We let our daughter (then 7 and in her second year at a private school) know that we were exploring many options for the coming year. Of course, this didn’t come out of the blue, because we’d all had problems with school from the start, and even though she liked, or thought she liked, her school she was often unhappy there.

We let her participate in our explorations, which included a visit to another school, but we made it clear that while her thoughts and feelings were important to us, it was our decision, since as her parents it was our job to look after her best interests … 

This is not the old argument that we must reform society before we can do anything about education. It is to say that the only way young people can grow up well is by having constant and free access to adults who are working to make a decent society. Unless we have a sense of mission, the children will not have one—but our mission can't be simply “children."

As the school-year consumer frenzy nears its crescendo I think it’s a good time to remember that schooling and all its paraphernalia are not the important things your child needs in order to learn well.

Danish homeschooler Jesper Conrad talks with Pat Farenga about driving around Europe while living and learning with his family, creating a month-long event for traveling homeschoolers in Spain, and how his family manages to make it all work.

“Our 9-year-old lost her enthusiasm for daily study; she just wanted to watch TV and play all day. We decided to put her in charge of her own learning program by requiring that after breakfast and her morning chores, she was to tell us what her study plans for the day would be and to then get started on them. …”

A parent describes helping her child learn this way: “During the first few days she was making “random” pot-holders. I love patterns in everything and had a terrible time not hinting to her that something exciting would happen if she would put colors on the loom systematically …”

Cevin Soling is critical of compulsory schooling for many reasons that he documents in his film The War on Kids. He also provides action-oriented ideas in his book The Student Resistance Handbook. We talk about why school takes up more and more of children's time while producing less and less knowledge, self-awareness, and social connection for students.

At a meeting —very pleasant—of (mostly) sociologists at Harvard, someone said to me, "But if we educate children in the way you propose, how are they later going to fit on the tracks laid down by society?” The question showed me that he understood very clearly what schools are for—to make people think, as they had made him think, that the tracks that make a society of any particular moment are not only the best tracks, but the only possible tracks.

It is the worst kind of tactical and psychological error to try to combat the people who are debasing and corrupting our country and the flag, by trying to demean the flag itself. No, we ought to carry our own flag, display it in every way we can, especially in conjunction with other symbols we believe in.

In the face of worldwide declining births, shouldn’t we be thinking about ways to structure society so it makes having children desirable? The surprising increase of homeschooled children in recent years is also an indicator that more parents want something that society is not providing: not more time in school, but more family time.

There have been and continue to be efforts to create different, creative endeavors besides the conventional 4-year college program.  Like homeschooling, many of these efforts are started locally by a small group of people, but it is rare to see independent universities being created to serve local needs. That’s why I wanted to talk with Manish Jain, who openly supports homeschooling and who helped found an ecoversity, Swaraj University, in India. 

John Holt: “I have met some fine teachers who have told me that for as long as twenty years or more they have been working in this or that school or system to bring about some of the kinds of changes I am urging, and with no success at all. I can admire their courage but not their tactical judgment. Not only have they wasted their time, skill, and devotion; they have given them to an institu­tion that has made bad use of them.”

“It took me ten years of parenting and half that many of homeschooling to learn an important concept: parents must have their own time—homeschooling parents especially. It is an intense life we lead.”

“...I have an odd feeling that whatever we do in environments we share with children, we ought to do because they seem like the most sensible, interesting, and humane things to do in the here and now, without hoping or expecting too much of this or that will cause the children to grow up to be this or that kind of person, or do this or that or the other thing.”—John Holt

“The same friend who convinced me that my math phobia need not be permanent also offered free phone tutoring. I have found my own attitude towards learning greatly improved since becoming a homeschooling Mom. Although I was a high school dropout, this does not at all reduce my confidence or determination to continue homeschooling my four youngest children. …”

“My daughter Sarah has always been a very social person, and when she was 5 she said she wanted to go to school. I got her to talk about why she wanted to go. Her main reason was that she wanted to have lots of friends to play with. I recognized her social needs but I honestly didn't think the playground at school would meet them in a constructive, positive, growth-enhancing way….”

All of those complaints are valid, and I’m certainly someone who, with four children, does a lot of driving to activities in the course of a week. We’re all really happy with those activities that the children are involved in, but it certainly does involve a lot of car time. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about that car time, and about the positive side of it. 

Of my own seven books, perhaps the most immediately useful to unschoolers may be What Do I Do Monday? It suggests many specific ways in which children can explore the world (in writing, math, science, etc.), and learn and feel its wholeness and interconnectedness.—John Holt

“Are your parents teachers?” “Do you have any friends?” and on and on. It’s come to the point where I feel like saying, “It’s really none of your business.” I don’t say that, of course. …