Growing Without Schooling 23

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING

23 I've just come back from a ten­ day trip to eight U.S. cities, doing many TV, radio, and newspaper inter­ views about TEACH YOUR OWN and home education. The trip went well - so far we've gotten about 200 requests for information, and they're still coming in fast . On Sept. 30 I'll be on the "Good Morning America" TV show along with the Tromblys of Con necti­ cut (not Sept. 22 as first scheduled.)

I was able to take part in two home-schoqler meetings on this trip: a conference north of Seattle, and a potluck supper in Chica~o . My publish­ ers say they are willing to put me on the road some more; I'm thinking of going to Eastern cities like Philadel­ phia, Washington, and Baltimore, as well as Detroit, Cleveland again, Denver, perhaps to Texas and still ot her states. Any GWS readers who would like to arrange meetings, pub­ lic events, etc., on this trip, should contact us right away . (For some suggestions on organizing such events, see page 15 of this issue.)

My three-week trip to the West, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia was a big success and a lot of fun. plan to write more about it in GWS #2 4.

Peggy has just finished proof­ reading the galleys for the revis ed edition of HOW CHILDREN FAIL,. and now it's my turn to go over them. Dela­ corte will publish the book in the spring of '82 .

So far we've seen good revi ews of TEACH YOUR OWN in Psychology Today and the Wall Street Journal. We're starting to hear from people who've read the book a nd are becoming GWS subscribers - we welcome them to the GWS family.

Donna reports. that we are get­ ting many more l ette rs than usual from people who have just started teaching their children at home, or who have been doing s~ for some time and didn't know GWS existed. Of course, we're delighted to hear more and more of these success stories, many of which you ' ll find in this issue. --- J ohn Holt

COMING SCHEDULE Octobe r 29, 1981: Panel discus­ sion, "Educati onal Choice," Committee on Education, State House, Boston MA. Jan 27, 1982: Kennesaw Junior College , Marietta GA. 9 AM. Co nt act Kathleen Gildea, 404-422-8770 x 268.

Feb 12: Waterloo County Teachers Professional Development, Kitchcner Valhalla Inn, Cambridge, Ontario . Con­ tact Pamela Constable, Glenview Park Secondary School.

Mar 13: Indianapolis Council of Preschool Cooperatives, Indianapolis IN. Contact Sally Zweig, Conf .

Chair . , 317-257-8275.

Mar ' 17-26: Stockholm and six ot her Swedish cities. Arranged by Ake Bystrom, Linkdping, Sweden. (We also hope to arrange engagements in Den­ mark, England, Iceland, and possibly other countries.)

LEARNING WITH HER SON From Brenda Cowell, 1814 Giant

St, Toledo OH 43613:

.. . My son, Kale, stayed out of school last fall, not so much because I had proof that home was better for him, but because I did have proof that school had not been good for me .

In such a place of increased tension and anxiety, I had felt much loneli­ ness, fear, and uncertainty ...

Although I learned to play the intel­ lectual ~ame quite well as a ~Grade A" s tudent, I never learned to devel­ op or trust my own r easoning capabili­ ties and intuition. .. . Last fall then, determined to find a better way, I kept Kale home, and slowly my whole co nception of learning changed. In working with him in a more natural setting, learning became a way of satisfying a ravenous hunger to know - insects and dragons, elec tricity and t oo ls, Spanish and English, the Renaissance ... They all became real , fascinating tools to grow by.

For myself, I recovered a nearly lost art, the art of asking ques­ tions, of wondering and searching for answers. J know things about 01' Christopher Columbus that they never mentioned in school, and I ' ve learned how to keep a daily journal and led ­ ger for my home business. Most impor­ tant to me, I've learned to trust myself.

I write this then for all of you who have suffered from similar school withdrawal symp toms, hoping you too will let your children learn at hom e, not just for their growth, but to open your ow n rusty doors and get to know that curious child in your own mind . . .

THE REASON WHY Penny Nesbit (IN) wrote: .. . When a reporter called to ask

if he could wri te about us, my hus­

band, Pete, was out of town. I called

our attorney to get some advice about

whether it was safe now to come out

in the open and he said that he

thought it would be OK as long as we

did not specifically condemn the

local schools. When Pete returned the

day of the interview, he also warned

me about the dangers of being too

ou tsp oken . So - I was surprised and

tickled when he answere d the repor­

ter's questionabout why ,,;e took

Peterson out of school by saying,

"Because we wanted him educated~" ...

IN THE ADULT WORLD From Elaine Mahoney (MA) - see

"Success Story: Cape Cod," GWS #11,

and "From Barnstable Schools," #15:

... We are now in our 4th year of home study and it gets better every year . STILL NO TESTING'! Kendra, 13 years old now, is an apprentice in a sewing machine repair shop. A family friend owns a repair shop and has been graciously sharing her knowledge and skill. Kendra enjoys spending time at the shop and is learning by

doing. She answers the phone, waits on customers, makes bank deposits, and is learning the general mainten­ ance and repair of sewing machines.

She is also following an interest in herbs, and is scheduled to take a Red Cross course in first aid. Kimberlee, now 11 years old, is doing wonderful­ ly well . She participated in the Northeast Seal Census program, went to the Dinosaur State Park in Connec ­ ticut, and has been recycling alumin­ um for both profit and concern ' for the environment ...

KEEPING LEARNING RECORDS Karen Cox (MI) wrote: . .. We stopped overnight at the home of anot h er home-schooling family in Ohio. Anna-Lisa had become acquain­ ted with their daughter when . they got hooked up as pen pals through Hostex News about a year ago . It was a love­ ry-visit, reminding us that there really are good, peaceful, loving folks out there. ... While we were in Ohio I was ' asked, as I often am, how I structure our 4ay. There are still, as you know, lots of home-schooling parents who feel extremely nervous unless they cover a certain amount of the "basics" eac h day or week. Sometimes ·this nervousness evaporates after some experience, but for others it does not . Sometimes pressure from a spouse or other relative keeps the nervousness alive even after a couple of years of successful living togeth­ er with kids - outside schools. And many people, especial l y if they have NOT had teaching expe ri ence, have been so totally schooled that they can't believe their kids will be pre­ pared for life unless someone insists that they do a certain amount of read­ ing, writ ing and arithmetic each day.

I'd like to tell you what I do.

It answers the need for written rec­ ords for official purposes. Also, when I've rec ommended it to friends it has had the effect of allowing the parents to relax.

I buy old-fashioned big blue lesson-plan books, one [or each child. Having taught, many years ago, in a very traditional school, I know this kind of book is just the kind of thing school administrators like. On the columns I p ~ t headings which, un­ like traditional headings, I have found t o be very flexible, workable categories . The headings (some of which extend over two or three col­ umns) are: 1) Reading/Writing/Graphic Think­ ~. On a typical day, the entries in a six-year-old' s book might be " "T HE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE" (the asterisk indicating it had been read to the child), and "Pencil sketches of horse and barn."

2) Logical Thinkin~/Math . Exam­ ple entries: "Simpl e ad ition: oral problems set and answered. Practical app l ication : adding pennies needed to huy stamp . " 3) Knowled~e of Physical and Social World. ·r is one is easy and the possibilities are practically in­ fini Le. In this cat.egory can he inclu­ ded everything that might fall under the headings of biology, botany, zoo­ logy, career education, environmental studies, community studies, geo­ graphy, geology, dramatic play, etc .

4) Musical Thinking. In this category are included everything from "List ening" and the name of the rec­ ord , to "Group Singing," with or wi th­ out names of some of the songs we

2 sang together in the car . It can, of course, include notations about piano lessons, dance classes, co ncerts attended, etc., but it's not just for formal lessons.

The categories ara not, of course, what make the activities.

They are simply baskets into which we can toss such activities. Lots of peo­ ple feel better when they can see the full baskets, never mind what 's in them.

Let me make it clear that I do not think that keeping such reco~ds makes me better at the business of growing with my children . No r doe~ it make any difference to what the child­ ren actually do wit h their time.

These r ecords are kept after the fact, not before. They simply record what we do. The children are not aware of the categories and feel, rightl y, that I keep them for my own sake . It makes no diff e rence to them that riding horses with a friend has been included und e r "Knowledge of Phys ica 1 and Soc ial World." Nor do they care that cutting the muffi n r ecipe in half has been recorded as "Frac tions- Di vi s ion 1Pr ac t ica 1 App li­ cation: Recipe adjustment and prepara­ tion of adjusted recipe."

It soon becomes obvious that ther e are fa r too many wonderful things happening each day to ever write them all down. But getting everything down is not the point eitn­ er. For many of my friends, these rec­ ords have had the value of proving to them that their children were, in­ deed, l earning . Even though they weren't doing a set number of work­ book pages each day and keeping a journal, they were learning and grow­ ing. In fact, it. could be seen (point­ ed t o on paper for faint-hearted rela­ tives) that the children we re actual­ ly doing a great deal more than would have been possible in a classroom .

How many 4th grade teachers h ave, as part of tHerr lesson plans, not ed that the children: read A WRIN­ KLE IN , TIME; heard a chapter of Tolki­ en ' s LORD OF THE RINGS; received a l etter from a friend in Japan; dis­ cussed Japan, especially Kyoto; lis­ tened to Jean-Pi e rre Rampal's Japan­ ese music for flut e an d harp; went to the library to look at a reference book on Japanese costumes; wrote a postcard to Japanese friend; mailed postcard after discussing with post­ al clerk time it would take' to arriv e and how Japanese mail carriers could read the address written in English and whether all mail carrie rs can read lots of languages a nd why " sur­ face mai l" is called that and is so much slower in winter when the Great Lakes are frozen? There was more t o that day' And, of course it's not a "typical" day" since th ere is no such thing. It might hav e lncluded working wlth a potter or helping hang a door or taking a diseased branch to the county extension department.

The po int is thi s : The structure of learning is no t in the curriculum guidelines, nor in the teacher's plan book, nor in th e workbook . The struc­ ture is in the world. As the children l earn about their world, they are understanding its order, in the only way that makes sense to them . And the first time an adult believes that, whet her they've used a big blue plan book o r not, the sun breaks through ...

NEWS FROM ORGANIZATIONS Mary Bergman of the HOME EDUCA­ TORS NEWSLETTER sent us her new add­ ress: Rt 3 Box 324 S, Gallatin MO

64640; phone 816-663-3793 ($2 . 501 iss., $17. 50/yr) ... Harold Ingraham of the I NDEPENDENT FAMILY SCHOOLS RESOURCE CENTER now has a pricelist of materials, including a legal manu­ al, $10; a curriculum manual, $7; and a resource list of publishers, schools, etc., $5. Address: Box 95, RD 1; Smyrna NY 13464 • .. Wendy Priesnitz (Box 640, Jarvis, Ont o NOA IJO) is looking for someone to take over the CANADIAN HOME ' SCHOOLER news­ letter'- she cannot continue with it past the end of 1981 ... Pat Montgom­ ery of HOME BASED EDUCATION PROGRAM ( 1289 Jewett, Ann Arbor MI 48104 ) just sent a "r ed alert " urging all Michigan families to call the State Dept. of Ed. and the Attorney General about some possible restrictions to be placed on home-schoolers. Contact her for ~ore info ... The newsletter of H.O.U.S.E., the Illinois home­ schooling group, is 9-11 pages full of resources, announcements, legal info, and learning tips. For a copy, send a long SASE with 2 stamps to Deb Martin, 22 W 231 71st St, Naperville IL 60540 ... Our "H ome Schoolin Resource List," $1 . 00, has theists of correspondence schools and home­ schooling groups that we've been printing in various issues of GWS, all on one page. Also, Ed Wilhelm (550 Mountain Av, Roanoke VA 24016) has entered our list of 40 or so home­ schooling groups in his computer; if you would like this list printed on address labels, send him $4 ... Peter­ son Nesbit just told us that he and Penny spoke to a group of 20-30 Indi­ ana families about unschoolin~ . The Nesbits (65 Oak Meadow, Evansville IN 47711) wrote a good summary of the legal situation in Indiana; we're sure they'd send it to other families in the state~ especially those who enclose 50¢ or $1 to cover postage and copying .. . Kentucky unschoolers had a state-wide picnic in August and plan to do so annu,ally . Contact Ruth McCutchen or Patti Van Buskirk ...

And Nancy Plent sent us a notice of a picniC for unschoolers in her area ­ he ld o n the first day of school, at 11 AM' ... --- Donn a Richoux

f

GOOD NEWS FROM COLORADO An Arizona re a der sent us a clip­ ping about a Colorado State Board of Educa tion proposal to regulate pri­ vate schools; we sent a copy t o the three home-sch ooling groups in Colora~ do . Nancy Dumk e in Denver just wrote : ... We were not aware of the impending hearing until,you se nt the artic l e . Immediately after rec e iving It, we receiv ed phone calls from home­ schoo ling support groups in Pueb l o a nd Ft . Collins . Sandra Warriner a nd I atten ded the hearing on Sept. 10, and were amazed nnd delighted by the turnout - there were over 400 people there, and I' m sure thal the size of the group helped to defeat the regula­ tions. [ After three hours of testi­ mony, the board voted 3-2 to kill the proposal. J The r elig i ous groups in atten dance were extremely well organ­ lzed, and many were represented by lawyers ...

From a Denver Post article about the hearing that Nancy sent: . .. William Ball, an attorney for

the Association of Christian Schools

International, which he sald conslsts

of 1,300 schools with 235,000 pupils,

led off the attack with the assertion

that, "The proposed new rules are flatly unconstitutional." They would create "entanglements" between the state and religious schools which have been forbidden by the U.S .

Supreme Court, he said.

Furthermore, he added, "There is no educational or social crisis imposed by the non-public schools. To impose these regulations, the state would have to show that such exists . " .. .

FROM TEXAS From Diane Elder (235 Kay ton, San Antonio TX 78210) who arranged the radio interview with John that we mentioned in GWS #22: ... We hav e gotten only positive responses and are still getting ~hone calls from interested fami lie s . My husband and I have taped another interview which will probably be on sometime in October ... That interview also went well . We are " out of the closet" now and it feels very good.

As far as my research reveals, we have been able to cover all the legal requirements by spending less than $50 and a little time and ener­ gy . I've put together a packet of information on starting a home school in Texas. I~'s about 22 pages and includes: articles of incorporation, by-laws, letters I've written to authorities and responses I've got­ ten, curriculum, phone numbers, addresses, and step-by-step instruc­ tions. I'd like to share it with any­ one interested in sending $2 (for postage and copying) to The Witte Ter­ race School [ address above]. .. . As far as I know, this com­ plies with all Texas law. However, we must all be aware that the schools can harrass us by taking us to court any time they want. The state attor­ ney general says his office would be very reluctant to prosecute because the law is so vague . Very good for us' Some of us are trying to orga n­ ize a hom e schooli ng association in orde r to provide sup port and give i nforma t ion . I'll keep yo u informed on how that progresses. ... Some folks are interested in lobbying for favo rable leg i s lati on .

My opinion is that that would be a foolish mistake . Right now Texas has no law governing home schooling. The private school l aws are very vague and fairly easy to comply with Sl nce accreditation is not mandatory, nor are certified teachers ... I have no intenti on of going before anyone to ask permission or justify what I'm do­ ing. I suspect that the desi re for "favorabl e legislation" comes out of our own ins ecu rity and need for some­ one to tell us that what we're doing is OK ... [ JH: I agree . J

10-YEAR-OLD HELPER From Helene Van Manen (CO) : ... One of the main problems at ou r home-schooling meetlngs was car­ ing for the c hildren during the meet­ ings. The kids range in age from a few weeks to 6 nnd most are toddlers.

Although they have a great time play­ ing, reading books , coloring, a nd so on, somone always needed to go potty, have a drink of ~ate r, etc .

So last month I found a neighbor­ hood g lrl who's 10 years old and loves children. She has come to our last two meetings and cares [or the children so we can share ideas, lis-

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

3 ten to readi ngs from books we've found, etc . The children love her in return and resp ond well to her.

She'll play games and sing songs with them plus if they need to go potty she can handle that also .

I'm ama zed at how she can care for the 7-10 month olds who are only crawling . She ' ll just lug a baby around with her while s he comforts a 2- yea r-old who's scraped a knee. True continuum' We ha ve a jar that each parent puts a contribution in to pay f o r her services ~ nd ~he a l ways goes away with a fair share.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not opposed to having childre n at meet­ ings - but this arra ng ement helps all th ose pare nts t o co nc entrate and share for at least a few minutes with­ out a million int er rupt io ns . I'd love t o hea r how o th er groups handle this s i tu a t i on . . .

NEW DISEASE-"SCHOOL PHOBIA" From an article titled, "Wh y Some Children Pa nic As The School Year Begins," in the Bos t o n Globe, 8/31/81 :

... A common fear, sch oo l phobia affects children of all ages . Accord­ ing to mental hea l t h wo rk ers and scho o l per so nnel, how eve r, it is most pr eva lent in th e 6 to 9 and 12 to 14 yea r o ld age groups. Ironically, say pr ofessionals, it usually ha s little or no thing to do with sc hool but i s a refl ec ti o n of some conflict withi n the c hild o r family. ... "In cases where a child is go­ ing t o kindergart e n of first grade, le av ing hom e can be a very disturbing step," says Raymo nd Levy, Cambridge psychologist and clinical f ellow at t he Mt . Auburn Hospital: " Th e issue here is the actual separ a tion from the parents, and sometimes in school­ phobic children, there is a s e ns e of pare n ta l collusion involved .

"Some parents, usually mothers," Levy e xplains, "g o thr ough their own separation anxiety. For th o s e wh ose identity and self-esteem is w,apped up in motherhood, a'child's leaving can present a threat t o the mother's sense of self . She may fear that when h er c h ild l~ aves s he will no longer have a purpose in life." According to Levy, a mother can . unwittingl y commun­ icate her own anxiety t o the child who, in tur n , senses that ther e is something to fear in th e world ou t­ side .

When a child devel o ps phy sical symptoms or does not seem to be ad­ justing to school after two weeks, it's a clear sign that the child needs to remain close t o home in order to have a sense of control over hi~ or her .world . If physical symp­ toms persist, the child should be seen by a physician . If physical causes are ruled out, then it might be time to consult the school psychol­ ogist or a mental health pr ofess i ona l. .. . What precipitates school pho ­ bia? An unusua l event occurring with­ in the past few months; the birth of a sibli ng or a death in the family; or fam il y a nd marital problems are possib l e causes .

When Kirstin Paulsen of Glouces­ ter was in t he four t h grade, her par­ e nt s we r e i n th e pr ocess of separa ­ ting, a nd Ki r stin decided, after Christmas vacation, that she didn't wa nt to go back to school . "I used t o put up a grea t b ig fight ~very morn­ ing, " says t he girl, now 12, " and my mom used t o have to t r ick me into g oing . " GROWING WITHOUT SC HOOLING #23

Kirstin's mother recalls, "My husband and I were having prob l ems , and there was a lot of f r iction in th e house . Then Kirstin began saying she didn't want to go to school.

First, she complained that she didn't like her teacher. Then s he said the work was too difficult . We'd have t hese hid eous fig hts in the morning, a nd I'd lite r ally push her out th e door. Sometimes I ' d find her, an hour later, h iding in the bar n. Then I 'd drive her to school. I just didn't knO\" wha t to do ."

Paulsen spoke to the principal at Kirstin's school, "but he wasn't much help," s h e says . "Th e n, toward the end of th e sc hoo l yea r, they started talking about holding her back because she ' d had so many abse nces (37 between Decem ber a nd June) . I really' did n ' t think that was the answer because, some how, she had managed to keep up academ i ca ll y . So I convinced them to let he r go on ."

The following year , things at home improved, but her mother decided to take Kirstin to a therapist .

"W e \vent only a cou ple of times, " she .says, " but we talked a lot about her fat h er ' s leaving . The therapist told Kir~tin if it l oo ked as If I cou ldn ' t control her and she didn't start going to sc hool more reg­ ularly, there was a possibility she 'd be taken away [rom me . She was very angry about that, but it did get her back to school . " ... After trying to calm a child's fears, parents must ma ke it clear that staying home from school is not an op t ion . " S ince th e fear is internal and not really sc hoo l­ r e l a t e d," says Raymond Levy, " allow­ ing th e child t o s tay a t home won ' t help . It will o nl y prolong the anxi­ ety ."

"Th e sc hools need t o be ·f lexibl e in these Situations," says Rockport teacher-principal Selma Bell. "We try t o work wit h th e pa rents when it appears that a child might be school phobic. Sometimes parents come in r eady to blame us for their child ' s fear but usually th ey 're very coope ra­ tiv e and seem to welcome our he l p. " .:. [ DR: 1 So now another l abe l is creepi ng into the schos l jargon . Just as kids w h ~ don't do well in school are labeled "l ear ning disabled" a nd "hav ing minimal brain disorders, " and r es tl ess kids ar e labeled. " hyperac­ tive," (and thereby very handily cre­ ating lots of jobs in Special Educa­ tion during a time of excess teach­ e r s) , now kids who don't like school \"ill be labeled "schoo l phobic, " and "treated " fo r this "illness." And what is at the r oo t of this illness' Why, th e family life, of course.

The s t o ry abou t Kirstin is abso ­ lutely incredible . First of a ll, no credence was given to her complaints about th e' t eac h e rs or the work .

Second, all th ose absences didn ' t seem to hurt he r education one bit .

In the third place, the threat of ·be­ ing taken away from her own familr ­ for what good reason? - was final y used to get her to go back to school .

And finally, the whole t h i n g was blamed on marital problems between her parents, which seems absurd ­ millions of kids whose pare n ~s have marital problems stil l go t o schoo l .

In fact if her home l ife was so terri­ ble, woul dn't it be just as likely f o r Kirstin to escape it by going to school' Any therapist who deals with "sch oo l phobic" kids and does not know that home-schooling is a legal

o pt io n needs to be e du cated himself.

If you start seeing articles like this in newspapers and maga­ zines, we h ope you will write letters of dis ag r eement, loud and strong, a nd that you ' ll send us a ctipy. If you teach your kids at home 'or are plan ­ n ing to do so , you ' d better be pre­ pared t o deal with accusatio ns and hints that you are " sick " or suffe r­ ing from " separation anxiety ."

And if the school people start . in on you wit h full forc~, you will need all the strength you can find t o resist these "experts." Challenge their statements - what research do the y have to back up t heir state­ ments' What kind of track record do~ they have treating "school-phobic" c hildr e n ' Why are the teache r s and sc h oo ls to be held blameless' Stic k to your conviction that you 'r e OK, your child is OK, i t ' s the education­ al system that has problems. And of course, get your child . out of there as soon as you possibly can.

The following letter is a moving accou nt of a family ' s experience with so-called " sc h ool-p hobia . "

"SCHOOL PHOBIC" SON From Marcia Farrah, 119 Reser­

voir, Newington CT 06111:

... Towards the spr i~ g of s~cond grade, we had to push our son to sc hool eac h day. We did not find out until summer that the teacher had embarrassed him several times in front of the class a nd was keeping him in a t recess to finish his work so he was missing that kind of outlet during th e day he so bad ~ y n eede d . ... During the summer we soug ht a dvice from a social wo rk er who said he might have to be placed on medica­ tion when he started baGk in th e fall. I couldn't believe this a nd flatly sai d " No . " . . .

When the first day of school arrived he was terrified and would no t go . Foolishly I phoned the social wo rker who a rriy ed and told us he had to go or we would l ose all co ntr ol-.-­ Against o ur most heart fe lt beliefs we dragg e d him down . We slapped him. My husba nd threw him over his shoulder and when th e principa l met t8em at th e door a nd t ook hold of our .son' s hands he kick ed her and r an home . We r eca ll that d ay wit h ho rr or . My hu s ­ band will n eve r forgive himse l f for doi ng what he did to Ou r so n because someone who should know didn't . We kn ow our son a nd it was wrong . We'll never again betray hi m t o the "sy s ­ tem . II

Of course, we had no alternative at th is pOint but to consult a psychi ­ atrist. Our son, by now, was threaten­ ing suicide i f h e had to go to school. His behavior became erratic and uncontrollable wit h terrible out ­ bursts o f temper and rage and then he would cry and be very depressed.

The psychiatrist sugges t ed Mella­ ril and/or hospitalizati on . My hus­ band was .a damant that we do neither.

Thank God' We are 5 0 grateful th at we had the presence of mind no t t o be taken in by this . Unfortunately, we had to keep th e doctor in o rder to get home-bound tut o ring. If onl y I had known about GWS at this time, we would have been spared mo nths of anguish .

The home - bound tutoring we nt on until January .. . My hus band was li vid when they were waiting for him one day to inform him of te,mination of the tutoring, du e t o a false ~ccusa­ tion by the tutor that we had kept

4 our son out of school for seve ral days when he was not sick . My husband most beautifully met their every threat with a better one, as he had looked up the law and by this time had read many of your articles and books. Because of my husband ... we received a very polite call from the head of the tutoring program saying our son could continue as he was until another PPT meeting was sched­ uled. At this meeting, my husband again insisted that the hour of tutor­ ing ' per day be kept, and it was granted.

We are ready to move if need be.

I will not stay here and be subjected to this again next year' We are hop­ ing to get ' through this year on our terms.

I have called and met with Jean­ ine Lupinek (whose na~e I got through your directory ) and others at her home. What a delight to be with these women who laughed when I told them about the "school-phobic" label given my son. They couldn't believe the hor­ r ors we'd been subjected to. Jeanine has been most helpful and is a lovely person ...

You can't imagine what a wonder­ ful feeling it is to know that we have an alternative, that the son we love is not "crazy," and there is a way out of this awful mess other than medication, hospitalization, etc . God bless you all ...

MOVED BY GWS From Carol Lambert (AK):

... Am ( the only person who cries while reading GWS? I ask myself this every time I get a copy and find mys~f sitting at the kitchen table, after everyone else is in bed, shed­ ding tears of relief over story after story of how someone bent back the bars and burst out of a cage; and tears because I am touched by the small acts of compassion and under­ standing I read ,about here; and tears of sadness, too, I guess, for myself and others who spent a lot of time feeling cowed and lonely, awkward and unvalued, in schools and o th e r places we found 'o urselves as kids. Read ing GWS always evokes deep emo ti ons for me: the whole spectrum. I am a lways refreshed when I put it aside, and itching for the moment when I can leave my full-time work anq wo rk my way into the relaxation of hom e­ schooling with our son ...

TIME TO RENEW Please stop and look at the com­ puter label on the back of this issue, or on the manila envelope if you receive a group subscription. Hun­ dreds of you have subscriptions that are about to expire, so now is the time to make sure you will continue to get GWS without interruption.

You~ label looks something like this:

12345 JOHN & MARY SMITH 16 MAIN ST PLAINVILLE NY

@

01 01 24 01111

The number that is circled in the example above tells the number of the final issue for the subscription .

The Smit hs' sub expires with Issue #24, the next - issBe' But if they hurry and extend their subscription

now, the Smiths will qualify for the free bonus issue for early renewal.

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Renewal rates are the same as for new subscriptions: $15 for 6 issues, $24 for 12 issues, or $30 for 18 issues. Make check (US bank) or money order payable to GROWING WITH­ OUT SCHOOLING, and send to 729 Boylston St, Boston MA 02116. Thanks.

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REWARDS AND CONCERNS From Marti Mikl (AZ):

.. . Most of the "teaching" has fallen to me . Though I manage two com­ panies from our home, my time is much more flexi~le than Mike's. The big­ gest problem I am faced with'is try­ ing to overcome 4~ years of Darris' boredom with conventional learning .

It's quite a challenge to, try and make the necessary subjects interest­ ing .

One of the most rewarding aspects of home schooling is watching Darris become, once again, happy, secure, sensitive, cr~ative, interest­ ed in learning, and other such good things that gradually "got lost" as his dislike for school deepened . He had always 'been bright enough to bluff his way through school with very good grades, but the overwhelm­ ing boredom with the classroom situa­ tion had turned him into a sullen, tense, and very grouchy young man.

The other very rewarding aspect is knowing that he is really grasping things, real~y learning. At school, he just tune everything out to the point that his lack of proficiency in the basic skills was appalling ...

One thing that totally baffles me is that so many home schooling families (f r om l ette rs I have read in GWS) seem t o let th eir children "do their own thing" wit hout any sched­ uled program of learning. I like this idea in th eory, but ca n't understand how it will result in a well-rounded education . I can 't imagine any typi­ cal child "ch oosi ng" to learn multi­ plication facts . And yet, in our opi­ nion, they must_ke l ear ned, as well as the proper way to function with the English language a nd other sub­ jects taught in the public schools.

My approach is flexible and nonrigor­ ous but, a t the same time, structured.

Another thing I'm curious about is that so many people whose letters have appeared in GWS seem t o have absolute genius children wh o have an insatiabl e appetite for learning everything and everyt hing , have none of the usual c hildho od shortcomings, have no interest in TV or playing, and are years ahead of their count er ­ parts in every aspect . Are these peo­ ple for real ? Darris is a typical 10 year old and, if left to his own choice, would play or watch TV most of the time . We don't necessarily want or expect our h ome sch ooling sit­ uation to turn him into a "super kid." Maybe someone could respond to these questions.

... Darris is learning at home from experiences there just ' weren't time for when h~ was in school . On a weekly basis, he does his own laun­ dry, including washing and changing the sheets on his bed . Nearly every day, he cooks something; today, he made brownies from scratch, with prac­ tically no help from me. He learns about spelling simply by knowing that I frequently look up words in the dictionary "just to be sure." ( I involve him by asking if he knows the cor'r ect spelling.) Recently, he has become enthralled with sculpting clay and is really quite talented. What a change from the days when he was gone from home nine hours a day ...

At times, I miss the hours of solitude I used to have, but am glad to exchange that luxury for a happy, contented, better-educated child.

Besides, Darris is a very interesting person and I enjoy his company. ... We would be very happy to help other interested families in the Phoenix,area ... We are very glad that we decided, in the beginning, to approach this venture honestly and aboveboard. Since we have official approval from the District School Board, we are free to talk about our home schooling situation with friends and acquaintances. We have been over­ whelmed that, even though people are stunned at first, the large majority verbally applaud what we are doing. I sincerely sympathize with ' home school­ ing families who have to hide ...

In her reply, Donna wrote: ... 1 had to smile a little, see­ ing your paragraph about superkids and then immediately following, the paragraph about all the things Darris is doing now that he's free of school . .. If we printed that one para­ graph all by itself in GWS. some par­ ents out there in readership-l a nd would, like you, throw up their hands and say "A ten-year-old doing his laundry every week, and making brown­ ies from scratch' And 'talented at sculpting' ~ kid is just ordinary, never like iliat." ... I think you are assuming that a kid who can do A, B, and C, must be a genius who can do D, E, F through Z, and nev er , never has any pr ob l ems . Even though you kn ow (a nd I kn ow, from what you saia-rn your Tetter) that a child ca n do some things that are usually considered amazing for his o r her age whil e still doing o th e r things that worry ~.

Just because we don't mention in GWS what problems a kid has doesn 't mean th e kid doesn't hav~ any prob­ l ems ' ... The reason why we print (a nd will co ntinu e to print) stories about c hildr e n doing things normally consid­ e r e d impossi ble for their age, is bec a use we want to challe nge those assumptions, to show that they a r e not necessa rily true. Society has a picture of what is proper behavior fo r a c hild - and remember, that pic­ ture c ha nges over time, and from cul ­ ture to culture. Not so long ago, young people we re considered much more responsible and capable than they are today .

A woman lKaren Franklin ] wrote r ece ntly that her son was ' the offi­ cial egg-cracker. for the family cook­ ing lon before he was two ea rs old.

Now, I in t at ascinating - I can picture a four-year-old breaking a raw e gg OK. maybe a 3 year old, but somehow my imagination stops at 2.

Yet should I say this woman is wrong?

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

5 No . Th e only alternative is to cut away another small c hink in mY,mental picture of what a l~ year old is sup­ posed to be capable of .. .

THEIR OWN PACE From Jeanne Finan in Virginia:

· . . r hope we can all maintain our awareness that the loveliest thing about hom e schooling is that chi ldr e n can move at their own pace .

If a c hild l ea rn s to read at age 3, bravo' If a c h ild l ear n s to read at age 8, bravo! I think we sometimes tend to want our children t o achieve miraculous feats; educational and o th erwise , to " prove " that 'oJe are doing the right thing .

We love th e time with ou r child­ ren (my hu sba nd and 1 are fortunate t o work at home so we are together a great deal ) and though [ do admit I beam wi th at least inn e r pride that our two love t o learn and " study," my heart si ng s when I see that they can s t op at any moment . The y can run in the ~oods a n y ti me of day, play in th e sand box whe never the mood strikes them, create their ow n schedules. We lose the children inside ou rselv es so easily and quickly in this society ; I lov e home-scho oli ng because it a ll ows ou r child r en to be just that - child r en' .. .

GIMMICKS VS. REAL LIFE From Louise Andrieshyn (Ma n. ) : · .. 1 think that you should point out that measuring "pr ojects " are stil l gimmicks, and though kids migh t be l ess bored by them than math wo rk ­ books, parents s hou ldn ' t expec t their k ids to actually want to do such pr ojects . . . Ther e-rs-no better pro­ gram than real l ife, and the r e is no program less than that, that my kids will do joyfully. · .. My kids love doing math and are adept at it, not because they do workbooks (t hey don ' t), ' and not because I think up exciting projects (I don't), but simply because they are constantly dealing with eve r yday life which i s full of malh questions and calls for l ots of math experiment­ ation .

The idea of kids being interest­ ed in their heights . Yea h, well . . . for a birthday card Lisey got a "gr owth cha rt" and th e kid s all meas­ ured their heights an d pr omp tly for­ got them .

But, about the same time we found out that for the swimming les­ sons Heidi and Michael wanted to t ake, you had to measure 40" at the chin. We discovered this whe n Michael wasn 't arou nd , so Heidi and [ tried to est i mate Michael ' s acceptabi lity.

She f ig ured he was a head shorter than herself . so if we measured her to the chin and subtracted " a head " we'd have Michael 's measurement . Tt came ou t to l ess than 40" - and she was quite worried unti 1 Michael came home and she measured him and found the ac tual measurement "as over 40" .

(Proba bly the "h ea d" she subl racled was her own, not ad jusling it down to the size of his head . ) Heidi learned a valuable l esson in estimation .

Again, the point is not the meas­ uring , but the reill life problem that made t he measuring impo rt3nt because th e latter was necessary to solve the problem . The effectiveness, serious ­ ness, and importance of thi s "math lesson " would not hav e been possible

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING =23

if, instead, I had invented some in teresting height-measuring project, because such a project would have been mea n ingless, pointless in terms of real life . . .. 1 don't mean to give the impression that my kids' real-life learning is all self -di rected . A lot of it is compelled, but it is stil l real. For example, how Michael first learned fractions when he was 7 . I was making a l arge pot of ketchup a nd his job was to put the tomatoes in the blender. That was by his ow n choice; he loves blending stuff. But then I asked him to keep track on a piece of paper the number of cups he was making because we needed 16 . He did this grudgingly, but neverthe­ less, he did it because it was esse n­ tial to the process . And by the time he was .done, he could read a nd write fractions in ~'s and ~ 's and, what ' s more, could add the m. And, of course (and this ca n't be learned in a ,,'o rk­ book) he now knew how to use the meas­ uring guide on the blender .

A few months ago Heidi com­ plained, "I quit school so I wouldn't have to sit in a desk al l day doing work. So instead [ stand Hl l day do­ ing wor k," She was \Vas hing dishes , I mean, [' m truly sorry \Ve hav e so much \Vork t o do arou nd here. I do ,,,ish the klds (and I!!) had more leis­ ure time . I empathize \Vith their com­ plaints , But the fact still re mai ns that this is how our life is right now and (barring 3 financial wind­ fall) \ViII continue for some time more , So , yes, much of th ei r learning is " compelled " - maklng meals, pla nt­ ing the garden, painting the garage, helping Daddy do mechanical jobs at home, etc - but this is a different kind of " compelled " compat'ed to being compelled to do schoolwork X hours a day. At least our kind of "compe lled" learning isn't ar.tif icial - and in learnlng this way , the kids are devel­ oping various types and levels of com­ petence whic h wi ll allow them to [unc­ ti on better in the wo rld. ., . One time \V he n we \Vere in the city, I decided to do the grocery shopping ." When \Ve got to the check­ out, 1 figured I'd better get Malco l m (age l) out of the slore ( he's not much interested in buildings . After seeing what ' s inSide, he usually puts up quite a fuss to get back outside) .

Seeing as ho\V I had had my ch~ck aut horized at the store of [ice, with the amount left blank, I exp l a in ed to Heidi what she should do \Vith it, and left her and Lisey ".

By the time she got back to the car, she ,,'as beaming "' ith sel[­ satisfaction , ~ot that she actually did anything much , Just stood in line, unloaded the cart, handed the cashier the check, and whe e l ed Lisey and the g r oceries t o the car . But I ' kno\V very well that the essence of the experience for her was the [ee l­ ~ It gave her of being grO\vn-~[t \Vas qulte different from going to the store to buy some candy and comics for herself, \Vhich she has done innum­ erable times. Any kid can do that.

But only adults sland in line with a load fu ll of groceries Hnd a four­ yea r- old in their cart . ... She told me : "The cashier took the chec k, ~O Ql:ESTIONS ASKED ."

That "as the besl part , [ bet " . An adu lt, who \-Jas " stranger and be­ longed to that Rig Mysterious Adult World, \Vas bv her deference acknow­ ledging the tact that He idi was func­ t ioning as a competenl adul tin the everyday ,,,orld .

Of course, by no\V, bot h Dumping

gas and doing the shopping have become routine tasks for my kids and they'd just as soon NOT do them any more ...

Further to this idea of mat h "gimm icks . " Yes, of course they are nece$sary in a classroom - and the more interesting materials in a class­ r oom, the better for children . But \Vhen I was reading through our provin­ cial Curriculum Guide for math, it became painfully obvious to me that all these " won d erful, creative materi­ als" now found in classrooms are sim­ ply that - GIMMICKS - to con ("mo ti­ vate " ) the child into " learning . " And, as suc h, almost all unnecessary in a home education \Vhere the child has access to the real materials of the real world and the everyday prob­ l ems of life that demand the use of those real materials .

This is not to say that, once in a \V hile, kids won't \Vant to pl ay \Vith "gi mmicks ," Certainly they ,,,ill enjoy all sorts of concrete math materials, especially measuring tools if they can play with them as they want to ­ or-wha t should officially be t ermed "experiment " ,,,1th them, since that is true experimentation , But to make out a "program" usi.ng the concrete materi­ als as "teaching aids, " 1 don't think will effectively overcome the problem of boredom or dislike, . .

MATH FROM LIVING Nancy Plent wrote in the Ne\V Jersey Cnschoolers Ne t\Vo rk: .. . 1 hate fiddling wi th little pieces o[ paper. But lik e everyone else, 1 keep coming across refund sli.ps for things that J ,buy , It seemed to o bad to throwaway th e money th ey ' represented . So I offe red my 9 year old half of the money if he \-Jould take ca re of the "ho l e process: get the necessary box tops or \Vhat­ ever together, fill out the s lips. address the envelope, stamp and mail it. I supply the envelopes and stamps. Whatever refund slips [ find, I put in his mailbox, which he chec k s now an d then . When the checks a rriv e, they 'r e madft out to hlm; so he has to endorse them, cash them, and figure out his share . He can do this almost instantly now; financial motivation seems to be the best way to teach math' , . .

And

~ancy

Wallace

(~H)

\Vrote :

.., Vita (6) likes "~) retty tt"!ings" - laces, Silks, je\-Jelry, etc, One thing she does is to pore over catalogues we ger :" the mai l, and one, the Sturbridge Village c3ta­ logue, really seems to have struck her fancy because it is so full of knick-knacks , She has learned to take the letters shokn on the pictures, find them on the prinled part of the page and then check out the prices of the stuff she likes . What she really loves are lhe chi na dolls with price t ags like $325.75 , $295.99, and so on, Hnd Vita has learned how to read those monstrous figures accurately .

She ' s also learned that they repre­ sent too much money' Trlthe morning, she runs into an interesting problem - too many nice dresses! (Thanks to her grandmother.)

So she has devised a logical method for figuring out what to wear . If she hilS H choice of four dresses, she ctivides them into two piles - one representing "heads" and one "t ails" - and then flips a coin . She takes

6 the winning pile and flips again.

With six dresses it becomes more dif­ ficult, but she manages that too .. .

Our checks fascinate Vita. I always give . her our old checks to play store with and she often keeps a stack of t~em on her little desk in the living room . Three or four times now she's asked me to explain how checks work - how they can represent money . And she wants to know where our money is, and i f the bat\l< ·gives us the same money .we put in, and so on. She-rrKes to watch me attempt to balance the checkbook. But mostly she likes the physical sensation of hold­ ing a bundle of checks in her hands .

It is is a very grown-up feeling ...

THEIR OWN BUDGETS From Gwendolyn West (TN ) :

... We've started an interesting project I'd like to share. My child­ ren receive stock dividends (a gift from grandparents long ago ) for which I'm custodian. Instead of ~ spending it for their clothes, schoar, etc. as in the past, this year we're going to give them the money directly to buy everything they need except food and shelter.

When first told they were e lat e d and had visions of new bikes, new baseball gloves and enormous savings accounts. I got out the encyclopedia, "B" for budget, and we became in­ formed t oge th er about "Budget Bas­ ics". I'd purchased (a t K-mart for a couple of dollars) a date stamp, ink ~ad and columnar tablet the day be­ fore. Th ey were ve ry curious abou t these items and could hardl y wait to use the professional-looking stamp. I gave them each a note card to write down all their needs and goals. The encyclopedia told about a boy named Carl whose inc ome from jobs a nd allow­ ance was less that his li s t of nee ds and goals. It said something to the effect " Carl will be in trouble i f he pursues t hi s budget." It tickled the boys as they quickly saw Carl's dilem­ ma (and I'd read it with humor which th ey e njoyed - ·a nd which, I might add, a school budget lesson would no t usually include ) . Th~y eager l y did mat h in th e ir heads to solve Carl ' s pr ob l cm .

We th c n we nt on to r ea d and t al k abou t major budget categories . I asked them what ones would apply to th em . I talked about meanings of words lik e "income," "expenditure," " co ntributi on" and in o rder t o writ e out th e ir own budgets on the special lined co lumnar s heets (which they'd ne ver seen before) th ey ha d t o find out how to spell them as we ll (t hey h ad sort of a sacred sense about a ll th ese new ma terials the y were given ­ eve n t o running up to their rooms to find binders t o ke ep their budge t s heets in in an official important manner). Sin ce dividcnds come quarter­ ly, we talk e d about what "quarte rl y" means - '",,,hat' s a quart e r of a dol­ l a r ?" " So ",hat ' s a quart e r o[ a year?" " So your budget's f o r how long ?" c tc. We talked about how needs will va ry [rom one quart e r t o the n ext - how major categories wo n't change but it ems or quantiti es needed mi ght.

My only stipulation was th at th ey had to buy eve r ything - eve n their ow n toothpaste (which is a n exce llent id ea since it savcs sibling a rgumcnts about who l eft th e cap off or sq ue ezcd it in the middle) . My only othcr poi nt to them was th ey had to be sure they had 5 clot hing out­

fits - one for each weekday (left­ overs for Saturday, and Sunday they were to determine what ihey~d like to wea! to church and so p an or it in their individual budget), They were also required to have enou~h under­ wear and socks for 5 days . If it had not been 10 P.M. I'd have taken them at this point to the stores to check prices (a learning experience in itself) but since the stores were closed, when they asked the price of a pair of ·socks I told them a rough guess - they each had to multiply it times the number of pairs they deci­ ded they needed. They had to add their clothing totals. Tney were astounded by the way their glorious funds had disappeared to things like socks! "It's no t fair clothes should cost so much'" ( I could probably have introduced another lesson here on how clothes are made, the people involved in the making of a pair of socks, for instance, that have to be paid et •. ­ but we had enough going on).

Actually it was socks that gave me this whole idea - I was so Eired of seeing the boys run outside in socks without shoes when in a hurry or letting the dog put ho les in them in friendly play. The thought came to me: if they had to ~ them they wouldn't treat them-rrke that' One of them aSked what contribu­ tions were. I offere d some examples, but added they probably wou ldn't have any at their age except for church.

To my surprise, my animal-loving son budgeted a couple of dollars a quar­ ter to The Humane Society. On their own they put down "c ollege fund," "saving s " and one had on his budget a Rolls Royce fund ,. (When I asked about this last entry he said it was be­ cause he only wanted to buy a car once a ~ d he wanted it t o be perfect ana-last; he said if he started sav­ ing a few dollars now he could afford one when he was a man ) .

I also showed th em my family bud­ get. This was helpful when they both found themselves about $20 over for the quart e r . I e xpl ai ned t o-rhem why sometime s we a t e mo r e peanut butt e r than a t o th e r times a nd how the pay­ check that has to do th e house payme nt doesn't ha ve r oom fo r much else that two-week pe r iod . I s howe d them how I had to change my id eas to (it th e incomc ~ o r find mor~ income. They hated doing this' "I just can't lm"er my savings a n y morc! " "Therer5n o­ where I ca n cut !" They were almost hos t il e' But like al l of us, thcy f ou nd a wa y . 1 s ugge sted th ey co uld do jobs to earn th e ext ra th ey neede d if they wercn't wi ll ing to cut back. They com ­ promised - a li ttl e job doing ( th ey ca lcul a t e d $20 for 3 mo nths was not much ove r $1 a week wort h of work, like baby-sitti·ng their sister for a n hour ) and a littlc cutt ing bac k.

Fo r days they ca, ri ed their bud­ get binders everywhcre , rc-thinking ce rtain parts or jusl loo king at i t .

No", we a r e considering checki ng accounts - that they pay for a nd han­ dle on their ow n using th ei r quarter­ l y di v id e nd moncy . What star t e d at 10 P.M. a t ou r kitchen table one night ­ ou r budget l esso n - cou ld hardl y hav e had hal ( the exc it cme nt, fun, o r r eal­ ity in a class r oom , nor been compre­ he nded so quickly .. .

YOUNG LEARNERS From Mary Ncwcomb (MN) :

... Ma king the dccision that we could , in (ac l, keep our child r en

home with us has not been easy. We vacillated back and forth and final­ ly home won.

Autumn (6) is interested in let­ ters and words. When we shop at our local co-op, he gets the butter or eggs or carrots . It was really a sur­ prise to me when he came back and told me the butter cost $1.76. Now we explore all the labels we find on things, and he is getting pretty good at figuring them out. He doesn't write yet - isn't interested in that at all, but likes to form words, so we are planning a trip to the local pawn shop to buy a typewrite~.

Rain is 4 and very interested in numbers; she will spend all day draw­ ing and coloring, so we have fun fig­ uring out new ways to make 3's and 7' s ...

Paula King ( CA) wrote: • • • A note about my daughter, Lindy. She is ll~ months old. Her favorite things are books . She takes my paperbacks off the shelves and. t oddles around with the m. She thumbs through them almost always gently.

She sits back with her books and "reads" them aloud . I mean that she opens them, turns a page, holds the book up and speaks in a reading tone of voice, then she turns a page or two forward or backward and does the same thing again. This activity can go on for quite a whil e. She seldom lets me read more thao a page or two of a book to her before she reaches out and closes it, takes it from me , and reads it aloud to us herself ...

From Mary Jordan (O H) : ... Christopher ( 4 ) l oves learn­ ing ... First (t was what he ca lls " arts a nd crafts": painting, co l or­ irig, c utting, pasting. Then for a ",hile he concentrated on letters a nd numbe rs. Now he's into na tur e s tud y , planting a garden with his fat he r' (a nd planting any o th er seed he ca n get hi s hands on ) and catching bugs in ja rs . He also enjoys sewi ng . I let him use a regular nee dl e a nd emb roi­ dery floss on felt. He ' s ma de a .pil ­ l ow, a glasses case, a purse and a holder for his comb. My bi ggest pr o b­ l em has been ans",ering hi s questions and keeping hi m supp li ed wit h the materials he wa nts.

My two yea r old daughter is more socia l a nd easy-go ing and I am mo r e r elaxed with her. She carries on e la­ borate and ve r y intelligent co nv e r sa ­ tions a nd loves people. Sh e i s not thc least bit int erested in (acts and names of things. She doesn't ca r e what co l or some thing is or ho", ma ny the r e arc . Life is simply (or e nj oy ­ ing ...

From Ba rr y Ka hn (ME) : ... Jocely n i s learning to ~ou nt.

Shc particu l a rl y lik es "th ree " (pro ­ nounced " ( r ee " ) a nd she now counts the steps whe n ",c come indoo r s .

"Fr ce, (ree, fr ee , free. FREE' " She a l ways ends wit h a flou ri sh .

Heat he r ",as co l oring a penguin the ot her day a nd asked me what co l o r its bea k was . "Y e ll ow or whit e - I think, " I replied doub t( u ll y . She th oug ht (or a mome nt a nd then starte d l oo k i ng thr oug h he r books . Eventually s he f ound one wit h a penguin picture and s he consu lt ed it frequently until s he had fi ni shed . It is amus ing (o nly to me) to see he r so co nce rn ed wit h

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

realistic accuracy when the finished drawings are so surrealistic. But there is definitely a logical system underlying her seemingly childish efforts . For example, I now know why she puts such long legs on the letter A. When she first writes it, it is. more or less the same height as the ot he r letters in her name . But she then proceeds to lengthen first one leg and then the other "so that it will stand up right." Making all her letters the same height is not impor­ tant, but keeping tnem fr om falling over is vital. I'm not going to argue with logic like that' ...

If I could remember 5% of what goes on around here I'd have material for many books ...

And from Wanda Rezac (MA) : . .. When the kids were 4 a nd 2, I read to them from books without piC­ tures - C. S . Lewis "Narnia" series, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, etc . - and whenever I did so, they both insisted on sitting in such a way that they could see the poges. If I moved the book out of their sight ( I deliberace ­ ly did this a few times as an experi­ ment) they immediately complained and pulled my arm back. They liked to l ook at the page full of words ...

FAMILY IN THE WOODS Peggy Carkeet (N . Calif . ) writes: ... A year ago I was very dis­ tressed wondering what we would do when Brent reached-rKe age of 5 or 6 and had to go to sc hool. One night I was reading The Mother Earth ~~ws and came across the interview with John Holt. It was as if a bolt .o f light­ ning struck me' I woke Ross up and told him of "home schooling" or " unschooling" and he was as excited as I was. He has been totally suppor­ tive of the whole idea all along .

We live 8 miles from the nearest school on a dirt road . We will probab­ ly declare ourselves a private school eventually . If that doesn't work, my father, who has been with public schools for 30 years (Eng lish teach­ er, high school principal, etc. ) a nd mother (who for years "home-taught" children who couldn't go to school for health reasons) say they'll be token sponsors and sign any necessary papers ... My mom says that the child­ ren she home-taught le~rned in 2 hours a week what kids in public schools lear ned in 5 eight-hour days . . .. Brent (2), wil l sit with us or by himself for hours and "read" books (pointing out things he recognizes by name or sound, e.g. birds are "k aka" from "quack quack.") One of my favor­ ites is THREE LITTLE ANIMALS by Mar­ garet Wise Brown. Brent also loves GO DOG GO by P.O. Eastman, mainly because we a ll ~ out "G o dog GO" '" throughout the booK. -.. . 1 was pleased to see the excerpt "Language Lessons" in GWS #20 and will co n tact the Publishers Ce n­ tral Bureau. I h ad two years of high schoo l Spanish - memorizing "Hol a, Isabelle," etc., and remember very little. Since we live in California (so many Spanish names everywhere) and public TV has many Spanish shows, I thoug ht that now is the time, when Brent is just beginning to talk, t o learn to speak Spanish with him. I signed up through U.C. Berkeley's corre sponde n ce course catalog, but the class was cancelle~. ( 1 am taking an Ita lic lettering course through

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

them . ) So 1 have been using a Spanish­ English dictionary to dig up words for us to learn. Now as I say, " No, no, no" to Brent, he repli es , "Si, si, s1." l.Jh e n he's in th (> ,,'ater (we have a kiddie-pool ) he splashes and yells "agua'" I've written in many of his books the Spanish words and he doesn't seem to care which ones are read . .. . Since we live o n a wooded ridge top, we do a lot of hiking.

Brent will sometimes hike three miles non-stop (wel llll, he stops to check out rocks, flowers, and bugs . ) He now requests "Walk ?" and needs to get out at least once a day .

Two plant-lady friends of mine visited last month. We were picnick­ ing in the meadows and I l et Brent munch manzanita blossoms and miner's lettuce along with his cheese a nd apple . One woman was upset with this : "How will he know what to eat and what not to?" 1 think-she felt that i( I let him eat anything "wild" he would not discriminate and eat any­ thing and everything. But he does l ea rn. We all managed to learn to identify and eat veget&ples from the supermarket a nd from o ur vegetable gardens. One does not have to draw this imaginary line betw.een wi Id and domestic plants . A child can learn to distinguish o ne plant from-8nother, by example and encouragement . Of course, I a 1 so be 1 ieve the pa rent (o r whoever) should be there to explain, "Amanita, ouchie, not good for Bebe" (which is what Brent calls him­ self) ... or, "Manzanita berri es, yum, yum ."

... We a lso indulge in the family bed; all three of us love it. Very few people do. For awhile we were " closet sleepers, " but nO\" \Ve are becoming more vocal, finally having the faith in our convictions not to' hide them .

1 guess the disapproval of so many of our values gets us down some­ times. I think that is a 15ig reason why 1 enjoy reading GWS so much: so many positive people who agree with us . ..

Part of our life-style is a goal of self-sufficiency . We use solar panels and a wind generator for power, a hydrauliC ram for water . I garden a lot (",Hh Brent's help' ) . I don't see how a child could help but learn under these circumstances ...

KIDS ON A BOAT From Rachael Solem (MA) : .. . Fisher and I have been talk­ ing for a long time about living on a boat, conSidering all the angles, joys and pitfalls from our armchairs .

When a friend told Fisher she'd seen an ad ' for a cheap sailboat charter on the Maine coast, we decided it ",as high time to leave our armchairs and see what it was like to live with two small children on a boat for a week.

Cou ntl ess books from the library and visits to boat shows had over ­ prepared us, o r me anyway, by talking up life on the water as something well out o[ the norm, something diffi­ cult and rewarding but unlike the challenges in daily life ... I'd read about netting that would create a fully enclosed playpen for an infant below decks, harnesses which keep children tied to the mast, and life­ jackets absolutely guaranteed to keep a baby's head above water for so many hours (said jackets costing several times the price of the simplest Coast Guard-approved bouyancy vest which

7 does the same thing "'ith less discom­ fort). Follo\Ving the advice of friends and gr andmot hers, I made a harness just in case it might come in handy (it never did).

We packed simple munching food ­ there was no refrigeration on this boat, nor was there a shower, flush toilet, or hot water - some warm clothes, cool clo~hes, and toys (never used), and headed for Tenants' Harbor, Maine . It rained all the ...ay there .

We waited for the Cap tain t o meet us in a fish market/grocery store. John-El i jah, 13 mgnt hs old, and Briana, almost 4, watched the lobsters scramble around a tank on the floor and witnessed the filleting of haddock and flounder skillfully done by a mother a nd daughter . In typ­ ical down-east (ashion, they spoke hardl y at all to eac h ot he r and not at all to us. We exc hang ed smiles . ..

One lar~e haddock had swallowed a, small perch "'hole. When its belly was slit ope n and the fish came out, Bri­ ana logically thought it was the had­ dock's baby. I reminded her that fish lay eggs instead of ca rrying babies in th ei r bellies.

We boarded the 35' sloop "Apheli ­ on " (mea r.ing "toward t he sun") in the rain ... We slept aboard, all four of us in th e forward cabin, really just a triangular bed. There are drawers under it and a hatch above so we could li e awake and see the stars.

The bed is high and the floor sLopes down (rom it so climbi ng up and down is tricky for a small child ... The lockers, drawers, and doors, \Vith their special latch es to hold all in place as the boat he e ls ove r, were easy for Briana. They were a chal­ lenge to John-Eli but that became his entertainment. Briana also learned to use various footholds built into the cabinet work t o get up t~ the high storage spaces, so she cou ld, and did willingly, fetch cups, flashlights, charts, etc . ..

She also understo.od the rules of the lifejacket ",hich we laid down as we set sail Monday morning: it.must be on every tIme she left the cock­ pit .. . John-Eli was another story as he did not appreciate the safety fea­ tures of the j acket. He, too, had to wear it outside the cockpit and in the tender (a small, rather unstable boat used to get ashore from a moor­ ing place) . By the end of the week he wa s almost used to it . ... 1 l ear ned t o cut ou t my anxi­ ety when I am watching him and become simply an observer, because he does indeed kno w what he can and cannot do, and he does really ",ant to live .

This was a rev elation to ou r skipper who welcomed children but had not had such young ones before. He began the week with phrases like "When he's a little older and not trying to kill himself. .. " and "Children are like little animals and I'll treat them as such until they become human ... " and ended it with a great deal of respect for my son and his capabilities. He, too, wa tc hed John-Eli without touch­ ing him or coerCing him. On one occa­ sion when I, in a throwback to over ­ anxious mothering, reached out to get John-Eli from a precarious spot (one foot on the dock, one on the boat, boat rocking away from him ), Capt.

Jory did what any thoughtful person would do for another, pulling the boat back a bit so John-Eli could make his move without falling in the water.

Briana learned to read a new kind of map. We sailed always within sight of land so that buoys, light­

8 houses, and rocks marked on the map could be seen as the time passed .. .

Every port had a new diversion.

In Rockport we met a local celebrity) Andre the Seal. He was being kept in a pen in the harbor where, we heard, he did a show with a seagull once a week ... 'In Castlne, the road s were lined with a variety of wildflowers which Briana collected to put in her hair. We also 'saw a hug e ship in Castine's harbor, the State of Maine, used as a training s hip for the Mar­ i ne Maritime Academy . Several other boats had been donated to the MMA: sleek and classy yachts which Fisher took Briana to visit. The crew, sea­ faring college boys, welcomed them aboard. These boats were so very dif­ ferent from our own small sloop; Bri­ ana took it all in, teak, fiberglass, air-conditioning, high ceilings, then proudly pointed out the "Aphelion" to h:r hos~s saying, "That's where I

Ilve ...

At home she is fairly shy ... but she started up conversations with all sorts o[ people of all ages, using John-Eli's wandering on shore as an introduction . John-Eli simply looked for dogs . At the beginning of the lYeek it was his only wo rd: "dah."

Then he made another connection. He loves lights, and I had to remind him of th e heat of the kerosene lamps in th e cabin of the boat. I first told him it's a light and then that it's hot .. '. his translation was "tah-tah­ tah" ... On shore, he began to look at car headlights and said "tah-tah­ tah," and street l amps, "tah-tah­ tah," and candles of course, "tah-t ah­ tah . " . .. It took me a bit of time to catch on, but he was so insistent and prbud of his discovery that I had to see it eventually. , ... Following John-Eli lazily around a small town was a visit to a new/ old world. The bark of a dog or the jingle of its collar threw him into squeals of delight. Wheels were to make go around; flowers were to kiss, to inhale. ... On a boat there is time for all these things. I brought my record­ er and laboriously played "Henry Mar­ tin" and other nautical songs while t he men were gone and the children a patient audience .

We all want to do it again . As for living-full-time on a boat, I think we will wait until John-Eli is 3 or 4. But in the meantime we want t o t'ake some more short chartered trips ...

CONTINUUM IN CHINA From Beatrice Liu (MN): ... Regarding THE CONTINUUM CON­ CEPT (GWS #13 ) , I have been thinking a lot about how children were brought up in pre-Revolutionary China. From birth they were held, jiggled, nursed whenever they fussed, and catered to.

A small child could do no wrong, and was generally given anything he wanted. When they fell down they just lay there waiti ng to be picked up. No one ever said, "Jump ,up!" The adults would run and pick him up and coo over him.

When a younger child came, the older child woul d be sudde nly told, "You are a big brother now. You must ,t ake care of the 1 i ttle one . " In any case at about six he was expected to be completely responsible and obedi­ ent. I have puzzled a lot over how th e transition was made from complete­ ly "spoil ed" to completely subdued.

The only explanation I have been able

to come up with is that the closeness during the first years created such a sense of security that at six the child was ready to leave the nest.

I'm not dogmatiC about this. It's a very superficial interpretation. But the question is interesting.,.

LA LEC HE INTEREST HIGH From Ruth McC\ltchen (KY) : .. , The La Lec he League Interna­ tional Conference in Chicago was a rousing success for the home-school­ ing movement. [ put my daughter AL­ ison into a "1 AM GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING" T-shirt so she could act as a walking billboard. [ carried a container marked "Home-schooling Information - Free Reprints" and we could scarcely walk 10 feet without someone stopping us to learn more. We talked with people allover the con­ ference areas plus others who came to our room in the evenings to ask ques­ tions .

The " Options in Education" ses­ sion was scheduled in a very small room and man people had been denied tickets to t e session . On Saturday morning I discovered ,that there was a larger room available for that ses­ sion. Alison and I set out to procure it and to open the session to all ­ we succeeded' At the 11 o 'cl ock ses­ sion, we delivered announcements to all , the sessions so that everyone would find out that they could attend.

At 1 : 30 people began to trickle in, taking the GWS reprints we had placed on a table outside the room.

By 2:15, there was , standing room only in a rOOm that held 270. Approximate­ ly 3/4 of , those present were specific­ ~ interested in home-based educa­ tion, though other options were to be covered . All of the reprints I'd ordered from you were taken ., .

The interest in unschooling among LLL folk is at about the same pOint homebirth was five years ago.

Now, homebirth is covered separately as a topic instead of in a "child­ birth options " session. I ,,,ouldn't be surprised to see the same for ~s in 1983 at the Kansas City, Mo., 9th International confe r e nc e! .. .

h

3 N.H. UNSCHOOLERS From Pat Savage (NH) : ... 1 am finally writing to you (you won out over laundry), motivated by our good news. Our home education program for 7 year old Jamie has been approved by the Barrington Board of Education . We feel really glad for this decision as we presented our edu­ cational philosophy as accurately as we could and wlil still be able to have a harmonious relationship with the public school system.

Our decision was 6~ years in pro­ cess with the actual hardcore work taking seve ral months so that when friends say, " Oh, I didn't know it was so easy'" we tend to gasp. It was a good process for Jack and me to go through . It was an effort riddled with highs of communion and lows of conflict. We came up with a statement that is rich in the understanding that only a mother and father can give together .

--At any rate, we followed the home schooling guidelines as provided by the State Department of Education (Thank you, Nancy Wallace). We were very fortunate to have the Assistant to the Superintendent, Leon Worthly,

help us with technical aspects of the final plan as he is very interested and supportive of our efforts. My observation has been that generally educators arc more sympathetic to the idea of home schooling (perhaps because they are aware of the diffi­ culties in institutionalized educa­ tion) but that the conservativ~, lay ,public is threatened by the idea . I was a bit nervous that the board would reject our proposal . .. I think presenting our case in a non-threaten­ ing, non-judgemental way, drawing a strong picture with lots , of positive images o[ our home life, emphasizing individual variation as ,far as readi­ ness, all helped to make it seem very acceptable .

The approval is [ or a one year perlod with quarterly evaluations . We feel comfortable with the need to re-evaluate annually as we want to remain open to both Jamie's and his sister Katy's needs. . .. With the realization of the responsibility we have welcomed to educate our own, comes the apprecia­ tion that children learn t hrough mod­ elling during the early years no mat­ ter what we set out to "teach:" If as adults we are growing as we should, waking with a freshness each new day, always learning and enjoying the task of life which is to live it, then our children will learn these things. If we are caught up in impatient and unloving patterns, doing only' the "shoulds" and worrying about the " only-if-I-coulds," then our children may be hard put to grow free of those patterns themselves ...

Elaine Rapp (NH) wrote: ... As the enclosed articles show, I have successfully applied to teach my son, Keith, at home next year ... I offered a well-rounded cur­ riculum but stressed flexibility in all areas so that Keith will pursue that which lies within h~s capabili­ ties, and that which seems too diffi­ cult or to exert pressure on him will be deleted and kept for future use.

New Hampshire seems to be more receptive to home schoolers since the adoption of the State Board of Educa­ tion's "Regulations and Procedures Pertaining to Home Education Programs in New Hampshire" in June of 1980.

Anyone can write for this excellent booklet, to Charles Marston, NH Dept. of Ed ., Division of Instruction, 64 N. Main St., Concord NH 03301 . . . . The school officials were con­ cerned about two questions : (1) Was I providing a stimulating and well­ rounded learning experience, and (2) what method would besl assure them that this would ensue. Our method for revi ew will be to pres e nt a portfolio o[ Keith's work quarterly to a first grade teacher in the school he would normally attend . There will be no standardized testing [or as long as I can put it off; at least until third grade. I don't think this will pre­ sent a problem since my relations so far with school people have been very positive. Although I am willing to cooperate with them, I am adamant about Keith's education following a flexible approach . Should the school people pressure me in any way, it might be necessary to go a legal route to protect the privacy of my home and my right to educate my child­ ren at home .

In preparing my program, I re~ ceived much help from the Home Educa­ tion Resource Center run by my sis­ ter, Meg Johnson (337 Downs St, Ridge-

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

wood NJ 07450) ... In fact my Superin­ te ndent of Sc hools indicated he would be writ i ng her so he could have infor­ matio n on f il e s hould he receive any ot her home schooling requests' I would a l so be wil ling to talk with a ny N.H. families who are home school­ ers , or po t ential home schoolers, regarding any questions or experien­ ces t hey may wish to share .. .

And from Viney Loveland (NH): .. . We and ou r two boys, now 12 and 10, decided to try home school­ ing in February 1979. After they dropped -o u t, the principal came to visit us . We talked for a couple of hour s and he talked to the regional sc hool board . That ' s all the hassle we ' ve gotten . We live in a small town (popula t io n 500) and everyone is friendly . The education thing is ignored by townsfolk and officials both. I t feels strange sometimes, especially when friends of ours a few town s away were getting so many "has ­ sles in Jan-Feb. 1979 .

We have not followed any special course of instruction but tri ed to explore as t he kid s were inspired.

They both lov e t o read and we'd go t o both the Gilsum library and the Keene library each "eek a nd bring home a"rm­ l oa ds of books. ~ow that summer's h e r e, the adventure is mostly out­ doo rs (we live in the woods) "ith butterfly nets, microscopes, and bino­ culars . We all enjoy being a family and learning as a daily and life-long 'vay of living . . .

SUCCESS STORIES From Nevada: ... We have been approved by our school board to keep ou r thr ee boys (12 , 10, and 6) at home for school­ ing . They "ere hesitant, but our 10-page ou tlin e and our appearance at the board meeting convinced" them that we are serious and able to educate our children . They "il l require that the boys be tested each spring, and [ am a bit concerned about that, but ['II face it when the time comes . .. have never been so chal lenged or so excited abou t any endeavo r . . .

From Alexander Dill in Virginia: . . . Afte r many let te rs to and from ou r school superintendent. we were finally given permission to teach our "daughter Al-lita, age 6, at home. " The basis for approval was that my wife update her t eachi ng cer­ tificate from Pennsylvania to meet Virginia s tate requirem en ts. This would hav e entailed my wife going back to school ...

My "ife was approve d by the state for a one - year temporary Virgin­ ia t eac hing certificate . However , prior to her rec eiving permission from the state of Virginia to te~ch in Virginia, "e had written the Super­ intendent. in forming him that we had es tablish e d our own private school to teach our d~ughter. That move , as you advised in your letter, put the icing on th e cake .

Information received from Lhe Giesys "as a I so very helpful . [ would I ike to add th~t for many school offi­ cials who do not readily give support to parents to Leach their ~hildren aL home, " see ing is believing" may be ap pli ed to them ... The immediate good results of hom e instruction reflected

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING "23

in the mannerisms, speaking skills, and happiness of our children were quite impressive to our superinten­ dent . . .

Yvonne Huegel, 2947 Payson St, Hous ton TX 77021 writes: · . . My own children have been in correspondence courses for some eight years now. All four children had one to six years Df schooling in bilingu­ al private schools in MexiCO, or pub­ lic "sc hools in the United States, be­ fore enrolling in correspondence courses .

.. . 1 was never satisfied with the amount of information I was able to get concerning what my children were o r were not learning in school .

When I finally enrolled them in cor­ respondence courses, I was much more satisfied because I felt I could moni­ tor their progress or lack of it . .. I feel that their Scouting, church, and musical activities have given them the opportunities they needed fo r social development . . . . Helping my children with their correspondence courses has been a full-time job for me . I ho pe compu­ ters and television will make the job easier for those parents who may wish to t eac h their own children in the future ...

From Illinois: · .. We teach our children - 11 and 12 years old - at hom e . .. Our children get their books from Christ­ ian Liberty Academy, and we like them very much. It is expens i ve but they are very fine books . · . . Our family qnd friends who know about this think we're just ter­ rible ... The strange thing is, the same parents who condemn us a r e the ones "ho a r e always complaining about the terrible things going on in their childre n's classrooms. Or tell me they wouldn't want to be tied down so much. Their biggest thing is, " You're not a teacher - ho" can you do this to your children?" But I feel I am their teacher and have been since­ they were born . And one who loves them and really cares that the y learn, not just ma th and spelling, but how to shop, check prices, buy a ticket at the airport, bake bread, raise vegetables, pl~y the piano, make their own bookcases, o rder books and pick out books at the library . . .

Now people are saying, "You know, your children are so polite, so friendly, ho w do you do it?" They have been home now for two years and haven't learned yet that children are supposed to be rude, smart back, or not speak when called . My only regret i s I didn't do it sooner with all our children ...

A Tennessee reader writes: . . . Well, at long lasL we have taken the first step . We have en­ rolled our 12 year old son in Clon ­ lara's Home Based ~ducation Program for the rest of this school ye~r and unless unforeseen things happen, plan to enro ll him in the 7th grade there also .

We had gotten along fine, teach­ ing him at home all this ' 80-81 year, excepL for the first two weeks, until just recently. The principal at the sc ho o l kept pushing for a doctor's certificate and after pinning our doc­ tor down, we couldn't get o ne ... We

liked the Clonlara information we had received and had a discussion with Dr. Pat Montgomery in which she told us the ~rocedure on how to withdraw him .. . The principal wasn't too sur­ prised and" said he had heard of Dr .

Montgomery. The only thing he did men­ tion was that we might have to appear before the school board and/or submit our curriculum that we planned to use ... We will keep you posted on developments, if any. . .. Our son is a much happier per­ son now and we truly believe it is because of our teaching him at home .

We have become a more closely knit family because of it ...

Rosalyn Banning (TN) wrote: ... This is the second year we have had Lewis home with us .. . Like many, we have been using the Ca l vert course. Like many, we have found it both boring and frustrating at times .

The first year we followed their instructions to a T and just about gave up on the wh ole idea . We are still using the course but no longer worry about their day to day coverage of material. I'm sure they would not ap pr ove of our method but we are much more satisfied ...

GOOD NEWS FROM N.M. From Cassie Tyler, PO Box 908, Holloman AFB NM 88130 : . .. What we have done is to go with the home schooling idea but com­ bined four families . We hGve nine stu­ dents with abouL 14 gro"n-ups dona­ ting time to teaching so we have a regular schedule worked out - hours from 1 to 5:15 so people can come after work. It's working very well and we were able to get some neat books and ideas through your newslet­ ter .. . Fortunately several of our peo­ ple are la"yers so we have no prob­ lems with the legal aspects ... [ Fr om a later letter: 1 Can't tell you jllSt how excited we are about our school - the kids are thrilled! It's a child's dream for a school . We took away the stress and removed the learning barriers put there by other types of schools and what we have, as John Holt has said, left the child ' s natural desire to learn everything in Sight. One of our small problems has been to get them to stop working long enough for a break and start another class .

If we can be of any help to oth­ ers to create similar learning situa­ tions, by all means print whatever you like. If need be, we could get up a more detailed explanation of our set-up in the form of printed materi­ al and for probably $1 to cover expen­ ses we could mail it to anyone inter­ ested . ._. Incidentally, with nine stu­ dents, we have Mexican, Negro, Indi­ an , and white - can ' t beat that for integration' ...

2ND FAMILY IN WAKEFIELD From Barbara Rodriguez (MA ) : . . . During this past summer, my husband and I "ere looking for alter­ natives to sending our children to school in September. The distance to the school was the reason at first, but it became much, much more than that after reading TEACH YOUR OWN. I

10 used the order form at the back of the book to order GWS , as I was inter­ ested in 'the directory.

When I received GWS, I found the names of Mary and Tom Maher who also lived· in Wakefield. I called them and asked how they went about taking t heir son out of school, realizing that we would be dealing with the same superintendent. They told me the procedure they had to go through to get the ap~roval of the School Commit­ tee and the Superintendent of Schools.

My husband and I typed up a le t ­ ter and made an appointment to see the Superintendent. When we met, We were expecting to have somewhat of a difficult time. He said he already had experience with this request be­ fore because there was another family in Wakefield (Tom a nd Mary) already teaching at home. He gave us permiss­ ion and said he would cooperate with us by giving books, papers, access to school, and so forth. .

I received a letter in the mail today saying that the principal of the school applauded my desire to edu­ cate my children at home and would co­ operate with us. I received books today from what wou ld have been my daught e r Jennifer's teacher. My son's teach er said s he would also be glad to cooperate in any way she can . A very surprising attitude, I believe, has occurred here. I am amazed!

Tom and Mary Maher really broke the ice here in Wakefield. I believe they had the difficult task. I would like to thank them both for their help ...

GEORG IA UNSC HOOLERS From Connie Shaw , 4818 Joy Ln, Lilburn GA 30247: ... During ·1980 -81, I kept my childre n out of school and taught them at hom e, and I plan to continue with home schooling this year. ... My husband and I were becom­ ing disenchanted with the local schools when we met several people who had taught their ch ildren at hom e . Their enthusiasm encouraged us to think serious ly" about the idea .

The reading of several books'on the subject helped to increase our conf i­ dence. During the latter part of the summer, we experimented with some structured home schooling before mak­ ing the decision not to en roll our childr en in the local public school.

We hav e five c hildr en ... It has been a challenge keeping them all busy. There have been good days and bad, but many of the problems we faced at the beginning have disap­ peared with the passage of tim e . ... We often take trips to places such as the zoo, museums, parks, and local hi storical sites ... We have never had-a television set in our hom e. This gives everyone in the fami­ ly more time for such pursuits as r eading , playing, a nd wo rking . Work is an important part of our home school routine. The c h ild r e n have assigned household c hores to do eac h day. A nearby public sc hoo l sys t em broadcasts educatio nal programs on public radiO, 3nd the children enjoy list ening to these .

During the winter we hold school in a n extra bedroom, but whenever the we a th er allows, the garage is our classroom. It is full of desks, chairs, tables, and shelves full of books, e du cational games, a nd toys.

The ch ildren enjoy being o nly a few steps from the outdoors. They are fr ee - to run out and play whenever

they 'feel the urge. Usually, they quickly return to their work with renewed interest after running off some energy .

We buy many of our textbooks, workbooks, and instructional mater­ ial? at used book sales. Many texts sell for only 40 or 50 cents. Two teacher stores located nearby also serve as sources of materials. My hus­ band collects books and has assembled a respectable library of several thousand ... It is most satrsfying to see one or more of the children off in a corner or stretched out on a bed absorbed in a book . . .. Hom~ school has helped to strengthen our family a nd bring us closer together . There seems to be less friction between family members despite the fact that we are together most of the time ...

LARGE FAMILY AT HOME From John Walker, Rt 2, Bruce WI

54819:

... In 1973 in Kansas City, Mo . , we started desch ool ing.by letting our children go to school four da ys a week instead of ' five . Our school prin­ cipal 't ho ught it was a gr eat idea (not publicly, of course). He wished all children would do the same and save the 5t h day for those who needed extra help . . . . Ou r children then spent two years in an A.C . E. program in Eau Claire, Wisc . where they lea~ned to study on their own. Also this put th.em "out o f sight - out of mind" as far as the system was concerned .

When we started at home after our move to Racin e, Minn., in 1978, we were careful to maintain this prinCiple . People get very upset if th ey see a child who should be in school. ... We lean heavi l y to arts and this allows the children to express creatively . One hour eac h day is spe nt in si nging. We hav e pr oduced four 20-minute programs on videotape.

These hav e bee n viewed o n Pub lit Access Cable TV. Our mo r e formal pro­ gram was the Weber and Rice cantata, "Joseph a nd Hi s Amazing Technicolor Coat ." TheY,are now producing their own adaptation of "Th e Little Prin ­ cess ." They chose the play and are making the costumes . The m.ost chal­ le nging part is a wa rdrobe for the doll, Emily . . . .. We have 10 of our 15 childr en at home. Our older son9 have been willing and effective teachers (no offic i al education credentia l s). All of the family a r e working together in a family i ndustr y of restoring old pianos.

Up to the present we have main­ tained a strict schedule and a tradi­ tional curriculum . This year we are moving int o a "free school" concept.

We are travelling extensively to visit other large families who are interested in home schooling ...

SUPPORT IN VA. From Dimitri Shelton in Virginia : ... We have six chi ldren a nd last year we took two of the gir l s out of public schools .. . When I started teaching them at home, I went through all the pains and anguish 1 guess mos t of us co n tend with. But since learning about you and your litera­ ture, I feel a great burden has been lifted (rom my shoulders .

Several of us who were acquaint­ ed previously decided to get together just to be able to talk about our frustrations. And then one of our group visited Theo Giesy [ see GWS #11, "Ruling in Va." 1 We had known about her for some time, as we live in the same town, but all of us felt we didn't want to get too involved in each ot her's educating. How unin­ formed and naive w~ were. That ~as the bes t thing tha~ ever happened to us. Theo came to a meeting and intro­ duced us to your wo rk. We are ever so grateful. None of us have done much teaching since . We have several more people that are inter ested in home schooling and will be joining our group.

We've had no trouble with the authorities. I merely requested a transfer slip for a private school .

We keep a low profile as much as poss­ ible. ... Since I've begun reading, I've developed a different thinking about my c hildr en . Not viewing them as charges to be taken care of and directed, but as people. ... I'm tryi-ng to put some of this into effec t with the three young­ er children . Jessica, 6, doesn't like to be taught and I have left her alone mostly because I was trying to work with Sheri, 12, and Teresa, 9.

Now Jessica is reading and wants me to help her. Amy, 4, wants to do everyt hing Jessica does and I'm help­ ing her, too . ... 1 feel very co nfident now that we did the right thing, ~nd was able to answer that when questioned by a relative . If someone had as ked me before if I were su re I was capa~ ble of t eac hing my children,' I would probably have answered, I think so.

Now thanks to you I say, Yes, I am ...

EARLY GRADS IN CALIF. Wes Beach, 149 Casa Lind a Ln, Aptos CA 95003 , writes: . .. 1 have just read most of TEACH YOUR OWN ... I am a public high school teacher elbowing my way in the Y direction through the X-bound crowd . I am responsible for a class called " Exploring Advanced Education" in which I teach kids how to read school policies, rules, procedures, and law to enable them to discover what op ti ons ex i st and to chart their own routes through the system . Some of my s tud ents spend virtually all their time in correspondence study and/or college classes.

Whatever expertise I have 1 gained in dealing with my own two ch ildr e n . Brian, the older, was bored from Qay One of school. He spent the third grade in a (ree school, and from the fourth grade on (in public school) I sent advanced work (or him to do in class . (He still did a lot for the regular classwork.) At _the beginning of the fifth grade he was ready for algebra and, with much trep­ idation, we arranged for him to audit a community college class in t hat sub­ ject. The class met daily, but Brian only attended three sessions per week so as not Lo interrupt his elementary school work unduly . He easily mas­ tered the algebra . During the follow­ ing year he audited several more col­ lege classes-and performed admirably in them. I attempted to pave the way for him to continue on this course in junior hi gh, but I was stopped in my tracks by the principal, whose exact words, once she saw what 1 was driv­ ing at, were, "I hate kids like

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

that." That remark, along with sup­ po rt from Julian Stanley of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth at Johns Hopkins, led me to take Brian out of school .

In California, as you probably know, there is a law that allows for home teaching by tutor; however, there are a number of rather restric­ tive guidelines, one of which is that the tutor must have a California cre ­ dential . Since 1 am credentialed for grades 7-14, this major obstacle was easily overcome. One telephone conver­ sation with a school secretary, in which 1 informed her that Brian would be working with a tutor rather than ,coming to school, was all that was eve r necessary . Neither the principal nor anyone else called me back, no one asked for a curriculum, and no official requested documentation or testing ...

He continued to audit college classes in what would hav e been his seventh grade year, and he also worked for an hour a week with a tutor (not me) who encouraged him to write. He was reaching college level mathematics, and we felt it was fool­ ish for him to continue to audit; we believed that he should be allowed to matriculate in the community college.

After a six-month campaign, which cov­ ered the ground from here to Sacramen­ to and included some fascinating con ­ versations and letters, and after everyone said, "W e 'd like to help, but the answer is no," 1 found a loop­ hole in,the Education Code (which has since been plugged) that would allow Brian to be admitted through GED test­ ing . He was .

From t hen o n it was easy . He met the regular requirement s for admis­ sion to the University of Californ ia, graduated from the Santa Cruz campus with honors in information science two weeks after turning 17, and is now working happily in the computer field . He is also very much more a whole human being than he would have been if he had remained in school.

My daughter Alison needed (or so we thought at the time) the contact with agemates that school provides. 1 now think that contact may have been harmful in the ways you have pointed out . She mastered algebra and most of geometry in junior high by means of correspondence courses; she worked on them in class instead of doing the regular math. Because she was not fin­ ished with geometry when she £ntered high sc hool, she scheduled a five­ period day and kept the sixth period open fo r her correspondence work .

This was against the rules, but a vice-principal was helpful in this and other matters.

Alison arranged a four-period day in her sophomore year and en­ rolled in an additional four communi­ ty college classes during the year. A recent California law allows a person to attend community college classes on a part-time basis at any age; the permission of the college and of the releasing district is required . I teach a computer programming course a the local community college; one of my students last fall was in the fi fth grade.

Alison also ea rn ed a California Certificate of Proficiency, which obviated the necessity of meeting high school graduation requirements .

When school closed at the end of the year she went off for summer session at the Irvine campus of the Universi ­ ty of California; her Certificate al low ed her to atte nd even though she was not yet a high school junior. Dur­ ing her junior year at high school,

GROWI NG WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

she took only those courses that interested her, attended three commun­ ity college courses, and came to the class 1 have mentioned at my high school. She intended to attend summer session again this summer at UCI, but changed her plans when she got a job she wanted very much . She wil be fully eligible to enter UCl as a full-time student after three more community college classes, and will have spent 48% of the usual time in high school classes .

There are many short cuts. This is what I teach the kids in my high school class, and 1 would be most interested in sharing what 1 know with your readers; what 1 know has largely to do with kids using school " as a resource for purposes of their o\.Jn .11

... 1 would also be pleased to help any family with unschooling, but 1 suspect, at least in fighting legal battles, families in California don ' t need much help. For a long ti~e there have been two ways for parents to remove their children from sc hoo l.

The fi rst involves the statute that allows for individual tutoring; this law specifies that the tutor be certi­ fied, that a specific number of hours of instruction'in mandated subjects take place daily, that there be a min­ imum number of days of instruction each year, and (most ridiculous), that the instruction take place be­ tween the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM. As I have already mentioned , it may be that no one will check on any of this, but the fact that these provi­ sions exist may cause some worry for unschoolers.

Second, parents may register their home as a private school. This involves filling out an annual Pri­ vate School Affidavit and following guidelines, a summary of which runs 10 pages. ... In my county (Santa Cruz) at least, it is nQw impossible for schools to do much of anything about truants; the compulsory education law is unenforced and ·unenforceable . .. · When parents simply take their child­ ,en out of school, the school has lit­ tle legal weaponry to fall back on . ..

It is possible, but' unlikely, that an unsympathetic school administrator could stir up some legal harassment ...

A PERFORMING FAMILY Amel Zachai, PO Box 543, Camden ME 04843, writes: ... 1 have two daughters who are now 23 years old and who did not attend schools . They are beautiful, loving, clear-thinking individuals.

They are far from un~ducated and know more than most adults ... though what they do know is quite different since we live a televisionless life and always have .

1 also have a son of 12 who is growing up totally free of the crip­ pling confinement of classroom and schools . He has never been to school a nd is an intelligent, versatile, flexible, peaceful, personable, and friendly person who feels comfortable with adults ... He was an important member of our performing mime company from age 3 to 6, at which time he and I became clown partners with Ringling Brothers' Circus and toured with one of the road shows . Since then we have travelled t~gether through Switz~r­ land and have lived a short time in Denmark.

We continue to perform sometimes when asked, but our current study is

11 of ships and sails and the sea. This winter we will be sailing the Carib­ bean. He is a valuable deck-hand and teaches adults about sailing, boats, the sea, navigation and chart-read­ ing .. .

We all love to study, and this we do through books which we find it libraries or in book stores, and through finding places and people who are involved in the things'~e are interested in ... Education for us has been, and continues· to be, a very natural process. I also notice that we are all very child-like in our hap­ piness and curiosity about things ...

HOME-SCHOOLED BLIND CHILD From Janet Seraphin, 322 Bryn Mawr Av, Bala Cynwyd PA 19004: ... You will be pleased to know that the small amount of information on learning disabilities which you sent has been enough to help me final­ ize my decision to keep Austin at home next year. 1 feel a great relief as 1 have been under much pressure about sending him to the local school for blind children.

Presently I have hired several people to work with Austin. He is only four so I have not begun any­ thing too formal. He h~s been taking piano lessons once a week for over a year ana greatly enjoys it . I have found two other teachers to work with him several pours a week playing at the piano, the guitar, drums, making things with fabrics and other good­ ies, walking and exploring (Austin is slower than other children as he'has not developed his muscles by running and jumping as he would have with nor­ mal vision) and so on . I spend a great deal of time reading with him and have found that he enjoys books for older children as they are far more descriptive ...

IN SPITE OF "HANDICAPS" Patricia Ann Mordes (FL) wrote: ... Our youngest, Gabriel, has the Ataxia type of cerebral palsy and can not walk or talk much (at age 3) .

He is a beautiful child and is not paralyzed although his muscles are very weak . The doctor has assured us that he will walk eventually and that he will be mentally retarded. I asked him if he would sign a paper stating that. He said, " Of course not'" I won­ der why, if he was so sure?

Since Gabriel has no other health defects, his heart is fine and so forth, we have stopped going to doctors, and my husband and I are reading everything in the library and all that we can obtain on cerebral palsy. We have found that many C.P. children are not mentally handicapped as previously thought (although some are ) . ... A friend of mine "turned us in" to Unit·ed Cerebral Palsy. She was "helping me out." U.C.P called me and said someone would come to our home and "work" with Gabe, free. Being under a lot of fire from friends, I toid her OK. The first visit, the woman told me that Gabe would probab ­ ly never catch up with "normal " child­ ren and I shouldn't get my hopes up .

Whenever 1 said something positive about Gabe, she would counter it with something negative. She told me that she would bet this was a case of brain damage although she wouldn 't sign anything saying that . I felt so

..

12 depressed after her visits until my husband and I decided to terminate the situation wit h he r. All this ha s taught me one thing, that most profes­ sionals aren 't very professional or very smart .

Gabe is crawling very well now, can sit alone and bears his own weight on his l egs . He wa lk s around the chairs and sofas whi l e holding on . He brings story books to his brother, father, or me to be r ead to h im. Gabe has made a lot of progress i n the ,last thr ee months and I have confid ence in his continued progress a nd success.

Daniel (8) has learned, as have we all, from this experience with our baby . Everyone in this world is unique, we a ll learn at different rates, but we all do learn, and be­ cause a person is slower in learning than most others is not reason to assume that that person is not a worthwhile individual because he or she is handicapped . . .

From Elaine Bechtold in Pa .: .. . 1 hav e a Down's Syndrome daughter who i s taking piano lessons and doing very well . She just fin­ ished the Green book for Beginners III (John W. Schaum Piano Cou r se) ...

I hav e received severa l copies now of GWS and I like it better al l the ttme. I as a parent am getting more and more confiQent in teaching my girl. I am realizing that there is a missing dimension in education a nd parents have a lot of teaching to do.

But it is rewarding and challenging . ... My school district principal will not give me any teaching materi­ al especially because my child is a learning disability child. Yet I am a taxpayer. In 1978 she was at 0 read­ ing level and now she is up to third grade level because of my help at home . She was in Special Education of the public school for seve n years and now since she is at a Christian Day School and mainstreamed, her whole life is changed . She is happy and learning - even if she is in second grade at the age of 15 ...

My daughter is also in 4-H . She entered her projects in the county fair, and the judge remarked, " She has improved much from last year. " ...

Carol French-Corbett (KY) writes: .. . In our second year at The New School in Cincinnati, we became par­ ents of Sebastian, born with Down's Syndrome. He went with us to school from 10 days old, until we left for our forest farm in the Kentucky moun­ tains when he was 8. Here we are home­ steading with all the activities that that involves and learning how to be more and more self-sufficient. Sebas­ tian, now 9, walks five miles to sc hool, a rural two-room, eight grade school, which he loves because he misses the ot her children that he always had at The New School. We still work with him at home all sum­ mer and holid ays and he is making good progress. Thank you for encoura­ ging paren ts to Assert th emselves and h elping them not to be afraid of their natural role as the first and most impoitant unteachers , their child­ ren will ever have ...

PERCEPTIVE TEACHER/LEARNER Letter~ from Jennifer Seip (NH), the "maverick L.D. expert" in GWS #22:

June 16: ... There's something that makes me resist fighting against learning disabilities per se ... L.O. is both a product and a sympton of our educational system. Learning prob­ lems are caused by our school system and they are are ~he holes in the bal­ loon . The system is trying madly to justify kids not learning before the whole system falls apart. I kno'" this isn't too clear , but I always felt like I was patching up a balloon that I soon realized I didn ' t wa nt to be patched up.

It's frustrating to deal with people about the tip of the iceberg.

I always want to go right to the heart of the matter, whi ch is in this case is learning, not learning prob­ lems ... Learning can be a problem; that's inherent in it. Just like mar­ riage problems are inherent in being married . It doesn't mean the people in the marriage are ~ick ...

The first "L. D." c hild I taught to read taught me how to teach him to read. I just tried everything I could think of and let him show me what worked, what he liked. We had a great time' John became a beautiful reader .

He would conti.nue to get reading help off and on only because teachers would get so frustrated with him - he hated to do homework, or any dumb written work, actually - so he didn't care what answers he put to the com­ prehension questions. So teachers thought he had a reading comprehen ­ sion problem. He was just bored with the stories and bored with having to write answers to questions every time he read!

You wouldn't believe how many kids I had referred to me that way .

The teachers didn ' t care how well they read, if they got the busy work wrong then they must hav e a reading comp reh ension problem . I'd talk to the kids and many ~ould admit they wouldn't even read the story - just look up the answers quickly . Really, I wou ld laugh and have them show me how good they we r e at it - they only wanted to be good enough to get some ans",er do",n to be done wi th it' (How "smart" you were was shown by how fast you could get through the r ead­ ers . ) I would explain to the kids what the consequences were , that I kn ew they could read and understand but their teachers didn't ...

I worked with John four years later for written language . Hi s teach­ er said he could read great but could not write. John was the most beauti­ ful writer I ever worked with . When he was in the mood his writing just [lowed, as opposed to'many A stu ­ dents. He just didn't like to use punctuation or fix up spelling. He could do · the ' part that can't be taught' His strengths were rarely see n in school. A beautifully crea­ tive student seen as a "poor stu­ dent . " What a crime' ... 1 just read the Leslie Hart article on learning disabilities you sent me . Ho", I wish I had that when I was teaching' It ' s the first time I've heard the physical make-up of the brain us'ed to disprove learning disabilities . He gives technical evi­ dence to support what ' I've always believed caused le arning failure ­ that it's due to stress. When I want­ ed to find out how much a c hild real­ lY kne"" I would create some wayt11at ",ould reduce the stress for that child ...

Every Specialist Meeting at sc hool was an argument concerning this . In the fe", cases I could get people to belie0e the c hild ",asn't L.D., they would then decide he/she

"'as lazy - they couldn't (or didn't want to) s ee anything in between' ...

July 28: 1 spent a week in Paris the end of ' June with some friends . It was, of course, wonderful' It's been six or seven years since I "'as last in Europe and the language barrier ",as really interesting in regards to learning. I kept saying to my friend: "Ho", could anyone be afraid that c hil­ dren won't learn to read in today's society??'" We were exhausted from the visual stimuli that bombarded us with French wo rds. Not kno",ing ",hat signs, menus, etc ., said really made me so much more aware of how much of a disadvantage you are at if you can't read - how kid s must feel (as whe n they're l earn in g to talk) and how naturally motivated they would be just living in the ",orld. I remember vividly one subway ride ",atching my­ self look at all the advertisements, trying to figure out what they saicl, making associations between words and pictures, the words I already knew, a nd asking my friends who knew far more French than I do. I learned the words that were most important to sur­ viva l and most emotionally charged for me, first . I laughed at the idea of going to Paris to sit in a class­ room from 9 to 3, five days a week, to learn about Paris and how to speak, read, and write French. I was learning so incredibly fast by simply living' One part that's interesting is that I experienced a lot of frustra­ tion whereas kids don't necessarily.

For example, I got very frustrated trying to read the menu. I wan t ed to be able to glance over it myself and quickly decide what I wanted - I didn't want to miss anything good - I ",a nt ed to know exactly what the menu said ... As a wait re ss, however, I don't see kids being frustrated that they can't read the menu . They want what they want - but they seem per­ fectly co nt ent wi th their parents telling them the c hoices (and onl y naming those items they know they like) .. . Maybe they think they aren 't capable of figuring out the ",ords on the menu - that their teachers will teac h them these ",ords .. . If this is true then sch061s are stopping the natural r eading processes i n many children even before they get to school! Kids aren 't doing what I did in. Paris because they don't think they are capable of it themselves ...

Several parents have told me that their first graders had cried at night at the very beginning of the school year because they hadn ' t been taught to read yet - they thought they would walk into that classroom and almost by magiC their teacher ",ould quickly bestow on them this skill . . .

I leave tomorrow for New York to spend the week "'ith my niece and nephew who are at my parents for the summer ... I'm really excited to have so much time with them - actual day­ to-day living rather than quick visit­ ing. I ",ant to do purposeful, "natur­ al," kinds of things "'ith them - not activities drummed up by adults for the purpose of teaching kids. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how possi­ ble this will be. But I'll consider it a challenge' PS - Just a note about frustra­ tion - I think it has to do with the emp hasis you put on the final goal .

I'm rebuilding my front porch (a com­ pIe te ly new, task for me). It I"oul d be terribly frustrating if I was only doing it in order to have ne", steps ­ there's just too many new skills to

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

learn. Instead I see it as a n opportu ­ nit y to learn basic carpentry and home construction s kill s through a project I can do all by myse lf - I!m only asking for consulting help . I 'm thoroug hl y e nj oyi ng the process and al l it offers me - plus I get a new porch for my hous e .. . ~: My visit with my ni ece a nd n~,.as wo nd e rful ... One day ... I took a quilt outside under the trees a nd asked KiH('n (7) if she wo uld like to write her mother a l et­ ter - she had onl y seen her onc e in the l ast six wee k s . Sh e was tentative - sai d somet hing about not knowing how to write. I was surprised she hesi t ate d - s he was always famo u s fo r loving books, eve n as a baby. I thought s he felt r ea ll y good about h erse l f with school.

I did what always wo rk ed when was teaching - I let Karen know i n my actions a nd wo rd s that I wou ld give h er all the information she wa nt ed I set it up so s he cou ldn't fail . [ wrote her fi rst se nt e nc e down, what she chose to say, a nd she copied it.

She was hes i tant at first, not know­ ing what to say a nd afrai d of a l l the wor d s she cou ldn't spel l - a nd in no time s he was a ll exci t ed wit h a mil­ lion things t o say a nd only as king for a few wo rd s to be spe ll e d - she didn ' t wa nt to stop ' The damage we do to c hi ldre n in schooli ng them is so obvious and suc h a crime' I wanted to sweep Kar en up a nd take h er away and never l et her in a schoo l again . She learned so much f r om writing t hat o ne letter with n o t eac hing - a nd she's l ear ned so little in two years of sc ho o l with all th at teaching.

Jhoug ht s on the urge to teach: I, who e nj oy so muc h watching a c hild t eac h him/hers elf a nd believe in it so strongly, observed myself wanting t o "t eac h" Ka r e n when she \.as writing h er letter . Oh, I was n' t going to teach her as much as most teachers would , but oh, how I wanted to get some teaching in' Really, it was all I could do to ho ld back t he clever words' I wa tch ed myself lik e an out ­ side observer . She spelled "want " fo r " went" and .1 knew just the questio n to ask to get her t o r ea li ze the c9r ­ rect spelling . How presumptious of me to get (unsol-ic i ted) in the way of h e r learning! She was having a great time and in a second I could have ruined it. Wh y?? Why is it so hard to l et imperfect things stay imperfect?

I knew how t o make th a t letter l oo k great and [ wa nt e d to do j t. I was excited at h ow great it WAS a nd yet not satisfied - and i t was her letter' Some peop l e wou ld say It's s uch a littl e thing, it doesn't matter. In a way it do es n' t, but in a way it mat­ t e rs so much - to intrude o n people when we are fully awa r e of wha t influ­ ence tney al l ow us to have o n their lives because they admire and love us so~

I think a l ot of it is ego . If Karen's le~ter comes out grea t and I know it's a l ot because ·of me, then I'm a great teacher and therefore a great person. Teac h ing i s suc h a super i o r positio n to be in. · 1 was as king my friend who is a ca rp enter some questions abou t build­ ing my po r c h. He was gr eat at drawing pictures and helping me find the ans­ wers I nee ded . I . t o ld him t o drop by any time and see my progress, and th at he'd be guara nt ee d not to be as ked to help ou t, that I want to do it a ll myself . . . First he said in thae-case he'd come and watch, and th e n he said no, it might drive him

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

crazy if I was doing somethi ng the r ea l slow way. I asked why , kn owi ng th at feeling myself. He didn't kn ow just that he hated seei ng someone struggle - like watchi ng someo ne un­ tangle a ball of string ...

If we become more at peace with ou r ow n struggles and o ur own mis ­ takes will we then be more comforta­ ble a nd t o l era nt of ot he rs ? I think thi s may be the gist of it .

My r oommate and I, in o ur adven­ tur ou s projects around the ho u se , have found that if we ho ld off on asking f o r he lp at our most fru s tra­ ting moments and go on instead to discover th e solution ou rselv es, that th e rewards and satisfactions are tremendous. I am learning to have more a nd more faith in my own abili­ ties to figur e out mechanical prob­ l ems - a nd the a ns wers a r e usually so simple it's amazi ng! ...

Se pt. 7: I just read the excerp ts you se nt me from my l et t e r s and am o nc e agai n struck by the co n­ tr ast between when I talk about schoo ls and whe n I t a lk about l ea rn­ ing ou tsid e of schools . One is full of such negative e nergy a nd the o ther with so much positive ene rgy' I don't like the way I am when I talk about sc hoo l s - I am c rit iciz ing and a ngry a nd negative . .. But I realize that talking about it can help people who a r e in it, and who wil l get out as th ey get support from ot hers who have bee n there ...

NO LONGER "STUPID" Diane Doty, Rt 1 Box 12, Baileys Harbor WI 54202 , wrote: ... You and all the o ther read ­ ers/wri ter s of GWS have confirmed, finally , th e fee ling s I had during all those years in school. It took me twenty years to le a rn how to e nj oy learning again . All my life I have fe lt s tupid · and that' s no place to be while rai si ng c hildr e n. I don't fee l stupid now, no thanks to anyone but myself and my fam il y ...

LEARNING PHOTOGRAPHY Fr om gandy Sapello Madkiff (N J ) : ... When Donald was in first grade, I started t eac hing him at home beca~se I realized that he thought he was a poor reade r . . . He had l ea rned to r ea d before he e n te r e d kind erga r­ ten, and t he sc hool had co nvi nced him that he couldn 't. It took several years a nd a lot of Mad Magazines, but he l ear ned agai n .

The first year and half that he was home, we had thr ee o r four ot he r kids with us : my youngest , then age two, who learned more than any"one, a 6 year old , two 14 year olds, plus severa l high sc hool students who helped us wi th puppets, stories, and especially photog r aph y . Photography was a focal poi nt for ou r activitie~ the fi rst yea r, but [ could not maste r the technicalities of th e cam­ era or th e developing process, so we asked for he lp. I kn ew that my inabil­ ity to und ersta nd the mechanics a nd mat hema ti cs involved was bas ed on a combi na ti on of lack of time, inter­ es t, concentration, a nd confidence . ... We took an old 35mm camera with black a nd white film on most of our trips to the park, e tc. Donald a nd Steve (14) devel o pe d some pic­ tures in th e ir own darkroom, a nd then interest waned for a while .

13 For seve ral reasons, Donald went back to sc hoo l for three yea rs - it '.as a "ni ce, " s ma ll, individualized private school t hat gradually took on a ll th e aspects of SC HOOL, a nd at age 12 he decided t o learn at home again .

John was 6 and very happy to stay a t h ome also .

Do na ld has maintained an inter­ es t in ph o t og r aph y , especially movie making, and about a year ago I start­ e d to t a ke some pictures of the child­ r e n at the nursery school where I wo rked part-time. Abou~ the same time a couple that I knew need ed someo ne to develop their B&W shots to accom­ pany their f re e -l a nce newspaper arti­ c les. Dona ld vo lunt eere d (for a price). As we set up the darkroom this time, I found myself wanti ng to understand how to develop the pic­ tures so I could e nlarg e some o f my nursery sc ho o l shots . I found myself spe nding hours in the ~arkroom making enlarge me nts and learning as I went a l ong. I ass ist ed Donald when he did his dev e l opi ng be cause we fou nd it better to have o ne person do the " ca m­ era" work a nd another do th e chemi­ cals .

Si nce my work has evolved mainly into writi ng articles.on e ducation a nd th e legislature, I tried to fig­ ure out ways to combine the two tal­ e nts. I have out lined a book on th e nursery schopl that will include my ow n pictures f o r illustrations . I put fliers up at th e nurs e ry school with some samples of th e pictures . a nd offe r ed t o tak e pi c tur es . .. lf the y do not like any of the shots, I don't c harg e anything. So far I have done two birthday parties and one wed ­ ding ...

Th e l ast few days I have read through tw o years of Modern Photo­ ~ trying t o decide on the best ca mera ( I have be e n using Donald's) for the t y pe of pictures I want to do . I still haven't found an adequate exp lanat io n of the merits o r disadvan­ tages of a n f/l.2 over an f/l .4 , but I have learned about apertures, shut­ ters, depth of field and lenses. I have learned things that a few years ago I did no t have the inclination o r desire to l ea rn because I now have ade qu ate reason to tackle the learn­ ing inv o lv ed ...

THE BAD HABIT BOGEY [J H: J The o ther da y I f ound these no Les I made many years ago of the speech o f my n e phew, then four o r five years old : r a'int oats J dot it for my birsday

toopid fool! rash (crash) he lme t (a lso ) s hr as h helme t bri ng (spri ng) dill ( kill ) tab (stab) dis one, dat one betuz (beca use ) b rack (b l ac k ) Fanta Fe (Sa nta Fe) darbage (ga rbage ) more people tomin (coming) in de in your be (get in your bed ) fes hin ( r e freshing) tasafy (cata stro phe ) o rganiz e tese tars (these cars) flas he s (glasses) t l"'O (mosquito) s r e e (free) Bolks,.age n fayer (sweater) soldiers (s houlders) fraffer (tractor) peash (please)

14 I loved reading these notes, since they brought that little boy, whom I loved very much, so vividly back to life. As the words show, though his vowels and stresses were always correct, there was no consis­ tent pattern in his shifts of conson­ ants,' so it was almost impossible for people who did not know him well to understand him; when he spoke to them, which he liked to do, being happy, fearless, and friendly, some older member of the family usually had to translate. But being the adored youngest of six children, he had no trouble communicating. We in the family all knew or were glad to figure out what he was trying to say, and he in turn easily understood our standard English. He did not mix up our consonants, even if he did his own. Now and then, in affection and courtesy, and just because we liked the sound, we used some of his words in our own talk. His family still often speaks of "hangburgers" and "chucksin" (chicken), words invented by earlier small children.

Nobody in the family worried about this boy's unusual speech. Not for a second would they have consid­ ered treating him as if he was sick. and calling in some kind of special­ ist to cure him. It wasn't even a mat­ ter of seeing his speech as a problem that in time would cure itself; they didn ' t see it as a problem . They knew from experience, which they had the sense to trust, that when little chil­ dren start to talk they talk oddly, and some more oddly than others, but that in time they want to talk like the people around them, and soon l earn to do it, just as they learn to do a thousand other difficult things.

And so it was in this case. When I saw the boy in the January of his fifth year, he was still talking much as those notes would suggest. When I phoned the family in March, he ans­ wered the phone, and his speech was so normal that at first I thought I was talking to his older sister. Not a trace of those consonant s hift s was l eft. Furthermore; having heard them as "wrong" and purged them from his own speech, he became very indignant if anyone else in the family used them. They had to learn to stop talk­ ing about things like "fraffers," which they did with some regret, as they had be~ome v ery fond of those words.

My point in tell'ing this story is to attack once again the mistaken and harmful Bad. Habit Th~ory of Teach ­ ing, which holds that every time a child makes a mistake, in speaking, reading, learning music, or whatever, some adult must instantly correct it, or it will turn into a "bad habit," which will become harder to correct every time the child does it, and soon impossible to correct at all .

The theory is simply not true, does not fit facts we can all see for ourselves. Most of the many things children learn - to walk, talk, read and write, etc., they learn by trying to do them, making mistakes, and then correcting these mistakes; in short, they learn by what mathematicians call "successive approximations."

They do something, compare t'he way they did it with the way the bigger people do it, see some of the differ­ ences (their mistakes), and try to reduce these differences (correct their mistakes).

It is like what we all do whe n we try to draw pictures of people or objects; the first ones are very bad likenesses, the next ones come a lit­

tle closer, and finally, if we per­ excerpts from GWS. I gave each person sist, we may be able to draw a fairly hand outs which explained everything and one of which was a subscription good likeness. But this is not at all form for GWS. a matter of finding all the " mis­ takes" in our first drawing and, one It all went pretty well. The peo­ by one, correcting them. ple were mostly young and unmarried.

No one opposed me (at least openly) .

Please don't misunderstand me as They asked polite questions about saying that learning ha s nothing to socialization and "how will he ever do with developing gOfd hab its. A very important part 0 learning all be able to get a job without a diplo­ physical skills, music among them, is ma?" consciously, deliberately, and at One of the instructors became first awkward l y teaching our nerves furious at my remarks ... She told me and muscles to do certain things, and later that we were on different sides then doing them so often that in time of the track. I told her that was all we can do them without having to right, I didn't expect everyone to think about how to do them. All agree with me. This is America, free­ skilled ath l etes do this . Musicians dom of speech, a nd all that . This of all kinds practice many kinds of lady was (and is) frightened, she scales, arpeggios, etc . , so that when knows that what we say is true. She they meet them in a piece of music has a thirteen year old son who has they can play them quickly and even­ had lots of school problems ... ly. As great a player as Heifetz, technically the greatest violinist of our time, played such exercises at GOOD NEWS FROM UTAH least three hours a day, every day of his playing life. No musicians can From a series of articles in the eve r say, " Now I have those good hab­ Sun Advocate, Price, Utah, 8/19­ its, I can forget about them ." They 8/28/81: have to keep putting those habits back into their neuro-muscular sys­ ... The Utah Home Education Asso­ tems . As Casals said one morning, ciation ... was formed by Kenneth and while doing a simple C major scale on Laurie Huffman [ 641 E Malibu Dr, Salt the cello, "Every day', for fifty Lake City UT 84107; 801-261-3521] and years, I have to find the E. " is designed to aid families in start­ ing private home schools .

No, the poinr-nere is not that good habits are unimportant, but that Private home schoolers are preva­ lent in the state and enthusiasm to since it takes a long time to develop good habits, so it takes just as long "teach children at home" is on the increase. This was evident at the a time to develop bad ones . The idea that we must work hundreds of hours First Annual Convention of the UHEA, to make a good habit, but can make held in Salt Lake City Saturday . bad ones in a few seconds, is obvious­ Two hundred people pre­ ly n onsense . What this means to us as 'registered for the convention and teachers, in turn, is that instead of about 400 were in attendance. The always being in such a big hurry to unexpected overflow of prospective correct our students' mistakes, we and established home-schoolers cre ­ can afford to give them time to ated a crowded but enthusiastic group. notice and correct , them themselves .

Forming a private home school is That list I made of the errors easier than most people at the conven­ in my nephew's speech is only a small tion realized. Legally, under Utah part of the total; half the many law, all that is required of the words he spoke - thousands, for he prospective home-school is to declare had a big vocabulary - came out with the home sc hool or private organiza­ those same kinds of consonant s hi fts. tion a "private school," according to Nobody laughed at or corrected or in Stephen J. Stone. In his paper enti­ any way pointed out these errors; tled "How Do We Form a Legal Private when we ourselves used "hi s " words, School?" Stone stressed the point we spoke in normal voices, as if that Utah law does not require the these words were just as correct as private school be incorporated and any others. When he began to hear the t hat permission is not required from differences between his words and the local school board to form the other people's, and to feel that home school .

The Huffmans started their own these differences made a difference, he made the corrections for himself. private home school, Zenith Home Aca­ In his case, the process was sudden demy Inc., in March . "Zenith Home Aca­ demy is a balance between structure and dramatic, but all children do the and non-structure," Mrs . Huffman same thing as they learn to speak. said. "We use a quarterly method, be­ Writing this, I suddenly remembered . ing in school all year long - summer that one of my sisters for many years said '''mazagi ne'' and "I' m such in a quarter being a very light study load." hurry." My other sister and.I pOinted .. . The purpose of the convention ou t these mistakes to her, scornful­ ly, many times . She ignored us . One was to let the home-schoolers know day she heard those ways of saying they are not alone; that many fami­ things as-wr0ng, and gave them up . lies have taken the plunge and start­ ed their own private home schools, The featured speaker at the con­ vention was John Holt ... He cited TALK ON UNSCHOOLING three basic reasons people take their Patricia Ann Mordes (FL) wrote: children out of the public school sys­ tem. "First, they think that raising ... 1 have been invited to speak their children is their business and at our local junior college, in the not the government's; second, they Child Psychology class, on John Holt enjoy being with their children and and what it's like to school a child helping them learn, and don't want to at home ... I want to make my fifti give that up to others; and third, minutes count. Do you have any sug­ they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically and spirit­ gestions? [ From a later letter:] I gave my ually. " . . . Several families present said talk at the local junior college, to an audience of 28 persons. I took they have children enrol~ed in public schools and some in the private home your advice and told of my personal school. The reason for the " split famexperience with Daniel, and used

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

ilies" is that some children ar e bet­ t er suited for the classroom situa­ ti on, whereas other child r e n wo rk bet­ ter in an unpressured environment such as the home . . . . According to' "The Journal of a Private School" by Dick and Joyce Kinmont .. . "The Singer family began teaching their own children before the provisions of the law were well known . John Sing er was not shot for keeping his childre n our-Qf school .

He was shot because he resisted a rrest whe n he would not honor the court orde r to turn over the children of his second, polygamous wife to thei r fat her" ...

Getting away from this dark cloud the Singer case has brought over the private home school system is what the UHEA is trying to do thr oug h conventions, meetings, and n ewsletters . ..

ORGANIZING AN EVENT Donna asked some of the people who arranged home-sc hooling meetings where John spoke to tell something about their experiences . From Laurie Huffman: , ... About the Home Education Con­ vention held here in Salt Lake City (actually in Murray, a suburb) on August 15th . It was a smashing suc­ cess ... I wi ll try to exp l ain the things t hat were wrong as wel l as right, and hope it will benefit some­ o ne else .

First of all, give yourself PLENTY of time to plan. We ha d only three weeks (it woul d be tedious to explain wh y), and we were working night and day to contact all the state's home schoolers, arrange class­ es a nd teac hers, etc . , and the last minute we di scovered that the build­ ing we had arranged wo ul d n' t begin to hold all the people we had anticipa­ ted . So three days before th e conven­ ti on we went building hunting.

Because we had already mailed out 300 n otices, we ha d to make over 100 phone calls to l et people know about the address cha nge ... We are really grateful for the he lp of people around the state who called fo~ us.

Then we had to make posters to put up at the ori gin al building, and start our program half an hour late to allow people time to arrive who hadn't r eceived word of Lhe c hange .

Our second mistake was to not bring cash t o make c han ge . Registra­ tion at the door was $6 (what a stu­ pid amount!) and we finally h~d to drop it to $5 in order to make change at all , an d our only income of cash was the registrations themselves. At this point I wil l add that we did one thing right - we had someone record­ ing checks and cash as it came in, with the person's name, so we would have a permanent record of who paid .

This a l so help s with ke eping address­ es current for future activities .

Another mistake - we didn't have time to plan for nurser y activities for the younger c hildr en . My youngest daughter volunteered to take charge of the nursery, and luckily the Mount Vernon Academy had a wonderful large nursery room filled with fun things to do. BUT there wer-e sometimes 40 children in that roo m at o nc e, with nothing to do that was truly ente r­ taining, and the young ladies (most ly 10 a nd II year o ld s) who were assist­ ing were pretty frazzled after the first three hou r s . The mothers ,t ended to be very l ax about putting ~heir kids in the nursery and then forget-

GROWIN G WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

ting them, even though we asked them to o nl y use the nurs ery for brief rest periods. So, if we do it again (a nd we will be f or sure), we wi ll put a~ aOUTt in charge, probably one who is professional at that kind of thing ...

Another mistake was that the building had no air condit ioning .

That is pretty much self-explanatory.

August in Uta h is definitely hot and dry . .. Let me add here though, how grateful we re ally are for th e use of the building we had. The principal of Mount Vernon Academy was very kind and cooperative a nd eve n now doesn't mind sending people to ' u s wh o cal l him about the home school convention. . .. 1 have enclosed a copy of the sc h edule form we handed out to peo ­ ple. It explains the mo rn ing sched­ ule, the afternoon classes , and shows the room changes on the back. We also handed out a questionnaire form which would allow us to make judgements as to future events of this type - what c l asses most people wanted, and new ones they might suggest . The majority of peop l e didn't fill o ut the form completely enough for our evaluation, but the 60 or 7.0 who did were ve ry thoroug h . . . Many requested area con­ ventions in which specialists' would travel as a group t o the outlying areas in Utah and Idaho . Another 20­ 25 people volun teer ed to help organ­ ize these conferences . . .

By far our bigges t mistake was in not getting more peopl e to help us with the detail work and the arrange­ ment of the classrooms, setting up, etc . It fell on two families, and we were exhausted when it was allover.

Next time, I will have a l ist of will­ i ng workers handy and start delega­ ting like mad from the start .

Getting in touch with the press is somet h ing I had n eve r done before, and we held off for a long tim e . As it was, the articles in t he pape r with Mr. Holt's in terv.iews brought in such a l arge number of people that we would not have been able to accomo­ date many more from adve rtising ...

All we did was to call th e majo r local pape~s a nd tell them all the info on the conve nti on and when Mr .

Holt would arrive in town. One paper was very excited because they had written about hi~ before ...

We didn't have any funds to begin working toward the convention, and I think this would be a major obstacle for mos t people in home school . We ended up using our own money, and the Kinmonts s har ed the cost~ . We worked with the lon g r ange hope that the convention would cover the costs at least of mailing and printing . We charged only $5 per fami­ ly, and T think thaL is quite low com­ pared to many such conventions . For­ tunately, it covered all costs and left us with enough extra to print our letterhead for the association , hire a lawyer to incorporate the asso­ ciation properly, and even enough at this point to send out our first offi­ cial bulletin . r call that successful. .. . Of course, most of the people in atte nd ance came to hear Mr. Holt.

They were not disappointed. In fact, the question and answer period (one hour) with Mr. Holt, Reed Benson, and Joyce Kinmont was a real success . ..

From Anna Myers (Ont. ): . .. First we checked wit h John about dates and got that finalized .

Then we checked out places - hi gh sc hool audiLoriums, co l lege rooms, and finally settled on York Universi­

15 ty be cause it was close to the air­ port, hotels, etc. The room cost $75 but we had to pay $100 extra for park­ ing. If we did it again, we wou ld check the room qut more carefully, getting a name and phone number of a caretaker, because we didn't have t he air - conditioning turned on and . couldn't find anyone around to turn it on . The room got quite "close" toward the middle of the eveni ng.

The only thing remaining was advertising and tickets. Wendy Pries­ nitz designed the tickets and posters so that they all fit on one sheet .

She had them printed at a quick print­ er and she cut them. I numbered them all by hand. We p~inted 500 tickets and 250 posters.

We sent all of the Ontario mem ­ bers of the Ca nadi an Alliance five posters and asked them to place them in libraries, health food stores, alternative schools, etc . We also sent each member five tickets and asked that they either send the tick­ ets or money back by a certain date .

We just trusted people and got most back but not all.

---Then we sent press releases to all newspapers , radio stations and TV stations within 100 miles .. . We got addresses from a book called "The Ca n­ adia n Almanac and Directory, 1981."

Just two of us did all the organ ­ izing, mainly by phone, and it worked out really well that way . There were a couple of "pr essu re" times, but it wasn't too much for two people . How­ ever, on the night of the meeting, we needed the volunteers we had - the kids, hu sbands, etc - for taking tick­ ets, dir ect ing people from the park­ ing lot, etc. Wendy and I were answer­ ing a lot of "h ome-schooling " ques­ tions from people (as was John') and so had a hard time doing the "organ­ izing" on that night.

As far as money goes, we were out about $60 . If the Secondary Schools Federation had paid John ' s travelling expenses we would have made a profit which we would hav e share d with John . [DR: The Federation had planned to bring John to Toronto for a conference, paying a fee plus expenses ; they cancelled the confer­ ence at short notice . J However, we felt the $60 was well worth all the publicity the Canadian Alliance, John, and home-schooling received. We also felt really good chat we could at least pay John's travel expenses , as we felt bad l y that the big confer­ ence was ca~celled and that John had to come all Lhe Wily up here just for us .

I ' m not sure if there is money to be made at this unless John is there anyway for Some other purpose Hnd his expenses are being paid . I Lhink breaking even might be a good place to starL. ..

And from Cathy Levesque, KEYS TO LEARNING, 2650 W. Trojan Pl., Anaheim CA 92804 : ... We sent announcements to all the SouLh California names in the back of GWS #21 , with a few extras to pass around . We had a very good ad in the Foundation for Human Understand­ ing newsletter, the Iconoclast .. . We would have had a much better turn out but the University only made t he agreemenL firm a few weeks before the conference . That made it very diffi­ cult to advertise .

The presale was 80 people .. . We had approximately 175 people atte nd the conference . If we were able to advertise in time we would have had

16 double the amount.

In the event we had a 16ss,

which we did, we wanted to help cover the costs by having tapes and informa­ tion t o offer for sale·over the next few morths ... We made tapes of all the speakers. Anyone may ssnd for the tapes of the co nference. They are $6 each and approiimately 60 minutes long. John Holt has three tapes. Two (# 100 & 101) are on TEACH YOUR OWN, GWS, cOurt cases and laws, and ques­ tions from·parents and his answers.

The third (# 102) is a discussion of why th e family does not exist for many, and what to do about it; he answers more questions on home­ schooling and o ther id ea s. Tape #103 is Lawrence Williams from the Oak Meadow School; #1 04 is Greg Boden­ hame r o n "Who Is In Co ntrol: Parent or Child ?" and # lOS is Gene Takamine, a lawyer - h e talked about a couple of very importa nt issues like tuition tax credits and the voucher system . · . . We had severa l display tables whi ch compli cate d the program but gave versatility. Everyo ne rea lly enjoyed them. We had home computer demonstrations, Di scove ry Toys , lots of books a nd literature. There was a last minut e slide presentation - we thought it was wo rthwhile so we did it.

Ma ke s ur e t hat all of the tech­ nic a l d ev ices are in good working order and that spea ke rs ha ve water and table and chairs t o sit d own on .

We had a sem inar room wher e John Ho lt answeted questions for most of the day ... · .. It was so rewarding. will remember it for a long, long time .

The small children were made very wel­ come . No one needs to·have suc h a com­ plicated conference as we did . Anyone can do it, even alone , if they just put in a lot of time a nd try to get a place that was free or of little cost . Our expenses were high beca use we wanted the extra rOoms and to have th e big ope n area for th e children to be able to be out i n the su n ...

If a nyone would like details of how t o go about establis hing a home school in California, se nd $S to KEYS TO LEARNING ... You ca n do it without anyone's help, but some people seem to need the support .

We hope to establis h a Cal ifor­ nia network of home sc hools through KEYS TO LEARN1~C . We ca n use areas to meet one another and have field trips, picniCS . and so on ...

BUILDING TOGETHER Pat Gurley (~T) sent us thc fol ­ lowing story from A",'akc nOi'gilzi ne, 7/8/81. She wrote, -rrrcron ' t knO\" if you 've heard of Lhc ' [nsLHnL Kingdom Halls ' going up around the country ...

We've gone to two of these mirac l es in t he past few mont h s ... We've ex pe r­ ienced so much love at thesc that we 'd try very hard not to miss one within a 500 mile radius . Evervo ne helps, children to grandpa r ents ­ there's a job for everyo ne who desires a job ." From the a rti cle : · .. As he drove by a neighbo ring field , Bill hardly noticed th e clust­ .er of peoplc surrounding a bare wood­ and-block foundHtion . It was early morning .

Four hours later, as Bi ll neared the same field, his mouth dropped opcn . There, on top of that founda­ tion, stood a build ing ' Thoug h it was not completely f ini shcd, it had in place a shingled roof, s id ing a nd win­ dows .

Bill saw the beginning stages of a two-day "miracle. " A Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses was being built by a swarm of eager workers wh o would almost complete it - inside and out - in just two days .. .

One of the organizers, Stanley Peck, estimates that over 60 "in­ stant" Kingdom Halls have been built, starting ten years ago a t Webb City, Missouri. TheYe in two days a crew of fifty put up the walls and roof of a hall. "It seemed then that if we real­ ly organized things properly we might do the whole job in a weeke nd," reflected Peck. Each additional hall was brought a little closer to comple­ tion within the two days. "During the last twenty or so halls ~e got it to 90 percent of completion ," ,sta ted an­ other organizer, John Langan . " Ni nety percent" usually in­ cludes a bricked, fully insulated, air-conditioned building, and occa­ sionall y a landscaped lot. Often it is painted, wal l-papered and decora­ ted with a ~triking hand-painted wall mural, which blends beautifully with the colors of a new carpet . They are not prefabricated ... Some have been as large . as 60 feet by 70 feet and able to seat 2S0. Each has its own design with multiple rooms, including rest rooms, a library and an auditori­ um.-They are a lso fully wired for sound amplification . One in Oklahoma eve n ha s a fireplace ' Usually they are appraised at three tim es their o riginal cost or more.

When one watches the operation ­ and there are plenty of onlookers f rom the neighborhood - the coordina­ tion is amaZing. Work starts at seven Saturday morning. Aft e r an hour the walls are up. The frames for the roof then follow_ Women begin bringing sheeting to cover the outside of the walls and this is na iled into place.

The electricians begin running wire.

Within three hours the first brick is laid. Those with air conditioning and heating equipment wait to begin in­ stallation. Everything just falls into place. "I see it," said one of the workers, " but [ dOD't believe it."

Yet something else makes it an even gr e ater miracle. " Not a dime has been paid for their labor of love," wrote a Tulsa, Oklahoma, newspaper reporter . People working this hard, yet not receiving a cent in wages, is no thing short of a miracle.

Doubtful about the quality of the work, severill people in Guymon, Oklahoma , called the city inspector.

"I t o ld them that if the y ",'a nted to see something done right, they ought to visit the hall," said the inspec:" t or. "Yo u people are even d o ing cor­ rectly whilt will be hidden and not seen: "

---Y et many of th e ,,'o rkers are not profeSS ional builders. These are given on-the-job training . Among the nonbuilders at one project were a pharmaCist, a col l ege instructor, a pro fes sio nal photographer, two doc­ t ors and a gard ener . However . to e nsure th e sa fcty of all, a Witness acquainted with building safety pat­ rols the site l ooking for any poten­ tial dangers.

"I d on't know much about this lype of wor k, but I'll do whatever you

\\l

a nt," explai ned the O\.Jnc r of a

large weld ing busi n e~s , who flew t o the location in a privat e plane . He ende d up with the messy j ob o f mixing and currying mortar. A legall y blind worke r was bUSily wir i ng the sound sys tem, mos lly by touch. Several he lp­ e rs served !1S hi. s " eyes ." Children kcpt the f l oo r clea n of scrap materi­ als and also passed o ut refreshments.

"Ther e is no way we would have worked today for money - no way'" exclaimed one of those at Vinata, Oklahoma, wh en the temperature and wind made it feel like -14 degrees_ Some had icicles on their mustaches as they worked. On the other hand, with the temperature soaring over 11S deg.rees, the same basic crew built· the hall in Purcell, Oklahoma . At times rain will pour down for the whole two-day period, as it did in Monmouth, III inois. "Not a single brother left the Site," said Harold Cheek. "They just worked right on through."

Yet why do all of these do it time after time? One o bservant teen ­ ager pinpointed the reason. Though not a Witness, she said to the family with whom s he traveled to the site, "Something just dawned on me . We don't know any of these people. We're never going t o their hall. Yet we're doing all this hard work. Hey, we're really sacrificing for somebody e lse.

This is something good."

Self-sacrifice is r eflec ted in the distances some travel. "We try to keep within five ·or six hundred miles from our homes in Oklahoma , for this usually is a day ' s drive, " stated Cheek . Howev e r, one family traveled over 1600 ~il es round trip . On one proj ec t workers came from ten states.

Normally those who come are not reim­ bursed for travel expe nses. To pre­ ve nt any being overburdened, John Langan keeps a file of the name and addresses of over 800 volunteers and thereby can give consideration to those who live clos e st to the upcom­ ing pr ojec t ...

STARTING A SCHOOL EARLY From Pa tti Van Buskirk ( KY) : . , .My husband suggested this.

We're both sort of wo rriers or plan­ ners by nature. Luke is only 2' But it seems if one got through all the red tap e and had one ' s home a school, and had it all settled by the time a child was five and expected to be in kindergarten by everyone, then in two years when the child would be legally required in school, you could say, "Hey, look, we 've been doing all that for t"o years' '' . . . [ JH: sounds like a very good idea. J DEALING WITH SCHOOL DISTRICT John wrote to a parent who asked about dealing wit h th~ local school district: .. . In your first communication with the schools, which should probab­ ly be by letter, ~ (and keep copies of all correspondence with school people), you should say, very politely and nicely: (1) People are legall y t eac hing th e ir children at home allover the country , including you r state (2) Their right to do so has repeatedly been upheld by the cou rts (3) Many pe op le are doing this with th e friendly cooperation of their own school districts (4) You would lik9 t o have the Silme friendly a nd cooperative r e l a tionship. with you r district (S) How m~y yo u do so?

In ot her wo rds, you are not ask­ ing if you may teach your children at home-;-but how.

And youmight point o ut that th ese people t eac hing their children at home in cooperation with their local schools have been encou raged by the schools t o use school r esources

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

whenever they wish . This enables the school to register the children as be­ ing enrolled (so tha t they don't lose state aid), and also takes care of any worries anyone may have about the children ' & social life, which is some­ thing the schools like to talk about (even when they do everything possi ­ ble to prevent them from having ~ social life in school).

You will learn a lot about your school district from the way in which they respond to you r first letter. If you get a friendly reply everything may go nice and easy .

If they ask to have a meeting with you, OK. But if they take any ­ thing other than a friendly and co­ operative stance, cut the meeting short, say that you will discuss the matter with your lawyer (which won't altogether be a fib, since through GWS you will be in contact with law­ yers), and that it will probably be better to conduct all further discus ­ sions of the matter in writing . (This always scares bureaucrats).

Friendly, informed, and deter­ mined - that ' s the picture you want to give . The schools are full of bul­ lies . If there are some in your town, and you let them think they can push you around, they probably wi~ If you make it clear that they can't, they may not even try .

Please let us know how things go . ..

COMPULSORY SCHOOL AGE People often want to know at what age a child is legally required to be in school . Meg Johnson, at the end of her home education "legal pack­ et" ($3 . 20 from the HOME EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER, 337 Downs St, Ridge­ wood NJ 07450), reprints a table of such ages that appesred in Liberty, Nov . /Dec. 1979. In summary: Minimum Compulsory Entrance Age is 8: Ariz . , Pa . , Wash . , Puerto Rico . ~ in Virginia, age is 5 but child­ ren up to 8 may be exempted with con­ sent of parent or guardian.

All other states require entrance at ~, except for the ones below .

Ag~ _ ~: Cal . , Del., Hawaii, Ky . , Md . , ~, N. J., N. M. , N. Y., Ohio, Utah, Wisc . In Mass . , age is set by s choGl boa rd.

EXCUSED ABSENCES Sandi Myers lMS) wrote:

.. . As I read through my wealth of GWS, I am surprised that no one mentions a beautiful time-buying device in making up your mind to, or actually-putting the pieces together to take a child out of school, and that is an "excused" absence because of "illness." Julie had only attended school eight days out of fiye weeks when I finally withdrew her . Unfor­ tunately, it took 8 genuine case of flu for me to see how severe- the prob­ lems at school were for her.

Granted, this measure probably wouldn ' t work if you had already noti­ fied the school of your intentions .

But for someone going through a peri­ od -of time-with unpleasant- parent­ teacher conferences where the vola ­ tile remarks a parent ~akes might later harm his or her case, this could be a useful tool - the child is out of the" jail" and- the parent has time to calm down and prepare ...

We a l ways allowed quite a few "hooky days" each year, and the child-

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

ren understood that it was easier for all if we said, "He felt bad," or "He had an ingro,,'n toenail," or what­ ever ...

HOME TUTORING STUDY From a long article on home­ schooling in the Seattle Post-Intelli­ gencer, 1/18/81:

... A study of home tutoring in the December issue of Phi Delta Kap­ ~ undercuts some of the arguments against home learning . The - report studies the effects of home education on nearly 70 small tutoring groups formed in Cali[ornia in April 1978 by white middle-class parents fleeing public school busing. The groups later were joined by parents not moti­ vated primarily by opposition to bus­ ing.

The children were taught by cer­ tified teachers within their homes while parents administered the pro­ gram. As a group, home-tutored stu­ dents scored higher on standardized achievement tests than did public school children. Fifth graders in the tutorial program scored above the 54th percentile on the California test of Basic Skills, while children in the Los Angeles ~nified School Dis­ trict, as a group, placed at the 37th percentile. Home-tutored eighth gra­ ders were above the 59th percentile, as opposed to the 40th percentile for the school-district average. Math results were similar .. .

NOT WORKING Nancy Wallace (NH) wrote:

. . . A friend called me up the other day, upset because it was time to renew her permission to teach her son at home and she figured she ' d have a hard time, since last year she really hadn't followed through on all the things she said she was going to do - daily spelling lessons, math for an hour a day, etc. As she talked, it became clear that home-schooling wasn't working out for her - she had other things she wanted to do, her husband wasn't very helpful, her son kind of wanted to be in school, and so on - but somehow, she felt guilty about even thinking of sending her son back . When I mentioned that since she had so many reservations about home-schooling, perhaps it would make sense for her son to just try the pub­ lic school again, and think of it as an experiment, she seemed so relieved and amazed .. .

OFFENDED NEIGHBORS Anita Devine (MI) wrote:

.. . We have been homesteading for the last five years on our 40 acres ... We are building a home lit­ t~e by little and laking care of a full time garden right now.

We started Errin, 7, out with home schooling using the Calvert School course . Now his younger broth­ er, Tully, 5, will be starting also this year. We tried to keep it quiet that our children were home schooled, but we live in a small community where everyone knows everyone and their business . . .. This community is extremely concerned that we do not send our children to the school. It has even gone so far as a local resident noti­

17 fying the Public Schools Attendance Office that our children were not in school. Luckily, we are living in a Forest Recreation zoning. This means we are not considered full time resi­ dents by the township. We are not allowed any public privileges and so the township cannot put pressure on us since they will not compromise on the zoning issue.

But this does not solve our prob­ lem with the local school and resi­ dents . The pressure is really on from these people.- We avoid them easily enough because of the distance. One of the teachers used to be a close friend of mine. Since we have used a home study program she has been very critical . She truly believes that our children will be handicapped academ­ ically, mentally, and socially. She is especially worried about their lack of peer exposure and influence.

My husband and I feel that Errin and Tully are very sound and happy and have always handled any situation in the best way that they could. They get plenty of exposure to life in all stages. They know more about life than other young children their ages .

They have also had plenty of peer influence, most of which has been bad, especially with our type of life­ style.

As for the locals, I think they are insulted that we do not think their little school good enough for our children. It's not that I find it unacceptable, it was just one alterna­ tive I chose not to use. When school starts this fall we expect trouble from this little school and the con­ cerned residents . We aren't sure what approach would be best. If anyone else has had to live among n~ighbors such as ours and succeeded, let us know how you handled things. We would love to hear about it ...

BAD LEGAL PREPARATION Bob Sessions (lAY told us about a recent Iowa Supreme Court decision upholding th2 -conviction of a home­ schooling family, the Moorheads . The ~loorheads apparently claimed that the state was infringing on their religi­ ous beliefs by attempting to regulate home study, but they did not present any evidence to that effect.

John was very concerned about the way the case ~as handled, and asked attorney William Ball if he knew who the lawyers were. Ball said the case was handled by the law firm Gibbs and Craze, and sent the follow­ ing article about that firm. We quote from the article in part, and will send the complete article to anyone who sends a SASE. From Christianity Today, 4/10/81:

. .. David Gibbs is an able trial lawyer who has won some victories .

But Gibbs spends most of his time on the road, preaching at fundamentalist rallies and lecturing in seminars a~out the need for pastors to stand their ground against the government.

He does this under the auspices of the Christian Law Association (not to be confused with the Christian Legal Society), which he and others founded in 1977 to raise money ~o Gibbs and Craze could defend its pastor clients and educate them about the dangers of government encroachment on church­ es.

Consequently, Gibbs simply does not spend enough time preparing his cases for trial, say the critics, and they say he has lost more than one case because of shoddy research.

HS

Gibbs roundly denies the accusa tion, but among those deeply co ncerned are the lawyers wh o have l eft Gibbs and Craze during the last two years b ecause they were dissatisfied with Gibbs. In fact, as many fu ll-time law­ yers - four - have left t h e firm in the last two years as curre ntl y work there ...

The three harmful cour t deci­ sion s that have been handed down in the last year [conce rning private schoolsJ involve Ch ri stian clients of Gibbs and Craze . It is wha t other constitutional lawyers see as inade­ quate d efense of the issues at stake that has them so concer n ed . One of these is John Whitehead, a Washington lawyer, who told a grou p of Christian educators recently. "If [t hese three decisionsJ stand, they may have re­ versed 50 years 01 co n stitut i o nal law." (Whitehead is o n e of th e law­ yers wh o left Gibbs and Craze and now practices independently.)

A doctor who harms a patient by using a treatment that fails, hurts no one but that patient . But a lawye~ wh o loses a case in a top s tate or federa l court sets a legal precedent.

The court's decision is used against ot her lawyers down the road when they try to defend similar cases . Each harmful precedent makes t he battle more di ff icul t.

One l awyer views the Gibbs and Craze situation as so serious that he h as done something lawyers rarely do.

He has criticized them publicly oy writing an unfavorable letter to them and sending copies to ot h e r lawyers h a ndling religious freedom ma tters.

That l awyer is n o idle critic. He is William Ball of Har risburg, Pennsyl­ vania, and he has has won more impor­ tant cases bearing o n Christian free­ dom than any ot h er lawyer in -the coun­ try. All five of the l a ndmark deci­ sions in the seven ties we re won by Ball, and h e has won ot hers as well.

Comments by two attorneys are typical of what -one h ears about Ball: "He's a la'"yer' s law yer ," sa id one . "He's almost a legend,~' sa id another .

The court decision that prompted Ball's l etter invo lved two fundamen­ talist Christians, Paul Shaver and Dennis Steinwand, who sent their children to the Bible Baptist School in Bismarck, North Dakota, being oper­ ated -by the Bible Baptist Church with­ out state approva l. The parents said they were required by God to educate their children by Chr istia n princi­ ples, which were not taught in public sch oo ls; since Chris tian educa tion was a r eligious duty, their school cou ld h ot be required to submit to any state regulations.

Fair e n ough , said the state supreme court in its opi ni o n; but if the parents believed state regulation imposed illegally on their religious beliefs, they shou ld have showed how this was so; but they did not. "No attempt was made at the trial to show how compliance wit h the law would affect the religion of the parents or their c hi ldren," said the court in its opinion.

(In one of trye landma rk cases of th e seveQties, Whisner V. Ohio ...

William Ball, defendant Levi Whis­ ner's lawyer, cal led witness af ter witness t o show that th e "minimum standards" were a hopeless maze. Not a ll o f the standards were even under­ stood b y the state 's educational bur­ eauc rac y. Ball also showed that state certification of teachers - one of th e regulations - was not the safe­ guard the state claimed i t was ... The trial was dogged work, but it paid off when, -in 19 76, the Ohio Supreme

Court found the standards unconstitu­ tional.) · .. Ball a nd other constitutional la wye rs believe it is imperative that religious educatio n cases be prepared meticulously and defended o n as many fronts as possible for one overridi ng reason. The United States Supreme Court has not yet ruled clearly on just how . far the state may go in regu­ lating religious schools, and the Christian legal community wants only the best-prepared case to get to the high court. Everett Sileven, pastor of the Nebras ka church [in another case lost by Gibbs and Craze J , is com­ pletely satisfied with Gibbs ' han­ dling of his case, and has asked him to appeal it t o the U.S. Supreme Court. He apparently will, and other Christian lawyers believe it will be devastating if the court decides to hear it, because they believe it has no chance of winning ...

Dale Crowley, executive director of the National Foundati o n for Fair­ ness in Education ... h ired Gibbs to handle their lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institution ... The suit was lost, and Crowley lay s much of the blame on David Gibbs ... "We ran into delays, neglect, and preoccupa~ tion with his speaking engagements across the country . It drove us up the wall. We'd write him letters and get no answers, make phone calls and get no return calls . We even had him scheduled for a meeting down her e and he didn't show up." · .. Gibbs said he d~d not show up for the meetin~because his plane was snowed in. Sometimes, he acknow­ ledged, he is hard to reach because he has so many cases and is on the road so much. He d e nied that hi s busy schedule prevents him from making the best possible prep~ration for the cases. · .. Gibb's law partner, Charles Craze, has become the subject of a legal action brought by an unsatis­ fied client . . .

PROGRESS REPORTS One Massachusetts family worked out a home-schooling arrangement with their superint~ndent of schools that does not require testing or visits· from officials. Instead, they visit the superintendent twice a year in his office, bringing samples of the children 's work, and they write mid­ year a nd end-of-year r epor ts on the children 's progress . Other home­ schoolers who are concerned about standardized tesSing might suggest this kind of progress report as an alternative.

The family sent us copies of the progress reports, and we quote from one here because it might help other GWS readers who have to write such reports, home - schooling proposals, or curriculums. This is a good example of how to turn day-to-day experiences into language that will show educa­ tors that learning is taking place.

As the mother said, "I try to state the children's weaknesses honestly yet positively ... I do not place them in comparison to other children . " Reading: B [age 8J has demonstra­ ted a rapid increase in her reading proficiency. She reads orally to me from assigned readers, she reads many library books weekly to her younger sister, and also reads independently.

Since last September the books she has read independently include: CHAR­ LOTTE'S WEB, STUART LITTLE, THE DOLL IN THE BAKESHOP, seven Moominland

books by Tove Jansson, and a bio­ graphy about Luc retia Mott, a Quaker abolitionist. B recognizes most of the wordS she encounters and reads fluently. She pays atte nti o n to punc ­ tuation marks and reads wi th express­ ion. From our discussions of the lit­ erature she has read, as well as the exercises in the Calvert course, I see that B reads with a high level of comprehension.

Lan~ua~e Skills and Spelling - B has litt eifficulty with the langu­ age skills workbook, which concen­ trates mainly on vowel sounds, conson­ ant blends, word recognition, and reading comprehension. B's ability to spell words from memory and from fig­ uring out th e ir phonetic sounds is increasing.

Com positio n - In creati ng sen­ tences or compositions . B demonstrates some reluctance to let her pen be the instrume nt of her imagination . It has been somewhat difficult at times for her to develop a flow of thoughts and words wh en writing . However, she is making progress in recent mont h s and is allowing herself to express her thoughts more readily in writing. B continues to compose and write let­ ters and cards to her friends and relatives; she has no difficulty with this aspect of composition. B also develops her own imaginative stories .

Penmanship - B has made great . progress ' in her bbility to write cur ­ sive script. She ha s the necessary muscle control to form her letters with care and uniformity .

Science - B ~hows a sustained interest in her Calvert science man­ ual. In addition she ha s participated in the use of the 600 power micro­ scope h er family owns. Some of t h e projects she was involved in wit h its use include: raising protists, exam in ­ ing a bee's compound eye and a dragon­ fly's wing, and observing plant cells and human epit helial cells. She also has shown great interest in the sim­ ple chemistry experiments that h er father has conducted with her and h er sister. These experiments include· making a preCipitate, obse rving the action of ~leach, testing for starch­ es, and neutralizing an acid base.

Mathematics - B has an innat e ability to perceive the patterns and logic of' mathematics. She makes rapid progress and is at ease with numbers .

In addition to th e Calvert workbook, B practices math with the aid of two electronic calculators, Dataman and the Little Professor. She also learns math by pla y ing games with her par ­ ents which entail the use of computa­ tion, particularly Monopoly and Milles Bornes . B also works with num ­ bers when counting her allowance and preparing her bank savings deposit tickets . A large cardboard clock face with metal movable hands has assis t e d B in her s~udy of telling time.

Geography - In reading stories of other countries in the Calve rt reader GOING PLACES, SEEING PEOPLE, B. is exposed to other cultures . She shows an interest in world events and in using the globe to locate coun­ tries about which she has read. She was also involved in the presidential election and inauguratLon. Si nc e some of her friends come from other coun­ tries (Jamaica and Japan), s he l earns through them about the customs of other societies and also learns respect for people of other races ...

Mathematics - L [age 12J contin­ ues to demonstrate a degree of confa­ sion regarding math . She stil l does not completely trust her ability to comprehend and utilize it. However,

GROWING WITHOUT ·SCHOOLING #23

recently she has shown some improve­ ment which, has increased her lev-el o'f self-confidence . She shows more abili­ ty when dealing with math concepts that are less abstract and m6re visu­ al, such as comparing inequalities, expanding numerals, geometry, count­ ing change, measuring objects, etc .

Her tolerance for math has increased from earlier years, and she enjoys doing supplemental math workbooks which fuse math and such creative ~ctivities as drawing and coloring .

She also enjoys learning math through the use of games like Monopoly and ~ultiplication Bingo . .

Science - L's interest in sci­ ence remains high, and she continues ~o read many reference books indepen­ dently as well as the Calvert ,sci­ ence manual . L shows a marked inter­ est in the chemistry experiments and microscope usage which were described earlier. L particularly likes to study animals, the universe, and the human body and its systems . Her read ­ ing was supplemented by several tele­ vision programs including " Nova, " "Cosmos," and "Connections."

Sellin , Penmanshi , and Vocabu­ lar~ tu y - n er own mag1nat1ve boo s which L writes often, she is less careful with her spelling and penmanship. Her interest in getting down the story precedes other consid­ erations . However, when we do the Calve rt spelling lists, L is more attentive t o her spelling and does quite well. Her handwriting is some­ what large, but as long as it is legi­ ble, we find it acceptable. She has a great interest in expanding her siza­ ble vocabulary, and has decided to keep a rec ord of all the unfamiliar words she comes across, complete with definitions, accent marks, and sylla ­ bificat i on .

Comfosition, Grammar, Languafe Usa gE is interested 1n th e Ca vert grammar and language usage book very much. It is writ t en in such a way as to allow for dramatic r eadings of sentences which illustrate princi­ ple s of grammar. L i s verba lly orient­ ed and has a lot of fun wit h this book ... When r assist her in pr epa r­ ing a paper on a non-fictional theme, the mec h a ni cs of writing are stressed : paragraph ind e ntation, top­ ic sente nc es, note taking and outlin­ ing , orderl y th ought processes, e tc.

L has undertaken a literary venture which is a great l ea rning e xpe rience for he r . Last year s he wrote a c hild­ ren's story for her younger sister .

This year s he decid e d t o send th e story to diff e rent publi s he rs to see if they would accept it . So far no o ne has. I f all the publishers r eject h er manuscript, L wants to investi­ gate publishing th e book hers e lf fo , a limited audience of yo unger f ri e nds and r ela tiv es .

US Hi s t ory - L is very muc h in terested in th e Ca lve rt hist or y text. Again, it is one wri tt en in a colorfu l s t y l e wh i c h ' k eeps her i nter­ est susta ined . We sup pl emen t the text with discu ss i on of current US hi sto r y in the making. L reads the newspape r s and through fami l y discussions keeps abreast of majo r eve nt s in th e United States. Sh e fol l owed the Iranian hostage issue with int e r est and the US presidential e l ection as well . L has an awareness of politics, and fre­ quently will draw a political ca rt oo n to illustrat e some recent nati onal eve nt. The Natio nal Geographic book OU R 50 STATES has been included in L ' s study of US hi sto r y , as we ll as the Time-Life se ri es , HISTORY OF THE UN ITED STATES .

Art Hi s tory (Painting) - This is

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

L's favorite subject this year. The Calvert text was written from a per­ sonal p6int of view and contains many anecdotes about the painters' lives to ~hich L responds. The Calvert School has provided small art repro­ ductions of some famous paintings, and we have supplied two ' texts, THE STORY OF PAINTING and ANIMALS AND MEN, which contain many beautiful col­ or photographs of paintings . L can recognize a number of the many paint­ ers she has studied so far. We have been the Museum of Art and plan to visit others .. .

Readin~ - L continues to read an amazing num er and variety of books.

In addition to the Calvert texts, L reads independently for hours every day. [ There follows a long des c rip­ tion of the books L has read . J Geograph~ - L is interested in geography, an adds her own emphasis to the Calvert course ... She makes a clay model of the country, a chart explaining the physical features of the country, and researches and writes a paper about the country's geography, economy, government, and history. l There follows a list of books and maga Zines relating to these t op~cs . J The daily newspapers are another source of information. L also has the use of a globe, wo rld atlas, and a set of gl obal flash cards through which she is learning to iden­ tif y major countries, their capitals and main industries and products ...

Fam il y discussions has included such topiCS as: the creation of Zimbabwe, the apartheid policy of South Africa, the Iran-Iraq war ...

3 OREGON FAMILIES From Karen Be rman in Ashland, OR: ... I've been home -sch ooling my o ldest ( Q ~) this yea r using th e Home Study Institute first-grade pr og ram.

I find the progr am very acceptable in spite of th e fact th a t it pr etty much parallels t he standard publi c ap pr oach. It ha s more in terms of materials than I bargained fo r a nd we have modified th e ~rogram to suit our­ se lve s . Our 4 year o ld uses the begin­ ning r eading books very comfortably.

We ' ve mastered the r ea ding, writ ing, and math ski ll s t o keep us abreast ­ a nd somewhat ahead - of the local pub­ lic schools.

Ou r local school district with whom I h ave dealt si nce before we bega n has been r eceptive-ana-Ee lp ful .

We have use of audio-visual e quipment at our di s ~rict elementary sc hoo l and make much use of film strips . We are we l come at the school library to check out books a nd ot her materia l s .

The distri c t psychologist is keep ing track of us as he is "interested, intrigued, a nd curious . " He spoke t o me at some length one day and was ex tr eme ly su pportive a nd understand­ ing ...

From Melva Lloyd, Rt 4 Box 259L, Sherwood OR 97140 : .. . We began homesc hoo ling a t th e beginning of the ' 80-81 sc hool yea r.

Our br igh t thirteen-year-old was sick of school and , in spite of a high I Q, was floundering academically.

We began the year ,intending that Jennifer spe nd eac h murni ng studying, bu t, as it ended u p, I suppose she spent an average of two hours a day , four days a week in actua l study time. The rest of the time, ou r daugh­ ter was free t o pur s ue he r own inter­

19 ests - little furry animals, horses, music, and reading. Because she loves children, she was also able to pick up quite a few baby-sitting jobs which helped pad her bank account.

She helped out around the h ouse , had good times with her five-year-old brother and, before our eyes, devel­ oped into a generous, happy, witty young lady.

When it ca me time for achieve­ ment tests ( as required by Oregon law ), I felt a bit insecure, wonder­ ing if we had spent enough time in academics. I needn't have worried, the results were astounding! Jenni­ fer's grade equivalent jum ped 4.6 grades! She went from a 71 percentile to a whopping 98 percentile !

Needless to say, we plan to con­ tinue home-schooling. "School" is so easy that we are co ntinu ing our studies year -round . Besides, Jennifer h opes t o complete the next three grades in t wo years . . .

We really enjoyed THE I HATE MATHEMATICS! BOOK ... We are also thor­ oug hl y enjoying the Ke~ Curriculum math materials [ GWS #1 , #1 9 J . I think my daughter end I ( two miser­ able math mo r ons) are going to make i t thr ough algebra and geometry, thanks to very understandable and fun-to-w o rk-with materials . ..

Fr om the Ellenburgs in Gold Hill: . .. The decisi on to take our children out of school was difficult, but with support and encou r a gement from o thers who have "been there," it seems t o be getting more comfortable all the time. Ou r c hildren already t es t at l~-2 grades higher th a n the y were in, so th e r e has been no opposi­ tion from our school boa rd or dis ­ trict wh atsoeve r. We are required how­ ever t o bring the child r e n in for testing in Oc t obe r. We do hope to con­ tact other fam ili es in th e Rogue Rive r area and start a suppo rt group ...

SUCCESS IN CO LORADO From Fra nk Bonasso, the cab­ driving s ingle fathe r in GWS #21 :

. .. r got approval last night from the school board to enroll Jessi­ ca in the Calvert Sc hool . I found a few things which may be of interest, at least in Colorado .

First, I contacted Jane Lars h at the State Board, as Donna recommend­ ed . ~rs . Larsh told me that here, at grade school level, Calvert and Home Study InsLitute are ,state-approve d. I then c hec ke d th e laws , whic h seemed to me to indicate that as long as app r oval was granted, the circumstan­ ces for home study were irreleva nt; that is, if a resident wanted to teach t he child at home , there is every right to do so .

The next step was to talk to Mr .

King, the supe rin te ndent of schoo l s .

I told him that I had plans to travel this fall and next spring in con nec­ tion wit h some a r t projects I am work­ ing on . 1 a l so told him [ had talked with Mrs. Larsh and had him call to verify this and r equest the necessary paperwork . (Chalk one up for going as high as possible on your firs.t attempt.)

Mr . King then scheduled me for the board meeting last night, indica­ ting that he felL there would be no problems . 1 bri efly explained my p l a n s to the board . One member rai sed th e question about whether a r es ident

20 who didn't plan travel could do the same . Mr. King s tated that a ll indica­ tions were that, yes, that was possi­ ble .

I h a d intended to broach the sub­ ject of keeping her on the rolls and paying for the course, but decided to postpone that this year .

What it boils down to this year is playing t heir ballgame with their rul es , whic h wi ll give me time to fur­ th e r research the l aws and other options . At this point, 1 don't feel Jessica would be hurt by the regulari­ ty of t aking the Calvert course, but feel she is capab l e of doing the wo rk in much less time than the sta te or the school board r equires , which is four ho ur s daily for 172 days .

One of the things we wou ld like to do th is fall is meet people in ot her states en route east to find out how they are dealing with educa­ tion. We plan to stay off the inter­ s t ates and stop at plenty of small' museums along the way. 1 think that wou ld be a good way t~ le a rn history, geog raph y, and a l ot of o ther " aca dem­ LC " courses in one ball of wax ...

MORE SINGLE PARENTS From Bob Post (IN) : . . . In 1975 Safron was born, and at 18 mo nth s her mother moved away.

After thr ee bad day-care sitter situa­ tions, I asked Safron if she 'vould like to work with me, and she has since age 2. Now 6, she knows a large number of skills and to o ls and will help me or play o n her ow n.

Safron and I are ~ontacting o ther nearby GWS people to share experiences and growing . We wish to correspond with o ther single GWS ' ers .. .

For eig ht years I have studied the infinite number of solar construc­ tion possibilities and wo uld be glad to assist a nyone planning a passive retrofit or new structure ...

And from Lynne Norris (NY) : . . . Having put in a year eac h in a formal school setting - me as teach­ er and my son as first grader - we are going back to our'''old'' way of life wit h great relief. We fpund out we 'd been right all along. I am a single parent in an extremely low income group, so home schooling for us has always taken a good bit of ingenuity . I ' d be h appy to be in touch with others in a similar situa­ tion to swap ideas . . .

AT THE KITCHEN TABLE From Kendall Dustin

(~ H ) :

. . . When Rosy was 3 or 4, discov­ ering 2 + 2 = 4, she l ooked at her hand one day and smiled up at me and said, "Mum' 2 and 2 and I is 5' " She truly enjoyed numbers. First grade took that away and for 2~ years T he ard "I hate math ." ' I kne\V it wasn't r eal l y true . Well, finally, t he o ther day, after a good session at m\lltipli­ cation, Rosy looked at me and said, " Mum, I guess T r ea ll y do I ike math."

I felt rea l ly good about whal we 'r e doing .

We basically spend the morning at t he kitchen table doing math, spel ling, reading, science (t ho\lgh that t akes us ot her places), social studies (reading Peter Freuche n' s wo n­ derful BOOK OF THE ESKIMOS), history­

(Lau ra Ingall s Wilder). Thursd ay is cra ft day - c l ay, sewing, corn husk do lls, papier mac he . They wr it e in their journals almos t daily, use sketch pads for quiet evening activi­ ty . What fascinates me is what they do wi th their free time all after ­ noon. For a couple of weeks they made elaborate houses with cardboard boxes and pocket knives. They draw and cut out a l ot, also sew . I'd like a lit­ tle more contact with ot her adults, but we're quite isolated here - which is nice ...

ADAM EXPLORING From Karen Franklin (AL): ... When I read my l ette r in GWS #18, it was as if it was from someone e lse. Everything sounded great, but since I know me and my family, I know that things don 't always go as smooth­ l y as it sounded . Every word of the letter is true, but we don't always love every minu te of every day . The r e are moments when it crosses my mind that if I'd send the kids to school, I ' d be rid of them for a few hours" Of course, I'm not serious, but I just want t o reassure any readers that think we have a perfect situa­ tion . ... 1 keep fee l ing that Adam (4) wi ll be reading soon . I have to be ca reful not to pressu~e him, though.

He 's so close, but if I irritate him about it, he may just decide that he doesn't want to fool with . it . He can tell the initial and final consonant in a n y spoken word . Really hears She distinction . If you say, "B-A-D spells bad, so what does D-A-D spell?" he knOlvs. This is ou r ne\V car game - if he wants to play . If he doesn't~you ca n forget it . He's r ea l­ ly big o n having you wr it e a word on his chalkboard, erasing a letter, add­ ing a new lett e r, and then he tells \Vhat the ne\V word is . He tells me I have t o' do things (like take him to the zoo, for example) because " it says right here in the paper, TAKE ADAM TO THE ZOO TODAY, ~10MMY . " He often writes random letters wi th his plastiC alp habet, and asks me what it spells . We've gotten into vowe l s a little with this . He isn't quite sure what a vowel is, but he knows you usu­ ally need one .

He ' s adding and subtracting a little. Says he's doing his computer ( Richard is a programmer) .

I'v e found that when I wan t to do something for a few minutes, like type a letter, I can buy time by let­ ting him mop the kitchen . And r must say that I have a spotless kitchen ­ a t lea st in some spots .

Cooking is really big with Adam .

For any who haven't tried it, they would be surprised at how much a child can do . Adam was the off icial egg-cracker in the family l o ng before he was two, and can use a knife almost as well as an adult .

Jessica (I) is doing more and more. She ' s at the point where she thinks she can do anythi ng Adam does .

She's really discovered her vo ice, and kn Olvs that MA-ma-ma-ma h' i II cause me to come running . It's so obvious that she understands so much more than she can SHY . She's so much fun to be with. Such determination a nd co ncentr Atio n.

We hAd an interesting exper ience wi th "pr esc hool . " \'e live i,n an apart­ ment where there reall y isn ' t anyone for Adam to play with . He has a couple of friends who go to pre­ sc hoo l. He kept aski ng to go . After

muc h discussion and wit h many misgiv­ ings, Adam and Richard 'spen t a mor n­ ing at the YMCA pre-school. I was n't really in favor of it, yet Adam r ea l­ ly didn't have anyone to play wi th , and I couldn 't spend his eve r y waking moment with him . So ... Well, Adam lasted one day. He said it wasn't very fun. They made you do stuff . He had to paint a sno\Vman, and he \Va nt ed to paint a pumpkin. He already knew the songs and the story, and he didn 't WANT to mark the picture the teacher said to mark . He doesn 't have any intention of going back. I th ink he just wanted to kno\V about wha t hap­ pens at school .. .

[From a later letter: J Adam wants to go to pre-school agai n (t he n eig hb o rs are getting ready for school) so \Ve 're going to let hi m. It mayor may not last, but for two hours a day, three times a week, we'll try it. They teach swimming, gymnastics, and soccer, all things Adam is interested in, so it may be OK ...

MUSIC, WRITING, SWIMMING From Manf,ed Smith (Md . ): March ll: . . . Have just finished \Vriting the lyrics and NOTES to my first "r ea l" song on guitar . I did it last night after reading your advice in GWS # 19 about writing down one ' s music . . . The act of \Vri ting down notes causes one to think in terms of the sounds these little dots make , and therefore enable o ne to "read" music . . . Sitting down and combini ng a tune with wo rds, elaborating on the music, looking for more compleme ntary sounds \Vas, to say the least, exci­ ting' . .. When I ·compare th e things I did outside of school (bui lt liquid fuel rockets at 12 and 13, cut a nd polished my own stones, built a crude laser \Vith some help ) to how I spen t my time in school , I feel like suing them all for stealing thousands of productive hour~ from my life' About l earning astronomy ­ astronomy was o ne of the first sci­ ences I was interested in . Whi l e in Alas ka, a group of us (12, 13 years old) got together to study the stars .

We got books, some decent t e lescopes, star charts, etc ., and we \Vere on ou r 01,10 . In fact, the scientific knOl~ ­ l edge that I accumulated while in my EARLY teens carried me through all the science c l asses ( albeit introduc­ tory ones) that I took in COLLEGE . ... Ben, my 15 year old friend who will unschool this summe r, has been going through lots of changes too .. . We usually take walks throug h Takoma Park every day . We spend our time studying the architecture and talking about whatever comes to our minds ... Ben has been telling me h ow being involved in unschooling has changed his attitude and \Vay of think­ ing. He is muc h more motivated, wa nts to d o a lot of '~riting, learn t o read music, spend more time reading, travel to museums, spend more time LEARN I NG (hi s IVords) ...

March 23 : Here is a copy of the notes to the lyrics that T sent you a few days ago . This is the first time that 1 have eve r written musical notes ... I ",rote dOlvn ",hat I thoug h t ",ere the correct notes (A, D, etc . ) .

Now, the notes were correct, but the beats we r e way off. r knew that ther e was something wrong, ·but was n't quite sure what it was . I shOlved my notes to one of my s tudents who, \Vithin 15

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

minutes, taught me how to writ~ no~es in time, measure, etc . With little effort I produced the finished (and 1 hope correct ) notes that you see here.

Writing the notes do wn, even though I really did not know what I was doing, was a good way to learn how ' to do it, and learn a lot about the way music is structured. t under­ stand now why you and others have sug­ gested that writing comes before read­ ing: it certainly seems like a more natural process. It doesn't matter if one knows what the letters mean at the beginning - in no time a child will place the written letters togeth­ er to form words. Jamie does this, working with letters, and I expect she will soon "write" words too. Wri­ ting and reading must go hand in hand ... ~: . .. Jamie is really doing a lot~w o rds now. She writes numerous ones down . Many of her wo rds are "nonsense," but she is experiment­ ing with letters and getting to know the alphabet. We play words games and number games, and it is wonderful to see the interest and excitement these activities bring to Jamie, and to us too ...

August 3: ... Last year, we deci­ ded that Jamie ought to have swimming lessons . At first, it seemed like a good idea. By the second lesson, it was becoming obvious that Jamie hated it. We dropped out after the fourth.

Yes, we were . quitters . For the rest · of the summer, Jami~ was constantly worried that she had to have lessons and did not like t o go into the big pool. This ' year, Jamie never entered the big pool but instead spent lots of time "swimming" in the baby pool.

The baby pool we have here is nice in that it gets deeper at one end . Jamie would spend hours with her head under the water, swimming sideways, back­ ward, etc .

About three weeks ago, she wa lked up t o me and informed me that she was ready to go into the big pool by herse lf now. She then proceeded to wa lk toward the pool . Had I not got­ ten up, I have no doubt that she wou ld have jumped into the pool.

Well, we walked on over to the big pool, I pick ed her up and lowered her into four feet of water - and s he SWAM . We spent over an hour in the pool that day. She would jump head first into the pool and swim toward me '. All in all, she could swim at least 15 feet . Now we spend lots of time in the big pool.

We just returned from the beach where Jamie had great fun with the ocean . She not only would swim in the ocean, she body-surfed waves' Jamie is three years old . When kids are ready, they wi ll do what they want to do.

I am collecting some of Jamie's "words" that she writes. I will. send you some when I hav e collected enough to give you a fair example of this peri od in her development . ..

TIRED OF NONSENSE A six-year-old friend came into the office th e other day with her brother and mother. While her mother talked to me and her brother looked over the books on our shelves, the six-year-old made a beeline for the electric office typewriter she had been using the da y before. I gave her some paper and soon she was "typing," seeing how fast she could make the machine go, pr obably enjoying some

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

fantasy of competence and power (she has seen and heard good typists at work). For a while her mother and I could hear this busy clatter of keys.

Then it began to slow down, and soon became very deli berate, a letter or two, a s Lience, then another le t ter. or two . I said to her mother, "She's looking at what she's doing, . writing something real."

After a few mi nutes the child came into our office and said to both of us, "At first I was only doing non­ sense, then I got tired of nonsense . " Then she gravely handed me a " fo rm . " At the top she had typed her name, her own zip code, and her telephone number. Further down the page, each one on its ow n line, were the words "naem," "adress," "zip," and "num­ ber." After each word she had made a long underline (s he had figured out how ) on which I was to fill in the needed information.

As I began filling in the forms, I asked her whether under "Number" she wanted my Social Security Number .

No, she wa nted my phone number. When the form was filled out, she went back t o make some more forms, each a little more official looking, and with a little more information on it, than the one before. The last few she decorated with a rectangle colored in with green crayon - her mother said later they represented checks.

When she had made as many forms as she wanted, she brought in all her nonsense sheets for us to look at. As I looked at the long chains of let­ ters, I could see that here and there was embedded a real word. I said, "There are some real wo rds hiding in here," and began to circle them with my orange felt-tipped pen. Even though there were few such words, she found this ve r y interesting and exci­ ting.

One word was "pax." I told her that I had fou nd a Latin wor d in there, that it'meant "peace," and that British children use it (or onc e did) to stop a quarrel or struggle or fight, at least long enough to talk things over . She was very pleased to hear a ll thiS, and lat er told her par­ e nts about it.

This incident showed me once again how child r en explore and make sens~ of the world around them . They are constantly trying to ma ke a men­ tal model of that world. They almost always begin with play and fantasy, as this particular exploration began with the fantasy of being a hotshot adult typist. But, if we will just let the children hav~ all they want o f this f antasy, and not tra to push them out of it into sU I)p0se ly " seri ous " learning before t e~ a re ready, they will soon tire o f w at they r eal­ ly know is nonsense, and will move toward things more real and serious.

We can afford to be patient and wait for thiS, for when working for their own reasons they move much faster toward r eality than we could ever push them, and they remember the things that, along the way, they in­ vent a nd find out . - JH PRINTING AND CURSIVE Linda Weikel (PA) writes:

.. . Some thoughts on handwriting (GWS #19) : Cursive ha s always been a bugaboo of mine. I never liked my own handwriting as a you ng student and never felt comfor tabl e using it . So in 8th grade I switched back to print­ ing, and contrary to my expectations, no teacher eve r told me I couldn't

21 print instead of write. Maybe because legible printing is so much easier to read and grade than sloppy cursive' When·I print fast ( taking notes, doing rough drafts, etc . ) my printed letters just sort of naturally glide together, forming a unique style of cursive . .. so speed has never been a problem.

The subject of hand writi ng once came up in a discussion I was having with an elementary school principal .

He believed it ' was a waste of time and energy to teach it (a nd the read­ ing specialist agreed) because the only thing one ~eally ever must write in cursive is one's signature:-and chi Idren .c ould learn vee? quickly how to form the letters nee ed for their own names. His reason for continuing the handwriting program at the school: he said the parents would fight tooth and nail if it wasn't taught to their children . . . . Are you familiar with the D'Nealian st yle of handwriting? If cursive must be taught, this is a sane way of doing it. The transition between D'Nealian manuscript and cur­ sive is lugical and easy to make.

Scott-Foresman publishes the set of workbooks designed for a K-8 program - they are colorful, interesting, and practical. Pricelist and more info from Scott-Foresman, 99 Bauer Dr . , Oakland NJ 07436 . ..

MAGNETIC LEITERS From Judy Cornel l in Florida:

.. . After my children grew bored wi th their magnetic letters that came wi th their "Play-skol" schoolhouse, we put the letters on the refrigera­ t or and played all sorts of games.

Kids love to see and spell their own names and the names of friends. We wou ld scramble a word and try to fig­ ure it out; we put up favorite sen­ tences or phrases ( " I love you"); we played "W ord of the \.Jeek" and studied new words for a while. Now that the kids are teenagers, we use the let­ ters to write notes and telephone mes­ sages .- where do teenagers head first ?

Friends and neighbors have always loved playing with them and the games continue when a st~a ng e r visits . When I suggested putting th em away, I got a resounding " No ." .. .

RENTAL LIBRARY From the leaflet of EARTHBOOKS LENDING LIB RARY:

... EARTHBOOKS is a nationwide mail-order RENTAL library system specializing in self-sufficiency do­ it-yourself titl e s - mostly quality paperbacks . For a $5 lifetime member­ ship fee and $1 per title, EART HBOOKS members ca n rent any book or magazine in our collection, keep it a full month, then e ith er return it or kefiP it just by paying the balance' Wit our rental arra ngeme nt, we also get many used books back, which are then offered to the the next member at used-book discounts. Since I"e drop books that are r epeate dly returned and criticized, our collection con­ stantly evolves toward the very best titles available in each subject area. All books are available for dir­ ect sale [to non-members] also.

We cu rrentl y offer books on building a nd repairing your own low­ cost ~om e, producing your own food, maintaining your health, creating your own income, explor ing conscious­

22 ness, developing new community travel and ~ecreaCion, women, where-to-get­ it information, crafts, shop skills and construction projects, nutriti on, children, wild foods foraging, alter­ native energy, su~vival techniques ...

Our complete catalog with detailed book reviews will be sent free with your $5 lif etime membership .. . .

[DR: 1 You ca n send $5 to join, or $2 to ge t the main cata l og without joining, or a self-a'ddress ed stamped envelope for more info and sample titles, to the closer branch of EARTH­ BOOKS: Allegheny Branch, Box 556, Harmony PA 16037, or Central/Western Branch, Mountainburg AR 72946,

SCIENCE MATERIALS From Carol Kent (TX): .. . STECK-VAUGHN COMPANY, 807 Brazos, PO'Box 2028, Austin TX 78768, offers a series of inexpensive but well done paperback science texts, intend e d to provide 7th-12th grade science for slow readers with 2nd-3rd grade reading comp reh ensi on. It's called "Wond e rs of Science" ( page 23 of their catalog.) When Robert (5~) reached second grade reading level, he began reading from this seri~s. It has been a rich source of vocabulary and information about the wo rld . ..

We ' ve been meaning to mention the THINGS OF SCIENCE kits, which a number of GWS families have told us they've enjoyed. Their address is RD 1, Box l30A, Newtown PA 18940. From their flyer: · .. Membership brings a monthly surprise package containing materials for exciting experiments and demon­ strations that offer the thrill of "discovery" and open the door to the fascinating wqrld of science . Inclu­ ded is a booklet with detailed back­ ground information and easy to follow instructions for performing many a·bsorbing experiments. · .. Recent kits enabled young peo­ ple to learn about solving some envir­ onmental pr oblems through recycling use the laws of probability - con­ struct simple machines and find out how and why they work - explore the fields of magnetism and e lectrostat­ ics - make chemical analyses using chromotography - learn the principles of aerodynamics - make a pinhole cam­ era - discover how plants grow with­ out soil - make a sextant ' - enjoy the mysteries of optical illusions ...

Designed for boys and girls 10-16 .. . A one-year membership, $16, brings a different kit each month . ..

CUISENAIRE RODS To a parent who asked, "Can you rec ommend a book that discusses Cui ­ senaire rodsJ L know very little about them. I tried the public lib­ rary - but their idea of the subject 'Arithmetic: Learning Aids' is audio­ visual stuff," Donna wrote: · .. Last year I looked around for a good book on Cuisenaire rods, and I was appalled by most of what I found.

There are a great many dumb, trivial, classroom-oriented busy-work books relating to Cuisenaire rods - "Do a little· dance with the rods," "Sing a little song with the rods," "Make an alpha bet with the rods . " No ne of

tbose things are bad in themselves, but th ey are not what the originators of the rods had in mind . In college I wrote a paper on the theory behind the Cuisenaire r ods a nd so r ead the books written 20 or 30 years ago by those who designed and developed them . Unfo rtunatel y , of course, those books are long out of print.

I finally found one set of "Acti­ vity Cards" that use 'fI'ie basic ideas the rods were intended fo r - looking at lengths, order, matching, etc . For $9.95, you can get a set of these cards a nd also an "Instructi on Manu­ al" that explains some of the mathe­ matical theory behind the rods, from the CUISENAIRE COMPA NY OF AMERICA, 12 Church St, New Rochelle NY 10805 (Order number #30020) . For $18 . 95, you can get th eir "M athematics Made Meaningful" kit (#200 11 ) with those two items plus a set of 155 plastic rods. For $4 . 50, you can get a set of 74 rods alone (#10291) . ... The very first instruction to teachers, parents, etc . , is to let the kid s ~ with the rods, and I truly bel~eve this is essential. Some pare nts have t old me that they never did any teacher-type activities with the rods at all, they only let the kids play and discover thing s, and I agree whole- heartedly th at this is a good proced ure. But if you do feel that you have to sit down ana teach, I think it's a real help to under­ stand what the rods were meant for and what can be done with them . ... If you get the catalog, you may see what I mean about all those teaching guides - "Picture Puzzles with Cuise naire Rods," etc ... I don't see anything wrong with doing puzzles with Cuisena ire rods ... But all those gimcrack activities weren't designed for r eal teaching, they were designed as w.ays classroom. teachers could fill up time. And doesn't anybody remember how awful it can be to do a "fun" activity under duress? ..

COMICS From Vicki Meyer (WV): . . .,1 want to put in a plug for the l owly comic book . - Both my olde r boys enjoy them, have large collec­ tions, and go through several every day. Jeremiah now collects old com­ ics, scrounging them at our local flea market, resells what he no long­ er wants at a small profit, and reads ~he hi story of this and that series avidly . They've been the basis for many discussions on morality, develop­ ment of fiction plots, mythology, and the role of the media in influen­ cing/responding to the times in which it exists. Elisha-the-artist, on the other hand, has learned a lot of draw­ ing techniques from comics . Since he can ' t read yet, he studies the artis­ tic devices and makes up his own plots . For both of them, comics have be en a creative experience, rather than passive entertainment . ..

And from TIeirdre Purdy (WV): ... One of the best "reading aids" in our house recently has been the daily comics in our newspaper .

Both children leap upon· them, have their favorites, discuss them, and the following day, cut out their special strips and save them for re­ reading and (Hannah) for coloring.

They do all the "exercises" that school reading programs try to get children to do in workbooks like look­

ing closely at a series of pictures, seeing if they are in orde r, guessing what comes next, but of course their questions come out of a real desire and I.onder. ( "Why did thOe professor say his killer was 'not of this world ' ? What could that mean?" I said it was from another planet and was proven t o be wrong when it was a robot . Tune in tomorr ow .)

They are both very critical when they don't think a strip is funny.

This has also affected Jed's dr awing so his characters have bal l oons for words and thoughts. He ca rt oo ns his fa ntaSies, like going camping with a good friend, i n 6 or 8 drawings with words and actions (people shaking with fright - both of them are learn­ ing to "read" such conventions). Also both of them ask every day about the political cartoon on the editorial page a nd understand some of them ...

TEACHING THEMSELVES PIANO From Karen Franklin (AL): . .. We've gotten a used piano .

Richard plays quite well , took les­ sons for years, though that was long ago . I struggled along for a couple of years (quit just after "Spinning Song " - doesn't everyone?) but never really learned. I dug out Richard's old beginning books and am now teach­ ing myself. Richard is great about h e l~ing me wh e n I want it ( he plays the piece so I'll know how it s hou ld sound ), but ot herwise, he leaves me alo ne. Some weeks, I practice con­ sta ntl y ; sometimes, not much . I know that practicing often would p~obably get me down the r oad faster, but I have other things to do too, and I don't want to feel like I HAVE to do it . Adam has had fun singi ng his favorite songs while his dad plays them, and often sits down and more or less bangs and sings. (Our only piano rule is to hav e clean hands). Jessica has gotten into the act too . She sits in my lap at the piano, bangs away, and says EEEEEIIIII, EEEEEIIIII' A family of musicians . ..

And from Suzanne Alejandre, for­ merly in Calif., now in West Germany: . .. 1 am teaching myself how to play piano. I intend to look up ~he books you mentioned in GWS. My method began by renting a piano ( not as expe nsive as I expected - $70 for pickup and delivery, $21.20 per month rental fee and a five-month minimum r e ntal period) ... I have two instruc­ tion books that I've not found too he lpful - they are too slow and un­ aesthetic. My great inspiration has been the song "Star Dust" by Hoagy Car.michael. Rich had the music be­ cause he takes voice lessons (a nother story in itself). I love the song and decided it would be my five-month goal to be able to play the melody with my right hand . It's been 3~ months and'I can do that, so now I'm attempting to make up chords to go along with it - all by ear. I know very little about music theory so most of what I've been doing is by ear . It's been great - one of my few real learning experiences ...

LEITERS ON ART More from Suzanne Alejandre: . . . I've been trying different things with art supplies since Niko

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

23 was less than a year old . It wasn't until I was sorting out things, dec~­ ding what to pack, discard, or give away, that I discovered Rich's and my old art supplies from college. Rich had worked with acryl ics and I pre­ ferred oils and we had a huge supply of each along with brushes, palette knives, etc . Also in the box were two plastic palettes - just enough inden­ tation for paint for a child, or any­ body for that matter. I'm sure they still sell them at art supply stores . ... If anyone were going to start from scratch, I would suggest just buying five tubes of paint - blue, red, yellow, black, and white, and then mix colors for all the rest.

Niko (now 4) loves to squeeze the pigment out of the tubes and the palette dents are a perfect size ­ one of his squeezes fills half the dent and he stops. He also enjoys man­ ipulating the caps to the tubes . I usually have to loosen them but after that he can do everything on his own.

I enjoyed your section on clean water for painting (GWS #16) . The next time we paint I'll try it out and maybe Niko will try it too. Dirty paint water has never seemed to both­ er him but it bothers me while paint­ ing .

I've experimented with paper and feel that art store quality water col­ or paper is far superior to anything.

I've tried every type of paper around the house. If you buy the large size (12" by 18" or thereabouts) one piece will satisfy the artist for quite a while . The result . is beautiful be­ cause the paper handles the paint so well no matter how runny it is (young artists often use a lot paint and water) . Also, I love painting washes so maybe that's part of my pre­ judice' . ..

From Bonnie Speir in Calif.: ... 1 like the Cray-Pas pastels a lot ... Sarah used to eat them, but at least they kept working - unlike pens. They clean off walls and furni­ ture also, unlike some pens . I like their small size, compared with Pen­ tel oil pastels, which are very simi­ lar but a little bigger around in circumference ...

MAIL-ORDER ART SUPPLIES l DR: J A source for ma iI-order art supplies is ART SUPPLIES, ETC . , 702 Beacon St., Boston MA 02115. For $1 they will send a copy of their 254-page catalog, which offers art paper, drafting equipment, paints, ink, brushes, tools, frames, and much more . You could learn a lot about graphic arts just by looking through the catalog. One caution: the store manager says all prices have gone up 15-33% since the catalog was printed two years ago, so you would have to inquire about current prices before ordering.

Janet Williams mentioned another source of art supplies in the first issue of the Pa . Unschoolers Newslet­ ter: DICK BLICK EAST, Box 26, Allen­ town PA 18105; catalog, $2 . If anyone else knows of such companies, please tell us.

PEOPLE/PLACES WANTED From Donna Kirk, Rt 2 Box 35, Prince Frederick MD 20678:

... Amy, age 13, is inter e sted in

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #23

the "Kids Exchange" [see GWS #17) .. .

We would perhaps have to limit it to Virginia (around DC) or Maryland as travel arrangements and expenses would be a limiting factor. Two to three weeks would probably be about the right time. It she were to visit someone her own age,. they wou ld be welcome for a return visit in our home or even perhaps to come here first. Although she's interested in staying with families with young children also, she hasn't had much experience with being responsible for very young children - but she is willing .. .

From Dick Gallienne, Winona Farm, E. Burns Valley Rd., Winona MN 55987: ... 1 sent you some letters l~ years ago from Julie Johnson, telling of her thoughts at Northland College.

She has been here for five months, living on savings from having worked two jobs at once; she is an example of the type of young person I would like to find some more of. I have com­ plete faith in her milking our 25 cows; she has learned the printing business by working for a printer in town; right now she is helping tear down 13 greenhouses, partly for pay and also to get enough greenhouse glass for her own future building; . she is reading and doing things con­ stantly ... This afternoon she will be with a beekeeper . Yesterday she sheared part of a sheep . . ... Some of your readers might be interested in.visiting us - both to be around kids that don't have TV or school and to look over the farm to see if there is some aspect of it that interests them. .. . We have found that it works best if visitors live in the cabin or some other housing arrangements that they can help build on the farm ...

Julie lived in the cabin six months, yet was in and out of the house so much' that she is almost like family. ... We would be glad to have fami­ lies stop here, or if they have un­ schoolers under 18 who are interested in experiencing small farm life and helping, we would like to discuss it. .. l JH: I vis i ted t his farm 1 a s t year - a beautiful place. J

reviews for this issue of GWS . Our apologies to all of you who enjoy · this feature. We should have a number of reviews in #24.

In the meantime, you'll find short write-ups of all the new boOks here on the MAIL-ORDER BOOKLIST enclo~ed with this issue.

If you're thinking of ordering books for Christmas gifts, we hope you'll do so in Octo­ ber and November to avoid any possible delays .

And when yo u're finished with the booklist, why not pass it along to a friend or relative?

Please note that Herbert Kohl's · GROWING WITH YOUR CHILDREN is still $9 .50 - the pub­ lishers changed their minds about doing a paperback edition.

Some changes since the booklist was printed: we do have TOWARDS A HISTORY OF NEEDS in stock. The-price of Studs Terkel's WORKING is now $3.15, and of WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? is $5.35. We have just added Ursula Le Guin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, $2.00.

Yo u'l l see in the "Reprints" sect ion that we are again reprinting John's article from the Radcliffe Quarterly that used to be on the GWS flyer.

FRIENDLY LAWYERS

Theodore H. Amshoff, Jr ., Amshoff & Amshoff, 3142 1st National Tower, Louisville KY 40202 Helen Baker, 440 Addison Av, Elmhurst IL 60126; 312-833-5655 Robert Baker, On the Square, Sarcoxie MO 64862 Frank Cochran, PO Box 1898, 250 Church St, New Haven CT 06508; 787-5821 Tom Digrazia, 3233 Klingle Rd NW, Wash­ ington DC 20008 John Eidsmoe, ORU Law School, 7777 S. Lewis, Tulsa OK 74171 David Mandel, 1350 6th Av, New York NY 10019 J. Britten Miller, Jr., 331 Washington Av, Marietta GA 30060; 404-424-7500.

Prof; Brendan Stockman-Enright, 'Willa ­ mette Univ., College of Law, Salem OR 97301 Phil Studenberg, 234 E Wauna, Klamath Falls OR 92601 S~elly Waxman, 30 W WaShington St, Ste. 1115, Chicago IL 60602 Peter W. D. Wright, 2702 Parkham Rd, Ste. 210, Richmond VA 23229; 804-270 -02 50.

FRIENDLY SCHOOL DISTRICTS We have decided not to run the "Friendly School Districts" list in every issue because of lack of space and also because the list is changing very slowly. We may start printing the complete list in every third issue, and additions and changes as we get them. May we GIFT SUBSCRIPTION FUND ask again that if you are home-schooling and When GWS began, one reader gave us $100 enjoying a good relationship with the public to use for gift subscriptions for people who school officials in your area, you find out if would benefit from the information in the maga­ they would mind having their name published on zine but who didn't have the money to sub ­ our list. scribe. That donation has long since been used up, but we still get letters from time to time from people who are clearly concerned parents, DIRECTORY determined to do what is best for their child ­ Here are the additions and changes that ren, but who are unemployed, on welfare, or otherwise short of cash. Sometimes we send have come in since #22. Our last co~plete Dir­ these people issues anyway, because we want ectory was in #21; the next complete Directory them to have them. (A few have paid us back will be in #24. later.)

Our Directory is not a list of all sub­ If you would like to contribute to a scribers, but only of those who have asked to "Gift Subscription Fund," you would be helping be listed, so that other GWS readers, or other us to continue to send these free issues, as interested people, may get i n touch with them . well as helping these folks. Many of you have If you would like to be inc l uded, please send told u~ how much encouragement, useful informa- us the information.

tion, and pleasure you have gotten out of GWS Note that we are listing names. and/or

ages of ch i ldren in many families . Let us know

- you would be giving all of that to someone else who needs it. if you want us to add yours to the list.

Thanks so much if you can do this. We'll If a name in a GWS story is followed by let you know what happens. - DR an abbreviation in parentheses, that person is in the Directory.

AK - Frank SODENKAMP & Carol LAMBERT MAIL-ORDER BOOKLIST (BenjamTn 4) PO Box 2815, Kodiak 99615 (new add) Because of all the traveling John has AZ - Bea & Gary RECTOR (Aurelia 3, Elli­ been doing, we were not able to write any book

24 ot 1) 2539 WKiowa Av, Mesa 85202 --- Dennis & Janet SARKETT (Donavan 12, Jeremiah 4, Nathaniel 2) MEADOW OAK MOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL, PO Box 852, Tuba City 86045 AR - Jim & Cheri MITCHELL (Geoff 7, Sara 5) Rt 4"Box 155, Mountain Home. 72653 South CA (Zips to 94000) ~ Gabrielle HARWOOD, 3200.1 Coast Hwy, S Laguna 92677 --Steve & Sandy HOUSLEY (Shawn 10, Chris 9) 21556 Av 200, Lindsay 93247 --- Keith & Elaine JACKS (Shalimar 5, Lalasa 2) 10924 Theis Av, Whittier 90604 --- Cathy & John LEVESQUE (Sheryl 14, Sharon 9) ANAHEIM FOUNDATION SCHOOL, KEYS TO LEARNING, 2650 WTrojan Pl, Anaheim 92804 --- Don &Cathy VULICH (Kendra 7, Austin 5, Dana 2) 15051 Ararat, Sylmar 91342 --- Gary & Sharon ZACHARIAS (Jared 5) 1968 N Nutmeg, Escondido 92026 North CA (Zips 94000 & up) - Nan SHAW, 2379 Swamp Angel Ct, Cool 95614 --- Karen & David THYSEN (Lisa 9, Erik 3) 160 Vista Verde Way, Portola Valley 94025 --- Randall & Jeri­ lyn WALTERS (Harmony 6, Sadie 2, Seth 3 mol PO Box 56, Douglas City 96024 CO - Frank BONASSO (Jessica 8) Box 526, Saguacne 81149 --- Pat & Forest WIGNER (Aubrey 4, Anson 2) 506 S Ogden, Denver 80209 CT - Frank & Jan ASCH (Devin 2) RFD 1 Rocky HTll Rd, Woodstock 06281 --- Annie & Art LIBERMAN (Sophie 10, Arielle 6, Sylvie 1) 47 Pierrepont Or, Ridgefield 06877 --- Tom & Mada­ lene MURPHY (Emily 9, Christian 5, Clare 2) 212 Twin Lakes Rd, N Branford 06471 --- Ben, Mary & Zachary WATTERS, 371 Capital Av, Hart­ ford 06106 DE - Mrs. Patrick STONER, 1223 Arundel Dr, WiTmington 19808 FL - Molly & Rob HARRIS (Geoffrey 14, Miranda-ll, Morgen 8) 212 4th St, Jupiter 33455 ~-- Judy & Ray KENNY (Kathleen & Sarah 3) 19028 SE Bryant Dr, Jupiter 33458 --- James & Jeanie PARKER (Stewart 1) 65l7-C SW 116 Pl, Miami 33173 --- Stephen & Joan SMITH (Dan'o 5, Jed 2, Sarah 6 mol 2325 Wilton Dr, Wilton Man­ ors 33305 GA - The SCHIFFERS (Debbie 22, Vicki 19, Wendy n, Jeremy 7, Corey 6) 404-475-4961 HI - Leroy & Rene MESARIS (Haloa 7, Lati­ sha 6,~ikaleo 2) PO Box 734, Captain Cook 96704 --- 'S usan SINGH (Neera 8) 1429 Kehaulani Dr, Kailua 96734 (new add) IN - David & Ellen DOMBEK (Kristin 9, Kirk 6~RRl Box 229, Pierceton 46562 (new add) --- Brian & Jean KEITH (Colin 6/72, Ian 3/ 76, Arlyn 1/8 1) UNION ACADEMY, 3473 E Bethel Ln, Bloomington 47401 --~ Charles Jr. & Mary STALEY, PO Box 455, Wabash 46992 ME - Bhasha, Divyo (Tanya 3, Satya 2), c /o Leonard Necom, 11 Hills Beach Rd, Bidde­ ford 04005 (new add) --- Tim & Ellen KETCHAM, RD 1 Box 133, Bucksport 04416 MA - Barn ADLER, c/o Gibian, 91 Moraine St, Jamaica Plain 02130 ~ -- Dan & Andrea BLACKLY (Sarah 3, Abigail 1) River Rd, Matta­ poisett 02739 --- John & Claire O'TOOLE (J ack­ ie 12, Cheryl 7, Terry 6, Timmy 3, Patricia 9 mol 188 Blue Hill Pkwy, Milton 02187 --- Rich­ ard & Barbara RODRIGUEZ (Je nnifer 7, Richard Jr 5, Elizabeth 3, Emily 6 mol 20 Emerson St, Wakefield 01880 --- Irene SANTACKAS, 86 Ply~ mouth St, Cambridge 02141 MI - Penny & Paul BATTJES (Andrea 14, Jason TIT, Paul 5) A3976 Beeline Rd, Holland 49423 --- Alan & Nancy BEDELL (Kurt 8, Kyle 6 mol 39 Campbell, Holland 49423 --- Wayne & Vicki BOULTON (Ma tt, Chris) 14 Cherry St, Ho ll­ and 49423 --- Larry & Jane DICKIE (Jennifer 12, Sara 6) 6108 Old Allegan Rd, Rt 2, Hamil­ t on 49419 --- Joan DONALDSON & John VAN VOORHEES, Pleasant Hi 11 Farm, Rt 4, Fennvi lle 49408 --- Dennis & Patricia DONOVAN (Leaf 5) 2920 Cousino, Erie 48133 --- Martha & Christo­ pher KAISER (Justin i, Matthew 4 mol 102 W 13th St, Holland 49423 --- Robin KLAY, 26 E 12th St, Holland 49423 - -- Jo & Joh n KL EIS, Emersonian Hal l, Hope College, Hollane 49423 --- Amy & Russel PACKARD (Noah 2) 3765 160th Av, Holland 49423 --- Robin TINHOLT & David NIEBOER (Rache l 2) 1501 Lakewood Blvd, Holland 49423 MN - Lowell & Audrey DITTBERNER (Forest 2) Rt ~Box 43, Parkers Prairie 56361 --- Ken & Ellen LOEGERING (Eric 11, Amy 9, Dean 6, Matt 3, Peter 2) 688-l1th Av NW, New Brighton

55112 --- MIDWEST LIBERTARIAN LIBRARY ASSN, 2708 E Lake St #204, Minneapolis 55406 MO - Mary BERGMAN, HOME EDUCATORS NEWSLETTER~Rt 3 Box 324B, Gallatin 64640 (new add) --- Charles & Rita CROCKER (Jeremy 6) Rt 1 Box 9260, Holden 64040 --.- Anna SANKOVICH (Stephen 11, Noah 2) Rt 2 Box 414, Rolla 65401 NE - Sam & Mary WELSCH, Box 302, Mi lford 68405 -NH - Kendall DUSTIN, Dustin Rd, Conto'o­ cook 012"29 --- Viney LOVELAND & Bob COOK (Bren­ an 12, Misha 11 ) Red Ear Farm, Box 233, Gilsum 03448 --- John & Patricia SAVAGE (James 7, Katherine 4) 130 Second Crown Pt, Rochester 03867 NM - Linda & Toby BENETTI (Arlo 3) PO Box 207: Montezuma 87731 --- Butch & Jeanette HACKNEY (Camille 3) PO Box 256, .Hillsboro 88042 --- Donna MacFARLANE (Brian 6, Danny 5, Molly 2) 532 Ponderosa NW, Albuquerque 87107 NY - Ken & Mary Jane BERNTSEN (Jason 9) 3773 waferbury Av, Bronx 10465 --- Verna & Bill HELMKE-SCHARF (Jud 14, Karleen 11, Martin 9, Luke 2) Lord Rd, RD 2, Candor 13743 --- Bim & Doris NEWMAN (Joy 13) 2 Fillmore Av, Coram, Long Island 11727 --- Susan & Gregory RHODES (Erin 6, Michele 8) 5 Chelsea Dr, Mt Sinai 11766 (new add) ~-- Priscilla TABER, 264 Spring St, Monroe 10950 OK - James & Carol STIRLING (Jim 17, John IT, Charity n Rt 1 Box 87, Rose 74364 (new add) OR - Brenn & Zandra BOYER, Box 455, Union ~883 --- Larry & Karen SHRADER (Krista 10, Kory 8, Scott 5) l3A N Reuben Rd, Glendale 97442 --- Michael & Candace SYMAN-DEGLER (Isaac 8, Vanessa 5, Lucien 2) Box 132, Cheshire 97419 PA - Ann CAMERON (LaAnna 8), 1743 Pokono~Stroudsburg 18360 --- Cranford & Beth­ ann COULTER (AprilS, Rosalie 3, Lydia 1) 216 4th St, E Greenville 18041 --- Dean & Robin SCHNEIDER, Valley View Apts, Lexington #10 , Pottstown 19464 SD - JoAnn BAUMBERGER (Aryca 4, Lyge 1) Nemo R~Box 1033, Deadwood 57732 UT - Donna & Lynn BROCK (Lynn Jr 7/68, Richara6/7l, Jared 10/73, Daniel 12/75) 205

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Our current policy .starts all subcrip­ tion. with the latest issue. Rates are: $15 for 6 lssues, $24 for 12 lssues, $30 for 18 issues. GWS is published approximately every other month. A single issue costs $2.50.

For all subs or orders of GWS (not books), please send check or money oreers in US funds payable to GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. Canadian and other foreign payments must be either money orders or checks drawn on US banks •. We can't afford to accept personal checks on Canadian accounts, even if they have "US funds" written on them.

We strongly urge you to get the back issues of GWS, especially if you plan ~ake your children out of school. Many of the arti­ cles are as useful and important as when they were printed, and we do not plan to repeat the information in them. Any combination of back issues, mailed at one time to one address, cost 50¢ per issue, plus $4.00. For example, GWS #1-22 would cost $15 (22 x 50¢ is $11. $11 + $4 is $15.) These rates are for subscribers only; non-subscribers pay $2.50 per lssue.

- - The last two digits on the line below your name on the computer label tell the num­ ber of your final issue of GWS. If you renew before we send the final issue of your sub to the mai ling house. ((or #24, about mid-Decem­ ber), we will extend your sub for one free bonus issue. Renewal rates are the same as for new subscriptions.

Group subscriptions: all copies are mailed to one address. Here are the current group rates (lX means you get one copy of each issue, 2X means you get 2 copies of each issue, 3X means 3 copies, etc.)

12 18 6 issues issues issues $30 $15 $24 lX $20 $34 $45 2X $25 $44 $60 3X add $10 per add $15 per etc add $5 per person person person

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING 729 Boylston Street Bost6n MA 02116

1st Av, Helper 84526 --- Peggy & Shep BUCHANAN (Me lissa 6, Rohanna 2) 141 N 1000 E, Orem 84057 --- David & Barbara STOUTNER (Soren 3, Cami lla 1) c/ o Lydia Sorenson, 307 W1st So , Manti 84642 VA - Bill & Susan CORCORAN (Sean 7, Sarah ~ Amy 1) 7118 Jayhawk St, Annandale 22003 - - - Mr & Mrs Ho 11 i s HA\OIK INS, 3048 McMana­ way Rd, Midlothian 23113 --- Beth & Eldon STOFFEL (Adam 6, Aubrey 1) 5000 Fran Pl #T2, Alexandr ia 22312 (new add) WA - Gail MAKEE, 33314 22nd Ln S #F3, Federa~ay 98003 OTHER LOCATIONS - Rosaligia ALVAREZ (Antares 2) Box 882, Luquillo, Puerto Rico 00673

Editors - John Holt & Donna Richoux Managing Edit or - Peg Durkee Subscriptions & Books Manager - Tim Chapman FLASH - Add to John's Coming Schedule: Nov. 12, Southeastern Loui5iana ~niv., Hammond LA.

Copyright 1977 Holt Associates, Inc.