"Wild Learning" answers a call in the educational community for practical, easy-to-implement activities that bring core curriculum out of the classroom and into the outdoors. Outdoor learning has risen in popularity in recent years, and it has tremendous benefits. Being outside is healthier, helps children form a strong connection to the…

Deepening disaffection with public schools has inspired flight to private schools, home schooling, and charter schools. At present, there are about 1,700 charter schools, with total enrollments estimated to reach one million soon. This book looks at six strikingly different charter schools, including an evangelical home-schooling charter in…

This book argues that the American school system is based on a false definition of education that leads to false goals. It explains the need for home schooling and describes the changes that must occur in child-rearing practices in order to shore up America's moral and spiritual fiber. Sixteen chapters are based on the notion that education is an…

This book presents suggestions for teenagers who are considering quitting schools. It argues that, for the most part, America's formal educational system hinders the acquisition of real-life learning and individual freedoms. Written specifically for adolescents, it offers guidelines for youth who decide to leave school and undertake home…

Noting that children bear a natural curiosity and urge to learn about the world around them, and that the nature of compulsory schooling is at odds with this inclination, this book explores why parents remove their children from schools to teach them at home and provides step-by-step guidance for parents who want to home school their children.…

Research has documented that the self-esteem of girls plunges at adolescence. Whether this is true for girls educated outside the school system was studied through interviews with 20 homeschooled girls, a questionnaire completed by 20 more, and tape-recorded responses of 5 others. Subjects were asked to describe themselves and their interests,…

This book is the sequel to "I Learn Better By Teaching Myself," which argued that parents need to follow their personal parenting instincts and to trust that their students know what is best for themselves. Chapter 1 describes how the author's family became involved in home schooling. The second chapter describes how they set standards in the form…

This book offers suggestions to parents for implementing interest-initiated learning in home-school situations. Interest-initiated learning is based on three principles: (1) the learner initiates and controls learning according to his or her own interests; (2) the student's own priorities guide the learner; and (3) the teacher only enters the…

This book challenges common assumptions about the nature of education and the need for formal schooling and provides an overview of promising alternatives to compulsory education. Following a foreword by Ivan Illich, four sections cover the philosophical roots of opposition to compulsory public education, current analyses of the public school…

Cooperative learning centers can provide educational activities for home-schooled children as well as support networks for home-schooling parents. This guide recounts development of a cooperative learning center founded by parents of over 70 home-educated children in upstate New York. Part 1 of the book details the development of The Alternative…

This book offers a compilation of home-education resources. The book contains brief descriptions of resources under the categories of catalogs, audiovideo resources, books, authors, and miscellaneous. The titles of the 10 chapters are: (1) "Reading and Literature: Beginners to Bookworms"; (2) "Writing: From ABC to the Great American Novel"; (3)…

Beginning in the mid-1960s, thousands of small alternative schools sprang up across the United States and Canada. These schools varied widely in programs and policies, but common factors among them were a disenchantment with conventional schooling, a desire to reform education, and (frequently) the belief that schools should be controlled by the…

Noting that most home-schooling materials adhere to conventional schooling at the cost of creativity, this handbook provides guidelines for building a successful home school curriculum, one that avoids student resentment and parent burnout, targets children's interest and motivation, and understands how a child's developmental stages contribute to…

This book represents a collection of over 60 articles appearing in SKOLE: the Journal of Alternative Education from 1985 through 1992 and focusing on educational reform and alternatives to public schooling. The journal was created 9 years ago in response to the growing number of families and educators dissatisfied with public schooling and to the…

This book is a guide to providing library resources and services that support homeschooling. The first section contains an overview of the homeschooling movement, statistics that show a nationwide trend toward this form of education, and an examination of the motivations, philosophies and educational styles of homeschoolers. The second section…