Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling by John Holt and Pat Farendga. Perseus Publishing, 2003.
“Why do people take or keep their children out of school? Mostly for three reasons: they think that raising their children is their business not the government’s; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn, and don’t want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically, and spiritually.”
This pretty much sums up a lot of my motivations for wanting to do homeschooling with you guys. When I struggle to think of a good reason for the Why? behind homeschooling, this sounds right to me. I like you guys and want to spend a lot of time with you, I think you’ll get a better education with Mama and me than with our current system, and I want to be close to you when you get hurt.
At some point in the book, he talked about the bias that people have against children and that many people don’t actually like or respect children. Just today, I heard a guy talk about Job having a “juvenile” faith. What the hell is that? Jesus told us we need to become like children to enter the kingdom. He was using “juvenile” as a word to mean “not there yet”, but in a very pejorative sense.
If I like you guys so much, why would I be willing to give you over to someone else and to a system that took you away from me most of the day and didn’t do a great job doing what they said they would do?
From a man in Iowa in an area where full-time farmers must do extra work in meat packing plants to make ends meet:
“The work ethic has been ground into these folks so thoroughly that they think anyone who doesn’t hold down, continually, a full-time painful job is a bum.”
In this case, school becomes a place to teach children about life as pain, as a place to Shut Up and Do What You’re Told. Because that is the life the parents are going through. You may win the lottery and end up with a high paying job, but it’s not likely, so you need to get ready for it.
This is not the life I hope for you.
From a wealthy family who was worried that their son was having too much fun in class:
“After all, he is going to have to spend the rest of his life doing things he doesn’t like, and he may as well get used to it now.”
Some other great quotes:
“The needs of the children have little to do with the needs of the school curriculum.” (24)
On responding to the objection that children need the valuable social life of school. “If there were no other reason for wanting to keep kids out of school, the social life would be reason enough.” (33)
Common question from parents: How am I going to teach my child six hours a day? “Who’s teaching him six hours a day right now?” (47)
“Many people who quite like and enjoy children still seem to be in the grip of the old idea that in civilizing them we have to give up or destroy some important part of them.” (80)
On repeatedly saying “No” to kids: “As parents, we can simply SHUT UP! If we can sit back and listen to ourselves, we can hear how much negative harassment we throw at our kids.” (88) I often have to catch myself with this. Sometimes I’ll notice that in the course of a few hours, all I’ve done with you is corrected you with negative statements.
On the need for rewards: “Very little children are like the Balinese. Just about everything they do, they do as well as they can.…Our intrinsic motivation to learn is warped in school by inappropriate praise and reward.” (98)
On language learning: “…all over the world many poor people in nonindustrial countries speak more than one language…and that on the whole it is only in nation-states that have had several generations of compulsory schooling that we find most people speaking only one language…people no longer learn their languages from people who talk to them…but from professional speakers who are trained and paid to say what others have prepared for them. (116)
I loved this one: Any kids truly free to run their own school exactly as they see fit, will immediately declare a permanent vacation, and that will be the end of it. They may get together as before, and do the same things, but they won’t call it school unless you make them.” (124)
“Some years ago I was reading aloud to a small child, as yet a non-reader, perhaps three or four years old. As I read aloud I had the bright idea that by moving a finder along under the words as I read them I might make more clear the connections between the written and the spoken words. A chance to get in a little subtle teaching. Without saying anything about it, and as casually as possible, I began to do this.
“It didn’t take the child very long to figure out that what had begun as a nice, friend;y, cozy sharing of a story had turned into something else, that her project had by some magic turned into my project. After a while, and whitout saying a word, she reached up a hand, took hold of my hand, and very gently moved it off the page and down by my side – where it belonged. I gave up teaching and went back to doing what I had been asked to do, which was to read the story. (144)
You guys already do this to me all the time.
On playing with a kid who asked him to pitch her some balls: “She didn’t ask you to coach, she asked you to pitch. So shut up and pitch.” (147)
This was an interesting observation about animal trainers in connection with schools: “It must continually be made clear to the animal that, when he knows what is the right thing to do in a given context, that is the only thing he can do, and no nonsense about it. In other words, it is a primary condition of circus success that the animal shall abrogate the sue of certain higher levels of his intelligence….I happened to make a remark about horses being intelligent. “Goodness no” he laughed, “They’re not intelligent. If they were, they’d never let us ride them.” (164)
“School is a place where children learn to be stupid.” …others had taken control of their minds. It was being taught, in the sense of being trained like circus animals to do tricks on demand, that had made them stupid.”…
“The elephant in the jungle is smarter than the elephant waltzing in the circus. The rat eating garbage in the slums is smarter than the rat running mazes in the psychology lab.
On doing really important work: Many people who are doing serious work in the world (as opposed to just making money) are very overworked and short of help. If a person, young or not so young, said to them, I believe in the work you are doing and want to help you in any and every way I can, and I’d be glad to do any kind of work you ask me to do or that I can find to do, for very little pay, or even none at all if you can give me room and board, “ I suspect that many of them would say, “Sure, come right ahead. ..in any case, he or she would learn far more from working with them and being around them than in any school or college. (188)
A college degree isn’t a passkey that opens every door in town. It opens only a few, and before you spend a lot of time and money getting one of those keys, it’s a good idea to find out what doors it opens (if any), and what’s on the other side of those doors, and to decide whether you like what’s on the other side, and if you do, whether there may not be an easier way to get there.” (189)
“If you know what kind of work you want to do, move towards it in the most direct way possible. If you want to build boats, go where people are building boats, afind out as much as you can. When you’ve learned all they know, or will tell you, move on. Before long, even in the highly technical field of yacht design, you may find you know as much as anyone, enough to do whatever you want to do….But don’t assume that school is the best way r the only way to learn something without carefully checking first. There may be quicker, cheaper, and more interesting ways.” (193)
“If you learn, the schools get the credit; if you don’t the student gets the blame. In short, you can’t sue a school for educational malpractice.” (212)
Some more practical bits we can use:
“One thing I’ve found useful, when helping kids go through [the process of choosing what they want to focus on] is to make three lists. One list is for things that come easily, things that you would do anyway, whether or not you say down and made a plan about them. The second list is for things that you want to work on but feel you need some help with – maybe suggestions of ways to pursue the activity, or maybe some sort of schedule or plan regarding it. The third list is for things you want to put aside for a while, things you don’t want to work on right now.” (241)
“It is a mistake to think that learning is an activity separate from the rest of life…When we lock learning and teaching in the school box, as we do, we do not get more effective teaching and learning in society, but much less.” Schools have tried to corner the market on knowledge. (278)
“The only difference between a good student and a bad student is that a good student is careful not to forget what he has studied until after the test…Adults continually demand that children learn facts and information that they themselves do not use or know” (283).
Schools teach not to cheat and share answers with each other, but this is not the practice in the outside world.