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 . . .

In Memory of Jean Liedloff and The Continuum Concept

I learned that Jean Liedloff, author of the groundbreaking book about her work with the Yequana Indians of the Amazon basin, The Continuum Concept, died on March 15, 2011. This book was championed by John Holt during his life, and we continued to sell and support it until we closed our bookstore in 2001. Holt wrote:

This seems to me as important a book as any I have ever read. In it Jean Liefloff says and shows that babies grow best in health, happiness, intelligence, independence, self-reliance, courage, and cooperativeness when they are born and reared in the "continuum" of the human biological experience, that is, as "primitive" mothers bear and rear their babies, and probably always have born and reared them through all the millions of years of human existence.

We interviewed Jean Liedloff in Growing Without Schooling 70. You can download a PDF of the two-page interview here. I hope you enjoy reading the interview.

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.

The Complacency of Sentimental Education

As another school year begins so too are the media stories with their formulaic reporting about homeschooling: Talking heads debating the pros and cons of learning at home; education experts concerned about gaps in homeschooler’s knowledge; “Wife Swap”-types of videos that contrast strict school-at-home moms with loosey-goosey unschoolers; and the common lead to so many articles and TV segments that I’ve heard since 1981, “The school bus drives past the Farenga home but their children aren’t on it. They are part of the growing and controversial homeschooling movement…” There are occasional well-done stories, of course, but I’m struck by the large amount of cookie-cutter reporting about homeschooling that I’ve seen over the decades and am now re-seeing, as I look through my back issues of Growing Without Schooling magazine, my work files, and the current news in print and online.

Why can’t the media, educators, and most parents get past the standard questions about socialization, college and employment for homeschoolers that I, and many others, have responded to with studies, case histories, anecdotes and the evidence of at least two generations of socialized, college-educated and employed homeschoolers? Why can’t we get into the real meat of the issues, such as: How can society/local communities capitalize on such dedicated parental involvement in education? Why do colleges accept homeschoolers without conventional high school degrees and what can that mean for reforming our schools? Do students who have autonomy in their studies and lives become employees who are team players?

Our sentimentality about children often gets in the way of seeing them as real people and we are further bound by our own sentimentality about our schooling and upbringing. It “worked for us” goes the thinking, so it will work for our kids. The problem is, our kids are growing up in a completely different environment than we did. Talk about socialization should not be about whether or not homeschoolers feel hurt because they don’t get Valentine’s Day cards from classmates (this was how the socialization question was phrased to me on a national TV show), but about the sort of socialization our kids experience from bullies in school, Colombine-type threats and experiences, and the “teach ‘em and test ‘em” policies we have that make test scores more important than social experiences in school, such as playing at recess, art, sports, drama, choir and music. Our “lens of sentimentality” limit not only our expectations of what children can do, but also our relationships with children. Can it be that our sentimental memories and expectations of schooling and youth make us ignore the realities before our eyes? When I came across this piece of unpublished writing by John Holt that we printed in GWS 68, I felt Holt had, again, summed up a complicated issue very plainly and neatly and pointed my thoughts in a new direction.

Here’s what Holt wrote:

…I fear and dislike sentimentality because I’ve learned from experience that it is one side of a coin whose other side is callousness, contempt, and cruelty.  The trouble with the people who think that some of the time children are little angels is that when the children are not behaving in ways they like they think they are little devils.  The people who at one minute are ready to shed crocodile tears at the thought of an eight-year-old doing actual work will in the next minute become indignant to the point of rage or panic if I suggest that that same eight-year-old be given some kind of say about his learning or the conditions of his life.  This dainty angelic creature, who at one minute we had to protect, in the next minute turns into some kind of dangerous criminal monster.  In fact children are not angels or devils, saints or monsters, not naturally good or naturally wicked, simply human beings very much like the rest of us, with the additional assets of having rather more energy and hopefulness than we do, and the liabilities of being somewhat smaller, weaker, and less experienced.  If we could only agree not to take advantage of their weakness and inexperience, not actually and positively to prey on them, they would be safe enough making a great many decisions which we now don’t let them make.