Defenders of school s might say me, and told me what books he was' reading - serious, adult books. He that such incidents are the ex ception rather than the rule. It had clearly solved his problem would be easier to believe this if himself. unjust and cruel teachers ever, got In short, I was what I call a into trouble for acts like these. serious teacher - I would not ac I have not yet heard of this hap cept fancy excuses and alibis as peninq. a substitute for doing the work I had chosen and had been hired to do - help children learn things. If they were not learning, as many READING GUI DES were not, I couldn't blame it on them, but had to keep tryi ng until In FREEClOM AND BEYOND, 'and, I found spmething that worked. As again in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION"I :l:f2 HOW CHILDREN FAIL makes clear, proposed a reading program which this often took a long time, and I for little or no money might help failed as much as I succeeded. children, above all poor children Another book about serious teach (or adults), to r:ead better. I Quite a few people have writter. ing is James Herndon's THE WAY IT proposed that we have what we SPOZED TO BE, a very funny, truth might call "Reading Guides." Any us about the first issue of GWS. They like it, say it makes them ful, and in the end sad story one who could read could volun feel less alone, isolated, help about his first year's painf.ul teer - college ,students, younger struggles - finally successful, less. One said it was like a children, housewives, older or re beacon. We hope many others feel for which he was fired - to help tired people, or anyone of any aqe this way. students that the rest of his who in daily life might come in Some liked its plain looks. One school had long since given up on. contact with children or other or two thought we should jazz it non-readers. The guides would wear up a bit, to look more like other The reason that schools are no some identifying armband, hat, magazines. (We have no plans to do. good at their work is above all button, etc. so that anyone want this. ) that they are not serious. "Good" ing information could easily spot schools and "bad," private and We see that we didn't make it them. Seeing a guide wearing a public, with only a fewexcept clear enough that if two or more sign, you could ask him either or ions they have always run under people take out a joint subscrip both of these questions: 1) You this rule - when learning hap tion to GWS, all copies of each could show him a written word and issue will be sent to one of them, pens, the school takes the credit; say, "What does this say?" 2) You when it doesn't, the students get who must then mail or deliver the coul d say, "How do you write such other copies to the other subscri the blame. I n the old days the and such a word?" That's all the schools said the kids were stupid, guide would have to do. bers. Sending all copies to one bad, 1azy, or crazy. Now they say address is what makes it possible A school, a church, a group of for us to sell joint subscription~ they have I11Ysterious diseases like parents, a block committee, a "minimal brain dysfunction" or for less. The record joint sub branch library, or students them "learning disabilities." Under scription so far, by the way, is selves (in or out of school) could whatever name, these remain what a 14X sub. from a group in run such a program. It would cost they always were - excuses for the , little or nothing. There would be Seattle, who by this means are school and teachers not being getting GWS for about $2.55 each. no need to test or screen the abl e to do thei r .iob. A single subscription is $10 guides; there is no reason why for six issues; a 2X sub, $12; a they should have to know every 3X sub, $14, and so on up. If you word they might be asked. don't say otherwise, all subs LI FE IN SCHOOLS So far, no one I know of has begin with Issue No.1. tried to start such a program. (From a letter from Raleigh, N.C., You may buy extra copies of This is not surprising; most peo Issue #1 for 50¢ each, or 25¢ each which by the way is supposed to be ple now believe, after all, that one of the en l ightened areas of for orders of 10 or more. Extra only "official" programs run by copies of all later issues will be that state . ) "professionals" can get anything $2 each, two for $3, $1 each for done. Every year these proqrams "On ly today I had a 1uncheon orders of five or more. Please cost 'more and fail worse. We can with a good friend whose 9th grade only hope that when ordinary peo send checks (U.S.$) made out to son has on his permanent record GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. ple get enough fed up with these (thanks to one of his teachers incompetent experts, they will be this year) these 'crimes': suspen gin to act for themselves. sion from school for ,three days SERIOUS TEACHING because of breaking into lunch line, going up a flight of stairs My first teaching job was to ANGRY ASPS tutor an otherwise interesting and' used by the teachers but not per mitted to students and saying bright teen-ager whose school A91'S are what I call peopl e who "dang" back to a teacher for say skills were at about second or constantly Attack Schools but Pro him, and a com ing something to tect (or promote) Schooling. In third grade level. Top specialists parable list of 4 other unbel iev had pronounced him "brain-damag one breath they say, "Schools are able offenses. terrible to, and for, poor kids. " ed." In spite of the label, he A 5th grade boy and son of good In the next they say, "Schools wanted to read, write, and figure friends was spanked in front of like everyone else, and wanted me are the only way that poor kids the class when he was out sick to help him. can escape from being poor." The He was used as an ex for the day. logic is hard to follow. Schools Not having studied "education," ample to the class so that the have made it far harder for poor I had never heard of "brain-dam would not be tempted to do class age," di dn' t know enough to know kids to escape from poverty than the same thing, i.e. think of it used to be. There are hundreds that it was just a fancy way of being out sick. or thousands of jobs, that people saying, "We don't know what the A 2nd grader took more money to used to do perfectly well wi thout trouble is." But it was clear to college or even high school diplo me that brain damage or no, it was school than her teacher thought she should have. Sbe argued with mas, that people now have to have my task and my responsibility to the mother, who said that the find out what was keeping him from diplomas to get. And how the money was actually that of the school s, whi ch have always des learning and to figure out some thing to do about it. Working with child. She was accused of steal pi sed, ignored, insulted, and ing and spanked. Two months later oppressed poor kids, are suddenly him, I found out that he had a very precise, thorough, and logic on April 1st, the same teacher going to protect and help them, told her class to put on their al mind, and had to understand a the ASPS never make clear. coats and hats as they were (]oing thing thoroughly before he could One ASP wrote me a furious let move on to the next. He asked hard outs i de to play. After they \'/ere ter about GWS, saying "How is a dressed, she told them " ~rril questions; to find answers to some welfare mother with five kids of them took me many years. But if Fool!" Nothing could be done goi ng to teach them how to read?" about her treatment of the chil ~ , . I did not solve his problems, per The answer is, teach them herself. ren; it was all leaal. haps my belief that they could be If she can't read, but one of her sol ved was enough. Some years la chi 1dren can, that chi 1d can teach te r , w;!i 1e in t'le " rmy, he 1'1 ro te the other children, and her. If
GROWING
WITHOUT
SCHOOLING
none of thaM'can read, they can get a relative, or friend, or neighbor, or neighbor's child, to teach them. Reading, and teaching reading, are not a mystery. The schools, in teaching the poor (and the rich, too) that no one can teach a child anything except a "trained" teach er, have done them (and all of us) a great and crippling injury and wrong. A number of poor countries ha ve had mass 1i teracy programs, often called Each One Teach One, in which as fast as people learn to read they begin to teach others. They found that anyone who can read, even if only fifty or a hundred words, and even if he only learned them recently, can teach those words to anyone else who wants to learn them. Every now and then, in this country, a school, often a ci ty school for poor ki ds, lets older children, fifth or sixth graders, teach first graders to read. Most of them do a better job than the regular teachers. Quite often, older children who themselves are not very good read ers turn out to be the best teachers of all. There is a clear lesson here, but the schools don't seem able to learn it, mostly be cause they don't want to . People who make careers out of helping others - sometimes at some sacrifice, often not - usually don't like to hear that those others might get along fine, might even get along better, without their help. We should keep this in mind in dealing with attacks from ASPS. And this may be the place to note that "trained" teachers are not trained in teaching, but in classroom management, i.e., in controlling, manipulating, meas uring, and classifyin9 large n~m bers of children. These may be useful skills for schools, or people working in schools. But they have nothing whatever to do with teaching - helping others to learn thlngs. READING , CHICAGO STYL E
(From a recent Chicago Tribune) "It has been ten years in the making, but Chicago school offic ials now believe they have in place a complete sweeping program to teach children to read - a pro gram that may be the pacesetter for the nation ..... it is built upon the concept developed by Ben jamin Bloom, distinguished Univer sity of Chicago professor of edu cation, that children should mas ter - bit by bit - elements of I-eadi ng. .... For some years, a Board of Education reading ex pert, Bernard Gallegos, has been putting together a package of the reading skills children need to learn in elementary school. At one point, Gallegos' list topped 500 elements. It has since been re duced to 273 over grades 1 through 8. The first skill a child needs to master, fs to repeat two- and three-syllable words. The second is to point out objects by going from left to riQht ..... some other skills the child should ac quire: knows long vow~l sounds, (Ed . note- there is nothing 'long' about them, the word is in accurate and needlessly confusing) places accent marks on accented
syllables (Ed. note - I was read ing at near-college level before I began to do that), and identi fies rhyming patterns. This is the final skill·. (No. 273)" This might be quite funny if it were not so horrifying. 500 skills! What could they be? When I taught myself to read, I didn't learn 500 skills, or even 273; I looked at printed words, on signs and in books, and puzzled them out; each one I learned made it easier for me to figure out the next. And how did the 500 get cut down to 273? ASPS woul d do well to take a look at Bernie 's first skill: to repeat two- and three- syllable words. In practice, this is going to mean the children, black, Hispanic, Asian, or from other non-WASP groups, are going to have to pronounce these words the way the teacher wants them pronounced. Until they do:-tney will not be allowed to go to the next step, or into the next grade. So step No. 1 in the Chicago schools is going to be to talk like white people, and until you can do that, you won't be allowed to do anything else. This, in spite of the fact that many people in the West Indies or Africa, or for that matter Great Britain, can read fluently, though they speak an English that few Chicago teachers could understand.
time to read, and what's worse, no desi re. Indeed, some chil dren who can read w,ill prQbably be held back because they can't pass some of the 273 tes ts. Then, ten years or so from now, we will hear about some grea t nevi plan. LIFE AT HOME
A mother of four children, the wife of a career officer in the U.S. Armed Forces (both of them "church-going Catholics), who for obvious reasons prefers that we not ,(yet) gi ve her name, has written us a splendid letter, say i ng, in pa rt :
"Always, always must we pa rents and anyone else who under takes a revolutionary change which seriously affects the lives of others remind ourselves that we do so for selfish reasons. My husband and I began to get cold feet ("sounds 1ike an epi demi c ," our daughter said) two or three days before school started this year; what urged me to continue with our plans was the thought that I would be very unhappy if I didn't give it a try. It was cer tainly not that we didn't consid er what was best for the chi 1d ren; we believed (and believe) they woul d be better off growing up at home than in a classroom. But keeping them home was mostly The schools were never intelli !!ll'. deci sion, !!ll'. experiment, !!ll'. act of faith. What I hope is that gent; as I pointed out in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, they have never even the children not only will flower more truly in their home environ tried to find out how many child ment, but also will be enriched ren teach themsel ves to read, or by growing up with parents who are in what ways; nor have they tried attempting to live their beliefs. to find out what skill ful readers I hope that they will learn the di d to become ski 11 ful (they read true meaning of action, that a books that were "too hard" for wrong seen is a wrong to be right them); nor have they learned any ed; a better way seen, one to be thing from the experience of peo rle like Dennison, Fader, Herndon, taken. We did not give C (12), M (9), Koh l, who taught kids to read that S (7), and K (5) a choice between the schools said could not be school and school-at-home. As the taught. excitement in the neighborhood But now the schools are begin ning to make stupidity into a sys mounted during the week before tem, even a kind of pseudo-science school started, the boys were dis turbed about our decision. But we like alchemy, or phrenology, the felt that they had been so com old "science" of reading people's pletely indoctrinated by our ,so characters from the shapes of ciety's trust in schooling that their heads. Like all pseudo-sci they would never decide "in our ences, the pseudo-science of favor" if we gave them a choice. "education" has all the trappings of real science, including myster If after two or three years of ious big words, plenty of measure this experiment they are still determined, we will discuss it. ment, plenty of numbers. But this Living as we do in the heart of is as far from reality, and its our school-going, career-pursu precision is just as spurious, as ing, achievement-oriented culture, medieval arguments about how many angels could stand on the head of we had to operate this way. We justify it by the fact that we a pin (326.734 angels). The al are their parents and, we think, chemists tried to measure what of all the people on earth, wisest did not exist; the educators say when it comes to their upbringing. something even stupider, that no ~e monitor their socialization as thing exists except what they can we do their TV and sugar consump measure. tion. And yes, they're doing fine. Not long ago, a teacher , in Bal They're generally contented. Only S complains about staying home, timore, who being serious had and that less often each month. found a way to make good readers ouf of children who had never read They occupy themselves continually and, though I don't get out much, before, was fired, because when the school board adopted some new we get on each other's nerves very little, even when it's been rain reading program and ordered all ing for days. teach'ers to use it, she sensibly and responsibly refused to scrap You'll notice I didn't say back there, "We monitor their educa her reading program that worked. tion." That's because the whole This will happen in Chicago; most of wha t few good readi ng teachers subject is an embarrassment. We they have will quit or be fired. are in charge of their education, (thailk you, state), but if the The chil dren vii 11 be so busy try ing to learn how to pass 273 read ~ocal superintendent came to take ing tests that they will have no a look, he wouldr,'t think we were
doing such a slam-bang job of it. We are using the Calvert Home Instruction courses - because we said we would. But we are not using them the way they were intended to be used. For one thing, they are highly structured, so well organ ized that any dummy who can read could use them with his child. If they were followed faithfully, there would be no time left for teaching, that is, being there when a child needs help in learn ing something. I've been in a quandary several times and I've tried to teach a child something he either already knew or wasn't ready for. All in the name of fol lowing the curriculum and staying on schedule. And my heart really isn't in it. I think, for instance, doing a scheduled les son on the Industrial Revolution, which right now is utterly boring, when you've spent hours over the last few weeks watching and dis cuss i ng the Rome of "I, Cl audi us," is stupid. You scribble some hasty answers to questions about the In dustrial Revolution and you forget a11 about it. But I am getting smart and here is basically what we do about "education." At the beginning of each month the children each make and decorate a fol der out of 12" by 18" sheets of construction pa per. We fill the folders with pa perwork, including the tests which Cal vert provides; we never send these in to Calvert since we are not using the Advisory Teaching Service. This "proves" that we are keeping up in (almost)-every subject. There is not nearly so much paperwork done as Calvert demands, but every paper is per fect. When the children make mis takes, they erase and correct them immediately. I make no tra ditional teacher's marks on their papers such as X's, checks, happy faces, etc.; but I dispense Nat ional Wildlife stickers freely. (I hope I am teaching them that mistakes, in work and in life, are not irrevocable; and, though I don't know if it means anything, I like the idea of keeping reminders of myself off their work.)" (Ed. note - I interrupt only to say that I think it means a great deal, and can't imagine a more humane or sensitive way of putting it. ) "Many of the drawings that they all do spontaneously at the dining room table are put into the folder in case anyone wonders if we are having 'art.' If on a school day we go somewhere "educational," we paste a souvenir of the trip on a piece of colored paper and include it. The two older children each keep a list of pages done in sepa rate workbooks and include these in their folders. So we actually look pretty good, even if we aren't. And the filled folders at month ' s end, which we ritually arrange and staple, seem to give the children a sense of accom 1ishment. What I would really like to do is put all the ' Calvert courses out in the rain. (The children keep them in their original cartons.) For one thing I am really too busy for all that nonsense, between housework, normal family activi ties, and a couple of my own in terests, and for another I think
it is an empty ritual. During the week after No More Schools (Ed. note - a weekend conference) I kept notes on academically related activities which the children did spontaneously . Here are the notes for one day: C taught Mand me to play "Go Fish" and "Concentration;" she asked if "Concentration" helped in 1 ife. C and I played gin rummy. S worked on crossword puzzles. S read Put Me In The Zoo silently tWiCe-;-tnenaToLidto K. K built with blocks. (When asked, C, M, and S each helped with chores.) C tested her memory of names of states (45/50) and their cap itals (35/50); invented charades to describe 3 countries. Mshowed S placement of U.S. and England on map (which hangs on wall). C read Roclsi'. and we di scussed possible jealousy of Stallone's wife. I played "War" with K and used phrases "greater than" and "1 ess than. " S read aloud phrases on back of Ivory ~nQv' box . S went opt to play in his knight's costume (homemade: re sult of rearling about knights.) I read Little 'Toot to M and K; Masked qu~out vocabulary. S and I discussed bees (when the queen flies out of the hive; how bees aid in pollination) after he got stung by one. Mcounted his money. Also from that week: Mcut open avocado seed and we discussed seed coat, embryo, seed leaves and true leaves. K built aircraft carrier with blocks. S made reconstituted juice, reading label to determine amount of water to add. C suggested own math project, figuring cost to carpet upstairs rooms. (I took C to Self-Sufficiency Seminar at community college.) S used tape measure to measure several objects around house. He reported lengths and widths in both centimeters and inches. C read The Metric Book of Amu ~ Thing~ ToDO,and didan exerC1 se W1 tncurves and stra ,i ght lines. Sand K read The Question and Answer Book of the Human Body. -rtoOKlleraiiClS'Ste"mperature. C continued with her project to average a book a day for a month for the Mental Health Readathon. The most serious books included Davii Copperfield and Treasure TSTand. ---wewent to the library. We toured the replica of the Santa Maria in the harbor. What is important to remember about these activities is that because they were self-initiated they were meaningful; that is, oecause they fit in with an on going and/or current interest, what was learned is not likely to be forgotten. This deepened my curiosity about what the children would teach themselves if they were freed from imposed school work entirely. Hopefully, next year I can move toward satisfying
this curiosity. (Ed: note - They will be stationed in another coun try. ) ... I began this mental evolu tion, this change in my attitude toward schooling, after reading Ivan Illich and your Escape From Chi 1dhood. I was ready for t~ conversion that took place, in what must have been a very deep part of my soul; it was "Of course, why didn't I think of that?" when I learned that child ren could grow up at home. And so I, and then soon, we, began to change the way we were bringing up our children. We had been consci entious parents, but we had (and have) a lot to learn. We are learning to listen, to stop what we are doing to pay attention when it is needed, to answer questions simply, to sit around and just talk sometimes. More learning comes out of just plain talk than can be imagined. (Ed. note - This was my point about the Ny Lilleskile in INSTEAD OF EDUCATION) I hung M.C. Esher's "Verbum" on the dininq room wall and several conversa tions that started with "How did he draw that?" occurred, and ca reened wildly through design, artist's materials, optical illu sion, evolution and the Gospel of St. John. With C, I can see the encrusted layers of school-rigid ity falling away; several times a lesson with her has dissolved into a conversation about her real worth as a loving, responsible human being versus the graded, classified, surely stupid person she sometimes felt herself to be in school . GOOD BOOKS CHEAP
A good place to buy, at low cost, the kind of books that many or most children would find inter esting (partly because them are not children's books, but about the grown-up world) is Pub lishers Central Bureau; Dept. 516, One Champion Ave., Avenel, N.J. 07131. It is what they call a re mainder house. When publishers find they have printed more cop ies of a book than they think they can sell, they sell the extra cop ies at very low cost to remainder houses, who sell them, usually by ffiail, at much lower than the orig ~nal cost. I strongly recommend that you write for one of their catalogues. Here, from a recent one, are some sample titles that might in terest many children: THE BASEBALL ENCYCLOPEDIA ($9.98); THE ANATOMY OF COSTUME (7.98), a history of clothing; THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HORSE (10.98), a sure bet for many girls; THE WORLD OF CLOWNS (9.98); LOST CITIES (2.98); THE VIKINGS (2.98); Frank Leslie's ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR (12.98); RIPLEY'S GIANT BOOK OF BELIEVE IT OR NOT (6.95), a sure-fire suc cess (like the GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS, which Pub . Clear. does not sell); PREHISTORIC MAN (5.98); THE TIME OF THE BUFFALO (3.98); NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS (3.98), a sure winner for many boys; RAIL WAYS THEN AND NOW (7.98); THE HORSE, THROUGH 50 CENTURIES OF CIVILIZATION (15.96), probably well worth the price; GOLD AND SILVER IN THE WEST (5.98); TIM-
..... We have assembled an arts and crafts corner. Collage materials, homemade playdough, paint, etc. are available at all times. We have woodscraps, large headed pounding nails and scrap craft paper of varied size, color and texture. Burl ap an d yarn for stitchery and wire bundles for creating sculptures are popular RE · CYClING TOYS items. Recycled computer paper and cards are sold by the bundle for (From Briarpatch Review, 330 10¢ and 5¢. Ellis St., S.F . CaT:94i02) Toy Go Round welcomes hand crafted toys and games giving 75% "...... Knowing that chil dren to the maker . Personalized birtb lose interest and outgrow toys day banners are made upon request. that are in still good condition ..... You are always welcome and that quality toys are too ex to stop by for a visit. You'll pensive, we created Toy Go Round find us at 1715-B Solano Ave., an alternative way of disposing of Berke 1ey, CaL - Tues., Thurs., toys. The toys' original owners Sat., 12:00 - 5:30." can share them with younger child Andora Freeman, Joy Ernst ren and at the same time support new i nteres ts with money returned from their resale. People who want to work with or We each had "1 ike new" toys in in some way make themselves useful the basement, attic, or closet to children, and don't want to because they were too good to give work in schools, may find some away or throw out ...... Both of good ideas here. In INSTEAD OF ED- ' us wanted to use our talents and UCATION (available from GWS), I skills, have fun, create our own suggested toy libraries, but on job and provide a service for the whole I like the toy recycling others. store even better. We began in Sept. 1976 selling Though I haven't asked them, outgrown toys be longing to our woul d guess that Toy Go Round children and friends - returning might well accept toys sent by 50% to the toy's owners. In ten mail . months Toy Go Round had grown to Briarpatch Review is a quarter over 250 individual accounts. ly, $5/yr., about small, self-sup People bring in outgrown toys, porting businesses. Many readers books, and games on consignment of GWS might find it useful, esp. and receive 50% share upon their those on the West Coast. sale. Checks are available the first of each month for all items so1d the previ ous month. . .... BEFORE YOU WERE THREE Children with their own acc ounts often return to make a pur This is the title of a new and chase and to see what they have much needed book, by Robie Harris sold and what toys with their and Elizabeth Levy, with 100+ code number remain on the shel ves superb photos by Henry Gordillo for someone else to buy and enjoy. (pub. by Delacorte Press). It is a We have done much research on book for young children about what prices and pricing, quality and they (and other children) were availability. If a toy comes in like when they were even younger . "1 ike new," we check to see wha t It seems a perfect book to read a reasonab ly priced store is aloud to 3-6 year olds, or for selling the new one for, then we slightly older children to read automatically discount it 30%. We themselves. It will surely spark have many catalogs and price lists hundreds of questions, conversa to use as guides ...... We esti tions, rememberings, about being a mate our prices on toys to be sold baby or toddler, and about growing by their condition and play value. up. It would help children to un For example, a cobbler's bench derstand themselves better, and might be nicked and dented and other children, and younger bro appear "well-loved" but if the thers and sisters, too. I can't pegs and hammer are intact, it recommend it too highly. still has good play value. If enough GWS readers are inte ..... We scrub, repair, impro rested in this book, we could ad d vise many a tail, ear or wheel, it to the list of books we sell, make missing 'pieces to wooden puz so that if people couldn't find it zles with a jigsaw and try to give in local bookstores they could get others advi ce ~!ith thei r problem it from us . Let us kno~1 if you or sick toys. have trouble finding it locally. When games arrive with missing But do look for it. It could be pieces, we code them, set them immen sely valuable. aside to wait for another to ar rive. Then we combine pieces, and both accounts receive credit. We HOME (cont.) match up toys to make complete sets. Some of our toys have re "In Blackberry Winter, Margaret turned for a second and third Mead (who did not attend school round. regularly until she was eleven) Toy Go Round assists in fund said that children used to be raising for schools and play brought up by means of stories. I groups. They collect and bring in thought I'd 1i ke to try tha t wi th toys in the group's name and re my own children but didn't know ceive the 50%upon their sale. how to start until Sean began to They are also able to buy toys and ask me questions last summer about supplies frow. us economically. the origins of man and the uni Our bulletin board, one whole verse. He woul d ask me, "How di d wall, is overflowing with wanteds, God make Adam and Eve?" or "How for sales, playgroups, schools and did God make the earth?" Knowing community activities for children. nothing, I knew everything, and I BER: TOIL AND TROUBLE IN THE BIG WOODS (3.98); HISTORY OF AVIATION (17.95); HITLER'S LUFTWAFFE(9.98); THE ADVENTURES OF SAIL, 1520-1914 (17.95); a number of books by Bea tri x Potter (PETER RABBIT, etc.) and many others. Worth looking into.
began to enjoy answering his ques tions, which I did with stories. One evening as his father was tucking him into bed he said, "You know, Daddy, every day I ask Mommy how you make things - and she al ways knows the answer!" Sure enough, the next morning as soon as he awoke he sat up and asked me, "How do you make stones?" My knowledge of geology is scant, but I managed to bring the earth from big hunks of rock through earthquakes, thundering ocean waves, etc. to little stones, which by the way are made of min erals like gold, copper, and cal cium. He nodded his head, satis fied, and laid back on his pillow. When K asked me where he came from, I followed the advice of A.C. Harwood (who was writing on Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of ed ucation) to tell the child a truly spiritual story of his origin and not to get bogged down in biolog ical details. He loved hearing about what went through God's mind as He decided where to send a 1ittle blond baby. I incl uded some biological details, too, but we had already discussed them several times (on his level, of course). He was delighted. ..... I must incl ude one more thing. C and Mhave joined the junior swim team at ----, which has, in the absence of school, become a focus for their lives. Four or five times a week they practice rigorously and attend meets on some weekends. They love it and we are happy about it for several reasons. The physical ben efits now and in adulthood, when their bodies will crave the exer cise they are giving them now, are great. They meet children with a common interest. They have chosen to join ·the team; it is not com pulsory P.E. They are engaged in competition in a real sense; no amount of apple-polishing or cheating can get them to the other end of the pool any faster. But most of all, it is an example of the best kind of learning (life) activity; they go to an expert (the swimming coach) to learn a specific skill (swimming) and they do it while they learn it (they participate in meets no matter what their times)." May I underline, among all the good things in this letter, J's words, "knowing nothing, I knew everything." We don't have to know everything, or even very much, to gi ve useful answers to children's questions. A child ask ing a question does not want to know everything; he wants to take a step or two further into the world in a given direction. It is all right even to make a wild guess, and then say, "That's what I think, but if you like we can look it up in a book and see what it says." Thi s gi ves the idea that when you don't know something you can always go look it up some where.I think with sorrow and horror of an article I read, in which two college-graduate parents said that they were looking for a school for thei r four-year-ol d because "we were not competent to teach him oursel ves." The school s work hard to make them, and everyone, think this way. But it is not true.