GROWING
WITHOUT
SCHOOLING
10 Unschooling is still much in the news. Iowa has ended its prosecution of the Sessions family, and New Hampshire (accor ding to a news report) has dropped its case aga in st Betsy Tompkins, l argely because the local school district has (wise ly) decided it is costing too much money. In Minnesota a small town jury found Mrs. Wunsch guilty of vi olating compulsory attendance laws, but the verdict was so obvious ly prejudiced, and against the whole weight of the evidence, that the judge (rightly and legally) overturned the verdict. Rev. Paul Lindstrom of the Christian Liberty Academy writes that in the nine unschoo l ing cases with which his organization has been i nvolved, 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 Hamp shire, have persuaded their local schools to cooperate with their home schooling plans. A mother on Cape Cod tells me that she has been teaching her children at home with the enthu siastic cooperation of the local schoo ls , who welcome the children any time they want to go to school for special projects, field trips, etc . More on this in the next issue. The ABC "20-20" show taped us here in the office, and also taped muc h of the Ohio meeting of the National Coalition of Alter native Community Schools. They tell us they plan to air this show in early September, but probably won't be able to give us a defin ite date until just a few days before the show. This is too bad, as it 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 suppor ters ca lled up radio station WRNG 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 radio stations to do the same. I may also appear on the Joel Stevak TV show in Philadel phia, 9 AM on Mon. 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 librar ies in your area don't know about us, please tell them. COM ING LECTURES
I wi l l be speaking during the day on Wed. Sept. 5 at the Devereux School 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 Cruces, NM. I have one meeting from 1 - 3:15 PM, 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 this meeting i s Kathy Easterling, Title I In-service Coordinator, who can be reached c/o Hatch Valley Municipal Schools, Hatch NM 87937 . Also Mon. Sept. 24, at Western Maryland College, West minster MD (about an hour from Baltimore), afternoon workshops and an 8 PM meeting. Next is Thurs. Nov. 29, an 8:15 PM meeting at Texas Tech
Univ. in Lubbock, TX. Contact
Robert DiPietro, Lecture/ Fine
Arts Dept.
Later meet ing s are 4/14/80, 8 PM at Huntington Col l ege, Huntington IN (25 mi. from Ft. Wayne): 4/17/80, Univ . of Wiscon sin at Lake Geneva, WI; 4/19/80, Rutgers Uni v., Newark, NJ. (Tha t schedule is rather tight, in the middle at least.) Since one of the chief ways we get the money we need to produce GWS i s from my lecture fees, one of the ways in which some GWS readers mi ght help the work along is by helping me get fee-paying lectures. If any of you have any connection with the kinds of groups and institutions that hire speakers (co lleges, conferences, etc.), and 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 speak 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 ab l e 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
Pl ease note under SUBSCRIP TIOilS that in one small 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 work with for that same number of issues, us at the office - and her help plus $2 per person per year (1 is very valuable, too. yr. = 6 issues), up to a 20X sub, The group of people who took after which the cost of addition out a 74X sub to GWS have since al subscriptions became Sl per
person per year. That $1 part is now no longer in effect - the cost of extra subs will remain $2 per person per year, no matter how big the group sub gets. The reason is that it costs US more than $1 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 $1, we will bring back that old $1 offer . But that probably won't be for a while. NEWS FROM N.H.
Last month we successfully got our 30n J, who is seven and in second grade, excused from school until June. We will 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 hardship" by remaining in the public schoo 1. We proved "manifes t educa tional hardship" in J's case by showing that, basically, he had learned everything he knows at home, not at school, and tha~ because 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 head aches, the lines of tension around his mouth , and gone is his depression. He used to compla in bitterly that he had no time to read (schools don't let you read these days until you ' ve mastered the 1,000 "skills" deemed neces sary to learn this "most diffi cult subject " !), and consequently he read every free second he had outside of school and rarely played. He didn't eat his lunch because it got stale at school, he came home wi th Ivet, cold feet acquired at recess and he barely spoke to us. We had thought, "J is going through a stage. All kids are 1i ke thi s etc.", but boy were we wrong! These days J sleeps well, eats well, laughs. ~, and learns. He gets his (apparentl y psychologically necessary) reading done in the morning, does hi s "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 woodworking, skiing, art, and play i ng . The school board was worried that J would become a social mis f it, but just the opposite has happened. AND PROVIDENCE , R. I.
Peter Van Daam writes : "There was a radio poll a few weeks ago... r~ore ca 11 ed in say ing that they could teach children
better at home - 739 Yes, 664 No .. That same radio interviewed the R.I. Commissioner of Education who admitted that the State does not know how ma ny children are learning at home, but that they have legitimate reasons for doing so (which he listed). Last Friday local public tel evision featured Brigitta and me on a panel about home-based educa tion. The lawyer representing the R.I. Dept of Education made a strong observation that everyone seems to ~e getting 'hung up' on due process. (Ed. note - an odd way, to say the least, for a law yer to talk about a Constitutional right. ) The state's largest community action group has invited us to thei r congress in two Iveeks where they will help me introduce a res olution affirming the parent's right and responsibility to con trol the education of his child and the state's obligation to as sist the parents to fulfill that obligation. The state-wide Coalition for Consumer Justice had a special 'new issues' committee meeting where I presented the concept of children as unwilling consumers of unwanted (a nd harmful) ser vices in unresponsive schooling structures that refuse to acknow ledge any accountability . They are following that up. A major radio station taped a 1/2 hour sess i on for its 'com munity access' program which ap parently has a broad audience. And one of the major TV stations is coming to our home this Sunday to focus in on the perplexities faced by two parents sincerely concerned about their parental responsibilities, So ... I think home - based education is much more a communi ty issue, People recognize and greet us. Three families nearby have taken their children out of school after counseling with us, A fourth wrote two days ago seek ing encouragement and information. I find that people respond mos t profoundly Ivhen I bri ng up the issue of love and individual i sm. They seem to identify with my desire that my children learn to be vulnerable, open, giving, kind, patient, long suffering and tolerant rather than another or ganization person who has found his own edge over his fellow ma n. II
Pe ter also sent me a copy of a letter from the Principal of the school where his daughter was enrolled. It says, in full: "Because Julia has not at tended school at all this year, in Ivhat was to be her third grade experience, and state law re quires children to attend school between the ages of seven and sixteen, I am compelled to retain Julia in the third grade. She will be carried on a third grade register here at Ki ng for the 1979-80 school year until that time [sic] she appears in school or the matter is adjudicated." An interesting example of petty and vindictive school har assment. The principal is not "compe lled " by state law to do
any such thing. If the Van Daams had been out of the country for a year or more, the local school would have tested her to see where she should be placed in school. The Principal's letter notes that copies were sent to two other school officials, one a "Student Re l ations Coordinator," the other a "Segment Administra tor." What do these people do, I wonder, and how much do they get paid for doing it? Taxpayers might like to know the answers to these questions. They might find in them some of the reasons why schooling has become so expens i ve. Paul Goodman wrote, many years ago, I think in his book COMPULSORY MIS-EDUCATION (well worth reading), that there were more public school administrators in the state of New York, with a population of 17 mil l ion, than in all of Western Europe, with a population of 200 million . And would guess that there are more administrators per pupil now than there were then. Unschoolers facing a possi ble conflict with their school distr i ct might find this matter worth looking into. How many non teachers are on their school dis trict's payroll, what do they get paid, what do they do?
Most indicated that their interest in home education was rooted in their dissatisfaction with formal education, particu larly public education .... The group represented a
wide range of philosophic and
religious points of view ....
At least one parent came with guestions and l eft convin ced. LShe] said that she intends to take her two children out of the Providence elementary schools tomorrow.
II
IN THE WOODS
.. . 1 moved to Canada, to the country, without electricity or running water, with firewood to cut and food to grow, and eventu ally children to care for and learn with. Somewhere along the line I decided that my chi l dren would never go to any school unless they wanted to go. And that if they wanted to go to school we would find a school we were a 11 happy wi th. I ha ve gi ven this more importance than most other things. I like spending a day as often as possible (usually about once a week) when I have no other responsibilities than to be with children, follow their interests, show them things I think they might like, talk, read, explore. The Providence Journal - Bull Most of the time I am very busy, etin of 4/29/79 carried a news and of course that's great learn story, sayin9, in part: ing time for us all. But so much of the time I'm either too busy "... This was the first org or tired to really respond to anizational meeting of a still some questions or help a child unnamed group of Rhode Island and with an intricate problem or Massachusetts parents who believe project or to just fall into in educating their children at their play and antics. home - a volatile constitutional In GWS I've been reading and educational issue that has about unschooling and learning abruptly burst onto the local not being separated from life and scene. that we all are teachers and Thirty adults and a dozen or learners. At the same time I so children showed up for the think a healthy community can session that had been called by include the adults (especially Peter and Brigitta Van Daam, the those who want to) spending part East Side couple who were arrest of their time giving undivided ed April 11 for keeping their atte ntion to children rat her than eight-year-old daughter, Ju l ia, al ways relating with children out of school. Their Family Court while in the midst of other case has been continued to May responsibilities. 15 .... When I devote a day to the The group included an auto children, I let a few other mechanic, a Newport policeman, children in the area know they the chairman-elect of the Liber are welcome to come over for the tarian Party of Rhode Island, and day. This gives the children here a commercial artist . a chance to spend the day with Some came only to observe, their friends - a big thrill. We but at least six of the families usually have a wonderful time who participated are educating together . We all enjoy a great their children at home. deal of creative activities Most are doing so without painting, dancing, using clay, the approval of school author drama, costuming, singing . We ities - like the Van Daams and also really enjoy going for walks another Providence couple who or doing something in the garden didn't want their names used for or orchard. Or talking. Something fear it would speed the truant they always want me to do is to officer to their door. read to them (none of them read Others reported that they really fluently yet). I let have won School Committee per everyone choose a book or story. mission for their home programs. Those who can, do part of the David Kendrick of Rehoboth, reading. We read all kinds of Mass., for example, said he has books - simple and complex, with been given the okay to educate and without pictures. his nine-year-old daughter at I often write on a scrap of home this year, using a corres paper a few ideas of things to do pondence course supplemented by a together before the day starts. tutor who visits once a week. Sometimes we do those things, ... Virtually all asserted sometimes we don't. I am very that home education is a consti willing to follow the lead of the tutional right that supercedes chi 1dren . I fi nd these days very state laws requiring school at fulfil li ng and worthwhile. Wheth tendance for children between er or not we call it school is the ages of 7 and 16. irrelevant to me.
Last fall we had a school group meeting twice a week. Mostly 2 - 4 year olds and mostly girls with one 5 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. Altogether there were about 12 children. It was quite a delightful group. This is the day I remember best from that time: We began painting, and working with clay, and playing in the yard in front of the house. As lunch time neared we decided to have a picnic in the little pine tree forest. (This was one of the favorite nice weather activi ties.) The little pine trees are about 12 years old and a wonder ful size for little people to climb and create fantasy worlds withi n. As we were eating, I noticed some tiny green plants growing within the browns, reds, oranges of the fall leaves. I looked cl oser at the little plants and suggested that the children near me help me look for the various tiny plants growing around us. We found my favorite spring greens sorrel and peppergrass - and some clover and a couple of plants none of us were familiar with. We nibbled the greens and were pleased with our discovery. Soon the wonderful game of "roaring lions in the forest" began. The other mother and I sat to rest for a while. One child (3 years) stayed with us looking at the plants. She was a very quiet child and often stayed by herself very absorbed for long times with her interests while all the others very easily rela ted and played and talked with each other. Sometimes I wondered if she wanted help getting to know others, if she was lonely and frightened in her solitude . But from observing her I'd deci ded she was actually quite happy on her own a lot. She almost never talked at school, but I knew she could talk because I'd heard her talk to her older sister quite freely. So when she began talking to me about the plants I was delighted. We looked very closely at many little plants and she pulled some out to look at the roots. Then she looked at the different levels of dead leaves - the brand new, bright crunchy ones were pushed away by her delicate finger, next there were softer brown ones, then black matted ones, then dirt. We talked throughout this examining of the magic of plants and earth. When that was complete we moved off to join the others who led us through the pines to the edge of the swamp - cedars and black gooshy mud and water. Someone took shoes and socks off and within a very short time all shoes and socks came off. There was a great deal of splashing and stamping and singing and joy. Someone fell down and got his pants mucky. (I thought - what are his parents going to think? they were obviously having way too much fun to stop them.) Soon all clothes were being taken off and put on the moss under the cedars. And the jolly dance continued. The little girl I described earl i er was jOining ri ght in with all the others looking quite radiant. One child stayed back from the muck and the
wet. He didn't seem disturbed by the others dancing in the muck, but obviously it didn't appeal to him. Exploring the swamp went on until it was time to dry off, get dressed and go home. I thought about that day and wondered how most of the parents would have responded. Some, I don't think would have allowed the naked water play - others probably would have. Some prob ably would have felt there wasn't much happening that day as much of it was spent on a long walk. But I was glad that the other mother who was there was as willing as I to follow the lit tler people on their adventure and I loved that day! CALVERT NEWS
A mother writes: . .. 1 had no problem enrol ling Sean in Calvert - we move a lot - and all they require is for legality's sake - a change in address every four months. If we didn't move every four months then I was required to go to the school and get an approving letter from them, which I've never had to do! I've been very pleased with the Home Course - it is variable and easy to work with and learn from. Sean finished a 9 month course in 6 months and is looking forward to his 4th grade course. He got "messed up" (to put it mildly) his 3rd year in public schools and cured me of that .
GROWING IN DENMARK
From a Danish government pamphlet, by Frede Petersen, about Carl Nielsen (one of my favorite composers): "I twas in Hans Andersen's island of Funen ... that Carl Nielsen, Denmark's greatest com poser of recent times, was born on June 9, 1865. His parents were simple, indeed poor, peo ple; the father was a house painter but would do odd jobs on farms in order to augment the income of an ever-growing fam ily. Carl was the seventh of ... twelve children ... ... The craft of music came to play no small part in the life of this large family: Painter Niels, as he was invar iably called in the neighbor hood, was also a village music ian. Music was his chief inter est and he was a valued player at feasts and dances in the island, where he also taught music and dancing .... ... Scarcely anyone has de scribed this island ... more lovingly than Carl Nielsen . . . 'If, from a lofty mountain in the middle of Funen, we could look down over the whole island, tracing its outline against the blue sea, we would make the delightful dis covery that, viewed this way too, Funen is one of the fair est of lands. We would reflect on all the island's beauties for the hundredth time and never weary - the breadth in proportion to the circumfer ~ row i n9
without s(:hool1ng 110
ence, the blue inlets in re lation to the sky, the little plains and the plump hills in contrast to the woods and hed ges - oh, there is so much! Nowhere else in the world have I seen lanes and foot paths wind so snugly sweet, making you want to lie down on the ground and kiss it . We have all read in books of men kneeling and kissing their native soil. But that would be in the great moments, perhaps after long absence, and the grand manner comes easily then. Here it is quite differ ent; not solemnly, but sponta neously, sincerely, suddenly; as if one's heart wanted to pop out and play with little red and blue balls in the spring air, hopping and skip ping for joy like lambs that do not bleat but cluck.' ... His boyhood in Funen tending geese and cows, in close contact with Nature, developed his sense of all that showed growth and energy . He would lie for hours in the field watching the drifting cl ouds, the rhythm ical waving of the corn, or a little feather floating over the rippling surface of the pond . This awareness of the exuberant life around him is reflected later in his art. His first steps in music were taken when he was a small boy. One day, when he was ill with meas les, his mother gave him one of his father's violins which hung on the wall, and on it he tried to find the tunes she sang to him . His father's only comment on this early start was to take the vio lin from him and tune it. Later, his father gave him regular guidance and soon Carl was able to go with him to play for dances, wed dings, and other feasts . To this primitive form of music Carl Nielsen ascribes no little im portance in the development of his compositional talent. In the long run, however, the routine playing, as second vio lin, of rude three- and four-part dance rhythms failed to satisfy him. Like his companions he soon be gan to improvise counter melo dies and rhythms to the simple harmonies which governed this dance mus i c. He also composed tunes, and in his reminiscences he quotes one which provoked his father's distaste on account of its liberal syncopation, which 'nobody could dance to.' Besides this utilitarian music, Nielsen in his boyhood made some acquaintance with the class ics, which were played under simple forms (Ed. italics) in local music societies, and together all this helped to re fine his sense of music .... At the age of fifteen, after an interrupted period of apprent iceship to a local grocer, he was encouraged by his father to practice for a month on a new instrument, the bugle, and apply for a vacant post as bugler in the regimental band at Odense, which he obtained in competition with other app li cants. His car eer as a musician was thus marked out. He continued to study the violin, mastered the elemen grow; n9 wi thout schoo I i n9
~
10
tary secrets of piano-playing, and soon began to compose " How different it was to be poor, in that place and that time. Today we think of mus i c, especially classical music, vio lins, pianos, etc. as being for the middle and even upper middle class, wholly out of the reach of the poor, most of whom, though poor by today's standards, would not have looked poor to the Niel sen family, who in ten years could not have saved up the price of a TV set (if there had been such a thing). A Danish friend of mine told me a little about his boyhood in the Danish countryside in the 1920's. His family raised (among other things) strawberries; but except perhaps once a year, for a very special treat, the children could not eat them - they needed every penny they could get by sel ling them. One of the minor tragedies of his young life came one day when, as he was about to eat the dozen or so berries that were to be his treat for the summer, he mistakenly put salt on them instead of sugar. J. B. Priestley, in one of his books, describes the lives of working-class poor people in the wool district in Yorkshire in which he grew up. It was not at all uncommon for these families, living on the edge of bitter pov erty, to have a piano in the house, on which at least one mem ber of the family could and reg ularly did play some of the great classics. Miners, factory work ers, mill workers, sang in great choruses of hundreds of voices, which every year sang "The Mes siah" and other great works. (Many of these choruses still exist, though whether many work ing class people still sing in them I do not know.) And though Carl Nielsen had to start doing real work very early in his life, at the same time how much space and leisure there was in that life, time for his interests and talents to show, and grow. Like the gypsy chi ldren of whom we wrote in an earlier GWS, who learned to play by playing in a working gypsy band, Carl Niel sen was from very early in his life a working musician. He was not studying music so that some day he might make music. He was making music as he went along. AND IN CANADA
A mother writes: "I made up my mi nd two days ago not to force Mi chae 1 (8) to read. I had pretty well decided I'd better and had even gotten together all the necessary stuff, but then I finished a book, BETTER LATE THAN EARLY, by Ray mond Moore. Do read it . . .. Anyway, that same afternoon I happened to watch Michael out the window - he was hanging around the yard waiting for his father to come home (so he could grab a ride on the back of the truck - the excitement in that being in jumping onto a mov ing vehic le ). So I just stood there watch ing him a bit - and I became
FROM A MOTHER
FAMILY ROBINSON, ALICE IN WONDER-. LAND, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, to mention many but not all of the lengthy books, in the past two years (J aged 3 to 4) . Now H, age 2, when tired will also climb up to hear stories such as these. From SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, J developed some funny locutions as crying "Seize her" of his sister who interfered with his play or "I gave chase" in his hunting games. This is the first place, I know, where they learn to relate what they don't understand to the context of what they do, to pick out the key words or phrases which once understood, open up the meaning of the rest. The first and pr imary place is prob ably that intense attent ion they give to adult conversation, not only but especially when it deals with love/hate, sex, death / birth, people they know, and all that good stuff we all pay attention to. They usually know to keep quiet at the time. Then weeks or months later, you'll get a ques tion like, "Why did Uncle John not want to marry Sarah and whose baby was it anyhow?" (We try to answer as fully as we can and honestly. ) Some books, though, e.g. WIND IN THE WILLOWS, have proven for us too wordy . We realize we're out of step, but neither W nor I enjoyed it and after a few chapters, we set it aside ex plaining that J could read it himself when he was able to if he chose. Another thing we've done is to pick out interesting parts of books, the whole of which was too advanced to be appreciated, like the chapters about the wo l ves in NEVER CRY WOLF (Farley Mowat) or the story line in HANS BRINKER (which has a long section about a skate trip the rich boys take, intended to educate about Holland, which we skipped).
We read to our 4 year old, J, every night and try to pick up things we've read in National Geograp hi c or GWS that he wou l d be interested in as well as children's books. J particularly enjoyed the poem in #8 . I wonder if a mimeographed collection of such child- centered stories would be enjoyed. [Ed. - Yes.] We've made a story up for J too, prob ably most everyone has. No great literary merit, but the intention in the making shines through them. Also compared with vast amounts of what passes for literature for children , they are quite good, I'm sure. He also enjoyed most of the story about A and her apple picking. It has provided him with much fantasy material about how he can make money when he gets a bit older, how he wants to pick fast and well and help pay his own way, what he'll spend the money on (a telescope and "gas balloon" - this last from the NG story of the first men to ride a balloon across the Atlantic). Want to substantiate what was mentioned in #8 about the rapid growth of children's atten tion spans when they are regular ly read to. J would listen until our tongues were numb if we would read that long. We've read all the Little House (Laura Ingalls Wi lder ) books, THE WIZARD OF OZ, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, HEIDI, SWISS
... On learning to read. I've noticed as two of my own children and several others have passed through this stage, they've been able to recognize and form the letters, put them into words, copy them, and thus write quite legibl y and competently before they read more than a few words . They can write many things, real things, letters to one another (with no phone we send many notes), letters to Grandma, make lists (th ings to buy a favorite), write stories. These need not be perfect or even be sent. That can be left up to the child. Atten tion span here again incredible. The diligence. All this writing and being read of notes, lists, leads obviously and simply to that flash of recognition that is being able to read. ... Learni ng to type. I too taught myself to type at about age 12 when at loose ends one summer. I had a teach-yourse 1f to- type book which was quite sufficient, cost maybe 75¢ at that time. I wouldn't have the abstracting job I have now if I weren't a typist, and, since it's piece work, the pay rate would be much lower if I weren't a fairly skilled t ypist. I've never had any sort of instruction, but have had plenty of practice, mainly all the ti mes when I've been doing schoolwork or making money with it . A good practice gimmick
quite overwhelmed by a feeling of the universe unfolding as it should. He was puttering around like he usually does - not doing anyth ing in particular, just 'bonding to the earth' as Pearce says in MAGICAL CHILD. Then, al l of a sudden, he must have heard or seen a bird. (He's been quite deeply interest ed in birds lately .) And I watch ed in awe as he stalked it with a11 the grace, agil ity, and instinct of a long-ago Indian who was native to this prairie bush land. The bird must have flown away, because just as suddenly he turned back in an 8-year-old sauntering down the road, quite at peace with the world out there because it made no demands on him. I can't quite find the words for how I felt - a just-right ness - seeing my son growing up so at home with himself and the earth. And knowing that this is what made the exhausting battle with the School Authorities all worthwhile, and that this in essence is what we are fighting for: our children's right to grow as their individual natures move them. I resolved then and there not to make him read. And if it comes down to a rea 1 crunch make him read, or go to jail - we will move. However, there are so many avenues of delay available in our case that by the time we come to the end of them, he may have already started reading and writing. He's almost 9 now." P.S. The mother has just written me that he has started reading - without saying a word about it.