John Holt's Last Homeschooling Speech

Introducer: ... John Holt's work.

I'm sure that you have
read "How Children Learn,"

"How Children Fail,"
"Teach Your Own."

You may have had
an opportunity to see,

lots of times on tour, him talking
on television or on the radio,

John Holt, who's probably the best-known,
most vocal commentator on unschooling,

and particularly home-based education,
in the country right now.

Also, I understand he's
a magnificent cello player.

So maybe some germane questions about
that would be refreshing and useful, as well.

Here's John Holt.

[Applause]

John Holt: Well,
thanks very much.

First of all, we have to delete
that "magnificent" part. [Laughter]

Someday maybe,
but not yet.

``How many people still remember
those instructions about how to get to this – ?

[Laughter]

We'll have a run through again
after the meeting, I think.

[Laughter]

We were talking about parking,
and something popped into my head.

I was tempted to interrupt and say it,
but I didn't, but I'll say it now.

What popped in was,
"Parking is such sweet sorrow."

[Laughter]

Well, thank you for coming.
Thank you for inviting me.

It's nice to be here.

I said I was surprised to see,
among a number of good friends of mine,

a friend that I really didn't
expect to see here.

And I think he probably wins the long-distance
attendance record for this meeting.

Now, I'm John Holt from Boston,

but I'd like you to see
John Boston from Escondido,

which happens to be
near San Diego.

I couldn't believe he was
here for this meeting.

Just wave your hand or say hi.
[Laughter]

John Boston: Hi.
[Applause]

John Holt: I want to talk about
a number of things tonight.

And first of all though,
I'm probably saying things

that you've heard me
say before or read.

``This young man has the right idea
about how to dress for this meeting.

[Laughter]

Oh, but I guess, even before I get into what
you might call the body of this formal address,

I want to ask just a few questions
to locate the audience.

And perhaps one way to start
would be by saying,

how many of you – I'm asking here
for a "show of hands" response.

I wonder if we could
remove that rattle.

John Holt: Thank you.

Experience has taught me
the good things to bring with little kids,

and I love to bring bags of it –
get it all out. [Laughter]

This young man is

divesting himself of his coveralls.

I think, very smart.

Now, how many of you
are working with,

in one capacity or another,
alternative schools?

All right.

Thank you very much.

And another question.

How many of you are now
parents of school-aged kids?

Good.

All right.

How many of those of you

who are parents of school-aged kids
are sending them to alternative schools?

All right.

How many of you
are teaching them at home?

Big crowd.

This next one will be
for those of you

who are parents of children
who are not yet of school age

or expect soon to be
parents of very young children.

How many of you are
seriously considering

the idea of, I'd say,
teaching them at home?

All right.

And how many of you
are seriously considering

sending them to
an alternative school

if there was one near you
that was within reach?

Okay, good.

How many of you
are teaching or otherwise

working with public schools
or colleges or universities,

let's say, in one
capacity or another?

Okay, thank you very much.

The grandparent question.

How many of you
are grandparents of homeschooled or –

Good! –
alternative school children?

Okay.

Grandparents are a very important
ingredient in this situation.

There are homeschoolers who are
having just about as much trouble with –

Small child: Hi.
John Holt: Hi. How are you?

Child: Hi. Hi.
John Holt: Hi.

A famous Jimmy Durante storyline:

"Everybody's trying to
get into the act!" [Laughter]

There are folks who are having
about as much trouble with grandparents

as they are with superintendents.
[Laughter]

So, it's extremely important to have
friendly and supportive grandparents

in this alternative-education movement.

Well, let me sum up in a very few words

what I have been
saying and writing

about children and learning now
for going on 25 years or more.

As a result of my experiences,

first of all as a classroom teacher
working in just about every grade,

sometimes, say,
K through G.

I did a little college and
graduate school teaching,

not very much.

K through 12 might be
a little more accurate.

But as a result of, on the one hand,

working with children in
more or less conventional classrooms,

and on the other hand,
spending a lot of time

with babies, infants,
little children –

first my sisters',

then the children of other people,
little children in nursery schools,

and since then, many children
of homeschooling parents –

I came to understand something –
certainly to believe something

about young human beings
of which I am more certain

than I am, I think,
about anything in the world –

and that is
that children are,

by nature and from birth,
or perhaps before birth –

though I have no testimony
to offer about that –

natural learning creatures.

There is nothing
that they want more.

They have a desire –
more than a desire, a passion –

to find out
as much as they can,

to make as much sense as they can
of the world around them,

or as much of that world
as they experience,

to become competent
and skillful in it,

to do things in it,
to play a useful part in it.

This is a truly biological
instinct or drive.

It is as strong as or stronger –

at least for children who
are not in famine condition –

it is stronger than
the desire to eat.

Those of you
who are mothers

or attentive and observant fathers
of very young children

will have seen this
happen many times,

that a tiny infant,
babe in arms,

hungry with his
little stomach hurting –

which is what happens
when they are hungry –

and eating, feeding, nursing,
will stop eating if something interesting happens.

If somebody comes into the room,
if there's a noise,

if there's some kind of
a change in the situation,

this hungry little teeny creature

will stop eating and look around
to see what's going on.

There is probably not a mother in the
world who hasn't seen this happen.

And how we can persist in talking about
children not being interested in learning

or needing to be taught to learn
or whatever it is,

is just absolutely beyond me.

Anyway.

They are extremely good at this –

this learning, this
making sense of the world.

They're much better at it than we are,
or than all but some microscopic fraction.

If by some accident of
who knows what – science fiction –

were all of us
to be dropped into,

say, the interior of Japan
or some exotic part of the world

where nobody spoke
a word of English,

where everybody was speaking some
language we had never heard of,

it's no mystery to us
which of us here in the room

would be talking
that language first –

the little guys would.

All of them
would be talking it.

Most of them
talking it fairly soon.

Most of us –
some of us – big ones –

would be struggling along
in a kind of a halting way.

And a lot of us would
never learn any of it.

Many of us would
never know it.

Just the problems of learning something
totally new without any assistance with it.

No, they get it first.

But we all know that
when we think about it.

They're extremely
good at it.

Well, another way of saying
what I've come to believe

is that learning is not
the product of teaching.

Very difficult for me as a paid teacher over
a number of years to get that into my thick head.

I was very good at that whatever you call
that thing that goes on in classrooms.

I was probably a good example
of what's called a gifted teacher –

motivating, clever at devices,
good at explaining,

all that stuff you're
supposed to do.

It took me a long time to figure out
that this was not doing anybody any good,

and most people harm.

Very hard for us to give up
the picture of learning

that it's like pouring something out of
a full container into an empty one.

It's this assumption which lies at
the root of absolutely everything

that's done in schools and
under the name of education.

And it's a hundred percent wrong.

I mean, not even 98% wrong –
a hundred percent wrong.

That is not what happens.

Learning is the product of the curiosity,
the interest, the enthusiasm, the activity,

the ingenuity, the imagination,
the thinking power of the learner.

Now, there are things that outsiders,
whether grown-up or whatever,

can do to assist this process, and
I'll talk about them in just a few minutes.

But the work is
done by the learner.

These little people are not empty receptacles
into which knowledge is poured.

They are not sponges
soaking up knowledge.

They are not little lamps to be lighted,
as somebody else likes to say.

They are not
any of these metaphors.

They are, in the most strict and
literal sense of the word, scientists.

The things that they do to create knowledge out
of experience, which is what learning is,

are exactly the same as the things
that the people we think of as scientists

do in their laboratories.

When they do them, perhaps,
there are some differences.

They are probably
a good deal less self-conscious.

A scientist will probably have a pretty
clear idea of what she or he is looking for,

whereas little kids
are not doing it in that way.

Nevertheless, they
do the same things.

The first is they observe,
they take in data.

And the second is that
they wonder about it.

And the third is that they ask
themselves questions about it.

The second and third
are pretty close.

And then, they begin to make up theories,
invent theories, maybe that the wind blows

because the trees are moving their branches,
which, on the face of it, is not a bad theory.

And then, they test these theories
with observation, maybe with questions,

maybe with experiments, some of which we
may welcome and others of which we may not.

In this connection, I think of the most
recent visit to my house of Anna van Doren,

of whom you may have read in
"Growing Without Schooling."

Anna's going to be four in June.

We were in the apartment.

Her mother and I were doing various kinds of work.

Her little guy seemed not to be
getting in any physical trouble.

And when the time came to leave, I have a door
with one of those push-button locks on it.

And as I was leaving, I reached in to push
the lock, and my thumb fell into a hole.

Well, this feels kind of funny.

And I looked, and the push lock wasn't
there, and it was sitting on the floor.

I said, "Anna, you've taken
the lock out of my doorknob!"

It took me about four or five minutes
to figure out how to get it back in.

Children tend to like to do experiments
right up into the point where no further

experimenting is possible, I guess you
could say, up to the disaster limit.

And it's very good on learning, but it's
sometimes tough on the lab. [Laughter]

So these experiments are not always
welcome, but nevertheless, they do them.

And then, as a result of what they find out, they
give up their theories, modify them, change them.

Let's see.

Has the GWS gone out which talks about
my little friend Helen saying, "gocks?"

Or is that 44?

Maybe you haven't received it yet.
Woman: Yeah.

Woman: It just arrived.
John Holt: All right.

So here's Helen Vandoren.

Actually, her full name is
Helen Maria-Holt Vandoren.

I had two schools and one baby named after me.

One of the schools is defunct,
but the baby is fine. [Chuckles]

[Laughter]
At any rate.

Helen has been, for some time,
using the word "gocks" to say socks.

And this is a mystery to us because she knows how

to say the sound "sss," and says
it in lots of other connections.

Indeed, it was one of the first sounds she said,

and it had multiple meanings,
including that she wanted to nurse.

We simply could not imagine where
she got the idea of saying gocks.

She never heard anybody say it, obviously.

No imitation.

Her sister had never said it.

If you think of the way sounds are produced in the
mouth and throat, S and G are not at all alike.

It's not a small difference.

At any rate, she must have had some
kind of theory about why she wanted

to do it this way and not some
other way, and it was a theory.

Just the other day, oh, I think maybe not
more than about three or four days ago,

we were all in the office, and it was time for the
Vandoren family to go home, which means rounding

up the kids' clothes, shoes, socks, putting
them on them – an operation you know well.

And we had Helen sitting on the floor
getting ready to put her socks on.

And she looked at them
thoughtfully, and said, "Zzzzocks.

Zzzzocks."

I said to Mary, "Have you ever
heard her say that before?"

Mary said, "No, first time."

Well, I saw Mary just a couple of days
ago and said, "How is the 'zocks' going?"

Has she said "gocks" since?

"No," she said.

In fact, she's very quickly converted the
"zocks" to "socks," and that's what it is now.

Now, why that difference, which didn't
make any difference to her before,

all of a sudden did make a
difference, I don't know,

you don't know, she doesn't know, we'll
never know – except everybody does it.

All of a sudden, whatever theory of language
it was that caused her to say "gocks," suddenly

seemed unsatisfactory, didn't work,
didn't fit – so now she says "socks."

Well, okay.

A very small example which we
could multiply by the billions,

and it's what these little people do.

They are observers, makers,
testers, changers of theories.

They are, in the strictest
sense of the word, scientists.

And, at least as far as learning goes, all they
ask is to be allowed to continue to do this.

Now, what we can do – I come back
to the point about what can adults

do to help? – because we are, in many
ways, an essential part of this process.

I don't claim children would
ever learn to figure out how

to talk if they were surrounded by deaf-mutes.

It wouldn't happen.

What we can do, what we do in our normal daily
lives before we start thinking about education

or coerced learning is we provide children with
– as much as we can – access to the world around

them – by which I mean not just places, places
that we go, places at the house, the kitchen,

the yard, the neighborhood, the stores, wherever
we go, but also the world of people, the world

of experience, actions, talk, materials, books,
records, tools, people doing things, human life.

Now, what we can do for these little
guys is to provide them with as much

as we reasonably can – I say reasonably –
I'm not saying you have to make your whole

life into a field trip – as we reasonably can
with access to our own lives as we lead them.

If you live in the woods, that means the woods.

If you live in downtown city, that means downtown.

I mean, wherever we live, whatever we do, as far
as we can, we open up that world to children –

let them see it, let them be part of
it – and we answer their questions

when they have them – and they have lots of them.

Some of you will have discovered that
when your children are getting on --

Small child: Hi.

John Holt: Oh, hi again.

Child: Hi, hi.

John: Mm-hmm.
John: Well, when they're getting on to a year

and a half, when they're beginning
to sneak up under – into speech –

It will be a place where they'll point to

all kinds of things and make some
kind of insistent noise: "Mmm mmm."

The tendency for a lot of people is to think
that they're saying that they want that.

They point to the clock, they
point to this, and they go,

"Mmm mmm," and people say,
"No, you can't have it."

They don't want it.

They want to know what it's called.

They want to hear the name of it.

Simple as that.

I say simple.

It took me quite a number of
years to figure it out. [Laughter]

So they ask questions – and we can
answer their questions when they

ask them – give help if and when it is
asked for, and not too much at a time,

and give a kind of demonstration just by
our being there and our doing things – give

the kind of demonstration of various
sorts of adult skill and competence,

and pay a kind of affectionate, respectful
attention to what they're doing, without making

some huge, big deal of it, and give them a kind of
moral support in this adventure of trying to make

sense of the world – and the best way to give
this moral support is, in fact, to trust them,

to understand that they are, indeed, passionately
eager to learn about the world, extremely good

at doing it, and will, in fact, do it
– in their own way, in their own time.

Not to say they're going to know
everything about everything,

but nobody does – and that's how we can help.

But ours is a very minor role,
and theirs is the major one.

Okay, well, I'm preaching to the
converted, I know. [Chuckles]

If you weren't already half convinced
of this, you wouldn't be here.

But I want to say it anyway.

All right, now, the next part of my
talk is about something different.

Much of this conference has to do with the future,

and I want to talk a little bit about the future
of homeschooling and the near-run future – the

next 10 years or so – and by extension,
to some degree, of alternative schools.

We are – from a legislative –

[A woman comes forward.]
Yes?

Woman: Is it possible to ask you
questions before you go on to the next –?

John: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Woman: I see. Okay.

John: Now, you don't have all
these electronics at your disposal,

so you've got to speak up – and not too fast.

Woman: Okay, I don't have a loud
voice, I don't know whether it carries.

You certainly are convincing.

I agree with what you say that
we are not going to convince.

On that part, that I'm going to disagree
in terms of people connected with you.

But I wonder what you have to say or
how you feel about what I believe is

a necessity to transmute this imperative.

And this is perhaps something
that can be picked up.

I agree children aren't all the same, God knows.

But we also need, I think, some input in
terms of direction, guidance and exposure,

and input in regard to the
heritage that is [inaudible].

John: All right, that's a good question.

Woman: Okay.
John: I'm familiar with it.

I've heard it.

I'd love to answer it, perhaps just take out very,

very briefly now, and we can go back
to it later and spend more time on it.

It's extremely important, in the first place,

in thinking about these things,
to use language accurately.

And we really have to understand the
difference between exposure and coercion.

Now, there's a big difference between putting –

I mean, we just went out to dinner.

The Baskins, and I and Heather,
we just had dinner together.

And there was the menu, and there were
things on different people's plates,

and we would say, "Here are some
capers in front of my veal."

And so we said to Heather,
"Would you like to try caper?"

Heather did not want to try a caper.

Well, that's exposure.

There are different kinds of food there,
and we say, "Would you like to try some?"

"No."

"Okay."

"No."

That's not at all the same thing as putting some
capers in front of Heather and saying, "You can't

leave the table until you've eaten them,"
or, "You can't have any dessert," or holding

her by the nose and pushing one in, which is
exposure as it is practiced in formal education.

There's no exposure unless you can't say no to it.

If you can't say no, it's coercion.

Really very, very, very important
to understand that difference,

and it's difficult, apparently.

Now, I'm just going to assert for the
moment that I am opposed to all forms

of coerced – or all attempts to coerce learning.

I meant to say after I had said
that learning is not the product of teaching,

I meant to say that teaching which
has not been asked for by the learner –

virtually without exception –
impedes and prevents learning,

and before very long will kill
most of the desire for learning itself.

I will say that forced learning
is faked learning.

I had the great traditions of culture,
etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. –

by which I suppose we mean Shakespeare
or whatever – thrust at me.

I was clever about
playing the school game.

I could do that trick.

And so I got my A's and B's,

and went to high-powered
schools and colleges, and so forth.

Most of the people who are told
to play this trick cannot play it,

don't play it well,
fail to play it altogether.

We have to understand,

we're going to probably have
to agree to disagree about this,

because nobody is going to be –

nobody who walks into a room
believing in some kind of forced learning

is going to walk out of the room
not believing in it

because they've heard me preach
this little mini-sermon about it.

But I want you
to be very clear about –

And I should say, by the way,

that I suspect that the number of
homeschoolers or alternative school people

who really agree with me
is probably well under 50%.

I mean, I think this is a minority view,
even among homeschoolers.

You don't have to believe what I just said to
be a homeschooler or run an alternative school.

But I'm the one who's sitting up here
and that's what I think. [Laughter]

{I think - you see}

If it is part of the cultural tradition,
it is there.

Children are very interested
in what is there,

and they're extremely interested
in what is most interesting to us.

And Shakespeare
is not interesting to adults,

except a handful of English teachers
who make a specialty of teaching,

and a fairly small handful of actors

who every so often take a shot
at producing one of his plays.

It usually loses money.

But other than that,
people don't read it.

All right, I don't want to
go on too long [inaudible].

But what people really care about –
a good example is music.

There are not very many
households in the United States

where people read Shakespeare just
for the sheer, solid pleasure of doing it.

They get this.

I've just been reading
some of the plays.

So, some of
the tragedies are lovely.

But I don't know anything in the world less
funny than Shakespeare trying to be funny.

Mmm!

Maybe someday, some really bold soul will
cut out those ponderous exchanges of puns.

It will be a great day for
the Bard when that happens.

I mean, they rolled in the aisles when
he wrote this stuff, and he knew that.

He was a practical man in the theater.

He put it in because he knew
it would make people laugh.

It doesn't make people laugh anymore,
it just makes you turn the page.

But there are hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of families

where music is
a central part of their lives,

as it's a central part of mine,
and in those families,

very, very few children
are indifferent to music.

Or let's say gardening if gardening
is your passion – or whatever it may be.

Children can tell from what we do what
sorts of things make the most difference to us.

And those are the things,
generally speaking, that interest them most,

unless they've gotten into
some rebellion kick,

and that doesn't happen
much in homeschooling.

So I'll ask you to let me leave it
at that for the time being.

No, I do not think this body
of whatever it is,

or this cultural tradition,
or whatever it is, needs to be,

or indeed can be, forced into people
under pressure by coercion.

If you really love Shakespeare,

go see Shakespeare plays
where they're performed,

and take your kids with you,

or even get a bunch of people together
in your neighborhood and town,

and put on an amateur production,
and let your kids be part of the operation.

In fact, if you really love Shakespeare,
you ought to be doing it anyway –

or whatever it is.

If you love music,
make music.

If you love gardening,
grow a garden.

If you love camping in the woods,
go camping in the woods.

If you love –
I don't care what it is.

But children sense that the world they get
from the things that we care most about.

All right.

{Let me - } I don't mean by what I say to imply
that I've been sort of diverted or something.

{That's very -}

it's a very central issue,
and I'm glad you asked -

I'm glad you
raised that point.

The homeschooling movement
is in the middle of

an extremely interesting
and important period

of political and legislative change –
and judicial, too, I would say.

Ten years ago, five years ago, I think
you could have said accurately that the

great majority of people who
were teaching their own kids,

and not just underground, not just hiding
out, were doing it - were making use of

what you would have to call loopholes
in the law, of one kind or another.

Things which had been put in the
law not with homeschooling in mind,

but with something quite different.

In many places, in many states around the country,

the compulsory school attendance laws
had some kind of a clause in them

about kids have to go to school or get some
equivalent kind of instruction or education.

Now, this was - this clause was not put into
the law to make things easy for homeschoolers.

But to take care of children who, for
mostly medical reasons, were not able

to go to school and they were probably thinking
of retarded or emotionally disturbed children who

couldn't go to school because the schools
didn't want them or couldn't handle them.

So they wanted to make some
kind of legal alternative.

The farthest thing they could have had
from their minds, the legislatures,

when they put these clauses in, was
that people who had the choice of

sending their kids to school, people
whose kids were, as they say, normal,

would decide that they didn't want to send them
to school so they could teach them themselves.

Nevertheless, there was that
loophole, and for a while,

in lots of places, people were slipping through.

The other great loophole was the private school
loophole where many states in the country in which

private schools were not regulated by law or not
regulated by the compulsory school attendance law.

Now, that was not done to
make homeschooling possible.

It was done for quite other sorts of reasons.

When legislators decided that private
schools would not be regulated,

it was to a large degree because private
schools had their own police mechanisms,

they - what you would call a non-alternative
independent or private schools.

The rich folks' private schools have their
own National Association of Independent

Schools, Midwestern Association of
Independent Schools – New England.

I mean, they have their own inspectors,

and their own checkers-uppers-on,
and so forth, and so forth.

So, they were not sort of flying free in the air.

Also, legislators, I think, tend to operate on the

assumption that rich people know
what they're doing – you know?

They say, "Private schools are expensive," or
at least they used to be thought of that way,

and that's what legislators were thinking
when they decided not to try to regulate them.

And they said, "If you've got 50 or
a hundred fairly wealthy families,

and they're all satisfied with the school, chances
are something has got to be going on there.".

Rich people are not terribly innovative,
as a general rule. [Laughter]

John: "And in any case, since they're
rich, even if their kids goof up,

they'll always be able to take care of them, so we
don't have to worry about their being on welfare.

So generally speaking, we can let them alone."

But the farthest thing in the
world they had in mind was that

this would be used in the way that
homeschoolers started to use it.

Well, that's where we were roughly
five or six years ago, we were all

happily crawling under this fence, as
it were, pulling up the barbed wire,

and slipping under the bottom strand [chuckles]
– and it was very nice while it lasted.

I mean, there was no regulation, and
no tests, and no papers to fill out.

Some states built a one-page something
or other about "my home is a private

school," and it was very nice, but it
perfectly obviously wasn't going to last.

It was obvious to me that it wasn't going to last.

It could not be made to last – that as we got
bigger and stronger, and got to be heard more

of in one thing or another, that people,
the courts, the public schools themselves,

the legislatures were going to begin to pay
attention and say, "Hey, what about this?

Well, roughly about two or three years ago,
we began to see – I say roughly – it differs

from state to state – but we began to see
the beginnings of attempts – in some cases

in the form of laws, and in some cases in the
form of administrative regulations – attempts

to make homeschooling illegal or virtually
impossible in Maryland, and Georgia,

and in other states – for a while in California,
which had been one of our chief homeschooling

states – the authorities began to try to
think of ways of making this very difficult.

And a couple of years ago, we at
Growing Without Schooling certainly

felt that the homeschooling movement
was in a kind of fight for its life.

Well, I don't mean to say that the fight isn't
over, but in fact, none of those attempts to

rule out homeschooling, stamp it out, make
it impossible, none of them succeeded.

In no place has a legislature written a kind
of anti-homeschooling law in that sense.

We've been under lots of pressure,
lots of pressure to do so.

{What they did start doing is} I should say
a similar thing was happening in the courts

in a number of states in which people had been
homeschooling through the private school option.

The courts began to say a home all
by itself can't be a private school.

That was our situation in Virginia
before the law was passed there.

So the loopholes were being closed up.

The fence was being repaired so that
animals couldn't get up through the bottom.

But at the same time, the legislatures began
to put some kind of a gate in the fence.

One way or another, they began to try to
legitimize homeschooling to make it explicitly

legal, and say, "Yes, people can teach their
own kids if they do this, that, or the other."

Since then, there've been a considerable
number of these kinds of laws passed.

I lose track.

In GWS 44, I think – in fact,
when we sent it to press,

we said there were 14 states
considering such laws.

I believe that since then, at least
three of them, maybe four – Arkansas,

Wyoming, New Mexico, state of Washington
– we had a very tough time in the state

of Washington – have passed one or
another kinds of legislation making

homeschooling explicitly legal with
this, that, or the other condition.

And we expect many more states to do that.

We'll probably see more even before
the end of this legislative session.

And I would hazard a rough guess that
we'll continue to see half a dozen

or a dozen states a year doing this,
and dozens, perhaps, to many a year.

And I would say that, oh, within five
years, we will probably see very few

states in which there is not some explicit
reference to homeschooling in the law.

Now, I consider this an extraordinarily
important move forward, even though,

in many cases, I'm not happy
with the qualifying restrictions.

Many of them talk about the use
of standardized achievement tests.

Though that is not a problem
for probably 80% of homeschoolers,

it can be a very serious problem
for people whose children

are late starters in reading,
or in whatever else it may be,

or happen not to like arithmetic,
or be a little afraid of it, or something.

And I think it's a very important step
forward that legislators

are beginning to see
homeschooling as a legitimate activity,

rather than some kind of
weird, strange, outlaw idea.

Now, what I think we have to do, along with
getting more of these kinds of laws passed –

and we'll probably be 10 or 15 years at it –
is educating the legislatures,

and particularly
the individual legislators –

away from rigid curriculums,
standardized achievement tests,

all kinds of attempts to reduce
human beings to numbers.

I think a lot of them are ready
to say now, in fact,

"Well, yeah, people
can teach their own kids

if they do it just the way
the schools do it."

But that's obviously
not satisfactory.

But we have to get them to see –
in one way or another,

to get into law at least some of the spirit

in which I talked to you
at the beginning of this meeting –

some feeling that there are other ways
besides the rigid curriculums of schools,

and the endless
little numerical tests.

There are other ways
of observing and taking note of learning,

of observing children's
growth in the world, and so forth.

Now, this is already being done,
of course, in some places.

But I would like to see,
for example, something in the law,

some kind of amendment
somewhere down the line

saying that parents and educational authorities,
in evaluating the learning of children,

may use, but shall not be
required to use or restricted to using,

the standardized
and other numerical tests.

I don't think very many legislatures would pass
such a resolution if we introduced it tomorrow.

But I think if we do
the right sorts of things,

that it's very possible that
a great many of them

will do so by, let's say,
a decade from now.

I speak of educating legislators, and
I'm not at all thinking of lobbying groups.

What I have in mind is that homeschoolers –

and also, again, insofar as
they are encumbered by The law –

alternative schoolers must get to know
their own legislators personally,

individually, meet them, go see them,
take their children, become a kind of pen pal,

write them occasional letters saying,

"Thought you might be interested
to hear what my kids are up to recently.

The other day we went, and my eight-year-old
child took 25 books out of the library,

which is more books than most school
kids read in a year, or two, or five."

We have got to begin to get into a kind of
continuing communication with these people,

so they begin to understand,
as we understand,

how this organic
natural learning takes place.

And of course, if bad bills
get introduced, of course,

we all have to hustle down to
the state capitol and do that number –

and obviously,

we've been very good at it.

But that's not all.

I mean, "I don't write my legislator
except when some kind of legislation

is coming up that I'm worried about," 

this doesn't seem to me to be enough.
QQQ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

SEGMENTING COMPLETE TO HERE
= = = = = = = = = = = 

I really think we have to try – as far
as we can – we have to try to bring these

people into the homeschooling family – and
it is a family – a collection of families.

So I see this as the main part of the future
of homeschooling in the next decade or so.

I think alternative schools can play
a very important part in this – as

indeed the Clonlara School and the Santa
Fe Community school and a number of others

already have – by providing a kind of
support for homeschooling families.

I don't know if Santa Fe was
the first school to do that.

It was the first one I knew about
that was doing it, but anyway.

And by now, we have a number of independent
alternative schools around the country,

which not only have their own buildings and
classes – there's a physical school there in

place – but they also provide a kind of legal and
educational support to homeschooling families.

Many of you might be on the
other end of the country.

I would like to see a much larger
network of these kinds of schools.

We now have – oh, I guess around
the United States – several dozen.

But we'd be in a very much stronger
position if we had many hundreds of them.

Let's see here.

Excuse me a sec here.

Amazing machines here.

I think the small tape recorders –
and they are now have really quite

astonishing sound quality – are one of
the great educational tools of our time.

And for all the talk about computers,
I think this is a gadget which has many

other kinds of possibilities, which I don't
think we have done as much with as we might.

Like typewriters, this is a machine which
is really fascinating to a lot of children –

the experience of saying things into it and then
hearing them back – very strange, very powerful.

All right.

Now, let's see.

So, I was talking about a very large network –
hundreds, thousands – of alternative schools,

independent schools around the country
– in some cases, public schools.

Because there are public schools
that also offer this kind of support.

The number is not very
large, but it's also growing.

All right, now, I want to switch to a different –

in the last part of this talk, to a look
at the future in a quite different sense –

not the future of homeschooling, or
the future of alternative schooling,

but the future of the world –
particularly of this country.

First thing I have to say is that everybody
who talks about the future is guessing.

Nobody knows.

There is no future.

It doesn't exist.

It isn't as if we're riding
along on a train and 20 miles

down the track there was a station
that we were going to pull into,

and it was just a matter of
talking about what it was.

The future isn't there.

We make it as we live.

{Most of the people}

I'm extremely skeptical, I have to say, of
most of the people who are making a living –

and quite a lot of them are, and they're living a
lot fancier than I am – talking about this future.

And mostly what they do is they find some
kind of a graph that goes up to 1985,

and then they just keep running it up the page.

Well If predicting the future were
that easy, we'd all be billionaires,

because we'd just look at
the stock market quotations,

and see what stock had been going up
for the last week, and then buy it.

The problem is the graph that
doesn't always keep going up.

There are an awful lot of high-powered people
in this country connected with the oil business,

connected with the government, connected
with the defense industry who made it

their business to know what was
going on in the world of oil.

And none – not one, not a
single one of these people –

predicted what came to be called the
"oil crisis – when was it, ten years ago?

Nobody predicted it.

And nobody, with a few possible exceptions –

maybe Amory Lovins, maybe a few conservationists

once we were in the middle
of that terrible crisis –

predicted that in five or less than 10
years we were going to be out of it,

because we would smarten
up and start saving energy.

The oil crisis came by
surprise and went by surprise.

So, it's not easy.

One of the big future books that's –

boy, I wish I had 10% of
the money that it's made –

talks about the Sun Belt
and the motion of industry,

the economic flight from
the North to the Sun Belt,

and it says this is a major
trend in American history,

and it's irreversible, and it's going to continue.

We can just see more and more of this happening.

Well, I get a certain wry amusement out of this.

I come from the old Frost Belt up there
in New England, and we are the most –

as regions go at the moment – probably the most
economically prosperous region of the country.

We have the lowest unemployment rate.

My home state of Massachusetts has the lowest
unemployment rate in any industrial state.

My home city of Boston has what they
call an office vacancy rate of 1%.

Of course, Houston has about 30%.

So, the old Frost Belt isn't doing too bad.

Right now what we're worried about is drought.

But that's going to be a big
problem for the whole country.

Very, very hard.

But there are some indicators.

Nothing is certain.

There are some indicators that give us, I think,

a pretty strong indication of the
way some things are likely to go.

There are really big, big, deep sort of trends,

and I want to talk about just one of them tonight.

[Coughs] Excuse me.

The Boston Globe, our local bladder,
[laughter] is a kind of nice paper.

I don't know how much news in it, but it has a lot
of good writers, and they have quite a lot of fun.

So, it's an entertaining sheet.

And not bad, as these things go.

It had an article a year and a half ago, maybe,

about wages in different parts
of the world – industrial wages.

And there's a map, a nice big-page article.

And they were comparing average hourly industrial
wages in the world's manufacturing countries.

Now, economists, I guess,

could spend the whole weekend talking
about how you achieve these figures,

and how you balance out this versus that, how you
figure out benign climates versus cold climates,

and what do you do about fringe
benefits, and this, that, and the other.

And I'm going to accept those figures
more or less as they were given to me.

And what it said was that the United States
had the highest average hourly industrial wage.

They didn't say what is industrial
and what isn't – not to get into that.

And it was something like $10.77 an hour.

And there was Canada pretty
close behind, and Switzerland,

and then a bunch of the Western
European nations – $8.00 or so – $7.50.

And then, Japan, $5.50.

And then Mexico, Brazil, some
down to the $2.00, $2.50 range.

And then we got down to what they
call the Pacific Rim nations:

Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea,
a couple of others maybe,

and these were running $1.25, $1.50 an hour.

And then India – the figure
they gave was $0.39 an hour –

and Sri Lanka, which us old cats used to
call Ceylon, near India, was $0.21 an hour.

Now, those are very, very,
very significant figures.

At one point in, the article they
quoted a young woman who's working

in one of these new electronic shops in
Hong Kong where the American computer

manufacturers are fleeing just as
fast as their legs will carry them –

those that are still in
business at all, I should add.

And that little future balloon
went down in a big hurry,

and has yet further to go, I will add.

That revolution lasted about two or three years.

But someone was talking to this young
woman who's earning $1.22 an hour,

making whatever it is, and
just happy as a clam to be

enjoying this wage which was probably ten times,

five times higher than anything
they had seen a decade before.

And she said, "Of course, we know it's
only going to be a matter of time before

the jobs all go to someplace like Sri Lanka,
where they only have to pay $0.21 an hour.

And the picture for me is of jobs as a
kind of great flock of migratory birds,

which fly from one place to another and settle

down and deposit a certain amount
of wealth there while they're there,

but soon they'll take off again looking for
some other place where the wages are even lower.

And that's not a bad figure of speech.

We saw that happen in this country
when the northern industries –

this was certainly true of
the mills in New England –

went down south where they could
get non-union and cheaper labor.

With the modern mobility of capital
in the multinational corporation,

jobs do in fact tend to –

many of them anyway – are pretty free to
migrate to where the wages are lowest,

and that's where they're going to roost.

Now, one of the things that struck me about that
article was that nothing was said about China.

And I found myself wondering, "Hey, where
do the Chinese fit into this picture?"

Why, they're probably under a dollar an
hour, $0.50 an hour maybe, I thought.

At any rate, it had to be a pretty low figure.

Under a billion people in that country.

Recently, my question was answered more
or less reliably by another article,

this time in the "Christian Science Monitor,"
and this wasn't about economics at all,

it was about a British rock
group called "Wham," which has

just gone to China and caused a great
upheaval of various kinds there.

But like all things Western, it's very popular
with the young people in the new China.

The article described a young Chinese workman
standing in line for five or six hours,

just like his American counterparts,
to buy a ticket to hear Wham.

And it said in passing that he
had to pay – for this ticket –

he had to pay 5 yuan – parenthesis,
$1.75, or 2 days' wages.

Two days' wages.

If you figure an 8-hour day, we're talking
about just a little bit more than $0.10 an hour.

And there are a billion people over there,

most of whom are ready and eager
to work at that kind of wage.

Now, this is bound to have a lot to say about,

not only our future, but the future of all
of what we think of as the highly-developed

wealthy countries of the North
Atlantic, let's say, community.

Given, again, the mobility of
capital, there is no possible

way that the wealthy countries of the
world are going to be able to employ

their populations at $10 or $9 or $8 or
$7, for that matter Japan, $5.50 an hour.

They're not going to be able to do it.

In other words, as nearly as one
can say anything about the future,

it is certain that the rich countries of the world

are going to get a lot less
rich, as we have defined rich.

And what the consequences of that may
be, we've talked for a long time –

there could be whole conferences – I hope someday

there will be if there are not any
yet – about what this really means.

None of the people who were
running for election in the last

campaign –

even those who talk glibly about new ideas –

none of them seem to have the
faintest idea that this is going on,

or what this means, or what they might do with it.

This is going to call for a lot of hard thinking.

To say just a very short thing about us,

I'd say we're going to have to
rediscover thrift in this country.

We're going to have to discover that efficiency
is not the same thing as making a lot of stuff.

We're going to have to rediscover –

learn how to do the most with the least.

Old New England motto: Wear it out.

Let's see, no.

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do,
do without" – the old Yankee saying.

Or old Ben's, "A penny saved is a penny earned.

We're going to rediscover the truth of that.

We're going to start learning
how to darn socks again.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

I think we'll be probably a very much better,
more interesting, more equitable country if

we learn to revise our ideas about what
is true wealth, what is true efficiency.

But that's a big topic, and it's not really
the topic we've come here to discuss.{I just}

If we're going to be talking
or thinking about the future,

I think this is an element in it
that we can't afford to neglect.

Okay, well that's all for the big formal
speech, if it struck you that way.

So now we can move into some
kind of questions, discussion,

comment on whatever you want to talk about.

I mean, we can talk about any
of the things I've talked about,

or if you came here wanting to talk about
something else, we can talk about that too,

unless I don't know anything at
all about it, I will tell you.

I can tell you how to begin on the cello.

I can't tell you how to
become a magnificent player.

Well, as soon as I learn, I will tell you that.

Sir.

Jerry Mintz: Hi.

Jerry Mintz from Shaker
Mountain School in Vermont.

{We can't hear you.}
John: Oh, hi, Jerry.

Jerry: {I just hope} One thing I was
thinking about is that you missed,

somewhere between Ceylon and India, the wages
of alternative school people. [Laughter]

John: Yes.
Yes.

Jerry Mintz: It may mean that the
industry may flock to the free schools.

I'm not sure. [Laughter]

One thing I was wondering about is what you think
the difference is between parents who are exposing

their kids to education or to learning
without coercion and schools that are

exposing their kids to learning without coercion.

And our school doesn't require kids
to go to any particular classes.

And on the other side of the
coin, the difference between

parents who are coercing their kids and
schools that are coercing their kids.

John: Well, the key difference for me is the
difference between coercion and non-coercion.

In other words, if I thought that the

homeschooling movement was made up largely
or entirely of people who wanted to coerce

their kids and just thought they could
do a better job of it than schools could,

I wouldn't have spent two
minutes on this activity.

My interest in homeschooling, and, for
that matter, alternative schooling –

and I was interested in alternative schools
before I became interested in homeschooling –

my interest in it is that it
makes it at least possible –

for those people who want to
give their children a natural,

organic, uncoerced learning experience – to do so.

Not everybody is going to use it that way.

People start schools which they hope will be
even more coercive than the schools that exist.

There are certainly some people
who teach their children thinking

that they can pound in learning faster
than the local schools were doing it.

I don't think many of them stick it out very
long because they find out it doesn't work.

No, I mean, if I look far enough down the line,
I like to think of schools as learning-experiment

activity centers, somewhat analogous to public
libraries, although rather wider in scope,

places to which people can
come if they feel like coming,

to do the things that they want to do
for as long as they want to do them.

And {I kind of – }I would hope that
somewhere we would find a way to call

these places something other than schools because
they're really very fundamentally very different.

"Club" would be nice if we just
kind of dared to do it. [Laughter]

We have a film that a friend of mine,

my friend Peggy Hughes, made in
Denmark of the preschool there.

The film was called "We Have to Call It School."

And the film begins with this young
Danish teacher there saying in English,

"We have to call it school because if we didn't,

they wouldn't let the
children come here."[Laughter]

But it would be nice if, in
our minds, we thought about

these non-coercive gathering-and-activity
places as something other than a school.

I like "club."

I mean, club has a –

But you can pick what word you
like, or invent a brand new one.

Ultimately, I suppose I'd like to
see all schools evolve this way.

I don't think, certainly not in my lifetime
and not in any future that I can see,

can I imagine legislatures striking
compulsory attendance laws off the books.

But I can imagine more and more schools defining
attendance in just the way you define it,

so that the difference between being in school
and not being in school gets so fuzzed over

that you can't tell any longer when somebody
is in or when somebody is out.{now I don't}

Have I spoken to your point, or was there
something other you'd like to get out?

Jerry: In other words, do you consider that it
would be advantageous for a parent to homeschool

their kid in a non-coercive way, rather than
let them go to a school that was non-coercive?

John: Well, if you're a homeschooling
parent and there was in your area a

non-coercive school that kids could go to,

I would be ready to leave it up to
those children and those parents

to decide how much they wanted to make use of it.

Some families, the kids would
be there a lot of the time,

and other families, they might
not be there much of the time.

I think of my friends, the Wallaces in Ithaca,

their public school system, as
a matter of fact, said to them,

"You're free to come and use us anywhere
you want or anytime you want to."

In fact, there's nothing for the
public school for them to do there.

These are, by now, two extraordinarily
accomplished musicians,

and they spent six, seven, eight,
nine, ten hours a day working on music.

What in the world are they going to do?

What has school got to offer them?

But if you were very interested in
the kinds of things that are likely

to be done at school, or something that
needed more people – let's say drama,

which is a hard thing to do in small groups –

well, then it might be very
interesting for you to.

So if these resources were there, we'd
say to people, children, their parents,

"Those of you who want to use
them a lot, use them a lot.

Those of you who want to use them
occasionally, use them occasionally.

I wouldn't try to make that decision for anybody.

I think most homeschoolers would be very
glad to have some kind of gathering resource.

One of the advantages of such a place
is that, of course, a gang of people can

get together and buy things which none of
them by themselves might be able to afford,

– make sufficient use of.

Well, they can do it now, but the
question is then, "Whose house is it at?"

There get to be problems like that.

If there is a central gathering and
meeting place, well that's all the handier.

Now, one of the reasons that I went from thinking
about alternative schools to thinking about

homeschooling is that most of the alternative
schools, in the sense that we're using it here –

I mean, the word has gotten so fuzzed up in the

public-education system that it
no longer has any real meaning.

Most of the true alternative
schools of the late '60s and

the early '70s have long since
gone, mostly for lack of money.

You know how hard a struggle it is, even
with Sri Lankan wages. [inaudible]. [Laugha]

Even with those kinds of sacrifices,
very few schools were ingenious enough,

or resourceful, or lucky,
or whatever to keep going.

We had a gang up in the Boston area.

I don't think one – maybe one,
right? – they've all disappeared.

A lot of them were doing wonderful work.

So I began thinking, what can people do who

are not able to get one of these
places going and keep it together?

I suppose one of the things we have to learn is
how can we do this in a way that costs less money

without starving and not going into Ethiopian
wages, or something like that. [Laughter]

We don't want to do that.

All right, now I'm going to do a
little number thing with hands,

just so I don't forget, or so
we keep some kind of order.

Is it one here?

Did you all thought on – ?

Woman: I'm going to ask a question.
John: All right.

You'll be number one.

And the second – all right, second here.

Third here.

Fourth.

Lady in the red dress shirt.

Okay.

All right.

Five.

Okay.
Now, you have to remember.

Six?

Okay.

You have to remember your numbers, and you
have to remember where I am in the numbers,

because I'm not going to remember
either of those things. [Laughter]

All right.
{I have quite –}

Yes.

Woman: I'm number one.

If our children are most interested in the
things that we are most interested in –

John: They aren't hearing you.

Woman: They're not hearing?

John: No way in the world. [Laughter]

Woman: Okay.

John: Got to sing out.

Woman: Okay.

John: I mean, it is possible.

Second Woman: There are a lot of people here.

Woman: If our children are most interested
in the things that we are most interested in,

are we not then as homeschoolers
rearing lopsided children? And –

John: Everybody's lopsided.

Woman: Okay.
John: I'm lopsided.

You're lopsided.

All God's children are lopsided. [Laughter]

Woman: And will they fill out?

John: Yeah.

Woman: Okay.

John: That doesn't mean to say they're going to

wind up knowing everything about
everything, because nobody does.

But your life is not just you.

You've got friends.

They come here.

You know people.

They have interests.

The child lives in a kind of bunch
of concentric circles of family,

and then larger family, and close friends
of family, and neighbors, streets.

And this world, as I say, has
many different layers in it.

And some of your children may meet people
who happen to be very interested in things

that you're not much interested in,
and they may pick up that interest.

That's okay.

As long as – as I say, as long
as – as far as we're able to,

we make it possible for children to move into
the world in whatever ways they want to do it,

they're going to find enough there.

Nobody's going to die of starvation.

I don't care whether you live on an isolated farm,

or this sterile suburb that
everybody loves to talk about,

or the wicked big city that I live in, the
fact is that human life, as people live it,

has got more than enough food for thought
for children to bite into and to grow.

As they feel the need of more, they're going
to know more about where to go to look for it.

All right.

Now, let's see, two?

Woman: May I just say to my friends
here that wait until they get married.

John: The children.

Woman: Right, then their lives will widen up.

I just had – our first just did.

I'm still at homeschooling with a six-year-old.

I just want to thank you, John,

from my heart for having helped us very much here.

And I don't have a question.

But I wanted to tell you that today my
sister-in-law had to hang up the phone

in order to go across the street
to walk her third-grader home

because she has been molested
within 400 feet of her own home.

And this doesn't even state how I feel
about the fact that they're not learning

going to these places that are supposed to
be teaching – or pouring it in, as you say.

I don't think that we have to defend ourselves
any more than if you're walking down the street

and someone starts to kill you,

because I believe taking my children out of
the public school system saved their lives,

not to speak morally, religiously,
mentally – every way possible.

And I appreciated the story in GWS about the
little girl who was diagnosed as terminally ill

because this was worth all pennies I
paid the pink wage we pay you for GWS.

Thank you, John, very much. [Applause]

John: You're very welcome. [Applause]

We had an interesting story
in the Globe the other day.

I cut out the clipping.

We always have about three times
as much stuff to print in GWS as

we ever have room to print, which is frustrating.

This was about a young man, he's now
18, and he was autistic, which is,

to this day by the supposed
official experts, called incurable.

Autistic, retarded, they're not the same thing.

I mean, he just had a whole bunch
of these labels stuck on him.

It's just hopeless –
"vegetable,"institutionalized."

If you can get him in and out of the bathroom,
that's probably as much as you can do.

And somebody got interested in this
boy when he was seven or eight,

and noticed that he seemed pretty
energetic and lively, and liked moving,

and they got him started
running – and running distances.

Took him on long runs or this, that, the other
– and they got him into this running world.

The boy's now 18, I think.

I don't remember whether this was because he

was getting ready to run in
the Boston Marathon or not.

But at any rate, he's become
an extremely good runner.

Incidentally, he has not caught up with his age,
but he talks intelligently and intelligibly,

reads, I don't know, something
on a 6th, 7th grade level.

But all this is going up.

He's become a fully-functioning human being –

because he was allowed and helped to do the
things that he liked best. {I mean, that's –}

People grow through their
strengths, not their weaknesses.

One of the many simple truths, which the
giant educational, psychological, medical,

et cetera, institutions don't seem to
be able to learn is just that, that:

people learn by and grow through their strengths,

not by having people pound
away at their weaknesses.

Somebody had the wit and imagination to see
that this boy had a talent, a gift, a love,

something he wanted to do, and then all
this other stuff kind of went along with it.

Well, we know that, and they don't
know it out there, [Chuckles]

and it's going to be a long time
before they do – which is interesting.

Okay, now let's see.

Yes.

Woman: I have a lot of resentment
against my public school education

and further education here at
the University of Michigan,

although I learned, as you said, to play
the games very well and got good grades,

but felt that I didn't develop a lot of interest,
because I was too busy playing the games.

But I wondered how you'd answer the
question, if I hear you correctly,

that you allow a child to
choose what he wants to learn.

I can't imagine how a person would ever
choose to learn things like trigonometry

or things that they say maybe
later that you're going to need.

John: Well, you will need
trigonometry if you're a surveyor,

in no other place [inaudible].{And that's}

I'm glad you picked that.

Woman: Well, I didn't take trigonometry,
but the algebra I've used, for example.

John: Now, now [inaudible –

Woman: I didn't enjoy learning
it, but I've used it a lot.

John: Okay.

Well, if you had not learned it, and
if you got to a place in life where

you needed it to do something you wanted to
do, then you would learn it very quickly.

It's no mystery.

It's not hidden.

The time to learn stuff is –

Woman: So you learn things when you need them,

not when the school system
says, "This is geometry year."

John: Right.
John: Right, right.

You learn things when you –

As a species, as a living creature,

we human beings are incredibly good
at learning stuff when we need to,

if we have not been convinced that
we're so stupid that we can't do it –

which, unfortunately, in a
great many places, does happen.

Man: I don't know who you're on right now,

but I just want to point out that
I'm enjoying learning algebra.

I'm alternatively educated.

Woman: [Inaudible]
John: Good.

And thank you.

Woman: What kind of school are you in now?

Man: Well, actually, it's a public school, but
it's an attempt at being an alternative school.

And it's not as close as the
school I went to before it,

but it's closer than the standard public schools,

and it has the atmosphere
of an alternative school.

But many of our classes are
chosen, I mean, rather than –

Beyond the state requirements that
the public schools have to follow,

most of our classes are chosen.

Woman: Do you have friends in public
school, regular public school?

What I wonder is if you feel, in comparison,
that you're getting a far better education.

Man: Well, the --

Woman: Obviously, you do.

Man: I was in the public schools until 7th grade.

And 7th grade, I jumped around,

and it was because of just all sorts of
problems I was having in public schools.

[Inaudible]

Yeah, I think my education, since I've gone into
alternative schools, has been infinitely better.

John: Good.

Well, I'm glad to hear that.

But I do want to make clear, as far as
I'm concerned, I'm not trying to make,

never have tried to make a
distinction between public

and conventional private schools.;{One of them, }

If you remember "How Children Fail," you'll
remember that somewhere along in the book I wrote,

"School is a place where children
learn to be stupid." [Laughter]

Now, let me tell you about the
school about which I was writing.

I was not writing about some poor old
PS 111 in the middle of the downtown,

I was talking about an extremely exclusive,

high-powered, selective,
private elementary school,

one of the two or three outstanding such schools

in the whole Boston-Cambridge area –

the top of the top of the top of the top!

They had an admissions policy under
which a kid could not get into the school

if she or he did not have an IQ of 120.

That was the cut-off.

It was at that school that I wrote,

"School is a place where
children learn to be stupid."

So I'm not drawing a line – never have drawn it.

I'm not drawing it here saying,

"Ooh, look at all these terrible, rotten public
schools on one-sided. Ooh, look at these –"

What I was saying then is that what I came to
realize in that school with these kids is that

you cannot coerce learning or attempt to
coerce it without making people stupid –

without making them afraid,
shifty, evasive, clever tricksters.

Yeah, the cleverest tricksters,
they'll sail on to Harvard, MIT, Yale –

I did that game – dope out
the teacher, guess the exam.

Everybody knows how it goes.

And everybody who does it knows
that 90% of that stuff you throw

out just like dirty dishwater
as soon as the exam is passed.

How many people on any university
faculty could pass an exam –

other than, perhaps basic English reading
and writing – outside of their own specialty?

I mean, just very, very few – and they know it.

I mean, this idea that there's some great body

of knowledge which they all
share – it's just nonsense!

Never was true, not true now.

It's a fraud.

I mean, I have a lot of people say it sincerely.

I don't think they're lying
when they say it, but I mean,

it's a fraud because it's just not so!

Nobody remembers that stuff.

Harvard University, if you're taking
some big course, they announce an exam.

Some professor's going to have an exam in
his or her course, professor announces it.

"We will have such an exam on such and such a day,
and it will cover such and such and such a topic."

And then you spend a certain amount
of time discussing this in review.

Nobody springs surprise exams on their students

because they know perfectly
well what would happen.

No, it's a very –

All right.
I'll get out of that.

I'll go on all night. [Laughter]

Let's see, now, where are we at on numbers?

John: Yes.

Dorothy: I'm the 4th.

John: Good.

Dorothy: I'm help coordinate a
homeschooling support group in Chicago.

And I'm noticing more and more the split
that you have alluded to in homeschoolin

g as well between those who wish to
coerce learning and those who don't.

And those who do are very much
interested, as it happens in Illinois,

in keeping those of us who don't want to coerce in

a semblance of unity with
them vis-à-vis the state.

And it's becoming more and more
difficult, I think, for that to happen.

And I wonder if you would
comment on that, and also on –

There's a definite one-way
flow of energy happening

because those of us who do not wish to coerce give
support and assistance very often to those who do,

because they believe they
have the right to choose.

And those who wish to coerce really don't think
that the rest of us do have the right because,

"We're not doing it the right way, you see."

So, would you comment on that? {I don't – }

This is not a problem I want solved
because I don't see it being [inaudible]

John: That's good, because it's –

Dorothy: -- we're not going to do that.

But I would like a comment
from you, if you will, on that,

especially vis-à-vis legislation
and that sort of thing,

when our interests tend to be
moving further and further apart.

And what would you think we should
do in terms of strategies about this?

John: Thank you, Dorothy.

I first think of something a
friend of mine used to say.

"This isn't a problem, it's a predicament."

Dorothy: Right. [Laughter] {Problems are –}

John: The word "problem" kind of cooks
up in our mind the picture of something

which we could make go away if we could
just figure out the right thing to do.

Things like debt and taxes are predicaments,
and they're just part of reality.

Yeah, this is a part of reality,
and we are living with it,

and we're going to be living with it
as far in the future as I can see.

It doesn't trouble me that –

{I'm going to answer} – I'm going
to respond in several sections.

First place, I don't think it's a
cause for worry or concern or distress

that we may be helping people to get
rights which they would not help us to get.

Dorothy: I'm not worried about that.{I mean, if –}

John: Now, there's no reason in the
world not to work together with people

with whom we disagree about many things
on those things about which we agree.

Because when we improve the legislative situation,
then we've made things easier for all of us.

{And there are – the other thing I would have –}

Another thing I would have to
say is – well, first of all,

a lot of the people who begin as
coercive homeschoolers change.

Dorothy: I've seen a lot of that [inaudible].

John: Their children teach them [laughter]
about how learning really works.

And if – and this is very, very
often true – if they care enough

about their children to pay
attention to their feelings

and pick up these messages, they become educated,

and they become less and less
coercive – minimally coercive.

My experience is that the people
who do not make that change

don't stay in homeschooling very long.

That is, people who – whether
for reasons religious or other,

believe in high-pressure coercion,

soon find ways to get together with
other people who feel the same way

and they start some kind of coercive school.

I don't think you're very likely
to find people doing coercive

homeschooling for four or five years in a row.

I mean, their children would hit the road,

if nothing else happened.
[Laughter] {So, I'm perfectly –}

I'm untroubled by having people start in
a position which is very far from my own,

partly because I believe people should have the

right to do this however they want to
do it, not just if they agree with me,

and partly because I have a
lot of confidence, as I say,

that they will learn from their children,
that they will move away from coercion.

As I have said at teachers' colleges, one
reason homeschooling works well in practice

is that the home is an absolutely splendid
teacher-training institution. [Laughter]

The numbers are small enough so you can really
hear the messages that your children are sending.

And you're in a position where, if you
choose to, you can learn from them.

When I first discovered, as a
fifth-grade classroom teacher,

that a lot of children were so scared
of the weekly arithmetic test

that they couldn't think about
arithmetic, I stopped giving the tests.

And it wasn't more than about two weeks before the

school administration told me that
I had to start giving them again,

and they fired me at the end of the year.

So I was not in a position
to do what my conscience and

intelligence and instincts
told me needed to be done.

Parents aren't in that position.

"You can start with a little desk,

an American flag, a schedule on
the blackboard and – [Laughter]

But the day you find out it
isn't working, you can say,

"We're going to do something different."

You have that freedom to move very, very –

[End of recording]