Posts in Book Review
The 30th Anniversary of The Teenage Liberation Handbook

If you have a teenage homeschooler or unschooler and you want to know what opportunities and resources and options are available for them, put this book in their hands. If you have a teen who is floundering in high school, put this book in their hands. If you have parents and adults questioning your sanity for allowing your teen to quit school for independent studies, put this book in their hands. If you haven’t read this book and you have or work with teenagers who don’t enjoy school, get this book.

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Teach Your Own: The Indispensable Guide to Living and Learning with Children at Home

This Fall marks Teach Your Own’s 40th anniversary in print and my 40th anniversary working in the homeschooling/alternative education movement. Read more about the latest edition of Teach Your Own: The Indispensable Guide to Living and Learning with Children at Home.

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How Children Learn and the Leap of Faith

Fifty years ago John Holt woke the dreary world of educational theory by showing that for small children “learning is as natural as breathing.” His brilliant observations are as true today as they were then. Over a million copies were sold worldwide in the decades that followed. This new, 50th anniversary edition features a Foreword by teacher/author Deborah Meier, who praises Holt's influence on herself, in schools, and in homes.

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Freedom and Beyond

Holt's most political book, Freedom and Beyond is also a very practical and useful book for parents and anyone who works with children because it explores in detail many of the tensions caused by giving freedom. Partners who argue over the value of self-directed learning, who worry about discipline, and so on will find that Holt presents both sides of these tensions and notes they will never go away . . .

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You Do Not Need a PhD to Look at a Child and to Think About What He is Doing

From John Holt's reply to Dr. Jerome Bruner's letter to the NY Review of Books: "The proper business of the intellectual is to make complicated ideas more simple, not simple ideas more complicated; to make the real world more comprehensible, not less so." Read more about this sharp exchange . . .

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Homeschooled Teens

This new book surveys 75 former and current teenage homeschoolers about their feelings, thoughts, and experiences about not going to high school. The range of responses and the variety of educational experiences outside of conventional school that they describe will give heart to any parent wondering if homeschooling during the teen years is a smart move.

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Choosing Home: 20 Mothers Celebrate Staying Home, Raising Children, and Changing the World

"Insisting that both women and men must work in equally high paying and prestigious jobs to attain gender equality explicitly assumes that high paying jobs reflect the pinnacle of success and importance. We disagree. When mothers (and increasingly fathers) stay home—whether they earn a paycheck never, now, or in the future—they change the world for the better by raising and prioritizing children, cultivating family and community, and investing in the future . . ."

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Book Review: Hacking Your Education

Any young person who feels they don’t have options other than going to college or being a loser should read this book. Hacking Your Education is a career guide and self-help book for people who don’t have a college degree in the 21st century, but it can be useful for older people with degrees who are seeking work or new careers, too . . .

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Amazon is offering The Willed Curriculum, Unschooling, and Self-Direction: What Do Love, Trust, Respect, Care, and Compassion Have To Do With Learning?

Carlo Ricci, founder of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL), has written a wonderful personal account and analysis of unschooling with his book, The Willed Curriculum, Unschooling, and Self-Direction: What Do Love, Trust, Respect, Care, and Compassion Have To Do With Learning.

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