Page Five
A CASE WON
From The New York Times, Jan. 26, 1979:
An estimated 5,000 Christian fundamentalist schools that have sprung up in the past few years are claiming the right to keep the state completely out of their affairs… They do not want to be told what textbooks to use, what educational policies to adopt or even that they must be licensed. …
Representatives of 20 non-accredited Christian schools in Kentucky fought a 1977 ruling by the State Board of Education that parents who used such schools were liable to prosecution and their children subject to being listed as habitual truants. They hired William B. Ball of Harrisburg, PA, a lawyer who is a frequent defender of religious freedom.
At least for the moment, they have won. Despite powerful opposition from many political leaders, a Kentucky Circuit Court Judge, Henry Meigs, ruled on Oct. 3 that the state had no right to make its regulations mandatory. Judge Meigs said the board must refrain from limiting the schools’ choice of textbooks and from forcing teachers to be certified. The state has appealed. …
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I am trying to get a copy of Judge Meigs’ ruling, in which, I have been told, he made a point that as far as I know has not been made in any previous court ruling on compulsory education. He said that no one has been able to show that teachers with certificates are any better at teaching than those without them. This is of course true, and a very good point for unschoolers to make. But this is the first time that a judge has said it. Perhaps we now can get some other judges to say it.
If Judge Meigs’ ruling stands, it may be much easier for parents, certainly in Kentucky and probably in many other states, to get their children out of school by calling their own home a Christian school. There is no reason, after all, why the word Christian could not just as easily be applied to schools which preach and practice tolerance, brotherhood, kindness, generosity, and love, as to schools which preach and practice (as some at least do) intolerance, racism, cruelty, greed, and hate.
THE RULING
FRANKLIN CIRCUIT COURT
CIVIL ACTION NO. 88314
DIVISION 1
Filed Oct. 4, 1978
Reverend C.C. Hinton, Jr. et al (Plaintiffs) vs. Kentucky State Board of Education, et al (Defendants)
It would not be difficult to find in the record of this case abundant support for a conclusion that the regulatory scheme fashioned by the State Board, and sought by it to be imposed upon these plaintiff schools under the dubious authority of approval (KRS 156.160) is far beyond Constitutional limits of legislative delegation. …
[Plaintiffs’] incontrovertible proof shows–and the demeanor of the witnesses confirms–irreconcilable philosophical differences between their educational concepts, notions of textbook and curriculum content and teacher qualification. These differences are not fanciful or arbitrary, but very real and substantial, having a foundation in firmly held religious belief. … Expert testimony in this case certainly established that there is not the slightest connection between teacher certification and enhanced educational quality in State schools …
The State is unable to demonstrate that its regulatory scheme applied to the public schools has any reasonable relationship to the supposed objective of advancing educational quality … Plaintiffs, on the other hand, have shown that without benefit of the State’s ministrations their educational product is at least equal to if not somewhat better than that of the public schools, in pure secular competence.
The rights of the plaintiffs named herein should be declared in accordance with the reasons herein set forth, and upon the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law annexed hereto; action and threatened action of the State against these plaintiffs or any of them heretofore enjoined temporarily, is now hereby enjoined (i.e., forbidden–Ed.) permanently, all at defendants’ costs.
Given under my hand this 4th day of October 1978.
Henry Meigs
Judge, Franklin Circuit Court.
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I hope in the near future to be able to obtain a copy of Judge Meigs’ Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. I hope also to learn more about the specific kind of expert testimony that established that there is no connection between teacher certification and other state regulations, and educational quality. Meanwhile, I should think that unschoolers, either in their home teaching proposals to schools or, if they are in a legal contest, in their briefs, could make good use of these words of Judge Meigs.
(Note: the Kentucky State Board of Education is appealing this ruling to the State Supreme Court, and has said that if it loses there it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. This will not, of course, be a test of compulsory schooling as such, but only of the right of the State to apply certain standards and requirements to private religious schools.)
LEGAL PROCEDURES
At the risk of explaining the obvious, a word on legal procedure. If someone–a private citizen, a corporation, or a government agency or agent, is doing or trying to do something to you that you think is against the law and violates your legal rights, you can appeal to the courts for what is called injunctive relief. That is, you can ask the court to enjoin, i.e., forbid that private citizen, corporation, government agent, or whatever, from doing to you whatever they have been doing. Such a statement from the court, saying in effect, Stop doing that, is called an injunction.
In two or three places in the country the schools and their attorneys have tried a new, and under the circumstances, perfectly sensible, legal trick. Fearing that if they charge the parents with truancy they, the State, will bear the burden of showing beyond reasonable doubt, as in the Sessions case, that the parents’ proposed teaching plan is not adequate or equivalent, they have instead charged the children themselves with truancy, thus putting the matter into Juvenile Court, where the ordinary rules and safeguards of due process do not apply, and where, as in the Lippitt case, the parents may not be allowed to present any evidence to show that their home teaching is in fact adequate.
My guess, which I will check out with those more experienced, is that if and when the schools do this, the best counter move by the parents would be to ask for injunctive relief, i.e. to sue the schools in regular court for attempting to deny them the company and custody of their children without due process. My guess, again, is that many or most courts would enjoin the Juvenile Court from having anything further to do with the matter. The schools could then decide either to charge the parents with truancy in a regular court or to drop the matter and let them teach their children at home.
ASK YOUR LIBRARY
A public library recently subscribed to GWS, saying that they were doing so at the request of one of their (what’s the word?) users/subscribers/members).
Quite often libraries will order books and/or publications on request. Readers might ask any libraries near them to subscribe to GWS. More people will learn about unschooling–and the money will help GWS. Thanks.
A TEACHER WRITES
L.M. has written us from N.C., saying, in part:
As a former school teacher, a part-time teacher of my own children, and as a present day violin teacher, I agree with your general ideas. S-chools are inhumane, in their continual testing, ranking, and grading of children and in their rigid rules, and especially in their perpetual, secret, damaging record keeping …
Reading always seemed easy to teach, a matter of a few months’ instruction. My oldest daughter learned to print words and copy letters from her brother’s old alphabet blocks. I told her the sounds, got her to practice writing words a bit, maybe a half-hour a day. In a few months she could read her brother’s 6th grade books. I did not care about that. What I liked was the wide reading she did by choice at the age of 5, and the imaginative stories she wrote. Nobody told her to write or gave her gold stars. Whatever satisfaction there is about teaching for me is to see a child using reading, writing or violin playing for her own reasons.
The younger daughter also learned to read–supposedly impossible because her IQ was tested at 40 or so! She also learned from those old blocks.
About the peculiar Learning Disability theory that these children see letters upside down, etc. how can this be? The test chart for illiterates looks like this [ ]and the person tested points out the direction of the figures, thus: [ ]. How could such a test mean anything if 1/3 of the population sees letters every which way? This letter is running longer than intended. Please let me know if you find any of it of use. (Ed. note–indeed we do!)
I write a great deal, keep a diary, etc. So much involves the youngest daughter,and I really do not want publicity for her. She is a pleasant young person, spends a lot of time reading, and is not like the people usually described as retarded. … She is doing about 100 times as well as all the dismal predictions which were made when she was 4 years old. I suppose she is the reason I become so unhappy about all this ranking and classifying of young children, even when it is done by doctors, as in her case. It is even worse when by S-chools, as you call them.
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S-chools refers to a distinction I made, in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, between S-chools and s-chools. S-chools are places where people have to go, either because the law tells them to, or because they believe (with some reason) that without the tickets they can only get from schools they can’t get decent work. What I call s-chools, on the other hand, are places like cooking schools, ski schools, schools of dance or martial arts, craft schools, etc. which, since they are not compulsory,and since they don’t give credits, diplomas, etc., people only go to because they want to.
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From a later letter:
In the 1940s I taught in a Nebraska country school. We were required to teach the Dick and Jane’ reading texts. But actually I used some little old-fashioned primers which were at the back of the school book cupboard. I can no longer recall title, author, or publisher, but the books appealed to young children. Each page showed a picture illustrating a letter sound, such as a baby reaching for an apple and making the first sound of the word. Also, there were a few other short words containing the sound. I would show and at first read the words to the child, and soon he or she would grasp the two ideas that letters meant sounds and that words are written and sounded from left to right.
In two or three months, without any long drawn out amount of drill, the children were able to read whatever appealed to them. Little children do want to read, and they do not need 500 rules. As you say, 2 principles will suffice.
The old-fashioned school was not so bad. The children had more freedom than they do now. We had fun, did quite a lot of singing, and I used to read aloud to them quite a bit. Perhaps because these farm children were needed at home to do household and farm chores, they were usually responsible youngsters.
Regarding attention span of young children, on Sunday I had a good time watching little J who is 9 months old, cheerful and busy. He crawls about on hands and knees, stands up by chairs. He likes doors, opening and closing them. he pushed a bedroom door almost shut and pulled it open over and over, very carefully so it would not latch. He knew if it did latch, then he could not get it open. He pays attention to his projects for ten minutes or longer. As you have observed, little children are good learners without any teacher at all.
LEARNING EXCHANGES
A friend wrote to say that many of the Learning Exchanges that started in the past few years have closed because of lack of money. I replied in part:
One reason, maybe the main reason they got in trouble is that they almost instantly got too fancy. They missed Illich’s point about being passive networks, and began to think of themselves as active organizations that had to plan and promote something. When Illich spoke of a card file, he meant literally just that, not programs, meetings, newsletters.
Here’s a model. To the Learning Exchange in Anytown, Ms Smith sends a letter and a return postcard. In the letter she says, (for example), I want to learn something about Home Appliance Repair. The Exchange files her card under Home Appliance Repair (or however it wants to index it). One day Ms Brown sends in a card saying that she knows something about repairing appliances that she is willing to share. The Exchange looks under home Appliance Repair in its files, takes out Ms Smith’s card (and any others), puts down Ms Brown’s name and address, and mails them back to Ms Smith and others who sent them in. They can then get in touch with Ms Brown and work out some sort of plan. But that isn’t the Exchange’s business. Its work is done when it sends back those cards.
If Ms Smith is happy with what she can learn from Ms Brown, fine. If not, and she wants to look for more information, she sends a new letter and card and repeats the process. If she also wants to find out about something else, say Chinese Cooking, she sends in another letter and card for that. Ms Brown’s card stays in the Have Information half of the file. Once every year or two–maybe, if it feels like it–the Exchange prints up, cheaply, a list of the people in its Have Information file, and maybe gives it away, maybe sells it for $1 or so, more if it is fairly large.
How do people hear of it? Perhaps a few announcements on bulletin boards. People tell other people. A slow process? No doubt. But what’s the big hurry? Being in a big hurry is why all those Learning Exchanges have had to fold up.
Hard to see anything here that would $10,000+ a year, need government grants, etc. No office, no rent, no phone, nothing but–literally–two card files and a mailing address, which might best be a post office box number. If people write in asking how to use the learning exchange, a form postcard could tell them that.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
We need three kinds of volunteer help.
1) People who live in or near Boston who, either during weekdays or on weekends could do some work in the office. Some of this work might involve typing, some not.
2) People who live in or near Boston who could do typing work for us at home.
3) People in other parts of the country who would be willing to help us by writing, or better yet telephoning, some of the 8000 or so people who wrote to us after the Donahue show, or perhaps people whose subscriptions have expired and who have not yet renewed them. People tend to be busy and forgetful, and need to be reminded now and then to do what they really mean to do. We can do some of this reminding from the office, but by no means all.
We are probably going to depend to some extent on such volunteer help for a long time to come. For anything you may be able to do, we will be grateful.
NEW BOOKS ON OUR LIST
We have added three books to the list that we sell here.
The first is my own newest book, NEVER TOO LATE. This is the story of how, in spite of a non-musical background, I became interested in music, and eventually decided to learn first the flute and later the cello, and the trials, problems, dangers, discoveries, and joys of that experience. it is a book about music, about finding out what one wants most, about starting something new, about struggling and coping with fear, about learning, about teaching, and probably about some other things as well. It was fun to write, and I think will be fun to read.
The second is GNOMES. This is a charming, funny beautifully written and illustrated scientific study of gnomes, for children of any age, but not just for children. A wonderful book to read aloud. For fuller description, see GWS#3.
The third is a new book by Herbert Kohl, GROWING WITH YOUR CHILDREN . The jacket describes it well:
This is a book on child-raising unlike any other, a book that speaks in direct practical terms of the parents we wish we were and the parents we hope to become. It confronts the basic questions that underlie the daily issues of bedtimes and manners, schoolwork and messy rooms, broken toys and talking back,’ questions that parents, in one way or another, find themselves asking over and over again: How can I help my child be strong in a world that saps strength? … How can I pass on values to my children when no one seems to agree on what’s right or wrong?
What is important and different about this book is that it is not simply a book of tricks or techniques, unlike too many others one might name. There are tricks and techniques in it, many of them, things to say, things to do. But these tricks are useful and practical because they arise out of the ways in which Kohl thinks and feels about his children, and himself, and the world around them. He is not just a clever trickster, but a humane and intelligent person and parent who things about the meanings of things. I know of no book to compare with it. Unlike the trick books, it could make a real difference in the way we see and live with children.
OLD FAVORITE
Most GWS readers have probably seen the National Geographic Magazine, or know what it is. For any who may not, it is a monthly magazine, crammed full of beautiful color photographs, about all parts of the earth–land, air, sea, under the sea. The contents of the Sept. 1978 issue give a rough idea: Solo To The Pole, about the first person to reach the North Pole alone; Syria Tests A New Stability; Undersea Wonders of the Galapagos ; A Most Uncommon Town, about outstanding modern buildings in Columbus, Indiana; The Joy of Pigs ; New Mexico’s Mountains of Mystery. Another recent issue had an article about the two men who first crossed the Atlantic in a balloon. And so on.
Over the years I have seen the National Geographic often at the homes of friends. This last year I subscribed for the first time, to report on it for GWS. It was always good, but has become much better. There is a wider range of stories, and the photography, which used to tend to look like the kind of photos tourists take, has become very dramatic and beautiful. The writing is clear and easy for children. A wonderful magazine.
You can buy the magazine without joining the National Geographic Society, but since this costs $11 a year, while membership, which includes the magazine, costs only $9.50/yr (U.S.), $12/yr. (Canada), $13.80 elsewhere (U.S.$), it makes more sense to become a member. People with little money can share a subscription with others. This is a magazine all children should have a chance to see. (Write The Sec’y, Nat’l Geographic Society, P.O. Box 2895, Washington DC 20013)
The National Geographic also publishes many beautiful and interesting books for children (and others). Also maps, including a map of the oceans showing all the deepest points, which is something that fascinated me as a kid and still does.
Editor–John Holt
Managing Editor–Peg Durkee