear puzzle for my niece out of 1×8. I used acrylic paints thinned with water to stain the wood, and it worked great. I drew up my own design - I’ve worked out a system for making patterns come out evenly from a sketch made directly on the wood - and the whole thing only took a couple of hours. That sort of thing is a lot more fun to me than fighting my way through a crowded department store, too…

SKILLS POOL

The Spring ‘81 issue of “Unschooled in Maryland” (9085 Flamepool Way, Columbia MD 21045; $1 for 3 issues) printed a “skills pool” to start a learning network. Here are the skills that 13 people listed: 1. Solar energy, building, carpentry, vegetarian cooking. 2. Early childhood elementary school teacher; alternative approaches as well; environmental games, activities, projects; ecological studies for adults and kids; centering games and exercises; organic gardening; tofu making; assisting home births. 3. Incorporating businesses; homebirthing & breastfeeding info; sewing for my own shop. 4. Registerd nurse; assist homebirth with a nurse midwife; needlecrafts. 5. Sewing, quilting, cross stitch, etc; stained glass. 6. Carpentry; shop woodworking; house and boat building. 7. Oil painting and craft; Japanese language; knitting, sewing; international cooking; Origami. 8. History; social and political philosophy; films as a learning resource. 9. Learning games and activities for young children. 10. Sewing; nutrition & natural foods; herbal medicine. 11. Builder (any structure); organic farming; foraging; beekeeping. 12. Various media related skills; sewing, knitting; vegeterian cooking & natural foods; canning; learning materials, activities, etc. 13. Various musical instruments; gardening, drawing; resource for geology, astronomy, other sciences; meditation.

ONTARIO PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Anna Myers (GWS #19) writes:…Here’s all you do to start a private school in Ontario: phone the Ministry for a form to fill out (which only asks for name, address, phone, etc). It is called a “Notice of Intention to Operate.” You must have at least five school-age children enrolled to be called a school. You never have to give names of children, just fill out a “September report” each year, which asks for teacher’s names, etc. None of the teachers or principals have to be qualified teachers (we just listed all our parents). The law just states that you must meet “at some time” during the week during regular school hours. The Ministry has the right to enter the school at any reasonable time (school hours), but a man from the Ministry told me they are too busy to come unless they receive a complaint. You must also have your “school building” (we chose our home as the “one” building) inspected for fire and public health. Here’s the trick - “they” have a magic number of “5 or under”, so to approve it they don’t want more than 5 kids in the home at once. They said they don’t care how many we have in our home if “school” is not in, so the trick here is: find out who is at the door. If it’s Fire or the Public Health dept. and there are more than 5 kids say it’s not school. If it’s the Ministry, say it is! We can “enroll” as many as we want to but just can’t have them here all at once. I tell parents to try to make it down here once a week for a short visit if they can, just to make it all legal! But we don’t push it or feel we “have” to do this……When we visited Pioneer Village, in every house a lady dressed as a pioneer would ask why the kids weren’t at school! The first time Drew said, “We have the day off.” In the next house he said “We have a Professional Development Day.” (Schoolkids get 12 of these a year - teachers use these days to mark, write reports, have staff luncheons, etc.) I asked Drew why he told those ladies those things and he replied, “It sure ends a lot of talking!”…

PEOPLE VS. LEVISENÄ

When people in Illinois ask us how they can legally teach their children at home, we usually suggest they look up an Illinois Supreme Court case called “People vs. Levisen”. The legal citation for the case is 90 NE 2d 213, 14 ALR 2d 1364; this just tells you the names of the series, the volume numbers, and the page numbers where you can find the decision. You can usually find a law library open to the public at your county courthouse or city hall, and the staff will help you find what you’re looking for. In an opinion dated Sept. 27 1979, the Michigan Attorney General surveyed what the courts in other states had ruled on home schooling, and summarized “People vs. Levisen” as follows:…The respondent was convicted of violating a comparable [to Michigan] compulsory education statute. The defense was made that the child was receiving private tutoring at home. The facts were that the child, a third grade student, was receiving five hours of instruction at home in comparable courses, the instruction was being given by her mother, who had two years of college work and some training in educational psychology. Further, the child showed the academic proficiency of the average third grade student. It should be observed that the tutor in this case did not possess a teaching certificate. The Illinois court defined a school as a place where instruction is bestowed upon the young. The number of children being taught does not determine whether the place is a school, so that the respondent was, in fact, providing an education in a private school for her child in her home, in lieu of attendance at the public school. But the court pointed out that the parents have a burden of showing that they have in good faith provided an adequate course of instruction in the prescribed branches of learning. Finally, the court held that the copulsory education statute was not enacted to punish those who provided their children with instruction which is equal or superior to that which may be obtained in the public schools. To the same effect is the decision of the Indiana Supreme Court in “State V. Peterman”, 70 NE 550, and the decision of the Oklahoma supreme court in “Wright v. State”, 209 P 179… For more info on these last two cases, see GWS #3, page 2. As it happens, we do not yet have copies of these three decisions in our files; if anyone would like to send us a copy, we’d be grateful. - DR

B.C. EXEMPTION

A reader received a letter from the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, saying in part:…The Public Schools Act requires every child over the age of seven years and under the age of 15 years to attend some public school subject to certain exemptions. One of the exemptions is that the child is being educated by other means thought to be satisfactory to any justice or tribunal to whom the matter might be referred… Another possible exemption is “where the child has reached a standard of education equal to or higher than the standard to be attained in the public school within a distance of three miles”…

FROM WASHINGTON STATE

A reader writes:…My thoughts on getting around the officials here in Washington come down to this: I think it would be quite easy to satisfy the state in setting up a private school, since there is no follow-up after the initial approval. If I were not credentialed, my plan of action would be to find a credentialed teacher, preferably one who is not currently teaching, and put his or her name down on the application as the teacher of the school. The credential is checked up on, but I doubt if any cross-checks are made to see if they are teaching at a public school that same year. No one ever visits the school to see if a teacher is physically present, so I don’t think that there is much chance that you’d ever be found out. The key here is getting a credentialed teacher to let you use his or her name. Not everyone would be able to find one, of course, but I think it would work for many. Until they tighten up the laws, that is. Some people might be turned off by the dishonesty involved, and it might cause some uncomfortable moments, but I think I would do it if it were the only way I could keep my kids at home….All the dealings in our case were done with: Carl T. Fynboe, Administrator of Private Education, Division of Instructional and Professional Services, Old Capitol Building, Olympia WA 98504; (206) 753-1137. We were told in no uncertain terms by Mr. Fynboe that licensing the home as a private school was the only legal way to teach one’s own children in this state. He was a stickler for having forms signed and filled in properly by the proper persons (fire dept. chiefs and health dept. officials) but generally he seemed very receptive to what we wanted to do. I was told he was a pretty “free thinker” himself, but he definitely took the requirements of his job very seriously. There is one family nearby teaching their kids at home, without benefit of private school approval, and they have never been bothered. They plan to continue, since this year went by without any problem. They are not credentialed. If I couldn’t find a credentialed teacher to lend me her name, I’d do the same thing as this family has done. They just tell people that it is legal, and no one questions it.? One nice by-product of being approved as a private school is
that our address is given out to all sorts of businesses that sell to schools. We get catalogues and letters daily from all sorts of businesses, and it is fun to look through their wares. We have ordered a few things from these sources, especially films. We have access to a projector at the local elementary school and can order films for free from the public library…

HIPPOPOTAMUS QUESTIONS
While talking to a recent and very interested and friendly meeting at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I said something that I make a point of saying in all my talks about home schooling, and that I think might be useful to others who talk about it, since it saves much pointless and heated argument. What I said went about like this:…One of the things I want to try to do tonight is to stay away from what I call hippopotamus questions. [Bewildered looks.] I mean by that questions like, if hippopotamuses could fly, how would we keep them from breaking all the branches off the trees? I admit that if hippopotamuses “could” fly, that would be a serious problem. But for this evening, I don’t want to take time to discuss it, just as I don’t want to take time to talk about what would happen if tomorrow all the public schools disappeared, what would poor people do with their children, etc, etc. Public schools aren’t “going” to disappear tomorrow, or a year from now, or ten years from now. They will be around for some time to come, and for some time to come most people are going to be sending their children to them, no matter what the home schooling movement may or may not do. So we don’t need to see tonight’s discussion as some kind of battle to save public schools.

WINNING THEM OVER
From a California reader:…We were visited in the fall by a representative (his title may be Private School Consultant) from the County School Superintendent’s Office. He brought with him the assistant principal from the local high school that our daughter would attend if she attended public school. We leveled with them totally. His first question was, do we keep an attendance record. This is the one thing the California law requires of private schools. I told him we didn’t because we couldn’t see how we could have anything but perfect attendance when the school met in our home, but if he had a need, I would do that. He agreed that any attendance record we kept would be a perfect one, but he also said that he thought we should keep a record anyway. He thought it was the responsibility of the County Superintendent’s office to supply a school with a record book and he said he would see that we got one of those. The book has never come, however, so we have not done anything about it. His next question was what math series did we use and what reading program did we follow, so I explained our no-teaching approach and he loved it. He asked some very intelligent questions about it and the conversation eventually turned into a discussion on how we would make this work for the whole society….As they were leaving, the man from the County Supt.’s Office asked if he could keep in touch because he thought I would be an asset to the local Student Attendance Review Board and hoped I would feel good about serving on it. This was interesting to us because this is the board (although in a different location) that we had to appear “before” when we were first approached about being illegal. Two days later an English teacher we know told me that while she was standing in the office of the high school, the assistant principal had come up to her and told her about his visit to our home and how excited he was about what we were doing. We talked for a little about it and she is interested in learning more about this approach. Then just last week we were at a group gathering and my daughter had occasion to mention we learned at home; a member of the group we didn’t know searched us out to talk about this. She was a friend of the man from the County Supt.’s Office and he had told her about a family he had visited who was using the noªteaching approach. He was really excited about it, she said….We are constantly approached by people who want to talk about what we are doing and how we can do it and we always send them away with a GWS. We feel this is important because the one thing we get consistently from these poeple is a fear of doing something out of the ordinary all by themselves… GWS also shows them that home-schooling can be approached in a million different ways - that they can just decide for themselves what approach meets their own personal needs and go with it…

SELECTING A JURY

The same issue of the “Ocooch Mountain News” that we quoted in GWS #19 has a story about Mr. and Mrs. Sawall, who were found guilty by a jury of failing to send their children to school. It was not clear whether they would appeal the verdict. Mr. and Mrs. Sawall acted as their own defense. At the beginning of the trial, Mrs. Sawall asked, “Is there any person on the jury who does not believe the Bible is the inspired word of God?” The District Attorney objected that religious beliefs could not enter into the selection of jurors, and the objection was upheld by the court. In a very similar case in Minnesota a couple of years ago Joseph Palmer, who like the Sawalls was defending himself, handled the matter of jury challenges somewhat more wisely. Though he was taking his children out of school primarily for religious reasons, he did not ask prospective jurors about their religion. What he did was to use his challenges to strike off the jury list all persons who worked, or whose relatives worked, for the local schools. Sincein many small towns the schools are by far the largest employer, this got rid of a good many people who might have been expected to be prejudiced against him. The jury thus obtained acquitted him and his wife. There is an important lesson here for others facing possible jury trials.

This archive is presented as a service to the homeschooling community by the editors of Home Education Magazine © 2006 and is reprinted with permission of Holt Associates, Inc., © 2006. (All rights reserved)