Growing Without Schooling 77 'You'd have to go to school for that,' people say, about experiences or opportuniUes that it's hard to imagtne homeschoolers having access to. "What about biologr labs? What about team
Susan Shilcock (center) is among those interuicwed for this issue's
INSIDE THIS ISSUE: i
News & Reports p. 2-3 New Law in New Hampshire, Speaking
to Estonian Teachers, Organizing Homeschoolers' Dance
Feellng OK About Belng an Older Reader p. 4-5 An Experlenced Homeschooler LooksBack p.5-6 Challenges & Concerns p. 7-9 TWo-Career Families, Single Parents,
Special-Needs Children
Watching Chlldren Learn p.
1o-13
In the Movies, A Day in the Life, Working in a Bookstore, Reading, Helpful and Un-
helpful Teaching Resources & Recommendatlons p. l3 How Adults Learn p. t+
Focus: You Don't Have to Go to School
forThat
p. 15-19
Questlonlng College: Interyiew wlth Herbert Kohl p. 20-21
sports?'Sometimes these questions are posed as challenges from a critic of homeschooling, someone who wants to point out that at least some things are surely impossible for homeschooling parents to provide. Just as often, though, these questions come from homeschoolers who are feeling stuck about a particular issue. Maybe theyVe been homeschooling successfully for a while, but they've come up against a problem: their child wants to play a team sport, or have access to school's social life, or whatever lt may be. If we take that interest seriously, the family wonders, will school be the only way to satis$ it? This is the kind of challenge that we at Growing Without Schooling like to meet. If someone says it can't be done without going to school, we start thinking of, and looking around for, ways that whatever it is can be done. For this issue of GWS, we've interviewed homeschoolers (both parents and children) who have found a way to get or provide the experience in question without having to give up homeschooling. We're hoping that their experiences, and even more important their ways of thinking about such questions, will help others who may be feeling stuck. These homeschoolers have in common what they refused to believe: that they had to accept the whole of the school experience in order to have access to a part of it, and that what they wanted could be found only in school. Jesse Schwerin and Kevin Davies didn't believe they had to enroll in school full time just to get the parts of it (running on the track team and riding the school bus) that they wanted. Susan Shilcock didn't believe that enrolling her child in high school, or even enrolling her in one class, was the only way to give her access to biology labs and equipment. When this refusal is combined with a willingness to think creaUvely about what else might be done, it becomes relatively easy for parents and children to find alternate solutions. Often, families find that focusing on the specific activit5r or experience that they are looking for, as opposed to thinking that school must be the answer, brings results that are closer to what they really wanted in the first place. After all, if what you want is to run on the track team, do you need to go to classes, take tests, and all the rest of it, just to get that one activity? If what you want is the chance to use lab equipment, is school the only place where that can be done? John Holt wrote to a group of students in l97O , ''..We have to push out against the walls of circumstances that hem us in. One of the reasons we have to push is that unless we push we can't really be sure where the walls are. We may find that we are walled in, not so much by a real wall as by a wall that we have built ln our imagination...'John was writing to people who thought they had to go to school to get a good job. The same is true of people who think they have to go to school to get biologr equipment or sports teams. It mag be true in a particular situation, but lt may not. It has certainly not been true for everyone. The only thing to do is to test those walls, see how far they expand, find out for sure what can't be Susannah Sheffer done and what is, in fact, very possible.
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