GROWING
WITHOUT
SCHOOLING
11 As you can see, as far as type goes, this issue is a bit of a hybrid. Since GWS#3, we have been using an IBM Memory Typewriter to type up the magazine. Re cently we bought a new mach ine, an Olivetti, which does all the things the IBM did, plus a few others, does them faster, and lets us store as much material as we want, which is very important for the unschool ing book I am working on. Since some of the material in this issue was stored in the IBM, we have used it for those stories, rather than retype them. All the material in the new typefac es has been done on the Oli vetti. Until now, GWS has been typed in a typeface called Letter Gothic, Elite in size, which means there are 12 characters per inch. Since none of the available Olivetti Elite-sized type faces seemed to me as legi ble (don ' t laugh') as the Letter Gothic, we are doing the main body of the text in a Pica-sized typeface 10 characters per inch. This loses us a few words per page, which I regret. If you find the new type easier to read, it's worth it.
For the Directory, we are still using an Elite sized typeface, since peo ple won't really be reading the entire Directory, just looking up a few names in it. Also, by the time GWS #12 comes out, the complete Directory will take up quite a lot of room. There are now seven communities in Massachus etts in which parents are teaching their children at home, with the knowledge and support of the schools. In two of these the parents needed a court decision to do this. In the other five, the schools took a more helpful position from the start . In two of these, one of which we write more a bout later, the unschooled children are able to use the schools for special ac tivities . Let's hope that many more schools follow these good examples. No further news in the Van Daam case in Provid ence, R.I. The whole matter
was more or less set aside during the summer. We have now made a new version of the basic GWS flyer. If weight permits, we will enclose it with this issue; if not, with #12. COMING LECTURES
Sept 24, 1979: Western Maryland College, Westmin ster MD; afternoon work shop, 8 PM lecture; contact Joan Nixon, (301)848-7000 ext. 265. Oct 17: Ithaca Col lege, Ithaca NY; 7:30 PM lecture in Ford Hall; con tact Jeff Bradley, Speakers Chairperson. Oct 22: Lake Park High School Conference, District 108, 600 South Medinah Rd, Roselle IL; 9 AM Opening ad dress, interaction ses sions; contact David D. Vic tor, conf. dir. Oct 25: Vermont Conf . of Social Concerns, at Lake Morey Inn; contact Veronica Celani, Dept of Social Wel fare, State Ofc. Bldg, Mont pelier 05602, (802) 241-2800. Nov 14: Eastern Mon tana College, Billings; aft workshop, 8 PM lecture. Nov 29: Texas Tech Un iv, Lubbock; 8:15 PM at U.C. Theater Apr 14, 1980: Hunting don College, Huntingdon IN; 8 PM Apr 17: University of Wisconsin at Whitewater; 8 PM lecture at Lake Geneva WI Apr 19: Conference on Literature and the Urban Ex perience, Rutgers U, Newark NJ; contact Michael C. Jaye, conf. dir. Apr 26: Children Stud ies Symposium, Hobart & Wil liam Smith Colleges, Geneva NY; contact Marilyn Kallet
Some of the above lec tures may not be open to the public: check with the contact listed. Of course, if you can come, it will be nice to see any of you at the above meetings.
days - I had almost forgot ten. I had more time for him too, now that I no long er was spending time at the school. One day he talked of his mom "rescuing" him from school. I felt like a heroine.
PLEASE RENEW EARLY
... One of the best times we had in the euphor ic first two months out of school, was a marathon session in the biochemistry lab where I work. I had a 48-hour experiment going which had to be checked in the middle of the night. J went in with me the first night and we had trouble with one of the machines, a fraction collector which moves test tubes along un der the end of a length of fine tubing which slowly spits out the stuff to be collected. We stayed there until 5 a.m. and J occupied himself almost the whole time with a stop-watch checking the rate of drips from the tubing, the rate of movement of the tubes, and the rate of a monitor ing pen on another machine - all work that was neces sary for getting the job done - and he revelled in it . We left the building just as the last stars were leaving the sky. Sheep and cattle were grazing quietly on nearby university pas tures. Only the birds pro vided sound. J was amazed that he had really passed through all the dark hours without sleeping. I thought of all the kids who could not have the kind of exhila ration he had just had be cause of their confinement to hours dictated to them by schools. We slept all that morn ing and went back to the lab for checks during the afternoon and again at night and the following day. J wanted to stay with it right to the end and did. He learned all sorts of things in that short span of time about units of volume and time, about mul tiplying and dividing, about fractions, about ligh~ absorption, magnets, solutions and probably oth er things. The same boy had been completely turned off by school math and was regarded by some as "slow" and "lazy." '"
If the label on your copy of this issue has, af ter your name, the numerals 01 12 (or, in the case of a group sub, 02 12, 03 12, etc.), it means that your subscription, like that of many readers, ends with I s sue #12. If so, we will be very grateful if you will renew right away, rather than wait until you have re ceived #12. If you do renew before we send issue #12 to our mailing house (probably around the middle of Nov . '79), we will extend your sub an extra issue. By renewing early you will save us a lot of work, time and money. To those people who have not renewed by the end of January, we will send a renewal letter. A month or two later we will probably send another reminder. Then we may ask volunteers around the coun try to follow up with anoth er letter or perhaps even phone calls . You can save us this trouble by renewing promptly, or, if you don't want to renew, by telling us so. Please help us in this way. And remember - if you don't want to receive GWS, but would like to help the work along, you can always send us a contribution. We'll be glad to list you as a non-subscribing member. For whatever you do, thanks in advance. FROM A WORKING MOTHER
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 read ers might help the work a long is by helping me get fee-paying lectures. If any of you are connected with groups and institutions that hire speakers (col leges, conferences, etc.) and that might be interest ed in hearing about un schooling, 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 expen ses. 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.
A mother writes from Canada: J stayed home from school the next day - he didn't need any coaxing. He has been out of school ever since and I have felt bet ter and better about the move as time goes on . It seemed he had been asking me forever to be able to stay home. After a few days he missed some of his friends but still didn't want to go back. We managed to see some of them on week ends, and that seemed to satisfy him. I go to work on week days and he is left home in the apartment (reminds me of Ann McConnell in GWS ) . This worried me at first, but he said it was fine, and he has become quite self-reliant. A great weight has lifted from our relationship. I was no long er pushing him to school against his will, and he started to trust me again as he did in his pre-school
SUCCESS STORY - CAPE COD
From the Cape Cod Times, June 22, 1979: An aquarium sits on the kitchen counter and colored squares of construc tion paper line the refrig erator door. A bowl of tur tles is on a coffee table in the living room, and a quail cage sits on the fire place. This is the Mahoney home in Centerville - and it is also the schoolhouse for Elaine Mahoney's daugh
2 ters, Kendra, 11, and Kim berleee, 9, who are being taught by their mother at home instead of attending school. The experiment was initiated by Mrs. Mahoney, 31, last September after months of research and study. "I think, so far, that this is the best way for my childen," Mrs. Mahoney says. "There are so many different ways of learning, and it doesn't have to be confined to the four walls of a school, five days a week for nine months. Educa tion is not something that should be done to you, but something that you do." Mrs. Mahoney's ... criticisms of the Barnsta ble schools, however, are not an attack on the admin istration or teaching staff. Instead, she is more concerned with the struc ture of public education itself. "The Barnstable system is the closest to the kind of schools I'd like my chil dren to attend," she says. "The school committee and staff have been very recep tive to my children's needs and to my ideas. But, I'm looking for a special way of educating my children, by assuring their indepen dence, fulfilling their individual needs, teaching them through experience and pacing their work according ly . The school tries to match learning and individ u al development but this is impossible in a classroom of 20 students who all make demands on one teacher . " . .. Consequently Mrs. Maho ney, who is divorced, ap proached William Geick, Assistant Superintendent of the Barnstable Schools last spring with her proposal. "Mrs. Mahoney came to me not as a parent angry at the school system, but as a parent with a different philos ophical approach, based not only on her opi n ion but on sound recommenda tion," Geick says . To his knowledge, Mrs . Mahoney is the only parent on the Cape who ha s suggested and car ried through with a plan for hom e education . . . . "The dut y of the school is to act in the best interest of the child," Geick says . "In that respect, Mrs. Maho ney's program seemed sound, and her criticisms of h e r children's previous ed uca tional experience were val id ones." Although the c h ildren were n ever individually consulted by sc hool offi cials, before approval of the plan Geick said that they felt confident that Mrs . Mahoney knew her child ren's needs better than anyone . "All we ca n do is guide their education, a nd act on good faith. In Mrs. Mahone y 's case, this has
had a very positive re sult . " Geick and Mrs. Mahoney then presented her proposal to the five-member school committee, whose reactions were mixed in the begin ning. "I wasn't very recep tive to the plan until I met Elaine," said the head of the committee. "She im pressed me as a serious, conscientious woman who was able to give this time to her children. It's quite a responsibility and we felt she could handle it." A major concern of the committee was not only the quality of education the children would be receiving at home, but also the so cial disadvantage of their not attending school with their peers. "Children must learn to live in large groups and interact. In that sense, we didn't want to see the chil dren hurt by a home educa tion plan," [t he chairper son 1 said. However, through a written contract between the Barnstable schools and Mrs. Mahoney, a flexible plan for home education was agreed upon and is reviewed annually for renewal. For academic guidelines, Mrs . Mahoney is required to rely on a certified teacher . . . . Mrs. Mahoney is also rely ing upon the Calvert School instruction booklets, a prescribed home teaching program, as a backbone for teaching the basics. She says the children are drilled at least three hours a day in re ading , writing, and arithmetic .
"Elaine has sought out more resources to teach her daughters in nine months than most teachers do in four years," [a special education teacher J says. "I'm amazed at the number of things she's thought of. When the children express an interest in an area, she picks right up on it, wheth er it be marine life at a beach, or physical fitness. They go, and do, and see, something that public schools just can't do when on a strict class sched ule . " . . . When the school commit tee reviewed the Mahoney's progress this past month, they were unanimously pleased with their achieve ments. They were particular ly impressed with a scrap book the girls had made illustrating a year of ac tivities. Although the girls were not graded, they will be required to take the Iowa Basic Skills Tests. "Learning goes on ev ery hour of the day," Mrs. Mahoney says, "so how can you grade or test that accu mulated knowledge?" She indicates the reac tions of parents in the community were mixed. "Some were very supportive and others angry or fearful because my way of educating is threatening an estab lished institution." Kim notes that her friends called her "a lucky duck" when they learned she's been staying home all year to learn. "When they find out th e thing s we do and places we go, they want to go too."
"Sin ce I only ha ve a high school education, I'm l earning with my daugh te,,"s," s he says . "If I feel inadequate in a subject matter, I go to outside resources, particularly in th e community." When her daughters expressed an in t eres t in electronics, Mrs. Mahoney took them to a sound studio. The sc hool committee ha s ma d e it possible for th e Mahoney children to attend special programs offered in Cape schools in order to round out their education and provide oppor tunities for them to sociai ize with their peers. In the past year Kendra and Kim have attended sc hool workshops in so lar energy, wood carving, beekeeping, jazz, and arts and crafts. Both are members of the 4H Club and the YWCA and Kim is currently the only girl on a little league baseball t eam. "I think the girls are interacting as much as ever with kids their own ages," their mother says. "In fact, even more, because they ha ve met many new peo ple, from classmates to community members who have opened their doors to us. "
And the future? Mrs. Mahoney plans to contin ue teaching again next year . In fact, the girls will still be "in sc ho ol " this summer on a lighter sched ule so they don't have to review in the fall. "I'd like to go on doing this for as long as we can ." But after next year, Kendra wil l be of junior high age, so an en tirely different set of circumstances may enter into their decision. "I might want to go back to sc hoo l then," Ken dra says, alt houg h s he adds s he sees her friends a ll .the"t ime. "It'll be my c h o~ce . . .. So far, no ot her par ent in the Barnstable sc hool system has ap proached the administration with an alternative ed uca tion plan. "W e regard it as a valid premise, alt hough what follows is no snap decision," Geick says . "But, we are pleased with the Mahoney family." Mrs. Mahoney only ha s words of praise for the sc hool committee. "I re spect them because they care . Because of that, any thing is possible. I'd like to see more parents and
children attempt this sys tem and I encourage other parents to come to me for suggestions." ...
UNSCHOO LING SURVEY I'd like to ask read ers to help us make an in formal (and confidential) survey of unschoolers. Please let me know if you are teaching one or more of your children at home, and if so, which of the following statements des cribe your situation. ( Feel free to answer simply with numbers and letters, though if you want to add more details, that will be fine. Don't feel you have to ans wer all questions - if you're not sure of an ans wer, just skip it.) 1. Our local school system (plea se name ) knows about, and a) supports, or b) at least tolerates and allows, our home teaching plan. 2. Our local schools would be willing to be list ed in GWS as allowing or supporting our home teach ing. 3 . Our local schools, as far as we know, do not know that we are teaching children at home. 4. Our local schools support or tolerate our home teaching plan, but only after a court decision in our favor. (P lease give name of court and judge, the title of the case, i . e . People v . Jones, and date o f ruhng.) 5 . We are able to teach our children at home because we have registered our own hom e as a private school . (Please g ive name.) 6. We are able t o teach our childr en at home because we have registered them wit h a school a) in our town b ) in our state c) out of sta t e, which s up ports our home teaching program. (Please name sc hool. ) 7. This sc hool would be willing to be listed in GWS as supporting our home teaching. 8. We have some ar rangement not listed above (please specify) . 9. Our local sc hools are supporting and assist ing our home teaching prog ram a) by helping us get needed materials b) by giving us ot her assistance which we find helpf ul ( please specify) c) by allowing our child(ren) to go to the school to use special facilities or to take part in special activi ties. 10. Our local sc hoo ls are impeding our home teach ing program by a) making us conform to their cu rricu lum b) making us prepare an elaborate curriculum for their approval c) making us teach subjects we would prefer not to teach d)
growing without schooling #11
3 making us give the children tests we would prefer n o t to give them (please speci fy) . 11. Our local schools send people to our home to inspect/oversee our program (please say about how of ten) . 12 . On the whole, these inspectors seem to be a) friendly, helpful, etc. b) the opposite c) indif ferent. 13. In order to get the local schools to ap prove our program, we sub mitted a formal proposal to them (please indicate rough ly how long). 14. In our home teach ing proposal we included some references to court rulings in this field. 15. In preparing our plan, we had the aid of a lawyer. (Please give name and address.) 16. Our lawyer would be willing to be a) re ferred to other unschoolers looking for legal help b) listed in GWS as being will ing to do this. 17. The decision to allow us to carry out our program was, as far as we know, made by a) the super intendent of schools b) the school board c) other (please specify, if you know) . 18. In getting appro val for our plan, we had to, or chose to deal with authorities at the state level . (Please specify.) 19. In getting approv al, we used the assistance, advice, support, etc. of one or more outside organi zations. (Please specify.) 20. In teaching our children at home, we make some use of formal curricu lum materials, such as Cal vert, Home Study Institute, etc. (Please specify). 21 . In order to get these materials, we had to send a letter of approval from some school (please name) . 22. In using such ma terials, we feel a) they are really helpful b) we would rather not use them, but are using them as part of our arrangement with the local schools, or for some other similar reason, i.e. to protect ourselves in case of trouble. 23. Our home schooling has received some mention in the local media. (Please specify. ) 24. On the whole, we feel that the local media have been a) favorable b) unfavorable. 25 . As far as we know a) quite a number of people in our community know about our home schooling b) few if any people know about it .
26. As far as we know, the people who know about our home schooling seem to be a) favorable, support ive, etc . b) indifferent c) unfavorable, hostile, etc.
growi ng without schooling #11
27. As a result of media attention to our prog ram, or for whatever rea son, other pe o ple in our community ha v e asked us how they might unschool their children. ( About how many?) This is probably en ough questions for now . If you think of an important question that we did not ask, please suggest it. Thanks very much for whatever information you can send. As I said, any thing you say will be confi dential, unless you tell us otherwise . But this informa tion will help us to have a slightly better idea of how many people are teaching children at home . And it will be a great help to future unschoolers. AN UNSCHOOLED SPECIAL CHILD A mother who has un schooled her teen-aged daughter ( born with Downs Syndrome) writes about this experience: ... As for unschooling L, I had long wanted to do this with my older child ren, and everything I read in GWS and have experienced with her makes me quite sad to have missed the op portunity to have allowed them the same thing. Of course the time was not right - in the world or in me - so it probably would not have worked anyway. But I saw in them all the things GWS describes, and did try to help them along in an extracurricular way. They had some tutoring, took time off on occasion on regular school days (as when one went to Stevens Inst . to fool around with computers), and I had the strength of mind to tell the school secretary, who asked "And is this going to be a regular thing?" that it just might be . I was always strong-minded but not often enough strong-spo ken, unfortunately, when it came to dealing with these insufferable school sys tems. Only when it was as obviously desperate as it clearly was to save L from their awful effects was I able to do what I knew was the only way to proceed . Anyway, L only once had any special ed. involve ment, at a nursery school run by the local associa tion for retarded children, and it was bad to useless. From there on she went to regular schools - private nursery school, private kin dergarten, a public school which was running an experi mental open primary, and a Catholic private academy. All this was expensive and time-consuming. Six of those years I drove her back and forth - 16 miles each way (x 4 trips a day). The local public school sys tem only once honored my de
mands for reimbursement of tuition, after the county special ed. people managed to point out that one of L's teachers had a learning disabilities certification and therefore the class could be defined as a spec ial program. They did say they'd provide transporta tion to the public school, but I preferred to drive her myself, since I wanted to keep her out of special ed . situations, which I feel increase the degree of handicap by-providing handi capped models of behavior . And the transportation, of course, was in the special ed . vans. Besides, I wanted hot-off - the - classroom read ings of her moods and re sponses, not her reactions 45 minutes after leaving school . In planning to un school, I went through the usual mental discussions about how much time I should allocate, how to re-create a parallel school system for one child, and so forth . Of course I quick ly realized the futility of that idea just on the basis of money. To provide even one week of tutoring according to the time allot ments of schools (4-6 hours a day) rapidly used up all the money I was paying for a year of private schools. No wonder people feel the schools are a good buy just in terms of the cheapness of the babysitting. From the beginning, L and I have p l ann ed what she'd do . I collected clip pings from allover for a year, then sorted out the ones I could afford, and presented those to her for her consideration. Choices like cooking, horseback, trips to New York and else where, tutoring . We did have to keep c h anging things when, for instance, a teac h er who was going to give her cooking lessons (an overnight deal) got divorced and went to work in New York. But we kept consulting and revising, and ended up with the present schedule of swimming, ballet, draw ing and painting, and nee dlepoint. Th ere were other considerations besides the learning ones involved too. I felt it was not safe for her not to swim well, and her ear operations had made her fearful of going whole hog on her own. So she has private lessons in that. And I read about a ballet dancer who had taken ballet initially to overcome flat feet, so we began this main ly for that reason . Too, the more I went into it, the more I decided that what L needed was a re prieve from the morass of schoolwork that, in spite of the good - as - possible situations I'd been able to find, was not at all as helpful or satisfying as I
felt might be possible somewhere, somehow. So I decided not to do anything at all academic for awhile. Just say the heck with it. So we went to the beach in the lovely October and even November weather that had been denied us as prisoners of school, played kickball in the back field, and proceeded with the cour ses. On one trip to the shore, paying tolls, it was again clear that L still didn't know one coin from another, so that became the first academic venture. And it provided one of my first principles: though the gen eral ideas are the same for L as with regular kids out of school, certain things have to be done different ly. While other kids probab ly need only a bit of assis tance and guidance in fol lowing what they learn and are interested in, L really has to have regular expo sure. Not lengthy but regu lar - daily, if possible, including weekends. Every day I put prices on four things and she worked them out with a plas tic measuring cup full of change - a permanent collec tion of coins. I remember trying to get the school people to have her use real money but they seemed to think that was quaint. They just loved their big card board coins. Within a month she had it cold. I switched to numbers on paper, and she could do it that way too. (Ed. - and in the schools we have all those "normal" children who after years of school arithmetic still supposedly can ' t make change. ) However, a second prin ciple of unschooling with L is this: Like freelance writing, unschooling is sub ject to cancellation at any time, whenever somebody comes to visit, or the neighbor's car breaks down and she calls you to go pick her up, etc. Now this is probably one of the ad vantages of unschooling with other kids - that you can live your regular life and still keep learning. But with L, Christmas, and long visits from my mother, who had not been well, meant a far less-than-hoped for routine. I had a hard time concentrating on what I was working on, and L would get tense. Early in our unsc h ooling one of the first things I saw was an increased sense of success - a euphoric "I can do it" feeling, in contrast to the tight lips, lowered head, long hair hiding eyes that had been typical of the ear lier work with school stuff. Yet when life got hectic that same posture quickly returned. (Ed. this is an example of the kind of important sign that