"And this -- acquiring a degree of familiarity and becoming comfortable with books --
is far more important than becoming an early reader who finds no joy in it."
- David and Micki Colfax, 'Homeschooling for Excellence'
. . .
"...the anxiety children feel at constantly
being tested,
their fear of failure,
punishment,
and disgrace,
severely reduces their ability
both to perceive and to remember,
and drives them away from the material
being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know."
- John Holt, 'How Children Learn'
. . .
"Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years
(who does?),
but he knows, and much better than anyone else,
what he wants and needs to know right now,
what his mind is ready and hungry for.
If we help him,
or just allow him,
to learn that,
he will remember it,
use it,
build on it.
If we try to make him learn
something else,
that we think is more important,
the chances are that he won't learn it,
or will learn very little of it,
that he will soon forget most of what he learned,
and what is
worst of all,
will before long lose most
of his appetite for learning anything."
- John Holt, 'Teach Your Own'
. . .
"Regardless of
what the law
or your teachers
have to say
about this,
you are as human
as anyone
over the age of
18 or 21, yet,
'minors' are one of
the most
oppressed groups of
people in the world,
and certainly the most discriminated against legally."
- Grace Llewellyn, 'The Teenage Liberation Handbook'
. . .
"Children do not need to be made
to learn to
be better,
told what to do
or shown how.
If they are given access to enough of the world,
they will see
clearly enough what things are truly important
to themselves and to others,
and they will
make for themselves
a better path
into that world
than anyone else could make for them"
- John Holt, 'How Children Fail'
. . .
"Schools
and schooling
are increasingly
irrelevant to the
great enterprises
of the planet.
No one believes
any more that scientists are trained in science classes
or politicians in
civics classes
or poets in English classes.
The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.
- John Taylor Gatto
. . .
"As we grow up,
we have an ability
to let go
of immediate needs for the sake of long term goals.
Children don't have such vision.
Children live here and now.
They need to feel
that they
have power,
that they are important,
that they can choose,
and that the
environment
and people around
them care about them and respond
to them."
- Naomi Aldort, 'Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves'
A Sampling of BOOKS, MAGAZINES and RESOURCES FOR UNSCHOOLING and DESCHOOLING
Compiled by Rethinking Education, 817-540-6423
To recommend a book, magazine or organization, email Barb at barb@THEunschoolingconference.com
Appleton, Matthew. A Free Range Childhood, 2000.
Armstrong, Thomas. In Their Own Way, 1987.
Avrich, Paul. The Modern School Movement, 1980.
Bakunin, Michael. On Anarchism. Ed., Trans. Sam Dolgoff, 1980.
Bandura, Albert. Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis, 1973.
Barclay, Harold. People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, 1990.
Bear, John. Bear's Guide to Earning degrees Nontraditionally, 1999.
Bettleheim, Bruno. The Children of the Dream: Communal Child-Rearing and
American Education, 1969.
Bookchin, Murray. Remaking Society, 1989.
Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of
Hierarchy, 1982.
Botstein, Leo. Jefferson's Children, 1997.
Cameron, Bruce. Self Design, 2006.
Carter, F. The Education of Little Tree, 1976.
Casals, Pablo. Joys and Sorrows, 1970.
Cayley, David. Ivan Illich in Conversation, 1992.
Chase, Mildred. Just Being at the Piano, 1985.
Chilton-Pearce, Joseph. Magical Child, 1977.
Chilton-Pearce, Joseph. Magical Child Matures, 1986.
Chilton-Pearce, Joseph. From Magical Chid to Magical Teen, 2003.
Chilton-Pearce, Joseph. Evolution's End: Claiming the Potential of Our
Intelligences, 1992.
Chilton-Pearce, Joseph. The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Challenging Constructs
of Mind and Reality, 1988.
Colfax, David and Micki. Homeschooling for Excellence, 1988.
Corkville-Briggs, Dorothy. Your Child's Self-Esteem, 1975.
Dennison, George. The Lives of Children, 1969.
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education, 1916.
Dobson, Linda. The Art of Education, 1995.
Elkind, David. The Hurried Child, 1981.
Farenga, Patrick. The Beginner's guide to Homeschooling, 2000.
Fitzenreiter, Valerie. The Unprocessed Child: Living without School, 2003.
Fortune-Wood, Jan. With Consent, 2002.
Fortune-Wood, Jan. Bound to be Free, 2001.
Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness, 1973.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1981.
Gandhi, Mohandas K. Gandhi's Autobiography, 1948.
Gardner, H. Frames of Mind, 1983.
Gardner, H. The Unschooled Mind, 1991.
Gardner, H. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice, 1993.
Gardner, H. Creating Minds, 1993.
Gathercole, Rachel. The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling, 2006.
Gatto, John. The Exhausted School, 1993.
Gatto, John. Dumbing Us Down: The Invisible Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, 1994.
Gatto, John. The Empty Child, 1997.
Gatto, John. The Underground History of American Education: A
Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, 2001.
Godwin, Willian. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence
of General Virtue and Happiness, 1926.
Goldman, Emma. Living My Life, 1970.
Goodman, Paul. Compulsory Miseducation, 1969.
Greenberg, Dan. Free at Last, 1973.
Greenberg, Dan. Kingdom of Childhood, 1994.
Griffith, Mary. The Unschooling Handbook, 1998.
Gross, Ronald. Socrates' Way, 2002.
Gross, Ronald. The Independent Scholar's Handbook, 1982.
Gross, Ronald. Peak Learning, 1999.
Guterson, David. Family Matters, 1992.
Hailey, Kendall. The Day I Became an Autodidact, 1966.
Hayes, Charles. Training Yourself: The 21st Century Credential, 2000.
Healy, J. Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do
About It, 1990.
Hern, Matt. Deschooling Our Lives, 1995.
Holt, John. Escape from Childhood, 1974.
Holt, John. Freedom and Beyond, 1974.
Holt, John. How Children Fai, 1964.
Holt, John. How Children Learn, 1967.
Holt, John. The Underachieving School, 1969.
Holt, John. Instead of Education: Ways To Help People Do Things Better, 1976.
Holt, John. Never Too Late, 1984.
Holt, John. Teach Your Own, 1981.
Holt, John. Learning All the Time, 1989.
Hunt, Jan. The Natural Child, 2001.
Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. A.B.C., 1988
Illich, Ivan. Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution, 1971.
Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, 1971.
Illich, Ivan, et al. Disabling Professions, 1977.
Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis, 1974.
Illich, Ivan. Towards a History of Needs, 1977.
Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality, 1973.
Joudry, Patricia. And the Children Played, 1975.
Kaseman, Larry and Susan. Taking Charge through Homeschooling, 1990.
Kiyosaki, Robert. If You Want to be Rich and Happy, Don't Go to School, 1992.
Kohl, Herb. I Won't Learn from You!, 1991.
Kohn, Alfie. Punished by Rewards, 1993.
Kohn, Alfie. No Contest, 1986.
Kohn, Alfie. The Homework Myth, 2006.
Kohn, Alfie. What Does it Mean to be Educated?: And Other Essays on
Standards, Gradings and Other Follies, 2004.
Kozol, Jonathon. Alternative Schools, 1982.
Kozol, Jonathon. Death at an Early Age, 1970.
Kozol, Jonathon. Free Schools, 1972.
Kozol, Jonathon. Savage Inequalities, 1991.
Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, 1986.
Leistico, Agnes. I Learn Better by Teaching Myself, 1994.
Leistico, Agnes. Still Teaching Ourselves, 1996.
Liedloff, J. The Continuum Concept, 1988.
Leue, Mary. Challenging the Giant, Volumes I and II and III, 1992,
1996.
Lipton, Bruce. The Biology of Belief, 2006.
Llewellyn, Grace. Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who don't Go To School,
1992.
Llewellyn, Grace. The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Drop Out of School and Get a Real Life, 1991.
McKee, Alison. Unschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves, 1992.
McKee, Alison. From Homeschooling to College and Work, 1997.
McKight, John. The Careless Society, 1995.
Mendizza, Michael. Magical Parent, Magical Child, 2003.
Miller, Alice. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the
Roots of Violence, 1984.
Miller, Alice. Prisoners of Childhood: How Narcissistic Parents form and
Deform the Emotional Lives of Their Gifted Children, 1981.
Mintz, Jerry. The Handbook of Alternative Education, 1994.
Montagu, Ashley. Learning Non-Aggression: The Experience of Non-Literate
Societies, 1978.
Moore, Raymond and Dorothy. The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook,
1984.
Moore, Raymond and Dorothy. Better Late than Early, 1975.
Moore, Raymond and Dorothy. School Can Wait, 1979.
Neill, Alexander S. Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, 1960.
Neill, Alexander S. Freedom Not Liscense, 1966.
Neill, Alexander S. The Free Child, 1953.
Neill, Alexander S. Children's Freedom, 1973.
Pederson, Anne, and Peggy O'Mara. Schooling at Home, 1990.
Postman, Neil. The End of Education, 1995.
Postman, Neil. Teaching as a Subversive Activity, 1969.
Rupp, Rebecca. Good Stuff: Learning Tools for all Ages, 1994.
Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful, 1973.
Sheffer, Susannah. A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters of John Holt, 1990.
Shor, Ira. A Pedagogy for Liberation, 1980.
Shosie, Luz and Ned. Smarting Us Up, 2003.
Smith, Michael. The Libertarians and Education, 1983.
Spring, Joel. A Primer of Libertarian Education, 1975.
Unger, Harlow B. But What if I Don't Want to go to College? A Guide to
Successful Careers through Alternative Education, 1994.
Wallace, Nancy. Child's Work: Taking Children's Choices Seriously, 1990.
Ward, Colin. The Child in the City, 1976.
Whitehead, John. Home Education and Constitutional Liberties, 1984.
Wiener, Leo. Tolstoy on Education, 1967.
MAGAZINES
Home Education Magazine: www.homeedmag.com
Life Learning Magazine: www.lifelearningmagazine.com
Live Free Learn Free Magazine: www.livefreelearnfree.com
ORGANIZATIONS
Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO): www.educationrevolution.org
The Odysseus Group: John Taylor Gatto's organization: www.johntaylorgatto.com