Page Seven
AN ELECTRONIC TYPEWRITER
Since I travel so much, and like to type, I have long wished that someone would invent a truly portable electric typewriter. A Japanese company named BROTHER has done it, and their EP-20 is one of the most useful tools I own. It is less than two inches thick, weighs only a few pounds, and can run off regular house current or four D-sized batteries - which last a long time. It is so quiet that you can type without disturbing people close to you, or waking up people who are asleep. It uses a dot matrix printer, which means that you can’t make carbon copies, the type has the typical dot matrix look (some publishers will not accept manuscripts done in it), and the print is not very bold (though it is perfectly readable).
Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all about this little machine is that it has a fifteen-space correcting feature. When you type in the CP (”correcting print”) mode, each letter you type appears at the right hand edge of a 15-space liquid crystal display, like the ones on small calculators. Only when a letter moves off the left hand edge of the screen is it typed on the paper. Everything on the screen can be changed, either deleted or added to. Once it gets on the page, it can’t be fixed, of course, but the 15 spaces allow you to catch mistakes and even to change your mind about a word or two. All other machines with this correcting feature cost at least twice as much as this one.
The machine has another feature I have not seen on any typewriter at any price. There is a second shift key (green) which when pressed gives you an entire keyboard’s worth of extra characters. The smart Brother people, wanting to sell their machine in all countries, have used these extra keys for the accents and special letters used in such languages as French, Spanish, Swedish, etc. and also for symbols for different kinds of money. It would be very useful for people writing in some of these languages.
But the most interesting thing to me about this typewriter is that it is so fascinating to children. I have had it with me when I have visited several families with children, and they just can’t get enough of it. Something about its small size, and the correcting screen, has great appeal for them. They all say, “I’m going to get one like that!” Because it is small, and quiet, and correctable, and has no keys to jam up, I think it might be an ideal child’s typewriter.
Along with the disadvantages of the dot matrix printer, it has one other disadvantage. It uses a special ribbon cartridge, which for the amount of typing you get from it is fairly expensive. They cost $3 each, and I think will last for about eight or ten single spaced pages - I haven’t measured exactly. I don’t think it would be a sensible machine to use as a full-time home typewriter, if you do a lot of writing - one of the larger correcting machines would do better. But if you travel a lot, and like to write when you do, or if you have children, it seems to me almost ideal.
The list price of the typewriter is about $200, but in today’s news section of the Sunday New York Times I see that 47 STREET CAMERA - of whom we wrote in GWS #32 as being a very good source for cameras, tape recorders, computers, etc. - is selling it for $160, which seems a very good buy. Their mail order address is 36 E. 19th St., New York NY 10003, and you can call them toll-free at 800-221-7774. I would even be tempted to add this machine to our own mailorder list, except that we could never buy in large enough quantities to meet the prices of these big discount stores.
Another company which sells this typewriter (along with many other interesting products) is JS&A, One JS&A Plaza, Northbrook IL 60062. They charge $10 more for the machine, but they give an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee, so if after trying it you feel it’s not for you, you can send it back.
If I had to choose between getting a child one of these typewriters and one of the $100 computers, I would certainly pick this typewriter. - JH
LEARNING FROM COMPUTER GAMES
Herb Kohl wrote in Changing Schools, Winter ‘83:
… I have had arguments with teachers over the use of computer games in the classroom. They resist the games (even the same teachers who will use frilly versions of drill programs) because the children seem to be having too much fun to be learning. Of course they’re having fun! And despite what many teachers feel, they’re learning too.
I said this to a group of teachers recently and received a challenge which seemed to me more hostile than pedagogic. “If they’re learning, then tell us exactly what they are learning by playing computer games. How can what’s learned be tested? How does it fit in the curriculum?”
Whenever someone throws a question like that at me, I step back and think about specific children and specific instances where it was clear that something was being learned. In the case of computer games, what came to mind was:
The time I saw a very frightened, demoralized boy sit for two hours and conquer a complex game that required considerable dexterity and a bit of thought.
Another time when a girl I know learned enough chess from a computer to beat her father.
A time when a twelve-year-old I have worked with, and who the school calls “educationally handicapped” and “hyperactive,” worked his way through a space game that required weighing the relative values of fuel supplies, weapons, and speed, while charting his position on a map with 16 different segments. This same boy could not sit still in school for more than ten minutes.
A time when four ten-year-olds challenged me to play several computer games with them, and then wiped me out.
… In my experience, even the most avid game player eventually wants more from computers than just playing games. He or she eventually wants to MAKE games, to list and change programs, and to achieve that additional power which comes from understanding a machine and its language well enough to push it to its limits.
… I believe that through the programming of some simple games, just about all of the BASIC or PILOT computer language that one needs for programming competency can easily be mastered. In fact, this year I hope to work with a group of seven-year-olds and teach them the rudiments of programming this way.
A good game to start with is a simple number guessing game, or a graphics game. The game you start with, of course, will depend upon the qualities of the computer you work with. These days I work principally with the Atari 800 because I like its graphics and sound capabilities. It is a very easy machine to use with children because they can quickly see some elegant results of their work.
The challenge of my simple number guessing game is to program the computer so it will select a number from 1 to 20, and have the player guess the number. After we get that simple game written, the goal is to dress it up with sound graphics, to change the program so that numbers from 1 to 100 are selected by the computer, and to give the player hints.
All of this leads up to what I hold to be the central notion of gaming and programming - that there is NO SINGLE WAY to do things, nor even a single “best” way. Like playing poker or chess, programming is an ART, even though there is a structure to it …
LETTERS WANTED ON COMPUTERS
From Daniel Chandler (8 Burnet, Stantonbury 1, Milton Keynes, Bucks MK14 6AJ, England), who promises to share the results with GWS:
… I am writing a book with the title YOUNG LEARNERS AND THE MICROCOMPUTER for the Open University Press in England. It is to be both for parents and teachers in England and the US, and will discuss issues and practices, using as springboards the perceptions of kids themselves (up to age 12).
If your kids would like to describe how they’ve been using computers, I’d be very interested to hear from them (as well as from parents). As a deschooler myself I’d like to be able to use some good examples from alternative education … Any extracts will be gratefully acknowledged in the text.
…CONCERNS ABOUT COMPUTERS
From Lisa Boken (MA):
… Just a few quick thoughts on home computers - I love them, I hate them, they scare me, they lure me.
Like many of the “wonders of technology,” how much was researched before the masses were sold on them? … What about the problems that don’t surface for years? Decades?
There are those who see computers as the key to future success… Why, one parent actually wept and pleaded with a teacher of computer science in a middle school because her son’s future would be ruined if he didn’t squeeze him into is class.
… Our family has access to three computers. We have also attended local interest groups for computers in our area and what we see and hear and share thrills us and frightens us … We need people like you, John, to say, “Think about…”
So, what do we do - lock ourselves and our children up, away from technology until the implications are manifest? No … but think about the possibilities, picture (to the best of your ability) down the road a piece.
… I guess I feel strongly that our society is becoming less and less questioning and more and more accepting unconditionally … Look at the sacred cow, school, and how many years you and others have worked just to get people to question, to think … _____
From Shannon Bush (TN):
… I. too, am excited about the potential that computers have in making home-schooling and self-reliant living richer and even more exciting for us. But it is crucial that parents understand the biological hazards to themselves and their children that VDT’s (Video Display Terminals) may present. While there have been few conclusive studies yet, several are in progress, and one should not gamble with one’s health in the meantime. The information I am passing on here is from an article in the March ‘83 issue of Whole Life Times, by Barbara Bialick.
… Of 125 models that the U.S. Bureau of Radiological Health tested, 8 VDT’s emitted more X-rays than the legal limit. Some of these were recalled or taken off the market.
More worrisome … are the 8 clusters of birth defects and miscarriages that have been reported in North America since 1979 … Other factors in the workplace could be implicated, but one cluster seems to point the finger at VDT’s … The other suspected health effect of VDT’s is cataracts. A Scarsdale, NY opthalmologist, Dr. Milton Zaiet, is currently the only eye doctor in North America who will state openly that he believes that “VDT’s as currently shielded and constructed pose a grave radiation danger.”
… It is tempting for people who like their home computers to dismiss these problems as irrelevant to their situation on the grounds that they and their children certainly don’t spend eight hours a day at their computers. But might they not spend three or four occasionally? People who are really fascinated do … An hour or two a day of X-rays is worse for a growing nine-year-old than a fifty-year-old, as I know from the research I did a few years ago when they were building a nuclear plant near my home… _____
And from Kathie DeWees (VT):
… I happened upon the following “letter to the editor” in a local newspaper that I thought you might be interested in:
… Recently, President Reagan endorsed the idea that video games were ultimately going to benefit our country’s military forces. He suggested the maneuvering handles on the games were similar to those in miliary aircraft. And so because we have millions of kids zeroing in for the kill preparing to kill, developing the hand/eye coordination necessary to operate defense/offense systems, our president is pleased and I am horrified …
[Kathie resumed:] I, too, am horrified… if there must be all these computer things, though I don’t see why there needs to be, why can’t they be peace games, why must it always be for power and control and killing?
So many people are getting further and further away from our Mother Earth and the life and love that our planet stands for, and are so much into all this super technology that in the end stand for death and hate. I’m glad my family lives simply, without electricity, etc., and I’m glad to see our children building things from bark and stones and branches and playing in the stream and the snow. They are at peace with nature and I hope they can always be. They have yet to play a computer war game and I hope that can always be, though that will have to be their decision. I hope they can always love to watch the seedlings grow and the animals run free and feed the birds from their hands and not want to play war games that in the end lead to the destruction of all these wondrous things …
THE IDEAS BEHIND COMPUTERS
Truly successful inventions are likely to have ideas behind them; that is, they meet human needs which are not merely physical or economic, but psychological and emotional.
The automobile is a good example. It has profoundly changed the face of the world and the patterns of human life. From where did it get its magic power? Mostly from a dream, a wish, which human beings have cherished and pursued since ancient times, but found only in myths, like Pegasus the flying horse or magic carpets - the dream of going wherever they want, and many times faster than their feet or even a horse could ever carry them.
A middle-aged Danish woman, who had just bought the first car she had ever owned or driven, once expressed this dream as we drove through Copenhagen, still mostly untroubled by severe traffic jams. In a voice of true rapture she said, “I feel so free!”
That was ten years ago. Whether she still feels so free, I do not know. Living in Boston, where I can walk to most of the places I go and take public transport to most others, I feel more free because I have not owned a car in ten years or so and do not expect ever again to own one. In recent years I have said this to many people; almost without exception they have said to me, “Oh, you’re luck! I wish I didn’t have to own a car.” Recent figures claim that for most Americans the cost of owning a car is now over $4000 a year. Clearly an invention, a tool, which most people feel they have no choice but to own and which costs them many thousand dollars a year is not a liberating but an enslaving tool. It has added much more to our burdens and problems than to our pleasures. Most things that we really love to do, we could do without cars; the things we have to use them to do are mostlv things we feel we can’t get out of doing.
The computer is clearly another successful invention. Whether it will prove to be as enduring as the automobile, or be a liberating or an enslaving tool, it is too early to tell, but successful it certainly is. What are the ideas behind its success, what psychic needs does it fill? Two seem very clear.
The first is the Cartesian idea about which I wrote in my review of A SAND COUNTY ALMANAC in GWS #32, namely, that all of reality, everything that exists, is a machine, of which every part can be expressed as a number. The early educational psychologist Thorndike srated this flatly: “Everything that exists can be measured” - an idea which has corrupted and crippled education to this day. Or, as we might put it, anything we can’t count, doesn’t count. Computers powerfully reinforce the modern myth that anything and everything important can and can only be expressed in numbers. People have of course believed this for many years before anything like the modern computer was invented. But computers make it much easier to believe and much harder to oppose.
The other idea embodied in the computer is the idea that information can somehow be a substitute or judgement, wisdom, courage, faith, and luck - that if you just have enough pure facts at your disposal you can know exactly what will happen, and make happen what you want to happen. This need for absolute certainty and absolute control, while understandable enough in a rapidly changing and dangerous world, is a weakness and a sickness. Like the wish for unlimited mobility, it is also long enshrined in myth. The ability to know the future is one of the things which human beings have always craved and for which many have been willing to sell their souis to the devil. Since on the whole we do not believe the truths that come down to us in stories, but only what moves pointers on dials, we still persist in the folly of thinking that we can can get the best of that bargain.
One reason I am more fearful than hopeful about the future of computers is that I find it hard to see how much good can come of an invention which so strongly depends on and reinforces two such bad ideas. The first idea, that everything that exists can be measured and that whatever we can’t count doesn’t count, is from a scientific point of view absurd; from any conceivable religious point of view, it can only be called blasphemous, and it is astonishing that so few religious thinkers point this out. The second idea that information can replace judgement, that if we have enough facts we can’t go wrong, is equally silly, and is contradicted by every day’s news. Within the last quarter Pan American Airlines announced what the financial columns said was the largest quarterly loss ever reported by an American corporation. Yet we may be sure that Pan Am had as many and as good computers, and as much raw information, as its rivals. Where it failed was in not knowing which of its information was important, or in making wise use of it. This is something that in the nature of things computers cannot do.
Not believing in faith or judgement, we don’t believe in souls, still less the Devil. But if the busy makers and sellers of computers could convince us, as they are doing their best to, that with their machines we can really know and control the future, we might be willing to make any changes in our laws, customs, morals, ideas of right and wrong, that computers might seem to demand, not least of them the right to privacy, to reveal no more of ourselves to the world than we wish to reveal.
Let me be a bit more specific about these dangers. I have said that an important freedom for me is the right not to own a car - or for that matter, a television set. So far the government has not tried to denv me these choices. But there are already strong signs that it may soon try to deny me the choice of not owning a computer or spending time learning how to run it. A very slippery, tricky, and sinister little phrase is beginning to make its way, I should say force its way, into our language - “computer literacy.” It has appeared in practically every statement about education that I have seen in the past six months. A recent Christian Science Monitor story reports: “Both [Calitornia State Superintendent of Education] Honig’s proposal and one put forward by Democratic State Sen. Gary Hart … would require … one year of computer training for a high school diploma.” My friend Ed Pino from Colorado told me just yesterday that already sixteen colleges require their entering freshmen to buy a computer, and 120 make some kind of computer training a requirement for admission.
What is it that these educators want to compel students to know? Probably a modest amount of computer vocabulary - names of computer hardware, etc. - most of which I have learned from a little casual browsing in computer magazines - and the ability to do some simple programming in BASIC. But BASIC is even now hardly ever used for any serious business or scientific purposes, and within a decade it will probably be useless. For many years the ability to type well has been a very valuable skill - I count it one of the most useful things I have ever learned. Even now it is a great deal more useful for most life purposes than the ability to do simple programming. But no schools, though they might have been wise to do so, have ever made typing a graduation requirement, or colleges made it an entrance requirement, or demanded that all their students own a typewriter. No doubt the makers of typewriters are kicking themselves for not having ever thought of the phrase “typewriter literacy.” But then, typewriters never pretended to be more than a handy tool to write things with, instead of some magical way of knowing and controlling the future.
Who is going to be allowed to decide what people shall be compelled to know about computers? Who will write the textbooks for all those “computer literacy” courses? In all probability, the same people who are making and selling the computers. Will the students be taught to be skeptical about computers and cautious about buying them? I doubt it very much. Will they learn, as in my casual browsing I have learned, that most computer hardware is incompatible with most other hardware, and that most of the people who sell this hardware either don’t know that or won’t tell you? Or that the first word processing program put out by IBM for use with their personal computer was so bad that they soon had to withdraw it? Or that nothing done in homes (as opposed to businesses) economically justifies buying a computer. Or that when you buy a new model computer you will probably have to wait two or three years for the necessary programs to go with it? Or that businesses should not spend more than about one percent of their annual gross income on a computer? Or that at all price levels computers have been and are plagued by serious problems of reliability, and that most of the people who sell them do not know how to or will not service them? All this seems extremely unlikely. What is much more likely is that the schools, which have long been teaching Science-Worship, will now begin to teach Computer-Worship.
There’s an old Arab saying that if you let the camel’s nose into your tent you will soon have the entire camel. We have allowed into our tent - our society, our laws, our schools - the nose of a very large, determined, clever, unscrupulous, and in the long run possibly dangerous camel. Unless we are very careful, we may soon find ourselves obliged by law to buy whatever the computer industry wants to sell us. I still think there is a chance that computers may become, in Ivan Illich’s phrase, “convivial tools,” which, like bicycles, typewriters, and cassette tape recorders (to name only three of many), serve and empower their users, instead of, like autos and TV, burden and diminish them. But it will have to be up to us, not the computer industry, to make sure this happens. We at GWS will have more to say, from time to time, about how we may do this. - JH
IF YOU START A SCHOOL
Nancy Plent wrote in the New Jersey Unschoolers Network:
… My two years with an alternative school, 13 years ago, were exhausting, discouraging, and emotionally draining … I’ve learned that home schoolers often want to start schools. It was an upsetting discovery at first. I wanted to shake people by the shoulders and tell them how GOOD they had it without that complication.
…But many parents feel a longing for “something more,” some replacement for the special children’s place that school represents. As Eric grows, I see that he will probably want “something more” at some point, too. I’ve started wrestling with the painful ghosts of that school experience to see if I could decide where things went wrong, and if it seems possible to have a parent-run school which would bring pleasure and excitement instead of stress.
… Children and adults should maintain and run their “school”. Some time should be spent each day in adults and children working together on the physical maintenance of the school. No adults giving assignments and children doing the work, or hiring outside maintenance people. This idea comes from Dr. Raymond Moore, and is being practiced in private schools at all levels including college. Two boys at our alternative school refused to pick up after using things and were indifferent to any project we tried to get them involved in. They felt the adults should do the picking up. (Fair enough, actually, since the projects were all adult ideas.) When their family later moved to a commune, an old warehouse in need of lots of fixing, the boys were viewed as potential workers and welcomed on adult work crews. Their mother reported that their attitude was entirely different. They felt they belonged in this place, were needed, and had a voice in decisions.
A school should either share a building or run a business. Money problems can tear a sctiooi apart. If you’re in constant danger of having to close down, can’t buy any materials, etc, the school becomes drudgery. If you make tuition high, parents often demand unreasonable things of the school (”because after all, I’m sacrificing a lot to send my child there”). A sense of parent sacrifice makes the children feel guilty about enjoying the school. One school I know got a grant to run a health food co-op and expanded it into a store. Every effort should be made to keep expenses low or income stable.
Someone has to be in charge. This was an unpopular notion In the 60’s. Our school was started by an energetic mother of five with hundreds of ideas and a hang-up about being an “authority figure.” We spent hours in meetings, hashing out small things which she could have simply decided. We didn’t know what direction we were going in. We wanted her to set the course. The confused atmosphere that some alternative schools project comes from this kind of “Well, what do YOU think?” lack of leadership. If a school is a group effort rather than the brainchild of one energetic person, at least have people,in charge of different areas … A lot of energy is released when somebody has to go-ahead to act upon cheir ideas, right or wrong … _____
[JH:] I agree 100% that the children and adults involved in a school -or learning center, club, whatever you want to call it - should do all the physical work of maintaining it. At the Friskole in Copenhagen this has been the rule from the first day. The one thing all children are expected to do is do their share of cleaning up, repairing, and cooking, and the interesting thing is that no children, even the most disturbed, angry and rebellious newcomers, ever refuse to do it. It makes them members of the community they need so much to feel a part of.
PRIVATE SCHOOL OPTION
Many, perhaps even a majority, of the people who are teaching their children at home, are doing so by calling their own home a private school. Since in many states private schools are virtually unregulated, this has seemed the easiest way to go, and indeed we here at GWS have long recommended it. But I am beginning to feel more and more strongly that in the long run and even in the short it may not be the best way to go, and that the best way to go, if we can do so without making unacceptable concessions, is to reach a friendly and cooperative agreement with the local schools, of the kind we have often described, in which the children are registered with the school and can use as much of its facilities as they want, and in which the school continues to receive whatever state and federal aid it gets for its regular pupils.
The trouble with the private school option is that though it looks easy on the face of it - just fill out the simple form, and there you are - in the long run it is unstable. The public schools, that 100+ billion industry, with great political power in Congress and the state legislatures, must and always will see as an intolerable threat to their existence any home school arrangements which deprive them of the state (and perhaps federal) aid which is an increasingly important part of their budgets, and deny them the right to exercise any kind of educational control over what goes on. They will never stop trying to fight such arrangements, and in the long run, and not just because of their money, they will probably be able to persuade most legislatures, and most federal courts, to take their side. Even those legislatures (LA, AZ) which have passed what look like strong pro-home schooling laws could very easily be persuaded to repeal them if the schools could only manage to turn up one or two cases of gross neglect or abuse or educational incompetence by home schooling families - and sooner or later, as our numbers increase, there are very likely to be a few such cases.
In most of what we might call the private-school states, we home schoolers are in a kind of cold war relationship with the schools. On any given day there may not be active hostilities - they may not actually be taking any families to court - but they are likely always to be thinking about ways in which they might do it. This makes the situation of home schoolers more precarious than it ought to be; we never can tell when some court (as in Virginia and Florida) or some state Attorney General, or some educational official, as recently in California and Washington, may not suddenly be able to pull the rug out from under our feet. We have to keep thinking, “What might they try next, and if they do, what are we going to do about it?” instead of thinking about something more interesting - how to help our children grow up into the world.
Here in Massachusetts we don’t have the private school option (since private schools must be approved by the local public schools). What we have is much better - a situation in which a growing number of school districts are cooperating with home schoolers and in the process getting to know and trust them. Every year the number of districts grows in which superintendents and school boards can say, “Yes, we have home school families, and they’re doing a fine job, and we like to help them all we can.” Families whose school districts feel this way about them don’t have to worry about what this or that judge or state official may say. As far as anyone can be secure in this world, they are secure, at least in their home schooling. And, of course, they are able to use, if they want, those expensive school facilities which they could never duplicate and which their taxes help pay for. - JH
ON “DISCOVERY PROCEEDINGS”
From Theodore Amshoff (see “Friendly Lawyers,” this issue):
… In reference to the inquiry you made on Page 20 of GWS #32 concerning the use of discovery techniques in home education trials to ascertain test scores, etc., several problems present themselves. Normally the process of submitting written questions which must be answered by the opposing side (called “interrogatories”) is available only in a civil trial. Discovery proceedings in criminal trials are much more severely limited in most states.
… Juvenile courts in many states conduct their proceedings under the civil rules of procedure instead of the criminal rules. Thus, interrogatories may be available in that situation.
Even in the criminal context, some discovery is usually available under the laws of every state. We have been quite successful in our representation of home schoolers in securing Court Orders, even in criminal cases, compelling the prosecutor to furnish test data from the local public schools, as well as state test norms. In our experience, as a practical matter, judges have been much more willing to uphold the constitutional rights of home schoolers where they have been given evidentiary assurance that the children are receiving an education comparable or superior to that of their public school peers.
Obtaining such information in a criminal proceeding usually involves pre-trial motions to the court in order to secure appropriate orders for such discovery. We have done this in several states.
Incidentally, as a general principle, I wholeheartedly concur with your advice and recommendation against the filing of civil damage suits in the federal courts against the local school superintendents and other education and law enforcement officials … While it is possible that some set of facts someday might justify such action, I have not yet seen that case. Other remedies are certainly available which have far greater strategic prospects for success.
For example, the same statute (42 USC S.1983) also provides for the granting of injunctive relief, and may be coupled with an action for a declaration of rights. Relatively speaking, I believe this remedy to be far more appropriate to home school situations, and might be a recommended strategy in those areas where state court precedent is strongly against home schoolers, thereby foredooming a family’s prospects in a state court criminal prosecution.
Needless to say, each schooling case is unique, and merits careful consideration of the alternatives applicable in each situation with competent legal counsel …