Mental Health Screening revisited

Continued from July 13:

By the time school opened John and Jim had made friends with the neighbor children, several of whom were about their own age. The boys decided that since everyone else from our little valley was going off to school in town, they’d like to try it too. So one brisk fall morning they walked down the creek, met up with their friends, and waited by the last gate in the valley for the local school bus to come rolling up the dusty mountain road.

It only took about a month for the novelty to wear off. We started hearing reports of lunches being stolen by other kids, jackets torn in playground bullying, one boy ridiculed because he was coloring things the wrong color, another made to miss lunch because he went to the restroom without asking first. When a teacher rapped John’s knuckles with a ruler because he was talking to a friend in class we decided the school experiment was a failure and the boys never went back.

A friend of my mother’s had given her two copies of John Holt’s newsletter, Growing Without Schooling, issues #11 and #12. Mom had already taken my youngest brother and sister, ages 12 and 14, out of school permanently, and she passed Holt’s newsletters along to me. It was the first I’d heard about an organized movement to take or keep kids out of school, and reading those newsletters was like a breath of fresh air!

Our determination redoubled, we ignored the threatening letters from the local school superintendent. The last letter they sent advised us that they’d arranged a meeting we were to attend, and that we were being charged $25 per day, per child, for every day the boys were absent from school. At $50 per day the bill was undoubtedly adding up pretty quickly, so we took evasive maneuvers and told them we were planning on returning to Alaska. That seemed to end their interest in our family, although we were pretty certain they knew we were still living in the area. We figure telling them we were leaving let them check off some box on a form somewhere, and we never heard from the school officials again.

Sometime in the summer of 1983, on a trip to Seattle to discuss raising calves with a friend who was already successful in that business, I decided that we needed a computer. I’d grown up with computers; my dad was a programmer and an analyst for the big room-sized IBMs of the late fifties and early sixties. I’d played with punch cards and programming boards as a child and I knew these were powerful tools, capable of wondrous things. So when I found out I could buy one – a lovely little blue and gray machine called a Kaypro II – for only $1,500, I didn’t even hesitate. I plunked down my money and grinned all the way home.

To be continued…

Continued from July 12:

Long before I had children of my own I was telling people that mine weren’t ever going to school. People would smile condescendingly and let me explain why, and then they’d explain in return why not sending my someday-kids to school would be a very bad idea. Most experienced homeschoolers are familiar with the so-called reasons, such as stunted socialization skills, poor testing abilities, and a general inability to get along like other kids would be taught to get along. Somewhat naively, I was okay with that. I figured the benefits of not being tied to schoolish expectations would somehow outweight the negatives. Of course, at that time I also fully expected to raise my kids in the Alaskan bush country, where being able to load and fire a rifle, handle a riverboat, or build a log cabin were quite valuable skills.

As often happens, life had other plans for me – and for my children. When my two oldest sons, John and Jim, reached school age we found ourselves living a few miles from an Alaskan town called Palmer, which, while not exactly out in the bush, wasn’t exactly middle-American suburbia, either. Moose and bears frequented the neighborhood, and I decided my young sons didn’t need to run into them on the mile-long walk to the school bus stop. Sub-zero temperatures were the norm in winter, and I didn’t want my children exposed to that either. So I asked around and discovered that the State of Alaska ran a correspondence program which was open to any Alaskan child who lived more than two miles from a school – so we signed up for kindergarten and first grade, respectively.

The entire family, which by then included a baby girl, Jody, thoroughly enjoyed the programs, administered through the local Palmer Elementary School. We were assigned a teacher who oversaw the process via monthly meetings, but otherwise we were on our own. We received big boxes of books, pens, papers, crayons, storytapes, arts and crafts materials – it was almost like Christmas! The story and song tapes became great family favorites, and our kids still remember the words to many of them. As a special project we built a paper mache globe by pasting strips of newspaper around an inflated balloon and painting it to look like the planet Earth. The teacher overseer was so impressed she asked to hang it in her office – and the boys just beamed!

Both boys passed their respective grades with glowing reports, and we figured the next year we’d repeat the process, moving each up a grade. But again, life had other plans for our family. In late August of that year my dad suffered a debilitating heart attack and we suddenly found our young family moving to Washington state to help with my parent’s ranch. We spent the rest of that summer learning about horses and chickens and hauling hay and firewood – and when fall rolled around again I blithely headed down to the local school office and asked how I could enroll my boys in their state correspondence course. They just gave me a blank look and said they didn’t know what I was talking about.

To be continued…