GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING 10 Unschooling is still much in the news. Iowa has ended its prosecution of the Sessions family, and Ne1~ Hampshire (accordi ng to a news report) has dropped i t s case a~ainst Betsy Tomp ki ns , largely because the l ocal school distr ict has (wisel y) decided it is costing too much money. In Mi nnesota a small town jury found Mrs. Wunsch gui lty of violating compulsory at tendance l aws. but t he verdict was so obviously prejudiced, and against the whole weight of the evidence, that the judge (rightly and legally) overturned the verdict. Rev . Paul Lindstrom of the Christi an Liberty Academy writes that i n the nine unschooling cases with which his organization has been involved , the parents have won seven and lost two. Two families, one in Indiana (a first for that state, as far as I know) and one in New Hampshire. have persuaded their local schools to cooperate with their home schoo 1i ng plans . A mother on Cape Cod tells me that she has been teaching her children at home with the enthusiastic cooperation of the local schools, who welcome the children any time they want to go to school for special projects, field trips . etc. More on this in the next i ssue. The ABC "20-20" shO\• taped us here in the office, and also taped much of the Ohio meeting of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools. They tell us t hey plan to air this show i n early September, but probably won't be able to give us a defin i te date until just a few days before the show. This is too bad, as ft won't give us time to send out a notice to GWS readers. Needless to say , we will do so if we can. So many readers and supporters called up radio station WRflG in Atlanta , GA, asking them to talk about unschooling, that the station is going to do a phone interview with me at 7 PM, Tues. July 9. Readers in other places may be able to get rad i o s tations to do the same. I may al so appear on the Joel Stevak TV shC~-1 in Philadelphia, 9 AM on lion. July 16, but that is not yet definite .
bumped it to 86X! Someone wrote that, not knowing how to get in touch with us . she asked all the libraries in her area about GWS, and none had even heard of it. If libraries in your area don't know about us, please te 11 them. COMING LECTURES I will be speaking during the day on Wed . Sept. 5 at the Devereux Schoo 1 in Berwyn PA (near Philadelphia). Also on Fri. Sept . 14 at an in- service meeting of New Mexico schools , at the Holiday Inn De Las Cruces, in Las Cr uces, NM. I have one mee t i ng from 1- 3: 15 Pf·l, and will talk again, on more or less the same subject . at the Las Cruces Teacher Center from about 6 to 8:30 PM. My contact for t his mee t i ng is Kathy Easterl ing , Title I In- servi ce Coordinator, who can be reached c/o Hatch Valley Municipal School s, Hatch NM 87937. Also Non. Sept. 24, at Western Maryland College, Westminster MD (about an hour from Baltimore), afternoon workshops and an 8 PM meeting. Next is Thurs. Nov. 29, an 8:15PM meeting at Texas Tech Univ. in Lubbock. . TX. Contact Robert DiPietro. Lecture/Fine Arts Dept. Later meetings are 4/14/80, 8 PM at Huntington College. Huntington IN (25 mi. from Ft. Wayne): 4/17/80, Univ. of Wisconsin at Lake Geneva, WI; 4/19/80, Rutgers Univ., Newark, NJ. (That schedule is rather tight, in the middle at least.) Since one of the chief ways we get the money we need to produce GWS is from my lecture fees, one of the ways in which some GWS readers might he l p the work along is by helping me get fee -paying lectures. Lf any of you have any connection with the kinds of groups and institutions that hire speakers (colleges, conferenc~~ - Ptr.. ), Anrl that might be interested in hearing about unschooling, you might raise this possibility with them. When I am already scheduled to speak at a meeting , any other group in the same area (or on the way to or from it) that wants me to spea~ either just before or just after that meeting can have my service without having to pay all those travel expenses . The lecture fee itself may also be smaller, since it may be based on how long the new meeting delays my return to Boston. Anything any of you may be able to do about this will be a great help. And . of course, it will be nice to see any of you at the above meetings.
CHANGE IN GROUP SUBS
Please note under SUBSCR!PTIO.IS t hat in one sma 11 respect we have had to raise our prices. Until now, the cost of a group subscription (for any given number of issues) was equal to Donna Richoux has moved from the cost of a single subscription St. Louis to Boston to wor~ wi th for that same number of i ssues . u; d L Lil t- uffil:\! - d lltl l1er ilelJ.l plus $2 per person per y~ar (1 is very valuable, too. yr. = 6 issues), up to a 20X sub, The group of people who look after which the cost of additionout a 74X sub to GWS have since a 1 subscriptions became S1 per
person per year. That Sl part is now no longer in ef fect - the cost of extra subs will remain 52 per person per year, no matter how big the group sub gets. The reason is that it costs us more than Sl just to print 6 issues. Perhaps someday, if and when we get so big that we can print 6 issues of GWS for well under Sl, we will bring back that old Sl of fer. But that probably won 't be for a while. NEW S FROM N.H. Last month we successfully got our son J . who is seven and in second grade, excused from school until June . We v1ill have to reapply for each successive school year , but presumably the process will become easier as time goes on. According to a recent policy set out by the N.H . State Board of Education, a local school board can give parents permission to teach their children at home if the parents can prove that their children are suffering a "manifest educational hal·dsh]p" by remaining in the public sr.hool. We proved "manifest educational hat·dship" in J's case by showing that, basically, he h~d learned everything he knows at home, not at school , and thatbecause we have the time and dedication etc. to teach him, it was a hardship to keep him In school, where he spent the day doing mimeographed papers. and had no individual time with the teacher. Since then the changes that have occurred in J have been unbelievable. Gone are the fits of temper that erupted every day around 4 PM, gone are the headaches, the lines of tension around his mouth, and gone is his depression. He used to complain bitter-ly that he had no time to read (schools don't let you read these days until you 1ve mastered the 1,000 "skills" deemed necessary to learn this "most difficult subject "!). and consequently he read every free second he had outside of school and ra1·ely played. He didn't eat his lunch because it got stale at school, he came home with wet, cold feet acquired at recess and he barely spoke to us. We had thought, "J is goi ng through a stage. All kids are like this etc. " . but boy were 1-1e ~<t-ong! These days J sleeps well , eats •1ell, laughs. Wll• and learns. He gets his (appareiiTiy psychologically necessary) ~eading done in the morning, does his "school work' happily because we learn about the things he wants to learn about- Indians, dinosaurs, binary numbers - and then he has time to do 1•oodWorking, skiing . art , and playi ng . The school board ~1as worried that J would become a social misfit, but just the opposite has happened. AND PROVIDENCE. R. I. Peter Van Daam writes: "There was a radio pol l a few weeks ago. . . r~ore ca 11 ed In saying tnat they could teach children
better at home - 739 Ves, 664 No That same radio interviewed the R.I. Commissioner of Education who admitted that the State does not know how many childr~n are learning at home, but that they have legitimate reasons for doing so (which he listed). Last Friday local public television featured Brlgitta and me on a panel about home-based education. The lawyer representing the R.I. Dept of Education made a strong observation that everyone seems to tle getting 'hung up' on due process. (Ed . note - an odd way, to say the least, for a lawyer to talk about a Constitutional right.) The state's largest community action group has invited us to tneir congress in two weeks where they will help me introduce a resolution affirming the parent ' s right and responsibility to control the education of his child and tne state's obligat1on to assist the parents to fulfill that obligation. The state-wide Coal1tion for Consumer- Justice had a special 'new issues' committee meeting where I presented the concept of children as umvilling consumers of unwanted (and harmful) services in unresponsive schooling structures that r•efuse to acknowledge any accountability. They are following that up. A major radio station taped a 1/2 hour session for its •,ommunity access' program which apparently has a broad audience. And one of the major TV stations is coming to our home this Sunda~ to focus in on the perp 1e.d ties faced by b10 parents sin.:erely concerned about their parental responsibilities. So ... l think home-based education is much more a community issue. People recognize and greet us. Three families nearby have taken their children out of school after counseling ~ith us. A fourth wrote two days ago seeking Pnrnur~ gPmPnt ~nd infnrmAtinfl. l find that people respond most profoundly when I bring up the issue of love and individualism. They seem to identify with my desire that my children learn to be vulnerable, open. giving, ~ind, patient. long suffering ana tolerant rathe1· than another organization person who has found his own edge over his fellow ma n. "
Peter also sent me a copy of
a letter from the Principal of
the school where his daughter was enrolled. lt says, in full: "Because Julia has not attended school at all tnis year, in what was to be her third grade experience, and state la11 requires chi ldren to attend scnool between the ages of seven and sixteen, [ am compelled to retair Julia in the third grade. She will be carried on a third grade register here at ring for the 1979-80 school vear until that time [sic) she appears in school or the ma tter is adjudicated. • An Interesting exam~le of petty and vindi ctive school harassment. The principal Is not ''compelled'' by state l~w to do