GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING
12 Sorry #11 was so late in getting out. We sent it to our printer on Sept . 21. About mid-October we called to find out what had hap pened to it. They told us we would have it in a cou ple days. Nothing came. Next time we called, we were told they had lost not only the photos of our copy, but the original copy as well . So Donna and Peggy had to spend three hectic days laying out the whole issue again. Thanks to Louise An drieshyn and other unschool ers there, I spent three very busy days in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in early November lecturing and doing TV in terviews, one for a CBC pro gram on home schooling. Meetings were packed, audi ences friendly, interview ers perceptive. By the way, an Ontario court has just ruled in favor of an un schooling family, one of the first Canadian rulings I have heard of . Details ln the next issue. Some readers may won der what happened to that program on unschooling that ABC's 20/20 filmed late in the sprr~ The answer is that they decided not to show it. Some higher-up de cided that it would be more sensational and exciting to do an entire program on the Singer family instead. (Whether they have done it, I don ' t know.) More articles about home schooling: McCall ' s (Sept . '79), Wall Street Journal (Sept~~on MagazIne (Oct.), chkcafo Tribune (Nov. 7) . -r e a s t two, in particular, were long, thorough, and friend ly. The list of magazines, newspapers, radio and TV stations that have inter viewed us, in person or on the phone, now runs to three pages . Mother Earth News (Hen dersonville NC) which now reaches more than 3 mil lion people, wants me to write an article on home schooling, which I will do as soon as I finish my book (same subject) for Dela corte. We may want some pho tos of home schooling child ren to go with it. More about this in later issues . John Merrow inter viewed me here in the of-
fice for his National Pub lic Radio program O~tions in Education. When hear the cassette of it, I will report; others might want to order the cassette. The subscription count for #11 was over 2600. A group in New Zealand has taken out a 40X subscrip tion . And a group in Maine has bumped their sub to 48X. Good news, of differ ent kinds, from California, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and North Carolina (details in this issue). A HOLIDAY GREETING To all our readers, ,,'e send with ou~ very best wishes
this poem by William Blake: THE DIV[NE IMAGE To Hercy, Pi ty, Peace, and Love All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness . For Hercy, P1 ty, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear, And Hercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man , his child and care. For Hercy has a human heart, Pi ty a human face, And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress . Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form, In heathen, turk or jew;
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell There God is d,'elling too.
COMING LECTURES
Jan 28, 1980: Phi Del ta Kappa, Central Mass. Chapter; 7:30 pm, Assump tion College, Worcester MA. Free, open to public . Con tact Manuel Zax, (617) 755-3960. Feb 13: Unity Church - Unitarian, 732 Holly Av, St. Paul MN 55104; aft. mee tings, 7 : 30 pm lecture. Con tact Margaret Hasse, Wider Ministry Program . Mar 29: NCTE Confer ence on English Education, 12:30 pm luncheon, Omaha, Neb. Contact Robert Harvey, NCTE, 1111 Kenyon Rd, Urba na IL 61801; (217)328-3870 . Apr 14 : Huntingdon College, Huntingdon IN; 8 pm . Contact Dal Hammel, Art ist-Lecture Committee . Apr 17: Dept of Spec ial Ed, U of Wisc at White water; 8 pm at Playboy Re sort, Lake Geneva WI. Open to public. Contact Garry Libster (414)472-1660 . Apr 19: Confer. on Li- · terature and the Urban Ex perience, Rutgers U, Newark NJ; contact Michael C. Jaye, conf. dir. Apr 26: Children Stu dies Symposium, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Gen eva 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 you.
LOCAL GROUPS
Organization of un schoolers at the local lev el continues to grow. In two states and Canada, small groups of unschoolers have started their own news letters. In OhiO, the group OCEAN (Ohio Coalition for Educational Alternatives Now), 66 Jefferson Ave, Co lumbus 43215, has started publishing the newsletter Children at Home. Cost of the newsletter is $5/yr. The West Virginia news letter is Alternatives in Education, Rt 3, ~IA, Spencer 27276. Cost is $2/yr. Both newsletters are about five pages long. They contain announcements, news
on legal developments, let
ters from parents sharing ideas and experiences, chil dren's art and writing, etc . The Ohio group organ ized a state-wide meeting; the WV paper lists a whole page of names and addresses of members. Wendy Priesnitz of THE CANADIAN ALLIANCE OF HOME SCHOOLERS, Box 640, Jarvis, Ont . NOA lJO, wri tes: "Al ready we have helped a num ber of families with advice and received much media at tention for the side of lov ing nurturing of children as opposed to the proces sing procedure of many school systems .. . Member ship costs $3 per family and includes a small period ical newsletter, as well as access to the resources that we have compiled. Spec ific requests for informa tion from non-members must be accompanied by a self-ad dressed~ stamped envelope ... And, families in Mani toba can join the MANITOBA ASSOCIATION FOR SCHOOLING AT HOME. Write Mary Cather ine Figuel, 824 Barry Ave, Winnipeg R2C lMl . We are delighted to hear about these groups, and would like our readers to let us know of any other local or regional groups forming .
GOOD NEWS FROM WISC.
From Michael Ketter hagen, adminstrator of the New Learning Network, 3569 W. 34th St, Greenfield WI 53221 : . . . We have started a school specifically to al low parents to educate their children at home. Ini tially, it was for our son,
Joshua, who would have been in first grade . Brigid and Larry Horbinski encouraged us to go through the neces sary Wisconsin state law procedures to become a bona fide private school. We are now listed in the 1979-80 Directory of private schools in the state of Wis consin . Presently, we have 10 families involved in the "school," the New Learning Network, and 12 little peo ple enrolled. They range in age from 6 to 12. Recently, because of the growing un rest in the Milwaukee Pub lic High Schools, I have had a number of requests from high school age peo ple. It's really exciting and we're learning so much . .. . Our students are from six different school districts in Wisconsin and t he parents meet regularly, on the last Tuesday of the
month. At our parent meet
ings we give each other the
support and encouragement
that we need .. .
These folks also re
commend a helpful public of ficial: Mildred Anderson, Private School Liaison, Wis consin Dept . of Public In struction, 1425 E . Washing ton, Madison. WRITING FIRST
Ann Kauble, 1706 W. Huntsville, Springdale, AR 72764, writes: . . . 1 would like to tell GWS my story : it might help others who, for one reason or another cannot or do not wish to take their kids out of school. Our girls, ages 11 and 7, are "working independently above grade level" and have "very poor attendance re cords . " In other words, school is a place where the body has to be sometimes, but you learn what you are interested in learning and not necessarily when the school says it's time to learn it. This has worked for us because our girls have wanted to learn the ba sics before the school has been ready to teach them,
and I discovered that any
one, even me, can "teach,"
i.e. simply tell my kids
what they want to know, or,
if I don't know the answer
I can learn along with them.
I will explain our
7-year-old's experience so far. When she was 3, she wanted to learn her let ters, so I taught her how to write her upper case man uscript letters properly ( I like Zaner Bloser method of penmanship instruction . ) I taught upper case only, be cause it is so easy to learn with all letters touching headline and base line, and no worry about when to capitalize. Then we
2 started learning phonics . Eventually she learned all the phonemes and sound-sym bols as they are taught in the Kottmeyer Basic Goals in s~elling series, only sne1d them in upper case. We sounded out and she wrote short words like KAT. Th en on one h istoric day wh en she was five and a half, she discovered on her own that she could sound and write any word she could think of . This came about when she was SO MAD at me she left the dinner table and was gone t o her room with door closed for about an hour. Then she si lently presented me with a paper that said, "I HAT U MOM. I AM GOOIN TO ET MI VE NCHTUBULZ BUT I AM NOT GUIN TU ET MI FICH . IF YU DO NT FED ME I AM GOEN TO ET ALSO (all the) CUCEZ." [Ed . note - there are appropriate marks over the long vowels that we cannot reproduce here.l It wasn't even per fect sound-spelling, but it communicated' (She ate her fish next day in a sandwich and liked it, and no cook ies.) My older girl made the same spontaneous discov ery that she could write her thoughts when she was 5 and a half. Anyway, Gena, my young est, was now free to ex press herself in writing. She was SOUND-SPELLING, and she knew this was sound spelling, and that later she would spend years learn ing how to REAL-SPELL. Much of her early writing was practical : IOU's, lists, maps, instructions for us to follow, reminders for herself or us, mad notes to people she wasn ' t speaking to, money accounts, etc. Some was poetry . My favor ite was: "A SONG UV LOVE. AZ TH MIWZIK PAST BI A HIW MIN SED U R TU BE A SLAV." I saved a lot of it. I never really taught her to read, but my older girl and I took turns read ing to the three of us at night. At this time Gena was learning to recognize lower case letters because I had started teaching her lower case manuscript. Al so, I had ordered all the Basic Goals workbooks and teacherrs-manuals from Mc Graw-Hill, and Gena first joined in on our nigh t ly reading by reading the Read and Spell boxes in the 2nd grade level Basic Goa l s speller . She-waS-Very-happy to read just individual words, and these were groups of words with one spelling option (or two spelling options) for one particular sound. Following this same principle, we did lots of "WORD FAMILIES": ex ample - the ALL family ball tall hall, etc. When she was six, she announced one night that she was going to read us a book - a 37 page Disney ed ition of Peter Pan . I know that what made her long to
read that book was that the illustrations were so exci ting and mystifying, and no body seemed to get around to reading it to her. It took her a week to read it out loud to us, and from then on she was reading on her own. She continued read ing the Read and Spell box es and doing word families, bur she was doing this for the purpose of word recogni tion more than for learning real-spelling. At this point she had two different skills going on at the same time: writing her thoughts in upper-case sound-spel ling, and learning to recog nize printed words in lower case while she also learned to write her lower case man uscript. I asked her not to use lower case when she wrote her own thoughts until she had more skill in lower case penmanship, in order to avoid tHis SOrt of tHing. I think many kids may be afraid to write be cause real-spelling and low er case penmanship are so formidable. But Gena was able to keep up her confi dence by relying on sound spelling when she wrote her thoughts . She would copy perfectly spelled words in lower case for penmanship practice, but when she had something to say in writing - back to sound spelling . This seemed perfectly natur al to me. When she had mas tered using upper and lower case letters together, she started formally learning real-spelling by working in the 2nd grade level of the Basic Goals workbook. It was easy because she al ready knew the sound-sym bols and phonemes used in this series. If she has for mally learned how to real spell a word, I mention that she got it wrong here and help her get correct spelling, but she is still free to sound-spell any oth er word she wishes to use ...
UNSCHOOLED CHILDREN From a letter by a mother of four: ... Another myth brought up on the show is the "kids drive me crazy having them around all day" retort. It just ain ' t neces sarily so ' I have four, ages three to ten, and most of the time we enjoy each other and get along very well. We have our off days but that in no way overshad ows the good times. In my "experiment" of never send ing any of mine to school, I have had the opportunity to compare my experiences with women sharing my phil osophy of childrearing who send theirs to school. I no tice a syndrome which causes them to feel sorry for me for being stuck all year with FOUR . It comes from their having three or
four at home all day during three months ' summer vaca tion with "nothing to do" (that is, nothing scheduled by some authority) and bick ering constantly (because they don ' t know one another as well as they know their cronies at school) . These mothers think that is what I put up with daily, but mine who have had the re sponsibility for most of their own time, who inter act constantly with family with little interruption, I find behave quite differ ently. Another myth is that socialization is retarded with children at home. I have not found that true, but quite the opposite . They may be somewhat shyer and naive about cruelty but they seem to be extremely sensitive to the needs of others and possess advanced conversational skills . In teraction with peers is limited but when it happens they handle it beautifully. My mother (who was a super visor with the state board of education) used this argument exclusively as the reason I should send mine to school . As you said, the social life kids get in schools is, to me , a good reason to keep them out of schools, not the other-way around . Still another myth is the time it takes to teach a child some skill. Observ ing how my babies learn motor skills taught me a valuable lesson and gave me my favorite educational concept ... READINESS. In a nutshell, when they're ready, they'll do it with minimum effort. Sounds too simple but it works every time with everything from toilet training to riding a bike, mathematics, reading, etc. . . . The time spent in teaching a child who is ready is minimal - no rote, no busywork. Just minutes for most things . . .. People tell me that I am protecting my children from the cold, cruel world, and think children should have to take bad treatment in schools in order to cope with the real world . By that logic we should be putting the child ' s head in a vise every day to prepare them for the headaches they will suffer as adults . . .. Each child of mine is unique. Nighttime is often the only quiet, uninter rupted time for us, so lots of " learning" and interact ing go on in the middle of the night. Our "school" is open twenty-four hours a day ( even on snow days), seven days a week. The teachers love the students and often the roles of teachers and students are exchanged - I am the child ren's best student as I have probably learned the most from them about love, psychology, and subjects
they show an interest in and share with me . . .. An other difference in the way we feel about our home-ed ucated children from par ents who struggle with theirs in traditional ways is that we like our kids as well as love t h em . I find in my dealing with fami l ies t h at t h ere is, just as Ashley Montagu said, "a disdain for the state of childhood" in Amer ica. Children are toler ated, but rarely liked for just what they are . The rewards of my motherhood I am getting now, not looking forward to the future when they are grown
NJ CENTER Ann Bodine sent us a notice s h e is putting in the N.J. Unschoolers : I am organizing an Ac tivity Center - School With out Walls to provide compan ionship for unschooled chil dren and some free time for their parents. Although the Activity Center will not be in full, twice-weekly opera tion until the next school year (1980-81), the Center will offer four Gym Days (active free play in a gym nasium) during Feb . 1980 and two Nature Education Days at the Great Swamp Out door Education Center in spring 1980. Participants ' evaluation of these activi ties will determine the 1980-81 program . The Activity Center will employ no teaching staff and parents will par ticipate on a rotational ba sis. Attending children will share the cost of in surance, gym rental, snacks, and supplies . Costs
will be kept as low as pos
sible .
In addition to its
primary function of provi ding companionship for un schooled children and free time for their parents, the Center will enable our chil dren to participate in some activities which are only open to school groups and to receive certain services which are only offered to schools . For further informa tion contact me at 201-464 0149. Address: 83 Knollwood Dr, New Providence, NJ 07974 .
RESEARCH Stephen Arons, a pro fessor of legal studies, is doing research on conflict between parents and school authorities over value so cialization in schooling . Examples might include struggles over home educa tion, selection or censor ship of books, secularism and religion in schooling, etc . Arons is trying to dis cover the strains which such conflicts place on the
3 family, and the political and institutional interests which the school authori ties are seeking to protect during such conflicts. Means of resolving these disputes without resort to the courts are of special interest. Professor Arons will protect the privacy and anonymity of any will ing to meet with him to de scribe their own struggle . Please contact him at 20 Madison St . , Cambridge, MA 02138. HOME STUDY SCHOOL
Pat Montgomery, dir ector of Clonlara, 1289 Jew ett St, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, wrote us this summer: ... Clonlara does ha ve hom e-st udy students. I have received four calls since last spring and out of the four, three have enrolled as home-study students . Please continue to keep our name as one of the schools offeri ng home-study and keep publicizing it. We cur rently ha ve eight bona fide hom e-studi ers . . .
HELPFUL
From a father in a
town near Boston:
. . . We spoke on the phone nearly a year ago about a home-gr own educa tion for our then 4 year old daughter. Now 5, she is enjoying her "kind ergarten " year more at h ome than her friends seem to be at sc h ool. We are in a very amiable process with the su perintendent of schools to secure authorization to con tinue the home-learning up through the grades. We h oped it would be amiable, and came on that way, not criticizing the sc h ools, just earnest about the obvious student-teacher ratio advantage any inter ested parents can offer at home ... he had received from the Massachusetts Asso ciation of Secondary Super intendents a copy and sum mary of Jud~e Greaney's d~ cision on t e Percnemrrctes case:-rt-nasoeen sentout [o-all Mass. Superinten dents. And it made him amiable. He proceeded to use that document as the guide lines for our arrangements with the school district. What an enormous service the Perchemlides have done for us' And probably for all would-be Mass. home sc h oolers ... NEWS FROM ILl.
From Cinny Poppen, Valley Cooperative School, RR 2, Box 518 , Dundee IL 60118 : . .. Last spring we had growi ng w;thout schooling # 12
an adventure with the local au thorities that you might be interested in. After almost ten years of a fair ly placid existence as a free school we were written up by a reporter for one of those newspapers people use to line their garbage pails with, investigated by the truant officer, and cal led in for a h earing with the county superintendent of schools. We got legal ad vice from the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago and the Northwestern Univer sity Legal Clinic and asked t o postpone the hearing until we felt ready. We prepared a set of documents including ou r philosophy, hist ory, curriculum, creden tials, and current sched ule, and went into the hear ing five strong, two women and three men. The offi cia l s were expecting two mothers and were impressed with our organization and the way we talked about education. (I 'm guessing that; they didn't exactly say there were impressed.) They told the newspaper reporter, for hi s follow-up article, that we were doing a good job of educating our children. If you think any thing in that experience would be helpful to other readers of the newsletter, let me know. We have copies of the newspaper articles and our documents which we'd be glad to share ... LETTER TO SCHOOLS
Shawn and David Ken drick, of Rehoboth, Mass . , recently wrote a letter to their local Superintendent of Schools saying why they were teaching their c hild ren at home. It seems a mod el of what letters should be. We are quoting large parts of it here. If you would like a copy of the complete letter, please send us $1 . ... The purpose of this letter is to respond to the issues you raised at our meeting on August 23, 1979, and to inform you of changes in the learning plan which our daughters will follow and the reasons for those changes . We ha ve always felt and continue to feel that, as the people closest to our children, with the greatest opportunity to know and observe them, and with the most compe lling mo tivations of love and con cern for their mental h eal th and emotional well being, we h ave the ultimate duty and responsibility to provide them with the best possible environment in which they are free to learn and live as God and nature intended them to. We firmly believe that that en vironment is a loving home in which the natural author ity of the parents does not
exclude the child's rights as a person. Through close, meaningful interaction we are able to observe and know our children well, and to supply them with the emo tional support necessary to the development of a posi tive self - image. In such a setting we can best present our own spritual and moral beliefs while simultaneous ly satisfying the State's interest in an educated ci tizenry. An additional advan tage of the home environ ment is the small child -t o adult ratio which allows the individual differences and needs of our children to be recognized and provid ed for with greater profic iency. Our study plan is based on each child's inter ests and abilities because we feel that true learning, the kind which lasts a life time, is self-discovered and cannot be communicated directly to another. Such learning is frequently in hibited by the fear of fail ure, by ridicule and humil iation, by overstimulation, by the tension which accom panies competition, and by pressures to achieve beyond one ' s present ability. In order to encourage true learning, therefore, we have provided a calm, posi tive atmosphere, learning materials, and access to friends, mentors and commun ity resources. We have chos en to avoid the above-men tioned pressures which of ten prevent learning or make it a negative experi ence. As a result, we have modified our use of the Cal vert School correspondence cou r se. Although we will continue to include the Cal vert instruction in our plan, we will no longer ad here rigidly to the time frame of the lessons . We h ave found from last year ' s experience that such adher ence interferes with an in dividualized program which allows the child " satura tion learning,!! i.e ., to study a subject thoroughly before going on to another area of interest. Our daugh ter Anna, for example, will often complete several days' reading or math as signments in one sitting be cause we allow h er enthusi asm for the subject to take precedence over notions that one must study only what is allotted for in that period . Similarly, be cause of a high interest, she read the first-grade health book over the past summer a nd is now reading the second-grade book. The idea that one learns more over the nine-month school year than at any other time is foreign to our children, since their school year is year-round. Not having been encouraged to believe that one must go for certain months of the year to a place called school in or
der to learn things, they view the world around them and every day of their lives as the place and time in which they are free to learn. To respond to their broad interests, we have ar ranged for our children to meet regularly with Mr . Jack Friedel, a certified teacher and natural scien tist, and are including oth er subjects, such as photo graphy, film animation, and zoology, in our study plan. Whereas our daily activi ties will not follow a set pattern, over a period of days or weeks all of the various subjects will be studied and discussed. We have found that our children learn most readily and with retention when they have a need to know something and an opportun ity to assimilate in experi ence what they have learned through their own initia tive. One example was our daughter Celia ' s difficulty learning to write cursive ly. Despite daily attempts, little progress was made. We discontinued the writing lessons for a period of time until Celia asked us to help her learn cursive writing again. This time, with her own initiative as the key factor, her pro gress was rapid. As another example, Ce l ia did not seem to recall the various ways of telling time when work ing in her arithmetic work book . Her interest in the exercises was minimal. On her birthday, however, she received a watch as a pres ent, and the next day was able to recite the time ac curately and with no diffi culty at all . Similarly, a page of arit hm etic problems holds little appeal to Celia, yet when working out a purchase, budgeting h er allowance, keeping track of a game score, or measuring an object to construct, her interest is high. Celia es pecially looks forward to selling berries next summer that she is helping to grow in our garden and handling the cash flow herself. The practical application of ar ithmetic in her life stimu lates her toward achieve ment. It is the close and continuing relationship we have with our children which enables us to observe their growth in skills and comprehension without the use of standardized, rou tine testing ... Although quantitative testing may be the most practical method of charting students' pro gress in school where a high teacher-student ratio exists, it is not necessary in our own situation. A tremendous amount of confusion shadows the is sues of competency and ac countability, all pointing to the difficulties of meas uring a child ' s needs and development in a system of