GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING 64 John Holt wrote rn the revrsed How chitdrenleam. 'children use fantasy not to get out of, but to get tnto, the real world.'It's adults who seem to thtnk in terms of escaptng the real world; children are passionately tnterested in malrtng sense of tt, figuringl out how to use lt, and the o storles that parents tell tn this lssue show how crucial fantasy play is to o o thls process. Perhaps because we still thlnk that anythtng children o . choose to do on thelr own can't be lmportant, or because we distinguish wgrk from play in our own lives, we forget to notice how much is going on when children play. The storles tn this issue help to remind us. All of the play described here, though of course full of silltness and plagftiness, has serious purposes. Often the play ls a way of maklng sense ofdilflcult or confuslng things that have happened - a death, i car accldent, a burglary. B5r reenactkrg the events chlldren come to understand them, defuse thelr power, and ln some cases orplore what might have happened instead. Helen Van Doren at play. Mary Van Doren, Helen's Just as often the play tn these stories is used to prepare for thtngs mother, wrltes for thls lssue's Focr:s. "The Uses of that are going to happen, or to help lmagine what mfgfu happen. Fulls Conroy's children, playlng at being famous g5rmnasts, are broadening thelr sense of what is possible ln thelr llves. John Holt used to say urit rr INSIDE THIS ISSUE: he couldn't imagine something in fantasy, tt probably wasn't likely to work well in reality, so that if he found himself unable to imagine i uootOFFICE NEWS p. 2 in-progress betng read and appreciated, selling well, and so on, it sig_ NEWS & REPORTS p. 3-5 naled to him that there was somethlng wrong with hts approach to Ge book as he worked on lt. OLDER HOMESCHOOLERS p. 5-6 Play also helps us understand tradttionally academic or cognittve tasks. often this is because we get to mess around with whatevei it b we're trylng to understand - the parts of a machine, perhaps, or the CHALLENGES & CONCERNS p. 6-8 letters of the alphabet. Through the messlng around, we become so When Friends Dlsagree familtar wtth the way the parts work that we're able to use them for whatResponses to "Feeltreg Isolated" ever purposes we choose later on (to assemble the machine, to make words). Also, role-playing can give us a sense of power where we might RESPECTING CHILDREN'S PRTVACY not otherwise feel tt, as I suspect was the case for socorro Finn who. as p.9 her mother Ktt tells it, needed to be teaching her doll to read to feel comfortable learning herself. WATCHING CHILDRENLEARN p. rO-12 several of the writers in thts rssue talk about play's usefulness to Writng Speeches chtldren trylng to understand human behavior and relationships. The John Holt on Hlstory children cast other members of their family ln roles that help them Dental Apprentlceshtp experiment wlth dlfferent ways of betng, different lidnds of lnteractions. karnlng to Teach Five-year-old Billy Shipley gets to be Daddy and see what it would be like to make the rules, and by listening to hts mother play at belng Billy, he FOCUS: THE USES OF FANTASY PI,AY gets to see htmself ln an lnteresUng kind of mirror. p.I7-2O Fantasy play is a kind of spontaneous but ongoing theater, and it requlres theater's suspension of disbelief. Anyone who has suggested to a BAE}IES AND MOTHERS TOGETHER: child that a doll or stuffed animal isn't really real, for erample,-knows how INTERVIEW WTTH KAYE LOWMAN annoyed or even angry the child becomes at this. I suggest that thts ls not p.2r-22 because children don't know the difference between real and pretend, but because talking about that difference too expllcltly robs fantisy of tts CHILDREN IN THE WORKPLACE p. 22-25 power and value. How could socorro have used the fantasy ofher doll learning to read, for example, lf the adults around her had lnslsted on THINKING AEIOUT COMMUNITY p. 23-24 talktng about the fact that dolls can't really read? Maybe some of our occaslonal nervousness about children's play INVOLVING OTHERADURS IN arises because chtldren are, much of the ilme, so much better at play HOMESCHOOLING p.24-25 than we are. They are tlreless about staylng ln character, skillful at lmaglning themselves ln seemtngly imposslble situations. Kathleen HOWADULTS LEARN p. 25-26 Mccurdy asks adults, "wouldn't lt be neat lf we called what tle dld play?' Many adults do think of themselves as playlng; Richard Feynman, tn ADDITIONS TO DIRECTORY p.26-22 Surelg You're Joktng, Mr. Fegnman, says that he was playing when he first came to the ideas that eventually led to hts winning the Nobel prize. So let's spend more time playing, and learning from those among us who are especially good at it. Susannah Sheffer
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