Growing Without Schooling 5

GROWING

WITHOUT

SCHOOLING

5 A mother writes to Peg Durkee: "You probably don't remem­ ber, but one afternoon some months ago I called and asked for your help in removing our son from the public schools. My plea was answered on the spot with several suggestions on how we might gather information on which to base our decision. I'll skip over all the soul­ searching, the agonizing over alternatives, and get to the heart of the matter - "J" has been set free! He is enrolled at the Santa Fe Community School but is actually learning at home. As soon as the decision was made he seemed to be released from some terrible burden, he immediately began taking charge of his own life and learning, and began to approach everything with the zest and enthusiasm formerly reserved for his own nature study, sports and building projects. For exam­ ple, he always hated math, and the necessity of doing math home­ work caused the most unhappy and miserable hours in our household. Now he has set himself the task of getting math and is proceeding to do so with none of the emotio­ nal overtones formerly present. We owe you a great big 'THANK YOU.' If you had not re­ sponded in such a helpful way, the idea might have died right there. It's not an easy task for a poor working-class family to attempt this kind of thing - in fact it's a bit terrifying. Yet, I feel strongly that working­ class kids are most hurt by pub­ lic schools and most in need of being set free. (Admittedly not too many parents I know would agree with this right now.) Any­ way, we need all the help we can get, and we appreciate your wil­ lingness to give it."

A LEARNING EXCHANGE R From the Member's Feedback section of the newsletter of the Learning Exchange, P.O. Box 920, Evanston ILL 60204, this letter from Derrick White, a Learning Exchange member from the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago: "I am a pack rat. In actuality, that's not so unusual. America is full of them. As a nation, we collect every­ thing from rare coins and stamps to beer cans. However, I collect an unusual commodity: information. Unused, unobtrusive information. You may ask, what do I do with the information I collect?

My favorite thing is to come home and reach back into the recesses of my imagination and record whatever it is I pull out. In other words, I am a writer - at least I fancy myself as one. One of the organizations that has helped me perpetuate this pastime is The Learning Ex­ change. When I first heard about it two years ago, I was writing a script for an amateur movie, an­ other hobby of mine. Through The Learning Exchange, I found anoth­ er moviemaker who was extremely helpful in the project. lowe an immeasurable debt to The Learning Exchange for the amount of aid, information and advice I've received. When I wrote a play that included a se­ quence about magic, I found two magicians through The Learning Exchange who were very helpful in giving me information that enab­ led me to write it. Later, I wrote a screenplay that included a fencing battle. Through The Learning Exchange, I discovered two fencing champions and became so interested in the sport that I soon will be starting lessons in the Spanish style of fencing. What's my real success in actually selling some of my works? Fair. I have a teleplay currently searching for a buyer. And I have finished a novel that a publisher is interested in. But whether or not they actually are sold, it really doesn't make any differ­ ence. I'm 17, not even out of high school yet. So, what if im­ mortality holds off for a while? I've still got two, three more good years left. Pack rats are known for their patience."

TH E CHILD FI NDER S A reader from Anne Arundel

county in Maryland has sent us a

pamphlet put out by the local

schools, which I reproduce in

full.

(Cover page) "We're looking for children with special needs." [Then, a drawing of a cute little girl ­ the children in these kinds of pamphlets are always cute - look­ ing up impishly and seductively, supposedly at her adult helper.] Please help us find them." (Next page) "CHILD FIND [in large let­ ters] is the name which has been given to the all-out effort to locate children who will be in need of Special Programs in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools. [picture of more cute children] Please join the search. The sooner we can find the children, the sooner we can plan an ade­ quate program. To learn more, read the detailed information in­ side. Then contact us." (Next page) "The purpose of CHILD FIND is to locate and identify child­ ren ages birth through 20 who may be in need of special services, and to solicit the help of pa­ rents, friends, agencies, medical personnel and others in this ef­ fort. Upon receiving a referral on a Child, the Anne Arundel County public school system will

assess the needs the child ap­ pears to have. We hope through this procedure to be able to identify all pupils who will be in need of special services, so that we may make adequate pro­ visions for their coming to school. After reading some of the guideposts below, you may find you wish to refer a child to us. You may do so by completing and mailing the form which is part of this brochure, or by calling 224-7689 and relaying the infor­ mation by telephone. Please help us identify the children who need extra help. Anne Arundel County Public Schools. We want to know if you have a child, or know of a child, who Has trouble seeing or hear­ ing Appears to be learning much more slowly than other children Is listless, tired, or over­ active Is not understood by people outside the family Does not understand simple stories as told or read Has ear aches or running ears Talks in an unusually loud voice Turns the same ear towards a sound he/she wishes to hear Frequently rubs eyes or com­ plains that eyes hurt Sometimes or always crosses one or both eyes Every child can learn. Edu­ cation can be broken down into the smallest units, so special children can understand, learn, and develop a sense of self­ worth and go on to become self­ sufficient adults. (Ed. note ­ this phrase, which appears in one form or another in much of the propaganda of the compulsory helpers, is code for 'If you don't pay to have them fixed up now, you'll have to pay to keep them on welfare later. ') These are the goals for each child. Your criteria when determining whether a child may need special help should not be limited to those listed above. Any condition which gives you cause for concern can be a basis for referral. We will evaluate the child's need once the referral comes in." (Next page) [blanks for the following questions:] 1. Child's Name 2. Date of Birth 3. Parents' or Legal Guar­ dian(s)' Name 4. Child's Agel Grade 5. Address 6. Phone No. 7. Person Referring 8. Relation­ ship to Child 9. Phone No. 10. Is the parent or legal guard­ ian aware of this referral? (Ed note - this is code for 'Do you wish your name to be kept secret?') 11. What type of spec­ ial help do you think the child might need? 12. What things have you noticed that caused your con­ cern? 13. Is the child now re­ ceiving help for your area of concern? If so, where? [Then another picture of children, which I will describe later. On the back of this page is the return address: Anne Arun­ del County Public Schools, Divis­

ion of Special Education, 2644 Riva Road, Annapolis, MD 21401. This whole back page, folded, becomes a postage-paid return envelope. The schools want to make it as easy as possible to turn in your neighbor's child­ ren. No waiting around while you look for an envelope or a stamp.] At a conference not long ago I described this pamphlet to a man from North Carolina. He said that there were many such pro­ grams in his state. I asked him, as I now ask GWS readers, to send any and all information you can find about such programs, inclu­ ding copies of pamphlets similar to the one described here. Some of the things the schools are asking people to look for are innocent and sensi­ ble enough, signs of bad vision or deafness. Nothing wrong with wanting children with bad vision to have glasses, or deaf children to have hearing aids. But there are surely ways of doing this without setting up this elaborate spy system, this mini-CIA. The school system must have spent much money to distribute this pamphlet. Why not spend the same money to say to the general pub­ 1i c and to parents, "Here are some signs of bad vision or hear­ ing. If you notice them in your children, have their eyes and/or ears examined. If you need the names and addresses of doctors who can do this, or need some help in paying for such examina­ tions, let us know, and we will be glad to give such information or help." Something like this could be put on posters, which could be put in in many public places. , What this pamphlet says, in addition to what it seems to say, is, "Parents can't be trusted to look after the needs of their children. Only we trained profes­ sionals know enough, and care enough, to do that." A great deal of what professional edu­ cators say and write carries this same message - it is one of the things that student teachers are trained to believe. We alone know. We alone care. It might be very much to the point, in any school district having such a turn-in-a-kid pro­ gram, to ask, publicly, some of questions for schools that I pro­ posed in GWS#4. How successful have the schools been in meeting the special needs of children who have already been identified? Worth noting here that a re­ cent issue of TODAY'S EDUCATION, the official magazine of the National Education Association, which goes to all members of the Association i.e. probably three­ quarters or more of the teachers in the U.S., had a special issue on Learning Disabilities, in which they said, among many other absurdities, that while the ex­ perts did not know the cause of 'learning disabilities' they did know that they could not be cured, but only "compensated for." In plain English, what this means is that if your child is having trouble learning to read, he must have a reading learning disability, which in turn means t hat he will always have trouble with reading. The only remedy

they offer is to tell him that it i s not his fau l t, and to try to think of good substitutes for reading. Such is the wisdom of th e schools. GWS will have much more to say about "learning dis­ ab ilities" in l ater i ssues . Meanwhile, as I say, we can and shou l d make very stro ngly, to the general public, the point that schools that do not know how to solve the learn ing problems of the ch ildren they already know about, have no cal l and no right to demand that people start turn­ ing in each other's children. I wou l d not grant them th at r ight even if they di d know how to solve al l of ch ildren' s learning prob lems. But a great ma ny people who might not agree with me on the broad issue of the rights of citizens vs. compulsory helpers can probably be persuaded to agree on the narrower issue, that schools should not claim they can solve problems unless in fact they can so l ve them. I said I would descr ibe the picture at the back of the pamph­ let. It is of eight children, four girl s and four boys, in a classroom . They are young , eight at the oldest. All are cute, ex­ cept perhaps one - a fat boy, with glasses. Even he is fairly cute. Seven of the ei ght are looking at the teacher, all of them smi ling. The other i s a boy in a front desk, reading, head resting on one hand. ("T hat Billy! Always has his nose in a book!") Of the seven looking at the teacher, one is a girl, standing by her desk, holding a book out of wh i ch she is reciting something. Of the other six, five have their hands raised, and the other one, a gi rl ina front row desk, l ooks as if she knew. In other words, a teacher's dream of a class - little children, all cute, all smiling, all knowing the answer. Two- l egged talking puppy dogs. Just what so ma ny people wish ch il dren were . The cover of the issue of TODAY'S EDUCATION which deals with "learning disabilities" is also of a cute , smiling, faintly wistfu l , little boy. I stress this point because the senti me n­ tality of schools about ch ildren is on l y the reverse side, and in­ deed a root cause, of their hab­ itual hostility and crue l ty t o them. They don't see them as peo­ ple but as pets, to be patted as long as they obey, but quickly sco lded or beaten if they do not.

other school functions. Then, each spring, the students write up their Pepsi- selling success story for a chance at national prizes - shares of stock in Pep­ si-Cola. Accord ing to literature the company sends to teachers, the project helps ' strengthen stu­ dents' broad understanding of bus i ness.' Peps i doesn't menti on however, that it also helps strengthen the company's sales fi gures. Another company reportedly involved in the education game is Savannah Sugar Refining Corp­ oration. Sava nnah puts out a booklet for students that might make a dentist weep. The book­ let, ca lled Sugar Through The Ages, in cludes statements such as ' Sc ientists have found that generous amounts of sugar are a valuable part of well-balanced diets for growing chi ldren.'" FAN lETTER

An old friend, Dave Arming­ ton, writes, in part:

"A note to say how delighted we are with GWS . ... 1 told [a friend] about GWS, in case he hadn't heard already, reminded him not to miss the easily miss­ ab le logo for the "Pinch Penny Press" (wha t a super name!), and told hi m (by way of high praise) that GWS i s the onl y sta pled-to­ gether, squinty-eye-print, no il­ lus trations, read-me-if-you-dare tract that I ha ve ever been wil­ lin g to read, have enjoyed read­ ing, and want to go on reading when the ne xt i ssue arrives, which it will soo ner or later de­ pending on how much the editor feels like writing and on how much other people feel like wri­ ting to hi m, and in either case it will be a surprise when it arrives, wh ich is another good reason for subscribing because why shou ld anyone send out a pa­ per if he doesn't have anything to say? And I would have mention­ ed already (but didn't because I didn't have time) a sneaky fea­ ture on the back page called 'Directory ' which is where the editor wi ll put your name if you want hi m to put it there, for no special reason except I suppose that some people just like to see their names in print and here's a chance to get some free public­ ity so why not take it, something like t he guy who put an ad in the paper which said, 'this is abs o­ lutely your l ast chan ce to send $1.00 to Box so-and- so, Chicago' WHAT THEy'RE SElLING (or wherever), and retired on the The May, 1978 i ssue of Mother proceeds . .. " Jones, 607 Market St., San Fran­ cisco CA 94105 , printed, unde r Well, many thanks for kind the heading "The New Pepsi Gener­ words. We like the name Pinch ation," the following story: Penny Press, too. We started us i ng it before we began to pub­ "The Pepsi - Col a Company is sponsoring what it ca lls a 'learn lish GWS, but were only printing a lot of inexpensive reprints. and earn project' in hundreds of The l ogo was designed by Peg Dur­ U. S. schools - a project encour­

aging kids to sell the company ' s kee's cousin Jim Hayes, who is a painter and ma n of ma ny talents. soft drinks at school functions

I th ink Dave is the first perso n in return for cl ass credit .

to ment i on either na me or logo. The project is spo nsored

As we said .in GWS#4, we will jointly by a group ca lled the

probably be coming out about ev­ Distributive Education Club s of

ery other month. But we don't America , or DECA. Part i cipating

promise this. If, as may well students sell Peps i- Cola at pep

happen, I get very in vo lved in rallies, basketba ll games an d

writing another book, I may well skip a month or two here and there. As for the Directory, it has another purpose. I really hope that now and then people listed in the Directory will write to each other - as some already have. If they li ve not too far apart, or other circumstances bring them within reach of each other, they may meet, become friends. Or their children may be­ come friends, visit back and forth. In Eslape From Childhood {avo fro GWS I said that even in a society where many adults des­ pise, fear, and even hate child­ ren, there might slowly built up a mini-society, a network of peo­ ple who liked, trusted, and re­ spected children, and that these people might create a community (extending allover their coun­ try or countries) in which their children co uld grow up, move about freely, and have access to much of the world. GWS and the Directory may in time help to do this. Other possible uses. People in the Directory might actually swap toys , equipment, etc. Or, several families might join for­ ces to buy for their children something that by themse lves they could not afford, like an elec­ tric portable typewriter, with each family having it for a cer­ tain part of the year. This might be better even where money was not a problem, as kids tend t o get bored with something when it is around the house all the time, and might be more interested in it i f it showed up every once in a while. I can i ma gine doing something like this with a good telescope, or an electronics construction kit, or even books . Dave also asked what we will do when the Directory gets so big that it crowds everything else out of the magazine. Well, we are already only printing the full Directory in every third issue. When it gets beyond a cer­ tain size, we will shrink the Di rectory type even smaller. (No complaints, please, think of the phone book.) And if you like GWS, please tell your friends. They don't necessarily have to be unschool­ ers (Dave isn't), might want to read the magazine just because it (or part of it ) is interesting. In the long run, word of mouth is probably what will bring us mos t of our readers. TIME OF OUR OWN

A mo ther writes in part: "When we met you last fall, we had just begu n our first year of keeping the children out of school, and I promised to write when we were a little further in­ to it. Now I would like to share some thoughts and observations. The decision to keep the kid s , 5 and 7, out of school this year was somewhat forced down our throats . There were no other op­ tions. But when we started swa l­ lowing, we found it slid down rather easily, and when we retur­ ned fro m our summer in the mo unt­ ains, we found the first is sue of GWS waiting in our mailbox. We knew we were on the right track.

We entered the year with no preconceptions or plan of action. I just figured life would go on, and so it has. We go to bed each night and wake up each morning, the day passes and the necessary work gets done. I know that I live in a healthy environment and that I continue to grow as a per­ son, and I trust that is so for my children, as well, though I haven't been 'monitoring' their 'progress,' nor can I point to any tangible proof of 'achieve­ ment. ' About ten days a month I go to the city to work in a print­ shop. It is my habit, genera lly, to wake up early and spend an hour or two quietly planning my day acco rding to what needs doing and what I feel like doing. But on my 'work' days I find it ve ry difficult to 'get into' that kind of co ntemp lation . Such a large chunk of the day i s already plan­ ned for me. If I go to work sev­ eral consecutive days, by the fourth or fifth day I feel very removed from the core of myself, and find it much easier to con­ templ ate doing what at other ti mes would seem irresponsible to me. I seem to have less energy for recy cling, conservin g fuel, paying good attention to my hus­ band and children, etc. When I abdicate the responsibility for structuring my own time, a cert­ ain moral strength seems to be lost as well. Who ca n guess at the degree of personal alienation we as a society ca~ se our child­ ren by structuring so muc h of their time for them? I am begin­ ning to think the greatest harm is not in the 'wh at' or the 'how' of this structuring , but in the very fact that five days out of seven, nine months out of twelve, six hours out of the center of those days, we remo ve from child­ ren the responsibil i ty for their time. Perhaps it is not even the length of the time that is cru­ cial, but s i mply the fact of the interruption. I know from my own experience that even a small in­ terruption--- a den t al appoint­ ment, say, or a mee t ing or lec­ ture I have to give--- can halt the flow of my own creat ive en­ ergies for a length of time much greater than the interruption itself. Once I change from ac t­ ive to passive participant in structuring my time, a certain numbing takes place so that it is muc h easier to stay pass i ve, 'k ill i ng ti me' until the next prescribed activity, like fi xing dinner or whatever. I have noti­ ced that the only periods of real 'boredom,' when the children com­ plain of having nothing to do, are on days when a chunk of time ha s been planned for them. There is ce rtainl y nothing wrong with planning things to do together, but I have grown wa ry of too m~c h planning for, and of removi ng it from its natural ni che in the unique pattern of a particular day to an artif i cia l projection into the future of anonymous days: 'every Tuesday we will ... ' I have ne ver known how to 'sti mulate' the children. I know that as a parent I should be rai­ s ing my children in a 'stimulat­ ing' environment, so that they will not be 'dulled' or 'bored,' growing without schooling

~5

but what is more stimulating: a roomful of toys and tools and gadgets, bright colors and shiny enameled fixtures, or a sparsely furnished hand-hewn cabin deep in the woods, with a few toys care­ fully chosen or crafted, rich with meaning, time, and care, and intimate with the elements of the earth? The only world I can show them, with any integrity, is my world. Perhaps that is why field trips were such a disappointment for us. We started off in the fall doing 'something special,' i.e. 'educational field trip,' once a week. After about a mo nth we all forgot about taking these trips. They were fun, certainly interesting, but I think we were all sickened by the phoniness. Everyone knew the only reason we all trooped into the city to the aquarium was because Mom thought it would be a 'good experience. ' Of much more continuing interest and, probably, greater educatio­ nal significance in the truest sense, are the weekly trips into town to do the errands--- to the bank (where we all have accounts and are free to deposit and with­ draw as we please), the post off­ ice, grocery store, laundromat, recycling center(source of income for kids outside of parents), drugstore and the comi c book racks- -- and the evenings at the library and swimming pool. Those things are real, things I would do even if no one joined me, that just happen to be important acti­ vities for all of us. When I am trying to 'stimu­ late their interest' in some­ thing, the very artificiality of the endeavor (and rudeness, real­ ly--- I have no business even trying) builds a barrier between us. But when I am sharing some­ thing I really love with them be­ cause I also really love them, all barriers are down, and we are communicating intimately. When they also love what I love--- a song, a poem, the salmon return­ ing to the creek to spawn-- - the joy is exquisite: we share a truth. But our differences are also a truth. Common thread and fiber we share, but not the whole piece. And so I do my work each day, work which is full of meaning for me, and offer to teach it to them: cooking, sewing, splitting wood, hauling water, keeping house, writing, reading, singing, sailing on the lake, digging in the garden. Sometimes they are interested, sometimes not . But if I were to try to 'stimulate' them, sugar-coating various tasks, making games of various skills, preaching, teaching me to them, they would not have the­ time--- great, empty spaces of time--- in whi ch to search deep within themselves for what is most true about them . And neither, then, would I. Who can exp l ai n the chemis ­ try of crea tivity? I can sit at a desk in a well-lit room, with paper and typewriter in front of me, a subject clear in my head, yet the results of my efforts are merely mediocre. But when I am in a spot of my own choosi ng, a spot in whi ch stra nds of fantasy, im­ agery, memory, and emotion, and growing without scnooling f5

perhaps some other deeper, inde­ finable essence converge, I am able to produce an immensely sat­ isfying piece of work. Sometimes when I am writing I appear to be wandering aimlessly through the woods, or sitting idly on the bridge, dangling feet and tossing pebbles into the slowly moving water. But all the while my mind is working, trembling with the tension of an unarticulated thought, until I find the linear expression for that formless en­ tity. Knowing these things about myself, how can I guess at the workings of my chidren's minds ? And not knowing, how can I pre­ sume to interfere, to lock them into sterile rooms, to lure them away from 'idle' moments? I have no idea if the year at home has been 'good' or 'bad' for the children. I know of no 'standardized' test to measure the strength of one's spirit or the integrity of a self, yet these would be the only measure­ ments that would interest me. I did discover myself to have a learning disability--- in thirty years I still have not learned that one's friends ca nnot be trusted, and therefore I was surprised, though I'm told I shouldn't have been, when a 'friend' in whom we had confided turned us in to the school dist­ rict. I don't have the time or energy to devote to locking horns with some 'attendance officer' right now, so we are opting, in­ stead, for a lower profile, for­ cing us to give up, at least for now, the easy openness with which we are most comfor table in rela­ ti ng to others." FROM OREGON

"The' school' I was tal king then of trying to organize never materialized, mainly because there wasn't anybody who wanted to organize it. Which makes me all the more sure that schools are artificial to life anyway and that there are other ways we can figure out to do exciting things with our kids. So I spent the rest of the year on my land, building on my house and weaving and sewing dolls for the Christ­ mas fairs. After the turn of the year, I turned to what I hoped would be more lucrative for the time I put into it, as money was becoming more and more necessary, and I joined a tree-planting crew with the Hoedads, a tree-planting co-operative working out of Eug­ ene. The crew I am on is offici­ ally called Sprouts and is a 'school crew' - that is, it is made up of parents, and a few non-parents who are interested in kids, who wanted to plant trees and still be with their kids. So we have a co-operative 'school' worked out where we take turns p1anti ng and keepi ng the ki ds. So far we have been perfectly free with each other to do whatever we want to do with the kids , so some kid days turn out to be super fun; others fa 11 fl at. I myself put a low emphasis on reading and ma th on a group basis; I had rather spend my time in the woods with the kids. But I find that any theories of teaching and learning that I may have or have had are constantly being challen­

ged just by who the kids are and what they are teaching me. I have a beautiful and deep friendship with one of the kids, an eight-year-old girl. One day she and I were building a dam on the creek in order to create a pool to submerge in after taking a sweat in the newly-built sweat­ lodge. She said to me, 'Isn't it amazing how muc h I am teaching you?' That made me laugh; all this time I had been spending with her I had been patting my­ self on the back for what I had been teaching her! But I had also been aware of that she was teaching me - only, it wasn't anything else she thought she was teaching me, but something intan­ gible about teaching and learning and children and living. "

arr

NOBODY SEES BACKWARDS

A few years ago a national magazine (I think TIME) ran a full page ad for some outfit with a name like American Society for Learning Disabilities. At the top of the ad, in large letters, were the words, "SEE HOW JOHNNY READS." Then a photo, of an open children's book pri nted in very l arge print, large enough so that people reading the ad could read the book. The story was of The Three Little Pigs. But many of the letters in the story had been shifted and turned aro und in odd ways. Some were upside down or backwards. Sometimes two adjacent letters in a word had been put in reverse order. Sometimes a word was spelled backwards. Then, be­ neath the photo, again in large 1etters, the words, "TH INK HOW JOHNNY FEELS." Then some text about all the children suffering from "learning disabilities" and all the things the Socie:y was doing to cure or help them. The message was plain. We were being asked to believe that large numbers of children in the U.S., when they looked at a book , saw something like the photo in the ad, and so, could not read it. Also, that the Society could and would do something about this - it was not clear just what - if we gave it enough sup­ port. . I looked once more at the children's book in the photo. I found that I cou ld read it with­ out much trouble. Of course, I had two advantages over the sup­ posed "learning disabled" child who was looking at this book. I could already read, and I already knew the story. I read it a bit more slowly than I ordinarily would; now and then I had to puzzle out a word, one letter at a time. But it was not hard to do. This was by no means the first time I had heard the theory that certain children have trou­ ble learning to read because something inside their skins or skul ls, a kind of Maxwell's Demon of the nervous system (look up this Demon in an elementary Phys ­ ics text, or perhaps encyclopedia or dictionary of science, if you are puzzled and curious), every so often flipped letters upside down or backwards, or changed thei r order. I had never bel i eved the theory. It fa i 1ed the fi rs t two tests of any scientific the­

ory 1) that it be plausible on its face 2) that it be the most obvious or likel y explanation of the facts. This theory seemed (a nd still seems) totally implau­ sible, for many reasons. And there were and sti ll are much Simpler and more likely explana­ tions of the facts. (more on this later) What facts did this theory set out to account for. Only this, that certain children, usu­ ally just lea rn ing to read and write, when asked to write down certain letters or words, wrote .some le tters backwards, or re­ versed the order of two or more letters in a word, or spelled en­ tire words backwards - though note that most children who spell backwards do not at the same time reverse all the individual let­ ters. I never spent much time thinking about how to prove that this theory was wrong. I was busy with other work .. For a while I taught in a school right next door to what was then supposed to be one of the best schools for "lea rnin g disability" (hereafter l.d.) children in New England. I began to note that in that par­ ticular learning hospital no one was ever cured. Kids went in not knowing how to read, and came out years later still not knowing. Nobody seemed in the least upset by this. Apparently this school was felt to be "the best" because it had better answers than anyone else to the question, "Once you have decided that certain child­ ren can't learn to read, what do you do with them all day in a place which is supposed to be a school?" Later, when I was work­ ing full time lecturing to groups about educational reform, I had other contacts with l.d. belie­ vers and experts. The more I saw of them, the l ess I believed in them. But I was still too busy to spend much time arguing with them or even thinking about them. Then one morning in Boston, as I was walking across the Pub­ lic Garden toward my office, my subconscious mind asked me a question. First it said, "The l.d. people say that these child­ ren draw the P backwards because when they look at the correct P they see it backwards. Let's put all this in a diagram.

p ,

2..

In space #1 is the correct P which the child is asked to draw or copy. In space #3 is the back­ wards P which he draws, because (we are told) this is the way he sees it. In space #2 is what the child supposedly sees when he looks at the P in space #1.( The wavy line represents perception)" Then came the $64 question. "Now, what does the child see when he looks at the back­