Read Online The School on Heart's Content Road by Carolyn Chute - Free Book Online Page B

ago. AP just says you are
controversial
and mentions
passionate disapproval
by many . . . and then of course some emphasis on kids lacking
education
and
a competitive environment;
these are quotes.”
    She stops for one small
tsk
.
    â€œEven with all the changes, the AP version is very short. Condensed. Really condensed. It . . . changes the tone of the piece from the way I wrote it. And the picture we never used for
reasons;
they seem to like that one a lot. In all the papers that are using the piece, they rewrite the copy and use
that
photo. One of the ones of you by the merry-go-round. Closer than the one we used. And cropped. You look”—she swallows—“pretty scary.”
    Claire St. Onge remembers the days following the media stories.
    Everything seemed to snap into place. It felt like a thing already existing once, maybe in another life, just needing to be reassembled. We could never go back to what we had before the
Record Sun
feature.
    The phone, for one thing; it seemed to burst. Reporters from big outof-state papers and magazines. A couple of TV producers wanting to do specials or
segments.
Radio talk-show hosts inviting Gordon to go speak about our lives as separatists.
    â€œAren’t they afraid of all the stockpiled AKs and tanks and such?” wondered our Eddie Martin, with one of his happy chortles.
    Gordon said no to all the media calls. But then there were calls he was thrilled with. People interested in joining the solar-wind community, or the furniture cooperatives, or the CSAs, or all three, in hopes of restoring interdependence in their economically and socially devastated little towns.
    Gordon loved these calls but was now tied to the phone a good part of each evening.
    We got a few weird calls, people saying goofy things or making dangerous noises.
    The mail increased to six times what it had been before. This included media people, who, finding the phone’s busy signal a challenge to their patience,
wrote
to ask for interviews.
    Funny, not one educator wrote to speak for or against our philosophy. But the editorial pages of the
Record Sun,
even the editorial pages of other papers, were loaded with letters that decried the fact that our children were not pushed into competitive mode, not aiming for high scores and “excellence.” They insisted these children would pay later. They said that not to prepare kids for the highly competitive workplaces of the global economy and institutions of higher learning was irresponsible, even cruel. Some said they weren’t against homeschooling
if
it was state-monitored.
    A week later, letters were still appearing in the papers. Some called the Settlement a
labor camp
and
brute school
. Several insisted that authorities should “get those children out.”
    â€œThey don’t even have flush toilets!” one letter gasped.
    We heard some of the radio talk shows, hashing over whether or not the FBI should be brought in. I remember one talk-show host who was really angry at this suggestion, and, while cutting this caller off in midword, said gravely, “Let’s keep this conversation out of the realm of the absurd.” And right then, a caller got through who ran a small private school up on the coast that worked with principles similar to ours in theareas of reading and writing. With the deep kindly
patient
voice of reason, she explained that forcing children to read too early will just turn them off, that before the age of seven they are often still in the motor stage and need to master any hands-on skills at that time joyfully. She called the special ed experience a “social crucifixion, especially in the antisocial competitive atmosphere most schools create.”
    Then her beautiful strong patient voice was gone, replaced by shrill ones, all sorts of memorized propaganda about the importance of singling out
special children
and
honor students,
and the word
excellence
was repeated so often that the