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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Although I had my suspicions all along since I was six, the first light of 
day came through from a young lady, Martha, to whom I will always be 
grateful.  
I was working for a government school system as a speech therapist (or, as we 
like to agrandize it, a speech pathologist).  In the class for the 
'profoundly 
retarded', as was the term in those days, there was a Downs child named 
Martha.  The purpose of this class was just to teach the children minimal 
self-custodial skills, perhaps write their name, read warning labels, count 
change, 
etc.  But the powers that be thought that Martha should be able to 
consistantly 
say her own name, which due to a common speech phenomenon of persisting on 
the 
same sound, she called herself Marma.  

Be careful how you ask for things.  The educational group recommending goals 
for Martha said the goal was for her to say "th" in the second syllable of 
her 
name.  After weeks Martha and I accomplished that.  From then on she went by 
"Thartha."

I showed up at the classroom one day, looked about, and asked where was 
Martha.  The teacher and the aide blanched.  They had been very occupied with 
several of the boys and had forgotten they'd sent Martha to the lunch room 
for the 
recess milk over an hour ago and she had not returned.  Martha was the most 
agreable of persons and so easily overlooked among the roudier students.

I, being at loose ends, went directly to the lunch room and there, I will  
never forget this sight, was Martha in the dim kitchen with the light from 
the 
open refrigerator door haloing  her statuesque stance.  

She was fine.  You see, the routine was that the milk delivery man was to put 
an even dozen half pints of milk in that particular refrigerator during his 
morning delivery.  One of the students, in order to teach some initiative and 
responsiblity, was to take the milk crate to the kitchen and fetch those 
dozen 
half pints.  That morning there had been a new delivery man who did not know 
this routine.  When Martha opened the refrigerator door and saw no milk, the 
conditioned routine was broken.  For an hour she had simply stood there with 
the 
door open staring at the space where the milk ought to have been.

---------------------------------

Long before I heard of homeschooling or unschooling, this incident in 
particular knocked a crack in my perceptions.  Schooling has conditioned us 
to the 
point that just like Martha, we stand and stare in the pale refrigerator 
light 
if the underlying assumptions of ur indoctrination are removed.

Don't send a child to school?!  Don't use graded texts, work books, give 
grades, take tests, be on a schedule!!??  Just as Martha could see nothing 
but a 
blank refrigerator shelf when the milk had been removed, the schooled see 
nothing but a  undisciplined wild animal, a criminal, an illiterate when 
schooling 
is removed.

It never occured to Martha that there was milk elsewhere in the kitchen, or 
that she could bring this to the attention of the cook or the teacher.  
Anything beyond having the milk right there where it ought to be was outside 
of her 
imagination or grasp.  Just like that, whenever I try to discuss how children 
really learn, and what is really going on in schools, and what the real goal 
and MO of schooling are, the schooled see nothing but a blank child if all 
the 
school-ful-ness is removed.


So we are having this discussion against a background of a very loud noise 
playing in your head, the noise of schooling.  It leads to such inane 
observations as "Wait, there's this classroom I know of and the childrens 
papers are all 
pinned to the wall with lots of smiley faces on them and everyone is so 
happy.  You can't say schools are a failure, after all there's those smiley 
faces 
and they are, like, writing things that have stars and red A's on them."

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