| GWS Archives There are some back issues of GWS available from FUN-Books.com. The first twelve issue of GWS are collected under one cover and are fully indexed. You can order Growing Without Schooling: A Record of a Grassroots Movement, Vol. 1, from Fun Books. To read more about this book, click here. GWS Issue Number 1 GWS Issue Number 2 (one selection) GWS Issue Number 32 (complete issue) If you just want to jump to a selection from this issue and read it, click here. Growing Without Schooling was first published in August 1977 by the late author and teacher John Holt.
From Growing Without Schooling Issue 1, Aug. 1977:
This is the first issue of a newsletter, about ways in which people, young and old, can learn and do things, acquire skills, and find interesting and useful work, without having to go through the process of schooling. In part, it will be about people who, during some of their growing up, did not go to school, what they did instead, and how they made a place for themselves in the world. Mostly, it will be about people who want to take or keep their children out of school, and about what they might do instead, what problems come up, and how they cope with these. We hope, also, that children who are, right now, growing without schooling will let us know how they feel about this. If they do, we will not identify them as children, except as they do in their own writing.
Growing Without Schooling , or GWS as we will call it from now on, will be in part an exchange. Much of what is in it, we hope, will come from its readers. In its pages people can talk about certain common ideas, needs, concerns, plans, and experiences. In time it may lead to many informal and personal networks of mutual help and support. GWS will come out whenever we have enough material to make an interesting issue. This may at first be only three or four times a year. Later, as more people read it and send in material, it may come out as often as six times a year.
GWS will not be much concerned with schools, even alternative or free schools, except as they may enable people to keep their children out of school by 1) Calling their own home a school, or 2) enrolling their children, as some have already, in schools near or far which then approve a home study program. We will, however, be looking for ways in which people who want or need them can get school tickets - credits, certificates, degrees, diplomas, etc. - without having to spend time in school. And we will be very interested, as the schools and schools of education do not seem to be, in the act and art of teaching, that is, all the ways in which people, of all ages, in or out of school, can more effectively share information, ideas, and skills.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
GWS will be supported entirely by subscriptions, not by advertising, foundations, universities, or government grants, all of which are unreliable. We will do our best to print as much useful material as possible at the lowest possible cost. But we think it best that those who use a service should pay the cost of it. We also want those who work on GWS to be paid a decent wage, if only for the sake of staying power. People who work for nothing or for token wages soon grow tired of this and quit. We want this newsletter to come out as long as people feel a need for it. This can only happen if those who put it out do not have to do so at great personal sacrifice.
This first issue is four pages. All following issues will be eight pages, perhaps in time more than that. Subscriptions are $10 for six issues. A Times Two or 2X subscription (we mail two copies of each issue) will be $12 for six issues; a 3X subscription will be $14 for six issues, and so on, $2 more for each additional issue. Thus, two or more people or families can take out multiple subscriptions and split the cost. In this way, two people can get GWS for $6 a year each; four for $4 a year each; eight for $3 a year each, and so on. Or, people or bookstores, can take out multiple subscriptions and resell individual subscriptions or copies. Also, people may buy in quantity copies of any issue.
All subscriptions to GWS will begin with Issue #1 unless you tell us otherwise, i.e., please begin my subscription with Issue #2, or #3, or whatever.
Someday, if we get enough subscriptions, we may be able to lower the subscription price. This will not be for a while; even at its present price, GWS will probably not be self-supporting until we have around 2,000 subscribers. And as we said, we think GWS must be self- supporting. Charity is fickle, and we mean to be around for a while.
ON SOCIAL CHANGE
In starting this newsletter, we are putting into practice a nickel and dime theory about social change, which is, that important and lasting social change always comes slowly, and only when people change their lives, not just their political beliefs or parties. It is a process, that takes place over a period of time. At one moment in history, with respect to a certain matter, 99% of a society think and act one way; 1% think and act very differently. Some time later, that 1% minority becomes 2%, then 5%, then 10, 20, 30, until someday it comes the dominant majority, and the social change has taken place. Some may ask, "When did this social change take place?" or "When did it begin?" There is no answer to these questions, except perhaps to say that any social change begins the first time one person thinks of it.
I have come to understand, finally, and even to accept, that in almost everything I believe and care about I am a member of a minority in my own country, in most cases a very small minority. This is certainly true of all my ideas about children and education. We who do not believe in compulsory schooling, who believe that children want to learn about the world, are good at it, and can be trusted to do it, without much adult coercion or interference, are surely not more than 1% of the population and perhaps much less than that. And we are not likely to become the effective majority for many years, probably not in my lifetime, perhaps not in the lifetime of any reader of GWS .
This does not trouble me any more, as long as those minorities of which I am a member go on growing. My work is to help them grow. If we can describe the effective majority of our society, with respect to children or schools or any other question, as moving in direction X and ourselves, the small minority, as moving in direction Y, what I want to do is to find ways to help people, who want to move in direction Y, to move in that direction, rather than run after the great X-bound army shouting at them, "Hey you guys, stop, turn around, you ought to be heading in direction Y!" In areas they feel are important, people do not change their ideas, much less their lives, because someone comes along with a bunch of arguments to show that they are mistaken, and even wicked, to think or do as they do. Once in a while, we may have to argue with the X-bound majority, to try to stop them from doing a great and immediate wrong. But most of the time, as a way of making real and deep changes in society, this kind of shouting and arguing seems to me a waste of time.
WHY KEEP THEM OUT
Jud Jerome (Downhill Farm, Hancock, MD 21750) has written us a long letter, which we will print in this and the next issue. (I hope many other readers will follow his good example.) His youngest child, Topher, after a year of kindergarten, did not go to school again until he was 10. Then he went for a few months to a small "free School" on another commune. After a while, his parents took him out. Of this, Jud writes: ...In regard to Topher, though, I should add that though we were glad he was happy and enjoying himself [in school], we were also sad as we watched him deteriorate from a person into a kid under peer influence in school. It was much like we saw happening when he was in kindergarten. There are certain kinds of childishness which it seems most people accept as being natural, something children have to go through, something which is, indeed, a shame to deny them. Silliness, self-indulgence, random rebelliousness, secretiveness, cruelty to other children, addiction to toys, possessions, junk, spending money, purchased entertainment, exploitation of adults to pay attention, take them places, amuse them, do things with them - all these things seem to be quite unnecessary, not "normal" at all [note: except in the sense of being common], and just as disgusting in children as they are in adults. And while they develop as a result of peer influence, I believe this is only and specifically because children are thrown together in schools and develop those means, as prisoners develop means of passing dull time and tormenting authorities to cope with an oppressive situation. The richer the families children come from, the worse these traits seem to be. Two years of school and Topher would probably have regressed two years in emotional development. I am not sure of that, of course, and it was not because of that fear that we pulled him out, but we saw enough of what happened to him in a school situation not to regret pulling him out. I have snatched this paragraph out of the middle of Jud's letter because it seems to me to answer so perfectly a question many ask me when they first think of taking their kids out of school: "But won't they miss the social life?" To this I say that if I had no other reason for wanting to keep kids out of school (and I have many), the social life would be reason enough. In all the schools I have taught in, visited, or know anything about, the social-life of children is mean- spirited, competitive, exclusive, status-seeking, full of talk about who went to who's birthday party and who got what Christmas presents and who got how many Valentine cards and who is talking to so-and-so and who is not. Even in the first grade, classes soon divide up into leaders, energetic and (often deservedly) popular kids, their bands of followers, and other outsiders who are pointedly excluded from these groups.
And I remember my sister saying of one of her children, then five, that she never knew her to do anything really mean or silly until she went to school - a nice school, by the way, in a nice small town.
From GWS #2 , Nov. 1978
MIXED ALLIES
Those who read GWS , and want to take or keep their children out of schools, may have very different, in some cases opposed reasons for doing this.
Some may feel that the schools are too strict; others that they are not strict enough.
Some may feel that the schools spend too much time on what they call the Basics; others that they don't spend enough.
Some may feel that the schools teach a dog-eat-dog competitiveness; others that they teach a mealy-mouth Socialism.
Some may feel that the schools teach too much religion; others that they don't teach enough, but teach instead a shallow atheistic humanism. I think the schools degrade both science and religion, and do not encourage either strong faith or strong critical thought.
Some feel that the school curriculum is dull, fragmented, devoid of context, in George Dennison's words, that it destroys "the continuum of experience." Others may feel that the school curriculum is fine, but that they don't do a very good job of teaching it.
What is important is not that all readers of GWS should agree on these questions, but that we should respect our differences while we work for what we agree on, our right and the right of all people to take their children out of schools, and help, plan, or direct their learning in the ways they think best.
In all these matters, we at GWS have our own opinions, and will express them. This is not going to try or pretend to be an unbiased publication. We will be very biased. But we will try to be as useful as possible to all our readers, whether or not we agree with them on all details. And on the issue about which we are all agreed we will print as wide a range of ideas and opinions as our readers send us. -
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