Sylvia Ashton-Warner began by trying to teach her children with conventional methods. However, once these methods failed, she was willing to experiment in order to teach her children. She did not resort to racism or devaluing the children. Instead, she found the methods inadequate to the population, and experimented until she found the methods that were congruent for the culture.
That culture was organized around story-telling, myths, and an organic relationship to the world. As a consequence, Ashton-Warner determined that the method of teaching that would work with them also needed to be organic, developing out of their own relationship to the world and their own needs within it. Ashton-Warner defended her method by noting that organic reading is not new, that Egyptian hieroglyphics were one-word sentences and that UNESCO begins with its populations using words that are directly relevant to their lives (Ashton-Warner, 1963, p. 27).
Herbert Kohl, too, refused to resort to racism and give up on his students. Instead, he saw that teachers were afraid of the students and hid from them in various ways. His method was based more on developing a trust-filled environment than Ashton-Warner's, but it could also be considered as organic. The students were allowed to express their reality in Kohl's classroom and use that reality in order to interpret the curriculum. Interestingly enough, he also allowed them into his life, and his home, feeling that this was an important part of the dialogue. Yet, he did manage to set boundaries to this personal involvement (Kohl, 1967, pp. 107-108).
One theme that is expressed in each of these books, and that Calkins (1991) dealt with specifically is the theme of the classroom as a community. Certainly Ashton-Warner recognized the reality of this, and Kohl attempted to create a safe community for his children in the classroom. Calkins attempted to create community by encouraging studen...