GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #54, Vol. 9 No. 6.
Date of Issue, December 1, 1986.

I am pleased to tell you that I am expecting the birth of my first child in late April.  I’ve been feeling just fine.  Frank and I are planning a home birth with a midwife connected with Elizabeth Noble’s Maternal and Child Health Center.
For a long time it’s been a goal of mine to have a child and still see GWS come out on schedule without any drop in quality.  Now that Susannah Sheffer is here, I feel confident that this transition can be a reality.  Susannah has been doing an increasing amount of the production of GWS, and we still have two more issues to work on together before the baby is due.  I expect that she will do GWS #57 (put together in May) pretty much on her own.  After that I’ll see how I feel, but I expect to keep my work load quite light for some time, perhaps working at home, perhaps coming in to the office occasionally.  I expect I’ll always be available for reading material, editing, and discussion.

What complicates matters somewhat is that it is also time for us to make another transition - to producing GWS on the Macintosh computer.  The Olivetti word processors are wearing out and getting more difficult to fix, so we know we have to get something new, and the Mac’s "desktop publishing" ability is just too tempting to delay any longer.  Pat Farenga has been using the Mac to produce the "Book and Music Store" inserts that you’ve seen this year in the center of GWS.  Our tests have shown that there are several attractive typefaces available that are more readable than what we use now (I can hear some of you cheering!) and still allow us to bring you as much material as ever.  Susannah and I are going to do our darndest to produce the next issue of GWS entirely on the Mac - should be an interesting two months for us.

Please bear with us during these changes.  In particular, please remember that we always welcome and depend on your letters, even though we may not have time to respond individually. — Donna Richoux

NOTES FROM SUSANNAH
We’ve just learned from Merloyd Lawrence that Addison-Wesley will bring out a collection tentatively titled A JOHN HOLT READER, made up of previously uncollected pieces.  For this project we may need more volunteers to type transcripts of John’s recorded speeches, so let us know if you’d like to help with this.

We’ve had quite a lot of publicity in the last couple of months.  The Wall Street Journal (10/6) ran a story about homeschooling on its front page, a Washington Post (10/3) article quoted our office and several GWS families, and homeschooler Becky Rupp’s very good article for Country Journal was published in their December issue.  Several other interviews, and lots of general inquiries, have followed these articles.

Publicity surrounding the Moskos family case in MA (see "Court News," inside) has resulted in a lot of attention for our office, too.  A local TV station interviewed the Maher family, and another TV crew spent a couple of hours here interviewing Pat Farenga and filming us at work for a three-part series on homeschooling, to be aired in late November.

Adding to the excitement, a fire in an office above us caused us some inconvenient but minimal water damage.  We spent a couple of days sorting wet back issues from dry ones, but our insurance will cover the cost of the damage.

We’ve been enjoying the very welcome volunteer help of Chris Honde, a GWS reader who has lived in Japan for several years, and Jerry Puzo, who met us at the Holt Associates Picnic in August and whose article on storytelling appears in this issue.

Lauren Farenga, almost six months old at this writing, has begun spending time in the office with her father, Pat.  We haven’t put her to work yet (even around here young people get a few months’ grace) so she is able to enjoy life as not just an in-arms but an in-many-arms baby!
—Susannah Sheffer

PIONEERS AND DISCIPLES

[SS:] Some time ago I found this passage by John Holt in the book SUMMERHILL: FOR AND AGAINST and was struck by how directly it speaks to those of us who are continuing John’s work, if we substitute John’s name for Neill’s:

…The worst thing that can happen to any great pioneer of human thought is for his ideas to fall into the hands of disciples and worshippers, who take the living, restless, ever-changing thought of their master and try to carve it into imperishable granite, so that not a word shall ever be lost or changed.  The words may remain, but the spirit is soon lost.  A friend of mine used to say, "A conservative is a man who worships a dead radical."  Nowhere is this more true than in education; one thinks immediately of Maria Montessori and John Dewey.  It would be a tragedy if it happens to Neill.  The only way to prevent it, to honor Neill as he deserves, is to try to continue the exploration he started, to move on further into the uncharted territory of human freedom, happiness and growth.  We must therefore take Neill’s thought, his writing, his work, and Summerhill itself, not as a final step, but as a first one.

PICTURE

Donald Graves had developed an innovative program for classroom writing.  In an interview on page 8, he and Virginia Stuart share their findings with homeschoolers.

MOM WORKS, DAUGHTER HOMESCHOOLS

In GWS #50, we printed several "progress reports" that Diane Chodan of New York ("Certified Teachers") wrote about her daughter Annike (7).  Recently Diane wrote:

…I believe I indicated to you in a previous letter my desire to earn some money.  I tried to get a teaching position or part-time job.  Unfortunately, I was not successful.  Instead, based on my seniority with the state, I was offered a job as Safety and Health Inspector.  This is full time and requires a great deal of travel, but being unsuccessful getting what I really wanted, I decided to take it.

The first question my husband asked was what I planned to do with Annike (actually what school I decided to send her to).  I decided not to send her to school, but rather back to her former sitter.  I prepare a list of work for her each day, check her work at night (and do anything that needs to be done orally).  On weekends and holidays, I try to do field trip type things.

I decided to continue with homeschooling anyway for a number of reasons.  First of all, I can see how much more she gets from it (especially in terms of being allowed to read).  Second, Annike wanted to do it.  Third, so many things we do we weren’t about to discontinue anyway.  (For example, piano lessons, horse-back riding and swimming.)  I really believe going to school would be a waste of time for Annike and tire her out so she couldn’t concentrate on what she likes.

We use Open Court readers.  This is nice because grammar, composition  and spelling are all found in one book.  I also like it because actual literature is used.  The words are demanding and it isn’t watered down.  We are pacing ourselves to do one unit a week.  It only takes 2-3 days to do a unit, and usually Annike finishes one book per week in addition to her reading unit.  I, therefore, think that’s more than would be allowed in school.  Since she’s reading good literature she’s giving herself a wonderful background.

…There are some nice things I’ve noticed about continuing to homeschool in a less favorable atmosphere.  Annike is getting a chance to develop her own sense of responsibility.  She cooks dinner for me sometimes and tries to get her work done.

We have a new superintendent who did compliment me on last year’s organization.  However, he has "grave concerns" over homeschooling if I am not there.  He has worked into the conversation that he could take me to court and her has a strong moral obligation to see my daughter gets educated.

…Annike did get some peer pressure to return to school from her sitter’s children.  However, she has also hear positive things.  The librarian at the public library says Annike reads so well that she probably doesn’t need school!  To counter the argument that school offers band instruments and choir, her piano teacher (also a fourth grade public school teacher) told her she should stick to the things she is already doing and not try to do everything.  This lady also told me to keep her home if I could because she honestly felt Annike wouldn’t get much attention in school.

…I intend to argue with the superintendent about keeping her home.  I think my mind has changed from simply trying this out to continuing as long as I can.  Of course it is difficult, but most things worth doing are.

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

From Becky Olson (AZ):

…I would like to take a few lines to respond to P.B. (GWS #51) concerning "struggling."  I think we all have doubts and fears.  For many of us, unschooling and trusting our children is THE GREAT EXPERIMENT.  We are experimenting with our children’s lives…  If it doesn’t work, we can’t erase it an start all over!  As we watch our children grow and learn, doubts are fewer and farther between, but still there.  And even though we try not to, we compare our unschooled kids with schooled kids of the same age and see surface skills in schooled children that our children don’t have - like memorized multiplication tables.  (These were important when we went to school, and a little voice inside tells us they still must be important - even if they really aren’t!)

Then when we sit down and play cards with these same schooled kids and they can’t add (much less multiply) their scores of 4 + 6, we realize that those multiplication tables may as well be the Russian alphabet for all the usable information imparted to these children.  And when the same schooled child that couldn’t add 4 +6 ("I’m in special classes because I am dumb!") can add 19 + 19 in her head, we realize that the "great institution" has convinced this child that she isn’t capable, yet our experience with her is that of a very capable, resourceful child…

When the doubts begin to gain ground, the best way to overcome fears is to assess all the skills you are aware your child has.  Not necessarily academic skills, but perhaps survival, social, musical, culinary, companion, or any number of other skills.  Nest, remember each of us has "academic deficiencies."  Each of us has our own weak areas - and we are doing just fine.  And some of the weak areas have been turned into strong ones when we really wanted or needed that information.

I struggled for years trying to teach Rachel (9) to read, add, count money, etc., until I realized she couldn’t, wouldn’t learn it until she wanted or needed to.  Now I have discovered that most of these struggles are internal - me struggling with myself - trying to reassure myself that all the miscellaneous information I gleaned in school is not necessarily vital for the survival of my children.  Lots of people have survived without learning cursive, math tables, the preamble to the Constitution, and other bits of trivia.  and further struggling to trust my children to learn about what they need.  My greatest area of self-discipline is to keep this struggle from affecting my children - that I don’t try to teach them to satisfy my own needs, and not theirs…

…Her schooled friends tell Rachel she will be dumb for the rest of her life, and never have a good job.  This really doesn’t appear to bother her.  She knows she isn’t dumb (even though her reading isn’t up to "grade level") because she knows lots of things her friends don’t  - like what the concept behind addition is; how to use a computer; what stars are made of; how mice families live; what guinea pigs are used for in their native countries (food).  And she gets to do lots of things they don’t get to do, like cook (unsupervised); go to college classes with me; go to the library, zoo, shopping whenever she wants to; and explore Tucson freely.  Sometimes the pressure to conform gets to her, but we can usually discuss both sides of the issue and she finds she is much better off not in school.

It’s funny, when her friends list the "fun" things concerning school, the majority of the list deals with going home early, parties, recess, lunch hour, art days and other non-academic activities.  Once Rachel realized the reasons she wanted to go to school were ways and means her friends were using to get away from school, she began to question the validity of their arguments.  At any rate, as a result of the activities of this summer, she and I both know her friends think she has something pretty neat going on…

FEELS ISOLATED - IN SUBURB

From Patt Bristow (CA)

An article in GWS #51 recently caught my attention.  It was about Lauren McElroy and the network MAKING CONTACT (Tucson,AZ).  I wrote to her right away, because of a deepening sense of frustration I feel at the differences, to put it bluntly, between myself, my family, our beliefs of what parenting and nurturing entail, the rights and needs of our children as individuals (and our rights to stand up for them!) etc. - and those around us.  We live in the large metropolitan area of San Jose, CA and are leading an outwardly fairly typical suburban lifestyle.  We are on friendly terms with our neighbors and their children.  Yet, because we do not leave our children so as to be involved in adult-only activities, because we choose not to nudge our children into the preschool scene, because we do choose to let our children be individuals, be dependent on us until they indicate a desire to be otherwise, etc. etc. etc., we are very, very isolated.

A simple task like choosing a church where we can learn and worship as a family unit has turned into another dead end.  Most parents are all too happy to use church nurseries, Sunday School classes, etc., as a chance to get away to their adult classes, worship, or prayer groups, so they can be edified without interruption.  I say this a bit with tongue in cheek but also with sadness.  I, too, would like to study and worship and learn, along with the others, but not at the cost of shutting out my kids.  I think they need to see and be a part of real worship, not just the rather contrived teacher’s version that is suitable for a 3- or 4-year-old’s comprehension (supposedly).  This is how I feel about all aspects of our lives.

It does no good to be willing to involve our children if all of us are met with resentment as a result.  Consequently we seem to have slowly eliminated many activities and areas of interest, hoping to find other things that will work or where we can join in with like-minded people.  And the worst part is that I find myself almost unconsciously pressuring my young children to be independent and willing to separate before they are ready, or doubting their (and my) innate integrity and healthfulness of spirit, as it were, because we don’t seem to be fitting in.  I feel like I don’t have many choices to offer them, of activities, friendships, or simple exposure to familiar interactions with others on an ongoing basis.  Long-term, I wonder if our isolation might jeopardize our continuing wellness as a family and the good outcome of their growing into fulfilled adults through the homeschooling process.

I don’t foresee a geographical move for us any time in the near future - my husband is tied to the security of his position as electrical engineer (he also happens to like his work) but I really feel an almost overwhelming need for a sense of community, both for myself and for each member of my family.

VISITING POSSIBLE SCHOOLS

Madalene Murphy (PA) wrote in the PENNSYLVANIA HOMESCHOOLERS newsletter, Summer 1986:

In March of this year we reached another of those turning points as we try to carve out our own particular brand of homeschooling.  Our oldest, Emily (13), was approaching "high school," and we thought this was a good time to do a major evaluation, particularly since Emily seemed to be becoming more and more unhappy with herself.  We found that she was feeling like she was drifting, that she couldn’t reach goals she set for herself, and she was worrying about whether she would be ready for college.  When we started discussing the various alternatives for next year, Emily said she wanted to go to school to meet more people her own age and to give her the structure she though she needed to prepare for college.  But, having been out of school for five years, she soon changed her mind and wanted to eliminate school as a possibility because, among other reasons, it frightened her.  Since fear is a very poor reason for making decisions, we looked for a way to help her find out about high school life without having to make a commitment for a whole year.  We decided to contact the private high schools that were within commuting distance of us, ask for brochures about the schools, and then possibly arrange for a visit to any Emily found interesting.  We were pleased to find that many of the schools encouraged new students to come and spend one or sometimes two days going to classes and getting to know the school.

… We chose two to visit.  The first one we went to had a philosophy that sounded a lot like homeschooling - little or no pressure and competition, lots of individualized attention.  While the school had the potential of being something very interesting, at the time we saw it, there was no love of learning or spirit of curiosity evident among the students.  Emily, who loves to answer and ask questions, held back for the first half of the first class and then began to dominate the discussions.  By the time she got to algebra she felt confident enough to offer to explain her method of doing a particular kind of algebra problem that one student was having difficulty understanding, and her explanation evidently clarified the situation.  By the end of her day there, her self-confidence had received a tremendous boost and she talked about how neat it would be to go there.  But she soon began to realize on her own that she would have difficulty finding friends among the students, most of whom seemed to focus all their creativity on ways to avoid the assignments given them, and, while some of the classes sounded interesting, the teachers had to spend a lot of time dragging information out of students who didn’t want to be there.  In short, it was the usual school situation.

The next school we looked at was a much more traditional college prep school, but it emphasized its small classes and a flexibility that allowed it to meet individual needs.  I began to have my doubts about the place when, without finding out what Emily could or couldn’t do, what she knew or didn’t know, the admissions counselor decided on the basis of Emily’s age and the fact that she had been in an unstructured learning environment that she would not be ready for the pressure of their high school but should start in eighth grade next year…

Emily returned a week later to spend two days going to classes.  after her first day she was excited about an archeology project the class was doing, not because it made her want to go there ("I already knew the stuff he was telling them about techniques of handling artifacts") but because it gave her an idea to investigate an old oil-filled well on our property.  She also was given an assignment to rewrite the first paragraph of Poe’s "Cask of Amontillado" in her own words and spent a long time that evening getting it just right.  The next day was not so good at all.  The Latin teacher didn’t show up and the class became loud and chaotic and did not respond at all to the increasing threats made by teachers from nearby classrooms.  Immediately after that she was pulled out of class to take a math placement test, a complete surprise to her and to me, since that had not been mentioned as part of the visit.  And when I asked her about the Poe paragraph, she said the teacher’s only comment was, "Oh, thanks," when she gave it to him.  The class had not discussed the short story and there was no explanation why she had had to do it.  In short, it was again the usual school situation.
Although we decided to continue homeschooling, Emily’s time (and mine) was far from wasted.  Emily (and Tom and I) had a much better basis for making our choice.  She found that the companionship and intellectual stimulation she was looking for was probably not to be found in the schools we visited or at least she would have to give up too much to gain them.

And so we are left with the challenge of making homeschooling work, given Emily’s changing needs.  One of the many discoveries we made from the school visits was that we did not object to the structure at this point in her life as much as the loss of rights, particularly the right to choose for oneself.  And so we are incorporating a bit more structure into our plans.  We also saw very clearly the advantage of discussing with other books, articles, etc. we have all read and we are trying to arrange for even more time when we all agree on something to read and then talk about it.  And we are hoping to find other adults to act as resource people…

HOMESCHOOLER IN HIGH SCHOOL

Wendy Priesnitz of the CANADIAN ALLIANCE OF HOMESCHOOLERS sent us two articles that appeared in local publications when her daughter, Heidi (14) entered school for the first time.  From the first article:

…When Heidi first started lugging textbooks through the brightly-colored halls of Unionville High, she made a point of not telling her teachers that she had never been to school.  "My drama teacher heard there was a student in the class who had never been to school," recalls Heidi.  "So he was looking for a misfit.  He didn’t think it was me because I was too well socialized."
_____

And from the second, written by Heidi herself:

…My teachers seemed to like to talk with me and help me because I was interested and wanted to be there, and hardly anyone else did, which was something that took me a while to realize and even longer to understand.
The place where I think that my "home schooling" really paid off is in my attitude and my outlook on life.  I feel that because of it I am a lot more confident in myself and in others as well.  I also feel that I have a better relationship with my family than I would have otherwise just because I’ve been with them a lot more…

TRYING SCHOOL

This summer as Shane’s twelfth birthday passed, our conversation took on a new depth.  I found him wondering if homeschooling was really a good idea.  Being the only homeschooler in the neighborhood bothered him more than it ever had before, and he seemed more uncomfortable explaining to strangers why he wasn’t in school during school hours.  Somehow he started feeling like he wasn’t learning anything in homeschool.  This concerned him to the point of considering school.  His best friend Jason attends a local Catholic school and this was the school Shane wanted.

I made it very clear to him that the indoctrination he received in Catholicism class would be challenged at home by my own understanding of God.  I promised him some interesting debates, and almost looked forward to the prospect.  We arranged a day for Shane to spend in class with Jason as a sort of trial.  He wasn’t very enthusiastic about what he had seen, so I was surprised that he was still very eager for school.
The principal, Sister Kathryn, wanted Shane to take some tests so that she could be sure he was placed in the "proper grade level."  I explained this to Shane and he agreed to take the tests.  I have no idea what kind of tests they were, I didn’t even look at them.  It didn’t matter to me how well he scored on these exams.  We went to school on the chosen day and Shane was very nervous.  I had promised to stay with him but Sister Kathryn wanted Shane to be alone during the tests.  We had a private discussion and he agreed that it would be OK (he didn’t have much choice).

About a week later Sister Kathryn called to say that Shane hadn’t done so well on her exams.  His math scores in particular were low.  Everything else was fine but she felt he needed summer-school in mathematics before she could honestly place him in the same classroom with Jason.  I asked her if I could do the tutoring hoping to spare Shane summer-school, and she reluctantly agreed.  This gave Shane two choices: 1) start summer school part-time in two weeks and then go full-time to regular school in the fall or 2) work at home with me all summer on the school math text and then go full time in the fall.  Shane’s response was wonderful.  He rejected both choices.  Going back to school wasn’t worth wasting a whole summer for.  I was so glad.  Why is it that whenever something’s missing in our life, a little off, or just not going as good as it should be, I think to myself, or worse Shane thinks to himself, that school is the answer?

It’s funny because all the things that are happening to us as Shane goes through puberty would happen to him in or out of school regardless.  Only with home school, instead of leaving it up to school authorities I am finding my own natural authority to discover what he needs.  I want Shane to learn that you don’t have to go to school to get what you want out of this life, but it’s OK to need help now and then.  Right now he takes a karate class twice a week, and saxophone lessons once a week.  He gets help from Pat Farenga on the Macintosh computer here in the office, and Elsa Haas who’s our roommate just loves to read with him.  Recently he and Susannah Sheffer have begun writing together twice weekly, and last week he made forty dollars helping a friend of ours on his ice-cream truck.  We still have our regular reading and math sessions, libraries, book stores, museums, cooking projects; it’s just endless, the activities of life and learning.  Yet there are still those doubting days.
—WENDY BARUCH

GETTING PUBLICITY IN TENNESSEE

From Suzy Dodd (TN)

…I’m enclosing some newspaper articles from this area…  This year I was contacted by a Knoxville reporter who has friends who are homeschooling.  That resulted in the August articles.  When the photographer came, he wanted a picture of our whole family working together.  We are unschoolers but staged an art appreciation "lesson" for him.  It really was a scream with the kids making silly remarks - I think the photographer was charmed by it all.  He asked if it was a typical scene and I said, "Not at all!"
In September we held a meeting for homeschoolers in this area.  We sent announcements to area newspapers and we phoned three school superintendents’ offices to ask if they were allowed to give us names of registered homeschoolers.  Two obliged… we had 19 families at that meeting, and distributed a checklist of interests so people could match up.  We decided to have picnics every two weeks and have had 15-17 families at each of those.

We did send notices to newspapers about our picnics, just trying to keep our name before the public so they’ll become more accustomed to us.  TWO reporters and photographers came to the first picnic, resulting in the remaining two articles I’ve enclosed.  You may be surprised at the fuss that was made over my 14-year-old son playing with an infant!  And what a gorgeous picture it made!

…We were sorry that one reporter used the phrase "religious extremist," and it appeared to be attributed to the mother he interviewed…  Tennessee has gone through a period of being divided - religious homeschoolers in one group, quality-of-education homeschoolers in another.  But of course religious homeschoolers are doing it for quality-of-education reasons, also.  And homeschoolers who would say that religion was not the motivating factor probably would not divorce any part of their life from their religious beliefs.

I think that homeschooling groups in East Tennessee are making an effort to set aside the divisiveness.  A Knoxville group formerly make up entirely of fundamentals Christians (or at any rate it was believed that they were) is working to include any homeschoolers, and our own group is made up of all kinds…  And aren’t homeschoolers a diverse group!  We can’t go around separating ourselves into groups of like-minded people or we may each wind up in a group on ONE!

We found that newspapers could not seem to handle routine announcements from a group of homeschoolers without a name, so we did, after a few get-togethers, choose the name HOMESCHOOLING FAMILIES.  We also started a newsletter with the same name…

Our County Attendance Officer and the Director of Pupil Special Services have been quite friendly and accommodating.  One of them volunteered the information that they could give us Tennessee Basic Skills material, which included mastery tests and curriculum guides (our kids will be taking Tennessee Basic Skills tests)…  The Director of Pupil Special Services will be addressing our homeschooling group about the testing required by law.  He seemed pleased to be asked…

One section of the law I’m not please about is the requirement that a parent of kids 9th grade or above must have a college degree, but it says "a parent-teacher may request an exemption from this requirement from the State Dept. of Education on a year-to-year basis."  It had been rumored that someone in the Education Dept. had vowed that no parent would receive that exemption, but in fact I know of one family that was granted the exception right from the start, and it’s the only family I know that even requested it!…

LOCAL NEWS

ARKANSAS: Tom Holiman of the ARKANSAS CHRISTIAN HOME EDUCATION ASSOCIATION told us that on November 13th he testified before the Joint Education Committee, suggesting possible changes in the homeschool law.  (See GWS #46 for a summary of the law passed last year.)  Tom offered a list of eight recommendations, several of which the Department of Education publicly agreed to at this meeting.  Tom says that homeschoolers will incorporate these suggestions, which include allowing parents to begin homeschooling mid-year and loosening the current requirement that homeschoolers who twice score lower than eight months below grade level on standardized tests must enter school, into a bill which they will introduce in the 1987 legislative session.

CALIFORNIA: Judy Britton reports that representatives from several Calif. support groups met in Burbank in October to discuss the formation of a state-wide coalition of homeschoolers.  The representatives debated the need for homeschool legislation in California, and plan to send out a state-wide survey.  Judy writes: "Those interested in receiving a copy of the survey, being kept posted on what is happening, and learning how to become effectively involved, can send a self-addressed stamped envelope to me at PARENTS FOR HOME DEVELOPMENT, 10368 Kenyon Ct, Riverside 92505; 714-351-1886."

Jane Williams of the CALIFORNIA HOME EDUCATION CLEARINGHOUSE asks that people send her information about districts which offer Independent Study programs.

COLORADO: In GWS #53, we said that the St. Vrain school board had denied all the homeschooling requests it received.  The October COLORADO HOME EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION newsletter reports that the board reversed its decision and approved the 22 requests it had denied, and two new requests.  The board also passed two resolutions, one aiming to create a local home study policy and one aiming to change policy and one aiming to change policy on a state level, through open hearings.

FLORIDA: The FLORIDA PARENT-EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION newsletter reminds us that the Home Education Act passed in 1985 will expire on July 1, 1987, so homeschoolers should be prepared for home education to be on the agenda of the 1987 session.

KANSAS: Bonnie Sawyer wrote in the October KANSANS FOR ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION newsletter: "On October 4, home school representatives and attorneys met in McPherson to discuss our options for the coming legislative year.  As you know, last year action was not taken on any of the home school bills, and as a result all three bills died in committee…  We agreed that we need to be prepare so that if the circumstances warrant, we will have a bill written and ready.  If we introduce legislation, a bill similar to Missouri’s home school bill, passed last year, was favored."

MARYLAND:  Manfred Smith says in the fall ‘86 newsletter of the MARYLAND HOME EDUCATION ASSOCIATION  that the state Department of Education has drafted a set of proposed by-laws regulating homeschooling.  These by-laws would allow announced home visitations by school officials and would require that families sign a statement that they will accept such visitations.  Manfred says homeschoolers plan to oppose these visitations at public hearings (possibly in January).

MICHIGAN: In October, the state Board of Education adopted "Procedures for Home Schools" which required homeschoolers to hire certified teachers for 900 hours a year and to submit a form affirming that they were doing so.  On November 11th, however, a circuit court judge granted a preliminary injunction to Pat Montgomery of CLONLARA and the families who had filed suit with her.  This means that the state cannot enforce this strict regulations.  The judge’s redesigned form which homeschoolers fill out requires much less information and leaves very flexible the number of hours a certified teacher must be in the home.

MISSOURI:  The FAMILIES FOR HOME EDUCATION newsletter quotes this article in the Raytown Dispatch Tribune:  "[The Raytown C-2 School Board] approved a school policy concerning graduation requirements.  Under the new policy, home school credits will not be accepted on the high school level.  According to district officials, home school credits cannot be accurately evaluated.  Officials also said socialization - mixing with other students - provided an important part of a high school education."  The newsletter warns homeschoolers of the importance of being involved in local school board politics.

NEW YORK: Katharine Houk sent us a letter that her husband, Seth Rockmuller, who is Assistant Counsel for the State Education Department, wrote about the administration of Pupil Evaluation Program (PEP) tests to homeschool students:  "Because of the individualized nature of home instruction, the teacher of a student receiving at home an education which is substantially equivalent to that provided to public school students… would already be tailoring the instruction to the child’s individual needs.  Accordingly, it is unnecessary to use the PEP tests to assess those needs."  Katharine says that as a result of this letter, school districts now know that they do not have to administer the PEP tests to homeschoolers, although negotiation is still left to the individual district and family.

VERMONT: In the October LEARNING AT HOME newsletter, Kathy Blair wrote that a group of Vermont homeschoolers voted to draw up a home school bill and to organize a lobbying effort for the next legislative session.  Kathy says, "This year, material will be available to help inform us how to be effective advocates.  Lobbying teams will be established so we won’t feel isolated and lonely in Montpelier.  Car pools can be established to reduce travel expenses and/or provide transportation."

WASHINGTON: Kathleen McGurdy wrote in the October FLEX newsletter: "It has come to our attention that among certain public school administrators there is a move being made to ‘tighten up’ or clarify the homeschool law… Two proposals that have been circulated are: ‘1) that the approval form which is filed with the Superintendent should be more detailed to assure compliance with existing provisions.  [And] 2) Consideration should be given to a signed statement that the requesting parent has not been involved in child abuse or neglect problems.’  We find both proposals totally unacceptable."

The October TRESTLE newsletter adds that an amendment to the WA homeschool law, titled "Certification Standards for Homeschool Instruction," has been proposed.  The TRESTLE says that although the proposal is vague, its "ultimate intention" is to require that "homeschool teachers… be supervised by certified teachers in the State of Washington." - SS

COURT NEWS

ALABAMA: In October, a Dallas County District Judge found Dr. Malaika Hakima and Larry Hodge-Hakima guilty of "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" for failing to send their three children to school or to have them tutored by a state-certified teacher.  In a local news article, Dr. Hakima was quoted as saying, "We really want to teach the children ourselves.  I develop my own curriculum.  It suits the needs of the children."  The prosecuting attorney was also quoted as saying that if the Hakimas violate the compulsory attendance law, "that means everybody can do it."  The Hakimas are awaiting sentencing.

ALBERTA: In October, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the ruling against Thomas Larry Jones, a pastor who had been running an unapproved Christian school.  Jones had received a favorable ruling in Alberta Trial Court in 1983 (see GWS #33), but the Court of Appeal then reversed this decision (see GWS #50) and convicted him of truancy.  The Supreme Court ruling upheld this conviction, arguing that the state, as well as the parents, has a compelling interest in the children’s education and that complying with the School Act was not an unreasonable infringement on Jones’s religious beliefs.

MASSACHUSETTS:  In November, the State Supreme Court heard the Oral Arguments in the appeal of Richard and Denise Moskos of Canton.  The Moskoses were scheduled to appeal a District Court decision that found them in violation of the MA Compulsory Attendance Statute, but at the last minute the State Supreme Court decided to remove the case from Appeals Court and hear it themselves.  The family’s attorney asked that the Compulsory attendance Statute be ruled unconstitutionally vague, basing his arguments on portions of the state and federal Constitution concerning parental rights and religious belief.

PENNSYLVANIA: Peter Bergson of PENCIL tells us that the HOME SCHOOL LEGAL DEFENSE ASSOCIATION, which is currently representing several PA families, filed suit in federal court claiming that the PA school code is unconstitutional because it denies families due process.  Harrisburg attorney John Sparks also filed a separate suit claiming that the state Department of Education has misinterpreted the meaning of the term "school" in denying families the right to homeschool.  Meanwhile, the homeschool legislation - which addresses the issue of due process - will be reintroduced next session.

TEXAS: The judge unexpectedly withdrew the preliminary ruling in the class action suit Leeper vs. Arlington I.S.D. in late October.  (see GWS #53.)  According to homeschooler Judy Rosen, the attorneys plan to request an injunction if homeschooling families are prosecuted. - SS

HOW MANY HOMESCHOOLERS?

An article in the Buffalo, NY Metro Community News reports that the number of homeschoolers in New York State "has grown from approximately 200 in 1984-85 to 400 in the 1985-86 schoolyear…  The city [of Buffalo] has 15 students being taught at home in 10 different families."
_____

From the Hartford Courant, 9/16/86:

…In Connecticut, figures have not been compiled yet for this school year, but state Department of Education officials say the number will probably be higher than it was last year, when 122 students in 44 towns studied in approved home instruction programs.  That compares with 118 such students in 1984 and just 75 in 1983, said Marie Della Bella, school approval consultant for the department.  Not reflected in the statistics, however, are students kept at home by parents who do not get school board approval.
_____

An article in the San Jose Mercury News, 10/5/86, says that "while the state has no idea of the exact number of parents educating at home, the number of affidavits filed to establish private schools with fewer than four students - a sure sign of homeschooling - has tripled in the last three years.  It’s risen from 656 to 1808 families."
_____

From the Knoxville Journal:

…The number [of homeschoolers] registered last spring with the [Tennessee] State Department of education was 530, but knowledgeable parents estimate that only a fifth of the youngsters taught at home by their parents are registered with public school superintendents.  The rest are registered with private schools, making them not homeschoolers according to the law, but homeschoolers in fact.
_____

Sherie and Gunnar Richardson wrote in the November ARIZONA FAMILIES FOR HOME EDUCATION newsletter that because people are becoming aware of Arizona’s favorable homeschooling law, the number has "grown from 50 registered homeschoolers to 800 in less than five years."
_____

From the Pueblo (CO) Chieftain:

…To date, the State Board of Education approved 273 requests [for homeschooling] for the 1986-87 school year.  The applications originated from 73 of Colorado’s 177 school districts.  By contrast, there were only two school districts in which parents were teaching their students at home 10 years ago.

However, [staff assistant for the Colorado Department of Education’s Field Services Office] Roma Duffy said she believes the state’s figures represent only a fraction of the people conducting home study.  "There are probably two or three times that many.  That’s strictly a guess on my part,"  she said.  "There are probably more homeschoolers that we don’t have a record of.  Some people don’t even go through this office."
The state has no way to monitor all parents teaching their children at home.  "We have no staff or budget to check on it," Duffy said.

INVOLVING KIDS IN WORK

From Ruth Matilsky (NJ):

Sara (6) and I have been going to our food co-op once a week to work for two hours.  I needed to get out of the house and see sympathetic people and it’s working out to be a good learning experience for Sara.  We work on the produce each week and she is turning out to be a good helper.  She uses the price gun to mark different items and puts "organic" stickers on the organic produce.  She also can make signs that tell how much different items cost.  What I find most interesting is that other adults are asking her to help them and she is most conscientious about doing what they ask of her, whether it is cleaning potatoes or piling boxes up.  She is getting an idea of how a store operates.

It’s not always peaches and cream.  There are some jobs she is capable of doing but would prefer not to do and I have been trying to drive home the point that if she really wants to help then she needs to do what needs doing.  I do no want to "make up" busy work when there is real work that needs to be done.  She also likes to snack and work on art projects while she is there and while this is OK, I had to be firm in explaining that primarily we are at the co-op to work and that eating and drawing sometimes have to take secondary place to co-op work.  She accepted all this more easily than I thought she would and looks forward to our weekly trips.  It is a nice time for the two of us to be alone together.

John often said that children want to be involved in real work - that they want to help.  Now I have found this is true to a point.  Certainly most of the time it is true with baking.  With the everyday routines, however, it isn’t always the case.  Jacob used to love emptying the lint filter in the dryer and he begged to mix the super milk (we mix dry milk powder with whole milk to put on our oats in the morning).  However, when we ask him to do these things on a regular basis (because he really does help) he often will balk.  The same thing is true in the garden.  I have seen the kids fight over whose turn it is to use the rake, but when it is leaf raking time I get all kinds of complaints about doing the work.  An then, when I don’t persist in making them help me, one or the other will be asking me to please stop working and read or play a game.

The point I’m trying to make is that, at least in our family, the help doesn’t come automatically.  However, I am really proud that the kids do as much as they do - perhaps the crux here is that they want to help on their own inner schedules and that what’s really going on is four people learning to work together and respect each other’s needs.  (Do it here and then expand it to the world)
_____

[DR:] In my reply, I wrote:

About kids not wanting to do household tasks on a regular basis.  This is not really surprising, lots of people have pointed out that "play" consists of what a body is not obliged to do, and "work" is what a body is obliged to do.  it’s the coercion element.  Really little kids are enchanted at discovering they are physically capable of doing some job, and older children who might not have been allowed to do those things can experience the same initial delight.  But once the initial thrill is gone, and they know they can do it, things are different.  Then it can be an interruption, a calling-away from their fantasy world, or story, or game.
I think you are right about them wanting to help on their own schedules.  And I suspect that if you let them control as much as possible WHAT they do and WHEN they do it, then in those times when you TRULY  need them to drop what they are doing and do something right away, they will respect the sincerity of the situation and oblige you.

Some work expands as you have children - there is more laundry, for example.  So it makes a lot of sense to me that somehow everyone should be responsible for doing laundry - such as doing their own.  But leaf-raking - the number of leaves on the yard doesn’t depend on the number of children you have.  Do you honestly feel their slave labor is demanded in order to get the yard raked?  And what dire consequences would happen if the yard wasn’t raked?  Maybe something bad, maybe the grass would die…
_____

Ruth replied:

In truth I was a little put off by your allusion to "slave labor" in reference to help with raking leaves.  However, the point about only asking for help when I REALLY need it is a good one.  the problem is that with three kids, one an infant, and living a suburban, non-tribal life, I need a lot of help.
…As my children grow, I see how caretaking responsibilities get easier… Sara is now my shopping partner.  For the first time in my life, I enjoy shopping for the boring things -because I take Sara with me.  Jacob is fun in the supermarket.  Jacob is also fun in the garden and Sara is my partner in expanding our macramŽ swing set.  This is not to negate the joy of infants…

Now, for the leaves.  We have many beautiful trees, and if we don’t rake the leaves the grass will dies.  That is a fact.  And it is true that there are no more leaves (or not that many more) than before the children were born.  But I have just so much time and energy and feel the squeeze more now.  There is more cooking, cleaning, gardening, shipping, chauffeuring, bathing, etc., etc., etc., and sometimes I feel like my life is one of my macramŽ projects with 100 strings each 10 yards long and tangled.  I don’t actually mind that my life is spent on these tasks, but there are just so many hours in the day and I do get tired.  So when I see an area where the kids could help I try to involve them.

Now in actuality what happened with the leaves was this.  Last fall I spent an hour a day raking for several weeks.  I told them that I couldn’t read or do other fun things because this was my time to rake.  Jacob often stayed with me, "helping" with the wheelbarrow and raking himself.  Sara also joined in occasionally.  There were the times when I would be doing something else and Sara enlisted her friends to rake the yard.  there was only one time when I tried to insist that they help and it went so badly that I gave it up.  This was an area where I seemed to instinctively feel that they couldn’t be enough immediate help to make it worthwhile to force them to participate.  As I’ve thought about this issue in the last couple of days I’ve realized that they weren’t really ignoring the leaves at all and I feel better about the whole thing.

…Some practical things I’ve done are to have someone in to clean the house every other week and sometimes every week.  In the past I’ve used teenager - this time I’m using a recent college graduate who hasn’t found a career niche yet.  Ever since Sara was little I’ve had a teenager over two days a week for a couple of hours to relieve me so that I could do things like wash my hair or meditate or do some shopping that I want to do alone.  Creative things are harder for me to do during the scheduled babysitting time because I can’t schedule in creative moods.  Right now I have a babysitter come one night a week so the bigger kids can get baths at least once a week and she reads to them until bedtime.  and I have a couple of other teenagers on the street lined up to help on an occasional basis.

More practicality - the family bedroom.  We now sleep on the lowest level of our split level.  We have a queen-sized mattress for us and next to it a single for the baby.  Sara and Jake sleep on sleeping bags which we roll up in the morning.  The laundry room is adjacent to the sleeping room and it has made laundry so much easier, with much fewer complaints about putting it away and made it much easier to help them learn to care for their own clothing.  We wash diapers and napkins and biobottoms so there is a LOT of laundry.
This has enabled us to use three small bedrooms upstairs for activity areas.  Friends are absolutely forbidden to come into the sleeping area, and there is no need since all the activity things are upstairs.  It gives me a place to be when the social life is taking place (and like other homeschooling families I know, ours is a favorite place for neighborhood kids to congregate - a mixed blessing)…

J.P. IN CALIFORNIA

This summer, longtime GWS contributor Kathy Mingl and family moved to Los Angeles, and have been living in a camper (unable to find better housing).  Kathy writes:

Seems like an update on J.P. is due; he’s changed so much just since we left Illinois that you’d hardly know him for the same stubborn, bouncy little blond twerp who’s driven his doting mother up the wall these several years.  (He’s still stubborn, mind you.)  California must suit him - as soon as we got here, he proceeded to outgrow everything we’d brought with him to wear or grow into, and he is now one solid chunk of 8-year-old.
Our homeschooling has changed gears too, with both Tony land me working.  At first, I thought J.P. could just be in the camper parked at work in the morning, but that didn’t give him enough scope - he’s a "people" person.  He’s been taking a Scientology-type course in the afternoons (just general tutoring right now, but working up to a Children’s Study Course, designed to help him take over the job of getting an education), so now he’s going to another homeschooler’s house in the morning and doing his coursework in the afternoon.

My main problem, as I’m sure you’ve heard about before, is finding work for him to do.  After he’d taken an exercise/sauna program, he was helping out with washing towels and running errands - for cash money (!) - but once that ran out he was at loose ends, jobwise.  Right now he’s helping his good friend Lesley (the homeschooler), who babysits several little kids, watch and teach the babies, but not for cash.  At least he feels useful.

It’s funny about what I’m doing at work now.  I was originally hired to do filing and simple accounting, even though I had no experience in that area, just because they needed somebody right away and figured that anybody who had spent two and a half years teaching their kid at home must be pretty resourceful.  And resourcefulness, it turns out, is exactly the thing that’s needed, because the company is just starting out as a new office of an established outfit, and juggling Purchase Orders and schedules and receipts and petty cash demands (generally not petty at all!) can make you pretty darned glassy-eyed in no time at all.

I had a terrible time at first because I was trying to do two jobs - one upstairs and one downstairs - and answer the #*!@* phone, and learn how to use the computer - and I don’t even know how to type (as you well know).  the funny thing is, once I got the basics down (I just had Tony show me what keys to push), I had less trouble with the computer than anyone else (other than Tony) who’d tried it because I already knew what a Purchase Order should look like and how it works - what information is important and what isn’t - and because with that stupid phone ringing at me all day long, I had no time to even look at the manual.  I think I may take a look at it now, because they’ve hired someone else for the phone, and not only do I have more time, but I’m proficient enough that I can see areas that could be improved, and I understand enough about it that I don’t think I’d be that confused by it.  Interesting generalization to be made there, hmm?

Living in a camper is interesting, too - you learn all sorts of new ways of doing things that you’ve never even thought of before.  I find I like that, and I’m finding out lots of other things about myself, too.  I don’t know how long I’ll want to work, actually, but I value the education  I’m getting out of it very much.  (Maybe I’m teaching other people there some things, too!)  I’m sorry that J.P. can’t be with me there, but it wouldn’t be as good for him right now as what he’s doing, with me so busy and him so stubborn.  We tell each other things we’ve learned, and at night we read.  We all have a real passion for science fiction, and TV’s are hard to deal with in a camper.  (We do have one, but it’s just too much trouble).  In the last couple of months, we’ve read LITTLE FUZZY by H. Beam Piper, THE LAST UNICORN (back in print!) and now we’re on ENTERPRISE, a Star Trek story.  Earlier we read some Sherlock Holmes, and next I want to start the James Herriot series.  One major trouble with a camper is not having enough room for books.

It is lonesome, way out here in the wilds of L.A. without family or homeschooling friends - we’d be glad to hear from people who like visitors who bring their house along.

HELPING BALLET TEACHER

Diana Baseman (PA) writes:

Olivia (8) recently began a "job" or apprenticeship which grew out of our fantasy play and homeschooling.  Ever since she began walking an talking she has wanted to be a dancer.  She has not wavered from this ambition and speaks confidently about her future as a dancer and ballet teacher when she grows up.

This fall her ballet teacher asked her to assist with a large class of preschool ballet students.  She was chosen because of her serious attitude in class and because of her close friendship with her teacher.  She dances almost every day at home, so she has plenty of time to "fool around" with dance while the other ballet student are in school.  They don’t have time to fool around outside of ballet class, so they do it there.  Olivia goes to class fresh, not tired after a long day of sitting at a desk following orders.  She has no trouble with the strict regimentation of ballet class since it is the only time she spends like that, and the orders are given by her beloved teacher who has known her for five years.  Olivia is essentially an auditory learner.

…Recently she asked me to teach  her cursive, something she had rejected when I suggested it to her previously, because she must take the roll as part of her job, and she can’t read the teacher’s handwriting to check off names.

DAUGHTER WITH DOWN SYNDROME

From Elaine Bechtold (Resources):

This is an update regarding our daughter Jodi with Down Syndrome (GWS #23).  Jodi, now 20 and in her last year of high school, will be graduating next June.  We are still homeschooling in the area of reading.  I’m using the book called ALPHA PHONICS: A PRIMER FOR BEGINNING READERS by Samuel L. Blumenfeld…  Blumenfeld taught an adult with Down Syndrome to read using his phonic method.  This man is now reading the book TOM SAWYER.
Jodi is still a 4-H member and became involved in their clowning project three years ago.  It has helped her a lot to be the same as everyone else - that is, a clown under clown make-up and clown costume.  She has marched in many parades with a group, done many team acts for small children at libraries, people living in nursing homes, church entertainment and the like.  Learning how to act and performing in front of people is not always easy for some children and adults.

This year she also became involved in the 4-H ARTS IN program.  This is a group of teens who practice some songs and acts and present their program at the County Fair and again at the Minnesota State Fair.  She is with normal teenagers singing, dancing and acting, wearing costume.  This year they did songs from the production GREASE.  They will again perform at the 4-H Annual Award Banquet.

Also the past two summers she had a job working first as a volunteer and then as a paid employee.  This job was nine miles from home- transportation was provided by the parent and people from the community that drove that route to their job.  She worked at Vinland National Center, a rehabilitation center for the physically handicapped adults.  Here she did office work (which she liked the best), cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming rooms and hallways, plus an assortment of other jobs.  The Division of Rehabilitation Services provided her pay and job coach to work with and train her.

This year in school she is working out in the community of her school at a nursing home and a Farm & Home hardware store for two hours each day with a job coach.  She is also getting some computer training at school with possibility for future job opportunities.  I have finally gotten through to the school to focus on abilities and not on disabilities, and not to label.

Another learning experience she has taken part in is the public speaking contest through 4-H.  A topic is chosen and she presents it, even though she is not able to write the speech.  She does a super job of getting in front of a group of people and reading her speech and then talking with the judges after it.
What I am trying to say and tell other parents is that the Down Syndrome child and adult need challenge just like everyone else…

RESPONSES ON TOYS

From Andrea Kelly-Rosenberg (ME):

…I was interested in Sian McLean’s comments about toys in GWS #52.  I agree with her, although I can’t claim the same level of self-control she has - Noah and Laura have toys, although they are largely gifts and hand-me-downs.

But I have to put in an enthusiastic plug for a toy that I think is just great - dolls.  I made a doll each for Noah and Laura, using the instructions in THE DOLL BOOK which you sell, and also some little cloth elves from the same book.  The kids play with them every day, sometimes for hours.  I can think of nothing more important or healthier than this doll play, nothing that makes the kids happier.  They fight the very least when they are "playing elves" or with their dolls.
_____

From Mary Watters (CT):

I wouldn’t say that all toys are useless.  The Quadro (offered in your catalog) is a wonderful way to be able to build without the mess of wood and nails.  You can also take it apart - try that with wood.
When it is time for fantasy play and my 5-year-old climbs a tree with a plastic saw to play tree surgeon, I am glad he isn’t using a real saw, because it isn’t time to prune the tree - it should only be done yearly and he wants to do it daily.

…If Sian McLean makes having toys an issue with her daughter, she is only going to have a toy-crazy kid who wants every toy her friends have, instead of one who has learned to pick toys that truly interest her…
_____

From Madalene Murphy (PA):

…I wanted to reassure Sian McLean that there are other families who share her attitude toward toys.  While our oldest did receive a couple of Fisher-Price sets and did enjoy playing with them, even then we tried as much as possible to limit what she got.  Our son’s main interest in terms of toys when he was very young was a large set of wooden blocks, and he started asking for real tools as soon as he could talk.  Our youngest, Clare (7) has never had any great interest in plastic toys, although she is a great lover of bright colors and will occasionally ask for a toy she might see in a catalog because it is so colorful, but her great joy has always been in making things.

They have had unlimited, unsupervised access to: a real Polaroid Camera (with no film) and a real telephone (that no longer worked), a real set of dishes picked up at a garage sale, instead of a toy set that costs much more and that no real food will fit on.  The one area where we have found ourselves vulnerable to the lure of plastics has been in the building toys - our kids have gotten a great deal of pleasure our of Lego, Capsela and Robotics sets…
_____

From Peggy Webb of New York:

One line in Sian McLean’s letter provoked a big, green bubble of envy in me… her daughter’s toys "fit in a box that tucks under a stool."  Unless that stool is the size of a Winnebago, I have to ask a question: How is this possible?  To be more specific, how does she control it?

We are not a possession-oriented family, and as a one-income family in a two-income world are dancing pretty close to the old poverty line.  And yet, there are toys, toys, TOYS - under my feet, between the bedsheets, occasionally in the bread-box, etc.  Twice a year I go through it all and the local charities become richer for my efforts.  Still, there are toys, some of them the hand-rubbed wooden imports I was able to afford when I was still working, some are cheap, tacky, plastic things that come from well-meaning (usually childless) friends…  The rest of her stash is comprised of all sorts of gadgets and items she has absconded with from her carpenter dad and quilting mom, to wit: templates, t-squares, pocket calculators, measuring tapes, ace bandages, wooden spoons.

One thing is for sure, having a lot of toys has not confused her, nor has it made her demanding for more.  In all her 3 1/2 years, she’s never bugged me for a toy, and thus far shows real appreciation for the gifts she seems to get weekly from her largely-adult circle of friends.  In the background, I’m doing my bit to broadcast my philosophy (with tact I hope) to our friends and it seems to be turning the tide.  The same person who gave her the Barbie doll for her third birthday just gave her an old-fashioned telephone (a real one!) and a bird identification book…

TALK WITH WRITING TEACHERS

[SS:] From 1978-1980, Donald Graves and a team of researchers studies how young children in Atkinson, NH classrooms learned to write.  As a result of this study, teachers and researchers collaborated on the development of an unusual program for teaching writing.  In WRITE FROM THE START [New American Library, 8.95] Donald Graves and Virginia Stuart tell the story of the program’s success in classrooms from Maine to Australia.  The story interests us because it is a rare example of schools adopting an approach which homeschoolers can easily support.  It’s an approach that can be - indeed, already has been - used by parents, with equally satisfying results.  In October I met with Don Graves and Virginia Stuart at the University of New Hampshire, where they both teach.

SUSANNAH SHEFFER: What is your approach to writing with children?

DONALD GRAVES: It’s an approach that’s based on the belief that when writers of any age write - whether you’re a professional or 4 or 5 years old or someone who says, "I think I’d like to be a writer" - the basic question for all is you write about what you know.  And everyone does know things.  If the person comes to the page with the perspective that "Gee, I don’t know anything, nothing’s ever happened to me," that’s a hard start.  There’s an empty piece of paper, and it’s like a mirror.  If you look in that mirror and think, "My words here are going to confirm to the world that I’m an idiot, because I’ve been nurtured in idiocy," then you’re not going to put down what you have to say very well.

So, the person writes, and the role of the parent or teacher or anyone is very simple.  It’s to say "Where are you now, how’s it going, what are you going to do next?"

VIRGINIA STUART: To add to that, there are two things that I see as really helping children start with their own knowledge and go from there.  One is to have them choose their own topics.  My nephew was fascinated by knights and armor and medieval things, so that would be a natural topic for him.  The other thing is finding the right opportunity, and I think parents teaching in the home are in a great position for seeing opportunities to write that come out of everyday life.  If your child is very young and you’re going shopping and you have to make a list, even a 3-year-old can scribble a list.  If older children get upset about something, they can write about it and that ’s a piece of persuasive writing.

SS: Can you describe what went on in the classroom studies that make up WRITE FROM THE START?

DG: They wrote every day, and they had a lot of oral response through what we called a conference.  You come over to a child when the child is working, and you say, "Where are you now? What’s it about? What are you going to do next?"  If the child tells you what it’s about, you might say, "Well, if it’s about that, I have some questions."  There’s a pretty high level of challenge, but the challenge has to be appropriate to the person, to where that person is as a writer.  In these classrooms, there’s quite a development of a sophisticated audience.  Writers need audiences, so you’re trying to develop an audience that really knows how to help.  That takes a long time, but first graders and kindergartners can do it.  The problem of course is when you get learners who are set in the tradition of "help means you tell someone how stupid it is," and then expect the writer to want to return to it after that…  It’s sort of like the university tradition - you prove people unfortunate idiots, and then they are supposed to want to disprove you so badly that they’ll go do great things.  But it doesn’t work.

Anyway, they publish.  Not a lot - I think in our early work there was too much of an emphasis on that - you get a kind of orthodoxy that says unless you have this outward sign of a bound book you haven’t done anything significant.  But the goal is to get to a position where you’re writing about things you know and using writing as a way of thinking.

SS: When a teacher comes up to a child and asks how it’s going, does the child ever say, "I’m busy, I’m not ready to talk about it now"?

DG: Sure.  They have to have that right.  In some rooms we have a Do Not Disturb section.  If you go and sit there it means that no child or teacher can bother you.  It may mean that you’re having trouble getting started, it may mean that your piece of writing is hot and you don’t want to be bothered.

VS: Another thing that is different in these classrooms is the use of invented spelling, which gives the child a lot more freedom.  If the child wants to talk about a Doberman pinscher, in the other system he’d have to write dog because that’s all he could spell, but her he can go ahead and approximate the spelling and say what he wants to say.

SS: Did the first graders in the classrooms adapt more easily to invented spelling, because they hadn’t been told it was wrong?

DG: It’s funny - I remember the first time it came up - well, children have been doing it for centuries, but somehow it needed to be legitimized.  A teacher said to me, "look at this, what are they doing?"  I said, "That’s invented spelling" and she said, "What’s that?"  She went and visited a room where I knew it was going on, and she came back and shared the work that those children were doing with her children, and they were insulted!  They said, "We can do that , why didn’t you tell us before?"  So now, children everywhere are knowing what other children are doing, and it’s like this great stamp of approval has been put on it.  Also, of course, it works.

SS: Often, I think, homeschool kids use invented spelling readily because no one has told them not to, but sometimes the parent’s didn’t know it was OK and have gotten the child pretty worried about correct spelling.  What would you say to a parent in this situation who now wants the child’s attitude toward spelling to be more relaxed?

DG: There are children who are terrified of inventing something, and I can say, almost axiomatically, about 95% of the time, it’s because of the view of the parent about spelling.  They’ve had a stance about learning that says you don’t ever make a mistake, you get it right at the first shot.  So in a homeschool situation, you can take a look at yourself and see what kinds of views you’ve had.  There are some children who know that words are only spelled one way, and they need help - we encourage children like this, if they run into a word they don’t know, to just draw a line, or to put a dash where they think there might be another letter but don’t know what it is.  We above all encourage them to go by the situation, to continue writing.  But we can’t imagine how much we’re immersed in a culture that says literacy equals being able to spell well.  It’s that outward sign that you’re literate.

Another  thing I would definitely recommend, and we’re doing this more and more, is show children how to invent.  You sit there and - well, I actually sound it out, I put in the phonetic spelling.   I’ll say, "Let’s see, is that a ‘c’ or a ‘k,’?" and I’ll write it in.  So I’m slowing the process way down.  We’re finding that children have never seen another human being do this, and for many, just to tell them "go write a word" - well, that’s pretty abstract.  So let them see it.  Then what happens is, the group instructs me on how children learn to spell.

SS: I’m interested in how the teachers in these classrooms learned this approach, especially the ones who may not have felt comfortable with writing themselves.

DG: Yes, because we stress, in these rooms, that the teachers write with the children.  That’s an absolute must.

VS: I think a lot of parents, just like teachers, have had negative experiences with writing.  I just spoke to a homeschooling mother from Iowa who said her husband’s a professor, she’s a social worker, and neither of them feels really confident in their own writing ability.  So I suggested to her that she get together with some other parents who are teaching at home and discuss their own writing.

SS: Do the teachers sit there and write at the same time that the children are writing?

DG: Some do, some write apart from them, but more and more are doing it at the same time that the children are.  We noticed, in our last study, that when the teacher’s sitting there writing, that’s probably the peak involvement for the children, too.

VS: I think a lot of times people think "I’m going to teach writing so I have to be a great writer," when often the difficulties with writing, the times when writing has really been hard for you, are the times that will help you as a teacher.  Writing the book was very difficult for me, and it’s helped me immensely; I refer to it all the time when I’m teaching.  I think even if you’re struggling with writing, that’s something that can help you because your children will be struggling too.

SS: I’ve noticed that some parents who do feel comfortable with writing will feel that the gap between their writing and the child’s is so great that it will be discouraging.

DG: No - only if the parent says to the child, "Well, you can do a lot better than that!"  You can say that sometimes, but it has to be in a different context.  It’s an adult phenomenon, it’s adults who get anxious about other adults’ writing.  Young kids are fearless!

SS: One part of the theory of homeschooling is this idea of apprenticeships as a model for relationships between children and adults, which you mention in the book with regard to writing.  Thinking about it in terms oaf writing, I find that it’s so easy to picture how one would apprentice to a carpenter, for example, but harder to imagine it with writing because writing seems to be such an internal activity.  I wonder if you have ideas about how an adult writer could make the work visible.

DG: Well, you compose aloud.  When Don Murray got up - he’s a professional, Pulitzer prize writer - before a hundred and fifty people at our last conference, he was up there at the chalkboard, composing aloud.

SS: That certainly externalizes it!

DG: He says, ""Let’s see now, this word’s bothering me, what should I put here?"  You can do this at any level.

VS: The point of entry is often wherever you have a problem.  In my own writing, whenever I have a problem I have to draw back and say "There’s another way to do this."  If you can show the child what your options were and how you chose one, that’s helpful.

DG: Writing letters to kids is a very important thing, and expecting responses - you know, having kids find letters at all points, under pillows, in boxes of toys.

SS: An interesting area in all this is the area of response, what you say when a child brings you a piece of writing.

DG: The first thing I do is I respond to the information.  I try, above all, to respond from the standpoint of what it is I think the writer is trying to do.  I’ll say, "Oh, I see you have a piece about your dog Muffin and how she’s always barking at the neighbors, and your friend Billy said his father doesn’t like it when Muffin barks and wakes him up in the morning… did I get that right?"  So I’m first trying to get the essence of the content.  After that, if I’ve established that, then I’ve earned the right to have some questions, and then finally the right to give some advice.  The questions I ask are all asked from the standpoint of what a reader needs to know, and I’ll probably have only two or three of those.  We often get too exhaustive, and the writer is so bewildered by that.  Actually, you can take the piece over, with your questions.  I ask the questions because I first went through the process of receiving the information, and now I’m asking to reveal more.
A problem comes in when the adult thinks that the child is going to write all those answers to your questions just because they told you.  I you think that, the kid will never tell you anything again.  I would think that one of the problems in homeschool teaching would be, how can I get audiences for my child’s writing other than myself, because a very young child, especially, is going to think, "Why do I have to write all that down, I just told you."  but the two options you have are, you can say, "Well, we might need it later on, and you might forget," or, I would think that there are clusters of parents so children can take these pieces and send them to other places and get responses from other audiences.

SS:  There often are informal groups like that, and people put writing in the mail, too.

DG:  That’s one option, but the thing is you need to  practice your oral voice, with the text, on others.  It’s important enough, I think, to figure ways to provide a live audience.  Even the kid next door, who may go to school, if you can just bring him into the house and teach him how to go through the response process with you.

VS:  When you respond to a piece of writing, you need to get your priorities straight.  The point, the information, is the most important thing.  The spelling, the grammar exist to help you get that across.  I f the spelling and grammar, say, in an older child, are sod bad that you can’t understand it, that’s something you need to address.  But sometimes it may be helpful for parents to have the child read the piece to them, instead of looking at it, especially with a very young child, or the early draft of an older child’s piece, so the parent won’t be tempted to criticize.  You have to learn to see beyond those errors.  When you first go into a classroom where children are doing invented spelling, it looks horrible, really strange.  You have to get used to looking at it, to see through it.  It’s the same with an early draft.  You have to get used to reading in different ways, depending on what stage the piece of writing is at.

SS: What about something even earlier than a whole draft - I’m thinking of a child who comes up and says, "I just wrote my name," and you look and don’s see any of the letters of the child’s name there, you see a bunch of other letters, but you want to respond in an encouraging way.  What might you say?

DG: If that happens, the child has shown me that he or she has the concept that letters make words.  The next day, I might say, "You showed me yesterday that you understand that letters can make you name, let me show you which ones do."  But I wouldn’t do it right then.

VS: You always look for what the child already knows, and then try to extend it another step.

SS: What about revision?  How can you suggest that in a way that doesn’t seem discouraging?

VS: Again, it has a lot to do with other readers’ response, because you need those readers telling you what they don’t understand, what they need more of, what they need less of.

DG: Revision comes in at the point when a piece is going somewhere, it’s hot, you care about it.  There are so many different developmental levels for this.  The most elemental revision is the child adds the new information on at the end.  It takes a while before they understand where the new information should fit into the piece.  I might ask a child, "You know that thing you just told me about how you got Muffin at the dog pound, do you think other people need to know that?"  The kid might say, "I think it’s important, but I don’t want to put it in." So I’ll say, "OK, I understand that you don’t want to put it in, but if you were going to, can you show me where it would go?"  I’m interested to know if the child, conceptually, can handle an insertion.  The first bit of revision they’ll do is probably just a sentence.  Sometimes, there’s so much that we expect them to put in that the revision is bigger than the piece itself.  We have to have that sense of proportion.

With very young children, so often what they do in terms of revision happens in this way: the kid’s got six pieces on robots, and he didn’t want to revise any of them, but in fact, those six successive pieces over time were conceptual revisions of the one before.  So it’s pretty important for kids to write on the same subject for a fair length of time, because that’s their way of working their way into a kind of revision that’s overlooked.  Often, it’s repetition and obsession that really help somebody cut into a thing.  I think that’s one of the strong things about homeschool, that you really have that opportunity to revel in obsessions.

SS: An issue that comes up among homeschoolers is the issue of praise.  John Holt was basically opposed to praise -

DG: So am I.  Well, there are ways to give praise.  The more specific you are with the text, the more you are demonstrating understanding, this in fact is specific praise.  But praise can be manipulative, and it takes control, really, from the writer to yourself.  It’s like holy water, you can’t make a move until somebody comes around and sprinkles it and says, "Oh, that’s very nice."  It can be devastating.  On the other hand, I think praise can be very important if it’s timely and done sparingly.

SS:  I can hear some parents asking, "What if you genuinely love the piece?  Should you hide that?"

DG: It shows all through your person.  You pick it up and you smile - it doesn’t mean you don’t smile - and your whole body says it.  You don’t ever hide that.  On the other hand, you watch your words.

VS: The more specific praise is, the more helpful it is.  If you say, "This detail really helped me to see what this horse looks like," that’s teaching the child what has been successful, and the child can build on that, as opposed to saying, "This is great."

DG: I think we have to realize why praise gets given.  Most praise is given when the person really doesn’t understand what’s going on.  If you’re so uncertain about what’s happening that you keep saying, "That’s good, that’s wonderful," then after a while the kid can’t tell what’s good from what’s not good.  There’s  no honest audience there.

SS: I’m curious to know what you think of taking a child’s dictation, whether that’s writing or not.

DG: It is a kind of writing, because there is that shift.  If you’re dictating to me it’s different from just a plain conversation.  The problem comes in  when the parent becomes an amanuensis, when the child thinks, too quickly, that it’s only adults who can put words on a page.  Once a child knows six or seven consonants, they can do it themselves.  I think there is a phase where you can think there is a phase where you can say, "OK, if you were going to write that, tell me what you would say, how you would actually phrase it."  That moves them closer to writing - but I wouldn’t actually put it down myself.

SS: I worked for a while with a 4-year-old who was doing some invented spelling on her own, but was at the stage where physically, that took her a very long time, it was very laborious.  Another thing she was doing was dictating, and that would turn into much more text than she’d ever have the patience to write out.  Can we see all this as parts which will coalesce eventually?

DG: It is important to tell stories.  But children are not really bothered by trying to put it down themselves, unless they know that you could put it down and have a much broader text.  What happens is that even if there’s only three words on paper, in the conference, the whole story unfolds, so the child actually has had a significant communication there.  Children aren’t frustrated by the motor part of it, al song as they get a chance to tell far more than is there in the text, and then it grows together.  If they want to dictate into a tape recorder so that they can remember it, that’s OK.

SS; In light of this, what should an adult do if a child comes up and says, "I have a story, will you write it down for me?"

DG: There’s a middle ground there, for some kids.  You can say, "OK, you tell me the story and I’ll write down some key words."  Then afterwards, you have these key words which you can offer.  You can say, "You said these interesting words when you told that story to me.  You might want to use them when you write it, that’s up to you."

SS: It’s very interesting to us in the homeschooling movement that this approach of yours has been so successful in schools.

DG: It’s never going to be a field army, it’s strictly a guerrilla operation.  But it’s spreading, slowly.  The hardest part is the sensing of literate moments, having that great sense of timing.  So much of what we do in school is out of step with what’ s right at the time.  One good thing is it brings more and more teachers together to share their own writing.  We’re finding that anytime we have a conference here we’re always way overbooked, immediately; the demand is enormous, so that’s an indication.

SS: Are you specifically in the business now of going around and explaining the approach to people?

DG: Oh yes, we see about 25-30,000 people a year, it’s just enormous.

SS: And then they all go back and do it?

DG: Well, the places that you have longer access to - suppose you can work with a group for a week, that lasts longer and better.  A two hour talk is like saying, "Here’s the scalpels, go do brain surgery."
By the way, we have some videos now that I think might be of interest to parents - especially the one we have on conferences, mostly one-on-one, an adult working with a child.  Maybe a cluster of parents could get one and move it around. [Avail. from Heinemann Educational Books, 70 Court St. Portsmouth  NH  03801.]

SS: I understand that this has also had an international appeal.

DG: It’s all over Australia, New Zealand and Canada.  Those are the three countries, and it’s in there extensively, more so than in the United States, proportionally.

SS: Has the approach been subject to any of the traditional school evaluation methods?

DG: Yes, it does pretty well -

VS: Sometimes better -

DG: But the testing just doesn’t even remotely measure what the children can do.

CANDIDATE FOR SCHOOL BOARD

From Barry Kahn (ME):

…A GWS reader from Texas asked me if I had won a seat on the Portland School Committee…  I did not.  I did come in third out of four candidates (for two seats), and I received just under 3000 votes (the winners were both near 4000), which local experts told me was exceptional for a first-time, unknown, non-native candidate.
The campaign was fascinating, exhausting, and unlike anything I had ever done before.  The fact that I homeschool my children was mentioned once in the local paper, but I really don’t know how many votes it may have cost me.  I met people who found it very disturbing (a frequent comment was: "I really believe in the public schools…" which implied, I guess, that parents have a civic or patriotic duty to send their children to public school no matter what), and others who thought having a homeschooler on the committee would improve it immensely.  In the end, I think homeschooling was a non-issue.

I have also been asked by many people why I ran…  Last year I worked as an aide in a public elementary school, which really opened my eyes.  For example:

1.  The children spent lots of time doing "reading work" but they hardly ever read.  I doubt they spent more than 20 minutes per week actually reading stories.  And it was May before the class went to the school library, chose books, and brought them back to read in school.  The contrast with Heather who reads 1-2 hours daily was sharp.
2.  Testing.  These children spent over 16 hours taking state tests and city achievement tests.  Add on the weekly spelling tests, social studies tests, end of unit reading tests, etc., and it all adds up to an incredible amount of wasted time (teachers readily admit that the tests are only used to create grades or statistics) and unnecessary stress.
3.  The cafeteria.  On the wall: a traffic light.  When the light is on red, no talking.  If you talk, you will get a demerit.  Some teachers would harangue the children (yes, there was a microphone, too) non-stop through the entire lunch period, others would stalk around hunting for whisperers, and others thought the light was stupid.  By February children were refusing to go to school because of lunch incidents - and the parents were up in arms.  The principal chose to ignore the whole business.
So, one of the main reasons I ran for School Committee was to put myself in a position where I could publicize atrocities against children.  Another was to try to begin explaining to parents that elementary schools of 630 students cannot possibly function well - not because the teachers aren’t well-intentioned, but because the scale is wholly inappropriate to young children…

One thing I learned this year is that children in public schools are hostages.  I had numerous parents tell me point-blank that they were afraid to protest some horrible thing which was done to their child because of the probable repercussions.  They were not imagining things either, because I had other parents tell me what happened when they did protest.  In some cases children even begged their parents not to intervene because the children knew they would pay for it in class…

RESPONDING TO FANTASIES

From Marta Clark (KY):

About fantasy play (GWS #52): I rarely ever play with my children, that is, get down and be a unicorn or tractor-driver or whatever.  Instead both Elena (7) and Benedict (4) have gone through phases (actually Benedict is not through it yet) in which they talk to me about their fantasies.  It goes something like this:
B: I want to be a farmer when I get bigger.
Me: What will you do then?
B: Combines.  And tractors.
Me: Will you combine the corn?
B: I’ll combine LOTS of corn.  I’ll have one combine for corn and one for wheat and one for soybeans and one for tobacco.
Me: Farmers don’t harvest tobacco with combines.
B: And I’ll have lots of tractors, too.  I’ll just have John Deeres.  I don’t want any other kind except John Deeres…
The more he gets into the fantasy, the less attention he pays to me, but I keep saying things, to let him know I’m listening.  I’m not really guiding the conversation and I’m not really playing either, I’m just listening.  But if I don’t keep making remarks and asking questions, he suspects (usually with good reason) that I’m not paying attention to him.

USES OF FANTASY PLAY

From Diana Baseman (PA):

I’d like to respond to some of Marie Baker’s questions and concerns about fantasy play in GWS 52.  Olivia (8 1/2) began pretending in earnest at about age 2 after seeing the movie THE WIZARD OF OZ and having a simplified version of the book read to her many times.  She was an only child until age 4 1/2, and we lived in an inner city neighborhood with no other children for her to play with.  She began pretending to be "Dorothy," and of course my husband and I became "Uncle Henry" and "Aunt Em."  We have had many other parts in the years since then.  Along with ballet and singing, pretending and fantasy play have become our family’s homeschooling methods.

Ronnie and I don’t have time to do our adult work and pretend with the children as separate activities, and I have discovered that doing either one separately is very boring, so we combine the two.  When I cook I am usually "not myself."  Olivia will say, "Mama, I’m Mary Ingalls, Delia’s Laura, Gabriel’s Carrie, and you’re Ma making breakfast."  Or, Ronnie has to do the dishes and clean the kitchen floor.  The girls want to play Oz.  He says, "Let’s pretend we’re slaves of the wicked witch.  She’s having a party, and we have to clean her kitchen."  They all work together, pretending as they go.  Another time, I say, "Olivia, please watch the baby while I take a shower."  When I come out of the bathroom she is having "baby school" for her two younger siblings with her as the teacher.  Delia (4) began to learn letters, numbers, addition, and how to spell and write a few simple words at age 3, while being a student in "Piggy School."  (She like to pretend she’s a pig.)  We try to include the girls in adult work through fantasy play as much as possible.
Ronnie and I use to say we didn’t want to pretend a lot more often before we realized that we could do many things we wanted to do while pretending, and that our kids would do many things we wanted them to do, which they didn’t want to do, like clean up their room, take baths, or go somewhere in the car, if we would all pretend while doing them.

Even if I haven’t read a story the girls want to pretend, I can still have a part because they don’t usually follow the book’s plot but make up their own as they go along.  I must say that I (unlike my husband) don’t really enjoy pretending unless I can see some adult purpose in it like teaching Olivia phonics while playing school.  I did enjoy it as a child, and I want my children to enjoy it.  At first Olivia’s characters always wanted to have long conversations with me which I couldn’t follow very well as I worked.  I would not be able to concentrate on two things at once.  I learned to cope, as mothers must be able to do two or more things at once.  Also, when Delia got old enough to really participate (about 2 1/2), the burden of dialogue was lifted.  Now I can’t get a word in, and I don’t get many speaking parts.  I think this is as it should be.  Pretending is a child activity.

The children usually begin, end, and set up the situation for pretending.  I think of myself of an extra or stand-in who fills in when and however I’m needed.  I don’t want to manipulate their play, so I don’t direct them.  I try to stay in the background, occasionally playing a bit part or an adult supporting role.  We take our kids’ pretending seriously and plan for it in our daily lives.
I am always looking for books with "good parts" for the kids.  For example, just after Gabriel was born I found a book by Carol Brink, who wrote CADDIE WOODLAWN, about two sisters who were shipwrecked alone on an island with four babies to care for.  It is called BABY ISLAND.  Eventually they meet the only other inhabitant of the island, a goat-keeping pirate-like sailor who becomes their friend.  The girls could hardly wait for me to read enough of the book so they could start pretending it.  Soon Olivia was Mary Wallace, Delia was Jean wallace, Ronnie was the sailor, and Gabriel was Joshua, one of the babies.  Dolls played the other babies.  The girls would commiserate with me about caring for so many children who all seem to cry at once.  this fantasy was great therapy for our disoriented, new-baby-oriented household, helping the girls to gain valuable insights and to be more understanding about their temporarily unmet needs for adult attention.
Our children don’t pretend only from books we’ve read.  Everything and everyone they’re exposed to becomes part of their pretending.  In fact, I decided to limit TV years ago because everything she saw on TV ended up in Olivia’s pretending.  I didn’t like having to be "Wonder Woman’s Mommy."  You have to watch carefully what goes into a child’s mind because it will come out.
I can tell how my children are feeling by what and how they are pretending.  Are the characters fighting?  Are the girls pretending to be very rebellious people like Peter Pan and Pippi Longstocking or very docile ones like Mary Ingalls?

Of course there are snags.  What if there is only one starring role?  Sometimes taking turns works.  One day it hit me.  Why couldn’t there be two Dorothys or Pippis?  With pretending anything is possible!  Thus were born the Pippi sisters.  Both are named Pippi and play the part.  I only have to remember one name (the girls always correct me if I call them or the baby by the wrong name, and sometimes I lose track).  Sometimes the girls want to pretend different things.  That’s OK too.  Peter Pan and Pippi Longstocking found out they had a lot in common.  So did Dorothy Gale and Alice in Wonderland.  An educational researcher might call this sort of play "exploration of similar characterizations in comparative literature through dramatic role playing" or some such "educationalese."  We do talk about characters’ similarities and differences, and playing these roles together really shows the traits to the girls.

Ronnie enjoys taking a more active role in pretending than I do, and since he has less time with the children than I do, he’s fresher in his roles.  Pretending helps him to relax and escape from the tensions of his job, too…

I don’t want to leave the impression that I constantly play with my children, or that I would advocate such a thing.  Children need to learn to entertain themselves.  One reason I chose homeschooling was so that my children would not be dependent on adults for entertainment.  My daughters seldom complain of boredom, and when they do it is usually after watching TV (ours is used no more than 1-2 hours per day) or after playing for a long time with other children.  I feel that my involvement in the children’s pretending allows me to send them off to play alone without guilt when I do need some time alone with the baby, or for some other activity, like writing this letter.

TELLING STORIES

[DR:]  In GWS #53, I asked how people fit storytelling into their lives.  Mary Van Doren on our staff responded:

We did some camping this past summer, and decided we wouldn’t have time for books.  Between nightfall and sleep, Helen (3) wanted to be read to - not possible.  So we thought about telling stories.  But - no stories came to mind.  How could that be?  We quickly found a jumping off point: we were camping, so Mark told us about camping as a Boy Scout.

Now we know we always can have relevant stories at any time.  Helen loves to hear about Mama and Papa when they were children.  She also likes to hear about Helen when she was a baby and even what we did yesterday.  I think as we go along we may start making up some stories too.  We have enjoyed this a lot, though we certainly lacked confident at first.  The written word is so powerful in our lives.
_____

From Wanda Rezac (MA):

In the past month or two, we have been making up "bedtime" stories for our 4-year-old.  I’d definitely encourage everyone to give it a try - it is fun, and truly amazing what you can come up with.  In addition, Peter loves to be able to determine part of the story.  He often has an idea in his head for a subject, such as, "Tell me a bedtime story about a magic leaf that can turn into a kind of animal and then turn into a magic leaf again."   Often I find he will object strongly in the middle of a story about the direction I have taken, and insist on something else happening.  I like to hear his ideas, and sometimes if I get stuck I just ask him what he thinks will happen next.

I do have a couple of suggestions: (1) Tell made-up stories only around people you are totally relaxed with.  I cannot tell a good story in front of another adult, even my husband! (2) Don’t plan ahead in your mind what the plot will be.  I find my best stories come when I don’t know anything more than what’s happening at the moment.  I just follow each idea with descriptive narrative until a new direction suggests itself.
We have had our share of relatively "blah" stories, but all in all I’d say I am amazed at the quality we come up with, and we enjoy them much more that the storybooks from the library.  In fact, making up your own stories helps you realize how insipid and dull most children’s books are…
_____

From Jerry Puzo, who has been volunteering in our office:

Five years ago I rediscovered the magic of oral storytelling.  My housemate hosted a potluck dinner and storysharing evening.  What magic!  The art of Homer in the age of television.  We listened attentively to each story.  After the tale, thanks and praise was given to the teller, then, if the teller wanted it, comments on what would make the story better.  You could sense the kindness of the group, the importance placed on giving support to the voice that told the tale.

At the end of the evening, I knew how foolish it would be to let this group of people slip away.  The group met at a different place every month.   So I found new stories and new sections of Greater Boston every month.
One thing leads to another.  I learned about the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE PRESERVATION AND PERPETUATION OF STORYTELLERS (Jonesborough, TN): of a local Storytellers in Concert series of stories for adults; of Jay O’Callahan and Brother Blue; of the NEW ENGLAND STORYTELLING CENTER and the weekend conference called Sharing the Fire.

When I finally got to go to that  conference I found there in one place at one time more friends than I thought I had.  If you had asked me the day before to count my friends I would not have come up with a tenth the number of people I saw and recognized that weekend.  I had grown into the community.  It had grown into me.  The Friday the conference began I felt a small buzz, a slight vibration of warmth.  By Sunday the rhythm of the conference and the word of a story were rocking in me like waves of an ocean, and I was one with it.  The conference has been the high point of my year for the last three years.

GOOD TIMES PREPARE FOR BAD

From John Holt’s interview in England, 1981, transcribed by Jo-Anne Beirne:

Q. Do you think that that philosophy of saying "I want them to go to school where it is really tough and hard because the world is tough and hard" works?

JH: No, it doesn’t work…  I should say a word on good experiences being the best preparation for bad experiences.  At the end of the second World War, our own army made an experiment.  It had found out, as armies do, that wars are basically won not by soldiers who dive airplanes down the funnels of aircraft carriers, but by men who slogged on day after day, doing a little bit more than their share - as we say, "hanging in there," you know, men with enormous "sticking power"…  The army became curious.  It said, what kind of growing-up experiences have produced these soldiers with the ability to hang on and endure when others are beginning to crack and give up.  So they made an investigation.  They got names, they looked into their history, and what they found out - which, I think, was the exact opposite of what they wanted to find out - was that these people had extraordinarily happy childhoods, loving families, happy memories… They had lots of money in the bank and they could draw on it when things got tough.
_____

[SS:] John’s point here is so important, and so often missed.  Some people get what they need when they are children; others do not.  Which people grow up to be more demanding?  Our image of "spoiled" children, whose need have been met, is that they will grow up to be selfish, demanding adults.  But people who have just eaten a good dinner are not the ones who go begging in the streets, or stealing from others.  People whose infant and childhood needs weren’t met are the people who must spend their adult lives trying to meet them.  How much of adult life is wasted in compensation!  Imagine for a minute what might happen if most children were given enough "money in the bank" so that their adult lives were not fully occupied with efforts to get what they didn’t get as children.  What would such adults be like?  At the very least - they might be able to think about other things, or other people, or the needs of the world.

WHY STUDY MATH

Nancy Wallace (NY) writes:

All along, ever since we took Ishmael (now 15) out of school, I’ve felt uncomfortable about math.  It always seemed like the one alien (the one misfit) aspect of our school at home.  "What really is math?"  I used to ask mathematically-minded friends.  "Aren’t there ways that I could be teaching it better?"  For some reason, it’s only been in the last six months  or so that I’ve felt that I’ve found people whose answers have made any sense.  Perhaps that’s because it’s only recently that I’ve really looked at what Vita and Ishmael have been doing with numbers (and seen, likewise, what I’ve been doing).  It’s only been recently that I’ve actually heard what my friends have had to say.  (When John said, several years back, "Math is fun,"  all I could think was, "Yeah, for you.")  What I am trying to say is that I have made my fair share of mistakes.  Now I am learning from them.  Fortunately, as John also said, it’s "never too late."

…By the time we rescued Ishmael from school at the tender age of 7, he couldn’t even add two and two…  We used math textbooks, telling ourselves at first that although Ishmael surely needed a rest, we had to do math in order to satisfy the school authorities.  Later, we just continued (not that we ever did speed drills or anything like the school math that Ishmael had suffered through) because Vita and Ishmael genuinely wanted to grow up to be competent adults and we were convinced that all competent adults knew math.

…By the time they were about 10, both kids seemed comfortable around numbers - even negative numbers and square roots - and I used to tell people, "Yes, Vita and Ishmael really are pretty good at math."  But meanwhile, I couldn’t help wondering what we were doing with our textbooks.  "Why did they have to be so necessary?"  I kept asking.  And then I could never quite figure out why it was so important for competent adults to understand negative numbers in the first place.  I mean, what exactly were they good for?  And I didn’t mean for architects or orthodontists but for plain old people like me.  I wondered, and yet I never doubted that if I just looked hard enough, I’d find my answer.

It was Seymour Papert, in his book MINDSTORMS, who finally gave it to me, although not entirely the way I expected.  His book is about mathematics and how children, with the use of computers, can build their own concrete models to create "intellectual structures" that will enable them to learn even the most abstract math.  It is a fascinating book, but it didn’t take me long to realize that when Papert used the word "math," he didn’t mean multiplication tables or speed drills, he meant a language to describe relationships in space and time.
Well, I got to thinking about this and I realized that for years and years, I’d totally confused simple arithmetic (computation) with math.  It must have started in sixth grade, actually, when our arithmetic classes suddenly became math classes as we began losing ourselves in "modern math" (SMSG).  After that we just always called division and fractions "math."   Now it might seem like I’m making some all-too-subtle linguistic point, but I’m really not.  Once I understood the distinction between that math, as such, wasn’t necessary.  If Vita and Ishmael wanted to be competent in our money-centered (cook-book-centered) society, than all they really needed to learn was a little simple arithmetic - addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, simple decimals and fractions, ratios and simple percents.  I know that this seems like a long list, but what I realized was that even I knew and used those things.  (Could it be that I was competent after all?)
By mixing up arithmetic and mathematics (not to mention making both things compulsory) it now seemed to me that school had taken arithmetic out of the realm of the everyday and had given me, and many other people, the idea that we needed textbooks because we lived in such math-poor environments.  When I had first looked around my house, the only numbers I had seen were on my one cracked measuring cup.

But did we really live in such a math-poor (or arithmetic-poor) environment?  Now, finally, I began to really look around.  What I saw astonished me.

We are out taking a walk.  The sky is a deep blue and we can see for miles across a low valley to the rolling farm land beyond.  Black-eyed susans, daisies and clover line the roadside.  Ishmael and Vita walk together up ahead.  "Let’s clap rhythms," Ishmael says.  "You clap in fives and I’ll clap is sixes.  If we keep steady we should come together on every thirty beats."  So much for the view and the wildflowers!

I am sitting in a cramped room watching Ishmael rehearsing at a Yamaha grand with a violinist and a cellist.  They are reading through second movement of a Schuman Trio.  Suddenly, although his left hand continues playing arpeggios in regular triplets, Ishmael’s face looks agitated and he begins tapping something - in mid-air - with his right hand.  The violinist and cellist look up.  "Your sixteenth is coming too late," Ishmael says.  "It’s sounding like a sextuplet.  You should be playing it right after my third triplet.  But don’t listen to my part, just count sixteenths."

For Ishmael, I now remembered, it had been reading LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS when Laura and Mary had tried to divide two cookies three ways, that had been the key to his discovery that fractions were actually division problems.  And when he learned how to read music, he learned that what’s more, fractions merely represent the relationship between two numbers, and that even when the two numbers change - as when you transcribe a piece with a 4/4 time signature to 2/2 - it will only be a change in kind, not absolute value, since the relationship between the two numbers has remained unchanged.  Because Vita started music so young, she literally grew up knowing this.  She knew that in a 2/2 measure a half note gets one beat but that in a 4/4 measure, it’s the quarter note that gets the beat.  She knew, too, that if she set the metronome to 152 to the quarter note it was the same as setting it to 76 to the half note because what really mattered, she knew, was not whether she counted in quarter notes or half notes but how the notes related - in time value - to the rest of the notes in the measure.  (That is what ratios are all about, right?)  In addition, when, at the age of 7 or 8, she was confronted with a piece where she had to play three notes in her right hand for every four in the left, she figured out that the easiest thing to do was to find a common ground between both sets of notes, in this case twelve beats, and then count out the twelve beats as she played, a note with the right hand on every fourth beat and a note with the left on every third beat. (Common denominators, right?)

when they were 6 or 7, Vita and Ishmael refused to put their money in the bank because I couldn’t assure them that if they put a dollar in they’d get their same dollar back.  Later, they learned that a dollar is a dollar, but that four quarters also make a dollar and so do ten dimes.  Looking back, it seems clear that Vita and Ishmael only became comfortable with our textbook math when they had spent enough time in the real world using numbers - playing music, going to the bank and so on - to really see, concretely, that numbers had both set values and relative ones.  Only then could they believe me when I told them that a one in the tens place was the same as a ten in the ones place (borrowing and carrying) or that when we divided decimals it was fair to move the decimal in the divisor over to the left in order to create a whole number as long as we moved the decimal point over the same amount of spaces in the dividend.  all of this, of course, had to do with "place value" - a concept that Ishmael’s teacher had tried and failed to teach him in first grade.  But then, he was still counting apples and oranges.  He had no concrete model to fall back on.

…By confusing mathematics so hopelessly with simple arithmetic - by assuming that math could only be found in textbooks - I neglected to see the serious work that the kids had been doing on math all along and I gave them the feeling that they weren’t mathematicians.

That made me feel bad, but to be quite honest, I didn’t yet know what a mathematician was, or once again, what mathematics (as opposed to arithemetics) was good for.  So I asked Bill Hoyt, my friend the mathematician.  His letter is mostly an answer to that question.  He wrote:

…I think you are exactly right in considering math as a language, and anyone who has seen how foreign languages are taught in our schools can hardly be surprised at their failure to interest students in math, either.  A language is a tool of communication, and the joy in learning a new language is the result of a new-found ability to express oneself more fully.  When the study of a language is reduced to a succession of drills which purport to instill a reflexive knowledge of its grammar, a child has no reason to be interested, and therefore little or no incentive to overcome the frustrations inherent in any learning process.

What you refer to as our overemphasis on computation essentially boils down to an analogous obsession with the "grammar" of mathematics - the multiplication tables, the postulates of algebra and the axioms of geometry, even the method of long-division taught in this textbook as opposed to that one - to the exclusion of any clue as to what all this stuff is actually good for, what makes it interesting.  It’s as though some misguided physical education instructor decided to teach his charges to play baseball by sitting them down at desks for a couple of years to study the rules (with weekly multiple-choice spot quizzes on such key vocabulary words as "inning" and "earned run average"), then another couple of years working out conventions and strategies ("With two outs and runners on first and second, the third baseman should (a) shade right (b) shade left (c) play deep (d) move in for the bunt (e) not enough information"), before he ever let them out on the field to see what in the world they were doing all this work for.

There are, of course, any number of good reasons to be interested in math.  I (and probably everyone who has an "aptitude" for math) initially got interested in it because it was fun - I could use this new way of thinking systematically to solve mathematical puzzles (in my day called "brain teasers," these have now been promoted to the status of "games for the super-intelligent") and to improve my performance in strategy games like chess and, later, Go.  Of course, as I used this new language, I grew more familiar with it, developing my own shortcuts so that old skills became "automatic" and I could focus on increasingly complex patterns of thought.  My increasing competence was its own reward, and my incentive to further study - but only because I could measure it by applying each newfound idea to problems that I, for my own reasons, wanted to solve.
Naturally, not everyone will be interested in math puzzles or strategy games, but as you point out, there are a multitude of situations (from computers to pianos) which can serve as leverage points for applying math skills.  I doubt that any one such learning tool will appeal to all students… (I am a bit skeptical of computers as learning environments for children simply because where there are computers there are inevitably computer games - and as a longtime addict, I can testify that you may as well buy your child a television set.)  But after all, one of the advantages of homeschooling is that  we have the time and inclination to look for situations that will make learning interesting and fun - for us as well as our children.

One final thought:  There is some basis for considering math to be a foreign language, more so than, say, history or geography.  If no one in the family "speaks" math, it probably makes sense to seek the help of a tutor who does…
_____

[Nancy Wallace continues:]  At first - OK, I admit it - I felt quite disappointed in Bill’s response.  What he said, basically, was that math was fun (like John had said) and that in some cases it might make sense for families to hire math tutors.  Those were the two things that  I didn’t want to hear.  After all, I’d just figured out that Arithmetic had a very definite utilitarian purpose and that kids could pick it up from their environment.  I guess I wanted to hear the same things about mathematics.

But the more I thought, both about Bill, who lives with a violist who worships Bach and Mozart, and about the whole arithmetic/mathematics dichotomy, the more his words began to make sense.  What if mathematics, unlike arithmetic, was only useful to architects and orthodontists?  Was there anything wrong with Bill simply loving math the way his friend, Marika, loved Mozart?  Could it be that mathematics was valuable in and of itself, like music, as a purely aesthetic experience?  If schools had made learning Mozart (from grade one) compulsory, I would have probably spent years (as I did with math) trying to figure out why it was so necessary for all children to learn Mozart.  Probably it would have seemed merely annoying (as it did when I first read Bill’s letter)  if someone had said, "But Mozart is so heavenly!"  Well, that’s just what compulsion does.  (That’s why John couldn’t bear the idea of kids reading Shakespeare in school.  "Better to ban it entirely," he used to say.)  Once I was able to get myself over that hang up I realized that just as we hired musicians to work with Vita and Ishmael on music, so it might  very well make sense to expose them to mathematics through the eyes of someone who could really appreciate its beauty - someone who would love the idea of Ishmael writing a piece based on sets of four numbers arranged in all their possible orders; someone who would gladly spend the afternoon making tetrahedrons with Vita; someone who would show both kids his own mathematical projects.  Someone like Bill Hoyt.

I suppose the moral to this whole story is that once again I have learned that the environment - even when it only contains one cracked measuring cup - is surely "better than school" because at school children are never given the freedom to experiment, to absorb or to daydream and wonder.  That is precisely what kids need to do in order to be able to learn arithmetic, and textbooks and flashcards can never provide an adequate substitute.  But am I advocating that we "do nothing" with our children?  Do I regret having taught Vita and Ishmael math?  yes and no.  Mostly what I am advocating is that we wait to teach math until our kids have "intuited the facts and rules," to use a phrase of Papert’s.  Then, we can be there, to help them write down (formally) on paper what they already know.  I am also advocating that just as we expose them to Mozart or Van Gogh or Jane Austen, so we make an effort to expose them to mathematics too, if only just to give them the chance to see its beauty.  And yet never by compulsion.  Never by thinking, however innocently, "All competent adults…"

CURRICULUM ALWAYS SUBJECTIVE

[DR:]  It turns out that what prompted Sue Radosti (IL) to write the following letter was a misunderstanding that is my fault, and I should first correct that error.

In GWS #47, page 4, Karen Schadel (NY) told about signing up with Clonlara’s HOME BASED EDUCATION PROGRAM (MI) to get a curriculum outline - a list of subjects, with specific objectives for each.  What Karen actually went on to say was that she asked her local school officials for their 1st and 3rd grade curriculums and was startled to learn they didn’t have any - so how could they evaluate Clonlara’s?  Due to some careless editing on my part, Sue (and perhaps other readers) thought Karen was criticizing Clonlara for not having a curriculum, which in not at all the case.
Nevertheless, Sue makes some very worthwhile points about the devising of curriculums:

…The schools have really used that word "curriculum" to buffalo people into thinking that education is a much more objective, exacting science than it really is.  They know that curricula are subjective and as varied as the philosophies behind them, but hey still behave in public as though they and they alone have some magical way of knowing what’s best, and the lay public can’t possibly understand the intricacies of that magic.

When I first enrolled in my undergraduate education courses, I assumed that there was some set of formulas for devising curricula and that I would learn those formulas as a part of my "professional" training.  Ha! the full extent of my training in curriculum evaluation (curriculum development was never even mentioned, a mystery reserved for doctoral candidates) was an afternoon session of my reading methods class, in which we were divided into small groups and given some basal readers to thumb through and "evaluate" - that is, to merely note the order in which the skills were presented (no one suggested that any particular order was superior to any other) and to determine which basic linguistic philosophy was presented.  We were given a brief definition of three linguistic philosophies for this task, and it was only because I’d had prior classroom exposure to linguistics that I knew enough to laugh when my group decided that our set of readers reflected two very different perspectives: "It starts with one and then switches to another halfway through" - which is about as ludicrous as saying that an economics textbook espouses capitalism in the first five chapters but then shifts to a socialistic bias.  It was a joke.

I’ve concluded, after talking with text-writing professors and observing the various attempts by state boards of education to devise a "state curriculum," that what really determines a curriculum is a mixture of personal opinions, judgments, prejudices, experiences, and values on the part of the people who write it, the company that publishes it, the authorities that sanction it (state or local school boards), and the people who teach it.  It’s as much a political process as an educational one, with the authors writing to suit the whims of the market.  One professor told me that he made changes in a textbook he’d written which he knew were detrimental, because a major school district refused to buy the text, and consequently the publisher refused to print it, unless it reflected a certain philosophy popular in that district.  So much for the hallowed concept of the curriculum…

MOST MOTHERS AT HOME

[DR:]  Some reporters who interview us about homeschooling ask us whether it isn’t a very limited option since "everybody has to work these days."  In this light, I was interested to see this story in the Boston Globe, 11/3/86:

Despite the influx of women into the labor force over the past generation, more than half of all mothers with children under 18 remain at home, according to an American Enterprise Institute study.
Douglas J. Besharov and Michelle M. Dally of the institute, a policy research group, described their findings, based on Census Bureau and Labor Department figures, in an article in the magazine Public Opinion.  They said there is a misconception that almost all mothers are employed full time.
This impression, they warned, could lead to public-policy errors as the nation crafts new laws to aid families and working women and to revise the welfare system.

The statistics show that many mothers work only part time, and that when they work full time they do not do so year round…
The authors’ statistics showed that while the proportion of mothers employed full time at least some of the year was 41%, the proportion working full time all of the year - more than 49 weeks - was smaller.  Figures on full-time year-round employment were available only for married mothers: 29% of them worked full time year-round.

SEARCHING FOR THE SCISSORS

Anna Adams wrote in the New South Wales Homeschool Newsletter #8:

…When I read a letter in GWS recently from a mother about the frustration of not being able to find a hole-punch during a craft session, I felt a strong sense of deja vu.  Been there, done that, back in the days when we were a one-scissors family.  When we started homeschooling, we had for the kids one pair of scissors, one sticky-tape dispenser, one hole-punch, and so on.  But my problem was that a very small (by my standards, not Grandmother’s) mess was sufficient to hide one pair of scissors and just about one of everything.
Now that we are organized to be disorganized, we have four pair of scissors, and duplicates of other handy items.  This means that at least one pair of scissors is usually visible at or near the top of the heap at any given time, until the mess becomes so overpowering that we really have to declare war on chaos…
This duplication of small equipment has been a real boon, for while the demands of curriculum preparation, etc., never caused me to seriously consider abandoning homeschooling, spending ten minutes out of every twenty looking for small items nearly did…

CURRENT EVENTS FOR CHILDREN

Recently, Azima Gillis of California asked:

Does anyone know of a publication for young people that describes current events in language they can read and understand?  Like a news magazine for children under 10 or so describing major events, and perhaps editorials they can relate to …  Soon my children will be able to use regular Time and Newsweek I’m sure, but it’s hard for them to read and figure out at this point.  Standard newspapers are so full of trivial garbage…  We are passing on our interest in creating a better world to our kids and it would be neat if they could read and think about the news independently.  Also, it seems it would give them a more equal footing with adults in discussions…
_____

[SS:]  By coincidence, one of the responses we received to the October 3rd Washington Post article on homeschooling was from Patricia Rector, Associate Editor of NewsScan, telling us about this weekly newspaper for young people.  The sample issue she enclosed looks as if it’s just what Azima Gillis is looking for.  The news stories are current, written clearly but not condescendingly, and give the kind of background that young readers might need.  This issue covered, for example, Reagan’s and Gorbachev’s meeting in Iceland, flooding in the Midwest, and the "No Smoking" rule soon to go into effect in California high schools.  The paper really appears to cover news.  It also comes with a worksheet called "Stretch," which is less appealing - it looks a little too much like a school worksheet.  But it could easily be discarded, and doesn’t detract from the value of the newspaper itself.  A free sample is available from NEWSSCAN CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT, Box 131, Syracuse NY  13210.

FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA GUIDE

From Cindy Lee of California:

A reader had an inquiry about recommendations for a set of encyclopedias in one of the back issues of GWS.  I have done a little research in this matter since I am also interested in purchasing a set for my child.  I am enclosing a consumer’s guide called REFERENCE BOOKS BULLETIN, dated Dec. 1, 1985, that I checked out from our local library.  This bulletin, called "1985 Annual Encyclopedia Roundup," has prices and evaluations on the major encyclopedia sets that are being sold…  I think the reviews are up-to-date and have some very valuable information.

A single reprint of this bulletin (ISBN 0-8389-6959-3) is available free upon receipt of a self-addressed #10 (business size) envelope, stamped with 39¢ postage.  Write Marketing Director/Encyclopedia Round-up, American Library Association, 50 E Huron St, Chicago IL  60611…

HALF-RULED NOTEBOOKS

Stephanie Judy (BC) sent us a little notebook where the top of each page is blank and the bottom has ruled lines.  She writes:

…Are these half-ruled, half-plain notebooks available in the U.S.?  Friends of mine who live there can’t find them (and consequently I ship them by the dozen to one family I know).
They are common everyday school supplies in B.C., sold in every kind of store for 50 or 75 cents (I’ve found them for 20 cents).  There is something so inviting about these little books to most people.  I don’t know what they are used for in schools, but I’ve used or seen them used for:
-trip diaries
-nature notebooks (sketches and notes)
-recipes (with pictures) for kids
-collections of stories dictated and illustrated by children
-journals
-recording/illustrating dreams
-family Guest Books
-extended letters, especially to young friends
One of the best uses I’ve seen for these is a "Household How-To" book, with maps, drawings, and written instructions for kids, grown-ups, visitors, babysitters, repairpersons, whoever.  Items are added as the need/situation arises.  Included are things like: how to turn off the main breaker, gas, and water; location of fire extinguishers and how to work them; location of outlets/switches in garage and basement; how to loop choke chain for the dog; how to set float in toilet so water won’t run; fastest route to hospital; etc., etc…

GOOD SOURCE OF PUZZLES

From Loretta Heuer (MA):

…You mentioned in GWS #51 that you hadn’t heard of any good puzzle magazines lately.  Go out and acquire a copy of GAMES Magazine a.s.a.p!!

The magazine is aimed at adults, but the puzzles are rated by asterisks from 1 (easy) to 3 (hard).  The variety is delightful!  Crosswords, logic puzzles, visual-spatial teasers, trivia, mathematical problems, cryptograms, word plays, picto-mysteries, etc.

The delight is compounded by the fact that you can have a new issue every month.  (And on down-time days, you can pick up an old issue and find some unfinished problem whose solution fairly leaps off the page to your less involved mind.)  They also review board games each month and then pick the top 100 of the year to tout in their November issue.

From the homeschooling perspective, I can’t think of a better resource.  I’ve used Tad’s play with the magazine to cover vocabulary, logic and mathematics, science, and social studies (many puzzles are thematic, e.g., one on immigration and ethnicity this July to coincide with the Statue of Liberty Centennial).  In addition, it has the wonderful ability to render adults fallible, searching, curious: a good way to keep us humble while offering the kids a good role model for perseverance and mind-play.
All the puzzles are really divergent.  Not the pat "formula" puzzles that most magazines present.  They really bend your perspectives…

No, I’m not employed as their regional sales rep.  But I do find it such a nice, joyful, witty addition to our life here at home…

HAPPY WITH READING PROGRAM

From Jane Reid (MA):

…On page 24 of GWS #51, Karen Jackson reported on the BALL-STICK-BIRD reading system.  I sent for the books the same day I read the article.  My children are supposed to take a national achievement test this fall, and I’ve been scared that Alex (8) wouldn’t be able to read well enough to answer - "panic-stricken" might be more appropriate.

The books are wonderful.  Alex, who would usually squirm his way through a 15 minute reading session, eagerly read for an hour and was mad when I told him we had to put it aside for a while - he was obviously tired of stumbling over the words, but still wanted to find out what would happen next.  Toby (8) and Hannah (6) already read pretty well, and they scorned the books at first because they looked to easy, but soon they were both hooked on the story, and I had a hard time keeping them from prompting Alex, so he could figure a word out for himself.

_____

[DR:] Dr. Renee Fuller, developer of BALL-STICK-BIRD (Stony Brook NY) tells us she got 60 letters from GWS readers, "obviously a caring group."

ON DATING OUR ISSUES

Q.  I was wondering why the date of issue is not included on the magazines.  As I am going back through past issues of GWS I’m finding it would have been helpful to know when some of the pieces were written.
A.  Ever since issue #31 when we began using second class postage, we have been required by law to date the issues.  Look at the box on the bottom of page 3.

The reason we have never made a big fuss over dates is that John Holt viewed GWS as a reference work being published volume by volume, not a newsletter that gets outdated and thrown away.  What newsletter, for example, makes a point of reprinting its back issues whenever they run low?  It just wouldn’t make sense - but GWS is different.

However, after somebody complained they tried to go to an event listed in GWS that had happened the year before, we made a point of tucking the year into the John Holt’s Coming Schedule" story, and now in "Calendar."

MUSIC WITHOUT FEAR

From an article by Beth Ann Krier in the Los Angeles Times, 5/2/86:

It is perhaps a sign of these topsy-turvy times that the major speakers at a recent music education conference included:
-A tennis expert who has still not fully recovered from being kicked out of his third-grade glee club.
-A bassist who demonstrated how endearingly he could play "Greensleeves" off key.
-A neurologist who’s written a book titled TONE DEAF AND ALL THUMBS? AN INVITATION TO MUSIC-MAKING FOR LATE BLOOMERS AND NON-PRODIGIES…
Six years ago, Barry Green, the principal bassist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, teamed up with Tim Gallwey, author of THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS, to write the recently published THE INNER GAME OF MUSIC (Anchor Press/Doubleday).

Gallwey has always maintained that the most lethal opponent a tennis player faces is not on the other side of the net but inside his own head.  So he devised mind games to outwit the more devastating adversary.
In THE INNER GAME OF MUSIC, Green provides variations to tackle the similar demos of fear and self-doubt prancing in the skulls of musicians…

To demonstrate, Gallwey called for a musician in the audience who was having some difficulty.  Kim Blake, a violinist for 15 years, volunteered, indicating she suffered from tendonitis, "which acts up in stress situations."

Gallwey instructed her to play a few phrases on the violin and asked her if the tendonitis "acted up."
"No," Blake replied, "but I’m shaking.  My heart’s fluttering."
Asked to place the flutter on a scale of 0-10, she ranked it a 9.  Gallwey then invited her to "check out the scariest-looking people in the audience and notice particularly what’s scary about them."
When Blake again checked her heart flutter level, it had suddenly fallen to a 5.  Then Gallwey requested that she play the passage again, without trying to make the flutter go down, merely noticing what it’s like to play with a 5-level of heart flutter.

When Blake finished, she announced that her flutter had crashed to a 2.
What was going on here?  How did analyzing scary faces help the violinist to get relatively lost in her music and unwittingly reduce her heart flutter from 9 to 2?

"Awareness of what is (flutter level) doesn’t make it go down," Gallwey explained.  "All I’ve found is that in a state of awareness, excellence comes out more."

In another part of this musical dog-and-pony show, Green invited a woman who had never played the bass before to attempt to do so with two different types of instruction.

In the first, obviously exaggerated and ill-fated attempt, Green told Nancy Tarbell, "Don’t be so stiff here…  I want you to hold the bow right past your thumb, right here…  don’t grab so hard.  Relax this hand…  Over here, the fingers have to be 1 2/3 inches apart.  No.  That’s 1 1/4 inches."
Then, in response to her apparent frustration and nervousness, Green reminded her of his right to be so picky.  He told Tarbell he was instructing her on "all the right things to do - and I’m the professional."
When he finally asked her to "play a good sound," she played a meek noise he instantly pronounced "not very good."

In THE INNER GAME OF MUSIC, Green and Gallwey call this type of teaching "do this" instruction; they contend it typically increases a student’s anxiety, confusion, doubt and frustration.
As an alternative, Green demonstrated "awareness instruction," which merely asks the learner to pay attention to what is happening.

So Green simply advised Tarbell, "If you see me doing something, just notice what I do and do it."  Period.
He then placed a piece of tape over his mouth and communicated only through his bass and non-verbal movements, all of which were buoyantly encouraging.  He played a note.  She would try to match it.  No verbal instruction on how to do it.  In a couple of minutes, Tarbell had marginally mastered four notes - enough for a little song.

Suddenly, she was playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" for the crowd and singing it simultaneously as well.  Then Green got her to sing and play it up-tempo to a feverish taped accompaniment.  The audience of music teachers applauded wildly and shouted "Bravo!  "Bravo! "

What’s more, Tarbell said she had a good time learning to play the bass in front of about 1,000 people…

GWS was founded in 1977 by John Holt.
Editor - Donna Richoux
Managing Editor - Patrick Farenga
Subscriptions & Books - Wendy Baruch, Elsa Haas, Sandy Kendall
Associate Editor - Susannah Sheffer
Office Assistant - Mary Van Doren
Editorial Assistant - Mary Maher
Copyright Holt Associates, Inc.

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)