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 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 rom 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,

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.

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 these small tape recorders –

and they 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
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 is 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 a
verage 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
their legs will carry them –

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

l ooking 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,

or 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 here 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.
{I just hope}

Jerry: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 in

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 –?
I thought so.

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]

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.

Woman: [Laughs]
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 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,

wait until
they get married.

John: The chldren?
Woman: Right.

Then their lives
will widen up.

Because 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 just 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 the pennies I paid,

the pink wage we
pay you for GWS.

Thank you, John,
very much.

John: Well, you're 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" and "retarded,"
they're not the same thing.

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

It's 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,

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.

People grow through their strengths,
not their weaknesses.

One of the many simple truths,

which the giant educational,
psychological, medical, etc. 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 the 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 would 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 and way.

I'm glad you picked that.

Woman: Well,
I didn't take trigonometry,

but the algebra
I 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, 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.
[Laughter]

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 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.

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.

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 –
[chuckles] never have drawn it.

I'm not drawing it here saying,

"Ooh, look at all these terrible,
rotten public schools on one side.

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 think
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.
[Laughter]

I'll get out of that.
I'll go on all night.

[Laughter]

Let's see, now,
where are we in our numbers?

John: Yes.

Dorothy: I'm 4.
John: Good.

Dorothy: I help coordinate

a homeschooling
support group in Chicago,

and I'm noticing
more and more

the split that you have alluded to
in homeschooling 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 is 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?

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]

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

a picture of something
which we could make go away

if we could just figure out
the right thing to do.

Things like death 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
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.

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.

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]

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.

Now, 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 –

[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 –

[Recording ends prematurely]