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Quotes about school and education
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Practical Learning
Six of the Best!
Beach Combing
Mary Poppins has much to say!
A Rounded Education!
A Class of their own
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Six of the Best!
 Below are six excellent books covering a range of different aspects within home education.
If you want to know more about the concepts within HE, or want practical ideas of how to learn at home, or to hear accounts of what other families do, or just want a clearer understanding of the limitations of schools, then these six books are just what you need!
If you want just one book to share with a reluctant partner or with critical relations, get a copy of FREd (Free Range Education).
Read Gatto, FREd, and Holt, and you’ll never see schools in the same light!
Warning: Once your consciousness has been raised it can't be lowered!
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One-to-one
 A Practical Guide to Learning at Home, Age 0-11
Gareth Lewis, Published in 2001.
Available from Amazon, direct from Nezert Books or WH Smith
E-mail: info@nezertbooks.net
www.nezertbooks.net
One-to-One is now the UK's top-selling guide to home education. Although this book is aimed at home educators, and is an invaluable resource to any of us, there is so much in here that would suit a child who was in school and whose parents wanted some ideas for games, activities or helping with school work. From gardening, craft and cooking to ideas on maths and reading, this book has fantastic practical, reassuring advice and simple grading system for the activities and an easy to read and use format that makes it a book to go back to over and over again.
'This book is a gem', John Taylor Gatto; 'One-to-One is a truly wonderful book', Montessori International Magazine; 'Inspiring and yet undaunting', Full Time Mothers
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Unqualified Education
 A Practical Guide to Learning at Home, Age 11-18
Gareth Lewis, Publication: November 2003
Available from Amazon or direct from Nezert Books
Unqualified Education is both a parent's guide to home education with an emphasis on self-directed, self-motivated and enthusiastic learning, and a mini-text book, complete with lesson plans, reminiscent of the excellent Waldorf Oak Meadow curriculum books.
Gareth covers every subject and offers useful teaching advice, helpful hints, lesson guides, practical information, and clear guidelines that will enrich the learning experience. The fantastic black and white line drawings are delightful and will encourage children to use this book.
Ideas and information for studies in Literature, History, Geography, Languages, Science, Technology, Music, Mathematics, Art and Craft can be used as a springboard to further explorations, with Cooking and Gardening covered in two separate chapters. Gareth peppers the text with sensible home educating advice and tips, and devotes a final chapter to practical matters such as Timetables, Curriculum, Qualifications, Work and Employment.
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Dumbing Us Down
 The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
John Taylor Gatto, Publication (revised): July 2002
Available from Amazon
This radical treatise on public education has been a best-seller for 10 years! 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.
This is a series of essays and speeches the author has written about education in the United States. Mr. Gatto is an award-winning teacher who has taken the brave step of stating what he sees wrong with education. As only someone who has worked in the system for so long can really see the problems, he not only sees the problems, he shares them with the rest of the nation. Education does what it was set up to do - to tame the unruly individual thinkers, and more. Mr. Gatto's seven lessons that school teaches is exactly on target. Unfortunately.
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FRED: Free Range Education
How Home Education Works
Terri Dowty (Editor), Publication: December 2000
Available from Amazon and others
A handbook for families considering or starting out in home education. The book is full of family stories, resources, burning questions, humour, tips, practical steps and useful advice so the reader can choose what best suits his or her family situation.
You are already your child's main educator and these families show how home education can work for you. Terri Dowty edited the book's 20 contributions whilst home educating her two sons with her husband Ian, a solicitor.
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Learning All the Time
 How small children learn
John Holt, Publication: September 1990
Available from Amazon and others
How small children begin to read, write, count, and investigate the world, without being taught. The essence of John Holt’s insight into learning and small children is captured in Learning All The Time. This delightful book by the influential author of ‘How Children Fail’ and ‘How Children Learn’ shows how children learn to read, write, and count in their everyday life at home and how adults can respect and encourage this wonderful process. For human beings, he reminds us, learning is as natural as breathing. John Holt’s wit, his gentle wisdom, and his infectious love of little children bring joy to parent and teacher alike.
Filled with marvelous insights about children and how they learn, their initial love of learning and their later dread of it, this book explains why children's love of learning must be cherished and treasured. It is a wonderful book.
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Doing It Their Way
 Home-based Education and Autonomous Learning
Jan Fortune-Wood, Publication: April 2000
Available from Amazon and others
Today's political climate is not largely one of educational experiment and diversity. The National Curriculum has become firmly lodged in people's minds as the blueprint of a proper education. The introduction of literacy and numeracy hours in schools has gone a long way to standardising educational experience for the vast majority of children. In a political climate of paternalism and rigorous standardisation home educating parents stand out as what Roland Meighan has called a beacon of 'trail blazing'.
Amongst those who exercise their legal right not to delegate the parental responsibility for education to either the state or private institutions autonomous educators are a small, but growing sub-set of people. Autonomous educators believe radically different things about learning and education. This book sets out to make their case and to do so particularly within the context of the British educational experience.
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Where to find them
Useful sites for getting hold of the books:
www.home-education.org.uk/book-theory-uk.htm
www.hawthornpress.com/fre-ndx.html
http://edheretics.gn.apc.org/index.htm
www.nezertbooks.net
www.amazon.co.uk
All the reviews above are from Amazon.
For a great series of articles online visit:
Educational Heretics Press
Pages from the Roland Meighan column in Natural Parent magazine.
Educational Heretics Press is a research, writing and publishing company, founded in 1991 by Roland and Janet Meighan. |  |
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