GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING
59
ln Ftedotn and Bqond., John Holt wrttes, 'Another cons€quence of deflntng ti educatlon lui schoollng ls that as we put more and more of our educatlond reR sources tnto schools, we have less and left over for those lnstltutlons that are truly open and educatlve and ln whlch more and more people mlght learn for themdoes lt mean to say that we put all our educatlonal resources lnto schools? Are these resources really so llmtted that there lsn't enough to go
x selves.'What h around?
Apparently. At GWS we recent\r tnvestlgated the percentage of federal and local funds allocated to schools, llbrades and museums, and found (as you will see ln thls lssue) that schools recelve much more than the other two combtned. Ifs clear, then, that we're putttng more of our fmarclolresources tnto schools than into other educattonal lnstttuilons, whtch ls certainly an lmportant indlcaUon of our priorlttes. When llbraries (for ecample) recelve less money, there are fewer thlngs that they are able to do, and they get the message that thelr activities aren't A child at the Mr:seum of Comparatlvc Tl,ologt ln Cambridge, Mags. Muscums are one of thc altematives discussed in thls lssue's focus on breaking the school monopoly.
INSIDETHIS ISSUE: NEWS &REPORTS p.2-3 New Office Staff
Challenging German Schools New Jersey Suwey Results
CHALLENGES & CONCERNS p. a-5 Speech
Dilltculty
Sibling Conlllcts Relative's Questlons DISCUSSION: Reading. Writing. and the Nature of Coercion p. 5-7
WATCHING CHILDRENLEARN p.
S-9
Correctturg Mlstakes
Computers Kids in the Workplace THINKING ABOUT EVALUATING 10-l I Family's Goals School Report Thinking about Rewards
p.
FOCUS: BREAKING THE SCHOOL MONOPOLY p.29-30
Interview with Norman Henchey Museums: An Alternative Model HOW ADULTS LEARN p.3L-32 Learning a New Language, Playing
an Instrument, Flndtng Work
Without Credentials ADDITIONS TO DIRECTORY p.33-34
muchvalued. Even more tmportant than thls - and I think thls was what John was saylng ln Fteedom and Begord - ls that the rest of us get the message that the most valuable thlngs happen ln school. Or, to put lt the other way, we declde that what happens outside of school ls worth less than what happens inslde. In this issue of GWS IVe deliberately chosen several storles about adults ustng resc,unces outside of school to learn what they want to learn, and set these storles ln the context of McGlll Professor Norman Hencheyls dlscussion of school's 'monopol5r on learntng,' to slmultaneously encourage us all to recognlze thls monopoly artd see that some people are challenglng tt. GWS has always demonstrated that children can learn outside of school and can reach adulthood by alternate routes. It's my feellng, though, that we also need to get adults angry at the way school has captured our collectlve imaginaUons. Norman Henchey, ln this issue, says that school's centrallt5l ts going to become 'turcreastngly unacceptable. There's going to be a demand for the allocation of funds to other areas.'Who's golng to demand thls? It s€ems to me that if lt will be anyone, lt wtll be adults who, tqether wtththetr ch{Idren, want to see attenUon given to other aspects of their communitles besides schools. In other words, I think we wtll have to feel frustrated not.Just for our children but for ourselves. We will have to actlvely m{nd that our libraries our struggllng to stay open or that the schools are full of orpenstve equipment whtch ls avallable to only a small segment of the community. When this bothers us enough, we wlll begln to demand that reallocatlon - both of funds and of mental attentlon. Thts mental attenUon strikes me :rs belng as tmportant as the flnanctal attention. We can say that one is a product of the other - because so much of our mon€y goes tnto schools, we don't have a chance to see what librartes or museums could be if glven enough support. And, too, because school claims our imaginaUons in so many ways, we drcide that it's most centrd and most deserving of funding. Thts ts why a few examples of people learnlng outslde of school go a long way. Aaron Falbel, wriilng in this issue of GWS about learnlng Danish without classes or dictionaries, suggests that what people need to learn a language is a welcomlng communlty of people who speak that language. How can we make thts available to more people? This ls a different ktnd of questton from the one that asks, "How can we lmprove language lrstmctton tn the schools?' Also tn this lssue, Allen Fannin wrltes about flnding work without having academic credentials, and an article ln Tte.Etoston G&ebe describes several other people who have also done this successfully. These people have had to think tn new ways. They have had to ask themselves - as homeschooled children ask themselves - 'How can I llnd what I want to knoW? How can I get to the people, books or actlvlties that wlll help me?'As more of us decide to us€ soctet5r's other resources, we ll want these resources to be better supported, more readilyvalued, and more accessible. We'll want, to paraphrase John Holt's descrtptlon of an ldeal societ5r, a world in which knowledge, skills, and informaUon ts wtdely available and freely shared. When we're sure about wanting thls, we can turn our attention - as many of us in the homeschoollng movement are already doing - to moving direcfly and swtftly toward lt. - Susannah Sheffer