GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING 7T Some people ask, 'How will children learn ri$or, or selfdisctpline, tf they don't $o to school?' Behind this question is the
assumpgon thai the motlr4ation to stlck with somethlng until it ts learned or done, even tf the learning or doin$ is difllcult, comes from being requlred to do so. People ln school worry about concentratlon, aboul'ilme on task,' about perseverance' Conventional school wisdom supposes that lettturg children do 'whatever they want' makes rigor lmpossible - alter all, if no one is makin$you finish the assignment, why would you bother to stay with lt once it became
Nathaniel McAlpine wrltes about learnlng to ride a b: thls lssue's Focus on When Iâ‚Źarntng is
INSIDE THIS ISSUE: News
&Reports p.2-3
New Rules ln Ohlo, Newlaw
in
Maine, NEA Resoluttons
Ftndlng Homeschoolers ln Flctlon p.4 Recognlzlng a Chlld's Soclal Needs p.5-6 Challenges & Concerns p.6-9 When Siblings Compare, Worldng Outslde the Home, Children's Flghts
Watchlng Chlldren Learn p.
9-ll,
p. 34-35
What He Needed, PutUng on PlaY, I-eaming from Other Children, from Siblings, What Hands-On ReallY Means
FOCUS: When Learnlng ls
Frustratlng or Dlfrleult p. 29-31
The Problem of Professlonallzatlon:
Intervlew wlth John McKnt$ht p. 32-33
Older Homeschoolers p. 33-34 The Structured-Unstructured Dlchotomy p.35-36
Should Standardlzed Tests Be Used to Judgle Homeschoolers? p. 36-37
frustrating? For this tssue of GWS we asked several young readers of the magazine to write about the experience of learning or mastering, frustrating or dtlllcult. Their letters demonstrate Just how "oti.thtng v/i1ing children who iearn outside of school are to persevere, to work Urrough dtfflculttes, and they teach us somethlng lmportant about the source of rigor and self-disctpline and the conditlons under which they flourish. Here is Mar5rrose Dolezal talking about her struggle to figure out how to tell time: 'I kept at it because I hated being places where I needed orwanted to flgure outwhat Ume ltwas, but couldn't"' Itwas very frustratlng for me, but I'm glad I kept at lt, because now I know how to tell timi.'And here isJamie Smith talking about how she pulled herself out of a slump in herwork on the piano: "I found that the more challenging the pieces were that I played' the more interested I became ana trte harder I worked.'Anneke chodan says that it was because she "really enjoyed swimming' that she worked at it even though she is, by her own description, 'not a naturally athletic person.' The source of rigor and self-discipline, then, is the work itself' John Holt wrote in GWS #29: 'Good work requlres a klnd of selflessness, a purity of motive, a willingness to submit oneself to the requirementi not of the boss but of the task...' The requirements of the task, the demands it makes on us, are what tnspire us to keep at it.
But the source of self-discipline is also, as Nancy Wallace has polnted out, our relationship to the task at hand. She says, 'Children wlll never learn self-discipline as a skill separate from the work they perceive as their real work.' A task demands self-discipline if we feel ourselves engaged with it, if we have chosen it and thus chosen to submit to its requirements. Mar5rrose wanted, for her own reasons, to learn how to tell time, and so she gave herself to the demands of the task and got, at the end, the simple reward of krawirE twtts to tell time. Learning, then, is a matter of the relationship between the learner and his or her chosen work. Anything else - gold stars' grades, movlng up to the next workbook - is extraneous. Because th" young people who have written for this issue have a relationship wlth what they are trying to learn, they are able to figure out what they need to do tn order to learn it. Sometimes they cope with dtfllculttes that arise by takfng a break for a whtle. Sometlmes they involve other people in the task. Sometimes they simply remind themselves of how much they do want to swim or tell time or write a story. Having figured out what helped them in this one lnstance, they now have a basis for suspecUng that something similar might work the next time they are frustrated (although they will likely also discover that different tasks require different methods of working through difficulty). We don't have to make children rlgorous or disctplined. Interesting things to do, and children's natural desire for mastery' compeSusannah Sheffer tence, and growth, wtll do the job.
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