Lesson 2: Unschooling Philosophy
Unschooling Philosophers
John Holt, Patrick Farenga, and Susannah Sheffer:
John Holt taught in private schools for many years before writing his first books How Children Fail, in 1964, and How Children Learn, in 1967. He became an advocate for school reform speaking and writing books that explored education theory and practice, children's rights, alternative schools, and many other social issues related to schooling. His focus changed from school reform to alternatives to schooling. In 1977 he started the first homeschooling magazine, Growing Without Schooling. His last two books, the only two specifically about homeschooling are titled Teach Your Own and Learning All The Time.
Patrick Farenga, author of The Beginner’s Guide To Homeschooling, co-authored Teach Your Own, and continues John Holt’s advocacy work. He is currently the President of Holt Associates, Inc. and was the publisher of Growing Without Schooling from 1985, after John Holt’s death, until it stopped publishing in November 2001. He has also written many articles and book chapters for publications including Mothering magazine, Paths of Learning magazine, Home Education Magazine, The Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society and The Encyclopedia of School Administration.
Patrick Farenga appears on local and national television and radio shows as a homeschooling expert. He speaks about homeschooling and the work of John Holt throughout the U.S., Canada, England, and Italy. He also works as an education consultant.
Susannah Sheffer, author of A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters of John Holt, Writing Because We Love To: Homeschoolers At Work, and A Sense of Self: Listening to Homeschooled Adolescent Girls, was the longest-serving editor for Growing Without Schooling.
"Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons’ experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives. Whoever takes that right away from us, as the educators do, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience, has no value." - John Holt.
Matt Hern:
Matt Hern, Ph.D., author of Deschooling Our Lives and Field Day, is a father, has run an alternative school for young children, worked with a large public free school, and an alternative-to-school teen center. He teaches in Vancouver, Canada, and at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont (self-described as ‘both an educational and an activist organization.’) Hern argues that compulsory schooling should be dissolved.
"I want to encourage adults to live with the kids around then, not to service them, and to be in real relationships with them. To go places with kids, to read, to play, to draw with them, to travel with them, to live full lives with them. Our kids do not need us to be professional parents; they need healthy, caring people to use as models, and parents who will support them growing into themselves." - Matt Hern.
Mary Griffith:
Mary Griffith, author of The Unschooling Handbook, The Homeschooling Handbook, and The Homeschooling Image, is an unschooling advocate and mother of two children who never attended school. She was a long-time activist with the HomeSchool Association of California, the state's oldest secular homeschooling organization, she served several terms on HSC's board of directors, and was editor of its bimonthly California HomeSchooler for four years. Griffith is a frequent speaker at homeschooling conferences and other events on such topics as unschooling, learning to live with homeschooling, and homeschool advocacy.
Griffith's booklet, The Homeschooling Image: Public Relations Basics, is used and distributed by the National Home Education Network to help homeschooling activists get accurate information about homeschooling out to the public.
“In many ways, unschooling can be reduced to that hoary old chestnut from the sixties–the one you still see occasionally on bumper stickers today: ‘Question Authority! Ask why we always do things the way we’ve always done them, but ask with an open mind. Figure out what works and what doesn’t, and us what works.” - Mary Griffith.
Sandra Dodd:
Sandra Dodd taught junior high school before becoming an advocate of unschooling. As of 1998 she served as editor of the Home Education Magazine online newsletter and hosted the weekly unschooling chat. Her three children never attended school. Her website, http://sandradodd.com provides articles on many aspects of unschooling and life.
"If a family experimenting with unschooling can try to go some amount of time-a week, a month-without learning anything, but during that time they keep active, talkative, busy with life, maybe some art, some music, theater or movies, walks to collect things (in the woods, in the dumpsters, it doesn't matter)-just being, but being busy-at the end of that time (or halfway through) I think it will become apparent that learning cannot be turned off, that given a rich environment, learning becomes like the air-it's in and around us." - Sandra Dodd.
Grace Llewellyn:
Grace Llewellyn, author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, a former middle school English teacher, is now an unschooling and deschooling advocate. She leads a ‘Not Back to School Camp’ in Oregon and West Virginia, and offers unschooling t-shirts on her website, http://www.gracellewellyn.com/
“If you look at the history of ‘freedom,’ you notice that the most frightening thing about people who are not free is that they learn to take their bondage for granted, and to believe that this bondage is ‘normal’ and natural.” - Grace Llewellyn.
