Tolstoy
As Teacher: Leo Tolstoy's Writings on Education
by Leo Tolstoy, Robert Blaisdell, Bob Blaisdell (Editor), Christopher
Edgar (Translator)
On testing: "...Experts will probably tell me that without
this it is impossible to determine a given student's knowledge.
To this I answer that it is really impossible for an outsider
in an hour's time to determine what a student knows
..."
What IS "dumbth"? It is not just ignorance, although
the ignorance of american students is appaling; it is contempt
for knowledge as "elitist" and "snobbish".
Riane Eisler's new book is a stunning contribution to multicultural
pedagogy. Using her macrohistorical theory of dominator/partnership
swings, she offers a new framework, structure and content for
education. This is one of the most important books to come around
in a long time.
Deschooling Our Lives
by Matt Hern (Editor)
A provocative, practical response to the crisis in our schools,
this book argues boldly for replacing compulsory schooling with
a wide variety of home, neighborhood, and community-based educational
efforts.
Left
Back : A Century of Failed School Reforms
by Ravitch, Diane Ravitch
"Whenever the academic curriculum was diluted or minimized,
large numbers of children were pushed through the school system
without benefit of a genuine education," she writes. 2001
Paperback
Creating the Multiage Classroom
by Stone, Sandra J.
Schools are trying to duplicate homeschools! Appropriate strategies
for large families. 1996 Paperback
No More Prisons
by Wimsatt, William Upski
Inspiration and numbers and websites and addresses and names
of books that you need to do all the stuff you'll want to do
after you read this. 1999 Paperback.
You know there is a problem with the education system when
you realize that out of the three Rs, only one begins with
an R.
Science
Myths in K-6 Textbooks and Popular culture
So you think you couldn't teach science correctly at home? Homeschool
father and engineer, Bill Bickle, has links to show how school
texts mess up science facts.
Stand
and Deliver Revisited
The untold story behind the famous rise -- and shameful fall
-- of Jaime Escalante, America's master math teacher. ByJerry
Jesness.
Why Nerds
are Unpopular
The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly.
Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart,
why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system,
just as they do for standardized tests? By Paul Graham.
Chalkboard,
computer, homeschooling
Use what works best. Amy Trollinger, special to the South Florida
Business Journal, writes about Jim Kunz. Kunz is on a one-man
crusade to convince educators, parents and students that "self-directed
learning" is the wave of the future.
Charter
Schools
A new phenomenon has arisen within communities either frustrated
with local education reform. If a school could be free to develop
its own educational charter, perhaps it would be able to find
more teaching success.
Bullying at
School
Bullying may be a good reason to homeschool
I think that when parents find themselves trapped in a situation where they cannot get their bullied kids into a different school, then homeschooling is an option that must be considered. By Andrea Hermitt.
Home schooled due to bullies
Parents of both bullying victims and expelled bullies are turning to home schooling in a bid to salvage an education for their children.
Is Home Schooling the Solution to Bullying?
When a parent decides to home school a child, an often cited reason is that the child is being bullied. While the subject of bullying is discussed more often nowadays and most schools have a policy on how to deal with bullies, many parents still feel that not enough is done when bullying is reported.
Compulsory
Education
An
Argument Between Friends: Compulsory Education vs. Unschooling
I am an avid supporter of free public education. Even though
I choose not to utilize the public schools, I am happy to support
them. My argument, therefore, is not against public schools,
but against compulsory education. I would like to see free public
education become just that: truly free. By Shay Seaborne, HEM
M/A 06.
Case Against Compulsion
Mary Novello's brief is that compulsory school attendance serves no clear educational purpose while costing untold amounts in dollars and psychic energy.
The
Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and Anarchist Resistance
The history of the development of Western schooling is a complex
and meandering thing, but I think it is worth looking at in a
very abbreviated form here. A little insight into the logics
and basis for contemporary compulsory schooling might be useful
to social ecologists. By Matt Hern, Institute for Social Ecology.
Homeschool Quotes
These life-learning, life-affirming quotations will help you find the right words to explain your homeschool lifestyle to skeptics ... or help you take the homeschooling plunge ... or maybe help you remember why you decided to homeschool in the first place.
Deschooling
Deschooling
Society
Ivan Illich's 7 chapter book, all of it, online here. From chapter
1: "The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse
teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma
with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something
new."
Education of Girls
AAUW Research
On the education of girls in the American school system. Numerous
research projects by the American Association of University Women
(AAUW). Available for purchase.
How Schools Shortchange Girls
When girls call out answers in elementary school, typically they
are chastised and told to raise their hands. When boys call out
answers, teachers listen.
Effect on Children
Getting
Hit on the Head Lessons
If a practice can't be justified on its own terms, then the task
for children and adults alike isn't to get used to it, but to
question, to challenge, and, if necessary, to resist. By Alfie
Kohn
Closing
the Gap To Build Support for Education
If you could see the lineup of people, resources, and money behind
the effort to persuade you that all is well, you would be astonished
that any negative or critical coverage appears anywhere, at any
time. From the Education Intelligence Agency.
The
Economy, Public Schools, and Homeschooling
Why should homeschoolers spend time thinking about what's happening
to public schools? After all, didn't a lot of us choose homeschooling
so we wouldn't have to deal with public schools? By Larry and
Susan Kaseman, HEM M/A 07
Open Portal Schools
My friend, Liza Loop, takes you on an imaginary journey into
the future. Say, Fall of 2010. (Written in 1986, Liza manages
to predict what many of the public homeschool centers have turned
out to be like.)
Good Schools, Bad
Schools
"But
We Have Such GOOOOD Schools!"
Charlotte Monte confronts the dilemma of homeschooling in an
area where the schools are considered "so goooood."
The Death And Life Of The Great American School System
From Chapter 6: NCLB: Measure and Punish, by Diane Ravitch. My support for NCLB remained strong until November 30, 2006. I can pinpoint the date exactly because that was the day I realized that NCLB was a failure.
First to Worst
The Merrow Report. In the 50's and 60's California had the best
school system in the country. Now it is one of the worst. What
happened in the past 40 years to lead to the decline and what
is being done to help it improve.
Mistakes
Educational Leaders Make
Having problems with your kids' principal? One in three end their
careers being fired! Here's just teachers' complaints about principals.
Leaders in area homeschool support should also take note and
try to not make the same mistakes. ERIC Digest
School Sucks Project
The End of Public Education. A series of podcasts, a blog and a forum on the paths to solutions to make schools suck less.
Schools
and Kids
Wash, DC: What do you think of homeschooling? Can it be a force
for improvement, like Charter schools? Diane Ravitch (professor,
researcher and author of Left Back: A Century of Failed School
Reforms): I don't advocate homeschooling but I respect
the right of those parents who choose to do it.
Steve Wozniak Interview
I was the sort of person that learned pretty much on my own. The teachers - it didn't so much matter.
The Homework Ate My Family
"It's ironic that politicians talk so much about family
values," says Mandel, "when you can't have any family
time any more because the kids are so busy keeping their nose
to the grindstone." Time Magazine, 1/19/99.
Modern
Grade-School Pressures
Toward too much homework, too little freeplay, by Teresa Gallagher.
Pressured to spend more time memorizing and less time playing,
our children are being labeled ADD when they stress out.
Parents Are Best
Teachers
Myth
#4 "You Need Teacher Training, Dearie"
By using and constantly honing the parental qualities you already
enjoy, you are much closer to learning the secrets of lighting
fires within youngsters' minds, setting them on a course to appreciate
and pursue learning for a lifetime, than many, if not most, trained
teachers. By Linda Dobson.
Oz
Never Did Give Nothing to the Children That They Didn't Already
Have
As in Baum's story, if we are to witness a happy ending in the
non-fiction educational story unfolding today, exposure is the
only option that ensures the Mighty Education Wizard breaks down
to tell the truth. By Linda Dobson, HEM S/O 01.
You
Have Choices
The public school system implies that there really aren't any
school options. You can send your kids to public school, or you
can send your kids to public school. By Ronnie Ugulano.
Political Interference
Interview
with Susan Ohanian
When Standardistas don't allow students and teachers to negotiate
curricula together, we risk losing students. By Peggy Daly Masternak,
HEM J/F 05.
Petitioning
to make all schools private
The system Ms. Miller is eager to expose is not a communist dictatorship.
It is the United States public-school system, which, according
to Miller, wastes money, destroys children, and "causes
nothing but misery." Marjorie Coeyman, Christian Science
Monitor.
Problems with
Standards
Life and Music
How life and education ought to be more like a musical composition than a means to and end. An animated philosophy by Alan Watts.
Ravitch: Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching
"I came to the conclusion ... that No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable for the destruction of American public education," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
Schooling: The Hidden Agenda
So you see that our schools are not failing, they're just succeeding
in ways we prefer not to see. Turning out graduates with no skills,
with no survival value, and with no choice but to work or starve
are not flaws of the system, they are features
of the system. These are the things the system must do
to keep things going on as they are. By Daniel Quinn, The Ishmael
Community.
Standardistas
The education standardization movement across America has occurred
without any meaningful public discussion of what those standards
should be, or what they mean. By David Albert, HEM J/F 02.
Top Ten Mistakes in Education
Here are ten top school system mistakes, favorite not because
I like them but because eradicating them would go so far towards
helping kids learn. From Engines for Education.
Safety Issues
Homeschooling
is Safe Schooling
To provide and protect, those are my jobs as a parent. When there
is a dangerous place which threatens my child, it is NOT my primary
responsibility to change the dangerous place. From At Home
in America.
Losing my Tolerance
for "Zero Tolerance"
Passing an inflexible law does not stop murder -- which is already
quite illegal. Terrorizing a little kid for sharing candy --
and justifying it afterward when an outraged parent complains
-- doesn't stop drug use. And it never will. As far as I can
tell, Zero Tolerance has only negative effects. It must be stopped.
Schools
and Suicide
Karl Bunday writes on the relationship between school attendance
(especially compulsory school attendance) and youth suicide.
Books about School Issues
The Death and Life of the Great American School System
How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Diane Ravitch
"My support for NCLB remained strong until November 30, 2006. I can pinpoint the date exactly because that was the day I realized that NCLB was a failure." For readers on all sides of the school-reform debate, this is a very important book.
Weapons of Mass Instruction
A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
by John Taylor Gatto
Focuses on mechanisms of familiar schooling that cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a by-product of rote-memorization drills.
Presents statistics, along with historical trends and cross-sectional comparisons, to provide a clear, factual picture of today's K-12 education landscape, including information on school demographics, cost and finance, testing and achievement, public school reform, and other key areas.
Ms. Ohanian's book is meticulously well researched and she
cites startling and often frightening statistics and stories
about what is considered "normal" educational proceedings
in America today.
Is this really the way schools are heading? What really are
graduates from PS going to be when it's done and over. White
bread eating robots that have no idea what the real world contains...
mindless drones to complete the tasks of adults that escaped
the system?
These 13 essays, presented at the 1993 National Grassroots
Speakout on the Right to School Choice, illustrate how education
reform actually works. Written by award-winning teachers and
their students, these essays present successful teaching methods
that work in both traditional and nontraditional classroom settings.
August 2002.
Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's
public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory
governmental schooling does little but teach young people to
follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine.
The Schools Our Children Deserve Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"
by Kohn, Alfie
Teacher-turned-writer Alfie Kohn takes on traditional-education
giants like E.D. Hirsch, along with practically every state government
"raising the bar" and toughening standards, in this
attack on the back-to-basics movement. 1999 Hardcover
Summerhill School A New View of Childhood Vol 1
by Neill, Alexander Sutherland, et al
Originally published in 1960, it was a radical idea to allow
children to be the bosses of a school. 1995 Paperback
Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Md Mate
Like countless other parents, Canadian doctors Neufeld and Mat˙ woke up one day to find that their children had become secretive and unreachable. Pining for time with friends, they recoiled or grew hostile around adults. Why?
