A free John Holt book Escape From Childhood: The Needs And Rights Of Children is available for download on Pat Farenga’s site.

This Kindle book is only available until midnight tonight.

An excerpt:

No human right, except the right to life itself, is more fundamental than this. A person’s freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take form someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us.

We might call this the right of curiosity, the right to ask whatever questions are most important to us. As adults, we assume that we have the right to decide what does or does not interest us, what we will look into and what we will leave alone. We take this right largely for granted, cannot imagine that it might be taken away from us. Indeed, as far as I know, it has never been written into any body of law. even the writers of our Constitution did not mention it. They thought it was enough to guarantee citizens the freedom of speech and the freedom to spread their ideas as widely as they wished and could. it did not occur to them that even the most tyrannical government would try to control people’s minds, what they thought and knew. That idea would come later, under the benevolent guise of compulsory universal education.

According to this news report from New Jersey: “Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle will introduce legislation to regulate the home schooling of children. This comes on the heels of a recent investigation by the State Department Of Children And Families into the tragic may death of eight-year old Christiana Glenn of Irvington.

“Christiana died of malnutrition and an untreated broken leg. She was also supposedly home schooled. Vanieri Huttle’s bill would require medical exams and submission of student work portfolios for home-schooled children. It would also prohibit children under the supervision of DYFS from being home-schooled.”

Discussion of this potential leglislation is under discussion at the HEM Networking group, a free forum for homeschoolers prodvided by Home Education Magazine: “This bill is bad. Public school students are not required to undergo medical exams. Furthermore, there has been no evidence that homeschoolers in NJ are not doing a good job and that they suddenly need supervision by the public schools.”

In a contribution to the HEM-Networking group discussion, former HEM News & Commentary editor Valerie Moon shared a link to author Milton Gaither’s review of Timothy B. Waddell’s “Bringing it all Back Home: Establishing a Coherent Constitutional Framework for the Re-Regulation of Homeschooling” in Vanderbilt Law Review. Waddell, a recent graduate from Vanderbilt Law School and now a clerk for the U.S. District Court of Alabama, here presents a constitutional argument for increased regulation of homeschooling and much else besides.

Valerie shared this excerpt from Gaither’s review:

“As my summary indicates, I really liked this piece. It is the last of a long list of legal articles I’ve reviewed over the past few weeks, and it is the best of the lot in my view. John Holt wouldn’t like it because in his view it was always better to have things unclear than clear, for then you could get away with more. But I for one appreciated not only Waddell’s summary of the issues but his proposal as well. I know some of my readers will react strongly against what I’m about to say, but Waddell’s proposal to me does a good job of maintaining the freedom to homeschool while at the same time providing a mechanism for catching children whose parents are being abusive or neglectful. A homeschooling family that is doing its job should have no fear of outside evaluation–should welcome it in fact, as it will demonstrate to the public at large how effective homeschooling can be.”

This underscores a longstanding concern we’ve had with Gaither’s position on homeschooling, as he deliberately frames John Holt’s pioneering work for homeschooling freedoms in an unfavorable light, while dangerously welcoming government oversight of families.

In this first of three posts, titled Compelled to Attend, HEM’s Road Less Travelled columnist, Linda Dobson, is revisiting her first book, The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community and Self, published by Home Education Press in 1995. An excerpt:

And if colleges and universities ignore the true meaning of education and accept indoctrination as their function in society, what then is the purpose of all the years of schooling that lead up to college, starting at the tender age of five or, in many cases today, even younger?

Continue reading at the link above.

In this brilliant video lecture, The history of alternative schooling and homeschooling, Canadian-American documentary filmmaker and writer Astra Taylor describes her own homeschooling – specifically unschooling as promoted by John Holt in his ground-breaking publication Growing Without Schooling (“delivered to our mailbox in a brown paper bag”). She contextualizes her unschooled experiences and the progressive homeschooling movement by reference to the history of alternate education, especially the public conversation about it in the sixties and seventies:

“Raised by independent-thinking bohemian parents, Taylor was unschooled until age 13. Join the filmmaker as she shares her personal experiences of growing up home-schooled without a curriculum or schedule, and how it has shaped her educational philosophy and development as an artist.”

Homeschool advocate Patrick Farenga writes about a message he’s carried “for decades” from John Holt, founder of the groundbreaking Growing Without Schooling:

“…the message of John’s that echoes more today than ever for me is this: college is among the chief enslaving institutions of America.

“When Holt said this I believe he was thinking about graduates who spent time and money on degrees to work in fields they no longer enjoy but are now trapped by their mortgages and loans into staying. Now this critique is gaining traction outside the circle of alternative schooling, probably because the cost of higher education is so out of alignment with its benefits. Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom is we must send our kids to college so they can make more money than high school graduates do.”

Patrick makes several very good points in his post, and points his readers to further good reading.

The infomercial site that I (will admit) glibly awarded the Worst Headline of the Week carried a new piece “A Brief Look at the History of Homeschooling.” I can not glibly dismiss this article, infomercial or not.

Not until a little before mid 1800s did institutionalized schooling became the norm. Many of America’s founders were educated by mentors, family and apprenticeships without any state-run education system. This is some of the background information and basis for homeschooling catalyst John Caldwell Holt’s book How Children Fail, which came out in 1964.

~~~

However, neither of his books addressed or proposed any alternative to education. Holt basically planted the seed for change and many other education dissenters started producing books and articles supporting the premise soon afterward. Author Harold Bennet had actually written a book that gave suggestions on how parents can keep their children out of school illegally.

Only after parents had written him regarding his teaching, stating they started teaching their kids at home, did Holt start producing literature on homeschooling. His last book Teach Your Own, published in 1980, contains his take on homeschooling.

(Oops, the author fails to acknowledge Holt’s Growing Without Schooling started in 1977.)

The piece goes on to talk about the work of Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore and then to state, “Studies have found that homeschooling parents are of the Christian faith in the U.S. — nearly 90 percent having been polled said as much.”

I sat with Raymond and Dorothy in both formal meetings and informal brain storming sessions discussing the dangers of dividing the movement along religious lines. We differed in strategy, but their words and deeds supported the diversity of the homeschooling movement and opposed the coming division.

Maybe this ‘brief history’ is innocent, maybe by design, or, the most likely, just good for selling Christian Curriculum. In any case, ignoring the history, which includes the diversity and the purposeful division along religious lines, continues to drive us apart and is not helpful for anyone’s freedom to homeschool.

For now, I will point you to the resource section of this post for more information.

Here is the infomercial.

It’s not often that a homeschooling dad can share homeschooling experiences, as Wisit Wangwinyoo did in a Bangkok Post interview.

AN ALTERNATIVE FATHER December 4, 2008 SUPAWADEE INTHAWONG

Wisit Wangwinyoo is not an ordinary father.
A thinker and writer in philosophy who has translated the works of prominent Buddhist spiritual leaders like Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama, he chose to home-school his son and wrote about it in the book Home-made School, released in 2005.

His son, Isara, 18, and a music student at a college in Russia, also published a book that is a sequel to his father’s, telling the stories about the alternative education experience from his perspective.

The painful transitions in losing his wife to brain cancer 12 years ago seem to have helped solidify perspectives about his son’s childhood and education.

Wanting to spend as much time as possible with his son, he started the “unschooling” process for the then-six-year-old Isara.

His so-called “home-made” education method was based on the natural child-led learning with some influence from the ideas of US writer John Holt, the author of the books How Children Fail and How Children Learn.

John Holt’s research and philosophies seems right in line with what Wisit Wangwinyoo did for his son.  He chose a home for his son that would be conducive to nurturing and learning.

He chose Ashram Wongsanit, a community of NGO developers and alternative educators in Nakhon Nayok, as the home and school for their child, convinced that the natural surrounding and thatched home would provide a greatest learning opportunity for the boy.

The father and son later settled in Chiang Rai, following the family of Wisit’s brother. The northern province was also an ideal place for the learning and growing of his son, according to Wisit

The in-depth article covered a good deal of Wisit’s thought process about education, along with Isara’s childhood journey and accomplishments.  Isara shared some thoughts about his father and life so far, which parents always hope to be positive.  Wisit shouldn’t be disappointed.

On Wisit’s birthday, Isara wrote to thank his father for arranging him home-school education so that he did not have to “put up” with things he would not enjoy learning.

He said Wisit is a role model who works with passion and joy, and not for money or fame.

An image Isara has remembered since he was young was his father waking up early each morning to write books or translate works.

Isara said his father always avoids answering his questions directly but will try to have him think and find the answers by himself.

Isara is now in Yaroslavl, Russia studying piano in college.

~ Susan Ryan

One never knows when home education will pop up. While ‘off duty’ and zoning out in front of the tube with a movie-of-opportunity, I was surprised to hear that Honey Ryder, Ursula Andress’s character in the 1962 flick of Ian Fleming’s story, Dr. No, apparently was homeschooled.

In the movie, Honey arose from the sea, and (not surprisingly) captured the attention of 007. When Bond (James Bond) asked her about her childhood, Honey said her father raised her wherever there were shells (her dad’s research specialty) — places such as the Philippines and Bali. James asked Honey about her schooling and she said she didn’t need to go to school because her father had an encyclopedia. Honey said she started reading at A when she was eight and (by the time James was talking to her) she had made it up to T.

Honey’s autodidacticism seems to have upstaged John Holt concerning unschooling. The first of his books, How Children Fail, wasn’t published until 1964.

Now that I’ve got that homeschool tidbit of cinematic trivia out of my system, back to the movie.

posted by Valerie