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later a relationship - a friend also has a daddy. Considering the difficulty of the task, children ' s common success in gaining command of language under these circumstances must be viewed as amazing. Yet observation (a nd now a large body of research) shows that we can expect children to learn if they a r e given sufficient input (that is, they hear enough varied talk) and if they are able to get enough feedback on the results of their communication efforts from people or circumstances. Motivation is not a problem; by vir tue of being human, children are in tensely interested in mastering lang uage, which increases their con tr ol of their world. We need only observe preschool children to see this. Approaching reading from this direction, we can hardly miss the close parall el between extracting and recognizing patterns from sound se quenc es and from visible symbol sequences . Equally, building a pro gram to utter a word parallels build ing a program to write a word . Read ing and writing, then, can be seen as extensions of the language interests and operations which the children have been pursuing with enthusiasm and success, using the built-in pow ers of the brain. But suddenly this child may be thrust into an initial reading class where all thi s is turned upside down. Abruptly, t h e child who was guiding his own learning actively is now told to be passive and suffer being aggressively taught . The boy o r girl who was learning so well in an indiv idual way, at individual pace, from individual input, must conform to a group method. Reading and writing may be pr ese nt e d not as exte nsions of ear ly language learning, but as new sub jects to be learned by logic, stated rules, and analysis of parts approaches very far away from the program-building and pattern-detec tion that has worked so well. The brain, we no w know, does not work by logical progression along a single channel, as most electronic computers; it uses multiple channels - usually a great many - and comes up not with a precise answer but with an approximation or probability (Bra zier, 1962) ... We must concede that children learn to use language in the home and associated activities , with very lit tle gross failure if they get normal input and feedback . Nor can we close our eyes to the fact that this learn ing occurs, without instruction in the school se n se, from input that is in general unpl anned, fortuitous, ran dom, ungraded, and in no way logical ly presented ... On the ot h er hand, we can hardly deny the large amount of weak learn ing and gross failure that stems from conventional, l ogical, graded instruc tion. . . . Quite the worst feature of this instruction, I s ubmit, is the use of logically selected and graded vocabularies, on the utterly unfound ed assumption that short, regular words are easier to deal with than longer ones . Considering pattern detection, we see that 300 basal words present little range of pattern variation, and so are harder to separ ate. This may bring a letter-by letter approac h, eve n more crippling and impractical, as Smith (1978) and others have shown . Meanwhile, the great bulk of the child ' s real lang uage experiences is being excluded, rigorously. To illustrate, a preschool child
is likely to know words suc h as k itch ~, toothbrush, su permarket, hamour= ~, refrigerator, television, elec
tronic, spag h etti, bathroom, commer crar:-hospital, eXf l osion ... ~ words of this comp exity (the list could be many times longer) will in most cases not enter " official" vocab ularies for years. Reading instruc tion typically cuts t h e child off from his or her norma l language and real world . Still more serious a consequence is that the limit e d, graded vocabu lary, as many observers have re marked, makes ba sa l readers barren, stilted, and dull . In simplest terms, they are not worth reading . From a program-pattern viewpoint, they are disastrous because the text does not often contain th e normal patterns of spelling, speech, or meaning convey ance. There is no way students can extract patterns that are not there ... [ DR: Hart lists 15 references at the end of his article, including Ken neth Goodman's article "Reading: The Key is in th e Children ' s Language," The Reading Teacher, 3/82; UNDERSTAND ING READING by Frank Smith (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978); and Hart's own book HOW THE BRAIN WORKS (Basic Books, 1975) which is availa ble from him for $15 .95. ]
GOING BACK TO SCHOOL - 2 More responses to "Why Did They Stop?" (GWS #36 & 38). First, from Joan Johnson (MI): ... We home-sc ho oled for two years in Kentucky with exciting re sults, then moved to Michigan last September ... We put the children in school her e because we were swamped with closing our l awn & garden busi ness, new job, new state, new h ouse that needs finishing and new baby beginning to crawl, etc . - and the children wanted to go and meet friends. They thought they would stick out like sore thumbs in public school and be laughed at and looked down on for being home-schooled. Deep down, I think they believed the taunts of Ken tucky friends that they hadn't learned a nything . The lawn & garden busines s had not left Milt and me much time with any of the older four ... But the children had bloomed . Amy and Becky had begun propagating plants, Amy got fish (well re searched), Tim got a gerbil and built a mini-bike, getting to know bike repairmen and wheeling and dealing . He also did landscaping, drove the truck, learned some of the business . They all did that ... But they were just "having fun," not "learning." Anyhow, all are now A students. Becky h as been filling out work sheets daily until I finally got her tested - she's "gi fted" as is Tim (the others h aven 't been tested) and the school principal is working out a specia l program for her. Tim is enjoy ing the social scene and sliding through classes with almost no home work . I don't know what he's learn ing. Amy isn't learning much and is counseling girls in her class . She did a puppet s h ow with a group of girls on her own strength and much push - no support from h er teacher. She suffers a lot from the cliquish ness of the girls. She is becoming a fantastic writer after school on her own and reads constantly. They all say the classes are boring but they must remain in school for the social access.
... Our home has been quite a bat tleground since the children began school. They are all so tense and ready to fight at the drop of a hat. I can see the difference now that we are four days into vacation and they a r e more relaxed ... From Gretchen Denniston in Pa.: ... After considering several options, we finally went wit h using Calvert for Laurel's first year ... I felt quite up to going for another year at home, but Laurel felt differ ently. We left it up in the air for the summer. I wasn ' t sure I wanted to leave that big a decision up to h er . But as time went by it was obvious that going to school was what she really wanted to do . I debated with myself about how strongly to tell her that if school didn't " work out " that I would have to take her out ... The bussing worked out differently this year and takes up just und er an h our in addition to the 6~ hour school day. So things looked good . Laurel enjoyed 2nd grade from the start and has no desir e to home school, which makes me sad because I really enjoyed it. She does h ave some on-going problems, especially with staying on task. I find that I have to stay with her and ke ep urging h er on wit h homework assignments, as I had to do last year when we were at home. She is easily distracted and loved to talk with the others in class. The teacher has been most flex ible and creative and has tried a var iety of ways to help Laurel. (There are 17 in Laurel's class). I've been able to satisfy some of my desires to see that Laurel does well by being a classroom volunteer . I help the teach er one morning a week ... We don't know wh at the future holds - depends what we find where we live next. My experience has given me the confidence to know that I can teach the kids myself - at lease-in the early years ... And from Texas: .. . We enrolled the boys in a pri vate school last fall. Why? One rea son is that we wanted to buy a house (which we have done), and my wife needed to work so that we could have the income to qualify. Mind you, we ' re no better off, as the tuition eats up her income; but it enabled us to qualify for the loan ... The other reason is that my wife was not happy; our older boy had become a real handful, as he is very aggressive in the pursuit of know ledge. He thought he was bored and un challenged by our informal curricu lum, yet he would become very upset every time he encountered something that h e did not understand immediate ly. My wife was just not satisfied with her handling of the situation, and became discouraged; but oh, how a year back in school can make one appreciate what a good thing one had' This school is a well-regarded private school, and it really is excellent academically. SOCially, it stinks. John, everyth~ng you ever wrote about the negative social aspects of schools certainly applies to this one . If anything, it is worse than the publiC schools ... The headmaster is a very inter esting and open-minded fellow . He was intrigued by the thought of admitting home schooled children ... Without any preparation, our older boy tested out
GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING #39