Reviewed by Pat Farenga on June 22, 2011.

Reviewed by Pat Farenga on April 13, 2011 in this blog.

A great resource, provocative arguments, and solid advice for taking control of how you can design and implement your own personalized higher education program instead of spending four years behind ivy-covered walls.

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. I added more than 20,000 words of my own to expand and enhance the book for the 21st century.— PF 

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'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.

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 book, he added new chapters and fresh insights to the existing text based on his experiences with homeschooled children.

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.

It is so good to have this title back in print; 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. Foreword by Patrick Farenga.

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.

The most controversial of all of John Holt's books, this has been out of print since we published it at Holt Associates in 1995. Only used copies are available from Amazon. John's ideas about the rights of children are still too radical for most people, though I think they are thought-provoking and timely given the dilemmas modern childhood is creating.—PF

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. Foreword by Patrick Farenga.

The book that influenced John Holt to work at changing society by helping children learn in different places than schools. John studied with Illich in Cuernavaca in the 'seventies. This book continues to inspire people all around the world to seek new ways of teaching and learning.