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. -