A few days ago I received an email from Tunya Audain, a Canadian libertarian and home education activist. I have no way to corroborate her anecdote, but if true it is remarkable. In my book I explain how Holt’s encounter with Ivan Illich’s CIDOC in 1970 in Mexico was transformative. Audain’s account, which I reproduce here exactly as she sent it to me, sheds further light on this transformation:
The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico
I remember people ardently ranting and raging against oppressive compulsory schooling. About poverty and the thwarted aspirations of the poor. About the escalation of schooling as destructive as the escalation of weapons. About school and medical systems showing declining results as more money was being poured in …
These were the heady discussions students and academics enjoyed at CIDOC (Center for Intercultural Documentation) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the Spring and Summer of 1972. Deinstitutionalization was the main theme.
I had just completed teacher training at Ottawa Teachers College and was there (two young daughters in tow) to listen to the lectures of Ivan Illich who had just published the book Deschooling Society.
His ideas had already spread via many articles in magazines and book reviews. His complete book is available, all short 116 pages, for reading online or downloading at http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/ If you dare comprehend the book, you will be a different person.
“School is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling’s sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers.”
“Unquestionably, the educational process will gain from the deschooling of society even though this demand sounds to many schoolmen like treason to the enlightenment. But it is enlightenment itself that is now being snuffed out in the schools.”
“Two centuries ago the United States led the world in a movement to disestablish the monopoly of a single church. Now we need the constitutional disestablishment of the monopoly of the school.”
These words were spoken way before we had online education. If people pride themselves now on the advances of this technological magic, just read the chapter of 40 years ago, “Learning Webs”. “Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. … a huge professional apparatus of educators and buildings which in fact restricts the public’s chances for learning … It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.”
Illich was a priest, a philosopher, an inspired prophet. He laced his talks with Greek myths and poetry. When we heard his version of how Prometheus tricked the gods out of their monopoly of fire, we tried to project that concept to health, education, welfare and other fields monopolized by the state.
Neither Illich nor any of our discussions ever conceived of the notion of home education as a movement, though we frequently talked about home care of the sick. It was not till I had a discussion with John Holt, the author of such books as “How Children Learn” and “How Children Fail” that the movement toward home education started to percolate.
So, one morning, beneath a heavily-laden mango tree from which John partook, this was our conversation:
John: Now that you have completed teacher training, where are you going to teach?
Tunya: I didn’t get training to teach in a school. I took it to teach my own children.
J: Is it legal?
T: Yes, I’ve studied the legislations. It’s possible across North America and England. Parents are to cause their children to obtain an education at a school or elsewhere. It’s this “elsewhere” clause that allows home education.
J: Well, at least you’re now qualified to teach them.
T: I also found out that you don’t need a qualification to teach your own children.
J. What about socialization? They’ll be different.
T: Kids should be individuals. They’ll have plenty of friends from the groups we belong to. Besides, there is a lot of negative socialization in school …
J: What if they want to go to college?
T: They will probably be strong, independent learners and will have an advantage to transfer in…
J: SMART CITY!
5 years later John Holt, who already had a large mailing list of people interested in education reform, started the Home Education Movement with his newsletter, “Growing without Schooling” and the rest is history …
Meanwhile, Dr. Raymond Moore was spreading the word amongst his mainly Christian audience (The Learning Home) and paid frequent visits to Vancouver, Canada, especially when we held Home Learning Fairs in the 80’s.
Besides jump-starting the home education movement John Holt had the wisdom and foresight to caution against the threats and antagonisms that arise from people splitting off from conventional schooling. This quote is worth posting front and center on our bulletin boards, and deserves a lot of pondering in our present day (Feb 2010):
“Today freedom has different enemies. It must be fought for in different ways. It will take very different qualities of mind and heart to save it.”
The link to my article which helped validate the movement in Canada is here: Home Education – The Third Option (1987) http://education-advisory.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/homeeducation-third-option.pdf
See also: Parent Rights and Their Children’s Education (1977) http://genuine-education-reformtoday.org/2010/04/06/parent-rights-and-their-childrens-education/
by Tunya Audain
Education Advisory http://genuine-education-reform-today.org/
2010/02/09
I just want to note that I don’t dispute Tunya’s recollection of her meeting and it jibes with what I know of those days. However, John was thinking and writing about how parents can teach their children without sending them to school as early as the sixties, as can be read in his book The Underachieving School. Further, in interviews and book reviews he wrote during the sixties, John mentions his strong support for the idea of having teachers be guides or mentors to children who want to learn in the world instead of in school. Also, in his files I found a news article from around 1970-71 I think, about a family that didn’t send their children to school and instead let them learn using all the resources available to them in Manhattan. So I don’t think John had a “conversion moment” with Tunya, as much as a confirmation moment, meaning she provided John with more evidence that learning without going to school was a real possibility for ordinary people, not just for people with teaching credentials. John was letting that idea percolate well before he met Tunya. It took John another four years, 1976, before he strongly advocated creating an underground railroad to get kids out of school in his book, Instead of Education. After writing that book John was put in touch with people who, like Tunya, had been helping their children learn without sending them to school.
Can someone point me to follow-up studies on children like the Manhattan children. 39 years have passed, how well did they do? Socially, financially, educationally (did they pursue education at the college/university level)?
Why Home Education Matters
I wrote the article “The Birth of the Home Education Movement” in 2010 after we knew that home educators in California were safe from legal sanctions or having their children seized for truancy. There was that political threat before the courts in 2008 – claiming that parents needed teaching credentials before teaching their children at home.
In explaining the issues on an education blog I had mentioned how important this case was and that it was a godsend in this day and age that we had the quick services of the Internet to communicate and raise the alarm and support the cause. I had sent many comments to as many outlets as I could – ranging from Focus on the Family to John Stossel program and as many homeschooling sites that I could find.
However, one naysayer said: “So what? They’re probably only 1 percent of the school population.”
That is when I knew I had to write about the freedoms that home educators exemplify in a world growing increasingly unfree and compromised by political and power agendas. I had to point out how prescient John Holt was when he made his famous quote on freedom – a proclamation against the dangers ahead – that should be tacked-up on all our bulletin boards:
“Today freedom has different enemies. It must be fought for in different ways. It will take very different qualities of mind and heart to save it.” – John Holt
When I had met with John in Mexico, during the lectures of Ivan Illich of “Deschooling” fame, he was still an ardent school reformer. He was aware of home educators and that they were few and far between and rather timid about legalities. But, John was struck by my comments about intending to educate my children at home – by the firm resolve I showed. I was bolstered by the fact that my research had shown that school acts in the UK and North America provided the “elsewhere” or “otherwise” language to do so. That is when he exclaimed “Smart City!” – a comment which actually threw me as I had never heard such a term before.
I think my adamant firmness of belief was what caused what I have called a “Eureka moment” and others have characterized as a “conversion” to home education. It wasn’t that John Holt was unaware of these home educating possibilities. It seemed to me then, as a young mother with two little children and agreeing with him about the themes of his early books (How Children Fail, How Children Learn, The Underachieving School), that he had this “Ah-ha! Moment” and started considering a switch from his school reform efforts to supporting a home education movement more akin to his beliefs about education.
In my article I called his efforts the beginning of a “movement” even though I was well aware of the Quakers, the Moores and others in their work with Christian families. John Holt had the mailing lists, the networks and the foresight to start his newsletter “Growing Without Schooling” and the rest is history, I said.
The One Percenters in Home Education today, with the growing literature and materials available, provide a solid testament and inspiration to many who embrace alternative, independent forms of education. Additionally, these One Percenters are a visible and steadfast witness to legislators and opponents about the validity and legality of educating children in family units.
John Holt’s Prophetic Voice
It’s 2015 and in most of the Western World — particularly UK, US, Can, Aus & NZ — the education field seems to be infected with something called “transformation to 21st Century Learning”. In the US it’s called Common Core with similarities shared with other countries — shift to competencies such as collaboration, critical thinking, enquiry learning, constructivism, etc. — generally away from skills and content. Part of this move is because of technology — why teach knowledge when it’s just a mouse click away?
Whatever is indeed happening — few really know. Much of the goals and shifts are untested — not evidence-based — yet being implemented in wholesale ways. Some critics say these “paradigm shifts” are being imposed by stealth and without common consent. Fads come and go in education but this time there’s a coercive streak that’s just beginning to be talked about. It’s not just the goals that are in dispute but the methods.
In all the writing about John Holt and his mission to help parents and students toward meaningful learning it was rarely mentioned that he had an underlying concern about totalitarianism. Sure, he promoted non-compulsory education, learning centers, home education, alternatives, etc. But for their own sake, not as escapes from fascism!
But Ron Miller, in his book — Free Schools, Free People, 2002 — mentions that “Holt explicitly suggested that the alienation bred by authoritarian education could well ‘prepare the ground for some native American brand of Fascism’. . . What scares me is the amount of Fascism in people’s spirit.“
Noting that so much of Common Core and the rest of 21st Century Learning depends on central control it is enlightening to read Miller’s account of Holt’s (1970s – 1980s) “prophetic voice” in forecasting ”an efficient social machine managed by a privileged elite. Holt foresaw the coming of the New World Order, and he did not like what he saw.” (pg 89)
Without getting the book, you might be able to get a 6 page magazine article off the Internet or from a research group that is entitled — John Holt: His Prophetic Voice, Education Revolution, Autumn 2002, pg 28-33.
Today, I just intended to update information on this thread of a few years back because some links I provided no longer work. But, as I proceeded, I felt that this aspect of Holt’s mission should be brought forward because I perceive this cultural hazard remains to this day. In the article I wrote in 1987 I did warn about the “predatory state”.
CORRECTIONS to 2011 post: Here is a current link to — Home Education – The Third Option, 1987 https://www.academia.edu/10094489/Home_education_the_third_option
To get Parent Rights and Their Children’s Education (1977) — http://genuine-education-reform-today.org/2010/04/06/parent-rights-and-their-childrens-education/