Dear Linda,
Thank you very much. You wrote
> Thank you for the recent postings in support of "no diploma". I have chosen
> this route personally (I have about 180+ college hours and no college
> degree) and yet did not really consider it an option for the school. I
guess
> that shows how in-grained it is in our culture.
It appears to me that what is really ingrained is this notion of education.
There is this tremendous fealty paid to "education". It's like: "they are
children, and they go someplace for most of the day, a lot of days, so it
must be 'school' and they must be envolved in education". And then this leads
us to take our one, and only one, idea, which is freedom for the child, and
think that it must tend toward something. If the eventual summation we do
with the child is to critique whether they have prepared themselves for the
responsibilites of the larger community, then we have turned the offering of
freedom into pedagogy. We then have not changed the core notion that the
child is an improver. We have paid a huge price for our fealty. We could be
an alternative to education, and we have become alternative education.
Consider the realities for the child, of the leaving time, the end game. The
school will still be there. The parents will be around. The staff will be
back. The founders will still build. The assembly will continue. It is the
child who is leaving. The child owns these moments. Reread "The Art of Doing
Nothing". It is at the leaving time that its' ideas must best be in our
bones. Do nothing. Sit. Wait. Listen. Be with them. Be with our own selves as
they go.
If we need feedback, comfort for us that we have done good by them, reread
"Kingdom of Childhood", study the Plasticine work. If we want particular
feedback from a particular child, ask. Ask that they write for us the way it
was for them. If they will write it, the leaving children, every year, will
easily write a book as good as "Kingdom". Every year. And they will write it
as they have lived it. Freely.
Warm Regards,
Bill Richardson
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Wed Mar 27 2002 - 19:39:48 EST