Growing Without Schooling 4

GROWING

WITHOUT

SCHOOLING

4 As we go to press, we have close to 500 subscri pti ons. In recent weeks many of these, and a great many more inquiries and orders for single copies, have come in because of articles or other material about GWS in ~ad­ cliffe Quarterly, Mothering,-and above all, the Canadian magazine ~atura1 Life, which has brought us many new subscri bers from ' Canada . As in the U. S., it seems to be easy to unschoo1 one's child­ ren in some parts of Canada, hard in others. People are doing it in some of the I~aritime or Plai ns provinces, also in Quebec. Others, in Ontario, have run into the usual troubles - police, arrests, etc. We plan to write about all this in more detail. Please send any news you have. RADCLIFFE STATEMENT

The Radcliffe Quarter1¥ in­ vited me to wrlte a short plece for their March 1973 issue. I wrote about GWS, saying, in part: "The idea of 'education' seems to me to have embedded in it a number of ideas, all of them newfangled, mistaken, and ilarm­ fu1. These include: 1) Learning i s an activity separate from the rest of life, done best when one is not dOing anything else, and best of all in places where nothing else is done. 2)Important learning is, must be, and can only be the result and product of teaching. What we learn for ourselves, from the experience of our daily lives, can only be trivial or untrue. 3) Teaching is best done, and most often can only be done, by specialists \.ho do no other work. 4) Children cannot be trust­ ed to learn about the world around them. They must be made to learn, told what to learn, and shown how. 5) Education is a people-im­ proving process; the more of it we have had done to us, the bet­ ter we are. 6) People are raw material, bad in their original state, but almost infinitely processable and i mprovab1e. 7) People have no right to refuse any processing or treat­ ment that their betters believe will improve them. ... Aside from being deeply rooted in the harmful ideas about education just listed, [schools]

treat their students with what Charles Silberman, no sentimental chi ld-worshipper, once called 'appalling incivility.' Beyond that, they are appallingly incom­ petent at their work, even they define it, having always found it easier to blame all their failures on their students. Because the schools adamantly refuse to take the responsibility for the results of their teach ­ ing, they cannot even begin to 1ea rn hovl to do it. How much s i m­ p1er to call students 'learning disabled' than to figure out why they are having trouble learning what the teacher is tryi ng to teach. Worse than that, the in­ formal, haphazard, and fumbling incompetence of the schools in their earlier years, which at least left some room for the work of a few serious, responsible, and competent teachers, is now being organized into a system, a pseudo-science, which leaves no room at all. To be a truly res­ ponsible and competent teacher at any level of the system, ur to and including graduate school, carries the grave risk of not getting tenure or being fired. In the country of the incompetent, the competent are not kings but pariahs."

as--­

BATTING PRACTICE

The eight year old I talk about in "Rub-On Letters" lives in a little house on a small side street, really more an alley . Cars seldom come through, so kids can play there safely. In one part of the street there are high boar~ f~nc3s on both sides, which makes it a good place for small ball qames. My friend and her friends often play their own ver­ sion of baseball here. For a bat they use a thin stick abo ut three feet long. The ball is a playground ball about six inches in diameter. The rules fit the space perfectly; with that stick, no one can hit that ball over those fences. The day I arrived, after dinner, she asked me if I would pitch some batting practice. I sai d Sure, nnd vie had about for­ ty-five minutes worth in the alley. Next morning after break­ fast she asked again, and we had about an hour more. Some of the time she very kindly pitched to me - I was amazed to find how hard it was to move that squishy ball with that skinny stick. The point of the story is that in all this I did something of which I am qu ite proud, that I don't think I could or would have done even five years ago. In our almost two hours of play I did not offer one word of coaching or advice. The-words were more than once on the tip of my tongue, once when she tried batting one­ handed (she did better than I thought), once when she tried batting cross-handed (she gave it up on her own), now and then when she seemed to be getting care­ less, not watching the ball, etc. But I always choked the words back, saying to myself, "She didn't ask you for coaching or advice, she asked you to pitch batting practice. So shut up and pitch." Which I did. Nor did I give any praise.

Sometimes (quite often, as it happened) when she hit a real 1i ne dri ve, I 1et out a sma 11 exclamation of surprise or even alarm, if it came right at me. Otherwise, we did our work in silence, under the California sun. I remember it all with pleasure, and not least of all the s i 1ence. I hope I can be as quiet next time . TO THE AClU

I have recently written to i1r. Aryeh I~ei er, Di rector of the American Civil Liberties Union, more or less as follows: "Dear ~lr. Neier - Thanks very much for your kind invita­ tion to take part in your Nation­ al Convocation on Free Speech on June 13. I think that compulsory school attendance laws, in and of themselves, constitute a very serious infringement of the civ i l liberties of children and their parents. This would be true, I feel, no matter what schools were like, how they vlere organized, or how they treated children, in short, even if they were far more humane and effective than they actually are. Beyond that, there are a number of practices, by now very common in schools allover the country, which in and of them­ selves seriously violate the civil liberties of children, including: 1) Keeping permanent records of children's school performance. I would consider this inexcusable even if there were nothing in the records but academic grades. It is nobody's proper business that some child go t a C in Social Stud ies when she or he was eight yea rs old. 2) Keeping school records secret from children and/or thei r parents, a practice that contin­ ues even where the l aw expressly forbi ds it. 3) Making these records available, without the permission of the children or their parents , to employers, the police, the military, or to other branches of the government. 4) Filling these records, as experience has shown they are filled, with many kinds of malic­ ious and derogatory information and misinformation. These may include, not just unconfirmed teachers' 'reports' of chi 1dren' s misbehavior, but also all kinds of pseudo- psychological opinions, judgements, and diagnoses about the children and even their fam­ ilies. For examples, see The Myth of the Hyperactive Child, by Schrag and Divoky (Pa ntheon). 5) Compulsory psychological testing of ch ildren, and inclu­ ding the results of these tests in children's records. 6) Labeling children as hav­ ing such imaginary diseases as 'minimal brain dysfunctio n,' 'hyperacti vi ty,' 'specifi c 1earn­ i ng di sabi 1ites,' etc. 7) Compulsory dosing of children with very powerful and dangerous psycho-active drugs, such as Ritalin. 8) Using 'corporal punish­

ment' in school, which in pract­ ice usually means the brutal beating of young children for very minor or imagined offenses. 9) Lowering students' aca­ demic grades, or even giving failing grades, solely for disci­ plinary and/or attendance rea­ sons. Not only is this practice widespread, but school adminis­ trators openly boast of it, though in fact what it amouns to is the deliberate falsification of an official record. 10) In all of these matters, and indeed in any conflict be­ tween the child and the school, denying anything that could fair­ ly be ca lled 'due process.' As long as such outrages go on, I can't get very excited about such issues as the control­ ling of violence and sex on TV, the restricting of advertising material on TV programs, the ra­ ting of motion pictures, the cen­ sorship of student publications, or the banning of textbooks and library books on various grounds. People who argue strongly about such things, while accepting without protest the practices I here complain about, seem to me to be straining at gnats while swallowing camels. To return once more to the matter of compulsory school at­ tendance in its barest form, I think you will agree that if the government told you that on 180 days of the year, for six or more hours a day, you had to be at a particular place, and there do whatever people told you to do, you would feel that this was a gross violation of your civil liberties. The State justifies dOing this to chi1aren as a mat­ ter of public policy, saying that this is the only way to get them educated . Even if it were true that ch ildren were learning im­ portant things in schools, and even if it were true that they could not learn them anywhere else (neither of which I be­ lieve), I would still insist that since in other (and often more difficult) cases the ACLU does not allow the needs of public policy as an excuse for violating the basic liberties of citizens, it ought not to in this case." TESTING THE SCHOOLS

Peter Perchem1ides, B-2 No. Village Apts., Amherst MA 01002 is fighting in court against the local schools for the right to teach his ch ild at home. Not long ago I wrote him, in part: "Since the schools are de­ manding the right to judge your program, I think you have the right, as a citi zen, taxpayer, and the parent of the child whose education they wish to control, to judge theirs. More specifical­ ly, I would like to suggest that under the Massachusetts Freedom of Information Act you demand, and if necessary go to court to ge t, answers to a number of ques­ tions about your local school sys­ tem, including the following: 1) At the various grade lev­ els, how many hours of school time are allotted each week to

uninterrupted reading - that is, uninterrupted by questions, cor­ rections, or demands from teach­ ers? In short, how much of just plain reading are students allow­ ed to do at schoo l ? 2) At the various grade lev­ els, how much time each week are the students allowed in the school library? What restrictions are there on the use of the li­ brary itself, or on the borrowing of library books? 3) In addition to those in the school 1i brary, are there books (other than textbooks or workbooks) in the classroom? How many, and how chosen? 4) At the various grade lev­ el s, how many children are read­ ing below grade level (both nat­ ional and state)? 5) At the various grades, how many children are reading at least two years ahead of grade level ? Since grade-level simply repre­ sents the national or state med­ ian, a serious parent would hard­ ly consider it an acceptable standard for any child much more than eight years old. 6) Of the children reading below grade level two years ago, how many (among those still in the local schools) are now read­ ing at grade level or better? In other words, how effective are the schools at improving the reading of students who are hav­ ing trouble? 7) At each grade level, how many children ha ve been designa­ ted as having 'learning disabil­ ities?' 8) Of the children so desig­ nated two years ago, hDl~ many are now judged to be cured or freed of them? In other words, how suc­ cessful are the schools in deal­ ing with and overcoming these problems? 9) Same questions for 'emo­ tionally disturbed.' 10) Same questions for 'hy­ peractive' or 'hyperki netic.' 11) On the basis of what tests, of what duration, and ad­ ministered, scored, and judged by whom, are these judgements about 'learning disabilities,' etc. made? 12) To what degree are school records, in cludi ng these judgements, and resu lts of other sChool - given psychological tests, available to the scrutiny of parents? 13) To what degree is it possible for parents who disagree with any such judgements to chal­ lenge them or seek independent confirmation of them, so as to be able to clear their children's records of possible incorrect and/or derogatory information? 14) At various grade levels, what percentage of children are being medicated ~Iith psychoactive or behavior modifying drugs, such as Ritalin? What medical examina­ tions do the schools give, and how often, and by what doctors, to check for possible harmful side effects of such drugs? 15) What is the policy of the schools about altering stu­ dents' grades for reasons of dis­ cipline or attendance? What per­ centage of students in the system have had their grades so lowered? 16) Where grades have been so lowered for such reasons, what provisions have been made for students and their parents to

restore the correct academic grade to the student's record? You might consider some kind of community-wide publicity about this case. I imagine some kind of public statement, perhaps a let­ ter to the editor of a local pa­ per, perhaps an ad, saying more or less, 'There is much talk these days about the family being the most important influence on a child's life. We agree with this, and therefore want to undertake the primary responsibility for the education of our child. The superintendent of schools of this district, r~r .... is trying to prosecute us as criminals be­ cause we want to do this, and is threatening to put us in jail and to deprive us of the custody of our child. To this end he seems willing to spend quite a bit of the taxpayers' money, which might better be spent in improving the quality of the local schools . ' And so on. You might ask those citizens who feel you should have the right to teach your own child to make this view known not only to you but to the Superintendent and the local School Board." These seem to me questions which people, whether unschoolers or not, might do well to ask in almost any school district. The schools' answers, or their refu­ sal to answer, might in some in­ stances make up a valuable part of a court case against the schools. Not all states will have Freedom of Information laws; you will have to check to find out . In states which do not, you might say something like this: since the courts have said, in two dif­ ferent jurisdictions, that people may not collect damages from schools because their children did not learn anything there, they have in effect established the rule of caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. This being so, the courts can hardly deny the buyer the right to adk questions about the product - schooling for his children - which in this case he is being compelled by law to buy. In some cases, at least, this argument may be enough to persuade a reluctant school sys ­ tem to answer your questions, or if not, to persuade a judge to tell them that they must. FROM flORIDA

A mother writes: "I got the information back I sent for from the [Florida] Dept of Ed. on the rules for setting up a private school. There are hardly any! Here is stuff from page 1: 'References to non-publi c (private) schools are noticeably absent in the Florida Statutes and in the Fla. Administrative Code. The only direct or inferred references to these schools which are made are limited to register­ ing annually with the Dept. of Ed., compulsory attendance, san­ itation, voluntary participation in certain programs, incorpora­ tion, and distribution of student records. Aside from general busi­ ness considerations the majority of their operations are not regu­ lated in any manner.

Under the current statutes and regulations there are no laws govern ing at least those educa­ tional aspects of non-public schools listed below: (a) length of school day (b) length of school year (c) certification, educa­ tional attainment, or specialized training of teachers or adminis­ trators (d) content and comprehen­ siveness of the curriculum (e) graduation requirements (f) content, retention, transfer, and release of student records .... ' [The mother goes on] But anyway, it's unbelievable. All you do is fill out what looks to be a one page form every year. I just ca n't believe it's so easy. (Ed. note - according to another mother who has been doing it for some years now, it is just as easy as it looks) ... I wonder if other states are like that. (Ed . note - N.J. seems to be, and I have been told that starting your DIm school is very easy in Cal., Texas, and Oregon, though I have not yet seen the regulations for these states) Maybe I should write and find out." BEATING THE SYS TE M

In the Jan-Feb '78 issue of the British magazine RESURGENCE John West has an article, "How I Beat The System," which I think holds some useful lessons for unschoolers. In 1954 he was com­ pleting his basic Army training, in Virginia, hiding from the Army his desire to become a wri­ ter, and wishing he could get sent to Europe. An Army-wise friend tells him how. He writes, in part: "T he military hierarchy is modeled upon Kafka's Great Wall of China . Yet, within this fabu­ TOus complexity, the destina­ tions, and therefore destinies, of one and all at Ft. Belvoir are in the hands of one top sergeant; one old, bored, hung-over top sergeant buried in Administration HQ. The trick is to go to see him three weeks prior to the end of training. But there is no legitimate way to work this. No one cares that I want to go to Europe .... I wait for the ap­ pointed time, go AWOL for the afternoon, and head for the lab­ yrinth where administration is being administered - the famil­ iar knot of anxiety in the pit of my gut. It's not being AWOL that terrifies me. It's the prospect of having to bluff my way through the hierarchy to get to Sgt. Ffuffuff. I've been advised to think up a good excuse. I can th i nk of none. Then, at the last minute, my Muse responds. To the dreaming Pfc. at Reception I say, 'I ' ve been sent to see Sgt. Ffuf­ fuff. ' And I've hit upon the magic word, the military 'open Sesame!' I've been 'sent', therefore am following an order, therefore I must get to see Sgt. F.... Even Captains and Colonels will drop what they're doing to point the way. I could get to see the Pres­ ident this way! I've been 'sent!'

A variation of the same gam­ bit works on Sgt F. . Sgt. F,' I announce, '1 have permission to see you.' Permission! It's the other magic word. Someone in charge , an Officer, has set his imprimatur upon my quest . It's not Sgt. F's to reason why . I don't even need a phony excuse. just tell him I want to get to Europe, and mumble vaguely about carry ing on with my studies when my service is up. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, rearranges empty coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays, extracts the document ... Next to my name, on the otherwise virgin paper, he penci 1sin, 'Europe if possible.' And that is all there is to it." Only four soldiers were sent to Europe. West was one of them. The mora l is plain. It pays to know how big systems work. FRO M L

L writes about his son, say­ ing, in part: " r~y wi fe and I di d not begi n with the notion that our son would not go to sc hool . ~Je named hi m Neil, after A.S., true, but assumed he would find an alterna­ tive school at age five. What we did begin with was ... a convict­ ion that we would help him in any way possible to realize his po­ tenti a 1.... Si nce thi s meant that we were available (Ed. ital­ ics) - without ever being intru­ sive - he quickly began to use us regularly, hourly, for learnIng, ana we founa enae oy the ti me he was two we literally couldn't stop him from spending his day in learning . He read very well by two, and by three and four moved into continuous lessons in na­ ture, history, science, and so on. Here is an example: at three, in Central Park, he was looking at the pretty trees, and I mentioned that they could be distinguished from each other by type, this was an oak and that a beech, and others were like them. "Let's make a map of all the trees in Central Park!" he said, having seen a map before. Well, normally this would have been shunted off, but since I really had been practicing what I preached we did indeed spend ev­ ery day for the rest of that sum­ mer and several days a month in following summers making maps of all the trees in Central Park (almost all of it). I didn't know much about trees, but we got a book to identify them, and one could find us every afternoon in the Park, me trudging behind my son whi 1e he shouts, "One more hill, daddy, it's another Schwed ­ ler Norway Maple." By the time he was 5, he was so used to getting up in the morning with the ecstatic pros­ pect of learning all day long that I hated to disabuse him of the notion that learning was nat­ ural by sending hi m to school. Still I took him to a few and asked him to make his own decis­ ion and of course he said he thought it would be like going to jail which he also thought he pre­ ferred not to try. Since he was

never registered an~~here, no one knew of his existence so I didn't have to test the New York State Law ~/hich says only if home learning was "equivalent" to schooling could he legally be kept at ilome. (Legal research showed constant harassment of N,Y. parents who tried to prove equivalence, like saying home tu­ tors could only be those who had N. Y. State teachers' 1i censes - I found anyone I~ith a teacher's 1i ­ cense to be useless as a tutor to a self-regulated child, so to this day the state still doesn't know he exists.) During his early years my wife and I and a couple of friends taught him all he wanted to know, and if we didn't know it, which usually was the case, it was even better for we all learned together, Example: at 7 he saw the periodic table of ele­ ments, wanted to learn atoms and chemistry and physics. I had for­ gotten how to balance an equa­ tion, but went out and bought a college textbook on the subject, a history of discovery of the elements, and some model atoms, and in the next month we went off into a tangent of learning in which somehow we both learned college-level science, He has never returned to the subject, but to this day retains every bit of it because it came at a moment in 'deveropiiient and fantasy that was meani ngfu1 12. him," I have underlined those words because they seem to me to answer, I would hope for all time, the question I have so oft­ en been asked by defenders of compulsory learning and compul­ sory schoo 1i ng: "How can a ch il d know what he needs to learn?" I have always said, but never with an example as eloquent and per­ suasive as this, that though the chi 1d may not know wilat he may need to knol"/ in ten yea rs, he knows, and much better than any­ one else, what he wants and needs to know next:-rn-short, what hlS mind is ready and hun­ gry for, If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. I f we try to ma ke him 1ea rn some­ thing else, that we think is more important, the oddS are good that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will ,oon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, wi 11 soon lose most of hi s appetite for learning anything. Some might say that in help­ ing him make that map of the trees in Central Park, L was act­ ing as a teacher to his son. I would say that he was not so much a teacher as an energetic, enthu­ siastic, resourceful friend and partner. This is what children really like best. Popular child­ ren are the ones who are always thinking up interesting and ex­ citing things to do - and they are even more popular if, ~/hen someone else suggests a good project, they willingly throw themselves into that. A child will say of another child, "Aw, he's no fun, he never wants to do anything." L is clearly not like that. Some might read into L's letter the idea that learning

means learning something out of a book, or having other people teach you things. I'm not sure whether L thinks that or not. I know I don't think it. Most of what I know I was not tauQht, in school or anYI~here else, and most of that I did not learn from boo~ though I love books, read a great many of them, and get a lot from them. I learn a great deal, and more every day, by seeing, hearing, and doing things, and thinking about what see, hear, and do. TO A DEAN

A good friend of mine is the Dean of the Dept. of Education of a major university - I hope soon to be able to say which one. He wrote me, not long ago, saying t:la t he thought that home study should be one of the legal choi­ ces offered to parents. I wrote back, saying, in part: "I'm glad you feel as you do about home study, May I pursue the matter just a little bit fur­ ther. You say that your main con­ cern is 'to make certain that the child ... is given the best chan­ ces for learning and developing.' I have to say first of all that nobody 'makes certain' that this is true of children going to schools. On the contrary, no amount of demonstrated brutality or incompetence on the part of the schools will enable children to get out of them. But beyond that, I wonder whether there really is any way to 'make cer­ tain.' If we say to people, in effect, 'You can teach your children at home, as long as you can give some sort of absolute guarantee that this will be best for the child,' the result will be that nobody will be able to do it. I think ~/e have to say that people ought to be judged capable of tea chi ng thei r m.n chi 1dren unless someone can show, beyond reasonable doubt, that they are not capab l e. The burden of proof ought to be on the state to show that people cannot teach their own children, rather than the other way round . Later you speak of 'certain sensible and sensitive gate- keep­ ers' to see that things work out OK. Here the problem gets very difficult. Plenty of judges and legislators would probably agree that many parents are indeed ca­ pable of teaching their own children, and even of doing this better than the schools, But they would surely insist that some are not capable. Who is to decide which is which? The trouble with giving this power to the schools is that it is a little like tell ­ ing me that I can own any car I want, or even do without a car, as long as I have the approval of the local General Motors Dealer. The schools are by now a 120+ billion dollar a year business, based almost entirely on forced consumption, and they are not likely to make decisions which will let some of their unwilling customers escape. In GWS, 2 I describe a case in point, A mother in Iowa, cer­ tified to teach in that state, and with a great deal of teaching experience, was denied permission

to teach her chil d at home by the local school superintendent (by all reports, a long way from any­ thing you or I would consider a sensitive gate-keeper), a decis­ ion later upheld by both local and state school boards. In all this, no one challenged or ques­ tioned her competence as a teach­ er or asserted that her child would get an inferior education. She had in fact been teaching the child at home, and the child was by the school's own admission a superior student. All the local superintendent could say in de ­ fense of his decision was that if he allowed this woman to teach her child at home it would set a precedent. It is a serious problem. If we say to people, 'You can teach your own kids at home if the lo­ cal schools approve,' lye are ef­ fectively saying to the vast ma­ jority that, no matter what the ir qualifications or their plans, they cannot do it at all. But if we do not give school boards this power to decide who may teach and who may not, to whom will we give it? How wi ll we judge? I think of a boy I know, now twelve, who never \'ient to school until he was eleven. When he first went, largely so that he could meet other children in a new town, he was given school tests, and tested at 12th grade in reading! But he didn ' t even start reading until he was about 8! Now, after not much more than a year of school, he has recently ~/on a city-wi de competi ti on (i n a large city) for elocution in Spanish, a language he never studied until the last year or so. Yet obviously, if people had oivell him standardized tests at age 7, they would have said on the basis of these that his home education was deficient and that he should be returned to school. In other \yords, the ouestion is not only who decides who can teach their Children at home, but on what bas i s. If we say, for ex ­ amp~t ha t children can study at home as long as they do as well on all school tests as students ­ or good students - in school, we change very little, The whole point of many of the people who dislike school is that they want to get away from its rigid timetables and dividing of the world into little water-tight compartments. All my experience leads me to believe that, aside from any of the other bad things it does, the school's way of structuring and ordering know­ 1edae is in itself a massive ob­ stacle to-growth and learning. I hope we can find a way out of this di l emma which will be ac­ ceptable on the one hand to peo­ ple like myself, and on the other hand to professional educators as humane and enlightened as I be­ lieve you are." FROM A TEACHER

A reader, who has been doing some substitute teaching in a private elementary school, l'iri tes: "I found myself... in 3rd grade for four days. The two teachers team teach and so I had

to team teach. Both are old-fash­ ioned dedicated types who push math and reading workbooks. I al­ most went wild. I couldn't figure out the questions and answers (I refuse to use the teacher's an­ swer book) and the kids were frustrated and in pain sitting still. By the second day I could see these kids never had time to think let alone read as a pleas­ ure - just word-grabbing, mind­ readi ng workbooks. In thei r room were paperbacks, Charlotte's Web and many more goodies not yet­ touched, because apparently the kids 'can't read well enough yet.' I went to the ... princi­ pal and said I couldn't continue unless the reading time while I was there became silent reading. She agreed to it but ~/as not very happy about me, I could easily sense . I told the kids new rules, 'If you don't know a word and are really bothered by it, signal and I'll come whisper in your ear. No sounding it out, no vowels, no syllables, no questions, just the word.' Very few asked after the fi rs t fe~/ mi nutes. But they as ked for silent reading twice a day." Jim Herndon makes much the same kind of report in his book How To Survive In Your Native Land-:-When he and one or two other teachers stopped asking the children questions about their reading, stopped grading them, stopped tracking them, and just let them read, they all read bet­ ter, even the ones who had been very poor readers. But even that school could not think of any­ thing so sensible and simple as 'a readin0 pr09ram , ' and refused to learn anything from it. Children readinq for their own pleasure rarely stop to ask about words. They want to get on ~Ii th the story. If the word is important, they can usually make a good guess about what it is. "He drew an arrow from his quiv­ er . " Easy to see that a qui ver is some sort of gadget to put arrows in. t10re complicated words they figure out by meeting them in many different contexts. People learn to read well, and get big vocabularies, from books, not workbooks and diction­ aries. As a kid I read years ahead of my age, but I never looked up words in dictionaries, didn't even have a uictionary. In my lifetime y-aQn't believe I have looked up even as many as fifty words - and neither have most good readers. MOTIVE

Whenever I hear school peo­ ple say, "The students aren't mo­ tivated, how do I motivate them? " I think of the story about the American anthropologist (I think it was Hargaret t·1ead) and the Balinese. This took place in the 1920' s, when very few Westerners had ever been to Bali. The an­ thropologist was talking to some Balinese, trying to learn about this strange and very different culture . At some pOint she asked about their art. The Balinese were puzzled by this question. They did not know what she meant by art. So she talked for a