Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written ... for anyone with kids
Review: "This book helped me relax and do less about my kid--less worrying, less trying to cram information into him when he wasn't responding as I wanted him to. Using the approaches recommended by Llewellyn and Silver, I now have fun observing my little boy, guiding him gently, and enjoying his forays into the world as he explores and learns on his own."

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written ... for anyone with kids
Review: "This book helped me relax and do less about my kid--less worrying, less trying to cram information into him when he wasn't responding as I wanted him to. Using the approaches recommended by Llewellyn and Silver, I now have fun observing my little boy, guiding him gently, and enjoying his forays into the world as he explores and learns on his own."

Rating:
Summary: Something Amiss in the Classroom?
Review: For most of us who grew up inside a public educational institution, it is difficult to imagine alternatives. Indeed, it may difficult to imagine anything at all. After twelve (in my case 19) years of absract inundation, most of us have lost the trees in a forest of abstractions. We inhabit a vacuous matrix of unispired, cynical defeatism, where teachers can't level with us as human beings and test questions bear no resemblance to reality. Until graduation day, that is. Then the world opens up before us, free for the plunder of active, self-interested engagement. What if we had never left that world from start? What if from birth to grave our lives were naturally interesting and piquant? What if we didn't educate ourselves for the test, but instead focused on the context of our life and followed our natural curiosities? Einstein (a college drop-out) certainly thought this was the right approach to education: "It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangle the holy curiosity of inquiry." This book a refreshing, imaginative, and likewise extremely practical guide to context-driven education. All my life I had been vexed with the notion that contemporary education is utterly wrongheaded and thwarting, but until now I had never had the language or facts to back up my intuitive, gut feeling. Whether you are thinking of making the great experimental leap and homeschooling your kids, or whether you simply want to better understand how to get the most out of your local educational institution, this book is essential. Although you cannot relive the wasted years, it will send you in the right direction for future learning, and help you give your children an education that will truly unlock their deepest potential. Isn't that what education is supposed to be about: unlocking our native potential and stimulating genuine growth? With this book the relationship between information and the world becomes transparent again, as it should have been from the very beginning.

Rating:
Summary: helpful book, worth a read
Review: I found this book to be a pretty good read. I was looking for something to reaffirm our decision to homeschool, and it didn't do tha for me as much as I would have liked, but it was really interesting, and although it doesn discuss the bad aspects of going to school, it isn't down on school at all-- just helps people recognize where problems might lie and helps to address those issues.

I think this is a great book for all parents, those homeschooling and those traditionally schooling-- any parent that is interested in helping thier child learn to love to to learn will find this book to be full of good information.

Rating:
Summary: helpful book, worth a read
Review: I found this book to be a pretty good read. I was looking for something to reaffirm our decision to homeschool, and it didn't do tha for me as much as I would have liked, but it was really interesting, and although it doesn discuss the bad aspects of going to school, it isn't down on school at all-- just helps people recognize where problems might lie and helps to address those issues.

I think this is a great book for all parents, those homeschooling and those traditionally schooling-- any parent that is interested in helping thier child learn to love to to learn will find this book to be full of good information.

Rating:
Summary: Real learning despite school
Review: School is a place where young people are fed all sorts of meaningless information and forced to give it back on equally meaningless tests. This book aims to change that.

The authors show how parents can help their children can get a real education by helping the child find something about which they are interested, and proceed from there. The process includes five phases:
OPPORTUNITY-Don't just expose your kids to life's possibilities (arts, science, history, community, etc.) without overdoing it, the parent should also stay passionate and involved in learning. The enthusiasm will be contagious.
TIMING-If your child is not progressing according to some school bureaucrat's schedule, don't panic. Not every child learns at the same speed. Early bloomers may need extra stimulation to keep them interested. Late bloomers may simply need time and extra help.
INTEREST-Honor your child's passions, even if it something of which you disapprove. Children are her to grow into the best person they can be, not what the parent or anyone else thinks they should be. Also know when to back off.
FREEDOM-Give the child the chance to take on projects and solve problems. Make it clear that promises are expected to be kept, and also make clear the consequnces for broken promises.
SUPPORT-Be there for your kids. Supporting children does not equal martyrdom. Check to see how much support they need or want. Make sure their goals stay theirs. Well-being is most important.

I learned a lot from this book. It easily reaches the level of Highly Recommended, especially for any parent whose child is having problems in school.

Rating:
Summary: "Guerrilla Learning" celebrates loving life and learning
Review: While the book is about HOW your child(ren) can begin to love life and learning, whether enrolled in school or not, loving learning is presented in a much larger context: transforming your family relationships so that they themselves are based on love, trust, responsibility, and the love of learning. The authors lay out the characteristics of a child who is uninspired in or has been "turned off" by school. Because loving to learn develops in a family context, adult readers are asked to consider their own experiences as children when their own expressions of creativity were thwarted or interrupted. They are even encouraged to resume their own love-of-learning project. In five chapters, adults are quietly introduced to what it takes to support their childrens' innate curiosity and love of learning. The book does not preach, cajole, or seek to proselytize. Instead, it "merely" lays out some options for the characteristics of family life in which it is asserted that children learn and grow and love it. The book is beautifully written and some of the vignettes of real families taking a stand for their childrens' love of life and learning are inspirational. Finally, the authors say something important about the "standards" movement sweeping the country's schools: the tests which are implementing that movement have little or nothing to do with your kid's education. Of course, they, the authors, have a special definition of education and ask the reader to consider the schools' definitions. The pages of the book are poorly formatted, a matter I hope the publisher will correct in subsequent editions.