GROWING
WITHOUT
SCHOOLING
3
In its short life to date, GWS has already changed its char acter somewhat. It is turning out to be less about teaching than I thought it would be, and more about law, less about what your ch i ldren can do once you get them out of school, and more about what you may have to do to get them out. I rather regret this. I am much more interested in helping children to explore the world and to find out and do interesting and worthwhil e thi ngs in it, than I am in arguing about and fighting with schools. But it begins to look as if, 1i ke 110ses in Egypt, we may have to find ways to make things a bit hot for the school Pharoahs, if only so that they will let our people go. The dozen or so letters and phone calls I have had about this during recent months don't add up to much of a sample, perhaps not even a representative one. They suggest, though, that many people who ask their local schools to approve some kind of home study program are going to meet, not sympathy and support, not even in telligent questions, but threats .. we' 11 take yo,. to CCoJI";;! ric' 11 put you in jail! We'll take your kids away from you!" So it may not be a good idea just to walk in cold into the Superintendent's office and say, "I want to teach my kids at home." It may be better to do some groundwork first. What kinds, GWS will discuss. If I had children, and wanted to teach them at home, I think I would ask someone from out of town, perhaps even out of state, to write the local School Boa rd sayi ng, in effect, .. I am now teaching my children at home, am thinking of moving to your area, and am looking for a school dis trict in which I can go on doing this. What requirements and con ditions would I have to meet in order to be able to do this in your cOlTllluni ty?" To put the question this way puts the School Board in a bit of a spot. If they say, "It doesn't make any difference what you do, you can't teach your children at home under any conditions," they may be violating state law. In any case, such a statement will not look very good if the matter ever goes to court. If they say, "You must meet such and such con ditions," and you later meet them, it wi 11 be harder for them to say no. If they begin asking prying or hostile questions, or do not answer at all - well, there is your answer . Whatever you decide to do next, you will not have revealed yourself to them. Meanwhile, I hope that read ers of GWS who have unschooled their children with the approval of the 1oca 1 schools \~i 11 tell us
streets are full of the kinds of kids that schools were designed to keep off the streets. But if you are on of those now rare people who really care about the growth of your children and are willing NEW RECORD to take the responsibility for he1pi ng tha t grol'rth, and you try We now have about 405 sub to take them out of schools where scribers. A number of magazines they are not growing but shrink have mentioned us, which has been ing, the schools are likel y to very helpful. NEW AGE (Feb. 78) begin shouting about courts and and RADCLIFFE QUARTERLY (r'lar. 78) have run good stories about us. We jail s. Strange. plan to run short classified ads in a number of publications, to see whether this will bring in new MORE FROM "0 " subscribers and supporters. In the I asked D (see GWS #2) about long run, what will best help GWS the 'loophole' he referred to in grow will be people who like it t1ass. law. He replied, in part: telling other people about it. About half of our subscribers "Mass. General Laws Annota have individual subscriptions, the ted, VOT:9(Chapters 69-78'),lWest rest group subscriptions. In GWS Pub. Co., 1969), Chapter 76 #2 we said that the record group "School Attendance, " section 1 of sub, 14X, came from a group of which states that 'attendance teachers in Seattle. The record has now moved to Milwaukee, where shall not be required of a child ... who is being otherwise in people at the Multicultural High structed in a manner approved in School have taken out a 15X sub. advance by the superintendent or This school, by the way, the school cOTTlllittee' (p .429 of sounds like a very interesting the edition specified above). The place, and may make Milwaukee a 'otherwise' in the context of the good city for unschoo1ers with full section means 'other than in high-school aged children. The At the local school system tolerates and an approved school.' end of section 2 ('duties of pa even supports Multicultural as a rents; penalty ') of this chapter handy place to put kids whom the (p.434), however, the case of regular schools don't know how to deal with. But the result is that Com. v. Renfrew (1955) 126 N.E . 2d 109, 332 ~lass. 492, is ci ted, it keeps the truant officers off warning that prior approval, the backs of many young people (which the Renfrews failed to while they are doing useful work, obtain) is crucial - and without earning some needed money, or it parents are liable to be pro studying and learning about the secuted as for those letters world in ways that make some and numbers in the citation, this sense to them . is wha t they mean: vo 1ume 126, in hOVI they did this. It may help us approach schools in other commu nities.
the :Jor~;1C;JS~0r;1 ~c~ (:L~.),
AN IRONY
The Boston SL~BE of 2/23/78, in a story about school attend ance, says, "On a typical day, about 70% of the school system's 65,000 youngs ters attend c1 asses. " They say nothing about the missing 30%. Who are they? Why do they stay away? What do the schools do about them? The answers are, probably, that most of them are poor; that they stay away because they hate school and can see, even if they haven't got anything much else to do vlith their time, that the school is wasting it; and that the schools do almost nothing to get them back. There is irony here. As I said in an earlier GWS, compul sory school attendance laws were invented by rich people and aimed at poor kids. These rich people said in effect, "We educated peo ple are perfectly capable of teaching our own children, but the poor don't give a damn about their kids and wouldn't know enough to teach them anything even if they wanted to. So, unless we lock up those kids in school all day long they are just going to run around the streets, cause trouble, get in bad habits, become drunks and criminals. We've got to put them in school to make them into good, obedient, hard-worki ng factory hands. " The irony is that if you are in fa ct the kind of kid that com pulsory attendance laws were first aimed at, you can skip school all year lon g and nobody will pay any attention. The
Second Series (2d), ~ 109; the same case is also cited in vol ume 132 of t~e ~aSS!Chu5ett5 state re porter, on page 492. (E~. note other states and regions will have comparable volumes and abbrevia tions ) Stephen Arons wrote an excel lent article last year ... re printed as a pamphlet ($ 1.00) by the Center for Independent Educa tion (Box 2256 , Wichita KS 67201), "The Separation of School and State: Pierce Reconsidered," in which he argues "that the Consti tution protects the right of pa rents to pass their values along to their ch ildren ." He emphasizes the First Amendment as preserv i ng "individual consciousness from government coercion." ... Another excellent pamphlet from C. I.E. (a lso $1.00) is Litigation ~ Education: ~ Defense of Freedom, by William B. Ball, whowas counsel for the de fense in Wisconsin v. Yoder and in Ohio's Wh isner case-:--A year or so ago, the Comm ittee on Academic Freedom of the American Civil Liberties Un ion began to study the matter of com pulsory schooling; its cha irma n is David Cohen (ACLU, 22 E. 40, NY NY 10016) .
of nolle prosequi, and another where a lawyer was able to get a case tried before the most sympa thetic judge (who was an old ACLU 1a\,yer, and ru1 ed in favor of the parents); indeed, this latter par ticularly is the real value of getting a lo ca l 1a\,yer - he knows the local courts and judges, and can really do some effective man oeuvring for position." Again , many thanks to 0 for more good research. If others of you send information to GWS, please try to be as complete as 0 about your sources, so we (or others) can look up the same mate rial. And isn't it good to know that all those mysterious letters and numbers, that we have been seeing for years after law cita tions, in fact mean something quite simple and sensible. I have read the Arons and Ball pamphlets and recoTTlllend both of them, but even more the Ball. If Arons is talking about what he thinks the courts should do, I and most of us will agree with him. If he is talking about what they are likely to do, he seems to me too much of an optimist. Bell seems more tough-minded. I agree very strongly about the use of lawyers for manoeuvring purposes. Even there, though, the more vie can 1earn about h01'1 our courts run, who the local judges are, and so on, the better off we will be. One thing we might do well to find out is whether the procedures of a given court (in which we might someday find our selves) are written down, and if so, where. It would be useful )'caui II~. T;,c
lIIut 'e
we knuw, dnu can
show we knoH, about the law, the less likely th~ schools are to ~an~ to tangle with us. FROM ALE X
Alex Marton; 11460 N.W. 30th Place; Sunrise, FL 33323, has written us a most interesting let ter, saying in part:
"I really enjoyed issue #2 of G'IS. I parti cu1 ar1y got turned on by some of the legal questions covered in the letter from "D". I took his advice and went to the nearest law library, which happens to be at the Court House. By the way, the Court House Law Library is open to the public, at least, in my case, and yo u don't have to pretend being a student or any thing because nobody really ca res. Anyone who is really inte rested in the general background of what the courts have said in relation to various claims by pa rents who were tried for failure to comply with their state's com pulsory attendance laws can get an excellent overvi ew in 65 ALR 3d 1222. Incidentally, this num bering system also is very sim ple: ALR stands for American Law About using lawyers, I know Reports, 65 means volume 65, 3d of several cases where a letter to means tili sis the thi rd set of school authorities from a lawyer books (there is also ALR 1st and convinced them at the outset of ALR 2d), and 1222 is the page num the strength of the parents' ber where the report starts. position and thus avoided prosecu tion, another where a lawyer was For the record, I would like able to arrange a pre-trial con to raise issue with the somewhat ference with the O.A. who then optimistic view "0" seemed to con disposed of the case with a writ vey with regard to some of the
parties on their overly litigious court cases favorable to Home Study. In point of fact, only Peo course in search of a resolution, ple v. Levisen and State v. Massa and suggested that Whisner himself are true home study cases. People might have saved himself much cost and embarrassment had he attempted v. Turner was actually decided to deal with the School Board by against the parents, the court's availing himself of the judicial position being that a "private school" within the meaning of the review of the administrative pro ceedings guaranteed by such and compulsory attendance law was a formal or established type of in such and so on. In other words, stitution; the court also pointed the court would have preferred Whisner and the parents to go out that the state could not be burdened with the expense and dif through the morass of dealing with the bureaucracy because basically ficulty of supervis i ng "schools" the court subscribes to the idea taking the form of parents in that the educational establishment structing their own children at has jurisdiction. It only ruled in home." favor of Whisner's school because it saw a threat to the free exer I interrupt to note that this cise of religion." was exactly the point that one court made when it thre\'/ out the I interrupt again to point suit that some parents had out that as a general rule, and brought against a school system because their child had grad uated in all kinds of cases, the courts do not want to hear cases unless without knowing anything. The the parties have "exhausted all court said, in effect, if we let these parents get damages from the available remedies." In other words, don't come up to our rung schools, tens of thousands of of the judicial ladder unless and other people will also sue, and this will cost the state too much until you have dealt with all the money. One might say that justice, people on the lower rungs. There is a sensible reason for this. If rather than the state's finances, everyone tried to bypass lower ought to be the concern of the courts and go directly to the Su courts. It does not always work preme Court, the Supreme Court that way. The courts have an in would have as many cases as all terest in keeping the machinery the lower courts put together of government running, more or cases would come in a hundred less smoothly, and they are not times faster than the Court could likely to make decisions which might threaten to bring the machi decide them. I am quite sure that this is nery to a stop. one reason why the Supreme Court decided as it did in the matter of "State v. Peterman had to do corporal punishment. There may with a case where the chi ld was well have been a majority of taught in the home of a retired judges who felt that in the case scnool-teac;'er. llie cuurt hela before ~iler" 'i;i',,, ~eati"y inflicteJ this situation to constitute a pri- by the school was indeed excess vate school within the meaning of ive. But someone, at the very ... the compulsory education law. least Chief Justice Burger - and Not exactly relevant to home study, it is worth noting that Chief Justice Harren before him was but at least a step in the right direction, although not much begreatly concerned about the over cause the teacher was in fact cer- loading of the federal courts tified by the state. must have said, "Look, if we rule Wright v. State appears to be, that this punishment was cruel in its language, philosophically and unusual and so prohibited by more sympathetic to the parents' the Constitution, ten thousand right to choose as they see fit. It people every year are going to suggests that if the moral training come into the federal courts ask afforded by the public and private ing them to rule that their schools in a district should not children's punishments were also excessive." comport witl! the reasonable re quirements of the parents, and the parents are well able themselves to give or to obtain for their "Re ligion was also the prime children instruction in the sub element in State v. LaBarge, jects in which the state can re quire instruction, and actually do specifically an "unapproved" re so, the state cannot compel attend ligious school. In all these ance at either a public or private "private school" cases where the school. Even here, the court rec school is a "religious" school, courts have interpreted the stat ognizes the state's right to re quire instruction in specific sub utes rather strictly, and have relied quite heavily on arguments jects. How does the state insure that its standards are being met? relating to First Amendment con (Ed. note - they are obviously not sideratior.'. Again, there is not much here to comfort the parent being met in most schools) That was one of the points in who is not motivated by religious State v. Whisner, where Rev. Whis imperatives in his desire to withdraw from the established ner's religious schoo l did not obtain state "approva l " (actually system. Even inState v. f1assa, where never applied for it) because it the mother taught her daughter at felt that compliance with the home, the favorable decision is school board's minimum standards would violate their free exercise guided by the fact that the New of religion. It is interesting to Jersey statute required attendance note that the Ohio Supreme Court, at a public school or ... to re which finally decided the case in ceive equivalent instruction favor of the school on rather ab elsewhere than at school. The parents were lucky, and the court, struse interpretations of the "free exercise" clause, neverthe in its summary, opined that de fendant's daughter had received less ended by admonishing both
education equivalent to that available in the county's public schools, and that there was no indication of bad faith or im proper motive on defendant's part. But it also said that ... had the wording of the statute been some thing other than "equival ent " education, the whole case might have gone differently. In the end result, there is little sympathy to be found anywhere for the prin cipled parent who simply does not want to have official education shoved down his throat.
of a lawyer I met recently in Bos ton: Steven S. Tokarski; Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; Tufts Uni vers ity; f1edford MA 02155.
May I suggest that (except in cases of great urgency, where something must be done right away) people who want to get in touch with these lawyers write them a letter, and not call them on the phone. Writing-takes more time for the writer, but saves it for the reader; a lawyer can read in a few The most encouraging note minutes what we might spend half seems to come from People v. an hour trying to explain. Also, Levisen, the Illinois decision the law works by the written where the court said that word, and it will be good for us (1) school is a place where in to try to get our thoughts down struction is imparted; its exist clearly and simply on paper. ence is not dependent on the num These lawyers are much more ber of persons being taught; and likely to stay friendly if they (2) the object of the compulsory are not besieged by phone calls education law is that all children from unschoolers. be educated, not that they be edu By the way, if some of our cated in any particular manner or readers are lawyers, or know law place. This is good news, although, yers, who would like to be added to take things in context, the to this list, please let us know. case is somewhat vitiated by the fact that the parents were Seventh NEWS ITEM Day Adventists and the withdrawal from school was somewhat relig From a Cleveland, Ohio ious in nature. I believe that the paper, Dec. 8, 1977. quotes from the court rulings sound like ringing calls to free "... Juvenile Court Judge dom when taken in isolation, but the true meaning of the decisions Angelo Gagliardo in September found Tom and Martha Lippitt can only be evaluated by looking guilty of civil neglect charges at the whole picture. for not enrolling their daughters Amy, 7, and Alice, 8, in state I can say one thing about what I learned in a couple of days approved schools. The charges at the library reading up on these were brought by the South Euclid cases, as well as on the many that Lyndhurst School Board. The husband spent a week in went against the parents, and the jail for no;; c()",~ljiIIY wie" we cOIII"""tarie$ a~peliJeu to til""'. judge's order that the children be Courts have interpreted their state laws very close to the let enrolled in a properly chartered public or private school. ter; decisions favorable to Mrs. Lippitt and another parents were on the second or third appeal; the precise grounds woman operated a three-pupil un chartered school until Mrs. Lip on which most of these decisions pitt and her children disappeared were made do not point in a di when Judge Gagliardo threatened to rection that would make a prin jail both parents and place their cipled parent feel optimistic children in county custody. about a future lawsuit involving Mrs. Lippitt objects to mod him and his children. As a matter of fact, the experience of reading ern schooling, saying students are taught secular humanism, which ex through these volumes gives me pause regarding the kind of soci cludes God and extols man. She has ety we live in, and the liberties also criticized sex and drug edu cation and the lack of dress codes. we take for granted. " Her husband, who is an in surance man and John Birch Society member, last night called public Many thanks to Alex Marton for his good research and letter. I schools a cesspool. Mrs. Lippitt said she will think we should heed his warnings. In most places, unschooling child continue to teach her children ren l"Iill not be easy. The more we herself, as she did while staying in six different locations with understand that it will be hard, and why, the better our chances of them while away. She is a former teacher." doi ng it anYl~ay. Mrs. Lippitt has appealed the civil neglect charge - the D also sent the names of some news story does not say to what court. The judge has stayed a lawyers "who are sympathetic and bench warrant for her arrest until know about unschooling." the appeal is deci ded. I have William B. Ball ~ sympa asked my informant to send me any thetic); Ball & Skelly; 127 State later news stories on this case. Perhaps some GWS readers who live St.; Harrisburg, PA 17101. in Ohio might look further into Robert P. Baker; On The thi s. Square; Sarcoxie, MO 64862. Note carefully the words Helen Baker; 2555 Kemper; about the judge staying the bench Shaker Heights, OH 44120 . David C. Gibbs; Gibbs, Craze, warrant for her arrest. In GWS #2 we told about a woman in Iowa who & Thompson; 6929 W. 130th St.; was denied permission to teach her Cleveland, OH 44130. own child. Since then I have read To which I would add the name about a man in Greenwi ch, Conn., FRIENDLY LAWYERS
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who was in f act arrested - police came to his house and t ook him off to jail, because he had been keep i ng a chil d out of schooL In both thes e cases, and any like them that may come up, it would seem wise to ask the judge, as was done in Cleveland, to stay the arrest warrant until the case has made its way through the courts to some final decision. After all, according to the principles on which our l egal system is based, we are entitled to be presumed innocent of any crime, including keeping a child out of school, until the courts have declared us guilty . This may mean that while the issue is being decided, which may take some time, we can keep the child at home. MONEY
A fri end wri tes" "The ki ds don't get allowances. I don't even like the word in that co ntext. If adu l ts ' al low ' chi l dren to have money then who 'al l ows ' adults to have it? Each week $5 goes to each kid and it is called a share. The family receives about $75 a week from rental of income property and $20 of it is the kids' share to do with as they wish. A sort of guaranteed income. It's either a lot of money or a little depending on how you look at it. All real needs are provided by the adults as a gift. We have the connection and money-earning skills (Ed. note - and the legal right) to earn what is needed. We even have enough extra energy to provide a l ot of the wants but some of them the kids have to get on their own. We provide honey you buy your own sugar. We provi de \theat and oats, you buy your own Cocoa Pops and Twinkies. Ex ceptions are numerous because we all like that junk but the point is still made - I buy my junk, you buy yours . If you are smarter than me you will buy less than I do. On rare moments of weakness I get heavy and pl ay God. S got sore at someone one day and smashed a glass in the midd l e of the road to demonstrate his feelings. I con sidered it a transgression on all our freedoms so I ordered him to clean it up. He did a sloppy job of it, maintaining his position. I asked him if he had it all up. He said he did. I asked him if he would pay lOt apiece for any he had left. He said, "Sure." We all went to wo r k and he paid. If he had said, "No, and you have no right to require me to pay," I would probably have backed down and found some other way to lean on him. The use and abuse of power is al ways a question only half answered. We try to keep the question fresh." A nice way to put it. It is a tough question. One could saY that the political history of the human race is one long struggle to find a decent and workable answer to it. On money, a friend told me that when her daughter was about five she gave her an allowance of 10¢ a week. The child had a couple of younger friends in the neigh borhood, about 4 and 3, with whom she pl ayed, and it turned out after a whi l e that she was giving
i ng as we know or can readily fi nd out. This is not an issue about WhTch lawyers, above all experi enced and famous lawyers, have concerned themselves. We cannot count on them to work out good On the whole, I tend to think strategies and write good briefs that children, particularly from for us - at least, not at a price the age of about eight on, should that most of us can afford. We are going to have to do most of the be given less money than many of them are now, but should instead research, decide what legal act i on we want to take,what courts (fed be given a chance to earn much more than they do now. How much eral, state, or local) we want to go into, what kind of decision we each family can afford or will want to give or pay a child they want from them, put together all will of course have to decide, but our necessary supporting evidence, it seems to me better if most of statutes, citations, etc. and then show these to some lawyers, ask this is earned. t1y reason is this. Thoreau, them what they think, and if they in his essay "L ife Without Prin think we have a good case, ask them to polish it up and see if ciple" (as fine as his essay on Civil Disobedience), said some they can steer it through the thing about like this: "The cost courts. of a thing may generally be reck oned, broadly speaking, as the amount of life that must be ex EXPERTS changed for it." A very important truth (under any kind of econ In the preceding piece I said omic system), and important for that the parents had good reasons even quite young children to for wanting to sue the schools. learn. Children who ask them When their child was six, he went selves, "Is (or was) that toy, to school. Soon after, on the doll, game, etc.lWtJrth the time basis of a twenty minute examin will have to work (or did work) to ation by a school psychologist, he ea rn the money to pay for it?" are was labeled "hyperactive" and put asking a useful question. To use a in a special class. Looking into it, the parents found out that phrase now much in fashion, they are "clarifying their values" (or most of the children in that class at least some of them) in the only were seriously retarded. They took way values can be clarified - by their child out of school alto making choices which cost some gether and, still wanting to obey thing. the law, asked the school to send them a tutor. The tutor arrived and within a few minutes, in the LEGWORK presence of the parents, asked the child,"How long have you been A father called me the other emotionally disturbed?" The day. For many good reasons he is parents told the tutor they would thinking of suing his local school. not be needing his services, and the child has not been back to Looki ng for a good 1awyer to rep school since. resent him, he asked advice from a nationally famous expert on Con The story reminds me that I stitutional law. This lawyer rec ommended a lawyer friend. When the was traveling on a plane not long father interviewed that lawyer, he ago. As we got up to leave, I saw that in the row ahead a pleasant was surprised and discouraged to find that he planned to turn most and intelligent looking young of the work of the case over to a woman was reading a book called, young assistant, who, though he as I remember, Structure of Beha vioral Disorders in Children~ knew little or nothing about the law in this area, would charge him had another book with much the $50 for every hour he spent on the same kind of title. I assumed that case. The father mentioned a book she was studying to be a teacher, "Special Ed" teacher, or school that he thought had an important bearing on the case; the lawyer psychologist, and reflected gloom had never even heard of it. Later ily that she will probably do far more harm in her work than was the father said to me, "I '01 not ever done by an old fashioned going to pay him $50 an hour to read that book. I can't afford to teacher with a hickory switch, or even some of our present-day pad educate him at that price." Quite right. He can't afford dle freaks. to, and he shouldn't. People who make $100 or more can afford to RIGH T AND LEFT pay other people $50 an hour to do leg work and research for them. Schools get very upset and People who make $5 or $10 an hour an xious about right and left. If a have to do that leg work and re search themselves and use the $50 child writes a letter backwards, or reads off some letters in wrong per hour person to do QDly those order, or does anything else to things they can't do for them selves. Take this book the father suggest he is confused about right thinks the lawyer should know and left, adults begin to talk about. The smart thing for the excitedly about "mi xed dominance " father to do is to go through the and "perceptual handi caps " and book, copy the pages he thinks are "learning disabilities. " The child is quickly labeled as "having a of the greatest importance, make a digest of the rest, and have the serious problem." Specialists (if 1awyer read that. It will take the the school can afford them ) are lawyer a few minutes and cost the called in and told to take over. father a few bucks. A child once asked me a ques For a while at least, we are tion that not only completely not likely to find many lawyers, surprised me, but also suggested anywhere in the country, who know that when children are confused as much about the law on unschool- about right and left, the reason them an allowance of a penny or two a week. No two ways about it, little people want to do what big people do.
may be something wrong, not in them, but in us, the adults, and the way we talk about right and left. In short, the child's con fusion makes sense, and if ~Ie only understood that, we might easily straighten it out. I was in an early elementary classroom, working on something with some children in a corner of the room. I needed something in my desk, and asked a child if he would get it for me. He said OK, and asked \,here it was. I said, "In the top right hand drawer . " There was a pause. Then he said, "Whose right hand, mine or the desk's? " For a second, I was baffled. What on earth could he mean? Then I saw, and understood. When he looked at the desk, it was as if he saw a living creature , looking at him. So I said, "Your right hand." Off he went, brought back what I had asked for, and that was that. Later, I thought that many young children must be animists, and see objects as if they were 1i vi ng creatures. I wondered how many of them might have had that same question in their minds, without ever getting round to ask ing it. And if they didn't ask it, how did they ever learn the answer? I decided after a while that one way or another they learned it from experience. They went to the desk, looked in its right hand drawer, found nothing, looked in their right hand drawer, found what they wanted, and so learned which was meant. Like the infant I described in How Children Learn, who at the dinner-table asked people to pass her the salt, pepper, butter, etc. so that by seeing what was passed she could find out what those words meant. But some children might not in terpret the desk experience in that way. They might assume that the adult had made a mistake about the drawer. Or they might think that they themselves had made a mistake about which was right and which was left. The kind of children who worried about mis takes (because their parents or teachers worried) might be partic ularly ready to blame themselves for any confusion. Only recently, as I began to think about writing this piece, did I realize that our adult rules about right and left are even more confused than I had thought . Thus, when we ask a child to get something out of our right hand coat pocket, we mean the coat's right hand, not the child's. When we talk about the right headlight of a car, we mean the car's right hand. The right hand (or starboard) side of a boat is always ~ right hand. But the right hand entrance to a house is our right hand, not the house's . ~short, we adults talk sometimes as if things were people, and someti mes as if they were not, and there's no rhyme or reason at all in the way \,e do this. Why should a car or boat or train have its own right side, but not a house? In the theatre, of course, the confusion about whose right or left is meant, the audience's or the actors', was so great that they invented the words "stage right" or "stage left" to mean the right or left of the actors