TEACH YOUR OWN--A Hopeful Path for Education--By John Holt
Home Schoolers at Work
Following a Child's Interests
Art Harris wrote of his two sons' unstructured learning: "More for appearances than anything else, we borrowed some of those dull textbooks & readers from our school-assigned advisor, stashed them away, & proceeded on our own. Our oldest son took his high-school equivalency test & scored well in all areas."
Another home-schooling parent describes their teaching program: "First, we provide him with the materials he needs to learn with. Second, when he has a question or needs help with something, we try to assist him, but no more than necessary. Third, we're patient. We don't expect him to learn anything he's not ready for."
Home School Days
Judy McCahill wrote about her first home teaching experience:
"We are using the Calvert Home Instruction course--because we said we would. But we are not using them the way they were intended to be used. For one thing, they are highly structured, so well organised that any dummy who can read could use them with his child. If they were followed faithfully, there would be no time left for teaching.
"At the beginning of each month, the children make & decorate a folder. We fill the folders with paperwork, including the tests which Calvert provides; we never send these in to Calvert since we are not using the Advisory Teaching Service. This `proves' that we are keeping up in (almost) every subject.
"There is not nearly so much paperwork done as Calvert demands, but every paper is perfect. When the children make mistakes, they erase & correct them immediately.
"Many of the drawings that they all do spontaneously at the dining room table are put into the folder in case anyone wonders if we are having `art.' If on a school day we go somewhere `educational,' we paste a souvenir of the trip on a piece of coloured paper & include it. The two older children each keep a list of pages done in separate workbooks & include these in their folders. So we actually look pretty good, even if we aren't. And the filed folders at month's end, which we ritually arrange & staple, seem to give the children a sense of accomplishment.
"From time to time I keep some notes on academically related activities which the children do spontaneously.
What is important to remember about these activities is that because they were self-initiated they were meaningful; that is, because they fit in with an on-going &/or current interest, what was learned is not likely to be forgotten. This deepened my curiosity about what the children would teach themselves if they were freed from imposed schoolwork entirely. Hopefully, next year (if we are stationed abroad) I can move toward satisfying this curiosity."
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Nancy Wallace writes: "We never ask our kids to do things that we don't do ourselves, & consequently we inspire each other. We all read a lot, we all write a lot, we all speak very broken French, we all practice the piano, etc. People are often amazed at how `selfless' I am. They think they could never spend so much time with their kids, do all the necessary preparation it must take to `teach' all those subjects, etc. Actually, I have never been so self-indulgent. I always wanted to learn French & take piano lessons & when Ishmael asked to do those things, I knew that here was my chance! As for math, I can barely balance our checkbook, so I enjoy learning along with Ishmael. And he teaches me spelling & history (don't tell!), so I am feeling very alive & full. And I can't even begin to tell how much Vita benefits. She's only 4, but she keeps right up with French & piano & is beginning to read & loves numbers..."
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A father writes: "I will not be sending my children to school (the oldest, now five, would normally be entering Kindergarten this September). He has been reading now for about a year. I would not have believed anyone who told me a child could make the kind of progress D. has made. He is interested in space travel & astronomy & we have made available to him all literature on the subject we could find. He gobbles it up at an incredible speed & begs for more. He reads books about the planets & can discuss intelligently the effects of gravity on the various planets & moons (i.e. that the moon has no air because it has insufficient gravity to hold the air, & that on Jupiter he would be squashed flat)."
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A mother writes: "Finally, we settled in on a one-day, one-child routine. One day I would teach John all his subjects, while Jim was to read & match all his spelling words. He could do the reading & spelling at any time of the day or evening as long as he did something; the rest of the time he could play & do what he wanted. The next day I would work with Jim, & John would be free. They really liked this, & since they enjoy reading & spelling, this was no burden to them.
"It would take us about 3 hours to do the day's work, & the rest of the day the boys were free. Some days we took off completely to go to places of interest to them: Playing in the local park, going to a peanut butter factory nearby, & visiting McDonald's for a tour & some goodies. Since we considered life-learning & learning-life, school was always in & always out. It was great!
"We did not work at a table or desk; we bought each of them a notebook & we sat on the sofa together & held our books on our laps. (It is wonderful to be able to sit next to your own child & touch arms & hug or wrestle if you want & still get work done.) We could yell & cry & laugh, we could read with the most ridiculous expressions whenever we wanted & no one cared."
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A mother writes about beginning home schooling: "Many people have asked me if I used a curriculum with P., & I did--this past year, from the Home Study Institute in Washington, D.C. I was not planning to use a definite curriculum this year but I have changed my mind, simply because I think it is a good idea to have some textbooks around in case the school authorities start snooping!"
Home Schooling a Child with Down's Syndrome
A mother who has taught her teen-aged daughter born with Down's syndrome writes about this experience:
"L. only once had any special education involvement, at a nursery school run by the local association for retarded children, & it was bad to useless. From there on she went to regular schools--private nursery school, private kindergarten, a public school which was running an experimental open primary, & a Catholic private academy. I wanted to keep her out of special ed. situations, which I feel increase the degree of handicap by providing handicapped models of behaviour.
"Now, teaching her at home, we have a schedule of swimming, ballet, drawing & painting, & needlepoint. There were other considerations besides the learning ones involved too. I felt it was not safe for her not to swim well, & her ear operations had made her fearful of going whole hog on her own. So she has private lessons in that. And I read about a ballet dancer who had taken ballet initially to overcome flat feet, so we began this mainly for that reason. Too, the more I went into it, the more I decided that what L. needed was a reprieve from the morass of schoolwork that, in spite of the good-as-possible situations I'd been able to find, was not at all as helpful or satisfying as I felt might be possible--somewhere, somehow. So I decided not to do anything at all academic for awhile. Just say the heck with it.
"So we went to the beach in the lovely October & even November weather that had been denied us as prisoners of school, played kickball in the back field, & proceeded with the courses.
"On one trip to the shore, paying tolls, it was again clear that L. still didn't know one coin from another, so that became the first academic venture. And it provided one of my first principles: Though the general ideas are the same for L. as with regular kids out of school, certain things have to be done differently. While other kids probably need only a bit of assistance & guidance in following what they learn & are interested in, L. really has to have regular exposure. Not lengthy but regular--daily, if possible, including weekends.
"Every day I put prices on four things & she worked them out with a plastic measuring cup full of change--a permanent collection of coins. I remember trying to get the school people to have her use real money but they seemed to think that was quaint. They just loved their cardboard coins. Within a month she had it down pat. I switched to numbers on paper, & she could do it that way too.
"It seems to me that this question of scheduling is central. I suspect that it's only the school requirements that keep some families at it at all, & that in doing so, they undo some of the benefits of trying home schooling in the first place.--That is, feeling under pressure to produce for the satisfaction of the schools & their requirements, they may lay a lot of pressure & guilt on the kids.
"Her needlepoint is terrific, in ballet she is just barely less competent than the older girls in the class (20-40), & in art, according to her teacher, she is really gifted.
Her art teacher says of her, `This is not the same child I met last fall.'"
Children, Their Nature & Needs--Living with Children
There really are ways to help children, as they grow, to keep & build on all their best qualities. In "The Continuum Concept," Jean Liedloff says & shows that babies grow best in health, happiness, intelligence, independence, self-reliance, courage, & cooperativeness when they are born & reared in the "continuum" of the human biological experience, i.e., as "primitive" mothers bear & rear their babies, & probably always have. What babies have always enjoyed, needed, & thrived on, for the first year or so of their lives, until they reach the crawling & exploring stage, is constant physical contact with their mothers (or someone equally well known & trusted).
One of the most peculiar destructive ideas that "civilised" people have ever invented is that children are born bad & must be threatened & punished into doing what everyone around them does. No continuum culture expects children to be bad as a matter of course, to misbehave, to make trouble, to refuse to help, to destroy things & cause pain to others, & in cultures with long traditions of child-rearing these common (to us) forms of behaviour are virtually unknown.
Some years ago a group of American child experts went to China to study Chinese children, child-rearing, & schools. To their Chinese counterparts they eagerly asked what they did when their children had tantrums, fought, teased, whined, broke things, hurt people, etc. The Chinese looked at them with baffled faces. The Americans might as well have asked, "What do you do when your children jump 300 feet straight in the air?" The Chinese could only say over & over, "Children don't do those things." The American visitors went away equally as baffled. It never occurred to them to suppose that one reason Chinese children are not bad in the way so many of ours seem to be is that nobody expects them to be.
In short, the problem children of the affluent Western world are as much a product of our culture as our automobiles.
Ms. Liedloff says that some or many of the most harmful effects of severe early deprivation (of closeness & contact) can be largely made up for or cured if a human being is richly supplied with these necessities later in life. With enough kindness, tenderness, patience & courtesy, one can make up for much of this early loss.
Born Kind--Living with Children
Extensive research has shown that many children, even as young as one year old, when they see other people distressed or suffering, are upset & want to help. An article on this says, in part:
"A two-year-old hits a small girl's head accidentally. He looks aghast. `I hurt your hair,' he tells the little girl. `Please don't cry.'
"Another child, a girl only 18 months old, sees her grandmother lying down for a rest. She toddles over to her crib, grabs her own blanket, & covers her grandmother with it.
"These children are normal Americans, neither angelic nor exceptional," says Marian Radke Yarrow, chief of the Laboratory of Developmental Psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health. After a detailed study of children between the ages of 10 months & 2-1/2 years, she expects infants to show empathy for the feelings of others. Babies have amazingly generous impulses, she says, & many children perform acts of altruism at a surprisingly early age.
"Such findings challenge traditional theories of child development, which hold that young children are totally self-centered & selfish creatures, quite unable to act altruistically before the age of five or six.
"One of the study's most surprising findings was that as early as the age of one, some babies actually try to comfort people who are crying or in pain. They snuggle up to them, pat them, or hug them. Sometimes they even attempt to help them."
On Saying "No"--Living with Children
Even a young dog is smart enough to know that "No" does not have to be just a signal, an explosion of angry noise. It can be a word, conveying an idea. It does not have to say, "You're a bad dog, but we're going to beat the badness out of you." It can say instead, "You're a good dog, but this thing that you're doing isn't what we do around here, so please don't do it anymore."
Except in rare times of great stress or danger, there is no reason why we cannot say "No" to children in just as kind & gentle a tone as we say "Yes." Both are words. Both convey ideas which even tiny children are smart enough to grasp. One says, "We don't do it that way," the other says, "That's the way we do it." Most of the time, that is what children want to find out. Except when overcome by fatigue, or curiosity, or excitement, or passion, they want to do right, do as we do, fit in, take part.
Louise Andreshyn, a parent in Manitoba, says about this:
"You've made an excellent point about the difference between `No' the angry signal & `No' the meaningful word. There is a third kind of `No,' perhaps the most common of all, neither an angry explosion nor a meaningful word--the no, no, no that goes on all day with some parents. This constant hassling is simply a running ineffective barometer.
"If we can become aware of how we use `No' we can change our use of it. First, as parents, we can simply SHUT UP! If we can sit back & listen to ourselves, we can hear how much negative harassment we throw at our kids. If a parent would seriously & objectively listen to what he says (through his child's ears), he would be appalled & could probably with some effort change that kind of `No'.
"I think here of Lisey (then 3) who was pouring herself a glass of milk yesterday. She had gotten it from the fridge, opened it, poured from a fat 2-quart carton a small juice-glass of milk, had drunk it, then had gotten a paper towel & was wiping up the milk spilt on the table. There was more milk spilt than the towel could absorb so as she wiped now, the milk was being pushed off the table onto the floor.
"I walked in at this point & started with the running `No, no' commentary in a whiny voice: `Ooooh no, Lisey, you should have asked someone to pour you a glass of milk--no, don't wipe it up, it's going on the floor, no, stop, don't do it, I'll do it, it's bad enough on the table--look, now you've got it on the floor--you're making more work for me.'
"Happily at this point I was struck by a rare beam of sanity & it said to me, `Oh, quit being such a nag, Lisey has just poured her first glass of milk all by herself & you're ruining the whole thing for her.'
"And suddenly I looked & saw a very little girl trying very hard to grow up--trying to wipe up herself the mess she had made getting herself a drink of milk. And I said, `Lisey, I think Sparkle (the dog) would like this extra milk.'
"Lisey stopped & looked at me. I had finally said something of meaning. All the negative harassment up till then she had been trying to ignore.
"I said, `If you get Sparkle's dish, we can put the milk in it.'
"She got it & we did.
And immediately she began an animated chatter about how Sparkle would like this milk & how she had poured them both a drink of milk, etc. Until then, she had barely said one word. In fact, if I had pushed her far enough--`OK, Lisey, get out of the kitchen while I clean up your mess'--she would have probably ended up crying. (Over spilt milk!)
"But the happy ending here did not require too much effort on my part because I wasn't very emotionally involved. My mind could still be objective about the situation to the extent of being able to control & change it."
Testing Adults--Living with Children
In "Growing With Your Children," Herbert Kohl, like just about everyone else who writes about children, says that they have to keep testing adults in order to find limits. I absolutely disagree. They do it all the time, no question about that. But I don't think they have to do it, or do it primarily for that reason, & I don't think we ought to let them do it. If they want to find out, as they do, the rules of family life & human society, there are other & better ways to do it.
From many encounters I have since had with many children, I have come to believe very strongly that children as young as five & perhaps even three are well able to understand the idea of "testing"--doing something to someone else or in front of someone else, knowing they don't like it, just to see what that other person will do, & to understand that this is not good. If I thought a child was doing this to me, I would say, "Are you testing me, just doing that to see what I will do?" If the child said, "Yes," I would say, "Well, I don't like that, it's not nice to do & I don't want you to do it. I don't do bad things to you just to see what you will do. Then it's not fair for you to do that to me."
I think children are perfectly able to understand these ideas, to see that they are fair, & to act upon them. When they do, it will make our lives together much easier.
"Okay?"--Living with Children
When adults want children to do something--put on coats, take a nap, etc.--they often say, "Let's put on our coats, OK?" or "It's time to take our naps now, OK?" That "OK?" is a bad thing to say. Our lives with children would go better if we could learn to give up this way of talking. The trouble with this "OK?" is that it suggests to the children that we are giving them a choice when we really are not. By giving what we intend as a command & then saying "OK?" we invite resistance & rebellion. In fact, the only way a child can find out whether or not we are offering a real choice is to refuse to do what we ask. It is their way of saying, "Do you really mean it?"
Many adults feel that in saying "OK?" they are only being courteous. But this is a misunderstanding of courtesy. It is perfectly possible to be firm & courteous while making clear to someone that you are not offering a choice but telling them what you want to happen or is going to happen.
Some friends of mine have a No Smoking rule in their house. They are in earnest about this. Inside their front door is a sign saying "Thank You for Not Smoking." But every now & then a guest misses the sign, or takes it as a plea & not a command, & starts to light up. My friends gently but firmly inform their friend & guest that if he or she wants to smoke, the porch is the place to do it, but not in the house. No one argues, no one is offended.
Tantrums--Living with Children
People who write about tantrums seldom give any strong sense that the anger of 2-year-olds is about anything. One might easily get the impression that these little children are swept by gusts of irrational "aggression" & rage as the coasts of Florida are from time to time swept by hurricanes. Instead, I would insist that much of the seemingly irrational & excessive anger of little children--"tantrums"--is in fact not only caused by things that happen to them or that are said & done to them, but that these things would make us angry if they happened or were said & done to us. Even in the kindest & most loving families, 2-year-olds get reminded 100 times a day, perhaps by the words & acts of their parents, perhaps by events, by Nature herself, that they are small, weak, ignorant, clumsy, foolish, untrustworthy, troublesome, destructive, dirty, smelly, even disgusting.
The mother of J., a little boy, wrote about his tantrums & how they were both learning how to avoid them.
"I've never seen a kid more into organising things. He plays with dominoes & calls them either adobes, for building houses, or bales of hay, & has them stacked, lined up, or otherwise arranged in some perfect order; same with the trucks; he'll scream & yell, as per your theory of 2-year-old behaviour, if you snatch him up from a group of trucks & carry him off to lunch. But if you give him a couple of minutes to park them all in a straight line then he'll come willingly. Your theory (treat them like big people) works over & over again."
Lifeschool--Living with Children
A young teenage reader writes eloquently about how much she learns from that part of her life that is hers:
"When I left school at the end of the sixth grade to be out for two years, I learned a new realisation. Basically I learned that grades prove nothing. I also learned a lot of different things that I wouldn't have, if I had been in public schools. Public schools can't offer experience. I learned how to deal with & relate to adults better because I was around them so much--all the kids were in school! I learned many practical skills that I never would have learned in public school.
"When I look at kids my age, it makes me glad that we did what we did. I am capable of doing so many more things it amazes me. And it's all because I had the time to learn, & enjoy while I was learning."
Jud Jerome writes about the experience of his daughter in "lifeschool."
"Last year she wanted to apply for a government vocational programme, for which she needed a high school diploma, so went to an adult education class for a few months, & took the test, passing in the top percentile (& being offered scholarships to various colleges). She `graduated' earlier than her classmates who stayed in school. I think her case illustrates especially dramatically the waste of time in schools. She is by no means a studious type, would never think of herself as an intellectual, has always been more interested in milking cows & hoeing vegetables & driving teams of horses than in books, & in her years between 13 & 18 moved comfortably into womanhood & acquired a vast number of skills, had a vast range of experiences in the adult world, yet managed to qualify exceptionally by academic standards. By comparison, her classmates who stayed in school are in many cases stunted in mind, emotionally disturbed, without significant goals or directions or sound values in their lives."
Real World Skills--Living with Children
From the cover story of the April 1980 issue of Home Educators Newsletter:
"We have one child that keeps all vehicles in top running shape, another who provides milk, eggs, & meat for the table, another who displays beautiful artwork, & another who enjoys gardening.
"Katrina spends several hours in the morning & afternoon doing her farm work, but she is the beneficiary of her own labour, keeps all the records for feed, hay, & other purchases so that she can calculate her profit when animals are sold & what man-hours & money have been expended to gain that profit. I personally am not the least interested in any type of farm work & yet I know that this is developing with Katrina an ability far beyond anything that I could teach her. How much barley will a pig eat in a week, a month, till time for the market? What animals have the quickest turnover? What type of labour hours are necessary to operate a farm? I couldn't answer any of these questions, though Katrina can, & for an 11-year-old girl I consider that quite an accomplishment.
"John, at age seven, has all his own tools, including a power saw & drill. He builds beautiful miniature log cabins & will be in charge of measuring & cutting boards for the partition project.
"Kevin has repaired all my major appliances since he was kindergarten age.
"My dishwasher has been child repaired, my bathroom was child paneled, my toilets were child plumbed.
"People often ask me how I can tolerate the children doing things that are normally only done by adults, & professionals at that. Well, I watch the children carefully & never expect one to do a job which is over his head. I experiment constantly, finding natural abilities & letting them try their wings in harmless, inexpensive ways. If a child shows an ability in a certain area such as plumbing, I try them out taking apart an elbow & putting it back together without a leak. Next comes faucets, or setting a toilet. Next might come the installation of a shower unit, & finally the child is ready to plumb a bathroom. I would have no qualms about letting my 13-year-old plumb my entire house. After all, he wired it for D.C. electricity when he was only eight. Our daughter Cathy is remodeling her own home now (she's 19), & she has done all her own plumbing, plastering, wallpapering & carpentry."
Living & Working Spaces--Living with Children
Bill McElwain, a Harvard man who had taught French, run a Laundromat, & become a discouraged farmer, moved to the prosperous town of Weston, Mass., & saw a lot of fertile suburban land going to waste.
He saw suburban teenagers with few alternatives to football, tennis, drama or boredom, & he saw poor city people paying more for food in Roxbury than he was in Weston.
In April, 1970, Bill began with borrowed hand tools & donations of seed & fertiliser. With a handful of dedicated helpers, he cultivated almost an acre; the produce was trucked into Roxbury & distributed free to a children's food programme & a housing project. There, residents collected donations that found their way back to the farm.
Within a year, Bill was hired as project director of the new Weston Youth Commission. In 1972, he convinced the town to buy the farmland. He ignited a small but dedicated cadre of supporters, including enough people in the volunteer government to insure the continued support of the town. More kids got involved with the farm, & with the proceeds from the vegetables (sold in Boston for a nominal $1 a crate) he paid workers a minimum wage. The town put more money & equipment into the project, & by 1975, the farm was growing as much as 100 tons of produce a year. About 25% of this was sold locally; the rest went into Boston.
Bill McElwain was 50 years old when the town bought the farm. He is still project director for the Youth Commission & he still writes a column for the Weston Town Crier, in which he proposes dozens of other activities for the young to take part in.
One fall, for instance, Bill counted 600 maple trees along Weston roadsides. In a year & a half, he & a crew built a sugarhouse near the junior high school (using pine boards milled from local trees); scrounged buckets, taps, & evaporating equipment; & produced a cash crop of 250 gallons of grade A maple syrup. There was cider pressing, orchard reclamation, firewood cutting, cart making, construction of a small observatory.
Virtually all his plans, large or small, have these common ingredients: They provide young people with paying jobs that are educational, socially useful, & fun; they operate on a small scale, need little capital, & use readily available resources, preferably neglected ones; & they bring a variety of people together to solve common problems in an enjoyable context.
Homemade Stories--Living with Children
Children, whether in city or country, are more likely to be interested in stories in which they play a part, & which are full of things drawn from their everyday life. Parents, or other people who know the children well, are the ideal people to make up such stories. Even if they are not very polished, such stories are likely to be much more interesting than most of the stories in books for little children.
A Very Young Artist--Living with Children
A father writes about a "precocious" artist:
"M. began to draw when she was 6 months old. Everything she did was treated as important. By the time she was one year old she could draw better than anyone around her. Knowing that she could do something better than anyone, even better than the ever-competent giants around her, emboldened her strokes. In other areas it gave her the confidence to try something difficult, then to continue until she could do it well.
"At one year of age she was given an easel & some tempera paints. On her second birthday she got nontoxic acrylics, the medium she has preferred since. We made the surprising discovery that M. is a child artist who does not paint children's art. Her work would look absurdly out of place in a show for children's art.
"It is recognised that children have their original imagination destroyed in the socialising process & that as adult artists they must struggle to regain it. The most obvious thing to do is to stay out of school & maybe to prevent their exposure to phony children's art. If M. had been forced to go to school fulltime, her drawings would certainly be stiff & uninteresting. They would turn out like children's drawings are "supposed" to be, cute & easy to patronise.
"I am ready to believe that M. is an exceptionally talented child. But that is what I felt when I first heard 4-6-year-old children, students of Suzuki in Japan, playing difficult music by Bach, Vivaldi, etc., in perfect time & tune. Perhaps other children might do work of equal beauty & power if their talents were taken seriously & given scope."
Finding Out--Learning without Teaching
Since to so many people "learning" means what happens in school, or what is supposed to happen, I would rather use other words to describe what we humans do as a natural part of our living. "Finding out" seems to fit pretty well. Here a reader talks about this continuing process:
"What counts is the ability to teach oneself. As my employer puts it, `Though we may seem to know a lot around here, we succeed because we start out by admitting our ignorance, & then set out to overcome it.'
"People often say of me that I `know' a great deal about this or that; but often I have only average knowledge or less. In any given context, however, I can identify what I need to know next, & self-reliance has taught me to immediately acquire the knowledge. If people recognised knowledge as being important only in relation to actual goals rather than being some kind of unquestionable goal in itself, they might better know how to go about acquiring it. A market exists for free schools offering not `teachers' but the resources necessary for self-teaching."
The Short, Happy Life of a Teaching Machine--Learning without Teaching
When the Santa Fe Community School was just starting, a young inventor, who hoped to market one of the "teaching machines" then in fashion, lent one of his models to the school. For awhile the children took turns pushing the buttons & answering questions on the cards. This only lasted a short while. Then the children began to say, "Open the box! We want to see inside the box!" Someone opened up the front panel, showing the cards, mounted on a revolving drum. Beside each card were five little holes, & a metal plug to stick into the hole matching the "right answer" to the question on the card.
The children considered all this a minute, & then fell to work--making cards. One child would load up the machine with his cards, & put in the answer buttons, then another child would come & take the test, then they would trade places. This happy game went on for a day or two. Then the children, having done everything with the machine that could be done with it, grew bored with it, turned away from it, & never touched it again.
This incident tells us more about the true nature of children. We humans are not by nature like sheep or pigeons, unquestioning, docile, happy to work the machine as long as it lights up its green lights or rolls out its food pellets. Like these children, we want to find out how the machine works, & then work it. We want to find out how things happen, so that we can make them happen. That is the kind of creature we are. Any theory of learning or teaching which begins by assuming that we are some wormlike or ratlike or pigeonlike creature is nonsense & can only lead (as it has & does) to endless frustration & failure.
Learning a New Language--Learning without Teaching
After my father had retired from business, he & my mother began to spend the winter half of each year in Mexico. My father, who had been a good enough student to graduate from college, told himself sternly, & kept telling himself for six years & more, that he ought to "learn Spanish." My mother, who had not gone to college, & had been a poor student could not have cared less about "learning Spanish." What she wanted was to be able to talk to these people around her. She began to ask the names of things, to ask how to ask the names of things. The people she talked to talked back, showed her things & told her their names, gently corrected her mistakes in pronunciation or usage so that she would be better understood, & helped her in every way they could. Very soon she could talk easily & fluently with people on many subjects. At the same time, my father, who thought of himself as trying to "learn Spanish," which meant to learn to speak it correctly, so that then he could talk to the people around him, never learned more than 20 or so words in all the years he lived in Mexico. He was struck dumb by his school-learned fear of doing it wrong, making a mistake, looking foolish or stupid. He backed away from all these human contacts, telling himself all the while that he really ought to learn Spanish but was just too old, didn't have the aptitude, & so on.
Learning Music--Learning without Teaching
The famous Hungarian & Slovak Gypsies have a centuries-old musical tradition. This colourful folk has brought forth numerous excellent instrumentalists, notably violinists. They learn to play much as an infant learns to walk--without teaching methods, lessons, or drills. No written music is used. The youngster is merely given a small fiddle & allowed to join the Gypsy band. He gets no explanations or corrections. He causes no disturbance, for his timid efforts are scarcely audible. He listens: He tries to play simultaneously what he hears, & gradually succeeds in finding the right notes & producing a good tone. Within a few years he has developed into a full-fledged member of the band with complete command of his instrument.
Are these Gypsy children particularly gifted? No, almost any child could accomplish what they do. The band acts as teacher, talking to the pupil in the direct language of music. The novice, by joining the band, is immediately placed in the most helpful musical atmosphere & psychological situation; thus, from the beginning, he finds the right approach to music activity.
Like many artists, the great violinist Milstein suspects that even the role of teachers is exaggerated. "A teacher doesn't help much. Not many teachers do. Young people often think that if they go to a teacher, the teacher will tell them how to play. No! Nobody can tell you. A teacher may play very well in one way, but his student might not be able to play as well if he is taught to play the same way. That's why I think that the teacher's business is to explain to the pupil, especially the gifted ones, that the teacher can't do very much except to try to open the pupil's mind so that he can develop his own thinking. The fact is that the pupils have to do it. They have to do the job; not the teacher."
Self Teaching--Learning without Teaching
One of our readers tells us about his brother's learning:
"My brother is an electronics technician, by trade, & an electronics whiz by vocation. While still a teenager, he taught himself all the mathematics, language, etc., necessary & built many complicated things--an oscilloscope, a computer, etc. He is now making a lot of money as a skilled technician while continuing to develop his own very creative ideas in electronics in his free time, with his own equipment, at home."
Teaching vs. Learning--Learning without Teaching
If you like babies & little children, it is fun to talk to them about the things you are seeing or doing together. Mothers (or other adults) getting a small child ready to go out might say something like: "Now we'll tie up this shoe; pull the laces good & tight; now we'll get the boots; let's see, the right boot for the right foot, then the left boot for the left foot; all right, coat next, arms in the sleeves, zip it up, nice & tight; now the mittens, left mitten on the left hand, right mitten on the right hand; now comes the hat, on it goes, over your ears..." This kind of talk is companionable & fun, & from it the child learns, not just words, but the kinds of phrases & sentences they fit into.
This is not at all the same thing as saying, as we put on the child's coat, "Coat! Coat!" so that the child will "learn that this is a coat." The difference is between talk which is done for the pleasure itself, with learning only a possible & incidental by-product, & talk which has no purpose other than to produce learning.
Take this game for example: "Subject Bounce--Over a fast breakfast or a sit-down dinner, play this `talk' game that prepares children for putting their thoughts into writing. Toss out a subject, start with simple ones that children know about--summer, friends, breakfast, school. The child then comes up with a statement about it, like `Summer is the best season,' or `Friends like the same things you do.' As children build sophistication, their subjects & statements get more sophisticated too."
Years before I began teaching, I spent an evening with parents of young children in a home in which nothing was said or done without some kind of "teaching" purpose. Every word or act carried its little lesson. The air quivered with tension & worry.
Intelligence--Learning without Teaching
Intelligence is not the measure of how much we know how to do, but of how we behave when we don't know what to do. It has to do with our ability to think up important questions & then to find ways to get useful answers.
Disabilities vs. Difficulties--Learning Difficulties
Parents who teach their children at home may find now & then that some of them do things like writing letters or spelling words backward or showing some confusion about right & left. Parents who have already sent children to school may be told that their children have such problems. Such parents should not panic, & should be extremely skeptical of anything the schools & their specialists may say about their children & their condition & needs. Above all, they should understand that it is almost certainly the school itself & all its tensions & anxieties that are causing these difficulties, & that the best treatment for them will probably be to take the child out of school altogether.
To school people & others who talk to me about "learning disabilities," I usually ask a question something like this:
"How do you tell the difference between a learning difficulty & a learning disability? How do you tell whether the cause of a given learning difficulty lies within the nervous system of the learner, or with things outside of the learner--the learning situation, the teacher's explanations, the teacher him/herself, or the material itself? And if you decide that the cause of the difficulty lies with the learner, who decides, & again on what basis, whether or not that inferred cause is curable, in short, whether anything can be done about it, & if so, what?"
I have never received any coherent answers to these questions. What I usually get instead are angry insistences that learning disabilities are "real," that is to say, built into the nervous system of children. Here are some of my reasons for thinking they are not, & instead, what may be some of their true causes, & what we might sensibly do about them.
Nobody Sees Backwards--Learning Difficulties
There is the theory that certain children have trouble learning to read because something inside their skin or skulls every so often flipped letters upside down or backwards, or changed their order. There are much simpler & more likely explanations of the facts.
The "learning disability people" say that these children draw letters, say a P, backwards because when they look at the correct P they see it backwards. But if the child's mind reversed every shape it saw, a backwards P would still look backwards to him! He would think to himself, "I made a mistake," & would draw his P the other way around.
So the "perceptual handicap," "He-draws-backwards-because-he-sees-backwards" theory goes down the drain. It does not explain what it was invented to explain.
Why does the child draw the P backwards? The answer is plain enough to anyone who has watched little children when they first start making letters. The child looks at the P. He sees there is a line in it that goes up & down. He looks at the paper & tells his hand, "Draw an up & down line," then draws it. He looks back at the P, then tells his hand to go to the top of the up & down line & then draw a line out to the side. This done, he looks back at the P, & sees that the line going out to the side curves down & around after a while & then goes back in until it hits the up & down line again. He tells his hand to do that.
At this point, most children will compare the two P's, the one they looked at & the one they made. Many of them, if they drew their P backwards, may see right away that it is backwards. Other children may be vaguely aware that the shapes are not pointing the same way, but will see this as a difference that doesn't make any difference.
To be told that a "backwards" P that they have drawn is "wrong," or that it isn't a P at all, must be very confusing. If you can draw a horse, or dog, or cat, or car pointing any way you want, why can't you draw a P or B or E any way you want? Why is it "right" to draw a dog facing towards the left, but "wrong" to draw a P facing that way?
What we should do, then, is be very careful never to use the words "right" & "wrong" in these reversal situations. If we ask a child to draw a P, & he draws a T, we could say, "No, that's not a P, that's a T." But if we ask him to draw a P, & he draws one pointing to the left, we should say, "Yes, that's a P, but when we draw a picture of a P we always draw it pointing this way. It isn't like a dog or a cat, that we can draw pointing either way."
I strongly suspect that most children who often reverse letters do not in fact compare shapes. Like so many of the children I have known & taught, they are anxious, rule-bound, always in a panicky search for what the grownups want. What they do is turn the P they are looking at into a set of instructions, memorise the instructions, & then compare the P they have drawn against the instructions. "Did I do it right? Yes, there's the line going up & down, & there's the line going out sideways from the top, & there it's curving around & there it's coming back into the up-&-down line again. I obeyed the rules & did it right, so it must be right."
Or perhaps they may try to compare shapes, but are too anxious to see them clearly. Or perhaps, as with anxious people, by the time they have shifted their eyes from the original P to the P they have drawn, they have forgotten the original P, or dare not trust the memory of it that they have. This feeling of suddenly not being able to trust one's own memory is common enough, especially when one is anxious.
I am sure that the failing students I have taught have had somewhere in their minds the permanent thought, "If I think of it, it must be wrong."
Stress & Perception--Learning Difficulties
Prolonged anxiety, stress & fear can have great destructive effects on the human nervous system. In my own work I began to see, not only among the children I taught, but in myself as I struggled for the first time to learn a musical instrument, that anxiety could make it much harder for the children, or myself, to think, to remember, or even to see.
When educators begin to claim that some children might be having trouble learning because of "perceptual handicaps," they might look for possible connections between such inferred handicaps & children's fears & anxieties.
And it would surely be interesting to see what connections there might be between the incidence of "perceptual handicaps" in children & the measurable anxiety of their teachers.
Right & Left--Learning Difficulties
Many adults get very upset & anxious about right & left. If a child writes a letter backwards, or reads off some letters in the wrong order, or does anything else to suggest he is confused about right & left, adults begin to talk excitedly about "mixed dominance" & "perceptual handicaps" & "learning difficulties." The child is quickly labeled as "having a serious problem." Specialists (if the family or school can afford them) are called in & told to take over.
A child once asked me a question that not only completely surprised me, but also suggested that when children are confused about right & left, the reason may not be in them but in us, the adults, & the way we talk about right & left.
I needed something in my desk, & asked a child to please get it for me. He said OK, & asked where it was. I said, "In the top right-hand drawer." There was a pause. Then he said, "Whose right hand, mine or the desk's?"
For an instant I was baffled. Then I saw, & understood. When he looked at the desk, it was as if he saw a living creature looking at him. So I said, "Your right hand." Off he went, brought back what I had asked for, & that was that.
As I began to think more about this, I realised that our adult rules about right & left are even more confused than I had thought. Thus, when we ask a child to get something out of our right-hand coat pocket, we mean the coat's right hand, not the child's. When we talk about the right headlight of a car, we mean the car's right hand. But the right-hand entrance to a house is our right hand, not the house's. We adults talk sometimes as if things were people, & sometimes as if they were not, & there's little rhyme or reason in the way we do this. Why should a car or boat or train have its own right side, but not a house?
We might well ask how any of us ever get it straight. Most of us learn it the way we learn the grammar of our language, which is so subtle & complicated that (I am told) no one has yet been able to teach it to a computer. Children learn very early that the words "I, you, she, etc." refer to different people depending on who is saying them. They just use the words that way, & it works. In the same way, most children don't think to themselves, "Cars, boats, coats, trains, planes, all have their own right hands, while books, photos, desks, houses do not." They just learn from experience which is which, & don't worry much about the contradictions.
In short, most children master the confusion of right & left because they never become aware of it. Others may become aware of the confusion but are not troubled by it. But some children are philosophers. They examine everything. They expect & want things to make sense, & if they don't, to find out why not. Still others are threatened & terrified by confusion & paradox, above all, by seeing people act as if something made sense when it obviously doesn't. At some deep level of their being, they wonder, "Am I the one who's crazy?"
I suspect that most of the children who have persistent trouble with right & left in school or in life are of this latter kind. After a few right-left mistakes, which they make only because they have not yet learned our crazy right-left rules, they begin to think, "I must be stupid, I never can figure out right & left." So they go into a blind panic every time the words come up. They work out complicated strategies of bluff & avoidance. When people ask about right & left, they learn to get other clues--"You mean the one by the window?" etc.
In general, they assume that there is something wrong with them. If this is true, what might we do about it? One thing we should not do is to set out to "teach" the rules of right & left. Most children have always figured out right & left without much teaching, other than being told when very little, "This is your right hand, this is your left foot, etc." Let them go on learning it that way. But if a child seems to be confused or anxious about this, then we can begin to make the rules more explicit. We can say, "I mean your right hand, not the desk's," or "I mean the coat's right hand, not yours," perhaps adding, "I know that sounds a bit crazy, but that's just the way we say it, don't worry about it, you'll get used to it."
If a child shows confusion about right & left, don't panic, give him plenty of time to work it out for himself. Some small things we could do might help. When we first start telling children which is our right hand & which our left, it would probably be a good idea for both of us to be facing the same way, the child standing in front of us or sitting on our lap. At some point, facing the same way, we might both hold a toy in our right hand, & show that when we are facing the same way, the right hands are on the same side, but that when we turn to face each other, the right hands are on the opposite side. It would probably be better not to talk much about this as we did it. Just show it now & then, as another interesting fact about the World.
Beyond that, we should not assume, just because children do know that this is their right hand & this their left, that they understand all about right-hand drawers & coat pockets--all our strange rules about right & left. For some time, when we talk about such things, we should be sure to point out which side we mean. If the child seems to take all this in stride, we don't need to say anything & would be wiser not to. But if the child seems unduly puzzled or anxious about this, then we could make the right-left rules more explicit.
On Finding One's Work--Children & Work
By "work" I mean what people used to call a "vocation" or "calling"--something which seemed so worth doing for its own sake that they would gladly choose to do it even if they didn't need money & the work didn't pay. To find our work, in this sense, is one of the most important & difficult tasks that we have in life, & indeed, even if we find it once we may later have to look for it again, since work that is right for us at one stage of our life may not be right for us at the next. The vital question, "What do I really want to do? What do I think is most worth doing?" is not one that the schools (or any other adults) will often urge us or help us to ask; on the whole, they feel it is their business only to prepare us for employment. We will have to find out for ourselves what work needs to be done & is being done out there in the World, & where & how we will take part in it.
Many of the people who are doing serious work in the World (as opposed to just making money) are very over-worked & short of help. If a person, young or not so young, said to them, "I believe in the work you are doing & want to help you in any & every way I can, & I'd be glad to do any kind of work you ask me to do or that I can find to do, for very little pay, or even none at all if you can give me room & board," I suspect that many of them would say, "Sure, come right ahead." Working with them, the newcomer would gradually learn more & more about what they were doing, would find or be given more interesting & important things to do, might soon become so valuable that they would find a way to pay her or him. In any case, he or she would learn far more from working with them & being around them than in any school or college.
The Most Direct Way--Children & Work
An article from "Sports Illustrated" (December 17, 1979) shows how a person can zero right in on his chosen work:
"One of the youngest & most successful teams in contemporary ocean racing (has) Ron Holland, 32, as its equally unlikely chief. Holland failed the most elementary public exam for secondary schools in his native Auckland, New Zealand, repeatedly flunked math (considered by many to be a requisite in yacht design) & has no formal qualifications whatsoever in naval architecture. He even elected not to complete a boatbuilding apprenticeship. Yet today everyone wants a Holland design.
"...At 16 he walked out of secondary school--`too academic,' he says. Even then he seemed to know that his future lay in boats. Holland got into the boating industry as an apprentice & quickly chucked that job because the boss would not give him time off to go ocean racing...
"He spent nearly three years working with American designers, first Gary Mull & finally the flamboyant Charlie Morgan.
"It was in 1973, after less than three years of intermittent design experience, that Holland changed course again. He left Morgan to campaign his own quarter-tonner, Eygthene, in the World championships at Weymouth, England. It was a radical design--based, Holland admits now, on intuition, not `plain arithmetic.' Eygthene won."
Ron Holland sets a good example for people trying to find their work. If you know what kind of work you want to do, move toward it in the most direct way possible.
Don't assume that school is the best way or the only way to learn something without carefully checking first. There may be quicker, cheaper, & more interesting ways.
Serious Work--Children & Work
I wrote in reply to a couple whose young daughter worked with them on a work crew picking apples & assisting the mother with the bookkeeping:
"You wonder how A. compares with other kids her age? My guess would be that she compares very well, probably smarter, more self-reliant, more serious, considerate, self-motivated, independent, & honest.
"People get smart by giving constant attention & thought to the concrete details of daily life, by having to solve problems which are real & important, where getting a good answer makes a real difference, & where Life or Nature tells them quickly whether their answer is good or not. The woods are such a place; so is the sea; so is any place where real, skilled work is being done."
Two summers ago I spent some time working with a small farmer in Nova Scotia, the neighbour & friend of the friends I was visiting. He had a large garden where he grew almost all his own vegetables, had about 20 acres in hay & raised Christmas trees. He also owned woodlots, from which he cut wood, for his own use & to sell. He was 72 years old, & did all this work himself, with the help of two horses. The skill, precision, judgement, & economy of effort he displayed in his daily work were a marvel to see. The friend I was visiting, a highly intelligent & educated man, no city slicker but a countryman himself, who had long raised much of his own food & killed, butchered & cured or frozen much of his own meat, said with no false modesty at all that if he farmed for 15 years or 20 years he might--with plenty of luck & good advice--eventually learn to farm as well as this old neighbour.
Leaf Gathering--Children & Work
Children show me again & again that they love to be really useful, to feel that they make a difference.
Two years ago, I began a mini-experiment in urban agriculture. Each fall, when the trees in the Public Garden have lost their leaves, I collect several garbage cans full & make a packed-down pile of them in the little sunken patio behind my basement apartment. There I run some experiments with the leaves & earthworms.
One morning I collected & piled up more than a dozen loads. Four boys (8, 9, 9 & 10) who had been playing in the leaves, asked if they could help by loading some of the leaves into my cans. When the cans were full & loaded on the cart, the boys asked if they could help me take them home. When we went indoors, two boys insisted on carrying the empty garbage can downstairs, while a third pulled the cart up some steps--a hard struggle--& put it away.
As we walked back to the Public Garden, I said that I was sorry but that I had to go home & do some other work. I hated to leave these bright, friendly, curious, enthusiastic, helpful children. I loved working with them & showing them things & answering their questions. I think they were just as sorry to leave me. I remember, going toward my apartment, one of them said to the others, not to me, & in the kind of voice that can't be faked, "This is fun, doing this!" They all agreed--much more fun to be helping a grownup do serious work than just playing around in a leaf pile. I hope they may have more chances to work with some adult who cares about what he or she is doing.
The other day a young person wrote me saying, "I want to work with children." Such letters come often. They make me want to say, "What you really mean is, you want to work on children. You want to do things to them, or for them--wonderful things, no doubt--which you think will help them. What's more, you want to do these things whether the children want them done or not.
"What makes you think they need you so much? If you really want to work with children, then why not find some work worth doing, work you believe in for its own sake, & then find a way to make it possible for children--if they want to--to do that work with you."
The difference is crucial. The reason my work with the leaves & worms was interesting & exciting to those boys was precisely that it was my work, something I was doing for my good, not theirs. It was not some sort of "project" that I had cooked up because I thought they might be interested in it. I wasn't out there raking up leaves in the hope that some children might see me & want to join in. I never asked them to help, never even hinted; they insisted on helping me. All I did for them--which may be more than many adults might have done--was to say that if they really wanted that much to help me, then they could. Which is exactly the choice I would like to see the adult world offer to all children.
Volunteer Work--Children & Work
A twelve-year-old wrote us about being an office volunteer:
"In July 1978 my mother was asked to work at the Childbirth Education Association office. At that time we had a 3-month-old baby named C. So my mother asked me if I would like to go to the office to mind C. while she did her work. But when I went in, it seemed that C. slept most of the time, except when she was hungry. So I started to do a little work. Mrs. L. gave me some little jobs to do. Her daughter R. (who is now a very good friend of mine) helped me to get into bigger things. She taught me to make registration packets. Even now I do about 100 a week at home. She taught me to run the folding machine so that we were able to fold the papers for the registration packets & also for the Memo. We enjoyed that a lot. I can even do it better than my mom because she gets the papers stuck sometimes. I also learned what to say when I answered the phone, even though I had a hard time getting `Childbirth Education Association' out in one breath & I sometimes disconnect people instead of putting them on hold.
"I can't forget our literature orders. That was the best. We really had fun doing those, finding the right papers & counting them out. Writing out bills & addressing the envelopes was lots of fun. R. & I both knew what literature was there & what wasn't, so we could answer questions about what was in stock better than our moms.
"I also had to do the postage meter at the end of the day. I always tried to use Mrs. L's adding machine to figure out the totals, but sometimes I would have to use my brain; then I didn't like it so much.
"But it wasn't all work, sometimes R., her brother & I would play a game or go to the library. I really looked forward to coming in to the office. But soon the bad part came. I had to go back to school. As soon as I got my school calendar I sent in a paper with all the days I had off from school so I could come into the office.
"Now I am waiting for the summer to come so I can go into the office & help out."
+ + +
Not long ago in our office, we had so many letters from people asking about "Growing Without Schooling," & about teaching children at home, that we could not answer them all. In the magazine I asked readers if some of them, who could type & also had a cassette tape recorder, would help with this. Many offered to do so, among them the mother of L., the Down's syndrome child about whom I wrote earlier. She asked if it would be OK, for the letters she was doing, if L. addressed (in handwriting) the envelopes. I said, fine. I sent them a tape of letters, which came back soon afterward, the letters typed, the envelopes neatly addressed. Then I sent them a big stack of letters from all over the country, that we had already answered, but that now needed to be broken down by states so that we could send them to people in the various states for a closer follow-up. Along with these I sent a tape of instructions. About this, L's mother wrote:
"L. was thrilled with the whole project, & most impressed with being addressed by name on the tape. She took to the sorting & filing with gusto. I hadn't mentioned that this was another part of our `program,' again one where I had tried to convince the schools to do something `real'. They kept trying to get her to alphabetise on paper, & I wanted them to give her index cards, recipes, etc. or folders. No use. So when we started our planning this year, I had her make up a bunch of file folders, for each course or planned activity, & she puts receipts, brochures & stuff in them. Also we keep her papers for figuring out money, arithmetic problems, sentences, etc.
"So she was already used to that. She made up the folders (with my help in listing the states & assorted abbreviations). The first round, I went through the letters & underlined the state. The second time around I just screened them to be sure there was an address & that it was legible, but didn't note them--she figured them out herself. Anyway, L. loves the job, & can't wait to get started, at night even, after supper. All this seems ideal for L's purpose--some work experience, plus the exposure to the filing, alphabetising, state names & abbreviations, etc., all without any formal `instructions,' just doing it--the perfect way, but hard to find, especially for her."
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Heaven's Special Child (Poem by Edna Massimilla)
A meeting was held quite far from Earth!
"It's time again for another birth."
Said the Angels to the Lord above,
"This Special Child will need much love.
"His progress may be very slow
Accomplishment he may not show
And he'll require extra care
From all the folks he meets down there.
"He may not run or laugh or play;
His thoughts may seem quite far away.
In many ways he won't adapt
And he'll be known as handicapped.
So let's be careful where he's sent
We want his life to be content.
Please, Lord, find the parents who
Will do a special job for You!
They will not realise right away
The leading role they're asked to play.
But with this child sent from above
Comes stronger Faith & richer love!
"And soon they'll know the privilege given
In caring for their gift from Heaven.
Their precious charge so meek & mild
Is Heaven's very special child!"
--by Edna Massimilla
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