Book Review - Free Range Learning

Alright I recently enjoyed the pleasure and the bounty(!) of another new homeschooling book.

Recall I extolled that other one - What Really Matters - for *attempting to bridge the gap* between the vital *why* and the *how to* homeschooling questions.

Well, if that book was the bridge, Laura Grace Weldon's Free Range Learning is, the destination - THE how-to manifesto!

Sure, Free Range Learning covers the obligatory issues like: socialization, the differing homeschool philosophies, etc. but the book's real power is its resourcefulness.

Weldon's nearly 300 page book (large pages too!) is just teeming with practical suggestions for parents. From texts, curricula, organizations, and websites right down to countless, simple ideas on how a didactically-inclined parent might steer a day's activities. This comprehensive book is EXACTLY what my wife and I need as we enter the intermediate stage of homeschooling  - just beyond literacy and numeracy.

And about the *Free Range*, shtick...

As my long-time readers well know, I generally prefer the eggs of genetically modified, corn-fattened, chickens whose legs can barely support them in those jam-packed cages.

HOWEVER, as this crunchy farm girl convincingly articulates, homeschooling is in fact THE infinitely natural, bio-organic(!) path for treading on this Gaia-forsaken planet.

I'll post one excerpt and then wrap this one up:

...That's because adults tend to be future oriented. We're distracted from the present moment by the need to plan and work toward any number of goals - what to do about dinner, how to juggle next month's schedule, when we can get some bills paid off. These distractions take our attention away from what is in the here and now. When we think ahead so often, we have less time to notice, let alone appreciate, what makes up our lives minute by minute. What is impatience except denying the value of the present moment? The watercolor effect of rain on the window, the meandering quality of a child's conversation, the long wait for a pot to boil - these can be occasions to experience or opportunities to breathe deeply and experience gratitude.


Leaning so often toward the future unconsciously demonstrates to our children that later is more important than now. Yet, as we know, later never comes. As long as we're alive there's always "later" to strive toward. Worse, we are surrounded by media-driven messages telling us that we aren't there yet, that we need to do more or become something more in order to have friends, be successful, find love.


The nature of early childhood is the perfect antidote to this hurry-up attitude; that is, if adults truly pay attention to the lessons the youngest model for us. Young children who are not yet pulled by the adult world's messages are oriented to the present moment. When forced to disregard what is vital to their bodies and spirits - pretending, daydreaming and playing - they rebel. They are who they are, where they are. They are not caught up in the future tense which diminishes the here and now.


Homeschooling can be a solution to our cultural overdrive.


Homeschooling days provide ample opportunities for a mix of multisensory activities that anchor us to the moment. Practicing a new piece on the guitar, forming a juggling troupe with friends, birdwatching, reading on the couch, volunteering at the Head Start center down the street, growing heritage vegetables, competing in a robotics tournament, putting out a zine - homeschoolers can engage the creative energies they choose. Providing children with a range of opportunities while leaving plenty of space for relaxation allows each family member to find his or her balance. It gives us the time to know one another as whole human beings.


There's no need to make homeschooling into a daily hustle of events. Some well-intentioned parents overload their children with so many lessons, field trips, sports and clubs that everyone feels tense. Admittedly there are more enticing prospects for children's activities than ever before. But what is learned here is larger. We show our children by example that we know how to savor life. Each day is a microcosm of the lessons we teach them about our values and priorities.


Throughout most of history, childhood was entirely different. Children provided significant help to their families, and otherwise they were left to their own devices. This left them with ample time to reflect, imagine, play and understand themselves in relation to the world around them.


The Slow Movement is part of a cultural shift toward reconnecting with a simpler way of life, such as locally grown food, slower-paced work and closer relationships. Savoring rather than rushing. Homeschooling makes up part of this trend. We are taking back time with our families, and choosing to spend that time in ways that are personally meaningful to us.

I just want to reiterate that the strength of this book is that it's a genuine font of ideas - a book that won't be simply read, tucked into a bookshelf and/or passed on. My wife and I will no doubt be consulting Free Range Learning with biblical regularity - in the development of our educational website, on rainy days, and in the course of our homeschool macro-planning.

In fact, if I myself were sufficiently qualified and intent on writing a *homeschooling* book this is precisely the template I would choose - a little bit of theory backed up with copious real world homeschooling examples. Laura offers up not only her own experience in homeschooling four kids, she also shares the wisdom and testimony of a hundred homeschooling families in this book (the real meat of this text).

You see, homeschooling remains an extremely difficult concept for newbies to wrap their brains around. Because at root, to the parents it represents a complete repudiation of the system that produced and defines them to this day. Few among us are capable AND willing to look in the mirror and admit personal shortcomings - no less set out to address the causes. After all, the system never taught us to judge ourselves - only certified, unionized experts were permitted to do that!

And, additional to the self-assessment hurdle, homeschooling has to overcome the *imagination* problem. Present-tensers innocent of history are powerless to conceive of another way of raising their children - one different not only from how they grew up, but also at odds with what their neighbors are doing. I hate to say it, but even a color TV show or motion picture depicting a homeschooling family might go a long ways towards de-mystifying the lifestyle.

In the meantime, everyone with the slightest concern about their kids' education, particularly those on the fence about *pulling their kids out*, would do well to take a look at this one.

(Laura also writes for GeekMom and Home Education Magazine. The latter I subscribed to last year and the former, having checked out the site....I just don't know what to do with!)

Book Review - What Really Matters

Alright...I just procured, devoured, and savored another great homeschooling book - What Really Matters, by David Albert and Joyce Reed.

Recall Albert edited some of homeschooling patron saint John Gatto's work. And I've already blogged on a few of his other books - here, here, and here.

Joyce Reed is a new name to me. But hey, I'll eagerly lend my ears to ANYONE who's successfully homeschooled and expelled five kids!

The book is set up, skeletally, as a dialogue between these two *veteran* homeschoolers. Except it was more like a monologue with alternating voices. There wasn't any discernible disagreement in there either; just a whole lot of high fives and wet kisses going back and forth.

Nonetheless, the book was terrific and it instantly rises into my top five list of must-read homeschooling resources. More than a few times, in the course of reading it, I had to remind myself to inhale, and exhale.

Homeschooling is such a vast subject the narrow term itself ought to be done away with on account of insufficiency. No single book, as yet, has come anywhere close to doing it service; nor could a 200 page book on, say, *science* hope to scratch the surface of its titular subject. So allow me to sub-title or sub-categorize this one.

David and Joyce, from what I can tell, and compared to others in my personal sample set, are so-called *un-schoolers*. That means they believe, almost fanatically, in child-led exploration and learning.

In other words, they would probably (David anyway) frown upon the 2,000+ workbook pages I MADE my son do between the ages of 3.75 and 4.75. See - What'll We Do Next Year.

Unschoolers believe it paramount that kids learn at their own self-regulated pace. So if they don't read until they're 10 - then so be it and don't sweat it. Because it's far more important, in their eyes, to keep the learning process *pure*, i.e. devoid of coercion and incentives.

Okay. So why am I reading and lauding the pontifications of my critics?

Well, because I don't believe they are directing this book specifically to me, at all. Their message seeks a wider audience of government school parents, young homeschool parents, veteran homeschoolers, and potential homeschoolers. Few adults out there have the same situation I have: kids with superior genetics and probably the best teacher on this planet - a hero who can magically make long division with decimals fun, interesting, and relevant even for little squirts!

And with that goal in mind, the book has been well-sculpted as an inspirational masterpiece.

While many have chosen (and will continue to choose) to educate their own *outside the system* on account of a bad school experience, because of so-called special needs, for lifestyle reasons, religious calling, or, like me, because they believe an individualized education in the comfort of home is superior to every other method....David and Joyce take it up another notch or two. They truly believe that homeschoolers can improve global health. They're going to save the planet!

Normally, in this space, I'd mock the socks off anyone making such claims and I'd out them as dissembling power and money seekers.

The fact is, optimally raised homeschoolers won't slavishly pick up the newspaper or go to CNN.com everyday to *receive* their intellectual and emotion orders. Essentially, everything churned out by Big Media boils down to *propaganda* from regnant institutions: political parties, unions, Big Business, the college/university cartel, Big Military, organized eco-pagans, et al. So it follows that only truly independent thinkers will be able to come up with outside-the-box solutions and prescriptions for larger societal problems.

It's a nice little cynical and self-aggrandizing theory, right?

Well consider Albert's oldest daughter:

Following our trip to south India to aid in some small way in tsunami relief efforts in December, 2004/January, 2005, my older daughter Aliyah decided she needed to return in the summer to feel she had completed her part of the job. She raised the necessary funds herself and took off for Asia. She spent a week in Cambodia with that nation’s only child psychiatrist, who is training the country’s entire child mental health workforce (the previous one having been physically eliminated by Pol Pot in the late 1970s). She met with an old graduate school friend of mine who gave up a promising academic career to (among other things) set up hospices in Phnom Penh for those dying of AIDS. She flew on to south India, undertaking for nine weeks to document the efforts of the land reform/house building organization working with the poorest of the poor, and with whom we had contributed our time and energy six months previously. Then she moved on to Bangkok, visiting with an organization that is training Buddhist monks to help individuals and communities heal from the trauma of the tsunami, which is still very fresh. And now, having returned home, she is working to set up an internship for herself in Italy with a group that does Third World development-related work.

Aliyah is seventeen.

Wow, right? It sounds like she's going after after Mother Teresa's records as a young Tiger Woods sighted Jack Nicklaus!

Now, would any of that (especially the imagination and travel) be possible if the young lady's time and priorities were co-opted by *schools*?

Of course not.

BTW, Albert's other daughter volunteers at animal shelters and organizes piano concerts in furtherance of Mid-East Peace and whatnot.

Look, John Gatto's work remains the tour de force, the beacon of homeschooling inspiration.

BUT, he really only, in exposing the sordid history of government schools, taught us the *why* of the homeschooling question.

Since he himself was childless didn't homeschool(?), we need others, trailblazers like Albert and Reed to teach us the next step, the *how to* aspect.

I guess the appeal of What Really Matters - for me anyway - is that it successfully bridges this important gap.