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Unconventional ideas for teaching and learning.
FOR SALE
UNSCHOOLED (26 min. DVD). No tests. No grades. No lessons. No school. Three families who keep their children at home and don't provide them with any curriculum are profiled. A funny and provocative film that examines our personal and social feelings about the question: what does it mean to be well educated?
A review of UNSCHOOLED by Pat Farenga.
John Holt: A Life Worth Living DVD.
This is a documentary I made about John Holt for the 20th anniversary conference of Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1997. I recently transferred the video to DVD and am pleased to offer it to you now.
This 21 minute show covers Holt's life from birth to death, from being a conventional fifth-grade teacher to becoming the founder of the unschooling movement, told largely in his own words and photos. The last segment includes video footage of an interview Holt did about two years before he died. $10.00
Learning In Our Own Way DVDs
Dr. Thomas Armstrong lecturing about:
Eight Kinds ofSmart
The Myth of the Add Child
Weapons of Mass Instruction
To view more CDs and DVDs from the Learning In Our Own Way Conference, click here.
BOOKS FOR SALE
I charge the exact cover price plus the exact shipping costs and small handling fee to ship anywhere in the US. If you want me to ship via International carriers, please contact me first so we can determine your shipping and handling on a country by country basis. — PF
Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling by John Holt and Patrick Farenga. I revised Holt's only book expressly about homeschooling in 2003. It hadn't been updated since it was first published in 1981, and it has been out of print since the late eighties. Not only have I added more than 20,000 words, I also updated all the resource lists, research citations, and bibliography. — PF
The Underachieving School by John Holt
Foreword by Patrick Farenga. Reprinted for the first time since the early seventies, this collection of essays by John Holt is a trenchant antidote to the same solutions educators offer us today as they did when this book appeared in 1968.
Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better Foreword by Patrick Farenga. It is so good to have this title back in print. since it is one of my personal favorites. This is Holt's "bridge" book, showing how he went from advocating changing schools to advocating alternatives to schools.
How Children Fail, Revised edition.
John's first book, an all-time classic that has been translated into over 14 languages and sold over a million copies. The strategies students and teachers use to pretend real learning is taking place in the classroom and what we can do about it. John revised this book in 1983 based on his experiences with homeschooling and the failure of schools to embrace any of the solutions he proposed.
How Children Learn, Revised 1983
This is becoming the bestselling title of all of John's books now (9 out of 10 of them are currently in print). His second book, John decided he had to write about how children learn before they are school-age and buy into the game of faking knowledge, which he described in How Children Fail. When John revised this title, he added new chapters and fresh insights to the existing text based on his experiences with homeschooled children.
Never Too Late: My Musical Autobiography
John's most personally revealing book. It describes in loving detail, how he came to play the cello as middle-aged man despite so many people telling him he would never be able to learn and play it because he was too old. This is an inspiring story not just for adult music learners, but for anyone who thinks they are "too old and set in their ways" to learn anything new.
Learning All the Time: How small children being to read, write, count and investigate the world without being taught
Modern society has made such a fetish out of teaching and managing children that we are on the verge of forgetting that we are born with innate abilities to learn and grow. Not interfering with those processes is more of a problem today than ever - from the moment a child is born we think we must make them better through classical music, special programs, tutors, learning toys and televised education. This book is an antidote to anyone who prefers to live and learn with their children instead of working on them to become educated.
John explores the issues caused by viewing life and learning as a choice between "structured versus unstructured living and learning" and in so doing finds many new approaches to helping children learn. Contains some sharp critiques of the alternative school movement, which is described as a "soft jail" for kids, compared to the "hard jail" of conventional schools.
What Do I Do Monday?
John thought this was his most useful book for homeschoolers, though it never really caught on with them compared to Learning All the Time and others. Nonetheless, this book describes, in great detail, what teachers can do besides the old "sit down, shut up, and do as I say" routine in their classes. Responding to charges that his ideas about education were not practical, John filled this book with practical ways to teach math, science, reading, writing, and many other subjects.
