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[thebookspileup]

Once when substituting in a first-grade class I thought that the children, who were just beginning to read and write, might enjoy some of the kind of free, non-stop writing that my fifth graders had done. About 40 minutes before lunch one day, I asked them all to take pencil and paper and start writing about anything they wanted. They seemed to like the idea, but right away one child said anxiously, "Suppose we can't spell a word?" "Don't worry about it," I said. "Just spell it the best way you can." A heavy silence settled on the room. All I could see were still pencils and anxious faces. This was clearly not the right approach. So I said, "All right, I'll tell you wat to do. Any time you want to know how to spell a word, tell me and I'll write it on the board." They breathed a sigh of relief and went to work. Soon requests for words were coming fast; as soon as I wrote one, someone asked me another. By lunchtime, when most of the children were still busily writing, the board was full. What was interesting was that most of the words they had asked for were much longer and more complicated than anything in their reading books or workbooks. Freed from worry about spelling, they were willing to use the most difficult and interesting words that they knew.

What Do I Do Monday? by John Holt (©1970) Chapter 24: Writing For Ourselves

[thebookspileup]

nothing of worth has ever been said in a podcast.

[thebookspileup]

*After I asked his sister if she'd washed her dish after she announced that she was leaving the kitchen.*

4/yo: Why do we HAVE dishes!?

[thebookspileup]

Once when substituting in a first-grade class I thought that the children, who were just beginning to read and write, might enjoy some of the kind of free, non-stop writing that my fifth graders had done. About 40 minutes before lunch one day, I asked them all to take pencil and paper and start writing about anything they wanted. They seemed to like the idea, but right away one child said anxiously, "Suppose we can't spell a word?" "Don't worry about it," I said. "Just spell it the best way you can." A heavy silence settled on the room. All I could see were still pencils and anxious faces. This was clearly not the right approach. So I said, "All right, I'll tell you wat to do. Any time you want to know how to spell a word, tell me and I'll write it on the board." They breathed a sigh of relief and went to work. Soon requests for words were coming fast; as soon as I wrote one, someone asked me another. By lunchtime, when most of the children were still busily writing, the board was full. What was interesting was that most of the words they had asked for were much longer and more complicated than anything in their reading books or workbooks. Freed from worry about spelling, they were willing to use the most difficult and interesting words that they knew.

What Do I Do Monday? by John Holt (©1970) Chapter 24: Writing For Ourselves

[thebookspileup]

There is a terrible difference between the position of the poor with respect to the schools and that of oppressed minorities with respect to their oppressors. The black man once had to tell his children to submit to the white, to degrade themselves before him, to do whatever he said and even what he might want without saying, to run no risk of countering even his unspoken wishes. So the poor parent must tell his children to do everything that school and teacher says or wants or even seems to want. As the black parent used to have to punish his children for not doing what the white man said, so must the poor parent when his children get into "trouble" at school. But the oppressed black knew, and could tell his children, and make sure they knew, that because they had to act like slaves, less than men, did not mean that they were less than men. They were not the moral inferiors of the white man, but his superiors, and it was above all his treatment of them that made that clear. Poor parents do not know this about the schools. As Ivan Illich, one of the founders of the Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC), says, the schools are the only organization of our times that can makes people accept and blame themselves for their own oppression and degradation. The parents cannot and do not say to their children, "I can't prevent your teacher form despising and humiliating and mistreating you, because the schools have more political power than I have, and they know it. But you are not what they think and say you are, and want to make you think you are. You are right to want to resist them, and even if you can resist them only in your heart, resist them there." On the contrary, and against their wishes and instincts, they believe and must try to make their children believe that the schools are always right and the children wrong, that if the teacher says you are bad, for any reason or none at all, you are bad. So, among most of the poor, and even much of the middle class, when the schools say something bad about a child, the parents accept it, and use all their considerable power to make the child accept it. Seeing his parents accept it, he usually does. So far - I hope not much longer - few parents have had the insight of a friend of mine who in his mid-thirties said on day in wonderment, and for the first time, "I'm just beginning to realize that it was the schools that made me stupid," or the parent who not long ago said to James Herndon, author of The Way It Spozed to Be, "For years the schools have been making me hate my kid." Even the most cruel and oppressive racists have hardly ever been able to make parents do that.

What Do I Do Monday? by John Holt (©1970) Chapter 9: The Killing Of The Self

[thebookspileup]

Several things help me ride out spells of gloom and depression, keep me from getting trapped in a cycle of despair. One is that since I have been through that tunnel before, I know there is an end to it and that I can go through it. Also, since I more often feel good than bad, I can assume that bad feelings will in time give way to good ones. When a person who is used to being healthy gets sick, he thinks, This won't last; I'll soon be up and about. A person who is used to being ill, exhausted, and in pain, if he does have a spell of feeling well, thinks, This can't last. This is in part why children who are used to failing are so little cheered up when now and then they succeed.

What Do I Do Monday? by John Holt (©1970) Chapter 6: The Learner In His Model

[thebookspileup]

4/yo: *Showing off some recent scrape.* It's been a few years, so it's healed a lot.

Me: You're only a few years old! You've only had that for a couple weeks.

[thebookspileup]

Desiderium

Desiderium. He was gone. He would never come back. "Thank you..." his last, faint, whispery words; still hanging in the quiet, misty air he once drew breath from. A fog was rolling in, over his body, across his eyes, as if embracing him into his sleep, and dragging him down in to whatever awaited in the afterlife. Desiderium. I couldn't cry. I was breathing, and he wasn't. I looked down at him with longing, alone in the quiet under the canopy of stars, leaves brushing against my arms and legs. I wasn't alone several minutes ago; he was with me, he was here. Now he wasn't, now I was alone. Desiderium. I sank to the ground, my fingers digging into the dirt, my mouth opening, my breath coming faster. I was looking at him, at his perfect face, and then I wasn't, tears blurring my vision. I reached out to touch him, I had to. I couldn't do it, I couldn't bring myself to feel him; to feel him gone. My hand dropped to the ground, and I choked on a sob, the entirety of my inner being pushing itself into that first expression of desiderium. The tears came faster. I struggled to breathe. I let it come; let it wash over me. My cry went up into the night, tortured agony pushing itself out through my lungs, my hands balled into fists as I pushed myself up. Then I was standing. Standing. My face toward the darkening sky, kissed by the light of the stars. The cry receded into the gloom, as the breath within me died slowly out, replaced with deep lungfuls of the air he would never again breathe. Tears running down my face. I tried to yell again, but nothing came out; I had no energy with which to vocalize my distress. I breathed out. My hands, on a tree; my eyes, cast toward the sky; my breath, mingling with the coolth of the fall air; my fingertips, running down the tree trunk; my knees, in the dirt, my body to follow. Desiderium. It hurt within me, to be separated so. Life and death the only two dimensions which mankind has known. Would he never break the silence again? He would never, never break the silence again; but that moment, that thought my soul could not bear to entertain. Oh, to feel his breath upon me, his breath, to hear the sound of his voice, to see the way he walks, just once more. Better yet, forevermore; I would die with him now if I knew I would see him there. Desiderium. This world could kill itself for all I cared, compared to the grief the loss of my friend brought down upon me. His eyes I would never cease to see in my mind. I would stare into the them and hear his voice, in my ears, in my head. I would never tire of his image plaguing my dreams. Yet I was still in this world, and I would keep him alive in memory. Within me would I carry him always. His tale would be mine to tell, and tell it I would; but naught could be done at such a time as this, there were things to do. I couldn't leave him here. My time here must soon be over, grief to be held off to such a time as was fit. None other could ever understand, and here where I found him, and now where I found him, I could only stay. I was still in the world; and the world awaited me. Desiderium.