The Headgate: Close Wrong Headgates

Tibbets open this section by relating a story of a farmer who opens and closes headgates to various fields to water them. This simple action of opening and closing headgates and allowing the water to freely flow within those bounds demonstrates how our children are. The are like the water, seeking progression and fulfillment. When we manage the headgates they will naturally flow to where they need to go to produce the best results.

A right headgate is defined as any activity you would want your children to voluntarily engage in, that would help develop their mind and direct their motivation towards wanting to read. A right headgate is determined by asking the following five questions:

1. Does the fun or the thrill of the play come from the child's own brain, muscles, or voice box?

• If it has batteries then the answer is generally No.



• Examples of lifeless toys that are great for the imagination: dolls, blankets, ropes, planes, cars.



• "This environment is much like the environment our children experience when they attempt to read: substantial effort yielding subtle rewards. Children reared in this natural environment will not think that reading is too hard for what pleasure it yields them."

2. Who was the creative one, the toymaker or the child?

• 
  "...the more creative the toy, the less creative the child will be for having played with it. The less creative the toy, the more creative the child will be for having played with it--the child will have to be creative in order to get any enjoyment out of it."

3. Is the activity using resources, or wasting resources?

• An example of wasting resources is allowing the child to draw, cut, glue, and create all sorts of things that usually end up in the trash a few weeks later. This happens because they have a seemingly unlimited supply of paper, crayons, markers, glue, fancy scissors, etc.



• An example of using resources is having one notebook for drawing and a limited amount of crayons or colored pencils to draw with. It is stored in one area and is only used when the child really wants to be artistic - it also is already bound and kept in a neat unit for the future.



• "When a child is allowed to consume resources there is a false sense of progression beyond the natural thrill the activity should provide." This reminded me that John Taylor Gatto often speaks about how we are trained by the public school system to be consumers. I say we need to work on being producers more than consumers.

4. If the child is creating something, what is the end result or product, should this activity continue? Is it something useful?

• I like the idea of having purpose for our creations that are useful. Not only will these be useful for the family but doing these things will refine skills for greater self-sufficiency. Brings to mind the idea of mini-factories that Oliver DeMille talks about in The Coming Aristocracy.

5. What has become of the child after the activity is finished?

• Is he/she improved in more areas then just trivial knowledge? Trivial knowledge can be gained by viewing TV or a movie but will not improve reading comprehension, spelling, punctuation, etc.