GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING
cers confirm that a home e d ucation needn't be a deficient education . Each year the Unive r sity of Califor nia at Berkeley gets a half dozen or so applicants who are h ome educated and don ' t have t h e t r aditional cre dentials, says Robert L. Bailey, dir ector of admissions a n d records . "We give them proficiency t ests, and if they pass them, we go ahead and take a chance on them, " h e says. "T h ey usu ally do very well ." . ..
14
. .. AND STAYING OUT
As you can see, we're switching to a three-column format with this issue. We think it will be more read able, and harmonize better with the larger typeface we've used since GWS #11. You may also have noticed our new headlines. They're made on a "Kroytype" lettering machine; an art store is charging us a very small amount to use theirs. The manuscript of the home schooling book is just about ready to put into my editor's hands. Besides the March and April speaking engagements announced in GWS (Omaha, Huntingdon IN, Lake Geneva WI, and Newark), I also spent April 16 at the Northern Illinois Universi ty in Dekalb. I've enjoyed meeting a number of unschooling families on these trips, some of whom had to drive four or five hours to come . By the time you get this, I will have spoken at the Hobart & Smith Colleges in New York (Apr. 26), and the Antioch Graduate School, Keene NH ( May 16). I also expect to stop in at the Holyoke, MA, conference for the National Coalition for Alternative Community Schools (May 17). I will be speaking at Rio Grande College, Rio Grande OH sometime dur ing the week of 9/15/80. Thanks again to Sharon Hillestad of Minnesota, her daughter Holly, and niece Amy, who volunteered to spend a long afternoon of their Boston vaca tion in our office, sending out renew al notices. We enjoyed their com pany, and because of their efforts got almost all the mailing done in a single day. Mother Earth News now says the "Plowboy" interview will be in the July issue. Two good court decisions handed down in Michigan and Ohio - details inside.
The reply by the Indians to t he
Virginia colonists wh o had proposed
to educate six Indian boys at Wil
liamsburg College in 1774 :
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in t h ose Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are con vinced, therefore, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposa l ; and we thank you heartily . But you, who are wise, must know that different Na tions have different Conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our Ideas of t h is kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some Experience of it . Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Prov inces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ig norant of every means of living in the woods, ... neither fit for Hunt ers, Warriors, nor Counsellors, they were totally good for nothin~ . We are, however, not the less 0 lig'd by your kind Offer, tho ' we decline accepting it; and, to show our grate ful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men o f them.
NEWS FROM IOWA From the Des Moines Register, 1/18/80 : ... According to Larry Bartlett, an administrative consultant for the Iowa State Department of Public In struction, between 600 and 800 Iowa pupils are enrolled in correspondence type instruction, and the numbers are growing ...
CELEBRITY UNSCHOOLERS GOOD NEWS FROM ONTARIO From Mary Syrett: ... We experienced fantastic growth in the GWS movement in Canada in the last two years. GWS groups are starting in every province - some started by people in our group sub' Every few weeks I get a phone call from another mother who has got my name from your directory or from Wendy Priesnitz's (Natural Life Maga zine), or just through word of mouth. ITreels like "new roots"' ..
GETTING INTO COLLEGE ... From an article on home school ing in the Wall Street Journal, 9/13/79: ... University admissions offi
From THE BOOK OF LISTS (by Wal lechinsky, Wallace, & Wallace): 15 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO NEVER GRADU ATED FROM GRADE SCHOOL: Andrew Carne gie, Charlie Chaplin, Buffalo Bill Cody, Noel Coward, Charles Dickens, Isadora Duncan, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, Maksim Gorky, Claude Monet, Sean O'Casey, Alfred E . Smith, John Philip Sousa, Henry M. Stanley, Mark Twain. 20 FAMOUS HIGH-SCHOOL OR SECON DARY-SCHOOL DROPOUTS: Harry Belafon te, Cher, Mary Baker Eddy, Henry Ford, George Gershwin, D. W. Grif fith, Adolf Hitler, Jack London, Dean Martin, Bill Mauldin, Rod McKuen, Steve Mcqueen, Amedeo Modigliani, Al Pacino, Will Rogers, William Saroyan, Frank Sinatra, Marshal Tito, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright. 20 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO NEVER
ATTENDED COLLEGE: Joseph Chamberlain, Grover Cleveland, Joseph Conrad, Aaron Copland, Hart Crane, Eugene Debs, Amelia Earhart, Paul Gauguin, Ka h li l Gibran, Ernest Hemingway, Rud yard Kipling, Abra h am Lincoln, H. L . Mencken, John D. Rockefeller, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas, Harry S. Truman, George Wash ington, Virginia Woolf. 13 FAMOUS AMERICAN LAWYERS WHO NEVER WENT TO LAW SCHOOL: Patrick Hen ry, John Jay*, John Marshall*, Wil liam Wirt, Roger B. Taney*, Daniel Webster, Salmon P. Chase*, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, Clarence Darrow (attended one year), Robert Storey, J. Strom Thurmond, James O. East l and . (* - Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.)
PEN PALS . . . Th e GWS Directory has afford ed our children the opportunity to practice their writing and communica tion s k ills, as well as to have fun getting to know others. Our oldest daughter received a letter from a young girl who had selected her name from the GWS listing. She asked our daugh ter to be a pen pal, and they now correspond eagerly and frequently. Our six year old, spurred on by her sister's example, has decided to write to several children in the Dir ectory to see if they will be pen pals. She was delighted by a recent positive response . So far, none of the children have brought up the subject of school in their letters . There certainly are more interesting things to talk about ...
A MUSLIM FAMILY ., .Like many other families who are schooling their children at home, our main reason for wanting to make this move was a religious one. In our case, however, the religion is Islam, not Christianity. We are a very com mitted Muslim family, and it is of the greatest importance to us that our c hildr en grow up in an atmosphere which is not destructive to their re ligious orientation and values. For this reason, we are obviously in to tal disagreement with many social and moral values (or "unvalues") which are being propagated in schools, as well as with the limited educational approaches. Moreover, in our faith religious and other learning is not to be approached as two separate mat ters since Islam does not acknowledge any schism between "sacred" and "secu lar" aspects of life. Our three older children had grown up in public schools, with very serious consequences to their sense of se l f-worth and the rightness of their values, and above all on the in tegratedness of their personalities. They passed through the hands of a series of junior high and high school teachers and situations in which reli gion, and anyone who upholds high mor al and ethical values, was viewed with contempt or at least stigmatized as being very, very strange and abnor mal. When my son was in the first year of junior high, we had just come back from a year overseas and the boy was feeling very much at odds with the school atmosphere. I went to the principal and expressed my concern about him, saying that he was a very religious youngster with high values. Would it not be possible to form a club or association for youngsters of
2
similar inclinations? The response of the principal was astonishing. He told me he would look into my son's record and behavior and talk with his counselor to see if he was really nor mal and fit in. Of course, you can im agine how I felt after this encoun ter, and the club idea naturally died of its own accord although I tried without success to interest other peo ple in the community in it. I felt and still do feel that such an organ ization would be very important and meaningful to young people who care about religion and values but have no support and are even afraid to voice their opinions under prevailing condi tions. When the fourth child, Y, was old enough for kindergarten, we en rolled him in a Catholic school, hop ing it would be in some significant wayan improvement over public school. But it was a total disappoint ment, in no real way different in at mosphere or approach. Thus, toward the end of Y's kindergarten year, see ing that there was no workable solu tion except to teach the children at home, I went to discuss the matter with the local superintendent of in struction. Although he made it clear that he is not in favor of home schooling, he was helpful and cooperative. We must, he said, submit a letter to him by early summer, which he would sub mit to the local school board, who would in turn submit it to the state board of education. My husband and I wrote a very brief statement that "be cause the religion of our family, Islam, is a complete way of life which requires that religious educa tion go hand-in-hand with secular edu cation, the educational needs of our children cannot be met in a normal school situation." We also mentioned that we might be spending time out side the country and hence needed to have a method of schooling which could be continued wherever we might be residing. Permission for home schooling was given under the under standing that I would be using the Calvert materials, would teach 176 days a year, and would be under the general supervision of the local school principal (i.e., would submit the Calvert tests and confer with her once a quarter, and the child would have to take standard achievement tests and end-of-the-year tests, if any, annually.) We enrolled Y in Calvert's sec ond grade program as it was clear that first grade would be a complete waste of time. He is an exceptionally motivated child who loves to study and learn. In the beginning, as I was very uncertain of my ability to "teach" since I had no teaching exper ience at all, the structuredness of the Calvert material was tremendously helpful and reassuring. However, I have since left its method largely be hind as it moves much too slowly for the child, who is now proceeding at his own pace. The younger child, H (3~) was a bit of a problem in the be ginning. She wanted a great deal of attention and was not satisfied to spend the school period simply play ing . I began working with her very gradually, assisted ably by Y, who spent long periods teaching her out of pre-school workbooks. She is now learning to read and enjoying the ex perience greatly. I expect to start her "formal" education with second grade after working with her in a com pletely unstructured manner until she reaches that level. I spend the first part of the school time working on re
ligious studies with Y. Afterwards I work with H while Y continues with the Calvert and supplementary materi al on his own. My role is as a re source person rather than as a teach er standing over a child to "teach" him what he can easily learn on his own. The experience of teaching my children has given me endless new in sights concerning the role of parents (especially mothers), both what it is for most of us and what it could and should be, and the nature and meaning of education. I cannot express what a satisfaction it is to see my children growing up with stable, integrated, happy personalities, especially after the struggle of watching the harmful effects of school on the three older children . ..
A WAY TO HELP As most GWS readers know, Linda and Bob Sessions (IA), their child ren, and I were on the Phil Donahue show on Dec. 7, 1978. It was aired over various stations for the next two or three months. Because of the show, we received about 10,000 let ters, which is about 100 times as great a response as we have ever had from any other article or TV show . Most of the people who have sub scribed during this past year did so because of that program. We still get letters now and then from people who say, "I just saw you on the Donahue show." This tells us that certain local stations are re peating that particular program, which suggests in turn that one thing people could do to help GWS would be to ask their local TV station to re run that particular show. We have a list of stations carry ing the Donahue show, in case you have trouble finding the appropriate station in your area . Please let us know what your local station says when you write or call them, and whether they decide to re-run the program. Thanks for what ever you can do .
PERSONAL Will "D . O.C." who forwarded a letter through us to "D" of GWS #2 please contact us? We have a reply for you but no address.
SKILLED CHILDREN Mary Bergman wrote in the cover story of the April 1980 Home Educa tors Newsletter: ... These children [of home schooling families] form an exclusive student body as they are each born in to the school . They take their places according to ability rather than grade level . They listen to works far above their comprehension, just to be part of the present company . In our own instance, we have one child that keeps all vehicles in top running shape, another who provides milk, eggs, and meat for the table, another who displays beautiful art work, and another who enjoys gardening. Katrina spends several hours morning and afternoon doing her farm work, but she is the beneficiary of her own labor, keeps all the records for feed, hay, and other purchases so that she can calculate her profit when animals are sold and what man hours and money have been expended to
gain that profit. I personally am not the least interested in any type of farm work and yet I know that this is developing within Katrina an ability far beyond anything that I could teach her. How much barley will a pig eat in a week, a month, till time for the market? What animals have the quickest turnover? What type of labor hours are necessary to operate a farm? I couldn't answer any of these questions, though Katrina can, and for an eleven-year-old girl I consi der that quite an accomplishment. She has a reading assignment just like the other children of 200 pages per week plus a written paper every day. She generally turns in a paper that has to do with her present projects. It is a rare occasion that I do not get the type of workmanship out of my children that I would get out of some adult . We are presently sec tioning off a room in the basement and all the partitions will be built by the children . One startling fact is that John, at age seven, has all his own tools, including a power saw and drill . He builds beautiful minia ture log cabins and will be in charge of measuring and cutting boards for the partition project . He is also planning on paneling his own room . ... Kevin has repaired all my major appliances since he was kindergarten age. Recently I had to hire a repair man to come and fix my furnace motor, which turned out to be shot and had to be replaced. This repairman hadn't been here for several years and his first question was "Why can't Kevin fix this?" When he discovered the problem he knew that the present motor was beyond repair and he went to get another . However, he brought the burned-out one back because he felt that Kevin could use parts for it. My dishwasher has been child repaired, my bathroom was child paneled, my toilets were child plumbed. They enjoy developing their abilities, it saves money, and we can use this gained savings for enjoyable activities. One more wonder that was per formed by a child is the light switch which regulates the living room and hall lights. One switch turns the living room lights on while it turns the hall light off and then turns the hall light on at night when the living room lights are not needed. An electrician noticed this strange arrangement and said it couldn't be done, but it's been working for a long time. We have tours through our home occasionally and people never stop marveling at the many things our children know how to do. Kevin built his own motorized three wheel all terrain vehicle, as well as helping his dad build a one-man plane. He has developed one patent and is working on another. People often ask me how I can tolerate the children doings things that are normally only done by adults, and professionals at that. Well, I watch the children carefully and never expect one to do a job which is over his head. I experiment constantly, finding natural abilities and letting them try their wings in harmless, inexpensive ways . If a child shows an ability in a certain area such as plumbing, I try them out taking apart an elbow and putting it back together without a leak. Next comes faucets, or setting a toilet. Next might come the installation of a shower unit, and finally the child is ready to plumb a bathroom. I would ~rowin~
without schoolin~ #14
3 have no qualms about letting my thir teen-year-old plumb my entire house. After all, he wired it for D.C . elec tricity when he was only eight. Our daughter Cathy is remodeling her own home now (s h e's nineteen), and s h e has done all her own plumbing, plas tering, wallpapering and carpentry. Matter of fact, that's how she helped pay for her college education. Sh e worked as a carpenter in an all-male shop! ... EARNING MONEY From Pamela Feeney Jolly, 7210 SW Philomath Blvd, Corvallis OR 97330: Recently I have had to settle how I feel about my children and mon ey. Until now I didn't feel they need ed money of their own because they didn't understand its real value. When they had money from relatives it seemed to be a burden to them. They would spend it on the first thing they saw. Not because it was some thing they wanted but to get rid of the money . I might add here that we rarely have more money than we need just to survive so we don't spend mon ey as a pastime. We are now living with relatives whose son gets an allowance. I have never liked the idea of allowances but I was made aware that our child ren needed to have access to money . I found ways for them to earn it. NOT by doing things they should be respon sible for anyway (like picking up their messes and washing themselves) but by doing extra kinds of jobs. Mostly seasonal work like raking leaves or picking fruit. (Things they will still do for enjoyment.) I pay them $3 an hour. I realize this may seem absurd to some but I think it is just. I have always been underpaid (or not paid at all) for the work I have done. It's not good for the self image. I don't want to use or insult my children in that way. I feel that if they are to be paid for work at all, they should be paid at least min imum wage. My five year old son spent 45 minutes washing the kitchen floor (not so appropriate) and raking leaves (better). They were jobs I could have done much more thoroughly in half the time . But that is not the point. The point is that he worked as hard as he could for that 45 minutes. Much harder than anyone I've worked with at any job for which we were paid. I feel my son earned the $2.25 I paid him. It is his money to spend however he chooses. I have learned not to give helpful suggestions here and to thoroughly repress my judge ment that what they buy isn't worth it. To them it is worth it, and if it isn't, that is something they have to learn for themselves. I remember so well the guilt and anxiety I felt over IdTr~ purchase un til I was 26 years 0 . very single time I bought something, I thought it was my last chance. I hope my child ren can grow up knowing that money is a tool that they can earn and use whenever they need to ... ART EXHIBIT Judy McCahill (Md.) writes from
England:
.. . Here is a story I think you will like. Last Saturday for some thing to do, because Dennis was out growing without schooling #14
of the country, I said to the boys, "Let ' s go to t h e art exhibit . " Sean and Kevin thought it was a wonderful idea and began discussing what sort of art they would do there and what pictures (of their own) they migh t bring from home. Startled , I tried to explain to them what an art exhibit was all about and they were genuinely puzzled at my trying to t ell them they were just going t h ere to look at somebody else's pictures. Puzz l ed, but not deterred, S gathere d h is s u p plies, two sets of paints, a brus h , some paper, and a jar full of water which he handed to me to carry; and K made us all wait while he finished a full color marker pen painting of an army tank. When we got there, we strolled along the sidewalks near the craft shop that was hosting the exhibit, dutifully examining the works and passing several fully grown and wise looking artists sitting in portable lawn chairs, all the while S at my heels urging me to find out how he was supposed to enter the show and me ahead of S, stalling. Finally an old man who works in the shop, who once told me a long story about his difficulties getting home to Cobham one night during the war when London was being bombed, greeted me. I introduced S to him and asked him to explain what an art ex hibit was. He started to, but then he and his daughter, who also works in the shop, saw that S was ready to do some work and after a good laugh with a couple of customers over it, gave him a couple of nice big pieces of "card" to paint on . He sat on the doorstep of a small office building nearby and painted, while the rest of us strolled through the exhibit again, windowshopped, and ate ice cream cones . When he had finished, it was a beautiful picture of a black dog, fur flying, running up a hill on a windy day, a glorious sun in the sky . It seemed to reflect his mood of magic. He took the picture into t he shop, where the man said he would put it on sale for 50 pence (and confusedly ex plained about how the arti s ts had to pay rent to the exhibit), and we went home. A few days later, still full of the experience, S told a friend of mine about it. She promptly went out to buy the picture, and it was gone' When I suggested to S that he go and check to see if his painting had been sold, he replied that he already had, the next day (which of cou r se was Sun day), and the shop was closed. And that was that. He was too busy doing something else to give it another thought . Not to be l abor this pOint, I must say that I've noticed this before in the children, that it's the doing of a piece of work that matters, and not what happens to it afterwards ... THE BEST WORK From Manas, 10/31/79: ... In a recent Ecologist Quarter Edward Goldsmith said: "Obviously Ene most satisfying work must be that which we are willing to do for noth ing." With all the sententious talk, these days, about the legitimacy and importance of profits, it becomes vital to point out that the best work is done by people who do it, not for money, but because it is righr-and good and necessary. They may get a little money, but barely enough to
lY,
get by. The only sensible way to look at money is as an instrument of free dom to do what you care about and are determined to do anyway .. . Q. & A.
Ques t ions from a . mother's le t ter, and the answers I gave: Q. My greatest concern is that I d on 't want to slant my c h ild r en's view of life all through "mother colored" glasses . .. A. If you mean, determine your children's view of life, you couldn't do it even if you wanted to . You are an influence on your children, and an importan t one, but by no means the only one, or even the only important one. How they later see the world is going to be determined by a great many things, many of them probably not to your liking, and most of them out of your control. On the other hand, it would be impossible, even if you wanted to, not to have some influ ence on your children's view-Df life. Q. I also wonder if I can have the thoroughness, the follow - through demanded , the patience, and the con tinuing enthusiasm for a diversity of interests they will undoubtedly have. A. Well, who in any school would have more, or even as much? I was a good student in the "best" schools, and very few adults there were even slightly concerned with my interests . Beyond that, you may expect too much of yourself. Your children's learning is not all going to come from you, but from them, and their interaction with the world around them, which of course includes you. You do not have to know everything they want to know, or be interested in everything they are interested in. As for patience, maybe you won't have enough at first; like many home teaching parents, you may start by trying to do too much, know too much, control too much. But like the rest, you will learn from experience - mostly, to trust your children . Q. I get the impression that most unschoolers live on farms grow ing their own vegetables (which I'd like) or have unique life styles in urban areas, and heavy father partici pation in children's education . What about suburbanites with modern-conven ienced homes and fathers who work for a company 10 to 12 hours a day away from home? What differences will this make? Will unschooling work as well? A. Well enough. You and your children will have to find out as you go along what differences they make, and deal with them as best you can. Once, people said that the suburbs were the best of all possible worlds in which to bring up children; now it is the fashion to say they are the worst. Both views are exaggerated. In city, country, or suburb, there is more than enough to give young people an interesting world to grow up in, plenty of food for thought and action. You don't have to have every thing in the way of resources for your children, and if you did, they wouldn't have enough time to make use of all of it . Q. Is the father's involvement crucial? A. I t can certainly be helpful, but it is not crucial. Some of the most successful unschoolers we know of are single mothers. And there may be many others we don't know about.
4
Q. What if the children want to go to school? A. This is a hard question. There is more than one good answer to it, and these often conflict . Parents could argue, and some do, that since they believe that school can and prob ably will do their children deep and lasting harm, they have as much right to keep them out, even if they want to go, as they would to tell them they could not play on a pile of radioactive wastes. This argument seems more weighty in the case of younger children, who could not be ex pected to understand how school might hurt them. If somewhat older children said determinedly and often, and for good reasons, that they really wanted to go to school, I would tend to say, let them go. How much older? What are good reasons? I don't know. A bad rea son might be, "The other kids tell me that at school lunch you can have chocolate milk." Q. Since people feel that as a religious group (Christian Scien tists) we neglect our children (which is not the case), I'm concerned that someone might be eager to take us to court and take away our children. A. The schools have in a number of cases tried - shamefully - to take children away from unschooling par ents. I think there are legal coun ters to this, strategies which would make it highly unlikely that a court would take such action. And if worse came to worst, and a court said, "Put your children back in school or we'll take them away," you can always put them back in while you plan what to do next - which might simply be to move to another state or even school or judicial district. Q. I don't want to feel I'm shel tering my children or running away from adversity. A. Why not? It is your right, and your proper business, as parents, to shelter your children and protect them from adversity, at least as much as you can. Many of the world's child ren are starved or malnourished, but you would not starve your children so that they would know what this was like. You would not let your children play in the middle of a street full of high-speed traffic . Your business is, as far as you can, to help them realize their human potential, and to that end you put as much as you can of good into their lives, and keep out as much as you can of bad . If you think - as you do - that school is bad, then it is clear what you should do.
Q. I value their learning how to handle challenges or problems ... A. There will be plenty of these. Growing up was probably never easy, and it is particularly hard in a world as anxious, confused, and fear-ridden as ours . To learn to know oneself, and to find a life worth living and work worth doing, is prob lem and challenge enough, without hav ing to waste time on the fake and unworthy challenges of school - pleas ing the teacher, staying out of trouble, fitting in with the gang, being popular, doing what everyone else does. Q. Will they have the opportuni ty to overcome or do things that they think they don't want to do? A. I'm not sure what this ques tion means. If it means, will un schooled children know what it is to have to do difficult and demanding
things in order to reach goals they have set for themselves, I would say, yes, life is full of such require ments. But this is not at all the same thing as doing something, and in the case of school usually something stupid and boring, simply because someone else tells you you'll be pun ished if you don't . Whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them. Struggling with the inherent difficulties of a chosen or inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to superior force destroys it.
dential has been a real hassle. The alternatives of having a credentialed person oversee your program or using an accredited correspondence program with your children are not acceptable to the Wash. State Dept. of Educa tion. In typical bureaucratic style, all the emphasis is put on having the credential and then there is no fol low-up at all to see if any instruc tion is taking place ...
AT HOME IN CALIF.
... Yes, Washington is a tough state for unschooling .. . Although the law appears tight, it is cumbersome enough to provide real enforcement problems. I think the law is proving to be very imprac tical from the state's point of view. The fine and penalty system is more complex than is indicated by these [enclosed] articles. Most prosecuting attorneys do not want to get into the area, specially on individual student parent cases. They should have too much else to do, right? At a time of severe school fund ing cut-backs here, most school dis tricts are not staffed to spend much time in drawn out hassles. If the par ent wants the student in school they are more apt to pursue the student, but if the parent is "un-cooperative" they are likely to layoff. Here in our town, for example, the attendance officer reports "un-cooperative" par ents, who don't try to get their youngster to school, to the State De partment of Social and Health Servi ces. There, according to him, the case gets buried in paper work. He told me that he has yet to hear back from them. What he was really saying, I think, is that this is an easy way for him to take care of what he thinks his responsibility is in such cases. He told me how expensive it is for the school district to pursue such cases and that it wasn't worth it to the school district . ..
From Shirley Chapman (CA): · . . As you know, I am teaching Howard at home . . . . Howard is now very interested in raising and caring for house plants. As a result he is read ing several books on the subject. Some are mine, some are from librar ies, and some have been loaned to him by my friends. · .. Howard wanted a schedule made. We do not follow it strictly. Howard reads a great deal at night and I also am busy reading, writing, etc. His home study program is very easy-going and flexible . He is: "in terested, energetic, alert, attentive and LEARNING'" (from NEVER TOO LATE). Also, I might add, he is healthy and happy . What more could any parent pos sibly want for their child/children? · .. When Howard is absorbed in a given subject or project, he doesn't want to be interrupted . I endeavor to have materials and books and myself available. That is all. I leave the rest up to him. When he was enrolled in school, he was depressed, had nightmares, headaches, upset stomach and was some what withdrawn. All that has reversed in this present scnool year: since he has been in a home-study program" .. . Howard does a great deal of writing in his journal which he says is private and personal so I am not allowed to read it. I grant him his complete right to privacy. He also makes cassette tapes of "radio shows" and his artistic, creative ability and verbal communication skills are outstanding . He finds writing slows him down so the cassette tapes enable him to create almost as fast as he can think. He is still composing music for his guitar. He switches from his house-plant project to music to reading to listening to records and tapes to making "radio shows" to drawing to hiking to eating and sleep ing. He is very active and - again, let me emphasize: VERY HAPPY ...
FROM WASHINGTON STATE LeAnn Ellis (WA) writes: ... Since our names appeared in the GWS Directory several issues ago, we have received about 5-6 letters from interested mothers here in Wash ington [State] wanting to know how we are staying out of trouble with-rfie authorities. I love helping others in any way possible along these lines but it is very discouraging in this state. Washington absolutely requires a credentialed teacher in the class room on a da~ly basis, which makes it impossible for most mothers to teach their children legally. I was lucky to have a Calif. teaching credential when we moved here a year ago, but getting that switched to a Wash . cre
She later wrote that they had ob tained approval as a private school . Another reader wrote:
An editorial from Seattle: . . . Tough new state legislation prescribing stiff penalties against parents whose children consistently skip school has been on the books for some months now, but nobody has been hauled into court yet. Maybe it's just as well . School officials and local prose cutors who have been studying the 1979 amendments to the State Compul sory Attendance Law are discovering that the legislation is considerably looser than it looks. It provides, for instance, that penalties cannot be imposed when par ents or guardians can demonstrate that they have exercised "reasonable diligence" to compel their children's classroom attendance. And the law also says a school district must show it has done every thing possible to work with parents and students to solve truancy prob lems, even includinf adjustments in school programs, be ore f~nes are lev~ed.
Given such limitations, it is little wonder that school officials and local prosecutors have taken a cautious attitude toward enforcement, recognizing that a court referral could prove unjust or even useless . The potential financial penal ties are severe. The law prescribes a fine of $25 for each day of unexcused growing without schooling #14
5 absence. By the time a case came to trial, the fine could run into sever al hundred dollars . Common sense dictates that the fundamental responsibility for school attendance begins at home, and that school districts can help parents by making sure that something of value is available in classrooms once the student head count is completed. The tough amendments enacted in the 1979 Legislature seem well-inten tioned . But if they cannot be en forced or have no practical value in improving the truancy problem, they should be repealed ... SUPPORTIVE DISTRICT
Margaret De Rivera wrote in The New Family Newsletter: . . . Six years ago when I ap proached the Worcester (Mass . ) Public School authorities for permission to teach my youngest child at home, I was told that if I could find some recent precedent in the state for such a program, t hey would be willing to consider approving my request. I was not able to do this but hired a lawyer to draw up a legal brief argu ing that a home study program could, in fact, comply with the state compul sory education laws. This reassured enough members of the school commit tee that the request was finally ap proved by a bare majority. . . . The program runs from 9 to 3 week days and follows the calendar of the Worcester Public Schools. At the beginning of each day, the children, with the help of the teacher, plan their activities for the day. The children work alone or together depending on their skills and interests. They share with each other frequently during the day. Thirty minutes to an hour each day is given over to working on basic academic skills . Informal activities such as caring for gerbils, cooking, woodworking, starting collections of things, etc, provide opportunities for mathematical learning and under standing. The computational skills and mathematical notation that is learned in the academic period can be applied in these real situations . The children do a great deal of reading and writing. They visit the library each week and keep records on the books they take out, when they are due, etc. They keep a daily log (as does the teacher ) and write poems, stories, "books," letters, no tices, and labels . Drawing is also an important and favorite activity which provides an opportunity to work out ideas and fan tasies which often stimulate story writing . There are many opportunities for art work and the children are free to develop their own ideas and explore the possibilities of the ma terials. Emphasis is on the child ren's own expression rather than on technique. With such a small group, field trips are easy to arrange and happen almost weekly. In the past, the child ren have visited Sturbridge Village and the Art Museum frequently, and occasionally have gone to the Science Museum, the New England Aquarium, Hig gins Armory, and the Children's Muse um in Boston. Physical development and coordin ation are considered important so the children are active each day in a var iety of ways: swimming once a week, playing basketball, baseball, tag, soccer, badminton, kickball, bike rid growing without schooling #14
ing, jump rope, hiking, dancing, and jogging. The teacher keeps a daily log of the activities and a summary of the child's learning is written each year. This together with samples of each child ' s work, the child's log and the teacher's log are the materi als we share with the public school administration each year. The School Board approves the program on a year ly basis. Since t hat fragile beginning, our home study program has been ap proved each year without difficulty, and the school administration has be come a friendly support to the pro gram . . . . In the first three years, we hired teachers since I was working full time, people who were sympathe tic to informal education and could be flexible in their teaching style and responsive to the needs and inter ests of the children. The first year, our daugh ter was the only pupil; the second year another child joined her, and the third year two more came. The addition of other children offered the obvious opportunities for social learning as well as reducing the fi nancial costs . Year four, we decided to make some more radical changes and enroll our daughter half time in the neigh borhood public school. The other half of her program was still at home, this time alone with me as her teach er. This arrangement gave her the op portunity to meet the neighborhood children and to gain a sense of confi dence that she could "do" public school as well as any of t h em, an im portant concern for many "middle aged" children. In addition, the time at home provided her continued oppor tunities for more informal, self directed learning . Happily, the school was very cooperative in this arrangement and the children accepted her very well into their social life . We feel that the successful oper ation of this home study program for the last five years constitutes a strong legal precedent so that other families in the state who wish to teach their children at home should feel confident that such a request should be considered reasonable . A petition that is respectfully worded and avoids criticisms of the public schools will have the best prospects of being approved without hassle . De scribing sample learning activities and arranging these under curriculum headings help to reassure the school authorities that the program will be "equivalent" to the public school pro gram . . . EXCHANGE ON MATH
Donna Richoux asked Nancy Wallace about the math book she men tioned in GWS #13 . Nancy replied: ... The math book is Patterns in Mathematics published by Laidlaw Brothers. I wouldn't really recommend it though. It's good for Ishmael be cause of its orientation towards lang uage, but it might just as easily bog another kid down . Also, we do a lot of picking and choosing. I'm very confused about math. The kids I've seen who really are "growing without schooling" are usual ly advanced in reading and vocabulary and can barely add or subtract. Does that mean that numbers are really un important to LIFE? Or unnecessary? ... 1 suppose my expectations are far too high . I mean, how often do we
use algebra, geometry, calculus, etc, anyway? The important thing is that we aren't totally freaked out by the thought of numbers so that we remain free to learn math when we are ready. And if all we can do is balance a checkbook ( I can't) and play cards by the time we're 18, we can still get by fine. And when you take out a mort gage or get insurance it's just as well to have your head in the clouds. It's not wort h knowing how much you are going to have to pay! The trut h is that I think better on paper. I guess my confusion is obvious . We have a friend whose daughter was out of school last year and he said, "She didn't do a damn thing all year." "Not a thing?" I asked incredu lously. "Well, she read almost con stantly," he replied, "but reading is CANDY . I wish I had time to read like that." Reading IS candy, but why don't most people feel the same about math? . . Donna wrote back: ... Maybe your questions about math were just meant to be rhetori cal, but they sure hit a sympathetic nerve in me. Those sorts of frustra ting questions are some of the rea sons why I am no longer teaching math . During the two years I taught at a technical school, I had access to a lot of people who had spent many years doing practical things - fixing cars, building houses, repairing elec tronics equipment, etc. I kept asking everybody, "What math do you need? What good is it all? When do you need it?" and so on. To my surprise, al most all the instructors were con vinced that their students did need to know and use math, although they couldn't always explain why. In the simpler fields (welding, for example) the instructors would worry or com plain if their students couldn't do arithmetic; in the more complex fields ( electronics, machine shop) they would complain if they couldn't solve equations. So there did seem to be some real need somewher~ ~ it was almost impossible for me to gras p examples of how they used math. Every time they would start talking about gear ratios or fre quency or some such thing, I would get lost . I simply had no practical, concrete images to relate to. So no way could I bring in realistic exam ples to my classroom. But on the other hand, I couldn't believe that teaching math as an abstract bunch of rules, which was all that was expected of me, was going to do any good. Many people who can get right answers to purely arith metical problems can't solve word problems. And not everybody who can do word problems can apply mathema tics to the world [JH: or vice versal . Part of the trouble is that "word problems" are artificial - no body comes across a "word problem" in real life, the y come across a real problem and they have to supply-tKe words themsel ves . But in any case, word problems are as close as a math teacher can get to ever applying the procedures . The only way for me to reconcile all this was to decide that math shouldn't be taught abstractly at all, that all math should be taught on the spot by the instructor of the specif i c field . What good was it for me to teach and test a class about ratios in January (after which they promptly forgot it all, of course) when next October their own regular