What do you think of this book list?

[maamajullah]

Hi everyone!I intend to homeschool but my dd's just 16months old and ds is 18days old. However i want to buy and start reading books that'll help me. Pls kindly review my list and tell me if there's any book i wont find useful or if there's any i ought to add to the list.
*Home Learning year by year:Rebecca Rupp
*Home-schooling the early years:Linda Dobson
*The Ultimate book of Homeschooling ideas:Linda Dobson
*One to one:Gareth Lewis
*The unschooling handbook:Mary Griffith
*How children learn at home:Alan Thomas
*Free Range Education:Terri Dowty
*Educating your child at home:Alan Thomas
*School is not compulsory
*The teenage liberation handbook:Grace llewellyn
*Dumbing us down:John Taylor Gatto

Hello Maamajullah, congrats on your new addition to the family! I would suggest contacting your LEA or Educational Welfare Board also as they may have contact numbers for people who may be able to offer advice also. You are organised !

I wouldn't suggest contacting your LEA or Educational Welfare Board unless and until we all get flushed out of the woodwork by the contactpoint database. Otherwise, being "known" by State officialdom is, as far as I can tell, all stress and faff without benefit to a perfectly functional family

Really hanaflower are his works good? I came across some of his books but someone said his works are old and not in-tune with our time is that true?

dismemberingdora: Thanx for the compliment

Agree with OWAU-don't contact the LA at all!
Enjoy your freedom from interference, while you can.
They will have nothing to offer you that you can't get quicker and better from the Home Ed community online or in real life.

Many home ed local groups welcome families with young children. Going along to support meetings allows the child to see that is normal for some children not to go to school-and to see what fun we have!

There is a thread here about finding home ed groups local to you.

Also there is an Early Years home education email support list that again will give you information and support.

I have yet to meet any LA bod (and I have met more than most) that knows anything like as much about home education as an experienced home educating parent.

And in answer to your OP. I haven't read the first three, but enjoyed the rest.

Would agree with John Holt.

And there is also The Home Education Journal that might be of interest.

The last 40 or so articles about home education here are from previous copies of the Journal.

I would suggest contacting your LEA or Educational Welfare Board

No No No Nooooooo!!!!

Join Education Otherwise and they will put you in touch with your local contact and HE groups!
It' s never too early to meet HE families and make lots of new friends for invaluable support and advice.

Wish I had known about HE when my dd's were that young

I would make contact with your local yahoo groups first and see what their experience of the LA has been. If it's positive, then in a couple of years when your eldest reaches school-age consider 'coming clean' then.
Whilst the children are under 5 they won't be interested anyway and you could change your mind.
Second the John Holt books

I was really glad that you had missed out John Holt. He was writing about American schools in the late 1950's!!
'How Children Learn' might be helpful but if you read 'How Children Fail' you have to bear in mind that schools aren't like that -the books were required reading for educationalists 40 or 50 yrs ago!

and AbbeyA doesn't HE, just so you know. The John Holt books are a very interesting read nonetheless.

'How children fail' may have been written about American Schools in the 1950's but parts of it resonated very clearly with the experiences our children had in school, until they we withdrew them aged 13, 11 and 8.
Oh how I wish I had known about home education, when they were as young as the OP's.

Posting about the Home Education Journal, reminded me to go back and reread some of the articles there.

I especially enjoyed 'What did you learn today, Mum?'

I was just amazed that a book that was required reading for trainee teachers in the 1960's was the HE's bible. I have got a copy and while I think that it is good to read I wouldn't go away with the idea that it is what happens in schools in the UK. If you want to know what happens in schools today you would be much better reading Shirley Clarke.

I really liked this quote by Jan FW.

"The secret for parents is not to believe we have to be experts ? the world is full of resour ces and help ? but to be as open minded as our passionate, creative, inquisitive children. The secre t for parents and children alike is to learn whatever we want when we have the passion to do it. The secret is that life is the true arena for learning ? something that the powers that be probably hop e we won?t take as seriously as we do.

Sorry AbbeyA
I was relating to the experience our children did have in three diffierent schools in the UK.

They must have been unlucky.

Read it by all means, but bear in mind that John Holt was writing about observations that he made in 1958, 50 yrs ago. It is like him saying that he didn't need to make observations because he had someone's book from 1908 and he knew all there was to know from that!
Schools in 1958 were nothing like 1908 and schools in 2008 are nothing like they were in 1958 (they aren't even anything like they were in 2000). Good schools move on.
A lot of these books are worth a read if you have an interest in the history of education. If I was going through the OP book list I would start with the most up to date.

Though of course, John Holt's investigations into education did not end in the late 1950s. Growing Without Schooling magazine was founded by John Holt in 1977 and edited by him till he died in 1985 - hardly an indication of someone whose ideas were static. He had moved on from the idea that schools might be improved, which is where those early books came from, towards an idea that home education, and particularly autonomous home education, might well be an improvement over even the best schools in terms of educational, emotional and social outcomes.

I think that Teach Your Own, which is PAtrick Farenga's collection of various of John Holt's later writings, with PF commentary, is a very good representation of where John Holt was in his educational philosophy of the 1980s, with PF updating it to be relevant to the 21st century (publication date = 2003). I would recommend that anyone reads that before they assume that they know what home educators mean when they say "John Holt is very helpful and interesting".

Two more things.

1. How has noone mentioned John Taylor Gatto yet?!!!! (New York teacher of the year in 1991 who then almost immediately quit the teaching system in his belief that it is fatally flawed. He's big in libertarian circles. There's a Wikipedia entry with good linkage as a way in)

1. "they must have been unlucky" simply isn't good enough for the "unlucky" ones, Abbey.

Tin hat on!

IMHO the list is rather unbalanced as every book (I've read them all) covers home education in the autonomous style, as if that is the only one. In fact, most ordinary home educators end up somewhere in the middle of the autonomous -> strictly formal scale.

Sadly, there are very few UK or US authors who actively and enthusiastically cover the middle way in home education. They tend to be one extreme or the other.

Here's my, IMO, slightly more balanced list. It even includes One to One!

'Educating Your Child At Home Jane Lowe / Alan Thomas. Pub. Continuum. This is a clear and considered, authoritative guide to home education in the UK - useful and reassuring for parents still contemplating the step or for those just starting out. middle-ish-> autonomous

School's Out. Jean Bendell. Pub Ashgrove Press (1987). This book covers the experiences of an English, home educating family. A delightful and inspiring read. Out of print -try www.abebooks.co.uk, EO used to sell copies. autonomous -> middle-ish

The Well Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. Wise and Bauer. Pub. Norton (USA) A comprehensive and systematic, language-based, history-intensive home curriculum based on a three-part pattern of progress; first memorization, then logical organisation and lastly, expression. www.welltrainedmind.com. Formal.

First Language Lessons for the well-trained mind. Jessie Wise. Peace Hill Press (USA) Scripted, step-by-step lessons to develop oral and written work. Formal.

One to One: a practical guide to learning at home, age 0-11. Williams (Lewis). Nezert Books. Full of practical suggestions including games for arithmetic, handwriting, gardening, cooking and crafts (ignore his ideas on teaching reading though -as an ex-Steiner teacher he doesn't believe in the explicit teaching of reading, especially before the age of 7). autonomous -> middle-ish

Unqualified Education: a practical guide to learning at home. age 11-18. Lewis. Nezert Books. Lewis's book for secondary-age, home-educated children. Includes history, literature, music, cooking and gardening. Lovely!

When I say unlucky I just haven't come across the sort of teaching mentioned in John Holt's book. From what my father has said, I would think it quite common in 1930's-I don't even recognise it from my own school days.
It is a very long time since I read him so I suppose that I ought to update before I comment. I was just totally surprised to find that he had such a following.

I can't speak for private education-however it sometimes surprises me what people put up with when they are paying!

I don't like that mind set at all, hanaflower. I don't expect anyone saw a thread on testing 3yr olds for 'the right school' place, but given a choice between HE and selection of 3 yr olds I was firmly on the side of HE.
We seem to have moved from the OP which didn't have John Holt-I am just saying that I don't think he is that important for reading matter. OP seemed to have a good list without him.