Unschooling NYC

If you have a Kindle or any Mac device, you can now purchase Escape from Childhood through Amazon!   Take a minute – go ahead – and buy it.

I’ll wait…..

Done?   Excellent!   And if you don’t own a Kindle or any Mac device, have no fear.  EFC will be available before summer on all other e-formats as well.

Now that we’ve taken care of that I’ll keep this short so you can go read.   In fact I’m going to close with one final quote, taken from the section titled “The Right to Control One’s Learning”  (You’re going to … Read more

Yesterday was a great and discouraging hopeful day.

Great because no matter who you voted for, it is always amazing how this process of ours moves forward.   It’s not perfect – far from it, but in 200+ years we’ve experienced no coups and very little violence when it comes to the transfer of power.   Yesterday we got to celebrate that process and also celebrate the memory of Dr. King.  Which seemed perfectly fitting, all things considered.

It was also hopeful.  At first I wrote discouraging, because I ran across a compilation of tweets posted yesterday from a shocking number of … Read more

We pause in our discussion of John Holt’s “Escape from Childhood” for this announcement:   The New York Post found it necessary to send two (yes, two) of its reporters after Lisa Nielsen, calling her a “class clown” in their hyper link to an article that hit the web sometime last night.

Ladies and gentlemen, when the Post makes fun of you, you must be doing something right.

The Post, for those of you not well-versed in New York City newspapers, is our local rag.  They are (in)famous for once running the headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar”.

Classy.

The Post … Read more

Just as a reminder, we are less than two weeks away from a new edition of  John Holt’s “Escape from Childhood” currently being prepared for release by Pat Farenga at HoltGWS LLC.   This will be an ebook, available first on the Kindle and then eventually in other formats.   I encourage everyone to purchase it; the quotes I am including here barely scratch the surface and this is a book everyone should read in its entirety.

One of the most challenging chapters in the book, the one I read two or three times in order to digest it, wrap my head … Read more

It astonishes and dismays me that so little has changed since John Holt wrote Escape from Childhood in 1974.   Perhaps especially when discussing the opinion, held by many adults and parents, that children are a burden.  An expected one, a necessary one, perhaps even a desirable one (if a burden can be desirable), but a burden nonetheless.   Holt maintains that this comes about in part because adults build a “walled garden” for children, the purpose of which is to keep them in the institution of childhood for as long as possible (that safe, innocent & artificial place).  The problem of … Read more

Yesterday I sent a message to Pat Farenga at HoltGWS LLC, telling him that I’d just read “Escape From Childhood” (EFC), was planning to write a series of blog posts around it and asked if he had any particular requests in that regard.    He answered and told me (which, had I been paying attention to his blog I’d already have known; sorry Pat!) that he was within 2 weeks of releasing EFC as a Kindle ebook.

This is fantastic news!  The book has not been in print since the mid-90’s and is truly one of the most challenging and – … Read more

The copyright in this, John Holt’s most challenging and many would say subversive of books, is 1974.     The book is no longer in print, and after reading a used copy for which I paid dearly through the Amazon marketplace, I think that were it written today it would have little or no chance of being published at all.

 In Escape from Childhood, Holt pushes the   boundaries of how we’ve been programmed to view childhood and our children, reminding us that children are far more capable than we believe and in fact should be afforded the same rights and freedoms … Read more

” We tried for three days to sneak Ona’s [dead] baby out, but the guard stood near whenever the doors were open.  The smell of rotting flesh had become unbearable in the hot car.  It made me retch.

Ona finally agreed to drop the baby down the bathroom hole.  She knelt over the opening, sobbing, holding the bundle….

…’I can’t’, whimpered Ona.  ‘She’ll be crushed on the tracks.’

Mother moved toward Ona.  Before she reached her, Miss Grybas snapped the bundle from Ona and threw it down the hole.  I gasped.  Mrs. Rimas cried.”      – Sepetys; Between Shades of Gray

… Read more

“If you check out this “Amy” that is responding to your tweets..her twitter acct is about how she dosn’t send her kids to school because she dosn’t believe in public education?? WTF? Really..and she’s criticizing someone elses thoughts on parenting?? She’s a blogger and writer? Wonder where she got her edu??”

This is a quote from someone on a Facebook page who didn’t like what I was saying about respect for kids the other day. (She had also misinterpreted the comment in question.)  I won’t post other subsequent comments, because they are x-rated, and as a FB friend of mine … Read more

It’s been a busy firestorm of a day on Twitter and Facebook.

I’ll get to that in a minute, but first I want to talk about an interview Tom Cruise gave on David Letterman sometime last month.  (Don’t worry, it’s relevant.)  Tom’s son is 17 and Dave’s son is 9, and they were basically talking about the various stages of childhood.  Dave asked Tom if he’d had “the talk” with his son, and immediately answered his own question by saying “Of course you have, he’s 17 for god’s sake!”  (Which got a laugh)  Then he asked how that conversation went, … Read more