Growing Without Schooling 49

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING 49 Things are looking brighter here now that we've had a chance to adjust and get organized. More details in the story following this one.

Good news on the publicity front. Patti O'Toole of Family Circle stayed for several days with the Maher family in Wakefield and visited our office, and says that her article on homeschooling will appear in a late August or September issue. It will include our address, and just ,,,aybe will cause a spate of inquiries and new subs.

In February, my husband and I will combine a visit to relatives with a trip to Raymond and Dorothy Moore's one-day "homeschooling lead­ ership meeting" in Princeton, NJ. The Moores say, "A special moment of memor y will be reserved for John Holt. Many very religious people hav e sharply criticized him, often very unfairly. We will publicly acknow­ ledge the powerful influence John had on the home-school movement." Plans are to stay with Nancy Plent and Susannah Sheffer, and I look forward to seeing a number of GWS friends.

Nancy Fiero, a local homeschool­ ing parent, will represent Holt Asso­ ciates on a panel at the "Whole Life Expo" in Boston on Feb. 2. The topic is "Preschool Education and the Whole Child."

Mothering magazine is now sell­ ing reprints of its 1981 interview with John Holt. Send $1.50 to Mother­ ing Publications, PO Box 8410, Santa Fe NM 87504.

There's a fascinating article in the Dec. '85 Atlantic cal led "The Case Against Credentialism . " Writer James Fallows makes some powerful observations about the rise of the educated, professional class, and how this contributes to mediocrity . Worth looking up.

Homeschooler Penny Barker (OH) tells us that her daughter Britt was chosen as one of Teenage magazine's "100 most interest~ng teenagers in the country." The magazine's blurb reads, "'I'm too busy doing things to read about them,' says Barker, who has been out of formal school since the fouth grade . Her primarily self­ devised formula for home education has allowed her to apprentice with the local veterinarian, study applied biology on her family homestead, and write freelance articles for magazine publication." Britt was nominated for the honor by Pat Stone, associate editor of Mother Earth News.

You'll find a new feature in this issue - a 4-page highlight of selected items from our "John Holt Book and Music Store" catalog.

Throughout the year, we plan to focus on different sections and topics. We can also use this as an inexpensive mailer to send to separate address lists, and so reach people who may

like our items even though they are not interested in homeschooling.

Some people are wondering if we are still having the Open House at the office. Yes, indeed, at the usual time: the second Thursday of each month, from 6-8 PM . And you are wel­ come to come in any weekday to browse through our books; there's usually someone here from 10-5.

--- Donna Richoux OUR FI NANCIAL SITUATION In his will, John Holt divided the shares of Holt Associates as follows: 20% each to Pat Farenga, Steve Rupprecht, and myself, and l2~% to each of three couples: Tom and Mary Maher, Mark and Mary Van Doren, and Bob and Nancy Wallace.

On Dec. 11, we had a sharehold­ ers' meeting and elected ourselves to the Board of Directors: Pat Farenga, Tom Maher, Steve Rupprecht, Mark Van Doren, Nancy Wallace, and myself ­ with the provision that for the Mahers, Van Dorens, and Wallaces, either spouse may act as Director at any given meeting. The Board then elected Pat to be president and treasurer of the corporation, and me to be clerk. The Board will meet monthly for the next year to examine finances and decide matters of policy.

After personal bequests to fami­ ly a nd friends, John left the remain­ der of his estate to Holt Associates .

The estate will probably not be settled until the end of 1986 at the earliest, and so we can not use any of that money for quite a while.

In the past, Holt Associates has lost money every year, and John has mad e up the deficit with his personal savings. Last year the loss was about $10,000. We are now going to have try to at least break even. We always wel co me any suggestions you may have towards our financial well-being.

One thing we have decided we must do is raise subscription rates, which have stayed the same for five years. Starting June 1, 1986, the price for one year of GWS will be $20, and the rates for multiple years and groups will also go up . We feel this rate is still a bargain, consid­ ering what you would pay for other publications with fewer pages.

Furthermore, this means you still have until May 31 to renew or extend at the old rates . We hope you will act quickly, as every renewal is a relief to us. - DR

UPDATE: DONATING HOLT BOOKS I asked Donna Mahr (561 N Main St, Oregon WI 53575) how things were going with the plan to place John Holt's books in libraries across Wisconsin (GWS #48). For various reasons, the project is starting slow­ ly, but she said that so far they had raised $150, mainly from four local families - and this represents 25 books' One of the families has budget­ ed a contribution of $10 per month.

Donna says they plan to talk to fami­ lies at support group meetings and the WISCONSIN ~ARENTS ASSOCIATION con­ vention. It may takes years to reach the goal of TEACH YOUR OWN in every library, she says, but she is commit­ ted to keeping it going, as every book placed is one that wasn't there before .

Donna checked into the various possible ways of obtaining the books.

Dell Books will give 20% off to any­ one who orders a minimum of 25. How­

ever, libraries can get the books at 1/3 off, so she figures her group will probably give the money to the library network and let it place the order.

The Oregon folks had not yet started to raise money when I phoned in mid-January. Candace Syman -DegLer (26409 Valley View Dr, Cheshire OR 97419) thinks they may buy their books through a friend who runs a bookstore and so get a discount that way.

Donna says she got a lovel y let­ ter from Sandra Hanson in Vancouver, B.C., who is exci ted (though apprehen­ sive) about doing something similar in her area. If anyone else would like to follow suit, do please let us know. - DR RESPONSE TO JOHN HOLT TRIBUTE

From David Slezak (VA): ... Thanks much for GWS #48. It was a superior issue bringing togeth­ er the past and present of the home­ schooling movement.

I would encourage you to con­ tinue printing information and anec ­ dotes about John Hol t's life and work in every issue. That will help keep him and his memory alive. I at t ended a meeting of some Virginia home schoo 1­ ers in Charlottesville last Sund ay and was amazed to find several people who had never heard of him.

Please send ten copies of GWS #48. Enclosed is $9.50 plus a little extra ...

MEMORIES OF JOHN

Nancy Plent (NJ) wrote in the Unschoolers Network #19: ... 1 first "met" John Holt through a phone call on my birthday in 1977. We had just learned that GWS #1 had been published, and were very excited .. . My awe soon vanished as John chatted pleasantly with me for several minutes. When I asked him what he could tell me about the legal­ ities of homeschooling in New Jersey, he replied, "Why, nothing. We were hoping you folks would tell us'" It was my first inkling that we were going to have a colleague in John, rather than a guru feeding us direc­ tives . .. . His observations cu t to the heart of things, one of the reasons why his opinions were so valued. In the early days, we had carefully (and nervously) cultivated a dignified, serious image with the press. Then we came across some families handling things in what we considered a flam­ boyant manner, almost gleefully dar­ ing the school to give them a hard WHAT'S INSIDE - Van Dorens: 2 --- Volunteers:

2 --- Bllnd child: 2 --- Therapy services: 3

--- Foster children: 3 --- Parents learning : 3

--- Standardized tests: 4 --- Court news (TX.

MI): 4 --- Truancy: 5 --- Calendar: 5 --­

Local news: 5 --- Poll/disapp roves: 6 --­

Lobbying & letters: 6 --- J.P. 2nd grade:

--- From g y.o.: 8 --- Wanting kindergarten: g

--- Importance of play: 9 --- Asher /acc epting:

10 --- Giesy/influence: 10 --- Rewards: 10 --­

Baruch/Letting go: 11 --- JH/tracks: 11 --­

Teachers: 11 --- Live-in: 12 --- Teens: 12 - -­

Audubon: 13 --- College: 13 --- Single parent:

13 --- Spain: 14 --- Medical voyage: 14 --­

"Teach/fish ... ": 19 --- U.S. Trip: 19 ---

T.V.: 20 --- Lunch: 21 --- Formaldehyde: 21

--- Queries: 21 --- COMB: 22 --- Britannica:

22 --- Reading. writing: 22-25 --- Cursive: 24

--- JH/writing: 24 --- Math: 26 Physicist:

26 --- Composers: 27 --- PE: 28 --- Tshirts: 28

time so they could "go pub l ic " and show them up . We felt sure they would come across in TV or news stories as irresponsible, and therefore would get a lot of media attention. While we were concerned, we also felt we couldn't tell others what to do.

John's answer was simple . "You can't pretend to the media that there are no nuts in this thing, because there before their eyes IS one . Just trust in your own good works to speak for themselves and don't worry about what others do."

Another time when John asked how a particular workshop had gone, I moaned that some people had let us down, failing to get things ready that they had promised. I sighed and guessed that next time I'd just have to do it all myself if I wanted to see it done. John listened carefully to my woes and launched into a story about Gandhi, the gist of which was that you have to trust people "until they become trustworthy."

But the time that defines the man most clearly to me is a walk we took to the top of a hill one year at the Homesteaders Festival. John was a great walking companion . I usually drive people crazy once in a woods or meadow, pointing out things I notice.

John was right in there with me, and we interrupted each other a dozen times to point out wildflowers or small creatures darting past. When we reached the top and turned to look out over the view, John scanned the hills and murmured "A thousand shades of green" as his eyes swept the trees o n the hills beyond us. He said it again before we walked down, an almost involuntary expression of wonder at the magnificence and com­ plexity of nature's midsummer show.

He stopped often to feel the warm sun or admire the scene below us. I noticed later that he did this often in other settings, too, particularly where little children played nearby .

He never missed a word of conversa­ tion he was in, but his eyes followed children as they played, and he smiled a lot . His enjoyment of the world was quite contagious . I thought about him daily this fall, and tried to make time often to enjoy the love­ ly days, wishing, in the way we do when someone we love dies, that I could enj oy it twice as much to make up for him not being able to . . .

Danette, Bridget, and Socorro Finn ( 7, 6 & 4) dictated the follow­ ing to their mother, Kit, as their tribute to John: John was a good friend. He seemed like family to me . I played with him and I talked with him . John writed books, and him played on the cello. He played a violin, too. He showed how to play our violin . He played "Guess the song" with us. We guessed "Twinkle Little Star." John made a magazine. A lot of people made a magazine. John was the boss. It was him's idea. We worked too . We carried things and stapled. We took packages to the post office with Steve and Ross. I bringed John a package and him gave me a kiss. We copied papers on the copier. I stapled my finger once. I put postage on packages and I weighed them . John typed on his type­ writer . Sometimes he fell asleep on his typewriter. When he typed he put on his earphones and he did n 't close the door. He talked on the telephone .

Then he closed the door . We had a typewriter too and we typed. But our typing wasn't a magazine or a book .

Sometimes it was a letter. Sometime I'm going to make a book. John said I could make a book. I liked to be with him . He was our John Holt. He came to our house. He slept in Danette ' s room. Once Corrie stuck a penny to his head with spit. It stuck 'cause he was sort of bald. She was really little. He said she was learning. He didn't yell . Him never got mad at us.

We watched the gymnastics on TV together. I told him I plan to be in the Olympics . He said he'd Come and cheer for me. He was going to come and visit us. I was going to show him my cartwheel. We were going to play the violin together. I was going to show him my new room. But he died. He got cancer. Him was too sick. He took his body off. He went off to heaven.

I want John' John' John' John' John is my best friend. He has to take care of Anna. And he can ' t come and visit us. It's really sad. I love John and Anna. Anna got in an acci­ dent and got dead too. Her went with John . I don't like my friends dying.

John was good at hugging. I can't hug him any more. I can't sit on his lap any more. Nobody else likes to eat peanut butter and applesauce sandwich­ es with me. John liked to talk too and he never called me motor-mouth.

John was a grown-up and a person. I miss John . He's still my best friend.

You can love a person even if he has to take his body off and go off to heaven.

were a few people out there who we knew were willing to do this sort of work, the result would be that this info would become much more accessi­ ble. You don ' t need a lot of experi­ ence to do paste-up, but it does require a certain amount of patience, eye for design, and perfectionism.

Let me know if this appeals to you.

Another idea: we will almost cer­ tainly acquire one MacIntosh computer this year, maybe more, to streamline various operations. It would be very handy to know who else out there has a Mac and might be willing to do work on it for us at home .

As we've often said to people, you cin always help by spreading the word about us, and by having strong and active local groups. - DR

SUPPLIER BACK IN BUSINESS Carla Emery is once again run­ ning TEXTBOOKS FOR PARENTS, following the death of her husband. During his long illness she had to put the busi­ ness on hold, which explains why a GWS reader (GWS #47) had trouble get­ ting her order filled. Carla offers the same textbooks used in many pub­ lic schools, including teacher's edi­ tions, and she hopes GWS readers will send for her catalog and two free bro­ chures, one on children under 6, the other on kindergarten at home. Write to Box 209, Kendrick ID 83537; phone 208-276-4721. - DR

THANKS FROM VAN DORENS We would like to thank all of you who have expressed your sympathy to us for our Anna's death. We very much appreciate your concern. It real­ ly has helped us more than we can say to know there are so many of you who care. It has shown us that GWS, and the homeschooling movement, are more than a network for exchanging informa­ tion. This is a group of people who really understand that we are not just a collection of individuals but people who can support and help one another, and who do so. Thank you .

- MARY, MARK, AND HELEN VAN DOREN

VOLUNTEERS Patti Pitcher (ME) has started to work on the next GWS index. A half dozen others also volunteered in response to the notice in GWS #48, and I hope there will be some other way in the future to take advantage of their skills and good will .

Over the years, many people have offered to help us, but we have not always been able to find jobs that can be done outside of the office.

Much of what we do simply has to be done here, or at least locally. But we will continue to look for projects that can be done by faraway volun­ teers. For example, at John's sugges­ tion, we lined up twenty or so friends last summer to help us evalu­ ate possible books for our catalog; you've seen some of these folks' reviews in GWS. And recently I asked half a dozen people to help regularly with correspondence and other cleri­ cal tasks .

Here's something we could use volunteers for: a sort of "paste-up and layout" crew. There are certain projects we have long thought of but have never done, such as pasting up articles from back issues of GWS onto sheets or in booklets, according to topics (reading, writing, math, learn­ ing disabilities, etc.). If there

HOMESCHOOLING A BLIND CHILD From Kathy Klemp (see Resources): . .. When I suggested homeschool­ ing as a possibility until a better placement could be made for our 9-year-old son who is blind, school personnel told me I couldn't do that unless we belonged to a fundamental­ ist religious group. Not knowing any better, I trusted this person who has worked cooperatively with us for sev­ eral years . Thus, our son went back into his old school setting and our summer's work to help him become an independent young man slowly wasted away.

One month after school started went to observe our son in his class­ room. I was appalled at what I observed . His behavior was atrocious (not at all like the child we know at home). The teacher was not only fail­ ing to discipline him effectively, but even made excuses for his behav­ ior when I discussed it with her. No wonder our son failed third grade last year in spite of his above aver­ age intelligence' He was well on his way through another year of failure, as evidenced by his lack of academic progress.

My husband and I decided that something had to be done immediately.

Further communication with the school proved to be futile. By the end of that week we notified the school that he would no longer be attending their classes and would be enrolled in our home-based program. By this time I had finished my homework and was well informed of our legal rights. . . . Our home school is now in its fourth week and going very well. Our son's behavior is very manageable again and he's so much more relaxed .

It will take a long time for his self-image to change but I see signs of change already. Academically, he is progressing rapidly and really learning . While he could not (would not) complete seven addition problems

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

3

in 15 minutes in his former class­ ro om, he has now learned his times tables through 6x12 and completes 25 multiplication problems in 20-30 minutes.

Although we are doing well, I am anxious to find resources which can supply the special services our son needs, i.e . , braille instruction, cane training, etc. I have written several letters and I ' m beginning to receive some encouraging responses . I would like to know if there are any other homeschoolers who have blind children, and if so, how they are obtaining the special services for their child .. .

I went down to Catholic Chari ties to investigate their program we dis­ cussed foster care and homeschooling, and came to the agreement that (1) if the child desperately did not wa nt to attend school and (2) if the natural parents were in agreement that I could homeschool, then as far as Catholic Charities was concer ned, it was OK with them - just in case anyone else had th ose sor ts of thoughts. I t was my impression that you don't have to be Catholic to go through Ca th olic Cha rities foste r parent program ...

[F rom a later note:) ... Regard­ ing braille instruction, I am taking a correspondence course offered by the Library of Co ngress and therefore have the manual I need to look up any­ thing my son can't figure out. The NATIONAL FEDERATI ON FOR THE BLIND offered a seminar for parents of blind children which was very informa­ tive and encouraging. This group of blind people will support us in any way necessary with personal assis­ tance as well as group support ...

They sold us a cane that day and gave us the basic instruction so our son can now travel more independently . ..

ON PARENTS LEARNING

SPECIAL SERVICES AVAILABLE

From Sandy Stock: · .. 1 am a registered occupation­ al therapist with experience in the publi c schools - learning disabil­ ities, emotionally disturbed, autism, and other developmental disabil­ itie s . .. Public Law 94-142, the fed­ eral "Education for All Handicapped Children" act, does provide for "re­ lated services" - occupational thera­ py, physical therapy, s peech - and these are available even if the child does not attend public school. As a public school therap1st, I hav e pro­ vided services for children in pri­ vate schools. This may be something that homeschooling paren ts of handi­ capped children may want to investi­ gate . School therapists are generally used to working closely with parents, developing programs to be carried out at home. · .. In many states, the schools are required to provide services for students age 0-21; some from age 3-21, or 5-21 . The parents will probably have to demand the services; usually the public schools will do as little as possible. · .. Copies of PL 94-142 could be obtained at a law library - perhaps another reader could do that and send one to GWS (my life is quite chaotic right now, as I am moving). I would suggest contacting the local Director of Special Education. If the chi ld is not in school, an evaluation can be arranged and treatment provided, if appropriate ...

CAN FOSTER CHILDREN HOMESCHOOL?

Deirdre Cox (IL) wrote in the 9/85 HOUSE newsletter: · . . A Burning Question Has Been Answered - or at least one of my burning questions. I talked to several families who homeschool and who do foster care, and none of them have let the agency in question know that they home school their own children. Well, that is too much trouble for me to go through, so when

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

From Kathy Purdy (NY): . .. Janet Williams (GWS #46) want­ ed to know how mothers' lives have changed since beg1nn1ng home school­ ing ... I am starting to shake the idea that there are certain things I'm good at and certain things that just can't do. I realize that I' m capable of far more than I gave my­ self credit for in the past. That's one of the reasons I'm typing this letter . I took typing in high sc ho ol and barely got up to 30 wpm. Ever since then I have described myself as someone who "can't type very well, " someone who just doesn't have the knack for it . Long, frustrating hours in col lege typing essays and term papers, where the spelling (i.e . typ­ ing) had to be perfect, confirmed thi s perception of myself. But since I have been reading some of John Holt's stuff (HOW CHILDREN LEARN, HOW CHILDREN FAIL, TEACH YOUR OWN, and most recently, back issues of GWS), I am realizing how muc h this desire for perfe ctio n hampe red my first attempt to learn to type. So now I am trying t o type without looking and wit hout worrying about typos and I expect that my typing will eventually improve ...

Another reader writes: ... 1 had an interesting experi ­ ence a couple of months ago. I was attending a gem and mineral show, and there were a number of artisans making various kinds of jewelry, as people watched. One fellow was making a "lo st wax" tree. The " lost wax" process is used for making silver castings, each of which is unique . ..

You can s hape a figure by adding lots of tiny bits until you get what you want . Trees are easy to make because they lend themselves to be ing formed by tiny bits, especially by amateurs.

It is a process that takes at least a half hour by someone who is skilled .

Well, the fellow was sitti ng there making a tree, and I was watch­ ing him, fasci nated. To learn lost wax is one of many little goals in life I had set for myself . After I watched him for awhile, he asked me if I wanted to try it. I was truly astounded because, in general, people tend to be very proprietary wi th their equipment, myself included. But I thought it would be fun to try, and in any case, if I le a rned it on thi s day, I wouldn't have to pay someone a sum of money t o take a class. It looked as if I could learn th e essence of it in one session, and the rest I could glean from books, if I got the necessary equipment . So I decided to try it, and I sat there for quite awhile making a tr ee. I ~as right proud of my tre e; it r ea lly looked good .

The man told me th at he Jften asks peop le who are interestej if they want to try to make a tree . He said th a t they a l mos t never agree tJ do it' I thought this was very strange, although I guess I snJuljn't have been surprised; after al l, I have been l iving in this society fJr about 40 years, but the fact was , I did not expect to he ar this. I natu­ r ally assumed that people are as eager to try new things as I a11 . f>"lis is in spite of the fact that l1 JSt peop l e I know won 't read boo k s t o learn anything either . Well, whi le we were sitting there, at least a half dozen people came and expressed intense interest in what I was doing.

The man asked several o f them if the y wanted to try it . In fac t , he strong ­ ly urged them. No luck. I also asked some of them if they wan te d t o try it, and none of them did' I a l l10st th ought I had a cus t omer one time, but alas' not.

At any r ate, this got us in­ volved in a conversation about why people a re afraid to try new things .

We didn't make any profound obser­ vations abou t the nature of t he uni­ verse, I am afraid, but it occurred to me that nearly everybody in our SOCiety is a product of the schools .

It seemed logical to both of us that the sch oo ls do some th ing to pe ople that makes them afraid t o try new things. Maybe it is penalizing people for guessing, and for being wrong.

Maybe it is th e intense competitive­ ness, naturally due to a disparity of ages ...

All of th is, of course , leads one to notice how pervasive the fear of new experiences is in our society .

Whether it be the cas ual passer - by who won't make a lost wax tree, or my electronic music composition teacher who uses her sy nthesizer with aplomb, but is scared to dea th of com put ers (in my mind, machines of exactly the same ilk') . I have run into it every­ where I turn, most especially now th at I am paying attention . But it has been my experience that the home­ sc hooling parents I know, who have been at it for more than two years, have lost this fear to a large extent and are reaching out to embrace the world ...

From Barbara Gaut hier (Ont . ) : ... Ove r the last year, I hav e been following correspo ndence courses. My airr is to redo my science and math courses from high school and get the best marks possible. I hated high school when I was younger and, therefore, only did enough wor k to get through. The courses are put out by the Ontario Ministry of Educaticn and the entire high school curriculurr is available . Unfo rtunatel y, these courses are not yet available t o people of high school age. Hopefull y, by the ti~e the kids are that age, they will be acle t o follow these courses at horr e (if they are still homeschooling ) if the y intend to gc on to universities . Fo r myself, I arr hoping t o get as far as medical

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49, Vol. 9 ho. I.

ISSN #07 45-5305. Pu b1 i shed bi -month 1:1 by ~')1 t

Associates, 729 Boyl ston St, Boston I~I\ 0211{,.

$15/yr. Date of Issue , Feb. 1, 1986. SEcon~­

class postage paid at Boston MA .

POSTMASTER: Send address changes t o GWS, 72Y

Boylston St, Boston MA 02116.

ADVERTISERS: Deadlines are the 15th of adj· numbered months. Discoun t for ads in J con;pcu­ tive issues. Contact Patrick Farenga fer fdtes.

4 ~ = n oo l a nd co nt i nue on to psychiatry.

F~ rt u n a t e l y , the government provide s

Sing l e Par e nt Allowance which we have lea rned to live on quite comfort­ ah l y . It allows me to stay home and s t lldy with th e kids. It is just amaz ing how I a m e njoying math and ho~ simp l e and l ogical it is. There is no th i ng wr o ng with learning alge­ brn , geo me tr y , trigonometry, etc . , th e pro blem i s that the schools force p00p l e t o l e arn it whether they want 0r nee d t o o r no t, and without any choice of whe n o r where or how the y l pa rn i t ... q

LET THEM DISCOVER

Sha rr on Le r ew ( PA ) wr o t e in her lami l y ' s news l e tt e r ( se e story else­ whe r e this i s s ue) : ... Ll oyd and I took the "How To iste n So Your Kids Will Talk and l il lk So Your Kids Will Listen" work­ s hop l as t spr i ng. One of the big reve­ l a ti on s I go t f rom that workshop was th a t whe n I no tice that someone does nn t und e rstand s omething or is misin­ fo r me d abo ut something that it is not [,('cessa ril y my responsibility to - ­ t eac h th em o r co rrect them; that if t hey eve ntually learn it them s elves i t wi ll be th e ir s - not min e . A beau­ tif u l e xampl e o f this happened during Je nny ' s po t-h o lder spurt. During the fi r s t f ew days s he was making "ran­ dorr " po t ho ld e rs. I love patterns in eve r ythin g a nd had a terrible time no t hi n ting t o he r that something ex­ ci t i ng wo uld happen if she would put co l o r s o n the l oom systematically. I re s is t ed and a bout the third day she carre up t o me with the biggest smile a nd ce hind he r ba c k a patterned ro t-h o ld e r. Sh e was so thrilled. And she had di sc ove red it herself' Of cou r se af t er two days of her making t ha t s a me patt e rn I was once again t em pt ed t o s ugge st that a different sys t em woul d produce a different pa tt er n. Luc kil y I'm learning to re si s t these t e mptations when I no ti ce them .. .

FEF1CENTILES ARE MISLEADING

Fr om John Meyer (see "Additions t o Speaker Bureau"): . . . In reference to the letter fr om Ki tt y Semisch (VA) in GWS #47, 1 wis h t o make some comments about as s e s si ng children using standardized te sts, a nd the interpretation of re­ s u lts from such tests.

Homescho o lers should be partic­ l' la~l y a ware that the use of percent­ ile sc o res to interpret standardized t e s:s can be very misleading because rer~entiles are NOT evenly spaced quantities . For example, the "small" difference between the 2nd and the 16th percentile is, from a statistic­ a l standpoint, as significant a dif­ f erence as is the "larger" difference bet ween the 16th and the 50th percent­ ile. Assessment specialists generally c o nsider the "average" range on a standardized test to lie between the 16th and the 84th percentiles. (Tech­ n i call y speaking, this is the range f r om a negative one standard devia­ t io n t o a p l us one standard deviation [rom the mean, i . e., a Z Score of -1 t o +1.) In any meaningful sense of the ter m, children can ONLY be consid­ ered t o be above or below "average" i f their scores fall OUTSIDE of this range . Consequently, any regulation which d emands that a home schooled c hild perform above the 40th perce n t­

i le or be returned t o a traditional c lassroom can onl y be interpreted as absurd. Unfortunately, I am familiar with situations where a school dis­ trict has placed kids into classes for the handicapped because their test scores were near the 25th per­ centile - still well within the "average" range' ...

colors. We did the first twent y words of vocabulary and she got only two wrong (and our school year isn't e ven half over yet) . Our conclusion is that Judy is above grade level. So, with a little bit of luck everything s hould g o really well this year . ..

CREATIVE TEST ANSWERS PARENT PROTESTS TEST SET-UP

From Mary Ann Daniels (NY): . .. It was with such sadness we learned of John's death. I wrote him over two years a go t o thank him. Judy ( now 11) was labeled hyperactive/ learning disabled. We solve d the "hyperactive" pr o blem s with Fein­ gold's Diet, and we didn't feel Judy was "learning di s abled." She wouldn't do her schoolwork - s he hated it. At the ages of 5, 6, and 7, she had enough fortitud e t o f o llow thr ough with her hatred o f paperwork and refused to do it. She drew pictures of horses and unic o rns on the back of her mimeograph e d worksheet s , made up songs and sang them, ab out the sub­ jects of the paperwork, and outright refused to have an ything t o do with ABC order o r anyth i ng tedi o us.

Thi s i s our third year o f home­ schooling. I love it' It was as Donna stated in I s sue #46 of GWS, t o a mother whose daughter only wanted to play: "It will quite likely take as long for the effects o f school to wear off as the number of years that she was in it." Judy was in school for three years and the barriers she built up just began coming down this year. Suddenly learning i s becoming something which i s beginning to be fun. She actually loves math now. " .On the gloomy side, we moved into a new school district last win­ ter and were required to go in for testing. Judy got nervous and blew it. I then received a phone c all from the principal . When I told her I placed no significance on the tests she was a bit shocked, as she is a "test" person. To top that off, this fall we received a letter from the C.O . H. saying we could get a "free" education for our previously handi­ capped child. I can hardly believe that our child ' s progress is being judged by one standardized test . They never asked to see her work or any­ thing . .. I started researching the standardized test in my sister's teaching text books. All I found were statements such as "It is doubtful that the results of standardized tests can be accepted with great con­ fidence."

I then got angry and sent them a letter letting them know it . .. I also cited Judy's experience with the test­ ing situation itself: writing answers i n t h e booklet first instead of the answer sheet, being nervous, not com­ pleting the test, getting involved in a little incident with a boy, the classroom not being quiet like she is used to, etc .. . I requested that they send me a sample of the CAT and a sample of the PEP Writing Test that she has to take this spring. I also asked for arrangements to be made for her to take the test in a quiet place.

Guess what we got in the mail Saturday? We got a nice letter and a copy of the CAT and PE~ test . The psy­ chologist also told me to contact the principal to make special arrange­ ments in the spring for a suitable testing environment. When we looked through the test we were amazed. Judy should come through with flying

Another good testing story from Eda LeShan's book THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST CHILDHOOD ( see GWS #48 ) : · .. At the age of six, when I was given my first intelligence test for entrance into a progressive sch oo l, I was later asked by my mother wh a t I had th o ught o f the test. I rep o rt ed that it had been all right, e x ce pt f o r on e very puzzling quest i on. I s aid that the teacher had asked me to draw a lion between a chair a nd a pail drawn on the test page; I didn't think I co uld draw a good lion, s o I had drawn a daisy instead. Wh e n my mother said, "But, Eda, they probably wanted you to draw a line between the c hair and pail," I repl~ed, "Oh, but that would have been too dash'" .. . It later dev e l o pe t a t o n a s imple arithmetic question, "Wh e n the fo x ate two little rabbits, and then he a te two more littl e rabbits, the fox had eaten ---- little rabbits," I gave as my answer, "The f ox ate the poor little rabbits." When my mo ther suggested that I should have said "four rabbits," I replied, "Oh, but Mommie, the poor rabbits'" COURT NEWS

The November issue of the Texas Home Educators Newsletter repores:-As a result of recent action by the Texas Education Agency, numerous prosecutions have been initiated or threatened against homeschoolers since September. Among those school districts which have initiated or threatened prosecution are: Beaumont, Cleveland, College Station, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Grand Prair­ ie, Hughes Springs, Humble, Katy, Kerrville, Leander, Lubbock, Midland, Midlothian, Mt Pleasant, Pasadena, Richardson, San Antonio, Spring Branch, Taft, Vidor. · . . A word of encouragement to our readers ... This still represents a small portion of the approximately 1 , 100 school districts in Texas .

Furthermore, many of these 23 school districts are not aggressively pursu­ ing homeschoolers. · .. Shelby Sharpe, the attorney handling the class action case (GWS #44 & 46), wants to be informed of the name and address of each home­ schooler who is prosecuted or threat­ ened with prosecution, as he is seek­ ing to recover for all homeschoolers in Texas any expenses incurred in their defense and for the anxiety which they have suffered .. . [Sharpe's phone is 817-429-6268 or 335-4417 . 1 South Bend (IN) Tribune, 1/19/86: · . . A Berrien County (Michigan) judge has upheld the conviction of a Berrien Springs woman who said she did not send her son to school in 1974 because of religious beliefs, but he also has criticized a lower court for delays which kept the case £ending for 11 years .

In tfie ~n t erim, the 7-year-old boy has become an l8-year-old adult,

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

5

who is attending college and is old enough to vote. ... Although he upheld the ver­ dict, [Circuit Judge Chester J. Byrns) criticized the sentence imposed in Berrien District Court against Judith Jones, then Judith Waddell, and set aside a ruling that she pay $1,000 in costs.

Jones was arraigned Jan. 16, 1975, on a charge of failing to send her son, Brett Waddell, to school from Sept. 8, 1974, to Jan . 14, 1975. ... Jones claimed that she kept the boy out of school because of her religious beliefs expressed by Ellen G. White, a 19th century prophetess

of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

. .. [Judge Byrns) wrote that Jones' beliefs concerning sending her son to school is not shared by all Adventists and there is no official church position on school entrance age. In fact, Byrns said, the over­ whelming majority of Adventists do send their children to school at the required age.

In reversing the sentence that Jones pay $1,000 in costs, Byrns said that costs are often waived entirely in cases where a public question, such as constitutional rights, is involved, . . He said courts must not chill s i ncere constitutional claims and defenses by assessing heavy penal­ ties when the claim is denied ...

The Firminghams of Pontiac, MI (GWS #47 & 48) have agreed to place their children in an approved private school while they appeal their case.

Because of this, contempt of court charges were dropped.

Meanwhile, Pat Montgomery reports in the December Learning Edge that two families in Oakland County have been summoned to appear in court for "educational neglect," even though one family had already returned their child to school, and the other is supervised by two certi­ fied teachers. The truant officer of Oakland County says he intends to take every homeschooling family in the county to court, "two at a time so as not to tie up the court system . "

FEARS HARASSMENT FOR "TRUANCY" From Gayla Groom-Slatton (OR ): ... 1 work with an attorney who is in charge of representing the city of Portland in any truancy problems that arise . I asked him how the police determine who is a truant . He says that they basically just con­ front kids who are out a nd about dur­ ing school hours, take them to one or another Horrible Public Institution (I'm paraphrasing), and call their parents. This is awful. I realize that the majority of truants are out looking for trouble, at least the ones the police would likely be look­ ing for. But how can I protect my kids, when they get old enough t o be out and about on their own, from being summarily picked up and escort­ ed in a police car to a police sta­ tion or juvenile home or whatever, and left there until the "authori­ ties" can get ahold of me or my hus­ band? How can I keep the authorities from bullying and harassing my child­ ren? If it is not the law that a child has to be in school during c er­ tain hours, then why are the police enforcing such a law? Surely they can find better things to do. I remember one encounter I had with the law when I was a teenager, and, although I'd

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

done nothing wrong, the terror of the situation was all out of proportion to reality. I suppose that's the pOint ...

[DR: Any respon s e, readers? I can't ever remember someone telling us that the police had harassed home­ schooled children, but it may have happened. My hunch is that if a child is reasonably verbal, and is going somewhere or doing something in a pur­ poseful manner, not just hanging ar o und, then there' s not likely to be a problem. "We're homeschooling, and I'm o n my way to my French lesson."

My guess also is that most home school ­ ing parents don't allow their child­ ren the sort of far-ranging play dur­ ing school hours that they would per­ mit at other times, that children are either close to home or out on a specific mission - with their par­ ents, if younger, or alone, if older.

Is this accurate?)

N.V. TELLS LOCAL DISTRICTS When I wrote the "How To Get Started" s tory for the last issue, said we never heard of a state depart­ ment of education official passing along names of those who inquired about homeschooling to the local school di s tri c ts. Well, there's a first time for everything.

A Long Island family reports that if you ask the New York State Education Department in Albany for the new guidelines on homeschooling, a copy of the state's reply is sent to your local superintendent. This did not pose any problem for this par­ ticular family, but they felt that others should be alerted.

Rather an unpleasantly officious action of the state, I must say.

However, as we have also said before, if you are concerned about giving your name out, you can arrange to make inquiries through a non­ homeschooling friend. - DR

CALENDAR We ar e will i ng to print a calen­ dar of major homeschooling events.

Guidelines : ( 1) th e event should be open to anyone interested in home­ scho o ling; (2 ) it should have state­ wide, multi-state, or national orien­ tation; (3) we need at least four months' advance notice (because-0f tne-considerable time it takes to assemble, print, a nd mail GWS). Here ar e the first items we have on hand: A~ril 18-19, 1986: THE WORLD IS MY CLA SROOM, 2nd conference. Alver­ n i a High Sc hool, 3901 N Ridgeway, Chi c ago IL 60657. $ 5 in advance, $7.50 at d o or. Exhibitors welcome. No ch i ld care. Conta c t Deirdre Cox, 1919 W Melrose, Chicago IL 60657.

May 3-4: WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION OF HOME EDUCATORS , 1st Annual Home­ schooler s Co nvention. Everett Civic Auditorium, Everett WA. Contact Car o lyn Kunard, 206-745-8478.

June 14: KENTU CKY HOMESCHOOLERS Annual Pl c nlc. 12 n o on . Geo rge Rogers Clark Park ( near lodge), Thruston Av, Louisville KY . Co ntact J. Montgomery, 10208 Bluffsprings Tr, Louisville KY 40223.

LOCAL NEWS For addresses of state and local homeschooling groups, see GWS #48 or our "Homeschooling Resource List," $1.

ALABAMA: Lee Gonet of ALABAMA

CITIZENS FOR HOME ED UC ATI ON says t he group has decided to f o r e g o s u p po rt ­ ing ~ homeschooling l e gi s l a t ion f e ] 1986. There is to o mu c h of a po s s i ­ bility for a bad l a w t o be passed that we would--rather wa it unti 1 wE' hold a stronger positi o n. I n ot her 'safe' states the mand a t o r y atte n ­ dance laws had been rul e d u nco n &t it u­ tional befor e any h o mesc hoo l l egisl d­ t ion ha~ enacted. [ DR: for eX dn­ pie, GA & WI. ) In two pri o r cases (Hill v. State, 1981, a nd J e rn igan 'J • State, 1982) our court s rul e d th at Alabama's schoo l att e nd a nce laws ~ c r e constitutional.

---­ "So until the Al a ba ma Educa t i o n Association holds a weaker pos it ion in our House and Sena t e and/or we prove in court that th e s t a t e of Ala ­ bama has a minimal inter e st i n nur children's education, we wi ll not actively push for a n e w l aw co n ce r n ­ ing home education. This d oes n ot mean that we will n o t be l obbying this coming yea r. Th e gr o u p decided that we will be putt i ng ou r e n ergy into communication and educ at io n of the general public and o ur l egis l a­ tors through letters, ph o n e ca ll s , and personal contact s , with th e t~ought"of the 1986 ele c ti o n s i n mlnd . ..

ARKANSAS: The stat e is e n forcjn~ strictly the clause in th e n ew h o~ e ­ schooling law ( GWS # 46 ) tha t says homeschooling fam i li es must fi l e their intent notices b y Augu s t I S, says the ARKANSAS CHRI STIA N HOME EDL ­ CATION ASSOCIATION. Fa mi l ies cannot remove children from s ch oo l in ~id­ year and begin homesch oo l i ng. AC HEA plans to address this pr o bl e m i n th e next legislative session. Furth er­ more, if a homeschooled 6- yea r- old turns 7 during the s c h o ol year , t he state is saying s /he is trua nt unless the family filed th e Augu s t n o ti ce .

CALIFORNIA : A law pa sse d in October, SB 695, revi se d th e p r oce­ dures that allow stud e nt s f r om grad e s K-12 to take communit y c ol l ege cour ­ ses. If the community c ol l ege approves, a child may att e nd par t­ time or full time, and th e co ll ege will be able t o c o ll e ct st a t e aid money. Full-time att e nd a n ce sa t isfie~ the compulsory educati o n l aw . Pare n t s of children not in sc hoo l ca n pe ti ­ tion the pre s ident o f th e community college directl y .

COLORADO: A r e cent De n ve r Post article says that Rep. Mik e Bird~ -a homeschooling parent h i mse lf, p l ann ed to introduc e a bill th a t wou l d eli~ir­ ate the state's a uth o r ity t o appro ve home study pr ogr a ms, a nd a ll ow for alternatives to stand a rdi ze d t estin~, such as evaluation by a ce rt ified teacher. Students wh o wer e n't pro­ gressing after two yea r s o f h o~e study could be f o r ce d t o re t urn t c public scho o l .

The NORTHER N CO LORADO HOME SCHOOL ASSOCIATI ON n ews l et t er l isted four districts that seem to r eject homeschooling request s a ut omatica ll y: Westminster, Aur o ra, St. Vr ai n s, and Pueblo #60. Families s h o ul d kn o~ thal they have the right t o a pp eal to t hE State Board of Educ a ti o n.

CONNECTIC UT: Th e CONN ECT I CUT HOMESCHOOLERS ASSOCIATI ON i s prepar­ ing a phone tre e s o me mbe r s can act quickly if possible a d ve r se legis l a­ tion is introduced .

DELAWARE : Home s ch oo l e r s have CO-OPERA TlVE GAMES

about nature, ecology, adventure, langudgf',

history, math, space, world problems ( rn') 1e .

ALL AGES - ALL SITUATIONS New, expanded catalog, 25<: Family Pastimes(GS),Perth,Ontario,Canada K71UC6

told me o n the phone that there is 50~e uncertainty as to whether it wOll l d i nd eed be wise to introduce jpgislation (GWS #48), or whether ~ost fami li es a re con t ent with the e x i sting law.

GEORG I A: About 400 parents ~ltcn~i a- i-CEO RGIA NS FOR FREEDOM IN EDI 'CATrON sem inar in November. Guest speaker was a State Department of Edu­ cation off i cia l who talked abou t the first year ~ nder the recent home ­ schooling law .

KANSAS: Bonnie Sawye r writes in Kansas-for-Alternative Education, rrr isE-sissron-rne-nouse Education Com­ ~ jttee t a bl ed action on any home school l eg islation, pending a deci­ sion on a case on appeal before the Kansas Supreme Court . The appeal has since been dropped and is no longer a factor in the Committee taking action. Th e refore, thp Committee cou ld act on HB 2008, 2080, and 2178 at a ny time ... A major concern is that the committee wi ll take HB 2178 and amend it wit h some of the unaccep­ tahl e conditions contained in 2008 and 2080 ...

"This wi 11 be an election year fo r the Hou se , and some Representa­ tives may want to avoid controversial i ss ues . One positiv e point: the legis­ lat ors hav e heard from homeschoolers' Represe ntati ve Louis has received many comments from othe r legislators about the amount of mail they have r ece ived.

"Whil e [2 178 ) may not be a per­ fect bill, it is one that the lawyers f e lt they could defend us with in court if it were passed. This appears to be our best option . " LOUISIANA: From the newsletter of CITIZEN5-rGR HOME EDUCATION NORTHWEST CHAPTER : "The new [educa­ ti on ) department head, Sue Starling, has been very gracious and helpful wi th homesch oo l families . The majori­ t y of the renewal applications have been recommended for approval, but some have needed additional verifica­ tion of eligibility ... According to Ca thi Edwards, the app l ications that we r e acco mpa nied by test scores were r ecom mended for approval without ques­ tions. Those families who chose to develop their own programs rather than use the curricul ums familiar to th e educators, such as A Beka, are being asked to submit additional materials . In these instances, submit­ ting th e standardized test scores would be the quickest means of verifi­ cation . Even if the child scored l owe r than his grade level this is no cause for concern as the department is l oo king for progress."

MAINE: Barry Kahn (ME) writes, "Th e EiIggist b izarre news in my life is that I am running for the Portland School Committee . After 37 years of quiet apolitical life, I'm going pub­ lic. As I told one of my friends, even though my kids don't attend pub­ li c school, they live in the same t ow n - and play with - all the kids who do . If I can make school a little more se nsible for all those kids, I'll be content."

MARYLAND: The MARYLAND HOME EDU­ CATION -ASSO~ATION was unable to find a spo nsor for a one-paragraph bill that would have only required home­ schoolers to f ile a notarized affi­ davit stating that the child is r eceiv ing "regular , thorough instruc­ ti o n in the studies usually taught to children of the same age." So they are now supporting a modified version of Florida's la w, which delegate John Gary of Ann e Arundel county is will­ ing t o introduce. Under the bill, par­ ents would keep a portfolio of

records and wo rk, and provide an annual assessment in any of a variety of ways (test, certified teacher eval­ uation, correspondence program evalua­ tion, etc.).

MICHIGAN: The Learnin Edge reports~close t o 1,00 attended the homeschooling rally at the state capitol in Lansing on October 23. Th e r ally was orga niz ed by INFORMATION NETWORK FOR CHRISTIAN HOMES. MINNESOTA: Sharon Hill estad of the MINNESOtA HOMESCHOOL NETWORK felt that the Dec. 12 he aring before the Senate Education Committee went ~ell; many homeschoolers attended and pre­ sented good testimony. However, Ellen Loegering says the additio nal Januar y hearing did not go so well. Senator Pehler, the chairman of the commit­ tee, has drawn up an interim bill that would set up a Task Force to write the actual bill, and would in the meantime impose requirements regarding curriculum and t esting .

Various educators testified on behalf of this bill.

Ellen says that when the legisla­ tive session starts Feb. 3, Pehler's bill will be formally introduced, as will be the homesch ooling bill draft­ ed by the Berean League (GWS #43), and more hearings will be held.

MISSOURI: FAMILIES FOR HOME EDU­ CATION says the "A cademic Freedom" bill, allowing homeschooling with no restrictions, has been introduced in the legislature by Sen. John Schnei­ der of Florissant and Rep. Ronnie DePasco of Kansas City.

NEW YORK: Katharine Houk of the HOMESCHOOLERS EXCHANGE was invited to take part in a Jan. 16 conference of "education leaders" in New York State, the purpose being to improve relations between public and non­ public schools.

OKLAHOMA: Joyce Spurgin sent us a news story in which the Oklahoma Education Association listed a dozen legislative goals, one of which was "On the home-school issue, the associ­ ation opposes any schools without cer­ tified personnel and accreditation from the state Department of Educa­ tion . " Oklahoma has been one of the most peaceful states for home school­ ers ever since 1922 when t h e State Supreme Court decided Wri~ht v.

State. Joyce has writtener represen­ EiIIves and is sending copies of the clipping to other families in the GWS Directory, and I imagine the various homeschooling organizations across the state are also taking action .

PENNSYLVANIA : An article in the Lancaster Sunday News, 11/17/85, shows how much school superintendents vary in their handling of homeschool requests. Dr . Curtis Rohm of Solanco says his district has granted per­ mission to homeschoolers for many years, and has had "pretty good exper­ iences." Donald Bissinger of Hemp­ field says, "I won ' t allow it .. .

There is no home school that can match the quality of education in a public school."

WISCONSIN: On Nov. 15, the Senate~CiIIon Committee held an informational hearing on the 1984 homeschooling law. Roger Sunby of the Dept. of Education and other educa­ tors said that the law did not pro­ vide any assurance that children were being educated.

In January, the Wisconsin Associ­ ation of School Boards convention con­ sidered a resolution to ask for more regulation of homeschoolers. Donna Mahr tells us that several homeschool­ ers were able to attend, distribute copies of the existing law, and speak about the legal standing. The resolu­

B

tion was tabled until next year's co n­ vention .

Donna, a former school board mem­ ber herself, says she has told her local schools, "If you want the state to regulate me, I will go to the state and getthem to regulate ~" ­ and she feels this has a strong effect, as local control is very important to school officials . - DR PUBLIC DISAPPROVES OF HOME SCHOOLS? From Karen Furuhjelm (N H) :

... 1 found an article in a l oca l paper that states "The public (737.) thinks that the movement toward home schooling is a bad thing for th e nation." Need I point out that it is unlikely that this 73 % has seriously considered the issue for more than thirty seconds, and has done no research into the how, why, and why not of home schooling? This se nten ce was the last sentence in a 230 -word article, and the only mention of home­ schooling in the entire column. Fur ­ thermore, the internal evidence sug­ gests that this article and the sur­ vey upon which it was based were most likely prepared and paid for by the National Education Association, although there is no official respon­ sibility given ...

[DR: Karen sent the entire arti­ cle, which is just as she describes it. It was a report on the "17th annual Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools" and says the results of the poll were to be published in the September 1985 issue of the magazine Phi Delta ~appan . Perhaps a reader could look tnrs-up and send us a copy? There may be some useful information given on how the item was worded, who was polled, and so on.)

LOBBYING & LETIER-WRITING Here is advice and experience from two homesc hooling newsletters that may be useful to anyone involved in a legislative battle. First, from the PENCIL Sharpener (PA):

Letter Writing: Representative Pitts [sponsor of the homes chooling bill) has said on many occasions that five personal contacts and ten let­ ters from homeschooling families in a particular district will get that vote . In our work up to now, we have been struck by how unfamiliar many legislators seem to be both with the concept of homeschooling and with HB 1478 itself. We cannot blame busy legislators for this; rather, we must make it our business to inform them.

Writing letters, especially to members of the Education Committee, continues to be one of the most impor­ tant things you can do. Below is a list of all members of this commit­ tee, and we urge you to write to them, particularly to Chairman Galla­ gher, who has, as Rep. Pitts says, "life or death power over the fate of the bill . " Many letter-writ ers have already gotten evasive, non-committal responses from various legislators.

If this has happened to you, we strongly suggest that you follow up wi~h another letter, this time insist­ ing on a substantive response. You can still be polite (a nd it is always important to be) while asking your representative to identify his or her particular concerns about the bill so that you may address them. We have fact sheets available on Teacher Cer-

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

tification, Truancy, Achievement Tests, Socialization, and The Present Law (send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope) and you are welcome to send these to legislators or to use the facts within them in your letters.

In your letters, remember to be brief, polite, firm, and above all, personal - that is, emphasize what the passage of the bill would mean to you and your family . Stress that you are not attacking the schools, merely hoping to secure the right to home­ school.

Finally, do continue to send us whatever responses you receive, as we forward these to Rep . Pitts and keep our own list as well . If Rep. Pitts knows what the legislators are saying to you, he is able to identify which ones need more convincing, and he puts his staff to work doing just that.

Lobbting : After visiting the offices 0 two representatives on the day of the rally, we are convinced that Rep. Pitts has not underestima­ ted the value of personal visits.

Many legislators are simply unfamil­ iar with the bill and have no clear or realistic notion of who homeschool­ ers are. Their lack of information, supplemented only by a few negative stories sensationalized by the press, seems to lead them to imagine fami­ lies who might keep their children at home and then "refuse to educate them," and this in turn makes them wary of supporting House Bill 1478 .

Tom Eldredge, president of PARENT EDUCATORS OF PENNSYLVANIA, made the point when he spoke at the rally that the parents whom legislators fear are really hypothetical parents. We need to show legislators that home school­ ers are concerned, dedicated and reasonable people, interested in the best education for their children . It is not difficult to do this, and leg­ islators are interested in speaking with intelligent and concerned voters (which all of you are). So do visit a legislator who is still undecided or opposed - either your own, or a mem­ ber of the Education Committee - and bring your children. Don't waste the time of a legislator who has already promised to support the bill, but do write a brief thank you. And do let us know what happens' .. .

And from Kansans for Alternative Education: ... The most effective means of communicating with our elected offi­ cials is by letter. When writing to legislators, it is important to remem­ ber the following: 1. KEEP LETTERS SHORT AND TO THE POINT . The nicest available paper and envelopes should be used . Do not use notebook paper.

2 . GRAMMAR AND SPELLING . It is essentia l that all letters be free of spe l ling and grammatica l errors. This is extremely important because we a r e arguing that parents are capable of deciding the educational standards of their children. So please have some­ one proofread each letter for gramma t ­ ical and spelling errors.

3. BE NEAT. A handwritten note carries the most weight . However, if you have difficulty in maintaining a neat letter, use a typewriter. [DR: My own feeling is th at a neatly typed, one page letter will probably pack more punch than multiple pages of large handwriting. 1 Do not use pencil.

4. INCLUDE ONLY ONE IS SUE IN THE

GROWING WITHOUT SC HOO LING #49

LETTER. Do not bring up other issues when writi ng abo ut home education . If you are concer ned abou t several issues, address these i n separate letters.

5. ALWAYS USE YOUR OWN WORDS. When writing your letters, don't copy someone else ' s wo rding. Always use your own ideas and arguments . They are the most effective weapon you have. Most legislators read personal letters they receive but are not impressed by and will not read form letters .

6 . WRITE YOUR ADCRESS BELOW YOUR SIGNATURE . Many times legisl a tor s want to ack now ledge receipt of your letter.

7. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR LEGISLA­ TOR ' S VOTE ON ISSUES YOU ARE CON ­ CERNED ABOUT . If he votes as you sug­ gested, send him a n ice thank-you . If he does not, let him know you are dis­ appointed and ask for an explanation of his vote.

Your note to your legislator should include: 1. The bill number along with a short description of the subjec t of the bill .

2 . Your pOSition - su pport or oppose.

3. Two or three brief reasons supporting your posi ti o n.

4. Your recommendation o f action to be taken.

Your letter wil l make a di fference ...

PLANS HER OWN DAY

A parent wrote in the newslette r of HOME SCHOOLS ~NITE D (NV): . . . Our 9-year-old lost her en­ thusiasm for daily s tudy; s he just wanted to watch TV and play all day.

We decided to put her in charge of her own learning prog ram by requiring that after breakfast and her morning chores, she was to tell us what her study plans for the day would be a nd to ther. get started on them. We didn't have to remind her once' All we did was ask her what her plans were and it was obvious that she had already thought it out. She got busy right after her chores . And her work seemed bette r, too; ther e weren't as many mistakes . I have heard that other homesch oo l ers were "self-directed" but I n eve r really understood that conce pt until trying it with my daughter . . .

WHAT HE WANTS TO LEARN

More from Kathy Purd y (Ny): " .Last yea r ou r o ldest son Ternan (5) was enrolled in Yamaha music school . He has been teaching himself to swim in the kiddie pool across the park (he can dogpaddle with his head in the water) and I asked him which would he prefer, going back t o Yamaha or swimming les­ sons. He said he'd rather go to Yamaha because he al read y knows how to swim' I th en aske d him what else he would like ~o learn this year, and he t old me: how to ride a horse 2 ) how to drive a ca r 3 ) how to control trucks (i.e. opE rat e earth movi ng machinery such as bulldozers) 4) how to use a saw 5 ) how to use a chain saw 6 ) how to do rr.onke y bars 7) how to c limb a tree (which he 1)

taught himself shortly thereafter) 8) how to use a ha mm er 9) how t o put a wall up 10 ) how to r ead 11) how t o nurse (feed) a bacy a bottle 12) how to writ e words 13 ) how to build a house 14) how t o fix a book 15 ) how to ma ke toys 16 ) how t o hol d a baby Without lean i ng on a n arm r est 17) how to help my dad 18) how t o help my mom 19 ) how to cook 20) how to use a food processor 21) how t o go down th e fast slide without getting hur t 22) how to go down the fireman', pole 23) how t o put up a ceiling 24) how t o change a baby's diaper 25) how t o put up pictures 26) how to have music lessons on a guitar My husband is replacing the plaster walls in th e boys' room with sheet rock, and many of Ternan ' s "how- t o's " reflect this . I have been r p­ inforcing the c hildr en's paperback boo ks with c l ear, adhesive shelf­ paper and this is what he means by "fixing boo ks." He has a 2-month-old baby sis ter . .. The rest are self­ explanatory, though I suspect 10, 17, and 18 were included by him to please me more than a n ything else .

I was surprised at the range of activity he was interested in and at the powerful desire for mastery, both of himself and the world a r ound him, t hat his list reveal ed. I' m glad 1 asked, because now I make a point to include him in ac t ivities I might otherwise ha ve felt "t oo busy" to help him l ea rn abou t. 1 could write another whole lett er on t he tempta­ tions of being too busy when raisin~ children ages 5, 3 3/4, 2, and 2 months, but it' s taken me four days to t ype th is much so I thi nk I'll save it for another time ...

SECOND GRADE WITH J. P.

From Kath y Mingl ( IL ): ... At some point, maybe during th e summer, because we'd stopped pr3:­ ticing wit h him and he thought we were done, J.P. (7) had decided that since he now kn ew how to read, he should be able t o ao-it as well as Tony and I can. (He wants to read s:i­ ence-fiction and mystery stories ­ the heck with Dr . Seuss . ) When it didn ' t work that way, he cou l dn' t fi s ' ure out what was wrong, and to top it off, he was shocked to discover that his friend Andy, wh o's half a year younger than he is, can read better than he can' Poor guy - when sch~~l­ work time came and I asked him t~ read something, he went nuts . It would be funny if he just wasn't SJ hard on himself (a nd hard to live with') when he gets t hat way .

I did not laugh , and I pro~is2j to help him-g€t t o the point where 12 feels he can read as fast and as Nell as he wants to. I pointed out that reading is a skill a nd anyone can in­ prove - even Daddy a nd Mommy. (1 jJ all right wi th words I know, but I have a terrible time wi th foreign wo r ds and scientific terms, for in­ sta nce . ) That cheered him up; he al­ ways loves to hear abou t grownups having trouble with a nything, espe­ cially his mother ...

Most of his trouble was just that he was up se tting himself abJut

it. With that taken care of, he was anxious to do schoolwork . I asked him if he ' d run into anythi ng else he could n't do o r wanted to do better, a nd we started making a list . Those became our goals fo r schoolwork, and af ter we had spent some time writing down every thing we could think of, I began to have him choose "targets" fo r th e day out of them (targe ts are u se d in Scientology classes), and c heck each one off as we did it.

Our pattern was falling into place . Learning, of course, goes on a ll the time. His hamster has babies a nd we discuss reproduction and genet­ i cs , and look up how to take care of them. We make cookies and I show him how to r ea d and add fractions. He notices that a c ar passing ours from the opposite direction seems to go faster than when we go past a parked ca r, a nd we discuss physics and rela­ tivity . He helps me with an art pro­ ject and we discuss and expe riment with techniques. We cut out Halloween decorations four at a time with a raz­ or knife and discuss cutting methods, multiplication, and first aid. (There are many ways of getting educated') This is the best time to introduce subjects from his Clonlara curricu­ lum, pointing them out in actual ac­ tion, but one thing I notice is that J . P . 's own questions and projects seem to parallel what he's "supposed" to be learning. Of course, his list of "goals " doesn't show all that he's doing - roller skati ng, building pro­ jects, map-reading, science experi­ ments, etc. These things wouldn't come up, probably, unless he ran into some sort of trouble with them. Each day we talk about what h e 's been do­ ing and add any new goals he's thought of.

In hinds ight (I admit that we've just been making all this up as we go along), this seems like an eminently logical plan, if I do say so myself .

He gets the idea first from doing something he's interested in so the purpose is there already, we address on ly the matters he has questions on, so it's not arbitrary, and since it's his goals we're working for, disci­ prIne is automatic - if he wastes my time I just threaten to quit helping him. This is evilly effective, let me tell you.

We're using an excellent phonics book that was recommended by Sharon Hillestad (MN) - PROFESSOR PHONICS GIVES SOUND ADVICE by Monica Foltzer, M.Ed. It's cram-pac ked with just about every rule, key and reason known to the English language, and though it was too overwhelming for J.P. l ast year , now that he's reading it ' s just what he needs. J . P. likes mysteries, so we joke that he's the detective and this book is his "detec­ tive manual" to help him spot the " clues " in his reading. I try to have hi m practice on stories he already kno ws , t o keep his speed and confi­ dence up . He especially likes to drive me nuts wit h joke and riddle boo ks - the more I protest, the more h e reads' Sometimes he wants to read the same book several days in a row, just because it's a good story and he didn't "get all the juice out" the first time. I'm co ncentrating on his readipg just now, and only hitting the oi ler subjects lightly, because (a) i t s what he's most concerned about. and (b) more and more, his grasp of the others is going to de­ pend on his ability to read . As he gets into writing and typing he's be­ ginning to notice spelling, so I'm go­ ing to introduce him to some of the principles of it from his phonics

book.

I don't know if there's a connec­ tion, but as he's learned to read, J.P. 's also taken an interest in musi­ cal note reading. His grandpa's out of town, so we marked all the keys on the piano, a nd he spotted that they are all arranged in alphabetical order (another new interest). He's always liked all so rts of musical instruments (he has a h armonica , and a recorder, violin, concertina, flute, and clarinet from garage sales), but up until now he's been satisfied with them as toys and hasn't cared if he cou l d make songs or just noises with them. Lately he's been getting more scientific about it, so we bought him several of t h e "Mel Bay" instruction book series ­ they're not very expensive ($2.95), and they have all kinds, all "Fun with "titles, which is exac t ly what ~. had in mind. We do a few pages at a time for his schoolwork and he learns the proper fingering and so on, and is very pleased with himself. Sometimes he practices and sometimes he doesn ' t, and I would never force him to.

Tnere's been some discussion about t hat in GWS, in regards to "dis­ cipline." I do make J . P. finish what he starts, because he has trouble with that, but what I think you have to go by is his own original inten­ tion . J . P., for now, is just playing to have fun, and if I see him get t ing rather "dug-in" and confused, as he did the other day when he first got his harmonica book and tried to fig­ ure it all out, I'll even send h im off to make some more "noises." (As John has pointed out, if you ' re going to help somebody, you have to help them do what they wanted to do, not what ~ think they ough t to want ).

Of course, I don't believe he ' s wast­ ing his time - he's getting familiar with the instrument, finding out what it can do and what he can do wit h it, and then the book will make more sense. I think what h e's really study­ ing is music theory, correlating it all together.

Arithmetic we attack from sever­ al different angles, mostly in the form of games (such as "basketball" for adding a continuous score), and projec t s like cooking, where the ap­ plication is obvious . We've been do­ ing some drills to help h im recognize various coin combinations at a glance, and I've promised to do some others with him to get him faster at reading his clock (he built one h im­ self, out of an inexpensive battery­ operated clock motor, a piece of wood I helped him drill out, and some stick-on numbers he bought - real easy). He goes around telling every­ one what time it is , and if he wants to watch TV, I make him look i t u p in the TV guide . He always objects, but it does seem to keep him in control of it, rather than letting him turn into a zombie. I know some people be­ lieve that ~ TV is too much, just as some belleve in completely avoid­ ing sugar . I limit J.P. on both, and try to teach him self-control. (One thing t hat ' s turned him off of TV somewhat is my pointing out that it's a grownup plot to make kids sit still and stay out of trouble - now he gets suspicious if I ask him if he's going to watch cartoons . ) He uses his clock to check when his programs start. . .. When he wanted to try cursive ~riting, I had him practice by sign­ ing his name allover the house, leav­ ing his signature on the bottom of chairs for his grandchildren to find, and playing wit h the cake decora t o r

tube and some leftover frosting when we made cookies.

We also h elped him open a sav­ ings account and gave him a check to deposit in it - he practiced for days so he could endorse it and sign the card (money always inspires him), and was he impressed when he got his very own bankbook with all those wonderful deposit and withdrawal slips in it' Even so, although he could form the letters one-by-one, he didn't make the real breakthrough until just the other day - he had read a little storybook he's always liked, straight through, all by himself (such an exciting business itself, that he nearly bounced all the bedsprings out of my bed'), and I suggested that he might like to sign it, as a book he had read . Boy, did h e approve of that idea' He started making his name,-reI­ ter by letter as usual, and suddenly he was writing it - smoothly in one continuous llne. He was so excited he almost went into orbit, and auto­ graphed everything in sight.

I'm sure everyone who's been homeschooling for a while recognizes that "airborne" feeling when a kid's understanding suddenly ignites, and there's so much significance in the air it raises the hair on the back of your neck. I thought of John then, and thought I knew what made him such a great teacher and communicator - he loved that feeling him self, and want­ ea-tO share it: the thrill of discov­ ery, the joy of understanding, the aesthetic of learning that "touches t he sp,rit."

Whenever I try to explain some­ thing to J.P., I look at my own feel­ ings for the truest and simplest way to put it. Suddenly, translating it into its primary elements for someone else, it comes together fo r me, and I learn it too. Then I go and rInd Tony and tell him about it - homeschooling is going to get us all educated, yet '

9-YEAR-OLO'S OPINION From Shaina Dow, age 9: ... 1 home school because Mom and Dad wanted me to. They didn't think that school was a good place for me .

I wasn't learning and I was being treated badly. One time somebody took a boy's car and the person who took it put it in my desk. The teacher thought I did it. And one time I asked to play jump rope and some boys ran by and kno cked me down. In class I didn't work fast enbugh so I had to stay in after lunch, or get yelled at, or had to put my head down on my desk or had to stand against the wall at recess.

1 was in first grade when I stopped school. Homescho oling was hard when we first started . We had trouble with it becau se I didn't do my work. Home schooling is getting easier now because we don't do things like the school does. I get to play more now . I ride my bike. I go for walks. I get to stay overnight at Grammy and Grampa's. I go to the museum, too. I like to draw, read and play house. I still have to do les­ sons. I get them done quickly some­ times and most of the time I get them done slowly, but I don't get into trouble.

I do lessons like reading and writing workbooks and social studies, stories, math, science and English.

My mother corrects my lessons with me and reads books to us like the Child­ ren's Bible, Will Rogers, and Laura and Mary Ingalls books. Daddy helps

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

9 me with my math . I helped Daddy put up wallpaper and build the back porch.

Some of my friends feel bad because I'm home schooled and they aren't ... It makes me sad to think they would leave me out, but it doesn't change my feelings about home­ schooling. I still want to homeschool.

She loves to answer arit hmetic ques­ tions she knows or read out loud any of the books she has memorized. It is definitely a game, though, because outside of this context, those kind s of questions are a no-no. Her behav­ ior problems have pretty muc h dis­ a ppea red, too ...

TRAVEL, STUDY, ADVENTURE! July 4.1986. tall ships sail 1n Hew York Har­ bor to salute STATUE OF LIBERTY. Join us. Also Boston, Newport .

JAPAN· August,

1986 . "Sushldo Zen Experience"

Japan, Korea, Taiwan. Inner beauty of these cultures. Aikido. I(yudo. Tal-Chi, etc.

WHEN KIDS WANT SCHOOL

THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY

We get a few letters each year from people who are torn because, although they would like to home­ school, their young children want very much to go to kindergarten. Here are follow-up letters from two such parents. From Sue Strong of Calif.:

From an article ca ll ed "Super­

babies" by Sarah Ban Breathnach, in

the Sacramento Bee, 8/19/84 :

... 1 felt certain that school would be wrong for my daughter ... She had a little bit of sadness about a week before school started, especial­ ly about not being able to ride the school bus. Some friends and acquain­ tances and I organized an activity group for homeschooling 5-year-olds which meets 12 hours a week (she goes 3 or 6 hours). This helped, especia l ­ ly since one of her old friends is in it. It's reassuring not to be the only homeschooler she knows, and she also likes having somewhere to go where she can bring a lunchbox' She is now not only thriving as a home­ schooler, but is even proud to identi­ fy herself as one. We are all happy and I'm so glad I followed my intuition .. .

And from Patti Pitcher (ME): ... When I wrote early this fall, Becca ( 4) was desperately desiring school (i . e. friends) ... She said i f we let her go this year to pre-school then she would want to stay home next year for real school . We consented, only because she was so miserable and lonely and because it was so impor­ tant to her - not because we necessar­ ily agreed with the school situation.

At first, she loved it. Two weeks later she liked it . Four weeks later, she liked it but ... Six weeks later she she refused to go because "there is too much fighting and the kids are mean to me and because we don't get any time to really play ... " During this time, my emotions ran just about opposite to Becca's.

At first, I felt horrible - guilty and a failure . Then I was outraged at the seemingly immediate behavior changes I noticed in Becca. She start­ ed showing, for the first time, sib ­ ling junk with Laura (1), she became incredibly sassy, she couldn't enter­ tain herself any more and was con­ stantly bugging me to read her a story or tell her a story or play with her or ... (any of which are fine in moderation, but this was extreme).

I was horrified at the results of just a few days and weeks in school, but was determine to cope ... By the time six weeks had rolled along, I was getting a much better handle on how to help mediate this situation and actually saw growth in Becca's abilities to deal with adverse condi­ tions. I still didn't like her being exposed to that junk, but I had come to terms with it.

When she announced that she wouldn't go to school any more, I was floored . Apparently her curiosity was satisfied. At this point, she is com­ pletely comfortable and excited about home school . Every once in a while, she wants to play school and sets up little chairs for recitations, etc.

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

... Child psychologist David Elkind, author of THE HURRIED CH ILD says, "As far as superbabies are con­ cerned . .. it's clear l y parent need, not child need, that is pursuing this. An infant does not need to be swimming at 3 months or using flash­ cards at 6 months ... Parents may con­ vince themselves that infants need it but as far as I can tell, it's parent need, no question."

What do young children ne ed?

Child experts say if parents really want to help their infants utilize their remarkable capacity for early learning, they shouldn 't push flas h­ cards and toddler computer courses.

Instead, parents should offer young children the opportuni ties , resour­ ces, and most importantly, encourage­ ment for creative play. " Play is vital to a baby's devel­ opment," says creative play special­ ist and author John J. Fisher III (THE FIRST WONDROUS YEAR, YOUR TOD­ DLER and YOUR PRE-SCHOOLER.) ... "A lot of study as been done on the play behavior of animals. Animal play is the way baby animals prepare for their adult roles," Fisher points out. "Kittens, for example, will swipe at rubber mice, acting out skills that as adults they will need to survive. There are a lot of theor­ ies that it's the same with humans.

"Play is the way a child practi­ ces all the skills that he will need some day: the physical skills, the emotional skills, and the cognitive skills . Adult tend to think that play is what children do to simply amuse themselves, but play is everything children do; when they investigate their physical environment, when they make social contact, all of it can be called play. It ' s how a child learns and grows and the parent can make val­ uable contributions right from the start."

Fred Rogers, creator and host of the Emmy award winning "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," says that "one of the most misleading phrases in our lang­ uage is child ' s play. We use it to suggest something easy to do, some­ thing trivial. But it's not - not by any means. When children play, they are working. For them play is both a serious and necessary business." ... Rogers discusses the role of play in depth in his book MISTER ROGERS TALKS WITH PARENTS ... "Over the years I have come to think of play in a way that makes it a very serious matter indeed," Rogers says .

"I think play is an expression of our creativity; and creativity, I be­ lieve, is at the very root of our ability to learn, to co pe, and to be­ come whatever we may be. o. ,"Artists, writers, musicians, dancers seem to be drawing heavily on play to do what they do ... Mathemati­ cians play with numbers and formulas, scientists play with hypotheses and experiments ... Business people play with corporate structures, tr yi ng out new combinations of all the many

SU N VALLEY CAMP,

June 1986.

Idaho. For music

and non-music students & families. Horseback riding. ice skating. tennis, swim, hiking. Su­ zuki Institute.

SAIL AROUND T HE WORLD· Departin9

1987 .

"School at Sea" 9 months an a tall sailing vessel. Girls, Boys. H.S. completion. Interper­ sonal tolerance, astronomy, navigation; compar­ ative religion, geography, & social science.

Galapagos, Pitcairn , Tahiti. Samoa, Guadal­ canal, Sri lanka. Zanzibar, Capetown. Plan ahead. Write: --

JOHN HOLT LEARNING CENTER Box 2261, Twin Falls, ID 83303 things that determine profit and loss. One way to think about play, then, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things combinations that may yield new forms of expression, new inventions, new discoveries and new solutions." · .. One child development expert who shares Rogers' assessment of the importance of creative play ... is America's pre-eminent pediatrician, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton (INFANTS AND MOTHERS) ... It is the element of self-choice, so inherent in pLayful activities, that makes creative play so important ... "Creative play ought to come from the child," Brazelton says. "For instance, if a child is l earning to walk and stand and you're there to back her up, give her sup­ port with all the things she's try­ ing, then you know what excitement it l ends to whatever she's already exci­ ted about. And so it seems to me that your job as a parent is to watch her and see what is coming from her.

"Now, I'm aware of all those par­ ents of superbabies who say, 'Oh, but the child wants to learn' (with flash­ cards). Well, maybe. But maybe it comes from the parents first and the child picks it up in order to get pos­ itive reinforcement from the parent."

Right now, Brazelton says, our culture is "under a terrible head of steam. Maybe it's in a kind of reor­ ganizing process in face of the new technological explosion. Parents in a way are trying to prepare their chil­ dren for whatever they might be head­ ing for and so in this vacuum the over-emphasis on cognitive develop­ ment is occurring ... A child's main job is to get himself or herself together and get on the road." · .. Furthermore, there are dan­ gers in superimposing early learning programs on young children .

"Eventually everybody will learn something from thi s superbaby stuff, but I think parents ought to consider the cost now," Brazelton says. "I think there is a paradigm for this too in Japan, where Japanese child development specialists are very con­ cerned about the pressure they have their children under with the early learning programs they have set up."

As a result of all the early pr essure o n their Children, the sui­ cide rate has risen alarmingly among Japanese adolescents and during the third o r fourth grades children "be­ gin to flounder - with negativism and resistance - when they get to the point where they are in control in­ stead of their parents." · .. "The young child plays from early morning until he goes to sleep

10 at night. It is the most natural way for a child to use his capacities, to grow and to learn many skills," Frank and Theresa Caplan write in their classic, THE POWER OF PLAY. And while computer companies like Atari (a dvertising their new edu­ cational software aimed at preschool­ ers) claim they they have only just begun revolutionizing child's play, and articles instructing parents on how to raise a superkid assaul t us at every turn, making us feel anxious about whether or not we are doing the best for our children , it is worth remembering. "It takes time to grow," the Caplans wrote. "A chi ldtime to ex­ perience the magic of one's own growth and development."

If we really want to give our c hildren a healthy and happy head start, old-fashioned playtime, not computer-time, is the activity they need, for child's play is the work that "b~gins in delight and ends in Wl sdom . . ..

COSMETICS ARE JUST PROPS From Kit Finn (VA): ... 1 was bothered by the comment in GWS #47 about the little girl who wanted to play with dolls and tryout makeup (GWS #46) . The comment suggest­ ed s he might get interested in th e history of cosmetics. Well, maybe, but I doubt it. The cosmetics are likely just props and not the content of her fantasy .. . Most little girls like to play with cosmetics . They're pretending to be adults . A l ot of adult women like to play with cosmet­ ics, too . The fantasy of glamor is probably pretty similar. The c hild probably doesn't spend any more time in fantasy than anyone else. We adults just don't fantasize aloud .

She plays dolls with her friends, who presumably go to school, partly because that's what the y want to do.

Part of her c h oice is for the dolls but part is for the friends. The amount of time spent will be limited by her friends ' availability. ... The chi ld's lack of interest in her mother's activities may be real or it may be a lack of enthusi­ asm for the apprentice role . Danette (7) loves to cook but ha s no interest whatsoever in helping me cook or being t aug ht how to cook. She wants to be in control ...

ACCEPTING THEIR LEARNING Robin Asher (NY) wrote last year: ... 1 have avoided writing about my experie nc es with homeschooling, be­ cause we have had so many ups and downs. I think I've been waiting for it to turn out all right so I will be able to write "they all lived happily ever after" at the end. ... We are all still getting over that long contact with the sc hools, and I'm only now realizing how per­ vasive the effect was. No matter how appreciative a teacher tries to be, she or he must, by the nature of his job, concentrate on what a child is not doing: assignments not comp leted, courses not taken, days of non­ attendance, questions not answered correctly . S/he is not free to ignore these lacks. At home, as chief of police in charge of making sure my kids "made it" in school, I found myself doing the same thing. If some­ one was reading a book, I found my­ self asking, "Have you done your home­

work? " If it was a nice day, and some­

one was playing the piano, it was,

"It's a beautiful day outside."

( Hint, hint.) But if they'd been out­

side all day, then, "What about piano

practice?"

Now t hat we have home school, the girls are getting better at insisting on their rights to pursue their interests. I still worry about their missi ng whole hunks of experi­ ence [DR: John Holt commented here, "Everybody misses whole hunks of experience"] and I do try to provide opportunities to try things they might not do on their own. I think some reluctance to try new things is a result of all those years of having their undeeds pointed out to them . I am the one, perhaps in the stiffness of my 37 years, who has the most trouble handling the fact that any one of my daughters may turn down flat an opportunity to learn some­ thing or go somewhere I think is marvelous.

I am learning to focus on what is going on, by being willing to experience the fact that a long list of alternative activities are not going on. What if someone spenas-an entire afternoon thinking ? I ask my­ self, do I really want her not to think? Supposing someone doesn ' t want to write anything? That's not the pOint. What is she doing? Riding a bike? Playing-with dolls? Talking to people? Nothing wro ng with any of that. That is the point ...

INFLUENCE VS. COERSION From the notes that Theo Giesy

(V A ) sent us of the keynote address she gave at the Mid-Atlantic Home­ school Conference, 6/28/85: . .. Many parents have problems distinguishing between influence and coersion, especially people who have had a major break or conflict with their own parents . They don't want to do to their own children what their parents did to them. In an effort not to coerce they try not to guide or in­ fluence at all . That is neither pos­ sible nor desirable. A parent has a sense of values built on years of ex­ perience to offer his children . . . But children also need to know that they can examine and judge and make de­ cisions for themselves, and that those decisions will affect their lives. . . . When Danile was about 7, she let me know, with some triumph in her tone, that she had gotten a piece of gum behind my back. I said t h at I was sorry that she felt that way. I ex­ plained that the only reason that I objected to the chewing gum was that it was not good for her teeth . I pointed out that it was no less harm­ ful to her teeth if I didn't know, and that while I would be sorry if she damaged them, they were her teeth and she would have to live with them, that basically it was herself she was harming. I could not prevent her get­ ting gum. I could only teach her what the options were. The choice would have to be hers . She seemed to under­ stand that going behind my back accom­ plished nothing.

Some years later after we were taking ballet, the children asked if they could go to the restaurant near the ballet studio and buy junk food like the other kids did. I asked what they meant by " could they ." I said that I would not beat them, put them on restriction, throw them out of the house or quit speaking to them if

they did. They h ad their own money and they had legs. Of course they could go. However, I could not honest­ ly say that I did not mind or that I d id not believe it mattered to their bodies if they ate that stuff. My opinion was strong but the only con­ sequence would be to their bodies.

In the school deCision, we tried to h elp our children understand as fully as possible exactly what was in­ volved. We discussed the advantages (there were some at times) and disad­ vantages of school attendance . When each child was sure that for him the disadvantages far outweigh t ed the ad­ vantages, we discussed the legal sit­ uation . .. We explained the possibili­ ty of court action being br o ught against us. We also explained that if we lost in court we could give in and put them back in school if necessary to avoid unacceptable consequences .

They wanted to be sure that there would be no chance of their being taken from us. I felt that they made a very responsible decision . . .. When I first thought of this topic, I was thinking about my own children and the decisions they have made. But as I worked with other kids, 1 saw again how quickly it works to treat them as responsible people. As wardrobe mistress for a ballet company, I found that at the first performances, the dressing room was a disaster area. No one had been around to suggest that it was each person's responsibility to take care of her own costume, or that there was a need for something to be done . They acted as though t h ey believed that costumes were packed and transported, and dressing rooms cleaned, by magiC wand or elves. Once they were told ex­ actly what was involved and how much difference each person's contribution made, they co-operated well. By the second performanc e things ran very smoothly. A friend put it very well when she said that she was establish­ ing the feeling of working together to accomplish something worthwhile, rath er than trying to force them to do something against their wills ...

REWARDS: PRO & CON From Kathy Lorimor (IL): ... 1 read with interest the two articles in GWS #45 about rewards for music practice. We hav e also had to deal with this issue, not only with music lessons, but in many areas of life. I enjoyed reading of families who had been able to use limited rewards for positive reasons. It seems our society thinks that child­ ren will not do anything without some type of incentive . While widespread use of rewards can be counter­ productive, we ha ve tried to utilize those which are to our advantage and have ignored th ose we have felt use­ less. The children are constantly bom­ barded with offers to participate and win prizes. We try to help them make wise choices.

This summer the library is spon­ soring a reading program with incen­ tives that I felt were better than the average. One of the prizes is a pass to the Wildlif e Prairie Park west of Peoria. Another prize is a pass for an hour long cruise on the Julia Belle Swain Steamboat that spends the summer here on the Illi­ nois River. Each week the girls are required to read and report on 5 books. Our weekly jaunt to the lib­ rary has become a favorite event, and it has been exciting to watch the

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

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gi rl s gr ow as th ey discover new areas of in t eres t. It took the incentive of a contest for me t o be wi ll ing t o make the extra-rrip to town eac h week.

In ou r Suzuki practice we occa­ sionally use s ome rewards . I t is neve r used as a bribe, but mostly to help ma k e t he practice t ime more fu n.

Heidi, especia l ly , looks forward to HUG prac t ice wh e n, after each song, she hugs me so hard t hat I fal l on the floo r. Sometimes t he sma l l encour­ ageme n t of a rewa r d he l ps them to get over a par t icu l arly difficul t section of the music by making the necessary repeti t io n less of a chore .. .

And f r om Denise Hodges (WI), whose 10 - year-o l d is back at school after thr ee years at home: . . . The t hi ng I ' m most upset with is this reading ince n tive program they h ave . I f h e reads t hree boo k s in a month he ge t s a ticket fo r a free pizza at Pizza Hut . If he ' s the first one every mon t h he gets a button, too . It ' s changed h is whole approach to reading. He used to read dozens of books a mo nt h because he loves to read' Now he picks out three easy, crummy books from the school library, reads them al l in study hall, and bugs us t he r est of the month to ta ke him to Pizza Hut - where we NEVER go as we are very particular about our diet and food additives and a l l ...

Worst of a ll, after he reads those three books he doesn ' t r ead any more t i 11 next month ' ...

[DR : As John once said in an interview : " Yo u can train nurse r y school youngsters who love to d r aw pictures to s t op draw i ng them , simp l y by giving t hem go l d stars or some ot her l ittle bo nus fo r a couple of mont h s - a nd th en removing that arti­ ficia l mo t iva t ion ." ] CUTTING THE CORD

From We ndy Baruch: Three mo n t h s into third grade Shane decided he was ready to home school . .. now . I' d been talking about it, and th~ing about it , for almost six mo n ths . Final l y t he anticipation of freedom grew too large for him. He wa n ted out, he wa nt ed to be home , and if I didn ' t make good my intentions , h e woul d lose h is fa i t h in me immense­ ly. As muc h as I'd thought about it, it wasn ' t u nt i l his u nh appi ness was· this real tha t I could do it. For Shane, I had t o cut the cord of my dependency on public schools.

We talke d about how in a home school no bod y teac hes you. I told him h e ' d have to decide what he wanted to learn and th e n learn it. I pro­ mised to help him whenever he needed it. He rea l ly l i ked t hat . I cau t ioned him that i t wou l d be a lot of respon­ Sibi li ty t o have complete charge over his own desti n y . He assured me he could ha ndle it . Of course I knew he was t oo young t o realize the magni­ tude of what I was as k ing him to take on. But i t was o nl y th rough discus­ sions li ke th ese tha t I could investi­ gate t ha t mag n i tud e . Af ter all it was really me who wo ul d be guiding his lea r ning ex per ie nces . Co ul d I do it?

Did I wan t t o do it ?

I ke pt t r yi ng t o imagi ne what home sc hoo l i ng wo ul d be l ike . How much t ime wou ld I have to spend with him? Wou ld a ll my own crea t ive needs a nd pro j ec t s suffe r with th is n ew respo n sibi li ty? Did I even wa n t to have h im wi th me a l l day l o ng? I

GROW ING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

kept g r appling with these questions wh i l e devouring issue after issue of GWS . Having all those back issues and indexes was a real asset . The person­ al experience of each family ' s strug­ gle confirmed my views about learning and schools, empowered me with the understanding that I was not alone .

I already knew from my own life that learning was constantly happen­ ing . I already knew that most schools were unnatural in their teaching methods . I remembered how broken my spirit was, and all the daydreaming had to do in school to keep alive.

Still, as little schooling as I'd had it took a long time to understand why I was dependant on elementary school for Shane. How is he going to get the basics? Wasn't it school that taught me to read? What if he doesn't want to do anything?

What if he doesn't want to do anything?

This was the culmination of my understanding . This was the last strand before the cord snapped. Deep inside me I had located the place where schooling had marked me . I believed what they wanted me to believe. The unwritten law of school­ ing is that without it we'd all be ignorant . Ours would be a SOCiety of derelicts . It's truly obnoxious yet completely ingrained, and we believe it. It took me a lot of investigating to find the source of this stronghold in my mind, and just . .. let it . .. go . ..

For the next issue, I plan to write about how it seemed to me that Shane didn ' t want to do anything for that first year, and the emotional turmoil that we went through in ourselves and with the authorities .

FITTING ON THE TRACKS

From the foreword that John Holt wrote in 1972 for a book called SOMEWHERE ELSE: .. . At a meeting - very pleasant - of (mostly) sociologists at Har­ vard, someone said to me, "But if I"e educate children in the way you pro­ pose, how are they later going to fit on the tracks laid down by SOCiety?"

The question showed me that he understood very clearly what schools are for - to make people think, as they had made him think, that the tracks that make a society of any par­ ticular moment are not only the best tracks, but the only possible tracks.

His remark was a perfect illustration of what Ivan Illich was to say some years later about how the institu­ tions of our society dominate not only our lives but our imaginations, not only what we do but what we even think we might or could do.

I didn't say any of this to my questioner . What 1 said was, "They'll make new tracks'" From their ex­ pressions it was clear that most of them had never thought of this. "And after all," I went on, "where do you think the present tracks in society came from? They weren't always there .

They didn't fall from the sky. Some­ where, back in the past, someone made a track, did something that had n~ been done before - usua l ly because everyone who considered doing it, if anyone did, thought it was impossible or crazy."

Societies are constantly making new tracks. If they don't they freeze up, get hardening of the arteries and joints, corrode, decay, and die. All of which our SOCiety is quite clearly in the process of doing. The question

is, can people ... make enough new tracks, and fast enough? Can we find new ways of living, thinking, learn­ ing, working to replace those which have quite obviously ceased to work?

Nobody knows . ..

TEACHERS WORK WITH FAMI LI ES

[DR:] We have raised before in GWS the question of how teachers can work with homeschooling families.

Surely there are people who have know­ ledge they want to share with others (and earn money in the process); and surely there are homeschooling par­ ents who would like to be able to draw on these other adults as resour­ ces (and are willing to pay for this service). How do they find each other, and how do they make arrange­ ments that work out for all concerned' So I was interested to receive the following from Kim Solga of northern California: . .. My business is primarily in the field of art education. I operate a mail-order supply center for home arts materials; I also teach seminars on art education to homeschool groups and write and illustrate articles for a variety of publications. I am a cer­ tified teacher, and currently a com­ mercial artist in addition ...

I've taught both children and adults for the past twelve years.

KIDPRINTS, my home art study guide, was written while I was teaching printmaking and art history to gift­ ed/talented students in a large Cali­ fornia school district ... I adapted them to home use with preschool and elementary age students. After sever­ al months of use and evaluation from homeschooling families in California and Oregon, the six-week Special Introductory Unit was created. This is being expanded to a full year of art study with printmaking, sculpture and drawing, and will be available this spring . . .

1 developed the ART AT HOME sem­ inar in response to many requests from families who were using my KidPrints Introductory Unit. The sem­ inar is both a research and promotion­ al vehicle [or KidPrints. I love teaching, and the seminar is enthusi­ astically recieved by participants, so it is rewarding all around. I arrange the workshops through indepen­ dent homeschool organizations, parent­ ing groups, and public schools. and would enjoy taking the class nation­ wide in the future ...

[DR:] Kim says she wi 11 be happy to provide further information on her art resources to those who send a self-addressed stamped envelope. Her "Special Introductory Unit," a six week version of her KidPrints art course for children, costs $6.00.

Address: 912 Schilling Way, Mt. Shasta CA 90067; 916-926-5076.

Furthermore, Kim's sister, Kathy Means, is another teacher who works with homeschoolers. Kim sends this article she wrote about her:

A'M'ENTION HOWE EDUCATORS: tdelip ad I1IJIplemmt JOur on currEuIam, treceiYe hich quIily I1IJIPIis-deIiYered to Jour home, *find proctacu to meet the neecb of JOur prshooler, tad IlYe IIODeJ with our -\om pri:eI- paraDtee. fREE CATALOG •• THE TIWBERDOODLE •• • E1610 Speucer Lake Road • Shelton WA 98584 •

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. . . After five years of teaching elementary school, Kathy Means left her classroom position in order to stay home with her newly-born son ...

Three years (and another baby) later, Kathy is still an at-home mom , and the entrepreneur behind EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, a successful, multi-faceted home-based business in Mountain View, California .

There are as many sides to Educa­ tional Services as there are to Kathy's teachi ng and admi ni strati ve skills. She tutors stude nt s from elementary through h igh schoo l level.

She arranges seminars throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching many of these workshops herself. Sh e contracts with sc h oo l s to administer their standardized tests, eva luat es the results and arranges follow-up conferences . ... Homeschool customers ma ke up a large part of her business. When first approac hed by a new hom esc hool­ ing client, Kathy discusses the reali­ ty of teaching at home. She stresses the time commitment and importance of providing a well-rounded program. She then assists in their cur riculum anal­ ysis and decision making, h e lping each family schedule their curricu lum within a weekly program. Kath y is con­ tinually available by telephone for those quick questions on teaching methods, the how-to's of tea c hing.

She meets regularly with each family to aid in the evaluation of the ir school programs . She also provides seminars for the enha n ceme nt of the parents' teaching skills . Social interaction amo ng the h ome schooled c hildren is yet another aspect of Kathy's business; she pla n s field trips, programs, and activities ...

"I began with tutoring as my mainstay," says Kath y. "In fact, I was tutoring i n the ear ly mornings and late after no o n s long before I stopped fu ll-time teaching. My fi rst h ome school clie nt app r oac hed me fo r advice while I was teaching in a seco nd grade c las sroom ."

Through low k ey ad vert isi ng, suc h as flyers in local schools, busi­ ness cards, and satisfied customers, Kathy's independent business began to grow . "Once I had establis hed myself as a tut or and consultant, I was con­ ta cte d by a privat e 'satellite' school needing a hom e school coord ina­ t or in my area - someone t o s upervise severa l homesc ho o l families. I now contract with this sc ho o l, as well as with individual families, to provide monthly superv ision of educational programs."

Kath y bases h er fees on $20 an hour. Individual homesc hooler s and tutorial clien ts hir e her services as needed, from a single hour t o seve ral hours per month.

"Home Sc h ooli ng At Its Best," a month l y guide for teache rs, home­ schoo ler s, and par e nt s, is a new adventure fo r Educational Services .

"At th is pOint, subscription money is returned to the pr oject and u sed for promotion and production. By n ext year I h ope to be benefiting from some income." . . . Educatio nal Services was s t ar ted wit h little capi tal i nvest­ ment. The "tools of the trade" have been pur c has ed as need and income allowed. A resource librar y is n ow available for c l ie nt s, with a wide varie t y of materials including an Apple computer, educational software, and a Ca non co pier. Educational Ser­ vices owns a comp l ete video sys tem, and Kathy regularly tapes seminars . . .

A metal storage shed, set up within her garage, is her h ome office and

h o u ses most of the se resources .

Kath y divides her schedule into an a ppointme nt week followed by a work wee k. Appointments include group meetings wi th h o me sc h ool famil ies , conferences, and field trips. The work week i nclude s t e lephone co nfer­ ences, record keep i ng , office work, research, a nd production of " Home Sc h ooling At Its Best ." Scheduled tutoring hours run throughout the month.

Educational Services now pro­ vides a monthly income easily equal to the schoo l tea cher ' s salary Kathy left be hind, with less tim e invested and the many advantages of being one 's own boss . ..

LIVE-IN STUDENT TEACHER? From Norine Car nevale, 7408 Abbington Dr, Oxon Hill, MD 20745: ... The co ncept of "live-in" st udent -teac h e r (p. 344 of TEAC H YOUR OWN) thrills me. My husband and I had jusr that o pportunit y prior t o o ur marriage. He lived with a young fami­ l y for two years. I lived with the same family fo r nin e months. They had four children, had been married ten years, and were o ut s tanding models for us i n teaching, training, and l ovi ng th e ir children. We copy much of their approach, attitudes, and methods in o ur home. John said, "Six months living in a family with young chi ldren wou ld be a great deal more va luable than any education co urse."

This is so true. We valued thi s live-in time so much that we have a lwa ys made available two extra rooms in o ur hom e for co llege students or fellows fresh out of the military . . .

We have learned from experience to se t standard s of life-style for our renters . The se standards should be discussed with the individual prior to their moving in .. .

LETTERS ON TEENS Evelyn Tate of Nevada (GWS #41) and her daughter Amy used the Univer­ si ty of Nebraska High School corre­ spo ndence co urse for a year, but told us in the spring of 1985 that the local publi c school was being too de­ manding in its insistence that Amy follow a rigid timeline . The family co ntacted a private Christian sc hool a nd arranged for Amy to attend there part time. In Novembe r, Evelyn wrote: ... The Christian school we had written abo ut is a two-and-a-half hour driv e from us, but worth it all.

Amy has to be there o nce a week on campus where she receives counseling and her new assignments. She spends the day in c lass and has made some wonderful friends. They have already made plans to visit us at Tahoe for skiing' ... At first we had to deal with a lot of t e nsion and fear left over from publi c school. Amy would ap­ proach her assignments with the atti­ tude of, "I don't know what they want from me'" She'd be literally tied up in knots and it would take days to complete o ne assignment. We talked to the vice-principal and discussed the whole public sc hool trauma and Amy's reaction. He was an absolute dream .

He saw to it that her schedule was lifted so that she wouldn't feel pres­ sured by it. He said he was far more concerned with quality work than with quantity . We couldn 't believe our ears . Amy has always been a perfec­

t i onist and schedul e demands would throw her behind, then th e hysteria would set in. . .. She got t o help in the school office and learned a lot about office machines and pr ocedure . She felt wel­ come, and they let h er kn ow she was capable. .. . Now we are in the second quarter, and we h ave a scholar full of enthusiasm and confidence . She is even taking on more wor k than her schedule ca lls for because she is hav­ ing fun doing it and isn't afraid of falling short any more. · .. The school is giving Amy c redit for her regular visit to the library where she does re search and so metimes ai ds th e c hildr en ' s librar­ ian . She also get s credit for babysit­ ting. The principal said students should get cre dit f or le arning how to be adults.

Now our gal sits for hours read­ ing and then finding more books with additional information so that she ca n know h er subject and not just par­ r o t information. She enjoys every minute of it . . .

In GWS #47, Lesley Stevens said that her teenage daughter felt like s he was being punished when she was taken o ut of church school and taught at home. Alma Moon Novotny of New Jersey responds: · . . Aft er having read and heard complaints about adolescent behavior from the parents of home-, private-, and publi c-sc hooled chi ldr en, I am mystified that Lesley Stevens attri­ butes the c hange in her daughter's behavi o r to her c hur ch school. It co uld just be that she ' s 13~ .

Of course we expect our children to question our values, but somehow, we don't e xpect th em to question our real values. Now, really, what fun is it to qu es ti on whether navy blue is an appropriate color or the healthful­ ness of broccoli when you can get such a terrific r eaction on the sub­ ject of premarital sex? If anyone knows h ow to get us, it's our kids. · .. 1'11 bet h er daughter came in and expressed her new-found knowledge in the most provoking manner possi­ ble, and it was simply impossible for the mother not to react in a threat­ ened way. · .. 1 really don't think home­ schooling per se is the answer to the problems of adolescence. I think adolescence is a problem in and of itself. Frequently th e social atmos­ phere of schools compounds teenagers' difficulti es , and they are more than grateful t o be let l oose .

But this do es n't seem to be the c ase here . In fact, Les ley Stevens now has a problem (running away) that s he didn't even hav e before. I always looked on the homesc h oo ling movement as being about giving c h ildren more choices and more control of their lives . If I were her daughter, I 'd feel punished too. And I'd be especially hurt that when she wrote about my "friend s, " she would see fit to put quotation marks around the word.

The parents of teenagers who write to thi s newsl etter and say they are not suffering a l ot of conflict also usually tell us h ow many pro­ jects their children h ave outside the home: college courses, real work, apprenticeships, and other indepe n­ dent experiences. They seem to be pleased to let go. Of course, their kids may be more tactf ul and sensi ­ tive in the way the y deal with their

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

13 parents, and so their parents have more confidence in them.

But I don't think anyone hits a happy medium in adolescence. Whenever someone tells me how horrible it is to live with a teenager, all I can remember is how much worse it was to be one .. .

LEERY OF AUDUBON TRAVEL Merritt Clifton, a friend of John's who is now doing environment­ al reporting in Vermont, wrote: ... 1 noticed a plug for the AUDU­ BON SOCIETY EXPEDITION INSTITUTE in GWS #46. From my own recent experi­ ence with them, I'd say they're well worth avoidin§. Early last summer, Jim Swan of A EI invited me to address their symposium on "The Earth as a Living Organism" at Amherst, on the subject of media and ecology ­ how environmental issues are covered or not covered, why, and what can be done about it . Although I was given complimentary registration, I attend­ ed completely at my own expense other­ wise. To be blunt, it turned out to be the most chaotic assembly of pseu­ do-scientific faddists, dilettantes, and just plain lunatics I've encoun­ tered in many a year ... Many of the more bizarre guest speakers had been expedition leaders or had other affiliations with ASEI .. . If anYl'ne else there was actively, serious y engaged in environmental work, I didn't meet him or her. As a whole, the confab was much like Anthropology I-A, as taught by New Age crackpots, who seemed to believe the ills of the world could all be solved if we'd just return to the rituals of South Seas savages. I'd rather ride around hell on a bicycle than spend several months with such-like on 8 bus ...

COLLEGE COURSE AT 13 The Huntington, IN Herald-Press, 9/1/85: ... The expression "it's all Greek to me" will soon take on new meaning for 13-year-old Daniel Lewis of Huntington.

That's because Daniel has enrolled in a class in ancient Greek at Fort Wayne Bible College, and expects to soon be reading and writ­ ing the language as well as his older classmates.

Daniel's first class session was last Thursday. He is taking the four-hour class for full college credit .

Meanwhile, Daniel is continuing to study math, English, history and other junior high and high school sub­ jects in the "home school" taught in his home by his mother, Brenda.

Daniel has not attended regular schools since Mrs. Lewis started teaching him and his brother, Matt, two years ago. Home schools are per­ mitted under Indiana law.

"I'm looking forward to it," Daniel says confidently about study­ ing Greek in college. "I've always been interested in ancient Greece." . .. Professor Arlan Birkey said he finds it exciting that a 13-year­ old will be in his class. He said the best way to learn a foreign language is to start at an early age, and pointed out that many scholars of the old Greek language began studying it when they were young.

"I don't think he'll have any problem," Professor Birkey said of

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

Daniel's chances for success . "It's exciting to see a person with the appetite for the study of language that he has."

Daniel got his first taste of Greek through his homeschool classes.

He liked the subject and wanted to continue it.

At first, his parents tried to get a tutor for Daniel but were unsuc­ cessful. Then, they decided to try Fort Wayne Bible College, and the solution they came up with was for Daniel to enroll in the college 's reg­ ular New Testament Greek class.

The college agreed to accept Daniel after learning that tests con­ ducted at St. Francis College show he can be considered a gifted student.

Daniel also received a recommendation for the class from his youth pastor ...

"Applying was quite a process," Mrs. Lewis recalled, praising the "open-minded" attitude of the college and its academic committee.

"It was unique because of his age," she added. "Normally they would have asked for his high school cred­ its but he didn't have any . We were very pleased when they said they would accept him . It's pretty exci t­ ing to have a 13-year-old going to college." ...

SINGLE-PARENT FAMILY

By Wendy Razzell in the British newsletter Education Otherwise, 6/84: ... 1 thought that it might be worthwhile to write a piece about my experiences as a single parent with children out of school, in case any others are wondering if they should try this.

We first decided to deschool after I separated from my husband four years ago and at the time I didn't have the confidence to take sole responsibility for Josephine and Luke's well-being, so we joined a rural community where there were other de schooled children.

A year later we were again liv­ ing as a one-parent nuclear family in Sussex with the children back at school. After the freedom from insti­ tutional life, the return to a school-oriented existence was claus­ trophobic and depressing to us all .

It still seemed as if some kind of community would be the only suitable environment for us if we were going to deschool again. The image of us in­ cestuously closeted together day after day in a small town house, in an area where all the other kids were at school, just didn't seem feasible.

And I had little idea what I'd do with them on my own. But we did know that school wasn't right. ... So we wrote away to and visit­ ed various groups, and in the summer of 1982 moved up to the West Coast of Scotland to join a community in the making where there were other de­ schooled children. Our existence was extremely basic, living in a caravan in this remote spot, without running water or electricity. It was a physic­ al, outdoor life, except for times when the winter gales blew for days on end. It wasn't a situation con­ ducive to formal working, though Luke kept his hand in at Maths and Jos started to work sporadically on three Wolsey Hall "0" Level courses . We read lots of books aloud to pass the long winter evenings and enjoyed the beautiful countryside. The children made camps and treehouses, looked after the animals and started badmin­ ton, dancing, and music classes.

It had become clear that we weren't going to settle there, though, and had to lo ok for yet anoth­ er home. We moved the caravan to a much more sheltered and accessible site on the land of another EO family in the area, the Springthorpes, and spent the spring and summer happily and more comfortably (with the mirac­ ulous benefit of running water).

However, we wanted to avoid another caravan winter and, failing to find a cheap enough house in Argyll, we arrived at our present address in the Borders last August.

Here we were, finally, in the situa­ tion that I'd been running from for several years - just the children and myself in a house on our own, out of school, and in a totally unfamiliar part of the world into the bargain.

And it's actually fine and all my pre­ vious doubts seem unfounded. In our small neighborhood community there are four other families with children at school or due to go, but it isn't a problem at all . We've been complete­ ly accepted .

We had a small trauma in the autumn when the LEA, after a short visit, wrote to say that they were not satisfied with the education being given . This ha s since been re­ solved after we explained in detail what we were doing and our reasons for it and I emphasized our shared commitment to carrying on with EO. They are not very used to home­ educated children in this traditional region and also doubted, I think, whether I'd be able to keep going as a single parent for the necessary five years until Luke is 16. They were also skeptical about how we could tackle science subjects to sec­ ondary standard and whether they would be deprived of computing experi­ ence. I assured them that if either of the children wanted to pursue the sciences academically we could do that with the help of correspondence courses. We got a Spectrum computer and Luke's already taught himself from books a great deal more, I t hink, than he would have learned at school, where access to computers is very limited for his age group (Jos is totally uninterested in computers).

This challenge to our whole way of life was shattering but it did con­ centrate our minds and we've had a productive time since. We've adopted a much more definite structure with approximate school days and hours, doing regular maths, French and pro­ jects, and Jos working hard on her "0" level correspondence courses, as well as a lot of music and crafts. We still debate how far we should be in­ fluenced by society's exam-mania ...

Learning French verbs doesn't have much to do with speaking to French people and you wonder just when know­ ing how to manipulate an inverse matrix is going to matter . But the marvellous thing about home education is the freedom to respond to these kind of doubts and experiment with shifts in approach in a flexible way.

In any event, there's no doubt that Jos and Luke are infinitely happier and livelier than they were at school.

My fears of being very isolated and having no personal freedom haven't been borne out at all. We have made some very good friends of other Borders EO families and, be­ cause there's no rigid school time­ table, have the time and energy to go out a lot. Jos' and Luke's ages (14 and 11) must help and a single parent with younger children might need the support of reliable friends to make it possible to go out alone regular­

14 ly. The older they get, the less they are dependent, and the more they are good companions who share jobs, prob­ lems, and laughs.

Earning money is obviously dif­ ficult for the EO single parent. We live on Supplementary Benefit and so far have managed. Swapping work and help with friends in an informal way has helped enormously and is much nicer than buying services . I hope to fit in a few hours paid work too, soon.

So I've now been a single parent both with children at school and out of school and without question find the latter best . More than anything I appreciate the relationships between the three of us being so much fuller and more relaxed than when Jos and Luke were at school . Their personali­ ties then seemed to be subdued and shrouded in fears and tensions that could only dimly understand . School does seem to drive a wedge into family relationships and when this is removed life can flow so much more easily and naturally . ..

AMERICAN HOMESCHOOLERS IN SPAIN In earlier issues of GWS, Suzanne Alejandre wrote about her family's learning adventures in mov­ ing from California to Germany, where she and her husband worked for Ber­ litz. In 1984 they moved to Spain, partly because they could find no way to keep their children o ut of school legally in Germany. Suzanne wrote about the latest move: 1984: ... I fee 1 much more comfor­ tabl e-aeiling in Spanish than I thought I would. In Dortmund whenever I tried speaking Spanish, German would come out of my mouth' But once here with Spanish sounds all around me, the Spanish in the back recesses of my brain is coming forward.

Richard is already fluent so he has handled the major things, but I can hold my own when I need to.

The first week we were here, Niko (7), Le e (5), and I ventured downtown on our own - we took the met­ ro stop near our apartment and I got us downtown, but when it was time to come back, somehow I got turned around and I wasn't certain which dir­ ection to take in the subway, and I couldn't find the chart that is norm­ ally posted. After some heSitation, which Niko and Lee sensed, I decided to ask for directions in one-word sen­ tences . It worked and we got home fine. The next time we went downtown, when it was time to come back, Niko started telling me which way to walk ... I later realized that he had decided to be in charge and each time we go somewhere now, Niko notes which way we are going and has been able to lead us home ...

I think Niko and Lee have it the hardest right now because they speak no Spanish and they miss Germany and speaking German. Every day they spend an hour or more listening to story tapes in German. We stocked up be­ fore we left, thinking that would be one way for them to retain their German.

One thing that has helped as far as finding playmates - we bought a battery-operated toy submarine. At the playground there is a shallow pool to play boats in and one time we were there, a boy had one of these submarines. We were all fascinated by it. The next day we checked at the general store across the street and they had one ... That evening the play­

ground was packed and both Niko and Lee sat close to me on the park bench. I asked them i ( they were going to try the sub. After a few minutes Niko blurted out, "I won't know what to say if someone takes it." So I told them that " No " in Eng­ lish is the same in Spanish ... That did it, up they got and they became so involved in watching, chasing, and playing with the sub that they forgot to be intimidated by the crowd.

Later that evening another boy came who had the same submarine; the three boys played and played, and when we finally left, Niko said, "Se e, I played with someone without speaking." I asked him if he remem­ bered doing that when we first moved to Germany (Niko was 4 and Lee was 2). Niko answered no, and so as we walked home I reminisced about how they'd played without speaking and how they had gradually learned German by listening and copying the German children's words.

Before this experience, I think Niko had been thinking it would be a long time before he could play with someone besides Lee ... Now it seems to have given him some hope as far as fitting in at the playground ...

Lee has it easier - he's not such a worrier and being two years younger, h e finds it easier to play without talking, BUT, he still thinks we're going to go "home" (Dortmund) .

No matter how much we explain, he can't understand, and I think it's because we left so much behind in temporary storage . . .. While in Germany, we realized there was more than one "German" lang­ uage and now in Spain we are learning about the different languages here: Catalonian, the Basque language, Gallego, etc. Each has its own separ­ ate grammar, it's not like speaking Spanish with an accent' As we learn about the languages, we learn about history, too, since the development of languages is all tied to the early movement of people. Many of our Ber­ litz students know that history - so, again, we are learning so much as they practice th eir English' You can't beat our job for gathering in­ formation . I complain about the pay but then I stop and think, "I'm act­ ually getting paid for this??" ...

1985: ... We hav e already lived in Spain for a year and a half - in­ credibly fast passage of time. " .Niko (8~) runs all kinds of errands for us now. He goes to the bakery and buys bread. He goes to the tobacco shop to buy stamps, to the market for milk, etc . For all of these he must speak Spanish, of course, and use pesetas. He is really good with money - knows the prices of things, change, etc. He also likes to calculate the peseta-dollar exchange - Rich showed him how to figure it on his calculator watch . He can go in both directions now.

Niko speaks English, Spanish, German, a little Catalan and a little French, now . His English has become dominant again (when we lived in Germany, German was dominant). Be­ cause it has been such a long time since he has used German, he has lost a lot. Due to finances we weren't able to hire anyone for German conver­ sation, but now we have. An Austrian young woman comes for an hour a week to chat with Niko. We are going to in­ crease it to two hours now that they are comfortable with each other. She said that Niko understands everything but has difficulty speaking - no flu ­ ency . We are considering visiting

friends next summer in Germany and that would cure that real quick . ..

Niko learned Spanish by playing con­ tinuously in the same park with the same friends last summer. He started French (his favorite language) last summer by taking a short Berlitz course - 5 days per week, l~ hours per day in a group of five people ­ all conversation. Again, now that we can afford it, we have a private teacher come once a week for an hour for a one-on-one French lesson.

Catalan, Niko is picking up from his soccer club (we are in Catalonia and there are two very distinct languages here, Castillian Spanish and Catalan) .

1986: ... 1 work every morning at Berliez-Tgood method, lousy pay) and Rich works most afternoons at a pri­ vate Spanish school (bad situation, excellent pay) and in between we have private students - either they come here or we go there. Somehow with all of this we have it arranged so that one of us is always available for Niko and Lee. Occasionally they accom­ pany us to a class or sometimes we have a student at home while the other one of us is at another stu­ dent's home. When'that happens and the boys need somet hing , they just interrupt us in the study - the stu­ dents never mind - they enjoy hearing "real" English.

Rich and I figure that we spent an apprenticeship time at Berlitz ­ we learned that to teach a language, you must build a relationship with the student. Somehow that student must want to talk to you. We know how to teacn-people a minimum of vocabu­ lary, but what is more important is the rapport that you build. ... Niko's German chats have turned into Niko and Lee German chats - for some reason two weeks ago Lee said he would stay in the class and now he is included too. Karin is very friendly and the hour goes quickly for them all . The last class they played cards (in German, of course).

I set out games and storybooks ­ there are always too many things to do, which is good. They seem to be building a friendship with her (as Niko is with his French teacher as well) as I had hoped ...

HOME-SCHOOL ON MEDICAL VOYAGE From "Marimed: A Family Voyage Becomes a Health Crusade," in Whole Life Times 12/85: ... Theirs was a storybook life: he a successful corporate lawyer with degrees from Harvard and Boston uni­ versities, she a gynecologist/obstet­ rician educated at Wellesley College and Tufts University. At 33, they had a comfortable home in an affluent sub­ urb of Boston and could frequently be found sailing their yacht in the waters around New England.

The decision to leave, they ad­ mit, was a bit rash.

In December 1979, David and Lonny Higgins and their two young children - Jessica, now 7, and DaVid, now 12 - set sail on a journey that continued for five years, taking them from Maine to Japan on a 96-foot schooner they had rebuilt for the trip ...

"The trip, in the beginning, was really very personal," Lonny re­ counts. "It was a way to take our­ selves into the world and to be a fam­ ily." Nevertheless, she wrote to major U.S. drug companies telling CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

John Holt's

BOOK AND MUSIC STORE

Classics In Human Development

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for constant contact tapers off quickly when its experience quota has been filled, and a baby, tot, or child will require reinforcement of the strength it gave him only in moments of stress with which his current powers cannot cope. These moments become increasingly rare and self-reliance grows with a speed, depth, and breadth that would seem prodigious to any­ one who ha s known only civilized children deprived of the complete in-arms experience.

As Liedloff shows, children so reared very quickly notice what people are doing around them, and want to join in and take part as soon and as far as their powers permit. No one has to do anything in order to "socialize" the childre~ or to make them take part in the life of the group. Tney-are born social , it is their nature. One of the strangest, nuttiest, and most destructive ideas that "civilized" people have ever cooked up, not out of experi­ J F '" 'I II LDL OFF ence but out of their heads, is that children are born bad and must be thre atened and pun­ ished into doing what everyone around them If the- Wl..-ld ulUkl Ix W\'CId bya buok, ctw

does. No continuum culture expects children to mo,.(hr ht-lhe book"

JOHN HOLT

be bad as a matter of course, to misbehave, to make trouble, to refuse to help, to destroy things and cause pain to others, and in cul ­ tures with long traditions these common (to us) forms of child behavior are simply unknown.

Tnis see",s to ,.,e as ;,;.portant a book as Some years ago a group of American child experts went to China to study Chinese anj I have ever read. In it Jean Liedloff says children , child -rearing, and schools. To their and shows that babies grow best in health, Chinese counterparts they eagerly asked what happliieSS, intell isence, independence, self­ relianc e, courage , and cooperativeness when they did when their children had tantrums, they are born and reared in the "continuum" of TaUght, teased, whined, broke things, hurt the human biological experience, i.e . as "prim­ people, etc. The Chinese looked at them with itive" mothers bear and rear their babies .. . baffled faces. The Americans might as well What babies have always enjoyed, needed, and have asked, "What do you do when your children jump 300 feet straight up in the air?" The thrived on, for the first year or so of their lives, until they reach the crawling and Chines e could only say over and over, "Child­ ren don't do these things." The American visi­ exploring stage, is constant physical contact tors went away equally baffled. It never with their mothers (or someone equa Ily well occurred to them .. . to suppose that the reason known and trusted). Babies have always had Chinese children are not bad in the way so this, at least up until the last thousand many of ours seem to be is that nobody expects years or so , and each new- born baby, knowing nothing of history but everything of his own them to be. Being small , ignorant, inexperi­ animal nature, expects it, wants it, needs it, enced, and passionate, they may now and then and suffers terribly if he does not get it. stray off the path of good behavior. But cor ­ Here, in only one of many passages of recting them is only a matter of patiently extraordinary vividness and sensitivity, is pointing out that they have strayed, that here Ms. Liedloff's description of the early life we don't do things like-rnat. No one assumes of a baby among the Yequ ana Indians of the Ama ­ that their deep intent is to do wrong, and zon basin, with whom she lived for some time: that only a long hard struggle will break them of that intent and force them to do right.

From birth, co~tinuum infants are taken In short, the problem children of the everywhere. Before the umbilicus comes off, affluent Western world are as much a product the infant's life is already full of action. of our culture as our automobiles. What we He is asleep most of the time, but even as call psychology, our supposed knowledge of he sleeps he is becoming accustomed to the "human nature," is and can only be the study voices of his people, the sounds of their of the peculiar ways of severely deprived activities, to the bumpings, jostlings, and peop le, so far from the norms of long-term moves without warning, to stops without warn­ human biological experience that it would not ing , t o lifts and pressures on various parts be stretching matters to call them (us) of his body as his caretaker shifts him freaks. Liedloff's description of "modern, " about to accommodate her work or her com­ "medical," "scientific" childbirth, and the en­ fort, and to the rhythms of day and night, suing days and months as a baby must experi­ the changes of texture and temperature on ence them, is enough to make one weep, or have his skin, and the safe, right feel of being ni ghtmares, or both. It's a wonder we're no held to a living body. worse off than we are.

I wish that Liedloff had said early in The result of this kind of treatment is the book what she finally says at the end, not, as most modern people might expect, a that some or many of the most harmful effects timid, clinging, whiny, dependent infant, but of severe early deprivation of closeness and the exact opposite. Liedloff writes: contact can be largely made up for or cured if a human being is richly supplied with these When all the shelter and stimulus of his necessities, in ways she suggests, later in experience in arms have been given in full life . This is important. Many sensitive and measure, the baby can look forward, outward, loving mothers and fathers who bore and raised to the world beyond his mother ... The need children in the modern "civilized" way, upon It I)(

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"This remarkable little book contains some of the most sensitive observations of a baby's first year that I have read." - T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. See next page for more info. reading this book and realizing what they had unknowingly denied their children , might be almost overwhelmed by guilt and grief . With enough kindness, tenderness, patience, and courtesy, one can make up for much of this early loss.

It is impossible for me to say how important I think this book is. I have spent most of the past twenty-five years of my life realiz ing, more clearly all the time, that our world -wide scien tific and industrial civili­ zation, for all its apparent wealth and power, was in fact tearing itself apart, and moving every day closer to its total destruction.

What is wrong? What can we do? Many people are doing good work and are pointing toward useful answers. But only in the last year or two has it become clear, at least to me, that one of the most deep-rooted of the causes of our prob­ lems is the way we treat children, and above all, babies. I am equally convinced that no program of social and political change that does not include and begin with changes in which we bear and rear children has any chance of making things better.

So I hope that many people will read this book, the more the better, especially any­ one who may have any contact with, or anything to do with, babies or little children. The human race, after all, changes with every new generation, and only a generation or two of healthy and happy babies might be enough to $8.95. turn us around.

This review by John Holt appeared in GROW IN G WITHOUT SCHOOLING #13 .

Addison -Wesley Publishing Co. has acknow­ ledged its gratitude to the late John Holt for suggesting the first two titles in this series.

These are just some of the books from our catalog . Send a SASE for a free copy of our complete catalog. * = newest additions.

ON CHILDREN AND LEARNING

THE ACORN PEOPLE, Ron Jo nes. #13. Inspiring and mov lng story by a camp counselor who helped severely handicapped children do what was consi dered impossible. $2 . 25 THE AFRICAN CHILD , Camara Laye. #2 9. A young Afrlcan tells the story of his happy childhood in a pre-industrial tribal cu lture, showing us a very different world from which we have have much to learn. $2.50 *THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY, Margaret W. Shinn. #49 . One of the flrst natural scientists to study the behavior of infants, Ms. Shinn ' s day-by-day account of the first year in the life of her niece is as in sightful today as when it was first published in 1893. $8.95.

THE BOOK OF SMALL, Emily Carr . #19. Well-known palnter, born ln 1871, reminisces about her childhood in Canada. Touching, true-to-life picture of how a chi ld sees the world. $4.95 BORN TO LOVE , Joa nn Grohman. #14. An excellent book about the importance of natural child rearing, especially breast-feeding. $6.50 CHILDBIRTH WITH INSIGHT, ELizabeth Noble. #47.

ThlS reassur lng bOOk wlll conv ince you that women know how to give birth if they li sten to themselves, not to conflict ing theories & well -meant interference. Much info. $8.95 *DIALOGUES WITH CHILD REN, Ga r eth Matthews. #48. A phl losophy professor shows how the 8 ­ 11 year-olds he talks with are capable and wil­ ling to enjoy philoso phy. Hardcover, $12.50 DESCHOOLING SOCIETY, Ivan Illich . Why we need a soclety wlthout compu l so ry learning, and what it might be like. $5.95 EQUAL RIGHTS FOR CHILDREN, Howard Cohen. #2 4.

A thoughtfu l, carefully -reasoned argument in favor of making available to children the rights and responsibil ities of adu lt s. $4.95 *ESSAYS INTO LITERACY, Frank Smith. #48. An essay co llect lon about how chi l dren learn to read that centers on Mr. Smith's main point, namely, "Children do not learn from being corrected, but from wanting to do things the right way." $11.00 THE FACTS OF LIFE, R.D . Laing. #13. A doctor and psychlatrlst makes a powerful attack on the ignorance and crue lty of much modern medi­ :ine, especially relating to child-birth . $2.25 THE FAMILY BED, Tine The venin. #18. A strong 3rgument ln favor of having babies and young :hildren sleep in the same bed as their Jarents . Another good book on alternatives to nodern chi ld-rai sing methods. $6.95 ,ENERALLY SPEAKING, Ronald Macaulay. #32. A ;hort, clear, and perceptive descript ion, by a linguistics professor, of how chi ld re n discov­ ~r and master language . A powerful ar gument 'or freedom in l ear ning. $9. 95 iNYS AT WRK, Glenda Bissex. #24, 25. How a :hlld, start ing at age 5, became a sk illed wri­ :er by inventing spe lling s and correct ing hi s )wn mistakes . Opposes conve ntional view that ~verything must be taught. $6.95 'HE HEART HAS ITS OWN REASONS: Mothering Wis­ 10m for the 1980's, Mary Ann Cahl I I. #41. A .upportlve, practl cal book for mothers who hoose to stay home with their chi ldren. Good dvice on how to cut costs at home. $8.95 OW TO SURVIVE IN YOUR NATIVE LAND, James Hern­ on . # I. A very percepb ve and hl Iari ous ccount of da ily life in a sub urba n junior igh, in which a teacher disco ver s one of edu­ ation's basic mistaken ass umptions. $5.95 IDS: DAY IN, DAY OUT, Elisabeth Scharlatt.

10. Huge co llectlon of imaginative, practical deas about how to live, work, and play with oung chi ldren. $12.95

This carefully and thoroughly researched book is a devastating expose of the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), the Educational Testing Servi ce which makes and se ll s them, and by extension of the whole idea of st andardized mu lti ple- choice tests. It is by far the most revealing and important of all the many books on testing that I have seen during the past fifteen or more years, and is and will be for some time an abso lutely essential piece of information and ammunition for all home schooling famil ies and organizations. It is of the utmost importance that until stand ardi zed tests have been generally discredited, or at least lose their present monop oly over ways of keeping track of learning, we make sure t his book stays in print, and becomes known to as many as possib le of the pub li c, to educators, to the media, and above all, to legis lators.

Mrt!1 of As I will say elsewhere, one of our chief education­ al and political tasks for the next ten years or so will be to wean legi sl ators away from the idea, which most of How the Educationallesting St:rvict: controls the gates to hiplCr education and success in

them now probably hold, that children's (or any­ American society

one ' s) le arning can be accurately reduced to a number, ---Ga ......-Im, n""'c""U·W-V.._____ and that standardized multiple-cho ice tests are the best or even the only way to do it. It look s more and more as if most l egislatures, and perhaps before too long all of them, may be ready to say that parents should have the right to teach their own children; the danger is that they may then insist that all such parents must use the teaching and te sting methods of the schoo l s. To persuade them to change their minds on this point will take much time and patience, and to help us do this, Owen's book will be an invaluable resource . . .. The mailing address of the Educational Testing Service is and for some time has been Princeton, N. J.; in news stories it is of ten referred to as "the Educational Testing Service of Princeton N.J." But the institution itself is not located in Princeton at all, but in a town called Lawrence. One can only ask why ETS should go to the troub le of maintaining what is in effect a false addres s . The obvious answer is that, without ever actually saying so (which would get them in a lot of trou ble), they want t o encourage people to believe what many do believe, that there is some co nnection between ETS and Princeton University. In fact there is no connection whatever . As Owen cl early shows, most of ETS's dealings with the public are on this ethical level ...

I wish that Owen had said explicitly what hi s book strongly implies ... that it is not and never will be possible to reduce all the complexities of a human being's knowledge, understa nding, and skill in learning to a single number. The first step to change this assumption is for as many of us as possible to read, and get others to read, this splendid and indignant book. - John Holt . See "Test s" for price .

NO

OF THE

AB~

Behind the Scholastic Aptitude

THE LIVES OF CHILDREN, George Dennison. #6 . A profound, movlng book about kids - poor, non­ white, disturbed, public school rejects - grow­ ing and learning in a small school that treated them like people, not problems.

Essential! $4.95 MINDSTORMS, Seymour Papert. #24 . How children are learnlng programming by teaching a com­ puter to draw pictures; plus many useful ideas on learning, math, and the mind. $6.95 PHILOSOPHY AND THE YOUNG CHILD, Gareth Matthews. #z7. A phl losopher shows us, from charming examples, how much important meaning is in childre~'s questions and remarks. $3 .95 READING AND LOVING, Leila Berg. #45. A percep­ tlve Brltlshwoman contrasts the way a child picks up reading amidst a loving family vs. the demoralizing school methods. $8.95 SOC IETY, STATE, AND SCHOOLS, Calvin Center.

The rellglous, phllosophlcal, and legal issues raised by compulsory schooling. $9.95 TOTTO CHAN : THE LITTLE GIRL AT THE WINDOW, Tet­

suko Kutoyanagl. #31. Dellghtful st ory of an irrepressible little Japanese girl (the author) in a school run by a wonderful teacher. Best-seller in Japan. $4.50 WALLY'S STORIES, Vivian Paley. #39. A brash 5year-old lnvelgles his kindergarten class into creating and acting out stories. Perceptive, charming, and revealing. Hardcover. $15 . 00

THE WAY IT SPOZED TO BE, Jame s Herndon. #5 & 6. Used coples of thlS out-of-print classic abour-a teacher's struggles in a difficult school. Funny and important. $3.00 YOUNG CHILDREN LEARNING, Tizard & Hughes. #44, 47 . Important Brltlsh study concludes 4-year­ olds learn much more at home in daily 1 fe than in artificial nursery sc hool activ ties.

For fighting the trend to institutional ze the very young. Hardcover, $15.00

YOUNG CHILDREN, NATURAL LEARNERS. Our first GWS supplement conta ln s let ters from parents of chi ldren (from birth to 6) and various articles about how learning goes on before school. $2.00

TESTS COMPLETE GUIDE TO TAKING TESTS, Bernard Feder, #10. Best book around on I) why standardized test s don't measure anything important about learning; 2) how to do well on tests if you have t o take them. $4 .95 HOW TO BEAT THE S.A.T., Michael Donner. #34.

Clever tactlcs t o outwit the S.A . T. and other standardized tests. $4.95 HOW TO TAKE THE S. A.T., Marcia Lawrence. #20.

Lear n how wrlters of the col l ege board exam think when they make up questions. Many sample te sts and answers, with good advice. $6.95 NONE OF THE ABOVE , David Owen. #45. A bril­

llant examlnatl on of the myths, problems, and

stupidities surrounding the SAT and other

standardized tests. Hardcover. $16 . 95

TEN SATs, The College Board. #45. Actual and

complete sampl e tests plus advice on how to

prepare for them. $8.95

HOME SCHOOLING AND THE CHILDREN PLAYED, Pat Joudry. Back in prlnt, the V1Vld and beautiful story of how an off-beat family did without school. $8.95 ANYTHING SCHOOL CAN DO, YOU CAN DO BETTER, Malre Mullarney. #40. An Irlsh homeschooler write s about teaching her eleven children un­

til they were eight or nine (and later wished she had done so longer). $5.95 , BETTER THAN SCHOOL, Nancy Wallace. #35. The best book we have had about how home schooling has worked and what it been like in one family. Their story i s a textbook case of how to deal with difficult sc hool boards.

Hardcover. $10.95 THE COMPLETE HOME EDUCATOR, Mario Pagnoni. #42. Explalns how compu ters work and how fami­ 1ie s can use them at h·)me. Al so how and why the Pagnonis homes choo1. Mario is a public school teac her. Clear, helpful, funny. $10.95 THE FIRST HOME SCHOOLING CAT ALOG, Donn Reed. #31. A huge 11St of books, materials, and re­ sources, put together by homeschoo1ers. $10.00 OF CRADLES AND CAREERS, K. Lowman. #48. This lS publlshed by the La Leche League and is sub­ titled, "A Guide to Re-shaping Your Job to Include a Baby In Yo ur Life." Many workable ideas. $11.95 PETERSON'S INDEPENDENT STUDY CATALOG, 1983-85. #20 . Where to flnd hundreds of academlc courses-by-mai1 (high sc ho ol , college, or grad level). With general info on home study. $5.95 SHOULD I TEACH MY KIDS AT HOME ? A Workbook For Parents. Kate Kerman. #38. Ihl s book shou ld make many new friends for homeschoo1ing, per­ suade many people to undertake it, and help many of those who do undertake it, to do it better. $4.50 SURVEY OF WASHINGTON STAT E HOMESCHOOLERS, Jon &Wendy Wartes. #41 . These 1984 survey re­ sults, made for the use of legislators, are splendid and perhaps the best portrait of home­ schoo1ers availab le. 66 pages. $7.00 WE LEARN AT HOME, Katharine Houk. #45. Picture booklet made by a homeschoo1er about her 6­ and 3-year-01d . Give your kids someone to iden­ tify with! For read-aloud & coloring. $2.00

By Hannah Hutchinson. Simple version s of we11­ known folk tales, told in Spanish: Red Riding Hood, Pied Piper, Five Musicians of Bremen, Three Bears. The amusing cartoons make so clear what is going on, and there is so much FOREIGN LANGUAGES repetition, that you can figure out most words; if needed, there's a glossary.

CAPERUCITA ROJA. #37. $2.95 EL FLAUTISTA DE JAMELIN. #46. $2.95 LOS CUATRO CANTANTES DE GUADALAJARA. 44. $2.95 BLANCHE NEIGE ET LES SEPT NAINS. #44. Made for LOS TRES OSOS. #35. $2.95 French chlldren by Walt Dlsney, this is a cas ­ sette and storybook version of "Snow White and OXFORD PICTURE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH, the 7 Dwarfs," entirely in French. Useful Engllsh-Spamsh Edlbon, E. Parnwell. #39. P1C­ page-turning signal. Listen and learn! $6.98 tures of 2000 everyday objects with their names printed below them in English (in black) *CENDRILLON. #48. Created by the same company and Spani sh (i n blue). $4.95 as BLANCHE NEIGE, this is the story of Cinder­ ella told in French. Cassette and book. $6.98 OXFORD PICTURE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH, Engllsh-Japanese Edltlon, E. Parnwel I. #44.

By Herge: #47. The same "Tintin" cartoons as our English version of THE BLACK ISLAND (see Same concept as above, except with Japanese characters. Though no explanation is given how our "Series" section), but written in foreign languages. Ple nty of pictorial clues to to to pronounce the Japanese, it is interesting to figure out what the symbols mean. An easy fi gure out unknOl.n words. Fun! $5.95 way to take a peek into the mental life of a L'ILE NOIRE (French) $4.95 LA ISLA NEGRA (Spanish) culture very different from ours. $6.95 $4.95 DIE SCHWARZE INSEL (German) READ JAPANESE TODAY, Len Walsh. #48. This con­ Clse and entertalnlng book teaches you to read three hundred of the most useful characters. $4.95

WHO DOES WHAT WHEN, Kerman. An excellent guide to currlculum planning and record keeping in the home school. $2.50 '

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HOW CHILDREN FAIL,1964. Revised 1982. The ori­ glnal best - seller about how even the "bright­ est" kids in the "best" schools are made stu­ pid by their fear of humiliation, by school's separation from life, and by the assumption kids will only learn what they're taught PLUS 20-25,000 words of new writing. $5.95 HOW CHILDREN LEARN, (1967) Revised Ed, 1983.

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How ChUdren

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19

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

them of her plans to donate health­

care services a l ong the way, and ask­

ing for supplies. "We were flooded; I

was shocked'" she says .

They outfitted their traditional­ ly rigged schooner, Deliverance, as a home and added a treatment room equipped for minor surgery . Savings, the sale of their house, and some independe n t income enabled them to afford the journey.

David had a lways felt going to sea would be a good experience for the children. The sailing life teach­ es discipline on several levels, from learning to travel within the limita­ tions of the boat and weather condi­ tions to keeping the deck tidy.

Life for the family was not vacation-like . The Higginses a nd crew (mate, boatswain, cook, and engineer) rose at 7 AM and by 7:30 were clean­ ing the deck and polishing brass.

Breakfast was at 7:30, and school for David and Jessica started promptly at 8:30, letting out at no on for lunch .

The daily routine co ntinu ed through 6 PM dinner and 10 PM lights out.

The children studied correspo n­ dence courses modified and adminis­ tered by their parents , sometimes aug­ mented by a tutor . "It's been a tre­ mendous turn-on for the kids to be ed­ ucated by us in a living classroom ," Lonny says.

"We made studies relate to their exper i ence," David explains . "We used math to teach navigation and science to learn how to predict weat her ."

"Solving a geometry problem might mean going upstairs and measur­ ing angle with a sextant to find out exactLy where we were in the midd l e of the ocean," Lonnie elaborates . "A sociaL studies question could be, 'How did the Polynesian people come to live here?'"

Brother and sister became very close, according to their parents, un­ usually so for siblings five years apart. A profile in Islander magazine (5/13/84) described both chlldren as outgoing, polite, independent, and ad­ venturous . ... Medicine, at least as Lonny practiced it, turned out to be a great way to make friends, although it sometimes took several days for local people to overcome their shy­ ness and approach the boat. David and Jessica ' s p l ay with neighborhood children often broke the ice.

"If they feel comfortable with you, they'll bring their children to the boat, " Lonny told Islander. "Then word gets out, and other people come to you.

1I

Although Lonny never asked fo r payment, patients often brought her fresh picked fruit or homemade food.

And the communities they visited pro­ tected the Higgi nses from intrusion or harm. The one time in suc h a place that an item - Jessica's knapsack ­ was taken from the boat, it was re­ turned the day after the Higginses let the community kn ow that it meant a lot to her.

This episode profoundly impressed the children, "especially in comparison with the only other time something was stolen." That hap­ pened in a wealthy resort area on the Australia n coast: the outboard engine that powered the family's dinghy from ship to shore was stolen and never returned, even after a $500 reward was offered. ... While Lonny offered medical care and training, David and the crew members would repair outboard motors for local fishermen, or help with com­ munity projects like t he salvaging of

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLI NG #49

marine equipment from a grounded ship.

By the e nd of the first year , they realized that the best way to ex­ perience each place they docked was to live and work there for at least a few months. And as their trip grew from a planned two years to five, so did their commitment to the people they were meeting . "Now we believe we have a moral ob li gation to help the people of Micronesia obtain better health care," David says. ... In a project to teach local women about health care, "th e first thing I did was make the midwife the chief of the clinic," Lonny says . "I focused on teaching her the skills so that she could teach her patients .

It had th ~ effect of boosting her stature.

"Th is is also the most effective way to use the health-care dollar," she notes .

Her respect for the people she was worked with has been recipro­ cated . On Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, for example, a 78-year­ old midwife took her through the jungle, showing her plants used to regulate labor and to treat various ailments. Later the midwife sent a seriously ill man to Lonny for treat­ ment ...

[The Higginses have founded the organization MARIMED, 1210 Auahi St, Suite 222, Honolulu HI 968 14; 808­ 537-5586 . J "TEACH SOMEONE TO FISH ..."

Caroli ne Walker wrote in the Education Ot herwise newsletter, 10/85:

.. . I have always wanted to edu­ cate my children at home and now I find myself in the fortunate position of being obliged to do so . We have the great privilege to live in a South Indian village and have for the past five years been l earning about the life of the rural poor.

There is a well-known slogan ...

"Give a man a fish and you feed h im for a day: teach him to fish and you feed him for life."

I think we have to look closely at this stateme nt and try and work out its implications. Things are not always as simple as we would like and in the field of development t hey tend to be very complex indeed . Perhaps we could examine some of the assumptions implicit in this seeming l y admirable piece of advice .

Suppose you are a native of a rich western country. You are con­ cerned by all the appeals made by charities on TV, in the papers, by flag day tin-rattlers. You tend ther e ­ fore to see the Third World (for want of a better term) as a great mass of poor helpless hungr y people stretch­ ing out their hands to you, asking for some of your hard-earned cash.

Now you come across this statement; suddenly everything is clear. Your contribution of SOp in the tin is not really useful; it is only one fish ­ the poor man will be back tomorrow asking for another one and there will never be an end to it. Now you can feel justified in stopping such dona­ tions; instead of 50 pence here and there, it seems that you (or someone else) need to make just one larger gift - "50 pounds will teach a man in Senegal to fish " or whatever - and then the Third World will stop bother­ ing you . You can ca rryon in your comfortable lifestyle and know that you have done your bit for world poverty. " Teach a man to fis h and you

feed him for life" - does not this conjure up visions of the genial western expert breezing in with a couple of good lectures entitled "Impr oved fishing techniques using alternative technology in the Gambia " ? And does it not also suggest that the poor ignorant natives were just sittjng idly by the side of rivers and lakes full of fish, starving because no white man had yet come to teach them how to catch them?

All you need is to pay your ex­ patriate to run a few courses and they will all be fed for life.

Those of us working here know, and many in the rich world I am sure suspect, that it is not that simple.

In the first place it js generally pointed out by those who study the Third World in depth that poor people do not need any lessons in how to feed themselves . The poor are ex­ tremely ingenious and resourceful in their ways of gathering food . It is common for us to see ladies plucking wild greens by the roadside; children getting wild fruits from old wayside trees; boys collecting fat white ants as they swarm out of their holes at certain seasons, to be fried and sold sweetened the next day; I have even seen a group of woodcutters in the forest chase and kil l a panogolin (an armadillo-like creature) and with great difficulty and the loan of our penknife remove its scales to roast and eat it. And since we are talking of fish, when there is water in the rivers and reservoirs children can be seen every day after school catching a few tiny fish to add to the family's evening meal .

As we have learned more about the life of the rural poor we have become more and more irritated by this particular slogan with its subtle ove rt ones of white supremacy and Third World inferiority . It is trotted out over and over again and have not yet once, in all the develop­ ment literature I have read, seen it critiCised for the way it perpetuates the old damaging stereotypes which continue to block genuine and effect­ ive communication between rich and poor .

I would like to suggest that we discard such simplistic notions . Why not admit that the rich world can on l y maintain its comfortable life­ style precisely because the poor countries remain poor? It is not the poor nations that need teaching - it is us in the west who need to learn how to live with less, how to use less of the world's resources, how to be more sharing and generous and loving to our neighbor . ..

TRI P ACROSS U.S. From Ruth Matilsky (NJ): ... We were gone all summer on a three and a half month, 10,000 mile jaunt around these United States . It was an amazing experience. Neither Jacob (3) nor Sara (6) wanted to come home. They were terrific . It was interesting to see how they enjoyed each new place that we got to and how they improvised to make play toys, since we brought very little with us.

We had books, an art bag, a couple of toy cars, and that's about all. Sara collected the co rk s from the wine bottles we emptied and made dolls out of them that she shared with Jacob.

In the Gra nd Canyon, where the ground was sandy and gritty, she made rock art and drew sand pictures on the ground. In the most disgusting,

20 mi serable hotel th at we ha d t o s tay in one nigh t whe n we h a d ca r tr ouble, t hey made a "house " out o f c ha i rs and s pent hours playing.

They go t used t o sleeping in a te nt and bec ame real he lpe r s when we ma de i t clear that we ex pect e d them t o s ha re the work . Sara was quite int e r es ted in the his t o r ica l aspect o f th e places we visi te d . It was grat i f y ing. It was a TREMENDOUS a mount o f work . Jake was n't e ve n t o il e t tra i ned when we l ef t a nd I was wa sh i ng diapers across Ameri c a . In Big Sur I kne w he was rea dy a nd I t o l d h i m, "Momm y is done with d i a ­ pe r s ." He a cc epted th at a nd s t opped nee d i ng them. Hallel uj a h' · .. We boug h t a te nt we could stand up i n wit h h uge wi nd ows on all four sides. We r ente d our hous e to a f a mily from Japan, so ld our Ma zda car t o a f amily from Long Is l a nd a nd packe d our 1972 Ford LT D (wi th a trunk larger than our kit c hen . ) · . . Our very firs t nig ht out we had a n incredib l e t hund e r s t orm a nd Ja co b slept t hr ough the n i ght for the first time in his l i t e . In Memphis, Te nness ee, we wo ke up at s unri s e to the mos t amazing s ymphony of b i rds that we'd e ver heard. It was l i ke the Ph i lha rmonic a t Ta ng l e wood, and we n ev e r heard anything li ke it again on our t rip . · .. We did our on ly "primitive" c amping in New Mexico ( th e nearest wa ter was a mile away and ther e were n o pi c n i c tables) . We ca mpe d h i gh on a hill while everyone e l se in their R.V. ' s ringed the la k e ha v i ng par­ ti e s. There was no se n se o f e co l o­ g i c al c oncern h ere - peo pl e took their four wh ee l dr i ves i nto places that wer e unbelievab l y di f fi c ult to wa lk, let al one drive, a nd ther e was broke n glass everywhe r e . But we were f a r enough fr om the madd i ng c r owd t o re lax. And th e next day as we pa cked up, a he rd of goats a nd s he e p ca me through ou r field gra zing. The s heep be l ls we re ri nging . Thi s ma de a big hit with t he kids . . . . No pic t ure can eve r e xpl a in the Gr a nd Canyon. We s t aye d a week at Ma th e r Campgr ound. I t was s till early e nough i n the season so th a t there was no problem wit h r e serva ti ons.

(For those of you wh o ar e unaw a re, to camp these days you n eed t o make re servations t hrough Ti cke tr on - one o f the th i ngs th a t ma ke s America great.) . .. Te r ry a nd I t oo k turns r i ding bikes ou t to wa tch the sun­ ris e ea c h morning . Tha t was wonder­ f ul . The k ids loved the s huttl e buse s , so we used t he m i n the daytime t o se e t he canyon fro m different place s . Each spo t is u n ique and this wa s fun fo r a l l of u s . Jak e was parti­ c ularly impressed wi th a beetle that h e fo und at the canyon and both kids go t tr e mendous p l easu re out of the ga rbage t r uc k s t ha t ca me through our c a mp s ight . This was th e time that th i ng s meshed for us on th e trip. We h a d go tten i n to our routin e , th e kids ha d a n i dea o f wh at wa s ex pe c t e d o f th e m and wer e ac t ual l y beg inn ing t o h e lp. We were slowing our s el ve s down.

Our rout i ne include d l ong l unc hes during whic h Sara did sa nd drawings, J aco b h e lped her, we wat c h ed our prairie dog peek ou t o f it s hole, and Te rry and I relaxe d . I al so st a rted t o a ppr e cia t e the i nt e nse beaut y of the desert flowers. ... At Yosemi t e, we ca mped on a hill, in a n isolate d gr ove, across the road from t he mos t be autiful river I've ever see n. We parked the c ar and didn ' t ge t i nto it until we pull e d out over a week l a ter. There wa s a st ore wit h i n wa lking distance

a nd we just stayed put. Terry and I t oo k turns hiking and the kids were c ontent to play at the edge of the river or to climb the giant boulder s th a t were in our campground. Toulumne Meadows has many hiking tr a ils ­ long, short, hard and easy . It was the first time that I ever had the o pportunity to hike alone and feel safe . And EVERYTHING was beaut i ful ...

We met Sam and Mary and famil y , a homeschooling bunch from Florida wh o were on a month long cruise. They settled down in the adjacent ca mp­ si t e . The setting was c omplet e .. .

EARNING T.V. PRIVILEGES

From Jed Purdy (WV), age 11 : ... Many people have written t o you on the subject of kids watch i ng too much TV . At our house we have a method. My sister and I receive "TV time," for instance, if we ge t the mail (it's a 2/3 of a mile wa lk ) . We receive a ~-hour of "TV time" and with t hat we can wa t ch one ~-hour of TV . We also receive time for clean­ ing, working, etc. We somet ime s r e ­ ceive the same amount of "TV time" a s the amount of t i me we worked. We don't have to pay for educ a ti onal TV or TV that an adult is wat ching .

It has caused me to outgrow car­ toons very quickly. I now watch only one show that I have to pay f or . My s i ster also watches less . I thought it up last year and we are all happ y about it. Kids may dislike i t at first but should settle down quickl y .

I never minded it since it was my idea, but my sister didn't like it a t first .

We originally kept "t i me t ick­ ets" but now keep track of it on a piece of paper by the TV. I drew up a c ontract stating our rights a nd th e law s of "TV time." It helps t o settle disputes . Some shows are educational to one person and not to another . For i n s tance, "Ripley's Believe i t o r Not" is informative only t o me, there ­ fore I do not have to pay for it .. .

T.V.-WITH NO RESTRICTIONS

From Jocelyn Maskerman o f Quebe c : . .• 1 began to wonder about the role of TV in children's l i fe when our second child came back from nur­ sery school ( age 4 ) , shouted at me t o bring food, and turned on Se s ame Street. This went on f or several weeks before I tumbled on to the fa c t that this was his way of saying that nu rsery school was not the Good Thing several neighbors had implied, and Kenneth was under pre s sure th e re t o climb a ladder and pa i nt and do o the r Good Things that all c hildr e n l ove t o do.

-­ . .. We fin i shed the baseme nt a nd put the TV there and read in the liv­ ing roorr. again. Now anyone wh o want s t o watch TV has to meet the s e t at the appointed time and fixed plac e without impinging on the rights of others to quiet or conversat i on.

When George dropped out of Grade 2 he was keen on numbers, and the prices and the jolly razzmatazz of "The Price is Right" did a lot t o cheer him up. With 22 channels to choose from he was now able to wat ch four shows a day. The TV Guide pro­ vided the real i ncentive to read.

Here I was able to gain an i nsIght i nto TV as therapy. Safe from the noisy violent crowd in the classroom, he was able to watch people smiling

a nd happy - the ot her side of t he co i n as i t we r e. Anot her t i me I no t ice d Kenn e th was a ddic t e d to " Char ­ l ie ' s Ang e l s " (wh ere three curvaceous fe males do de t ec t ive work) a nd wa t c hed re l igiously every evening .

Wh e n I met h is Gr ade 2 teach er I real­ ized t his, too, was his a tt empt t o r ed r ess the ba l a nce - no t al l fe males were d emand i ng and dic t a t orial . Wh e n I fou nd myself (at a r ather bumpy per­ Iod i n my ma rri age) t a king refuge in wa t c h i ng M*A*S*H, it was subco nscious­ ly be ca use t he near l y al l ma l e cast offered mo r e positive models t ha n my pa r t ner j ust then . Much later I read No rma n Cousin ' s boo k "Ana t omy of an I l lness" where a very sick man vir t u­ a ll y cured h imse l f by watching f unny mov ies . I a m convi nced the amoun t of TV wa t c h e d is in direct proportion t o t he a'm ount of unh appi ness in one ' s li f e.

Seve r al peop l e, of course , were ap pa ll ed t hat a kid s hould dro p ou t of sc hool a nd watch "The Price is Ri ght" fou r ho urs a day' ... When John Ho lt i n Toronto i n J un e 1981 invi t e d que s t ions from th e a ud ience , one of th e m was " My homesc hooled c h i ld watch­ es fi ve hours of TV a day - any com­ me n t?" His rep l y was to ge t r i d of th e TV. Th is does s tr ike me as th r ow­ ing t he baby out wit h t h e bath-wa t er .

Be l ievi ng with A. S . Ne ill t hat " f r ee­ dom works," I observe d a nd waited . We ma de no r estriction s on the kids excep t t o mention that they would pr oba bl y find s hows after 9 PM bor­ i ng . They r espec t ed our recommend a­ tion, and ask permission for exce p­ t ion s .

Oh , th e JOY of being wo ke n up at 6: 30 AM on a Sund ay morning wh en an exci t e d 6- year - old a rr ives wi t h a bound a nd a whoo p : "Mom' Dad' I know how a wa t e r pump wo rk s'" fo ll owed by a l oud a nd l engt hy explanation. Why is Un ive r si t y of t he Air on at suc h an uncivilized hour? .. . The c hil dren have become more d isc r i mi na t i ng . Thei r t as t es hav e moved f r om "The Price Is Right" to mor e i ntell ige n t qu iz s hows a nd nature progra ms. The younger ch i l d, mo r e socia bl e, use d to rus h home f r om Grade 1 de t ermined t o wa t c h " Ge ne r a l Hos t i pa l " (sic'). I did watc h some of these - t he sc r i pt was t ri t e: "You know my fat h er neve r l oved me' " so bs a g i rl - perfect fa r e for a sympa ­ thet ic 7-ye a r-o ld. How adults can wat c h the c l ic h ed ac t i ng-rs-Deyond me. Ce rt ain l y with t he choice of fi ne (ma inl y Br itis h ) d r amas we ca n n ow v a lue ac t i ng as a h ig h art form, ha ve d evel oped a n apprecia t ion of direc t­ i ng , and ca n recog n ize camera-work as e x c ell e nt o r s l o pp y. Th e kids, t oo, ha v e wond e r ed how fi lms ar e made, g aini ng mo r e i n sight into this 20 t h ce nt u r y a rt form by th e age of 10 th a n I ha d at 30 .

The commercials . Many pa rents h e r e f i nd th emselves a t odds wi th th e d ema nds on th ei r poc ket, a nd t he wis h t o sa t isfy t heir k i d s. I've had re qu es t s t o buy t his t oy and that ce r eal and have often complied. The k ids hav e i nvariab l y bee n disappoint­ ed . At th e age of 7 George co nfi d ed i n me: " You know, th e peopl e of Kraft t e ll lies - t hey say th eir c heese is be st , bu t I l ike X bra nd better. " Af t er a bout th e age of 7 kids r ecog­ nize commercials for wh at the y are .

Jus t l ast n ight I said, "Tha t (new foo d ) s ound s l ovel y, s ha ll I buy some? " There was a c hor us of " Oh , Mom, you k now it ' s j unk if it ' s on TV! " I s l unk away' The ques t ion of violence has u pse t many pare nt s . At firs t I, t oo, wa s ho rri fied whe n a visiting 4 - year-

GROWING WITHOUT SC HOOL ING #49

21

old insisted on watching "Gilligan ' s Island" where Gilligan was sure some­ one was out to kill him, and was ner­ vously trying to hide. However, I understand that children under the age of about 8 have no real concep­ tion of death, and the titillation of dangerous predicaments (when one's life is safely sanitized or suburban­ ized) as in games of cops and rob~ers ("Bang' You're dead''') or in fairy tales (eating a poisoned apple, or what is more violent than a wolf eat­ ing your grandmother?) is understood by small kids as fun because of the release of the happy end . I must say, in this regard TV is highly moral .

Violence is used against the bad guys and the good ones emerge victorious.

(Often older adults who have experi­ enced real violence in life usually have no-wTsh to watch further vio­ lence on TV) •..

I watched my kids carefully after "The A Team" "Dukes of Haz­ zard," etc., and ~part from chasing each other up the stairs immediately after, I could detect no wish to watch more of the same~in fact, they are now complaining it's the same thing every week) and absolutely no change in character - in fact, scnool attendance wrought more change in per­ sonality than TV .. .

I'm sure it's a question of con­ trol when the schools deplore the amount of TV watched by their stu­ dents - it interferes with their con­ trol over what is learned . Parents object because it can interfere with their control and organization of their children's lives. The anti­ TVites remind me of the outcry after the invention of printing 500 years ago: "It's immoral, unnecessary' It will give people revolutionary ideas' corrupt their minds' ruin their eye­ sight' waste time and prevent them from doing useful work' '' . . .

SPECIAL LUNCH DAYS

Theo Giesy (VA) writes: .. . About five years ago I start­ ed having "lunch days" to give a special time of individual attention to each child in turn (their ages then 8-15). One day a week, not always the same day, is set aside for me to take one of my children out for lunch. When we started, all four of my children were still living at home so each one got to go every fourth week; now, with two at home, each goes every other week .

The child gets to pick the res­ taurant, within reason. Many res­ taurants have lunch menus much cheaper than their dinner prices so expense can be kept reasonable . We go to a wide variety of restaurants, including favorite Chinese, Mexican, and I ta lian restaurants.

During lunch we have a special time together. Sometimes we go shop­ ping afterwards. Sometimes if the chosen restaurant is in a mall, the other kids will ride along and shop during lunch . But lunch is for just one child to have special time alone with me .

No matter how busy or hectic life gets, we always observe lunch day. When life seems too busy and it is tempting to skip "just this once," that's when it is most important to take a little time out to give some special attention and to catch my breath . That enforced break makes a big difference.

In months with family birthdays, we change the schedule if necessary

GRO WING WITHO UT SCHOOLING #49

so that the child with the birthday gets to go to lunch the week of his birthday . On rare occasions the best friend of the child is invited along.

But the main idea is one-to-one time . ..

CHILD, Doris J. Rapp, M.D.; Simon & Schuster.

NONTOXIC & NATURAL, Debra Lynn Dadd; Tarcher/St . Martins (a direc­ tory of safe products).

WHY YOUR HOUSE MAY ENDANGER YOUR HEALTH, Alfred V. Zamm, M.D.: Simon & Schuster . ..

UNBEARABLE-DUE TO CHEMICAL

A reader wrote to the parent of

"Hard To Live With," GWS #43 & #47:

. . . 1, too, have a difficult child - my older son . .. You mentioned that most of the families who respond­ ed to your letter suggested a natural diet. Tim has been on Feingold since he was a little more than a year old, with mixed results. We have found a greater determining factor in his behavior to be, not his diet, but his environment - and here I may be able to help you.

A year ago, when things were more or less bearable in our relation­ ship, we suddenly came to a crisis.

Within the space of a few days, we installed a new bathroom cabinet (full of particle-board), had our con­ dominium units painted, and had a long visit by my mother-in-law from overseas (a smoker). Within the space of a week or two we watched helpless­ ly as our son degenerated from a most­ ly lovable child to a raving lunatic - I mean violent, destructive behav­ ior, and 90% of it was directed at his grandmother (even though from the beginning they got along fabulously, and when away from her he claimed to miss her). It reached the point that I had to move out with the children and spend several weeks with ~ , parents.

During that time, since I sus­ pected a connection between the smok­ ing and our son's behavior, and at the suggestion of a friend with simi­ lar problems, I took Tim to an aller­ gist specializing in clinical eco­ logy . That trip has literally changed our lives - probably saved Tim's (I know - pacifist though I am - I would have broken down and killed him').

The doctor diagnosed a formaldehyde allergy - or "sensitivity," for those who want to quibble about the meaning of the term allergy. Formaldehyde was the common element in the particle board, the paint, the Cigarette smoke, and, incidentally, the host of scented products my mother-in-law uses, plus, to my dismay, countless other products in common use every where .

Skeptics say, "How can allergies cause behavior problems?" A clinical ecologist would answer that the brain is an organ just like the skin or lungs and so can also be affected by an allergic reaction . If you can imagine a severe case of hives on the brain, you can imagine my poor tor­ tured son.

Anyhow, the mother-in-law has gone back home and we have even moved into an older rental home with drama­ tic results. We have our sanity back.

Or did, until the onset of cold weath­ er a couple of weeks ago - now, with the furnace running, we have problems again . Unfortunately, all rental houses seem to have gas furnaces.

We are building a house in the country, using low-formaldehyde mater­ ials and no gas appliances, so hope­ fully when it is completed peace may be restored.

If you would like to look into the allergy/behavior question, there are many books now you may want to read, such as: ALLERGIES AND THE HYPERACTIVE

QUERIES

Here are more questions we hope

some of you will respond to. We will

forward all answers to those who

asked the questions, and we plan to

print the most interesting replies:

. .. Has anyone out there experi­ enced any problems with homeschool­ ing-related stress? I honestly thought I'd be the last person to have stress build-up, but this fall began having a variety of physical and emotional symptoms which indi­ cated a severe stress overload. I have had to do a lot of examining of my lifestyle, and I am forced to con­ clude that my present homeschooling situation is indeed quite stressful.

I didn't have any such problems when I was teaching my 10-year-old daughter at home, but this time the homeschooler is my 7-year-old son, a most obtrusive child. He is a world class talker and question asker, and is very persistent ... Naturally. I want to be responsive (that is, after i l l , one of the reasons why we kept him home), but feeling constantly stressed is taking its toll . . .

Our situation (alone in the coun­ try with no support group or phone) is one I know a lot of you share or have shared. These circumstances can help the stress become self-perpetu­ ating. When you no longer have the energy or concentration to teach or even interact, you take on a lot of worry about doing a poor job, particu­ larly if you are basically the child's only resource. If any of you have had to deal with this, I'd real­ ly appreciate your letting me know how you coped. - S.J , . .. Does anyone have any personal experier.ce with using the Clonlara home education program or any other non-religious home education program?

I have been getting curriculum guides from my local public school, which works fine for some subjects such as math, spelling, phonics. With reading and writing, I totally let my daughter decide what to do. She usual­ ly is very inspired in those areas (she is 8) . With science and social studies I sometimes get stuck with no inspiring project to lead us, I thought a home education program may help during those times. - V . L.

.. . Do you folks know of any good books on preparing children to stay by themselves? - R.S . .. . One thing I want to ask GWS readers about: my in-laws' biggest objection seemed not to be the home school so much as that the kids will become too dependent on me; they'll be too much with their mom. This is bad for kids, they say .. . In addi­ tion, my in-laws insisted I would become (perhaps already amT too depen­ dent on my children and will never be isIl verbS

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22 able to relinquish them . .. They see home school as simply an exc u se for me to stay abnormally attached t o my kids . I reeled with that o n e. And I ' ve heard the argument from two other people, one a psychologis t.

What do others think? Ha s anyo ne else had to deal with this? I wo uld very much like to hear from parents who have older home schoolers ... Did you have a problem in letting th em go, or they you? - T.H.

GOOD CATALOG SOURCE A reader writes: ... 1 thought I ' d pass on a con­ siderably less expensive source for all sorts of things: cameras , com­ puters, software, many tools, h ouse­ hold items, etc, etc . COMB DIRECT MARKETING CORP ( 14605 28th Ave. North, Minneapo l is, MN 5544 1- 3397) is an "authorized to liquidate " dealer which serves the entire country . All shipping and handling c h arges are the same regardless of where yo u live .

It's amazing the items they carry' We have ordered our Co mmo­ dore-64 computer, software, gene ra­ tors, radios, and many other things through them. They are prompt, t ake a check, Visa or MasterCard. We have been very happy with everythi n g we've gotten. (By the way, in their cu rr e nt holiday catalog they have a 20-volume Webster Encyclopedia for $1 48, ship­ ping and handling $15 .5 0.) We 've been able to buy things that would have been difficult to buy through normal means ...

SCHOOL SURPLUS-CHEAP From Carol Krentzman (MA) : ... Recently we came across so me great buys. We needed a filmstrip pro­ jector for our Shaklee business (about a $200-400 inves tm e nt ) . My hus­ band called the school departme nt s of several towns in our area and th ey each referred him to their " media ce n­ ters . " At one of these he fou nd a beautiful, sturdy surplus projector for $10' He also found an individual unit with built in screen for $10.

And the man at the media cente r said we were welcome to borrow any film­ strips we wanted.

Last weekend our town had a s u r ­ plus school supply sale. For $11.50 we got three wooden chi ld' s desks and chairs, a good Remington man ua l type­ writer, three beautiful large, roll­ up maps, and two small filmst r ip viewers! . ..

PREFERS THE BRITANNICA Catherine Murray-Flahe rt y write s : ... 1 wou l d li k e to help correc t some wrong information about the ENCY­ CLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. Diana Moskal (GWS #47, p. 30) says that Britannica does not have a n e ntr y for John Wilkes Booth . In our se t, whi c h is the 1984 printing of the 1 5 th Edi­ tion, there is a one-third page entry on him in Vol. II of the Ready Refer­ ence set and further e ntries on his role in the Lincoln assassi nation (Vol . 10), and on his Shakespearean roles (Vol . 3), in the Know ledge in Depth set .

We bought these e n cyclo pedias about a year ago . The township in which we live has no public librar y .

The County bookmobile comes by o n ce a

week, but our experience with it ha s been that we've "lost the moment" on some of our son's interests due to delays in getting b oo k s thr oug h th e bookmobile. I wanted to have some kind of comprehensive refer e nc e r eadi­ ly available so that our s o n wou ld see that we could still learn at home even though he was enrolled i n first grad e at a school. (My husband is not totally aga i n s t home sc hooling - o n ly for us.) We a lready had a se t of th e World Book Childcraft books and were finding that they did not even begin to answer some of his questions wh en we tried t o u se them.

When we looked at the sam pl e Bri­ tannica book s and literatur e that the saleslady brought out, we found the Britannica had changed a lot from what I had remembered from my school days. (I used the Britannica a lot during school because my high school English teacher would not accept World Book reference s for anything .

And, I admit this did influence my decision to buy Britannica ). The Bri­ tannica has been given a major re­ write, making most entries c l ear and easy to read. · .. In my opinion, the "M icro ­ pedia" Ready Reference Set of the Bri­ tannica compares favorably t o the World Book, and the "Macrope dia" Kn ow­ ledge In Depth gives the plu s of more depth o n a sub ject. To my knowledge, the Micropedia and Macropedi a are always sold together. · .. The only disadvantage that saw to the Britanni ca was th e price ­ it cost us abo ut $300-400 more than the World Book would ha ve . How eve r, the prices are apparently flexible and must depend on the commission th e salesman chooses to make . .. It was like buying a car. When we hesitated, the price came down. When we still hesitated, a set of books called th e "Annals of America" was included; This 25-volume set contains the origi­ nal writings of American hist orical figures . . . Since both my hu sband and I are fascinated by American hi story, we considered this a deal and signed on the bottom line ...

SELF-TAUGHT READERS From Donna Faturos (PA): · .. For several years I have been reading GWS and hearing about h ow many children learn to r e ad, and read well, without all of the eff o rt sc hools put into it. It sounded won­ derful, especially the idea th at I wouldn't have to be a t myself Sil l y tea c hing, but I had this nagging feel­ ing that it may work for others, but never for me. I read a loud a l ot to our three boys; and with Joseph (6~), o ur o ldest, I would occasionally play word games of our own creation. I was rath e r surprised this morning t o hear Joseph reading a Dr. Seuss boo k, one we've never read to him, to J os hua and Benjamin' It reall y does wor k' All of my worr y was apparentl y in vain ...

From Suzanne Alejandre in Spain: ... The biggest new s - Niko has realized that he can READ. He will be nine in March and, of course, Rich and I have read all along about lat e readers in GWS . We have tried t o f ol­ low the idea that Niko and Lee will read when they have a need. We have books everywhere and we are often reading, so it would have been very strange for Niko never to r ead . But,

as with all things, we had our doubts and the accompanying worry that maybe Niko wouldn't read. But, somehow, Rich and I have kept our mouths shut and it happened as it should .

For the past couple of years, probably once every three months or even less, Niko and Rich or I would take time to have Niko "read." That is, instead of the normal procedure of us reading and to him and his bro­ ther, we would read and he would re­ peat. It never lasted long. Niko nev­ er thought he could read, and so he didn't see the point. For a long time Niko has been able to read separate words but not any combinations. Then, I remember last summer we worked from " The Three Little Pigs" - for some reason Niko wanted to read that to me. But, he still wasn't convinced that he could read . He knew he had just memorized the story and that somehow reading was different . A few times I explained the idea of phoniCS - telling him that each letter had a sound. We also talked about the dif­ fe r ences between reading in English, German and Spanish, since both German and Spanish are completely phonetic (and he speaks them) .

Two weeks ago, however, I was Sitting in the living room, knitting, a nd Niko had an Asterix book in his hand. I don't know if Asterix is pop­ ular in the States . It is a comic book series about the adventures of Asterix and his sidekick Obelix . The setting is in Europe during the time of the Roman Empire. Anyway, Niko and Lee love the books and we have dif­ ferent ones in various languages in­ cluding ones that Rich and I can't read (Danish, French, and Swedish ­ we collect books'). By chance, Niko was holding one in English . I suggest­ ed that he sit by me and read to me while I knitted. The chemistry was right, and Niko started to read and in a few moments his face was beaming and he said, "I CAN READ." He was amazed and ecstatic. Finally it all clicked. I told him that he had been able to read for a long time but he didn ' t believe it. Now he believes it and knows that he can read . Every time I have time to knit, Niko comes and sits next to me to read. Asterix has enough easy words that he knows ­ so he reads all the simple words and I say the more difficult words softly and he repeats them. We have quite a rhythm. Normally, he reads about six pages and then goes off to do some­ thing else ...

KIDS TEACHING EACH OTHER Susan Shilcock wrote in the PENCIL (PA) newsletter, Winter 85: ... When Amanda (9) decided she wanted to learn to dive, she asked me for some help which I was happy to offer . On three different occasions I did a demonstration dive, made a few comments, told her the part she was doing well, and left the rest to her experimenting. But with each try she became more frustrated and claimed she'd never learn h ow to dive, I didn't know how to teach diving, and she didn't want to learn anyway .

Then one day, watching her fr iend Katelyn (7) dive, Amanda asked Katelyn to teach her how to do it .

She took instruction and criticism from Katelyn eaSily . She was willing to persevere even when she was doing belly flops. She showed no frustra ­ tion, just serious attention to the parts of the dive she was trying to improve. In only 15-20 minutes,

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

23 Amanda had changed her perception of herself from non-diver to diver .

Katelyn had guided her over the humps in a way that I had been unable to do . Halfway through the diving lesson Amanda said, "Hey Katelyn, you teach me how to dive and I ' ll he l p you with your reading . I know you ' ve been working on reading and I ' ll be happy to help." So this trade of skills WJS born.

Katelyn accepted Amanda ' s offer, and Amanda set to work writing and illustrating a personal book for her friend. She gave Katelyn a choLce of themes, all based on Katelyn ' s interests, and Katelyn chose gym.

Amanda and Katelyn attend the same gym class so it was easy for the story to include lots of familiar names and references, such as "Patty goes to gym class every Thursday " and "Patty checked the chalk box for her missing barrette."

To prepare for her work on the book, Amanda had asked Katelyn what she liked and disliked about begin­ ning reading books. Katelyn had said, "Well, something I really don ' t like about first-reader books is that they just have sentences that don ' t make sense to me and they don't have a story. They just say, ' Amanda goes to school. It is fall. Amanda has a friend. The end . ' I like there to be a story." Seven-year-old Emily, listening to the conversation, added, "Yeah, there's not a happy ending or a sad ending - it doesn't have an end

~"

So Amanda made sure that her book had a real storyline . The Gym Book is about fifteen pages long, has one or two sentences per page, and each page contains a large stick figure illustration.

Katelyn was able to read the book the first time through with almost no help. When Amanda asked Katelyn, "What did you like best about the book I made you?" Katelyn responded, "I liked the illustrations with the bubble coming out of Patty's mouth and the remarks she made, like 'Still, no barette' or 'No, not in the chalk box . ' That was funny . " "Did you have trouble with any words, or could you figure them out in connection with the story, like ' Thursday' because we both go to gym on Thursday? " Amanda asked . " No, they weren't too diffi­ cult," Katelyn answered, " But I had to work to figure some out and I liked that . The words weren't too easy and I liked that . " "Would you like me to make you another book, maybe about sewing or ice skating?" Amanda suggested, and Katelyn said eagerly, "Oh, ice skating - that would be fun . And maybe I could make you a book and maybe you could help me. " So now Katelyn is wrLting When Katelyn was a Little Girl and Amanda is her spelling consultant .

It seems to me, as parent and witness to these episodes, that there really are situations in which a child is unable to accept input from a parent or another adult, but is willing to hear the same information from another child. I've often sug­ gested that families consider actu­ ally hiring another child to tutor a particular skill or subject, and from all reports this has been successful .

I think it ' s helpful, whether the arrangement is a fo r ma l one comp l ete with fee or a casual exc hange between friends, that eve r yo ne view it as a short-term experiment, not as a life-lo ng decision . If Amanda had really felt herself responsible for

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOO LING #49

teaching Katelyn to read she might have been so overwhelmed that she would not have known where to begin .

This particular trade was actually a series of we l l-timed moments during which a child ' s sensitivity, care and specia l perspective of a friend's learning helped the friend reach a new level of skill . ..

It's interesting, also, that bot h Kate l yn and Emily were emphatic about their dislike of beginning readers . The books with words easy enough fo r them to read are boring non-stories that they view as demean­ ing . The books with more in t eresting storylines often have too many words per page which discourages the begin­ ning reader . Homemade books fill a major need here because they can be tailored to each child's inter~sts and ca n include challenging words that have special meaning for the reader (like trampoline, vault) and which can be figured out ...

VISION EXERCISES CAN HELP

Sherie Richardson wrote in the ARIZONA FAMILIES FOR HOME EDUCATION newsletter, 10/85: . .. We had a child who, since second grade (age 7) had been having trouble with her reading, reading com­ prehension, and spelling . We tried to get the schools to retain her in second grade as soon as the problem was obvious to us but they could not/would not do it . We paid a spe­ cial t uto r and that helped for a while but as soon as the tutor was out of the picture for a few months and new materials were presented to her, the same problems seemed to sur­ face again. We tried all we knew to help . We had her read aloud to us, we drilled on spelling words, we had award charts for books read , and set aside so many minutes of reading time per day . We drLlled on vocabulary, asked her questions about what she read, and asked her to tell us what she had read in her own words . We made her use a book-mark or other straight edge under her reading to help her keep her place. After five years of this and a child with low self-esteem and a nasty remark every time we mentioned practicing one of the above techniques, we were very frustrated .

It was about this time that some­ one told us about one of her children who was having some similar learning problems . She told us about something that had helped her child: visual training . We contacted an optometrist who did this specLal visual training and it has helped very much . Although our daughter was negative about it at first, her attitude started to change as she experienced and noticed changes and success in her reading and spelling abilities . .. Some of these exercises inclu­ ded follOWing a swinging ball that was mounted from the ceiling with a string, repeating a group of unre­ lated letters that were presented on a flash card, drawing familiar items with eyes closed, writing spelling words with eyes closed, giving direc­ tions for how to get someplace, or describing as specifically as pos­ sible a cer t ain item or place . . . We did the exercises every day - some t h ree times, some five times, or what­ ever the doc t or instructed . We me t with th e docto r week l y at firs t ... I t was such a special day when we dis­ covered a couple of exercises that rea ll y seemed to be the ones that our

daughter responded to and seemed to help her difficulties the most' We have been pleased with this visual training and the difference it has made for our daughter . . .

And Susan Richman (PA) writes : . . . Very interesting that there were several letters in GWS about kids needing eyeglasses for reading .

I, too, got reading glasses as a child (13 years old, not an easy time to begin \"earing glasses!) and defi­ nitely found that I once again began to love to read. The strain was off .

Over the past several years (or I should say whenever my glasses break or get lost) I have been very inter­ ested in reading Aldous Huxley's book THE ART OF SEEING, that details the work of Dr . Bates on improving vision with eye relaxation techniques . The ideas are always helpful. I see that John was familiar with Huxley's book, too, as he mentioned it in his rev Lew of " sleep shades" (GWS #46) .

I also noticed that when Jesse began reading at 6~ he often showed signs of eyestrain - rubbing his eyes, putting a hand over one eye, staring hard and not blinking often enough . An eyecheck showed nothing " wrong," but I still was very con­ cerned. I shared the Huxley ideas with Jesse. We both began palming our eyes before reading, and in between each page, we tried to consciously blink much more frequently, and gener­ ally tried to relax and not stare and strain. It worked wonders. His read­ ing began to come much more eaSily, he stopped showing stress, and began to be able to read for much longer times without any problems. This just might be another avenue for parents to look into when their children seem to have some eye and vision problem.

One of the basic ideas of Bates was that when we strain to see, fear­ ing perhaps that the words might just fly off the page unless we nail them on with our eyeball - that's when we see much worse. I thin~aps that many early readers might have that fear about the few tenuous words they feel they can read, a feeling similar to what John desc r ibed in NEVER TOO LATE when he went functionally blind when under the stress of reading music too fast . I also remember see­ ing a photo somewhere of a classroom full of young Japanese children doing eye relaxation exercises before begin­ ning their work for the day, so these ideas are being used in some parts of the world. The exercises are very sim­ ilar to yoga eye exercises, very soothing to mind and eye .. .

FAMILY NEWSLETIER

Sharron Lerew (PA) has sent us several copies of a family news­ letter, the "Lerew ABC News, " and when I asked her about it, she re­ plied: . . . Yes, we send our newsletter to family and friends . And yes, at this point, the girls dictate their articles and I type most of them .

They usually try to type at least one, but the length of their articles is grow Lng faster t han the speed of their typing . Jennifer (7) wrote some of her earlier articles by hand but began to feel limited by her writing ski l ls and wanted to dictate the way her sisters did. So for now that's what she ' s doing too.

We've only been doing this for

24 four months and so far have done no revising of stories . I'm writing down exactly what the girls say, punctuat ­ ing as well as I know ho w to convey their words, and trying ve ry hard not to correct grammar or sugges t differ­ e nt wording .. . I'd love to t el l Dory (5) that she doesn 't need to s tart

every sentence with "And." But hope­

fully she'll eventual l y see for her­

self that her writing would be more

effective without the "Ands."

The idea for the newsletter was mine . I've always felt wea k in commun­ ication skills - especial ly writing.

I decided if we started just writing for fun when the girls were you ng that they might escape my writi ng pho ­ bia. In addition I felt it might allay some of the mild a ppr e h e n sio n of relatives about our homeschooling.

After three issues , I find that in addition to these origi nal goals , it has many other be n efits. The girls are learning to mec han ical ly put to­ gether a newsletter, too. The y cut and decide where to paste; they've all, even our 3~-year-old, learned to run the copy machine, and th ey thor­ oughly enjoy collati n g and stuffing envelopes . Each issue they do mo re.

For myself, I've found the major benefit is the monthly eval uation .

Without this paper that has a (self­ imposed) deadline, 1 could easily put off "looking at what we 'r e doing" for months. For example, after l ook ing at our November issue, I was shocked at how much too much we were d oi ng. I knew it in-ffiy-oones but this made me actually face it. Of course, I've also never learned how to " cut o ut" things from my life. But now we've discussed it with the gi r ls and we're all thinking of ways we can hav e more unstructured time ...

ON CURSIVE WRITING An AP story in th e Sa n Diego Tribune, 7/24/85, reprinted in the Cali f ornia CC-PALS newsletter: ... The smooth, f l owi ng lines of cursive writing are a was te of school time, says a University of Iowa pro­ fessor who argues that the h ome ly blocks of prin t ed lettering are a ll a child ever needs to learn. ''It's important for teachers and parents to be aware that t her e ' s nothing magic about cursive writing and that a child can go through life successfully witho ut ever using cursive Ivriting," says Beatrice Furner, an education professor who's been studying handwriting for mo re than 20 yea r s .

She said s h e first b ec ame i nte­ rested in the problems cause d by teaching cursive writing, o r scri pt, when she was a third-g r ade tea c her.

"In a class with 20 to 25 kids, you're goi ng to h ave four or five with difficulties learning cursive and another group that makes th e tran­ sition but doesn't make it easily.

And it's all so unnecessary," s he said.

Furner said manusc r ip t writ i ng ­ sometimes called p rintin g - was intro­ duced in the United States in the 1920 ' s after studies in England showed that it was easier for chil­ dren to learn . She said that remains true .

"Young children learn manu sc ript more rapidly because it ' s easier for them perceptually, " s h e sai d. "And learning manuscript makes it easier for them to learn to read becau se of the greater similarity be tween manu­ script writing and the printed letter.

"Children who use it also t e nd to write more and enjoy it more. And there is some indication that in the early ages it ai ds in le a rning t o spel l. " Furner said educational pub­ lishers and tradition have convin ced peopl e that cursive instruction is neces s ary . But cursive writing ha s not been found to be any faster or more legible than ma nuscript writi ng, and manuscript Signatures a re leg al in most states, she said.

Many children have difficult y learning cursive writing because at the age it is commonly introduced, between 7 and 9, they do not hav e suf­ ficient perc ep tual and motor develop­ ment, she sa id.

Most commonly, the dif fic ulty is in letters with strokes in diagonal relationship to the ba se lin e ­ letters such as the c ursiv e "k" and "x," Furner said. The result is that children may be turned off toward s all forms of writing.

"Often the child will d ec ide n ot to write, not to express him se lf o r herself through written communi­ cation. The child thinks 'I hate to write,' when it's th e manual task which is the problem," she sai d .

Furner said children would be n e­ fit if the time spent teach i ng cursive writing were devoted to some­ thing more useful. With incr easing use of computers in classrooms and in society , she said, n ow would be a par­ ticularly good time to promot e the life-long use of manu sc ript writing ...

From Stephanie Judy (B.C . ): ... 1 was intere s ted in the com­ ments about cursive writing in GWS #20 . I agree that it is not at all essential to learn t o write in cursive, but I think i~mportant to learn to read cursive, and I wonder if the easiest way t o do thi s is to learn to write it (wh e ther or not you ever use it). I worked with a Japanese neurologist o nce, a visiting professor at U.B . C. medical school, who could read, writ e , and speak English admirably, but had never before seen cursive writing. He was absolutely stymied by it, and had a miserable time with nurses' n otes in the hospitals, colleagues' memos, and so forth. I worked with him for seve ral hours, examining as many dif­ ferent styles of cursive as we could find . The best solution, finally, was for him to learn to write in cursive.

Once he understood the principle of linking letters, and the consequent distortion of the printed form which that sometimes entails, he was home free. In a family, it would be simpl e for parents to write lists, notes, s tories, and such in cursive for ki ds to read . It might also be interesting to "invent" a cursive - just to fool around with linking every lett e r in a word to see what limitations develop . ..

JOHN HOLT ON WRITING In 1980, someone sent John Holt a questionnaire as part of a survey on how writers work.

Here are some excerpts from his reply: First of all, I have to say that the overwhelming bulk of my writing is in the form of letters . Man y of these I type myself, many of th em I dictate onto tape, for other s to type, as I am doing in this instance.

Most of what eventually found its way

into my books began life as letters.

I think it would be a very conser­ vative guess to say that I have written twenty times as much in letters as has been published in books, and the figure might be much higher than that. . .. Quite often I will get an idea, sometimes no more than a single sen t ence, and I will scribble it down on a s h eet of paper so as not to lose it. These little scraps of paper accu­ mulate in my pockets and on my desk and in other places. Sometimes I will amplify them, expand them in l arger n otes or put them in a letter . Some­ times ·they just si t around as scraps for quite a long time. Sometimes I find i use for these scraps, some­ times not - I will come across a batc h of them and realize that events have passed them by, that I have writ­ ten the same thing later in better ways, or am perhaps no longer inter­ ested in saying that particula r thi ng .

Certainly there is no week or even day in which I do not write some­ thing. But, in anSwer to your question A, I have no idea how much.

It depends very much on the other cir­ cumstances of my work. Obviously, on a lecture tour I don't have much time for writing, 1 might only be able to scribb l e some rough n otes about my lectures, or second thoughts after­ wards. But when I'm in Boston, work­ ing out of my office, I would say that it is a rare day that I don't write at least four hours, and it is usually much more than that .

I prefer to write in t h e morn­ ing, but circumstances don 't always perm i t i t . If I got 0 the 0 ff ice, I am liable to find phone calls, people are asking me questions, the mail comes in and I look through to see if there's anything of great importance that needs to have something done about it right away . The resu lt of this is that I may not get around to writing until the afternoon. But I would very much prefer to work in the mor n ing. Indeed, I am dictating this in my room, actually, in bed, in my apartme nt. It is now 9:25 a . m. , and I began dictating answers to a great big bunch of corresponde n ce at about 6 a . m. ... About organization, the only book that I can remember that began l ife on 3 x 5 cards was NEVER TOO LATE, th e book about my musical expe­ riences. Actually, it didn't even strict l y speaking ~egin there - I think it began wit my scribbling do wn on a sheet of paper, as fast as I could think of th~m, often only a few words at a time, everyt hing that I could think of, musically, that had happened to me that might be of impor­ tance. A kind of brainstorming session, if you know wh at I mean.

Later I began to put these ideas down on 3 x 5 cards, or slips of paper, adding t o them as I went along . Even ­ tually th ere got to be quite a collec ­ tion of stuff there and I began to turn it into a book . But most of my bo oks don't begin this way. They begin as letters ... I write things first, then later consider how best to orga n ize them.

Yes, I sometimes suffer from writer's block. I usually try to combat it by writing in a different pl ace. Sometimes I have been able to overcome it simply by changing the size or color of the shee~s of p aper I write on . Ordinarily I compose at th e typewriter, but if and whe n I am blocked there, I may go back to working in longhand, very ofte n in a stenographer's not ebook . If I h ave be en working at home, and get stuck

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLI NG #49

25 there, I may work more in the office or vice versa.

As for qualities of good and bad writing, it is easy for me to answer that question. Along the way, I will say that I think that 99% or more of what is called "professional" writing is bad. We have about us many sinners against the English language, but of all these sinners, the greatest by far, in my opinion, are the aca­ demics. 1 am sorry if this has any pejorat i ve ring - it's not acci­ dental ... 1 think that most academic writing is dreadful. Writing should, above all else, be clear. I think any­ one who wants or claims to be a serious writer has a moral duty to be clear, to write as plainly and simply as possible, to make her/his message understandable to as many people as possible . I work very hard on this, and take great pride and pleasure in the fact that many of my books have been read, understood, and enjoyed by children under ten, or people with very little formal schooling. My very strong impression of most academics is that they literally strive for obscurity, out of a mistaken, vain and arrogant notion that the harder their ideas are to understand, the more important they must be. Academ­ ics, and indeed many other people, literary and music critics, politi­ cians, and other public figures, write mainly for dishla y , to show the world, or someone, t at they are smarter than someone (or anyone) else.

Since I am talking about plain writing, I may as well give you the Holt Four Rules for plain writing . 1 wish 1 could make a book out of this, like THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, but since this will fit easily on a small scrap of paper I don't see how I can puff it up into a book. The rules are : 1) little words instead of big; 2) few words instead of many (note where number one and number two conflict, number one takes precedence); 3) active verbs rather than passive; 4) personal or concrete, rather than abstract, subjects for verbs; that is to say, words like Mary, John, she, he, I, you, it, dogs, cats, people, houses, cars, etc ., rather than things like transportation, tendency, demographic projections, etc. On the whole 1 would say that if a writer cannot turn a piece of prose into who did what, or who thought what, or who wanted what, that writer doesn't know what s/he is talking about. I assert that, except where technical vocabu­ lary is concerned, there are no ideas, no true or serious or inter­ esting or worthwhile ideas, that cannot be put in that plain form. It is extremely hard work, which is one of the many reasons why most writers don't bother to do it ...

READING & WRITING IN SCHOOL

[DR:] A hint here and there that the educational establishment may be getting ready for a new fad: the idea that children learn to read by read­ ing - even real books' - and to write by writing. There was the "Becoming a Nation of Readers" report (GWS #45), followed by the abandonment by the Chicago schools of their painfully structured reading program (GWS #47).

Shortly before that, there was some attention paid in the media to J. H. Martin's "Writing to Read" program (GWS #37 & 38). Below are some more pieces of evidence.

Whether or not schools in gener­ al come to embrace these ideas, home­ schoo l ers certainly should be able to

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

use these items as support for their own l earning styles.

First, an article by Teresa Pitman in the ONTARIO HOMESCHOOLERS newsletter: ... 1 recently was invited to attend a meeting of CANSCAIP (Canadi­ an Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators, and Performers). The guest speaker, who is the head of Scholastic Publishing, talked about how children learn to read . Most of it is what John Holt had been saying for years.

The speaker began by pointing out that 35% of the adults in Canada are functionally illiterate ... Beyond this group lies another very large part of the population who can read but only do so if they have-rG . . .

Most of these non-readers are this way as a direct result of the methods used to teach reading in the school system over the past few decades.

These methods used the "techno­ logical" model of reading: teach the children the many individual skills need to learn to "decode" words, and they will be able to read. If this did not work, the educators tried the "illness" model: kids who do not learn to read are sick (e.g. learning disabled) ...

A lot of research has now been done on the results of these beliefs and this kind of teaching, and the research has shown that these methods were actually destructive ... How then can we help our children learn to read?

The speaker emphasized, and even wrote on the board in capital let­ ters: LITERACY BEGINS AT HOME. This new model is taken from the way child­ ren learn to talk . Their home and fam­ ily are like a laboratory for young children: they listen to speech , make attempts to copy it, to respond, and to play with words as they sort out the rules of grammar . And the parents rarely correct their many mistakes; they just go on talking to the child­ ren and letting them figure things out .

Children learn to read the same way . That means they should be in an environment filled with books, maga­ zines, and words of all kinds. They should be read to constantly, start­ ing when they are babies. The speaker recommended, in particular, reading traditional folk tales and poems which .came out of an oral tradition and have a rhythm and repetition that help children remember them.

The speaker also emphasized that reading and writing go hand in hand (just as a young child learning to understand speech wants to talk and respond) and children should have many opportunities to write.

From these beginnings, and with an adult to answer their questions when they cannot figure out a word, children will naturally begin to recognize words and be able to make sense out of written material .

Another point he emphasized was that testing must be avoided. He com­ pared it to a two-year-old learning to talk; he or she would soon shut up' ... He finished up with a few critical commehts about schools and teachers. (In fact, two teachers who were in the audience got up and walked out during the presentation.)

Many teachers, he said , are actually illiterate themselves and are there­ fore unable to pass on reading abili­ ty to their classes.

Also, this approach must be very individualized, with different child­ ren picking up reading at different

ages (just as they talk at different ages) and this is much harder for teachers to deal with than teaching a prescribed course from a packaged set of workbooks and readers.

Finally, he recommended a book entitled "Becoming a Nation of Read­ ers" which summarizes the research and suggests appropriate steps for schools to take.

I found the whole talk so inter­ esting that I could hardly sit still' In my opinion, he offered a lot of support for homeschooling ...

And from "Early Literacy: Teach­ ing the 'Natural' Way," in the Boston Globe, 12/22/85: ... [These] two teachers are using the natural language approach to reading that concentrates on stor­ ies that appeal to children instead of primers that conform to vocabulary rules. This approach is the key to the Cambridge Literacy Project and is based on research that indicatess that learning to read can come as naturally as learning to talk.

Literacy classrooms in Cambridge elementary schools surround children with stories in big print that teach­ ers read aloud. Pictures give clues to the stories in "books" made by children who paste together poster­ sized letters and drawings. The entire classroom is an invitation to children to imitate reading out loud. .. . Reading should be a pleasure instead of a drill, said Don Hold­ away, director of the literacy pro­ gram in Cambridge. And when it is a pleasure for the children, it is a pleasure for the teacher, too. ... The natural reading approach started 12 years ago in Auckland, New Zealand, when Holdaway and his col­ leagues were teaching migrant Polynes­ ian and Maori children to read in the same classes with English-speaking 5-year-olds. [See "New Zealand Read­ ing Works," GWS #47.]

The New Zealand teachers started with native jingles and chants and went on to new songs and stories in English, Holdaway writes. Games and sound imitations from the stories being read aloud took the place of phonic drills. Teachers gave the read­ er's pointer to students so that they, too, could lead the class. In an adjoining room, children played with books, drew pictures, and start­ ed to make their own books, using the few letters they had learned.

Pioneers like Sylvia Ashton­ Warner, Marie Clay, Yetta Goodman, Frank Smith and Holdaway called their methods "Shared Book Experiences."

Holdaway said further research by William Martin, Jr. in the United States and in other countries con­ firms that using favorite books to teach reading instead of basic

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26 primers keeps motivation high during children ' s fumbling attempts to learn to read and write and spell . Hold­ away, now an associate professor at Lesley College, was a visiting profes­ sor of English at the University of Western Ontario and came to Cambridge in 1983 to work with the school department on a system-w ide approach to literacy in a joint program with Lesley ...

A growing number of observers from half a dozen states and co un­ tries as far away as Israel come to watch the Cambridge Literacy Project in action ...

LETIERS ON MATH Lynn Middleton (Alta . ) wrote: ... 1 thought that since the school board wasn't bothering us, we would also not worry Jonathan (10) about doing math for awhile. He al­ ways complained of headaches when he did mdth - and that his head felt "full." When I tried to work wit h him, he did the same sort of non­ thinking panicky guessing that John described in HOW CHILDREN FAIL. After a couple of months without math he says things like, "Hey, if our magic show is an hour and each trick takes five minutes - we only need twelve tricks, right?" Not advanced ma th, maybe, but he did it because he needed it, and it made sense sudden­ ly. Or when Benjamin (6) asked him how many seconds there were in a day, he answered after a minute, "Well, you would just multiply, wouldn 't you - 60 x 60 x 24''' ...

And from Ruth Matilsky (NJ) : ... 1 used to teach the abacus to blind people when I worked at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts. In order to do this I had to really start to under­ stand numbers myself. I had always done the rote work and had never really thought about what I was doing. Now I was teaching adults who already knew how to add and subtract (there were a few who didn't and with them I don't know whether what I did is worth writing about) but most of them, like me, never thought about why they were doing what they were doing. For example, when you have a number like 253 that is really two hundreds, five tens and three ones, and you add it to 425, you are adding four hundred to two hundred, five tens to two tens and three ones to five ones. The Japanese abacus that I used was a marvelous tool because I was able to clearly demonstrate what one was doing when one "carried" and "borrowed." I would say "Okay, you want to add six ones, but t h ere are not enough beads in your ones column so you must add ten ones (one ten) and take four ones away."

All this may be meaningless with­ out having an abacus in front of you, but it was a major breakthrough for me, and believe it or not, for many of the adults with whom I worked ...

NOTHING SACRED ABOUT ARITHMETIC Marta Clark (KY) wrote: ... We started our homeschooling regimen on Wednesday. I spent half an hour helping Elena (6) read and then I showed her how to express addition on raper. It was all easy (s h e has

been able to do it in her head for a long time) until we got to double­ digit numbers. She knows that twenty plus twenty is fort~ she blanked out when I added up one column at a time (O+O ~ O, 2+2~4). The fact that I got the right answer just made her more suspicious. So I dropped it ...

[DR:

1

1 wrote in reply:

... 1 don't want to belabor the point if it's something you already have figured out for yourself, but it looks pretty clear from what you say that that first day, you shifted from showi ng Elena how to express on paper her mathematical thoughts, to trying to teach her a procedure, a system, for answering a question she had not yet asked' If she knows how to add 20 + 20 in her head, there is absolutely no reason why she should also have to learn to add i t the way you tried to explain. True, if she gets to a pOint where she wants to add number s that she cannot add in her head, then she might appreciate a system that breaks it down into manageable steps. How­ ever, what some homeschooling parents have told us is that their children can add large numbers in their heads, something the parent s cannot do. Why? Because the only way tne-pBrents know how to add numbers is by that process you described, the columns and carry­ ing business, and that system is practically impossible to do mental­ ly' Whereas the children, free from such limits, have invented their own systems .

Many people just don't realize there is nothing sacred about the methods they were taught to do arith­ metic. One way to prove this is to talk with someone from a foreign country about how s/he does long division, say, or subtracts with "bor­ rowing." It can be a physical shock to watch someone apparently do it all wrong, write things upside down and inside out, and still come out with the right answer' What you might do is use the sys­ tem mathematicians have developed for truly expressing their thoughts, that is, the number sentence or equation.

For Elena to write down 20 + 20 ~ 40 is for her to express something that really is true. How she knows it is true, whether she-Qoes it in her head or counts on her fingers or draws dots on papers or writes the numbers one above the o ther and adds the columns, is immaterial to the truth of the statement .

If my child was subject to stan­ dardized testing, however, I would make sure that s/he understood there are these two ways of asking someone to add numbers, more or less as:

or

3 +4

3

+

4

~

. .. Something really interesting about subtraction. In some other coun­ tries, and even sometimes in various places or eras in the US, a complete­ ly different method for doing sub­ traction is used. You write down the numbers to be subtracted the same way: 82

59

And you start on the right . However, when you hit a situation where you wou ld have to do what in our system is "borrow," that is, when the bottom number is larger than the top number, as here 9 is larger than 2, you pro­ ceed this way. You mentally add 10 to

the top number, in this case making the 2 into an 12, and you subtract the 9, and write down 3 .

82

59

j

Then you move on the next column, and what you do is, add 1 (always 1) to the bottom numbe~re 5+1 is 6,-and then you subtract that from the top number'

... There's nothing you have to

do with this, certainly you are

nowhere near the time to show it to

Elena, but it's just an interesting

example of a very different - and in

some ways, superior - system ...

Six months later, Marta wrote: ... 1 was not aware of the differ­ ent systems of subtracting and doing long division, and found your notes quite interesting. We have pretty much abandoned written arithmetic for the time being and have gone on with mental calculation. Elena now under­ stands the relationships of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and div­ ision and uses them to compute ans­ wers. For example, if we are posing questions and I ask "What is 15 divid­ ed by 3?" she might attack it in a couple of ways. She might know immedi­ ately that 3x5 ~ l5, so the answer is 5, or she might have to add 3+3+3+3+3, counting the number of 3's on her fingers .

By the way, she always starts these sessions, a~ if we start with easy things, she can work up to fair­ ly difficult problems. A few days ago, she started a session with a question involving division by zero.

We had to backtrack and do a few easi­ er, more normal problems before she could really see the truth of the answers. When dividing by 2, she gets the answer by adding pairs of numbers until she hits the right pair. This can be quite time-consuming if she is trying to divide 42 by 2 and the first number pair she adds is 12+12.

But she enjoys the whole process as well as getting the right answer (unlike the class in HOW CHILDREN FAIL). She is starting to work with fractions in the same informal way, mostly while we are cooking ...

SCIENTIST KNOCKS EDUCATION Some thoughts from well-known physicist Richard Feynman, inter­ viewed in U.S. News & World Report, 3/18/85: ... There's a great deal of intim­ idation by intellectuals in this coun­ try of less intellectual people. It comes in the form of pompous studies and pompous words to describe ideas that are fairly simple or have very little content. If someone says they do not understand one of these ideas, they're put down, which must be hard for those who don't have too much con­ fidence in their own intelligence.

People think that all the experts know what they are doing.

But most experts, whether in the stock market, education, sociology or some parts of psychology, don't know more than the average person. They may act as though they are engaged in

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

27 real science. They do studies, fol l ow certain methods and have resul t s .

They follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific inves ti ga­ tion, but they ' re missing something essential . ... Take educational t heory. How do you know that people in schools of education don't know anything about how to educate children - not th~t anyone else knows, either? Well, are the schools improving? Have education­ al systems gotten better as the years have gone on? It's very easy to see that the witch doctors are not curing most diseases. ... 1 sometimes feel that it would be much better not to educate our children in such subjects as math­ ematics and science. If we left young­ sters alone, there would be a better chance that, by accident, the kids would find a good book - or an old textbook - or a television program that would excite them. But when youngsters go to school, they learn that these subjects are dull, horri­ ble and impossible to understa nd .

When I went to school, I didn't learn that math and science were dull be­ cause I knew before I got there that they were interesting. All I saw was that they were dull in school . But I knew better. . .. 1 once sat on a committee in Calilfornia that chose new school­ books for the state . . . The books said things that were useless, mixed up, ambiguous, confusing and partially incorrect. How anybody could learn science from these books, I don't know.

What happens often is that state bodies decide what ought to be in the curriculum on the basis of what so-called experts think. This has a tremendous influence on publishers, who want their books to cover every single item on the suggested list .

Publishers try very hard to follow what states want, and in the end, the books are poor. They don ' t try to make subjects easier to understand.

They try to make it easier to know what to do to pass the test and please the teacher . They ' re invo l ved in making sure that certain items are understood by children so that they can go on to the next course, which is designed in exactly the same way.

Someday people will look back at our age and they ' ll think: "My good­ ness, how they tortured their child­ ren! Year after year they went to these schools every day for hours .

Yet look how easy it is to teach. But they didn't know how to do it back then . . .

stamped envelope . I am currently unemployed . . .

[DR: I suggested to Joseph that he contact homeschoolers in his area, perhaps inviting them to tryout h is instruments, and I asked him some questions about his experiences. He responded: 1 .. . 1 have been interested in John's ideas for quite a while, but until I read NEVER TOO LATE I had no idea he was so involved with music. I agreed so thoroughly with his ideas concerning education, then to r ead about his work in music made me feel that I might be able to help home­ schoolers . . .. Your questions about "life as a composer " were most interesting.

Thinking about how I grew up to be a composer was quite different than the way I generally think of my develop­ ment . As far back as I can remember I used to wonder how music was put toge t her . I can especially remember wondering about how musicians in a large ensemble knew when to start and stop playing . When I eventually learned to read music, many of these technical questions were answe r ed, but I still didn't know how someone went about writing a piece of music . r kept trying to figure this out, half expecting the answer to be a like a mathematical equation (you do this, and this, and this, and you wind up with music). It was quite a revelatio n to realize this was not the case at all. Although there are ways to do certain things, putting together a composition is a very individual process . Whatever a com­ poser does is done to get the ideas across as clearly as possible . . . I imagine writing is similar in t his respect (for example, there is no one way to write a novel). It may seem basic, but it takes a while to real­ ize this, and longer to begin to understand the implications .

Your next question regarding what a composer does to support him­ self is one I am dealing with right now. There are types of music that a composer can make a living writing (pop, commercial, movie, etc . ) , how­ ever, my music is not like this. The music I write is generally considered a co n tinuation of the classical tradi­ tion, but it sounds much different than what most people think of as

" c l assical music" (by l3ach or Beet­ hoven, for example). The great major­ ity of composer~ who write like this earn their living by teaching in uni­ versities. I ' ve decided that I do not want to follow that path, so I am try­ ing to find another job I am interest­ ed in.

Most concerts of contemporary music are at universities, all the performances I've had have occured there. One of the main reasons for this is that the universities have the performers necessary to play the music. Outside the universities it is much harder to get performers . This is one of the reasons I've been turn­ ing toward electronic music; I'll be able to play my music myself . . . . 1 am not sure that a composer would have to go to music school to be accepted . There are many opportuni­ ties to learn about all aspects of music outside school. The hardest part would be finding others interest­ ed in the same things to work and talk with on a regular basis. In music school, there are many compos­ ers around at approximately the same stage of development. This is a tre­ mendous help for all of them .. .

And from Carol Hughes, 551 Sudbury Rd, Stowe MA 01775: . .. My husband and I are both musicians, and I have tried to take a long look at what we do that makes it possible for our children to be musicians, too . Everyone takes it for granted that offspring will follow suit, but there are definite things a nonmusical parent can do for their child who shows a love of music.

The one irreplaceable aspect of music study is listening. Regular listening to your local public radio station will expose your children to every kind of music and allow them to choose their own favorites . .. As I write this letter, some folk music is on the radio . My 7- and 5- year-old boys are lying around listening quietly . Music is in our home every ~.

.. . Music is like people - if you give yourself a chance to get to know a piece, you may like it, you may not. Your local library is a great place to start for free . Used record shops are good because you can get a lot of music for a little money.

Thrift stores, garage sales, library

II

COMPOSERS WRITE ABOUT MUSIC

From Joseph Fosco, 15321 Oak Rd, Oak Forest IL 60452: .. . 1 am a composer, and would be willing to try to answer questio n s your subscribers have concerning music. In addition to composition I have studied and taught music theory.

I have also done much work with elec­ tronic music . This has involved every­ thing from composition to design and construction of electronic music instruments to computer music and com­ puter control of electronic music syn­ thesizers . As a performer, my main instrumen t is saxop hone, bu t I also play clarinet, flute and piano . I have studied tablas (I ndia n drums) also ...

I must, however, require that anyone who wr ites r equ esti ng a response include a se l f - addressed

GROWI NG WITHOUT SC HOO LING #4q

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28 sales, etc., are all places I have found records.

Here is a list of suggested listening that a fellow home schooler asked me for: - Grand Canyon suite by Ferde Grofe. This may be familiar from the background music for many cartoons, particularly storm scenes. The "On the Trail" part is really fun to act out in dance movement.

- Symphony #40 by Mozart . My son Evan has loved this since he was in my arms. It is very fast music with gorgeous strings. Mozart was a genius for making stringed instruments exciting.

- Night on Bald Mountain by Moussorgsky. This is great music to paint to because it makes you want to do something with the energy it gets you in touch with. Pictures just pop up in your mind effortlessly.

- Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin.

Beautiful music' - Earth Mass by Paul Winter.

This is so moving . .. One part begins with the cry of a wolf and gracefully moves into musical instruments imi­ tating that sound - it's really thrilling.

- Charles Ives ' music attempts to include folk themes and is very uninhibited. This is not for those who find that modern music makes them anxious. ... Attend concerts, even of your local schuols, churches, etc. This observance of someone actually play­ ing an instrument is, I am convinced, the one big factor that private lessons have to offer . Occasional advice or tips should be all that is necessary to learn an instrument.

Making music is a priority over all ot her activities in our home . If anyone, young or old, is playing, no one is allowed to interrupt. We encourage them to improvise and imi­ tate. Formal lessons are rare and only given when asked for.

A lot of parents want to make their children take piano lessons-or other music lessons. I think this is a big mistake. I tell such parents, if they ask, that if they take the lessons themselves, their children may end up asking for them .

The biggest advantage to home­ schooling that I have experienced myself is that the doors I have opened for my children are open for me ... I now compose with complete aoandon and no fear of theory rules ... If it sounds good to me, chances are it will to my audience, too . ..

(DR: 1 Carol, too, says she would be happy to correspo nd with families who have questions about music .

Her point about going to school concerts reminds me of a letter some­ one sent some time ago that has since disappeared. That family made a point of finding out when the local schools had concerts (glee club, junior chorus, high school band, etc.) as well as plays, talent shows, and so on, for they found their children really enjoyed seeing other children perform . Such events are usually free or low-cost.

Carol's emphasis on the impor­ tance of listening is supported by the book DEVELOPING TALENT IN YOUNG PEOPLE, according to a review in the Christian Science Monitor, 1/6/86 . In this study of "120 individuals who had reached the highest ranks in such fields as music, sculpture, swimming, and mathematics ... over half of the concert pianists came from homes in

which the major musical activity was passive listening . .. "

P.E. THROUGH FOLK DANCING Ellie Andrew (CA) wrote:

. . . As to Physical Education (GWS #45) in our home school - both my daughters are now in Scottish High­ land dancing (with the kilts and swords and all that) which I found was good not only for P . E. but also social studies, as we learned about clans and tartans, etc., and creative arts - learning about spinning and weaving and how the wool tartans are woven on a loom . As the girls get older we'll be traveling more for com­ petitions (there are even Highland games in Hawaii'), always a good excuse - I mean, opportunity' - for more Social Studies ...

MAKING ROPE EQUIPMENT AT 6 More from Ruth Matilsky (NJ):

. .. Sara (6) is doing something find quite interesting now. We have never bought a swing set - for many reasons. We have a single tire swing and at one time had a geodesic fun dome for climbing. We are fortunate to have several excellent climbing trees and Sara climbs like a circus performer . Lately she's combined an interest in kno t tying with designing acrobatic equipment.

We have a lot of string around our ho use - I do macrame wall hang­ ings and plant hangers and have (on very rare occasions) exhibited my work . In recent years my macrame has been mostly confined to practical things - I macrameed a wrought iron staircase so our toddlers would not fall t hrough, and I macrameed a baby seat. Sara has taken the odds and ends of leftover string and made tarzan ropes and trapezes outside on our t r ees . Some of her designs needed some help from me, because I wanted to make absolutely certain that they were strong enough to support her weighr - so we are working together, but she is definitely the creator here, wh ile I am the occasional labor­ er. She ties pretty good knots and today she was working on a set of rings so that she can haul herself up and do somersaults in the air . ..

NEW T-SHIRT INFO Many T-shirt orders were delayed or lost during the last few months, and we (again) apologize to all you who put up with long waits for your shirts . T-shirt orders were filled separately by our friends the Zimmans in Wisconsin, who first proposed the T-shirt contest and supplied all our shirts . We appreciate their work, but the great distance between us, plus other factors, have made us decide to run the T-shirt business differently.

We now have a local supplier and will now be shipping the shirts directly from the office. You should receive your shirts in the same two or three weeks it takes for a book order . We had to drop the French cut and the very tiny size cotton T .

We're also limiting our selection to two colors, blJe and yellow. Price for any shirt is $6 plus postage.

Now t here's an easy system for ordering . Check this chart and list the codes fo r desired design, color, fabriC, and size . For example,

C/B/50/34-36 would be the Child/Sun shirt in blue, with 50-50 fabric, size 34-36. One code for each choice. to get

specify

DESIGN

GWS Child/Sun

G C

COLOR

Blue Yellow

B Y

FABRIC

100% Cotton 100 50-50 cot/poly 50

SIZE

Children Adult

6-8 10-12 14-16 34-36 38-40 42-44 46

NEW BOOKS AVAI LABLE HERE THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT by Jean Liedloff ($8.95 + post). As you have seen on the center insert of this issue, this marvelous book is back in print, and we are delighted to carry it once again. We have reprinted the long review of it that John Holt wrote for GWS #13, and to that I will add only a few notes.

One is to underscore that it is due to John Holt's efforts that this book, and also BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY, are back in print. The publishing industry's habit of letting good books disappear would often make John mournful or indignant. (Sometimes he couldn't bear to read a book that he was told was out of print - what if he loved it?) He felt particularly strongly about these two books and often talked about them with his book editor, Merloyd Lawrence, who took the idea of reprinting them to Addi­ son-Wesley. Her work on behalf of these books is a boon to all of us.

Second, Jean Liedloff has writ­ ten a valuable new introduction to the book, which brings up to date how people have adapted her ideas to fit modern society. I think this eases the concern John had, that in the original she only touches upon how people might undo the damage done unknowingly in the first months of life.

Finally, I want to repeat what someone said once in GWS, that there is much more in THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT than the single ide~ that babies need to be held. For example, a large part is devoted to the toddler stages of gaining independence, and the impor­ tance of ot her people's expectations on one 's behavior . Each time I reread this book I find more powerful ideas that I cannot remember seeing there before. A great book to get, not only for yourself, but to give to friends and relatives. - DR

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY by Milli­ cent Sh~nn ($8.95 + post). I recently saw a story on TV about pre-natal edu­ ca tion classes in California. An exam­ ple from one of the classes shows mothers who shine flashlights onto their wombs and say, "Light," then turn the light off and say, "Dark . " The well-dressed professor who teach­ es the class said that he thought all the parents would have bright (no pun intended, I assure you) children as a result of these "lessons." This made me think about the little person kick­ ing around inside my wife: will you be OK in this competitive environ­ ment? Maybe I should get the flash­ light . . .

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

29 Fortunately, common sense pre­ vailed and I we nt back to reading Milli c ent Shinn's BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY , which was written in 1893, and just brought back into prin t. Ms .

Shinn was one of the first natural scientists to stud y th e behavior of the human infant, and her detailed, affectionate, level-headed observa­ ti ons about her niece Ruth's first year of li fe reassured me: children want t o le arn and will do so without any coercive "motivating."

Shinn writes as a scientist gath­ ering a nd pr esenting informatio n , and while she is lovingly on Rut h' s side (rather than faking some de t ac hed sci­ entific tone), she is meticulous in her observations, mixing anecdotes , facts, child psychology, and notes on motor development with ease and clari­ t y . Here she is writing about Ruth learning to associate ideas at five months : She sat in my lap, watching with an intent and puzzled face the back and side of her grandmother's head .

Grandma turned from her knitting and chirruped to her, and the lit­ tle one ' s jaw dropped and her eye­ brows went up with an expression of b l ank surprise . Presently I began to swing her on my foot, and at every pause in the swinging she would sit gazing at the puzzling h ead till Grandma returned, and nodded and chirruped to her; then she would turn away satisf i ed and want more swinging .

Here we seem to get a glimpse of th e process I have spoken of, by which the baby gradually associates together the front and rear and side aspects of a person or thing, till at last they coalesce together in h is mind as all one object . At first amazed to see the coil of silver hair and t he curve of c heek turn suddenly into Grandma's front face, the baby watched for the repetition of the miracle till it came to seem natural, and the two aspects were firmly knit t oge ther in her mind.

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY is full of such interesting points and, as Dr. Brazelt on mentions in his fi ne introduction to this edition (which is commemorated to John Holt), "Mrs. Shinn was making these acu te observa ­ tions and l abe ling them l ong before Piage t had described such cognitive processes. " Being a tyro to the baby busi­ ness, I am fasci nated (and somewhat grateful) t o learn from this book that babies need wa t er as much as mother's milk: "Many a baby was treat­ ed for co li c, insomnia, nerv ous ness, and natural depravity, when all the poor little fellow wanted was a spoon­ ful of wa t er"; that "wee babies do not cry tears. When th ey do, it does not mean any higher emotional level has been gained, only that the tear glands have begun to act"; and, " No end of things can be trusted in the little hands, that ache for every­ thing in sight, if only vigilant fing­ ers hover close, ready to ward gently off any dangero us movement. Sitting in one's lap at the table, the baby may push and pull at many things not safe for him to lift; or he may be allowed to handle something safely tethered with a string . Ce rtainly the wider liberty of holding and handling he can by any devic e be allowed, the better; the instinct is very strong, and wholly healthy, and the thwarting of normal instincts is not good for anyone's nerves o r mind."

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

Millicent Shinn makes an impor­

tant point throughout the book, one

parents and educators can't pay

e nough attention to:

[Ru th ] began to watch people's motions carefully for long spaces of time - a ll through the process of setting the table, for instance - with a serious little face, and an a ttenti on so absorbed that it was hardly possible to divert her if one tried (which one o ught not to do, for ower of attentio n is a ~recious at ta inment, an pe o ~ e ave no bu siness to meddle Wit h irs growth f or their own amuse men t) .

One can see why this book was one of John Holt's favorites; he quoted from it at length in HOW CHILD­ REN LEARN . Here is science that is so li vely and clea r ly presented t hat it easily transcends some of the out­ dated scientific ideas that Ms. Shinn was taught, such as that all babies are born deaf. Fortunately she trusts herself as an observer more th an s he trusts the conventional chi l d develop­ ment theories of her time, and the record she left us is quite clear: children are born adept learners, and outside of love and protection provi­ ded by their parents and others, they need nothing more than their personal freedom to make sense of their place in the world in their own unique ways, thr ough vigorous visual, tac­ tile, and emotional invo lvement with their environment .

This book is a deep breath of fresh air and common sense about c hild-r earing that arrived just in time for me. Now I won 't have to bu y batteries for our flas hlight' --- Patrick Farenga CHILDREN LEARN AT HOME , edi ted

by Ro Krivanek ($4 .50 + post). Thi s 58-page book was put together f r om a survey of homeschooling families in Australia done by the ALTERNATIVE EDU­ CATION RESOURCE GROUP, a major Austra­ lian home school ing oganization. It goes into the major questions about homeschooling - why, how, and what happens - ve r y clearly and concisely.

There are especia ll y good sections o n structuring, flexibility, the evolu­ tion of approaches to homeschooling, the "socialization" issue, and the reality of homeschooling - the joys and the difficulties .

When John Hol t decided we should sell this book, he noted, "It doesn't say any thing new, but it says it very well ." And he was right. This is a very valuable little book. It can be ve r y useful, I think, for people who a re curious about homeschooling; for those who are doubtful; for skeptical relatives; and for all of us who need positive support and encou ragement from t ime to time .

A very important statement made at the end of the book: Today [homeschooling ] is pre­ eminently a private matter, a prac­ tice of exerciSing choice in impor­ tant life decisions where many peo­ ple see no choice at all. Beyond that chOice, each family decides what home education is.

- MVD ORDER INFORMATION

Postage charge: 1, 2, or 3 items except records: $1.20. 4 or more, 40¢ per item.

Postage for records: $1 for 1, add 50¢ for each additio~ Overseas surface mail: 1, 2, or 3 items,

$1.20; 4 or more, 50¢ per item.

Mass. residents, add 5% sale s tax.

Make check (US bank) or money order for books, reprint s , records , tapes, in struments, and art materials payable to HOLT ASSOCIATES, I NC. Payment for subs cr ipti ons , ads, T-shirts, the YOUNG CHILDREN supplement, inde x, and back is sues of GWS should be made out separately to GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. We will pay $2 in credit for used co pie s (in go od condition) of Jo hn Holt's WH AT DO I DO MONDAY? On request, we will photocopy and mail the GWS review of any item in our catalog.

Send 50¢ plus a S.A . S.E . for one; add 25¢ for each additional.

For a copy of our catalog, send a SASE. WANT ADS

Rates for ads: $5 per line (up to 47 spaces).

Please tell these folks you saw the ad in GWS. FOR.LANG . TAPES THE LEARNABLES - Span. Ger. Fr. Eng . & Russian taught by audlo-picture sys tem .

From GWS #3 1 ".. . promotes the f astest learn­ ing ... most enjoyable." Also excel. Eng. read­ ing prog available. From International Linguis­ tics, 401 W89th St , Kansas City MO 64114 Books for Home Schooling K-12 . Buy 1 subj or entire curriculum. No enrollment. Christi an oriented. Catalog $1. H. S. Glenn Distribu­ tors, 251 Bass Hwy., St. Cloud , FL 32769 CREATIVE LEARNING MAGAZINE helps families learn t ogether.Practical hints , how-to's, info , more.

One year $7.00, sample $1.00. CLM, Box 957-G, Wright stown, NJ 08562.

HOME EDUCATION MAGAZINE is looking for articles about homeschooling. We pay good rates for articles, photos, artwork, reviews, and poetry.

Write for our editorial guidelines. HOME EDUCATION MAGAZINE, Box 218, Tonasket, WA 98855 Will teach free: Not WHAT to think, but HOW to think. Be independent~derstand for yourself past,present,future trends in history,religion, government,science,current issu es, etc. Method s based on spiritual, mora l values. Barbara King, 222 Roslindale Ave., Roslindale, MA. 02131.

40 Acres Forest Coun try Lifestyle to Share w/ Family. Home Ed. as expressed by J. Holt common denominator. Own hydroelectric potential. If interested write for more info to Donna & Park Cowin, Site 24,C 19,RR2,Glade BC V1N 3L4 Canada TESTING--techniques/practice/answers. WORKBOO KS K-12 best quality/inexpensive. TEACHING GUIDE S -freedom to make choices within a structure you can trust. Matching CURRICULUM OUTLINES show the school you know what to provide. Catalog $1 LEARNING AT HOME Box 270-G49, Honaunau,HI 96726 MAT H MOUSE GAMES-set of 8 games to learn/prac­ tice math. Levels K-6 . $18 postpaid. Also other math games. Send LARGE SASE for details: Cathy Duffy, 12531 Aristocrat , Garden Grove CA 92641 SPIRITUAL MOTHERING JOURNAL - to support,assist & inspire parents in the noble work of raising children as sp iritual beings. All faiths. Qtly. $7 /yr. 3010 SE Oxbow Park, Gresham, OR 97030 HOMESTEADERS NEWS - How to Live Simply & Sanely In A Troubled World. "S herrie & Norm are doing extremely imp ortant work" - John Holt. Send $10 (6iss .) or $2 sample to B5l7-25 Naples NY 14512 LIVING HERITAGE ACADEMY: K-12 Teach your child at home . Diagnosti ca lly prescribed, self con­ tained, self instructional, continuous progress curriculum, high achievement results, permanent records kept, diploma issued, low tuition rates LIVING HERITAGE ACADEMY-GWS P.O. Box 1438, Lewisville, Texas 75067 Want to live walking distance to other homescl­ ers?Networr-forming.Send SASE to Making Contact 3543 E Bellevue Tucson AZ 857l6 / pn:b02-327-5667

30 BONE S OF THE SKULL PUZZLE. Color-coded 16 piece any ot her important information (distance you're willing to travel, fixed fee if any, wooden puzzle for all ages. For information special programs). write: FREE TO LEARN TOYS, 5154 Lincoln Drive, Edina, Minnesota 55436 KA RE N FOGLE 18120 l45th Pl NE, Woodinville, WA Several families wanted to create land cooper­ 98072; 481-2228. ative in beautiful SW Wisconsin. Homesteading, My course through Seattle Pacific Univer­ homeschooling, ecological land use. Active, sity was the first graduat e level homeschool­ supportive social environment where adults & children can share work & play. SASE to Kuehne­ ing course approved anywhere - as far as I Westerman, 1841 Jenifer St .A, Madison WI 53704 know ... I have offered my course four times already this fall with a total enrollment of Melodica, L.N. $30, P. Barker, R3 Mbg, OH 44654 68 parents and teachers. I have two more courses scheduled for winter quarter.

Serene 19th century experience for ages 6-12 on I have been homeschooling my own child­ our hilltop farmstead in an Ohio Amish neigh­ ren, Brendon (11), Sarah (9), and Zach (6), since 1980. As a certif i ed teacher I offered borhood. The Barkers (homeschoolers for 10 years) The Country School, R3, Mbg, OH 44654 myself as a resource person to homes chooling families. I have had over 150 families wor k with me over these past years. I have dealt Longtime homeschoolers traveling to Canada (Slave Lake). Summer. Need lodging / camping. with almost every type of problem and feel my clients are happy and successful. I read and Write: Lights PO Box 7, Gambier OH 43022 reread John's book s for inspiration and guid­ ance . My own background is in "open classroom" Hmschling family-sons 1,4,7-planning to move N AZ / NM. Hope to homestead near or with other and individualized instruction. Add to th is my hschlers. Job l eads-Albuq,Prsctt, L Cru, Roswll own homeschooling perspective , and I feel I so far. Wish to correspond with others in these have a lot to offer. areas. P. Kl uthe, Box 245, Ellendale, TN. 3B029 Last year I started a private school and home study extension program with one student.

BROTHER EP-20 PRINTER (GWS #33 ) FOR SALE . $90.

I now have 50 students and four teachers who D. Hodges, P.O. Box 183, Genoa City, WI 53128 offer courses from Aikido to physical science for children of all ages. The school is approved th roug h high sc hool. I think the concept of shared schooling resolves many prob­ WHEN YOU WRITE US lems homeschoolers have and is economically Please - (1) Put separate items of busi­ feasible for everyone involved.

In December I will be on a panel with ness on separate sheets of paper. (2) Put your homeschooling leaders in the state, attempting name and address at the top of each letter. to form a network which was organized by the (3) If you ask questions, enclose a se lf­ addressed stamped envelope. (4) Tell us if Washington Federation of Independent Schools. it's OK to publish your letter, and whether to We are trying to coordinate our efforts and use your name with the story. get out information to homeschooling support group leader s.

I'm available as a guest speaker and workshop fa cilitator on many subjects. Minimum HOW TO GET STARTED fee is $750 / day.

I would be willing to travel to other Here are some ways you ca n find out the states thi s summer to offer the course with a legal situation in your state.

1) Look up the law your se l f , in a public minimum enrol lme nt and travel expenses. library or law library (courthouse, law school, etc.) Laws are indexed; try "school JOHN L. MEYER JR. pO Box 3963, Eugene OR 97403; 503-342­ attendance" or "educ ation, compulsory." 16 states have revised their home education laws 3130 since 1982 (se ven of them in 1985), so check TOPICS: the recent statute changes . We have printed or (1) Planning a Proper Testing Program summarized these new laws in our back issues. for Your Homeschooled Child - Assessing Your 2) Ask the state Department of Education Ch ild's Achievement, Interpreting Test Re­ for any laws or regulations pertaining to home­ sults, and Satisfying Local & State Require­ sc hool ing and/or starting a private school. In ment s (2) Planning A Homeschool Curriculum some states (particularly CA, IL, IN, KY) which Satisfies the "Equivalent Education" Re­ there are few regulations concerning private schools and so you can call your home a school. quirement (3) Planning A Homeschool Curric ulum to If you are co ncerned about revealing Meet the Needs of Exceptiona l Children - Gift­ your name and address to the state, do this ed, Ta l ented and Handi ca pped through a friend.

(4) Kids-! Computers - Some Fantastic 3) Contact state or local homeschooling Ideas for Using Microcomputers with Homeschool­ groups; we printed this li s t in GWS #48. We ers - with Some Important Do & Don't Thoughts also keep the list updated and sell it separ ­ (5) Dealing with the Public School Sys­ ately for $1 as part of our "Homeschooling Resource List." Some groups have prepared hand­ tem - Survival Skills for Parents and Kids EXPERIENCE - Teaching; elementary school books or guidelines on legal matters.

4) Contact other families listed in our through college graduate level. School Adminis­ Directory . However, they may suggest you do tration: principal, curricu lum director, some of the above steps yourself. director of special education, business man­ 5) In general, it is not wise to start ager, assistant superintendent. by asking your local sc hool-olstrict; they For telephone calls and correspondence ­ usually don't know the law either. Better to as time permits - no charge for homeschoolers gather the facts first on your own. - DR or prospective homeschoolers.

For speak ing engagements or co nsultancy services - travel expenses plus a nominal hon­ orarium to keep food on the table.

ADDITIONS TO SPEAKER BUREAU For more listings of people willing to speak about homeschoollng and related sub­ jects, see GWS #43 and later issues. Or, send a self-addressed stamped envelope for a free copy of all "Speaker Bureau" listings .

To arran~e for speakers, contact them directly. We s ould make c lear that being on this li st does not constitute a recommend a­ tion. Please writ e us about any experlences, good or bad, you have with the speakers .

To be listed, send us your name, address, phone, a brief self-description, and

Family : Lois & Jim BLUMENTHAL (Janice /7 9, uavT0782) PO 683 , Summerland Key FL 33042 Certified Teac her s Willing to Help Home­ schoolers: Bonnle VERHULsT, 121 walnut Valley Dr, Sprlngfield IL 62707; K-9 (change) --­ Karen FOGLE, 18120 l45th Pl NE, Woodinville WA 9807 2; 481- 2228 --- Mike SMITH, INLAND EMPIRE HOME SCHOO L CTR, PO Box 11992, Spokane WA 99211; 509-924-3181 --- Victoria HALIBURTON, FSJ TUTORING SERVICE, 9706-l08th Av, Ft St John, BC Canada V1J 2R2; 604-787-7136 Friendly Lawyers: Tom DIGRAZIA, 333 Aolua St #323, Kallua HI 96734 (change) Dustin ORDWAY, 110 Terrace Pl, Brooklyn NY 11218; 718-972-9121 (c hang e) Friendly Professor: Chester S. WILLIAMS, Assoc: Prof./Secondary &Higher Ed., ETSU, Box 5518, Texarkana TX 75501; 214-838-5458 _h

ADDITIONS TO DIRECTORY

Here are additions and changes that have come in since our complete Directory was pub­ 1i shed in #48.

Our Directory is not a list of all sub­ scribers, but only of tnose who ask to be list­ ed, so that other GWS readers, or other lnter­ ested people, may get in tou ch with them. If you would like to be included, please send the entry form in this issue or a separate 3x5 card or postcard (only one family per card).

Note we are now printing birthyears of Children , not ages. If we made a mlstake when converting your child's age to birthyear, please let us know.

Please tell us if you would rather have your phone number and town listed instead of a -----mailing address.

If a name in a GWS story is followed by an abbreviation in parentheses, that person is in the Directory . We are happy to forward mail to those whose addresses are not in the Direc­ tory; mark the outside of the envelope with name / descriptio~e, and page number.

When you send an address change for a su bscription, please remind us if you are in the Directory, so we can change it here, too.

AL - Tom & Ci ndi RIDER, ALABAMA CITIZENS FOR HOME EDUCATION, 400 Hill Crest Dr, Opelika 36801 AZ - Sandra HOUSE, ARIZONA FAMILIES FOR HOME EDUCATION, 2101 WParadise Dr, Phoenix 85029 CA, South (Zips to 94000) - Tony & Merrie BOYD (Laura/78) 163 Ramona Dr, San Luis Obispo 93401 --- Jeff & Beth BRANDT (Joel/74, Kirstin /7 7) 720 Old Farm Rd, Thousand Oaks 91360 --- Phil & Cindi DENNIS (Phi11ipI73, Merrick / 77) 1655 Campbe ll Av, Thousand Oaks 91360 --- Harry & Helena HARRISON (Michael/65, Naomi/70, Ian/73) 320 WGarfield Av, Glendale 91204 --- Dale & Pam OWENS (Kari/70, Michael/ 78, Kati/80) 973 LaGrange, Newbury Park 91320 --- Lorinda SEVENANS (Wes / 7l, Joey / 78, Katie/ 79) 1857 El Cajon Ln, Ramona 92065 --- SYCA­ MORE TREE SCHOOL, 2179 Meyer Pl, Costa Mesa 926 27 (change) CA, North (Zips 94000 & up) - Dan & Payce BLOMQUIST (Scott/73 , Michelle / 77, Steve / 81) phone 408-378-6280, Campbell --- Ann & Peter BODINE-BONYHARD (Jonatha n/74 , Karina/75, David/79) 12840 Steven s Ct, San Martin 95046 --- Katherine CARINO (Murali/73, Vrindavana/ 74, Manjari / 78) 1249 8th Av, San Francisco 94122 --- Gina DiLEONARDO & Brian PAIS LEY (Eliot/83) 182 2 8th Av #3, San Francisco 94122 - - - Carol HEWITT (Marguerite/79) 2955 Kilkare Rd, Sunol 94586 --- Bob &Dawna MART IN (Tara/ 77) PO Box 491, Somerset 95684 --- Libbey PATTERSON, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA SUPPORT GROUP, 2410 Jefferson Av, Berkeley 94703 --- Mary & ADDITIONS TO RESOURCES John SIMO NITCH (Erin/8 l , John/83) 362 Arroyo These peop l e hav e experience in the fol­ Way, Sonoma 95476 --- Karen TURNER (Ramman/75, Drisan/78) PO Box 942, Gualala 95445 --- Jay & lowing subjects and are willing to correspond with others --- Adoption: Walter & Mary MARSCH­ Judy WATSON (Joseph/75, Benjamin/76) SKYTOP, 23883 Broken Bit Rd, Sonora 95370 --- Ne il & NER, 109 Alleman Dr, Lafayette LA 70506 Ronnie SIMON -WESTREICH (Ariel/8l, Leah /85) (change) --- Blindness: Donald & Kathy KLEMP 14440 Ester lee Dr, Saratoga 95070 (son 9) Rt 1, !xonla WI 53036 --- Home Compu­ CO - David LARUE & Suzanne WOLFRAM (Jus­ ters: Doug CALSBEEK, Box 185, Orange Clty !A tin /79~82 75 King St, Westminster 80030 --­ ~l (c hange) --- Single Parent: Judy Earle, Kim & Mary ORR (Nathan, Bethany, Noah, Rachel) 8 Tobey Ln, Andover MA 01810 --- Travelling GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

31 4750 Chaparral Rd, Colorado Springs 80917 --­ Bess & Richard SERR (Benjamin/74, Aubrey/78) 122 Stagecoach Trail, E1ixabeth 80107 --­ Steve & Barbara SMITH (Ben/80, Emi1ie /8 1, Abi­ gai1/8S) 1325 Hartford Dr, Boulder 80303 --­ Maureen WILLMAN (Justin/81) 1101 Colorado Av, Glenwood Springs 81601 DE - DELAWARE HOME EDUCATION ASSOCIA­ TION, PIT Box 55, Dover 19903 --- Dawn WILLOUGH­ BY & Drew KNOX (Brie/80, Adam/85) 2410 Ramb1e­ wood Dr, Wilmington 19810 (cha nge) FL - Fay FARLEY & John KUHN (Heather/79) 1707 KTng St, Jacksonville 32204 --- Ed & Mari­ anne JOHNSON (Tim/73, Robert /77, Rose/81) 8704 Manchester Ct, Tallahassee 32301 --- Nancy KIGER, EdD (Katherine/69) 1604 Sunside Sq, Orlando 32807 --- Charlotte & Marvin THIEN (Heather/73, Scott /74 , Sean/76) COUNTRY MEADOW DAY SCHOOL , 12201 Old Kings Rd, Jacksonville 32219 --- Roger & Cindi TRUNK (DorianI73 , Dari­ us/81, Orion/83) PO Box 208, San Mateo 32088 HI - Art & Leslie HICKS (3 boys) 1653 C 10th A~ Honolulu 96816 ID --- Jay & Sandy GOODENOUGH (Jeremy/ 67, Dana/73, Pau1 / 77) Box 68, Garden Valley 83622 IL - Jim & Rainie DALLAVIS (Carme n/78 , Co11eeri782, Ho11y/83) 1824 Grant, Springfield 62703 --- Mark & Joy KAISER, 702 E 2nd South St, Carlinville 62626 --- Nancy LEE (Cooper / 82) 1834 N Maud, Chicago 60614 --- Duane & Shirley SANDQUIST (Eric/66, De1bert/68, Jeremy /72 , Jason/73) 826 Chelsea, New Lenox 60451 --- Steve & 80nnie VE RHULST (Lori/83) 121 Walnut Valley Dr , Springfield 62707 --- Mari­ lyn & Matthew WOJDAK (Je na /78 , Brian /80 , Ben / 82, Jessica / 84) 912 Deka1b Av, Sycamore 60178 IN - Bob & Shannon BUEHLER (Drew/79, C1arklET, Seth/84) 631 High St #1, Anderson 46012 --- Gail & Cindi WILCOX-CLYDEN (Stacie / 72, Sara/78 , Joshua/80 , Whitney /B4) RR 4 Box 339, Veedersburg 47987 - - - Richard & Sa ndra MERRION (Robert/77, Rebecca /7 4) 223 5 Rd 300E, Danville 46122 --- Barbara & Lare11 PALMER (Jason/78 , Ke ndra /79, Jeremy/81, Richard /84) RR 53 Box 260, Terre Haute 47805 --- David & Luella PORTER (Meredith /80 , C1i nt /82) RR 1 Box 227, Wilkinson 46186 --- Tom & Lynn WEISS (Kurt/79, Cory/83, Ke11y/85) 14300 Browning Rd, Evansville 47711 IA - Evelyn HILL, IOWA HOME EDUCATORS, 2406 WOOdland #4 , Des Moines 50312 KS - David & Leslie LeROY (Kat ie /82) Rt 4, Great Bend 67530 KY - Marianne PETERSON (Tim Sti11/70) 251 S RTte #2, Louisville 40206 - - - Tanya & Tom POTTER (Trini t y/73 , Todd/74, Te1a/76) 315 Park View Dr, Louisville 40223 ME - Beth WILDMAN - EVANS, PO Box 475, Topsham04086 MA - Steve & Jean JOHNSON (A1den /80 , Ryan /8~ Evan / 8S) 72 Prospect St, Greenfield 01301 --- Joseph & Ina LeVANGIE (Danie1/76, Joshua/79, Joseph/82, Jesse/85) PO Box 274, Rush Rd, Wendell 01379 - -- Nancy & Michael LOPIN (Naom i / 75, Jonah/78 , Aaron/81) 26 Lom­ bard St, Newton 02158 -- - Dave & Nancy TOWLER (Mae Star/81, Nathan/82) 30 Grine11 St, Green­ field 01301 --- Greg & Jan VERRIL (Faith & Leah / 76, Heath / 80) 26 Pierce St, Greenfield 01301 MI - Jan & Ray BEMBEN-MEYER (Travis/83) 450 Sturgeon Bay Trail , Levering 49755 --­ Preston & Teresa COLE (Triston/76, Ty1er/78, Trevon/80, Tianne /83) Rt 1 Box 255, Mancelona 49659 --- Scott & Susan EVANS (Luke/77, Jesse/ 79, Margaret /8 2) 10755 Hibner Rd, Hartland 48029 --- Carolyn & Daniel HOBBS (Misty/78 , Sky1er / 80, Rei11y /83 , Devon /8 5) 965 E 3 Mile, Sault Ste Marie 49783 --- Jack & Mary SHARRY (Jessica/75 , Gabrie1 /80) 45310 Byrne Dr , Northville 48167 MN - Stephen COWD ER & Kathryn GRAFSGAARD (Seth(7g, Char1 ie /82) 559 Harrison St, Anoka 55303 --- FARGO -MOORHEAD HOMESCHOOL ASSOCIA­ TION, 1909 8th St S, Moorhead 56560 --- LEARN­ ING CONNECTIONS, 23330 Paris Av, Scandia 55073 --- Jeff & Julie MELBERG (Noah/78 , Jonathan/ 80, Christopher/82, Jacob/84) 9930 Kumquat, Coon Rapids 55433 MS - Mary SCHICK (Matt hew /76) 201 Oliver Av, Hattiesburg 39401 MO - Mel & Lila JENKINS (Lydia /7 9, Wyatt /81 , Rana/84) HC 76, Box 2720, Pittsburg 65724 GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49

--- Pamela & Robert SEID (Anisa/74) 821 S Kim­ brough, Springfield 65806 --- 8eth & Tim STACHIW (Scott/77, Christian/79, Meg/81, E1iza­ beth /84) 2221 Coulter Ct, Wentzville 63385 MT - HOMESCHOOLERS OF MONTANA, 80x 40, Billings 59101 --- Robin LANDON (Esrae1/78, Genevieve /8 1) PO Box 882, Corwin Spgs 59021 --- Holly MIKITA (Cory /7 4, Josie/83) PO Box 157, Fortine 59918 NV - Gary & Ann DANKWORTH (gir1/83, boy / 84) 1027 Spencer St, Carson City 89701 --­ HOME SCHOOLS UNITED - VEGAS VALLEY, PO Box 26811 Las Vegas 89126 (c hange) NH - Sally & Christopher EMBER (Mer1yn/ 80) 73Leverett St, Keene 03431 (change) --­ Allen & Susan HILLMAN (A1 1en /67 , Erika /70, Andrew/76, Suza nne /77 , Anthony/80, A1ycia/83) 66 Lincoln St, Laconia 03246 --- Laurie & Ken HUFFMAN (Jacquie/69, Angie/70, A1ex/82) 28 Millbrook Dr, Milford 03055 (change) NJ - Whitney & Cheryl NEWEY (Michae1/77 , E1isa(7g, Jennifer/81) 6 College Rd, Princeton 08540 NM - Mike & Nancy SEDILLO (Stacey/80) 1105 N~a11, Farmingt on 87401 --- Larry SIMP­ SON, NEW MEXICO CHRISTIAN HOME EDUCATION, 7417 Santa Fe Trail NW, Albuquerque 87120 --- A1 & Louise WILLIAMS (Evan/83) 77 La Paloma, Los Alamos 87544 NY - Jody BROWN & Jim SUTLIFF (Cory/78 , CaseyiSU, Jennie/85) 122 Elm St, N Syracuse 13212 --- Dan & Bambi CORNETT (Shannon/76, Me1issal78) 230 Cass Hill, Candor 13743 --­ Michael FEINBERG, NEW YORK STATE HOMESCHOOL­ ERS, Rt 1 Box 8, Ghent 12075 --- Jill & Jeff HERBST (Johnny/78, Jeffrey /84) 42A Shore Rd, Babylon 11702 --- Lou & Val LEVY (Jasmine/80, Rachae1/82, Jos hua /84) 86 Ellis Av, Northport 11768 --- Theresa LUCE (Tara/71, Jeffory/73, Joshua/77) 4328 Witherden Rd, Marion 14505 --­ Malcolm & Sylvia PHILLIPS (James/76, Brian /7 9, Micah/85) RD 3 Box 233A, New Berlin 13411 ROCHESTER AREA HOMESCHOOLING ASSOCiATION, 25 Hill Terrace, Henrietta 14467 --- Rich & Brenda SAMMARCO (Karan/81, David/84) 421 Armstrong Av, Staten Island 10308 --- WESTERN NY HOMESCHOOLING NETWORK, 310 Baynes, Buffalo 14213 NC - Nora CASEY & Larry BENNETT (Matthew /82 , MTChae1 /84) 2801 Shaftsbury St, Durham 27704 --- Rick & Lori HAYES (Jesse/80) 8421 Stafford Mill Rd, Oak Ridge 27310 --- Stephen & Nancy POCKLINGTON (A1e thea /83) Rt 1 Box 667, Franklinville 27248 OH - Richard & Penny BARKER (Britton/68, Maggie773, Danie1/74, Ben / 76, Jonah/78) Rt 3, Millersburg 44654 --- Howard & Deborah BONEM (Laura/80 , Emi1y/83) 3081 Coleridge Rd, Cleve­ land Heights 44118 --- Mike & Jan RUDDELL (Erin/82) 3085 Waynesville-Jamestown Rd, Xenia 45385 OK - Jennifer & Hugh GEMMELL (Trahern / 80, Calt1i n/ 84) 4146 S Harvard, F-6, Tulsa 74135 --- Douglas & Patricia LAWSON (Crispin/ 79, Ardath/81) 1409 S Maple, Bartlesville 74003

OR - Kathy HOLLOWAY (Tie1/81) Box 372, NeskowTn 97149 --- Lynn & Gordon MENNENGA (Kate/78, Andrew /83) 950 Nw Oakde11 P1, Corval­ lis 97330 --- Garth & Pat PUTNAM (David/68, Shannon/70, Beth/73, Sean/75) 38040 Pengra Rd, Fall Creek 97438 PA - Ann & Pat DODGE (Aaron/73, Me11isa / 75, LoUTs178, Jo/81) RD 2, Ecinboro 16412 --­ Linda & Ed FINLEY (Jo1ene/79, Co11ene/81, Ter­ ra1ee /84) Country N Lot D22, RD1, Northampton 18067 --- Joy & Fred MARLEY (Rache1 /75, Amanda /76) Mahoning Manor A-2, Punxsutawney 15767 --- Frank & Meredith PARENTE (Danie1/80, Jos­ eph /82 , Esther /8S) 101 E 12th Av, Homestead 15120 --- Nan & Dave PORTERFIELD (Link/73, Sean/74) Box 556, Harmony 16037 --- Elmer & Ginnie ZINK (Michae1/80, Josh ua /81 , Stephanie/ 84, Benjamin/85) 521 N Beaver St, York 17404 TN - Gordon & Mary MOUGHON (Joe1/81, Luke /8~ Timothy/85) 615 Oneega Av, Erwin 37650 --- Courtney SCOTT & Patricia STREET (Ce1a/81, Connor/83) 415 Hollywood Dr, Old Hickory 37138 TX - Kathy BERRY & Mark HELLER (Erin/81) 4330 Boren, Wichita Falls 76308 --- Gail & Jack HOGAN (Josh/75, Luke / 78) Rt 1 Box 704, Hemphill 75948 --- Summer MILTON, Rt 4 Box 176, Fredericksburg 78624 UT - Yolanda BREIDENBAUGH (Adam/73, Aprill75, Jason/77) 4150 N 3500 W, Ogden 84404 VT - Stephen & Roberta HISLOP (Timo thy / 79) PO-gox 308, Randolph 05060 --- Joseph & Martha McSHERRY (Frank /76, Caro 1yn /78 , E1ena / 81) RD 1 Bo x 340 Hillview Rd, Richmond 05477 VA - Joseph & Patricia KEEGAN (Michae1/ 73) 1802" Post Oak Trai 1, Reston 22091 --- Mich­ ael & Kathleen KING (A1isha/80 , Joshua/82, Brieanna /85) 3425 Chelsea Dr, Woodbridge 22192 --- Cathy & Fred MYERS (Scott/80, Miche11e /82) 3015 Fairmont St, Falls Church 22042 WA - Joel & Margie LESCH (Aaron/79, Seth /82, CaTeb /85) 6109 Shawn Dr SW, Olympia 98502 - -- Bob & Felice McGOWAN (Ian/79, Tu11y/80, Tobin /82) 18030 James St, Snohomish 98290 --­ Don & Jude MINIKEN (Joshua/73, Amanda / 77, Jos­ eph / 78, Sarah /84) Rt 3 Box 1272A, Hoquiam 98550 --- Kevin & Rosie MURPHY (Andrew/77, Mad­ rona/80) Old McCauley Farm, Lopez Island 98261 WI - Kim CRAIG (Joey/7 4, Am~ty / 78, Pau1­ ine /83r-S110 W26580 Craig Av, Mukwonago 53149 --- Don & Denise HODGES (Lucas/75, Maia /7 9, Had1ey/83) PO Box 183, Genoa City 53128 --­ Tom & Beverly HOFMAN (Va1ena/76, Jacob/79, Apri1/81, C1emet/84) Rt 1 Box 167, Kie1 53042 --- Tom &Gretchen SPICER (Jacob/70, Seth/73, Jessica / 74, Isaac/78, Vern/80, Esau /8 1) Hwy 82 E, Mauston 53948 CANADA --ALTA - Bonnie BROOKS (Ta ra /77) 12227-144 Av, Edmonton T5X 3M3 --- Betty & Lee MAINPRIZE (Dy1an/75) PO Box 580, C1aresho1m TOL OTO -- ­ Sandy & Hal PAULSON (SiriI79, Kim/83) 10935­ 122 St, Edmonton T5M OA7 BC - Ellen & Reg DIXON (Va1erie/77)

r--- -- -----ENTRY FORM FOR DIRECTORY

If you would like to be included in the Directory but have not yet told us, send in this form or use a separate postcard or 3xS card (only one family per card).

ADULTS : ORGANIZATION (applies only if address is same as family):

I

CHILDREN , NAMES/BIRTHYEARS:

I

ADDRESS:

Have been in Directory before: Yes No If this is address change, what was previous state?

I

32 10394 Shaw St, Mission V2V 4H9 --- Victoria HALIBURTON (Grace / 82) FSJ TUTORING SERVICE, 9706-108th Av, Fort St John V1J 2R2 --- Etta & Matt MARTINELLI (Steven/70, Bruce/71) Quatsino LTSTN, Winter Harbour VON 3LO --- Ron & Maur­ een PARKER (A11ison/83, Kimber1y/81) 462 Church St, Comox V9N 5G8 NB - Jane AONER & Joe WAUGH (Robin/80, Peter~, Graham/85) RR2, Anagance --- Kate KELLY & Rei EGBERS (Reed/80, Adrian/83) RR2, Anagance --- Mary & Paul WRIGHT (Frances/77, E1iza/79) Sussex Corner, Sussex EOE 1RO NS - Erika DU BOIS (Robert / 58, Eric/65, A1exanaer / 69) Box 82, Mabou BOE 1XO --- Sian & Hugh McLEAN (Wi110w /84) RR 2, Heatherton BOH 1RO --- Stan & Christine MOELLER (Luke/70, Naomi/75, Gabrie1 / 79, Jacob/82) RR4, Digby BOV lAO ONT - Lloyd GREENSPOON & Mikell BILLOKI (Benjamin/77, Noah/79, Abram/82, Reuben /85) RR1, Gore Bay POP 1HO --- Moby & Roswitha LAUTERBACH (Lutz/72, Mark / 74, Dirk / 77) RR2, Gore Bay POP 1HO --- Jim & Wendy McNALLY (Seu­ mas / 79, Phi1ippe /82) Box 210, Mindemoya POP 1S0 --- Dieter & Elizabeth NOLLERT (Bonnie/77, Michae1 / 79, Christine /8 1) RR1, Evansville POP lEO --- Marga RAUDSEPP (Hanno/73, Raja/76, Laine/78, Jako/80) 20 Paperbirch Dr, Don Mills M3C 2E7 OTHER LOCATIONS - Brian &Miriam COOK (Tomas/

82) clo 26 Temp1ars Av, London NW 11 ON5,

~A6~AOd (change) --- Shawn SPITZER & Valerie (Jeremy /75, Nebaj/83) Apdo 1457, Oaxa­ ca, Oaxaca Mexico --- Mike DeBOW, PANAMA SUP­ PORT GROUP,~ox 1578, APO Miami 34001 (Ft Amador, Panama)

PEN PALS WANTED

Children Wanting Pen Pals should send us name, age, address, and 1-3 words on interests --- Zachary DAHL (5) 15217 Mitchell Creek Rd, Fort Bragg CA 95437; trains, trucks, animals --- BECKHORN, Box 343, RD 6, Sussex NJ 07461: Patrick (6) dinosaurs, soccer, robots; Christo­ pher (5) checkers, He-man, bikes; Graham (3) animals, books, cooking --- Carolyn DELAS (12) 8074 Owens Way, Arvada CO 80005; animals, read­ ing, science --- Sharon AMOS (11) General Delivery, New Hope KY 40052; writing, reading, cats --- NELSON-CAVIGLIA, 200-92 Burnett Av, Morgan Hill CA 95037: Adrianne (10) dancing, stickers, art; Aaron-James (6) art, Knight­ Rider, skating --- BERRY, PO Box 35, Johnstown NE 69214 : Katherine/71 aerobics, reading, stickers; Anne / 73 stickers, aerobics, 4-H; Margaret / 75 roller-skating, Barbie, stickers; tmi1y/78 writing, sewing, drawing; Russe11/81 reading, playing, cats --- SPARKMAN, 115 9960 Bonaventure Dr SE, Calgary, Alberta Canada T2J 5RO: Tammy (10) sewing, cooking, animals; Ross (9) drawing, dinosaurs, stamps; Patti (8) read­ ing, stamps, writing; Jackie (6) writing, read­ ing, animals; Cathy-Lou (3) stickers, dogs,

reading --- Tammy BARRICK (12) 20806 94 St E, Sumner WA 98390; horses, animals, reading --­ OUELLETTE, 12642 Riverside Dr, Tecumseh, Ontario Canada N8N 1A3: Jessica (8) nature, ballet, gynmastics; Simeon (5) making forests, ecology --- MAIN, 1306 E Granada, Phoenix AZ 85006: Simone (6) dancing, singing, books; Celeste (8) violin, acting, reading --- John STICKNEY (6) 63 Spindrift Ln, Guilford CT 06437; dinosaurs, nature, writing

repeat the information in them.

Our rates for back issues: any combina­ tion of back issues, mailed at one time to one address, cost 75¢ per issue, plus $2. For exam­ ple, GWS #1-48 would cost $38. (48 x 75¢ is $36. $36 + $2 = $38.) These rates are for sub­ scribers only; non-subscribers pay $2.50 per­ lssue.

Index to GWS #1-30 costs $2.50; to #31­ 40, $l~se prices include postage).

Address chanaes: If you're moving, let us know your new a dress as soon as possible.

Please enclose a recent label (or copy of RENEWALS one). Issues mi ssed because of a change in ad­ As we said elsewhere, GWS rates will dress may be replaced for $2 each. soon be going up. But you still have until May Group sUbscri~tions: all copies are mail­ 31 to take advantage of our current low rates. ed to one address. ere are the current group At the bottom of this page is a form you rates (lX means you get one copy of each can use to renew your subscription. Please issue, 2X means you get 2 copies of each help us by renewing early. issue, 3X means 3 copies, etc.) : How can you tell when your subscription 3 yrs.

1 year 2 yrs. expires? Look at this sample label : 6 iss.

12 iss.

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1X $15 $27 $36 12345 2X $20 $34 $45 JIM & MARY JONES 27 01 50 3X $25 $45 $67.50 16 MAIN ST 4X $30 $60 $90 PLAINVILLE NY 01111 5X $37.50 $75 $112.50 The number that is underlined in the 6X $45 $90 $135 example tells the number of the final issue for the subscription. The Jones' sub explres 7X, 8X, etc : $7.50 per person per year. with Issue #50, the next issue. But if we were to receive their renewal before we sent our Please send in the names and addresses final account changes to the mailing house of members of your group sub, so that we can (early April), they would qualify for the free keep in touch with them. Thanks. bonus issue. . -Renewal rates are the same as for new GWS was founded in 1977 by John Holt.

subscriptions : $15 for 6 issues, $27 for 12 Editor - Donna Richoux

issues, $36 for 18 issues.

Managing Editor - Patrick Farenga

Subscriptions & Books - Steve Rupprecht,

Sandy Kendall, Wendy Baruch Office Assistant - Mary Van Doren SUBSCRIPTIONS Editorial Assistant - Mary Maher Subscriptions begin with the next issue published. Rates are: $15 for 6 issues, $27 Copyright Holt Associates, Inc. for 12 issues, $36 for 18 issues. GWS is published every other month. A single issue costs $2.50.

For all subs or orders of GWS (not books), please send check or money orders pay­ able to GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. Foreign payments must be either money orders-;n-us-funds 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. Outside of North America, add $10 per year for airmail (other­ wise, allow 2-3 months for surface mail). :z Back issues: We strongly urge you to get C> the back lssues of GWS, especially if you plan to take your children out of school. Many of the articles are as useful and important as when they were printed, and we do not plan to

RENEWAL FORM Use this form to renew or extend your subscription to GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. Place the label from a recent issue below, if possible. If not, print the info. Thanks.

Account Number:

Name:

Expiration code:

Address (Change? Yes/No):

City, State, Zip:

YES, PLEASE EXTEND MY SUBSCRIPTION FOR: 6 issues, $15 Group sub:

copies of

12 issues, $27

18 issues, $36

issues, $_ _ (see chart)

(Clip and send with your check or money order in U.S. funds to: GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING, 729 Boylston Street, Boston MA 02116.)

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #49