Learning All the Time by John Holt

This is the third post in my series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. (See my earlier post for a description of the series.)

One of the points that David Guterson makes in his book Family Matters (the focus of my previous post) is that the word "homeschooling" is a misnomer, "a newspeak word for the attempt to gain an education outside of institutions." He writes:

"A homeschooler is not really a homeschooler at all but rather a younger person who does not go to school, a person best defined by what he does not do as opposed to by what he does. (It is sometimes used, too, to describe his parents, so that the term has often a double meaning: It encompasses both children who do not go to school and those who guide them in schools' stead.)" 

I've always felt slightly uncomfortable with the homeschooling label, as applied to myself or my children, and I know many others who feel the same way. Half the problem is that the "home" part of the term obscures the diversity of our individualized, out-in-the-world educational experiences. The other half of the problem is that describing education received outside of institutions as "schooling" tends to influence expectations.

If homeschooling is merely schooling at home, the thinking goes, why not expect parents to copy what teachers in schools are doing? In some highly-regulated states, this school-centric bias influences legislation as lawmakers and teachers assume that parents who choose to homeschool should be required to develop formal lesson plans and daily activities contrived to revolve around a standardized curriculum. They insist student progress must be evaluated frequently with timed tests and recorded in percentiles or letter grades.

But here's the problem: some of us who homeschool our children are doing so because the school model isn't a good fit for us. I tried the top-down, mom-as-teacher approach for a while when I first started homeschooling, but it felt wrong to me. Not only was it a struggle to get my daughter to do assignments that were contrived and not what she wanted to be doing, it was also hard for me to believe that I knew best what she needed to learn on a given day. She had been curious, motivated and able to learn without my intervention before we started homeschooling, so why did I now feel compelled to slip into the role of teacher? Why had I stopped doing what had been working so well?

Thank goodness someone handed me a copy of Learning All the Time by John Holt. What he wrote validated what I had been feeling:

"Anytime that, without being invited, without being asked, we try to teach somebody else something, anytime we do that, we convey to that person, whether we know it or not, a double message. The first part of the message is: I am teaching you something important, but you're not smart enough to see how important it is. Unless I teach it to you, you'd probably never bother to find out. The second message that uninvited teaching conveys to the other person is: What I'm teaching you is so difficult that, if I didn't teach it to you, you couldn't learn it." 

What Holt describes as "uninvited teaching" was what I had been doing when I'd been following a curriculum. I'd gone from being a mother who shared ideas and showed my daughter the world to being a teacher who said, "This is what you need to know, and this is how you will learn it." No wonder my daughter was getting angry: I wasn't trusting or respecting her choices.

Holt gave me the confidence to go back to being the person I was before I started thinking I had to be a schoolteacher. The way he wrote about children resonated with me because what he described matched my own experiences with my own children:

"Children are passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of the world around them, are extremely good at it, and do it as scientists do, by creating knowledge out of experience. Children observe, wonder, find, or make and then test the answers to the questions they ask themselves. When they are not actually prevented from doing these things, they continue to do them and to get better and better at it."

Intuitively, I knew I didn't need to force my daughter to learn; I just needed to avoid getting in her way. The best way to help my child, Holt explained, was to do what already came naturally to me as a mother.

"Like a naturalist, an observant parent will be alert both to small clues and to large patterns of behavior. By noticing these, a parent can often offer appropriate suggestions and experiences, and also learn whether the help and explanations already given have been adequate."  

John Holt changed the way I thought about education. He helped me to see the difference between being responsive to my child's needs—essentially, being the kind of mother I wanted to be—and being intrusive, turning my home into a school.

For More Information About John Holt and Learning All the Time

• Who Was John Holt? (Growing Without Schooling, JohnHoltGWS.com)
• A Conversation with John Holt (The Natural Child Project)
• FUN Books (formerly John Holt Bookstore)

Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson

This is the second post in my new series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. (See my earlier post for a description of the series.)

A few years after Homeschooling for Excellence was published (see last week's post), David Guterson (and yes, I mean that David Guterson, the English teacher made famous by Snow Falling on Cedars) wrote an excellent book called Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense. Within my local and statewide homeschooling communities—and I presume elsewhere across the country—his book quickly replaced, or at the very least supplemented, Homeschooling for Excellence. It became the resource we most often recommended to those with a budding interest in homeschooling.

"If homeschooling means foremost teaching one's own, it also means answering questions about it put by friends, relatives, even strangers." 

Family Matters is the best book written for those who genuinely want to know why anyone would choose to homeschool. Homeschoolers struggling to counter opposition from friends and family who don't yet understand or support their decision can use the book to fuel their arguments or, better yet, hand out copies to their critics. Although I've noticed opposition tends to fade as others see how well homeschooled children do over time, the first years are usually the hardest for families and therefore the time when a homeschooling parent needs the most support. That's where Family Matters comes in handy.

When I first started homeschooling back in the 1990s, I met many women who felt crushed when their husbands, parents, neighbors, or any number of other important people in their lives, argued against homeschooling, claiming it would "ruin" their kids. These women, troubled by the doubters and critics in their lives, were usually determined to homeschool regardless, not because they were stubborn but because their hearts were telling them that homeschooling was the best option for their children. I admired their courage and felt their pain when they would say, "I'm going to do this no matter what, but I'd much rather do it with his (or her) support."

"Give them a copy of this book," was what we veteran homeschoolers would say. "It's very persuasive."

Someone who is dear to me was among the skeptics when I started homeschooling. I think his bias against the idea came from all the years he had spent in academia. He was a sociology professor at an Ivy League institution, so how could I expect him to imagine a life without school? I would need to prove to him that a homeschooled student could obtain rigorous academic instruction and adequate socialization, but I knew that would take time.

So I gave him a copy of Family Matters—and waited for his reaction.

He called me about a week later to tell me that he was feeling much better about my decision to homeschool. He said he still had some reservations but it was beginning to make sense to him. He was willing to keep an open mind, and that was enough for me.

"Teaching is an act of love before it is anything else." 

By now you may be wondering what's in the book that makes it so compelling. The power comes from Guterson's willingness to look at homeschooling from the perspectives of those who are opposed to it. Skeptics who read his book are open to what he writes because he gives them a chance to voice their concerns before he addresses them. Like a skilled debater, he anticipates all the common objections, acknowledges the valid points, and then offers his rebuttals.

Guterson writes with authority because he has a personal connection to the people who hold the views he's presenting—and countering—in his book. For ten years, he was a teacher in a high school, facing opposition from those who couldn't understand how a teacher could decide not to send his own kids to school. Likewise, he heard arguments from his father, a criminal defense attorney, who was philosophically opposed to home education. So these aren't straw man arguments he's knocking down; they represent serious concerns about the academic, social and political efficacy of homeschooling, and he takes them seriously. When he writes about "why homeschooling makes sense," it's clear he's thought long and hard about his reasons before putting them down on paper.

As for what the objections are and how he counters them, you'll have to read the book to find out.

"My central notion has been a simple one: that parents are critical to education and therefore public educators—and everyone else—can learn much from those who teach their own."

Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax

This is the first post in my new series about books related to teaching, learning and homeschooling. (See my previous post for a description of the series.)

When I started homeschooling in the 1990s, it was nearly impossible not to have heard of Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax. The book was talked about and shared at practically every homeschooling meeting and conference I attended. The book was recommended to relatives, skeptics, and those who were new to the idea of homeschooling.

Why was the book so popular? Because at a time when most people still doubted whether children could receive an adequate education without attending school, David and Micki were boasting about how their homeschooled children had been accepted into Harvard (see The Harvard Crimson article, "Homeschoolers are at Home at Harvard").

I was just one of many parents who were happy to be able to present the book as evidence, saying, "Look! Here's proof! Homeschooling works!" The Colfax family gave the rest of us homeschoolers a rallying cry. If one homeschooling family could prepare their kids for such high levels of success, why couldn't we all? Reading their book helped us believe anything was possible.

Even now, when I search for the book online, I find people who continue to rave about it. Many consider it THE book to read if you're thinking about homeschooling. And why not? The Colfax kids weren't just accepted into college. They were super-achievers. The oldest son, Grant, graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude and went on to Harvard Medical School. In 2012, President Obama appointed him Director of the Office of National AIDS policy. His younger brother, John Drew Colfax, worked his way through Harvard Medical School after earning his MA and law degree at the University of Michigan. He is now an emergency medicine physician. Their younger brother, Reed, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and went on to Yale Law School. He's now a partner at Relman, Dane and Colfax.  The youngest child, Garth, was still being homeschooled when the book was written, and unlike his brothers he didn't end up at Harvard. He went to a junior college and currently works with a nonprofit organization helping people with developmental disabilities.

What I feel made the Colfax's book so notable, as well as controversial, was what it revealed about the way they ran their home school. They didn't rely on a prescriptive standardized curriculum or school-approved program, which many people still believe is the best and only way to effectively educate college-bound students. In fact, much of their time was devoted to homesteading, working hard on a family ranch in California. They were largely self-taught (autodidactic), learning what they needed to know when they needed to know it, an approach some would refer to as "unschooling."

Back when I read the book for the first time, I remember having mixed feelings about it. On the plus side, the book inspired me to attempt an educational alternative that wasn't simply a carbon copy of school at home. I realized "homeschooling" was a misnomer—"family-centered learning" was closer to what I had in mind. I started thinking about the world as our classroom, where everything we did could be viewed as a learning opportunity. It was very liberating, and I'm grateful that David and Micki were willing to expose themselves and their family to public scrutiny so that I could learn from their experiences.

And yet, I couldn't help feeling inadequate and overwhelmed when I compared what I had to offer my kids to what the Colfax family was doing. They were learning how to set up and run a ranch as a family business, while I was showing my kids how to knit a scarf and do their own laundry. Not only did I not know how to do what they were doing, I didn't even want to try. I remember thinking, I don't really care whether my kids go to Harvard or not.

I didn't want "getting into a prestigious university" to be the standard by which my kids would be measured and evaluated, but it felt as though that's where Homeschooling for Excellence had set the bar. The more I heard people talking about the book, the more I began to worry that it might not be wise to crow about the connection between homeschooling and Harvard. Having heard so much about how homeschoolers can get into selective colleges, would people start pointing to other outcomes as examples of homeschoolers who had failed to provide an adequate education?

I sometimes wondered how the youngest Colfax felt about his brothers' success and the book's popularity. I can't be the only one to have questioned whether Homeschooling for Excellence would have been written and widely recommended if Garth had been the oldest rather than the youngest child. While I don't doubt that his parents were equally proud of all their children, we live in a society that tends to judge people by their credentials.

I think that's why, after I finished reading Homeschooling for Excellence, I felt the need to develop my own goals for homeschooling, my own standards for evaluating whether we'd been successful. I confess I hoped my children would choose to go on to college, and I'm glad they all did, but "get into college" wasn't ever on my list.

In case you're curious, my goals for homeschooling ("Homeschooling for Life") are listed below. How might your own goals be similar or different than mine?

Homeschooling for Life—Our Family's Goals

• Read for pleasure and to obtain information. 
• Write well enough to connect with friends, record events in your life, and make your ideas known to the world.
• Speak clearly enough to be heard and understood when asking a question or articulating your thoughts.
• Calculate solutions to problems by working with the “universal language of numbers” and in this way explore ideas that can be expressed more effectively with numbers than with words.
• Experiment with materials in the physical world. Form questions, observe what happens, be tenacious but open-minded when looking for answers. 
• Think carefully and critically to solve real-world problems and avoid jumping to conclusions.
• Create something appealing to your heart and soul. See, hear, smell, taste and touch appealing works created by others.
• Locate yourself humbly within the grand scheme of things. Study enough geography, history, and social studies to place current events in context and empathize with people from different times and cultures.
• Care for others and yourself with compassion. Love wholeheartedly.
• Apply your talents to make this world a better place.

A New Series of Posts: Books About Teaching, Learning and Homeschooling

I believe we all know what it's like to need help. Whether we are homeschooling parents, professional educators, student mentors, instructors or coaches, we've all had moments when our own expertise wasn't enough. When that happens, where do you go for advice?

Back in the 1990s, before everyone started carrying the internet around in their pockets, my options were limited. I relied heavily on the library. Although I did my best to connect with experienced homeschoolers, that wasn't always an option. Where I live in rural New Hampshire, homes are widely scattered, and homeschoolers are even fewer and farther apart. So, to become a better parent and educator, I turned to the wisdom collected in books.

I started with books about homeschooling written by homeschoolers, but then I broadened my selections to include books written by education researchers, professional teachers and psychologists. I read about parenting, education, cognitive psychology, child development, and human motivation. These authors who shared their knowledge helped me to understand and form my own ideas about what it means to teach and learn. And, whenever I came across a particularly good book, I would start recommending it to other homeschoolers.


Books were so foundational to my experience as an educator that I can't seem to help someone who is thinking of homeschooling without mentioning at least one or two titles. That's why I've decided to write a series of posts on this blog about my favorite books, specifically the ones related to education, and what they have meant to me. I'll begin with the oldest and dustiest ones, the treasures I latched on to when I was just starting to think about homeschooling. Then I'll work my way up to more recent releases.

The first book in my series will be Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax.

While I'm writing these posts partly because I'd like to reflect back on what inspired me, I'd also like to start a discussion here about what inspires you.

If you'd like to join in, just post a comment below and tell me which writers, past or present, have most influenced your choices as an educator. Which ideas resonated with you—and which ones turned you off? What impact have the best (or worst) books about parenting and education had on you?