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ing all of four years. At the end of h igh school, I decided that schooling and I were mutually unsuited to one another. I have always believed that school is not a good place for people to learn in and have argued this point for the past thirty years . Not until I came across a copy of GWS did I realize that there were other peo ple who feel the same way . ... When I encounter a worried mother who asks what will become of her kids if they don't have a diplo ma, I tell her that in thirty years of working for myself, no one has ever asked how I learned what I know. They only ask how much it will cost for a piece of that knowledge. ... My wife and I have been in the small scale textile production business for eighteen years and nothing we presently do would have to be learned in school . This has been true for everything I have ever done for a living ...
LOCAL NEWS ARIZONA: Sherri Pitman (GWS #28) writes, "I have finally finished my book on the new home school law in Arizona [$7; 6166 W Highland Phoenix AZ 85033] ... We have formed a group of home schoolers called THE PARENTS' ASSOCIATION OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ... " CONNECTICUT: Attorney Frank Cochran writes, "The State Department of Education, which has little or no statutory authority but has often shown good common sense, has pub lished a new set of 'suggested proce dures' . . . They suggest compromises on the testing issue and make clear that parents need only cover mandatory sub jects and need not provide identical or 's ocial' programs ... " Frank also sent us a copy of a letter he wrote to the Commissioner of Education about those guidelines, which in some respects resemble the "Mass. Memo." In his letter he pointed out that, un like Massachusetts law, Connecticut statutes cannot be read to require pri0ci approval before a child is ed u cate elsewhere than at a public school. FLORIDA: Ann Mordes of FLASH tells us that truancy charges against Linda and Richard Rousay of Panama City have been dropped. The Rousays had registered their home as a pri vate school with the state, and were meeting all the requirements for pri vate schools. An article in their local paper, written while charges were pending, said, "A news team from the ABC show 20/20 is considering interviewing the family ... Mrs . Rousay added that the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has selected her as a test case in support of home schooling in Florida. 'At first they said they didn't take educational issues, but then said they would take my case to represent a 11 others in the state ... '" On the ot her hand, th e FLASH newsletter reports, "The Steiners of Sarasota were a Scientologist family seeking to teach their own children on religious grounds. They were not registered as a private school. A truant oficer took them to court and the judge ruled against them . Their court-appointed defender tried to stand on Constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of religion; how ever, the judge stated that their rights were not being violated. They were threatened with jail and having their children taken away from them . .. After much anguish they put their children back into school ... "
INDIANA: From Carol Bridges (RR 3 Box 507, Nashville IN 47448): "You may be interested to know that it is a part of our religion (the Church of the Earth Nation is non-profit tax exempt) to teach our children at home. Our church was created, in part, to provide protection for those who believe strongly enough in their right to educate their own children that it is indeed their 'religion. '" MICHIGAN: From the newsletter of the NATIONAL COALITION OF ALTERNATIVE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS: "Nick Dennany, father of five children, chose to edu cate his children at home without the state required certificated teacher. Last March the Kalamazoo Schools filed suit against Nick in criminal court. Nick compiled a 300+ page brief containing more than 20 differ ent issues on home schooling. He spent five months researching it at the library, put it into brief form, typed it on legal size paper and pre sented it to the judge in advance of the appointed date. (Nick himself has a ninth grade education . He did all of the legal work by himself.) "The judge praised the brief as one of the most thorough and precise he'd seen in a long time . After read ing it, the judge told Nick that there would be no further proceed ings; he had the schools drop their suit and bade Nick to continue educa ting hi s children just as he'd been doing - no certificated teacher n eeded ... " MINNESOTA: Sharon Hillestad writes, "The MINNESOTA NETWORK OF ' HOME SCHOOLERS is meeting monthly . Carmelle Pommepey (phone 612-379 4068) has taken over the leadership of the organization ... She had almost no trouble getting permission from the Minneapolis school system to teach h~r young son ... People have come as far as 200 miles to meet like-thinking people ... Carmelle and I are going to hit the radio talk shows . Next summer we hope to have a symposium ... " NEW JERSEY: Ann Bodine writes, " The Commiss~oner of Education ' s let ter [GWS #26] has really made things easy for us in New Jersey. A new h ome -schooling family recently wrote their principal of their intentions and a few days later he called and read them the letter' Said he under stood the situation and wanted them to understand all their rights. What a change' ... " OHIO: Linda Cox and Beth Burns have started up the OCEAN newsletter again ($3/yr; PO Box 302, Cuyahoga Falls OH 44221). Beth says, "In July, Rich and I held a picnic for home schoolers (present and future) at our farm. We gathered together 18 adults and 37 children by inviting everyone listed in the GWS directory that lived within 60 miles ... " PUERTO RICO: From Patricia de Fernos: "There is now a family in Dor ado, a town near us, home-schooling their three children, and another two families in San Juan home-schooling besides ourselves ... We have all been so busy, we haven't had another P.R. HOME SCHOOLERS ASSOCIATION get together, though there have been requests it be held ... " TEXAS: Harold Baer of HALVI SCHOOLS writes, "In July and August this year we received a dozen more home-schooling enrollments ... Parents appear to be enthusiastic about our flexible arrangement ... We're still maintaining our $25/year tuition ... " WASHINGTON: Debra Stewart of the STILLAGUAMISH LEARNING EXCHANGE says, "Our Urban group is growing so fast
we can't keep up with it. We now have three urban centers, 55 families with 73 children among them ... We now have 11 centers state-wide and three more pending . We are approaching 150 students ... " WISCONSIN: John Ellis of FAITH ACADEMY writes, "We now have 66 fami lies in Wisconsin who have joined Faith Academy, Inc . , and are now oper ating subsidiary schools, or as we call them, one-family private schools . Also, we have a mailing list of over 300 persons in Wisconsin who support th e home school movement ... " ADS IN GWS Beginning with GWS #31, we are going to start carrying advertising in GWS. We probably should have done it sooner, but I feared that the money we could get from advertising would not be worth the work needed to get it, and in any case I hoped we might be able to do without it. Well, we can't do without it - we badly need another source of income . And the experience of Mothering shows that, even for small publications like ours, advertising can earn a sig nificant amount of money. With some luck and much hard work, advertising may soon help put GWS on a much sound er financial footing, and even in time enable us to put out a larger and better magaZine. Note that both Homesteaders News and Co-Evolution Quarterly have begun carrying ads, and for the same reason that we feel we must. We will carry two types of adver tising: classified ads, which we will set up in the same typeface we use for the Directory, and display ads, in which the advertisers send us photo-ready copy. Our rates for classified ads or perhaps "unclassified," since at first we will not try to arrange them under group headings - will be $5 per line (47 spaces per line). People can save space and money by using abbrevi ations, or perhaps joining words. Thus we might write our own City address as BostonMA02116 . Readers will have to decide how much abbrevia ting and word-joining they can use and still keep their meaning clear . We will run your ads exactly as you send them to us. (Payment must be in advance. Deadline for submitting ads for GWS #31 is Jan. 15; for GWS #32, March 15.) If you would like to run a dis play ad, please ask us for our rate card. GWS as you see it has been reduced in size from the pages on which we lay it out . On those origin al pages each of our columns is four inches wide, which means that a dis play ad designed to use half the width of an 8~" page (as in Mothering and many standard magazines) will just fit one of our regular columns . Readers can use ads (display or classified) to advertise home busi nesses, to sell anything they want to sell (making GWS a kind of permanent garage sale), to look for things that they want to buy, or for places to live or visit, or people to live with or visit them, or transportation for long journeys, or other people with special knowledge or skills, or pen pals, or people interested in swap ping skills or houses or (temporar ily) children - in other words, the kind of ads you see in many small magazines . Like all advertisers, we reserve the right to decline to run an ad if for any reason it does not seem appro-
GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #30