Homeschooling for Social Change

Intro

The Freechild Project defines homeschooling as learning at home that often features written curricula, textbooks, and parents as teachers, or collectives of families engaged in co-teaching. We believe there is a difference between homeschooling and unschooling. For more information on unschooling, click here>

Point to Ponder

"...the anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know." - John Holt in How Children Learn.

Resources

Included here are resources identified by Freechild's youth researchers to help explore the effects of homeschooling on social change, including organizations, websites, and publications.

Organizations

Minority Homeschoolers of Texas

Seeks to promote homeschooling among minorities. The site is geared for Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Native Americans, and Anglos with adopted minority children

National Home Education Research Institute

The mission of the National Home Education Research Institute is three-fold: To produce high-quality statistics, research, and technical reports on home education, serve as a clearinghouse of research for home educators, researchers, and policy makers, and educate the public concerning the findings of all research on home education.

Websites

Great site, great information.

John's homeschool links
Maybe the oldest, most comprehensive collection of links about homeschool on the internet today.

A how-to site on homeschooling, and information on private alternative schools.

And other books covering topics including home schooling, classical education, afterschooling & supplementing home schooling.

About Home Schooling

Packed with links and information.

Publications

Teach Your Own by John Holt
Holt's "how to" book. The what and how of daily living and learning at home and from life. In the words of Josephy Chilton Pearce, an intelligent answer to the question of how do we save our children from the tragedy of schooling.

And What About College? by Cafi Cohen
This book will show how unschoolers can present their education and learning in a way to make it understandable for college admission officers.

The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffin

The very best book on the nuts and bolts of unschooling. If you are wondering just what unschoolers do all day, get this book.

How Chidren Learn by John Holt

How Children Fail by John Holt

These two books speak to Holt's experiences in the classroom and what he eventually found untenable about the system. Presented are reasons why families should pursue education outside of institutions.