Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling

by John C. Holt

Book Overview

The classic and indispensable work on teaching children at home, fully updated for today's new laws, new lifestyles, and the growing new generation of homeschooling parents

Today more than one and a half million children are being taught at home by their own parents. In this expanded edition of the book that helped launch the whole movement, Pat Farenga has distilled John Holt's timeless understanding of the ways children come to understand the world and added up-to-the-moment legal, financial, and logistical advice. No parent even considering homeschooling should be without this wise and unique reference.

Rather than proposing that parents turn their homes into miniature schools, Holt and Farenga demonstrate how ordinary parents can help children grow as social, active learners. Chapters on living with children, serious play, children and work, and learning difficulties will fascinate and encourage parents and help them enjoy each homeschool day. John Holt's warm understanding of children and his passionate belief in every child's ability to learn have made this book the bible of homeschooling families everywhere.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738206946
• ISBN13: 9780738206943
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Educational reformer John Holt on home learning

John Holt is one who thinks education is worth the bother, though his research for books like "How Children Learn" and "How Children Fail" has led him to reject most of the institutional trappings that encumber formal education. Instead, he has become a leading advocate of home schooling. Even parents who are not ready to take their children out of school will find useful advice for encouraging their children's natural inclination to learn. Parents who are serious about home schooling will find practical information, including legal strategies for keeping the educational police at bay.

The master of modern homeschooling

Don't read my review. Buy the book and read it instead. If you only ever puchase one book on home education, then let it be this one. John Holt is simply the best.

A treatise from the "granddaddy" of homeschooling

In this unofficial treatise for the homeschooling movement, John Holt, longtime private school teacher, maintains that the traditional classroom model no longer works and may, in fact, ruin kids for learning. He exhorts parents to challenge the conventional wisdom and be their children's teachers. You don't need to be a homeschooler to benefit from Holt's books; you simply need to care about children and education and to have uttered, if only once, "There's got to be a better way."