Learning Foreign Languages or Just Learning to Play the School Game?

One of my current projects is to redo the HoltGWS.com website and to scan all the issues of Growing Without Schooling magazine and put them online; I'm about halfway through this project as I write this. It is now ten years since we stopped publishing GWS and I'm only now able to look at all these papers, audio and video recordings, books, and back issues with fresh eyes. I've had to organize these materials several times since 2001 as we downsized the company, put many of Holt's papers in a research archive at the Boston Public Library, and sorted and moved boxes from different colleagues' homes to mine. To be honest, it was often emotionally difficult for me to go through these materials in the past—so many memories, friends who've died, children who've grown up—but recently I've been invigorated by engaging with this material. I'm struck by how relevant all the writing in GWS remains—so many issues are the same for homeschoolers in 2011 compared to 1977: Are my kids really learning if I'm not teaching? How will they get into college if they want to go? How do I deal with skeptical school officials and relatives? Further, many of the comments John Holt made about learning at home seem even more important today, and I'll be highlighting some of those in later entries. But what really excited me this week is the discovery of a cassette of John being interviewed on a Boston radio station about the "A Nation At Risk" report in 1983. John spends nearly an hour talking about school and school reform, with just a few mentions of homeschooling. I'm in the process of digitizing this interview but I discovered this transcription of a section from that interview that ran in Growing Without Schooling 51. Donna Richoux, the editor of GWS then, followed John's radio comments with earlier writing by John about learning foreign languages in school.

First, from the WBOS interview in 1983:

Q. Does it alarm you that the report ("A Nation At Risk) described that not one state has any kind of requirements for foreign language?

JH: Not at all. The whole foreign language thing in schools is a big shuck from the word go. If you want kids to learn foreign languages, send them to places where they speak those Languages. I taught for a while at a private school here in Boston, a private secondary school, very good one, small, lots of money, very, very bright kids, very capable teachers. We had a French teacher there, a native-born Frenchwoman, an extremely competent woman. She liked the kids, the kids liked her, she had all the latest jazz: language labs, audio-visual materials, all the latest techniques. She wrote a report to the head of the school. She said. "Children take French in this school for four years, and these are very bright kids with all the best, and they don't learn as much French as they’d learn if they spent three months in the country.”

Q: How are they going to do that? I mean, in a rich private school I can understand. But what about in a public school in the United States?

JH: What's the point of teaching it? If you're living in a part of the country where there are—this is true in many parts of the country—let us say Spanish-speaking groups, or here Italian, you know you've got Iots of people in Boston who speak Italian - if you want kids to learn Italian, send them down to the North End and let them talk to people who speak Italian. But generally speaking, human beings learn what they have a need for, what they feel a need for. We‘re not good at learning stuff because somebody says, "Hey, someday you may need it, someday it may come in handy.” When we see a connection between real life and this stuff that we need to learn, then we're good at learning. 

And from a 1968 paper based on questions asked by teachers:

Q. If learning is best when one needs it, why has foreign language learning been emphasized at the early primary stage for total contact with the foreign tongue?

JH: For two reasons. The first is the assumption that since children learn their own language best when young, they will learn foreign languages in school best when young. The assumption is false. The child learning his own language has a hundred practical reasons for learning; a child learning a foreign language in school has no practical reason for learning it. The second reason is, quite frankly, that the modern language lobby is powerful in education these days. It has been able to create a situation in which schools and teachers feel they have to teach foreign languages early, whether they want to or not, and whether or not this leads to any useful or lasting results . . .

The Importance of Vulnerability in Learning

I often hear about the qualities needed for children to learn effectively and they are, sadly, often the same among most schools and homeschooling parents: for instance, children should sit still and follow instructions, complete their assignments every day, and get good grades. From a technical, school-efficiency view of learning these qualities are vital for providing detailed records of student performance in order to inform the school what they will do next to the student, but from a person-centered view of learning they are not nearly as important. This view, which I hold, places individual motivation, open questioning, and the singular ways in which each child learns to be far more important for nurturing learning than school efficiency. As John Holt often noted, “…little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning.” When I viewed this TED video by Brene Brown, author of The Gift of Imperfection, I understood, more completely, the importance of maintaining personal vulnerability, not just for learning but also for living a full life.

Dr. Brown presents herself as a hard-nosed researcher whose job is “to control and predict,” the essential task of research. However, as Dr. Brown, a social worker, applied hard science to her task of measuring the ability of people to feel connected to others, she learned that being able to feel connected to people also involved deep feelings of shame and fear, something she didn’t expect. As she explored the role of shame and fear in how we connect, or don’t connect, with others she also went on a fascinating personal journey that led her to change her ideas not only about social work but also about life, learning, and parenting. Brown initially follows her professor’s advice to “lean into the discomfort,” and she organizes the messy discomforts of her life and work into neatly arranged Bento boxes, but she eventually concludes that this is not how we can form authentic relationships with others, and so, applying her research to herself, she had to relearn how to be vulnerable, how to take risks in love and life, how to “lean into the joy.”

John Holt wrote at length, nearly 50 years ago, about how fear and shame inhibit learning (see How Children Learn and How Children Fail) and his observations are well supported by Dr. Brown’s research and stories. Though she doesn’t spend a lot of her time discussing children and learning, the overall message of this talk is so well presented and vital that you will easily make your own connections to parenting and education.



About Talking To Children About The World

Here’s a quote from John Holt about why he engaged in self-censorship during conversations with children that I find fascinating.

Many things in the world around me seem to me ugly, wasteful, foolish, cruel, destructive, and wicked. How much of this should I talk to children about? I tend to feel, not much. I prefer to let, or help, children explore as much of the world as they can, and then make up their own minds about it. If they ask me what I think about something, I will tell them. But if I have to criticize the world in their hearing, I prefer to do it in specifics, rather than give the idea that I think the world, in general, is a bad place. I don’t think it is, and for all the bad that is in it, I would much rather be in it than out of it. I am in no hurry to leave. Even if I thought the world, and the people in it, was more bad than good, I don't think I would tell children so. Time enough for them to learn all that is bad. I would not have wanted to know, when I was young, all that I now know about what is wrong with the world. I'm not sure that I could have stood to know it. Time, and experience, and many friends and pleasures, have given me many assets to balance against that knowledge, things to put in the other side of the scales. Children don't have many of these. They need time to learn about some of the good things while they are learning (as they are bound to) about the bad.

—John Holt, GWS 7, p. 11



Free resources and events for homeschoolers and unschoolers

Here are several resources, events, and videos I learned about over the past few weeks that I hope will be of interest to you too.

I’ll be featured in these two free webinars:

Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST. Dr. Carlo Ricci of The Schulich School of Education, Graduate Studies at Nipissing University has asked me to speak about John Holt’s work. My topic will be how can teachers negotiate the tension between using John Holt’s ideas about individualized teaching and learning while at the same time working in the field of standardized education? Can unschooling be reconciled with working in school? If grades and tests must be used in your classes, is it still possible to reduce fear and cheating, encourage Socratic dialog, and form meaningful mentoring relationships with your students? What did Holt do himself in this situation? What did he recommend others to do in that situation? Reserve your Webinar seat now.

Thursday, Jan 27, 7 – 8 PM EST. “Understanding Unschooling.” This will be an interview I do with Diane Flynn Keith, follwed by questions and answers with the audience. To register: http://www.homefires.com/

Learning Resources:

If you’re interested in scholarly writing about unschooling, you can read all the issues of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL) for free.

I’ve been a fan of the TED videos for some time, enjoying them as a smorgasbord. However, a non-profit site “designed to promote the study of the sciences among students considering obtaining a bachelor degree” has compiled an interesting list of TED talks that are focused on topics of interest for homeschoolers and other independent learners:

50 Awesome & Inspiring TED Talks for Homeschoolers

One of my favorite TED speakers, Sir Ken Robinson, receives an animated commentary in this neat video, Changing Education Paradigms.

I’m intrigued by this website and concept, the Slow Thought Movement. “Slow Thought embodies a conscious renunciation of borrowed ideas” which, among other concepts presented on the site, meshes well with homeschooling and unschooling practices.

Wondering About Life and Learning

Two things I've read so far this week have made me stop and think:

Boston Globe, September 20, 2010. Front page headline: AREA SCHOOL SEGREGATION CALLED RIFE. "Public schools in the Boston and Springfield metropolitan areas are among the most segregated in the country, often isolating black and Latino students in low-performing schools, according to a report released today by Northeastern University."

The irony of this report for homeschoolers is that we are often accused of fostering "parallel societies" and segregating our children from minorities and other social groups, the very problem our schools have not solved and, I think, a problem that is made worse by more intensive schooling. Indeed, I would argue that the majority of homeschoolers, unschoolers in particular, are seeking to get their children more involved in real-world activities and groups and therefore are not keeping them away from "others." Some homeschooling families, such as the Millmans, choose to live in blighted neighborhoods with mixed ethnic groups and poor schools yet are able to nurture positive outcomes for their children. Others, such as David Albert's family, make social work and volunteering part of their homeschooling lives.

But mainly I hear the voices of Ivan Illich and John Holt in my head when I consider this 21st century research, since both, in the 1970s, were making the point that schools don't integrate society but divide it into even finer class distinctions, creating an educational underclass. Education, as they predicted, has become a social divider based largely on one's ability to afford to live where private and public schools are well-funded and where neighborhoods and their social benefits are fully functioning. We certainly need more social glue but schooling, as currently conceived, is more about making children compete in a Race to the Top where, inevitably, a few will win and many will lose than it is about cooperating towards common goals. As John Holt noted when asked what he thought about the Back to Basics school reform movement in the early eighties, "'Increasing standards' is just a code for flunking more children."

It is remarkable that despite all the fear-mongering about segragation and child abuse that homeschooling's critics have complained about over the past 33 years (using 1977, when Holt started Growing Without Schooling magazine, as my milestone), these things are not nearly as wide-spread and common as the segragation and child abuse that continue to occur in public and private schools (over 20 states permit paddling and other forms of corporal punishment in public schools, to site one abuse). Families that can't wait for schools to change and want to avoid these unjust practices and model other ways of living and learning should be encouraged, not demonized.

_______________

On another note:

I'm reading a fascinating book, The Forger's Spell, by Edward Dolnick. It is about a con man and art forger who scammed Herman Goering, Hitler's second-in-command. This footnote has reverberated with me since it illuminates much of what I see going on in politics today:

It was in a conversation with Gilbert in Goering's jail cell, on the night of April 18, 1946, that Goering offered what became a famous observation on mass psychology: "Why, of course, the people don't want war," he said. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in Englad nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

Gilbert remarked that in a democracy the people have a say in the decision to got to war.

"Oh, that is all well and good," Goering replied, "but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."