How To Start You Own School

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Our work is meant to be part of the transition, of "living well"—shared among those of us living in Freestone. Yet it isolates us from each other, especially from the children; Salli gives up wool dyeing and spinning; Robert gives up the garden.

* * *

Alone, the idea of a Long March has an ugly militancy about it. As a transition, as motion, and as a shared trip, we begin to sense the joy of traveling with others. Castingoffthe colonists of our minds we feel like free travelers, and it's good. We read old pirate stories and talk of wilderness ventures in the olden days. With friends we feel the cool wind from the ocean after the heat of the sauna. . .

Different trips slowly emerge . . . less planning . . . going slower, waiting for others to come together . . . impatience issuch a bummer — the transition has its own pace!

Another family joins us. Together we are six children, six adults. We will meet at one house for several days, then at the farm for several days, sharing what we know . . .

We start to propose things — lists of skills that people ought to know — from languages to modes of expression to mastery of technical skills. But a Now takes us over, a warm silence, and we begin to hear the whisper's of each other's intuitions. We remember that "primitive" peoples gave their skills to their children by being what they were, with children around — working, making love, failures and joys bared, shared rituals as routes into heartland areas — the need for skills, for hard learning, simply a necessary preliminary to the real goal of living well. Our talk of goals goes no further than this.

* * *

Our children will learn by using ways of learning they already know: play, fantasy, doing it , experimenting, testing, questioning, failing, connecting what they want to learn with what they want to be . . .

So our "method" is simple: open up, be with each other; find the best people we can, get in contact with them, learn from them. Needs fulfilled enough to allow a climate of love that reduces the killer, fear. We'll invite gypsies walking the same road . . . and we'll always have our music . . . and it will be Now, each moment (longer and longer moments) . . . instead of future expectations.

* * *

When we wanted to learn about layout we asked the help of friends who were heavy into graphics. When our kids asked about making inflatable pillows and tents for their "school" place we asked the Ant Farm for help. A friend who runs a little tourist candy store in Bodega Bay needs a breather now and then and teaches the children to run the business. There are contacts and people everywhere. We can simply trade skills. Profoundly efficient, it turns out: the human scale.

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