GROWING WITHOIJT SCHOOLING 69 x
WeVe devoted a lot of space ln recent issues of GWS to the question of communitlr - what ts tt, how can we lind or make it, what would we want it to a be like lf we could have it? For this issue, we decided to take the discussion d one step further and ask, 'How can we make our communitles - the ones we o have and live in right now - more welcoming of and accessible to children? What sorts of changes might we actually consider making?" In inviting several readers to think about these questions, I gave them explicit permisslon to be speculaUve, wishful - to write about what they would like to see happen even if they could not always see how to make it happen. This is unusual for GWS; we tend to be stron$y biased in favor of storles of what has happend., what people have tried or done or experienced. But the departure from this blas was deliberate. GWS reader Peter Making our communtdes more welcomlng to children is the subject of thls l*sue's Focus, pages Bergson, who has for many years helped adults recover and children t9-22. maintain thelr creaflve problem-solvtng abtlities, says that the htstory of inventlveness, of creativitSr, shows that trt. ly new and workable ideas come INSIDE THIS ISSUE: to people only after they have allowed themselves this kind of wishing. To invent something new, we have to be able to think in farfetched, even crazy NEWS & REPORTS p. 2-a terms, to say, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could have something like this?" We Victory ln North Dakota, The Right wouldn't have airplanes if people hadn't been able to say, "Imagine someto Participate ln AcUviUes, Homething that would allow us to get from place to place bylyfngl" - which must schooling "Challenged" Children have seemed a pretty far out idea at the time. Of course, really making change does very deflnitely lnvolve thinking CFIALLENGES & CONCERNS p. 5-7 about how to put ldeas tnto practice. We can't generate ltsts of wild ideas and then stop there. But we can't get anywhere untrl we generate those lists, Doesn't Mind Isolatlon, Inquiring so with this issue of GWS we're taking the first step toward thinldng about Adults, Wanting School, When how to make accessible, welcoming communities for children and, by Mother ls lll extension, families. And in fact, even within the context of these wish lists, WATCHING CHILDREN LEARN the writers in this issue have come up with many practical ldeas about what we can do to make those wishes real. Sometimes they offer o<amples of p. 8-l I what has already been done as well. History, Museum Volunteers, AdvanA few words about why we spend so much time talking about commutages of Being an Older Reader, nity in a magazine that's ostensibly about education. John Holt wrote in Spelling, Becoming a Writer 1971: 'l do not think we can treat as separate the quality of education and the qualtty of life in general... I am saying that truly good education in a bad LEARNING FROM CHILDREN'S societ5r is a contradiction in terms. In short, ln a society that is absurd, unPLAY p.1l-12 workable, wasteful, destructtve, secretlve, coercive, monopolistic, and generally anti-human, we could never have good education, no matter what RETHINKING''SCHLEPPING kind of schools the powers that be permit, because it is not the educators or CHILDRENAROUND" p. 12 the schools but the whole societ5r and the quality of life in lt that really educate. This means that whatever we do to improve the quality of life, for anyone, and in whatever part of his life, to that degree improves education... CHILDREN IN THE WORKPI.A,CE The best and perhaps only way to prepare the young to work for a better p.12 world is to invite them, right now, to join us in working for it. We cannot say, "\Me will concentrate our efforts on maldng nice schools for you, and after FOCUS: MAKING COMMUNITIES you get out goucan tackle the toughJob of remaking the world.' ...What WELCOMING TO CHILDREN p. relpeople] need above all else is a society in which they are to the greatest 22 possible degree free and encouraged to look, ask, think, choose and act; and... making this society ls both the chief soctal or polittcal artd educaLTVING WELL WITH CHILDREN : tional task of our time.' INTERMEW WTIH MARC McGARRY If society as a whole is what educates, we cannot think about working p.22-23 for better education without thinking about working for better communities in which to live, work, play, teach, and leam. In a way, this makes the task OLDERHOMESCHOOLERS p. 2a seem blgger, more tmposlng. But defining it thts way also gives us a great range of possible courses of action, a great many things we can actually do. HOTWADULTS LEARN p.25 Of the many possible ways to work "in the field of education,' I suspect that working for stronger communities will be not only the most effective but GEORGE DENNISON ON FREEDOM also the most satisSing. Susannah Sheffer
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