Homeschooling at Random House

From the earliest days of the movement, homeschooling publications have largely been published by enterprising parents, small presses, and specialty publishers. This can make acquiring titles extremely difficult. Take, for example, Write Your Own Curriculum: A Complete Guide to Planning, Organizing and Documenting Homeschool Curriculums by Jenifer O’Leary, published by Whole Life Publishing, which, as far as I can figure, no longer exists. This is a straight-forward, useful, user-friendly guide, but one can only find it used, a problematic solution for most library collections. It’s the same story with so many homeschooling titles, even recent ones.

As homeschooling has grown, though, we are seeing larger publishers produce more titles and keep them in print longer. One of the most impressive lists I’ve seen is from Random House’s Three Rivers Press, which apparently acquired Prima Publishing, a publisher of several core homeschooling titles, some years back. Random House has one of the most frustrating web sites I’ve encountered (why publishers can’t get the hang of creating user-friendly web sites is beyond me), but you can find a list of some of their homeschooling titles here. I’ve read several of the Random House titles. They’re well-designed, professionally produced, and written by excellent authors. They’re packed with useful information, they tend to have at least some appeal for a wide range of homeschoolers, and they fly off the shelves in my library. If you’re just starting to build a homeschooling collection, this is a good place to find high-quality titles you’ll be able to get through your usual vendors – although I hope that eventually you’ll get to the point where you’ll want to start exploring some of those small, specialty publishers. There are some great treasures out there!

The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Raymond and Dorothy Moore

Moore, Raymond, and Dorothy Moore. The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook: A Creative and Stress-Free Approach to Homeschooling. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994.

Researchers and educators Raymond and Dorothy Moore played an important part in popularizing homeschooling in the 1970s and ‘80s, particularly among conservative Protestants. Their star has faded in the homeschooling world, but their contribution to the movement is important, so I’ve been looking to see which of their many books I’d recommend for homeschooling collections. Their most recent, The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook: A Creative and Stress-Free Approach to Homeschooling (1994), turned out to be the winner.

This book, a revision of their Home School Burnout, is one of the only Moore titles still in print. The book is packed with information, covering most of the philosophies and ideas the Moores developed in other books. It serves as a defense of homeschooling as well as an explanation of the “Moore Formula,” which emphasizes teaching children through study, manual labor, and service in the home and community. Like John Holt, the Moores assert that institutionalized schooling damages young children, and while they don’t advocate total unschooling, they do warn parents to delay formal instruction until their children are 8-10 years old. The Moores’ strong Christian faith permeates the book and their ideas, but, at the same time, it welcomes and encourages those of other faiths or even no faith to give homeschooling a try. The Moores’ writing is wordy and lacks spark, making the book a little less user-friendly than other titles, but, at the same time, the authors come across as extremely well-intentioned, well-informed, and likable. Smaller collections may want to skip this in favor of more practical, user-friendly titles, but larger collections will want this representation of the Moores’ work.

Creative Communications by Sandra Garant

“Most of us should be able to find enough reasonable motivation to write or use other communication skills every day. We all have responsibilities we need to remember, relationships we want to keep, problems we ought to resolve, interests we would like to explore, and celebrations in which we enjoy participating. These are meaningful and therefore motivating opportunities for writing, speaking, and drawing.”
-Sandra Garant in Creative Communications: Thirty Writing, Speaking, and Drawing Projects for Homeschoolers

This book is written with Catholic homeschoolers in mind, but it contains ideas that have applications far beyond its intended audience. I first read about Creative Communications in Cathy Duffy’s 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. I had a little trouble getting a copy for the library’s collection, but I’m glad I went through the extra effort. Garant’s philosophy is that the best way to teach writing is through emphasizing writing’s practical everyday uses: making lists, sending letters, designing signs, and the like. She encourages creativity and shows how activities like storytelling and scrapbooking build writing skills. The book is divided into five sections: “Writing Games,” “Pre-writing Activities,” “Short Projects for Ready Writers,” “Advanced Projects for Real Writers,” and “Additional Information.” While Garant’s Catholic faith is evident in some of the activities and examples, her activities would be useful to any number of homeschoolers, classroom teachers, and parents who want to encourage writing – no matter what their faith. Even though some readers will be turned off by the Catholic perspective, many more will either welcome it or look past it. Garant’s straightforward and concise writing style makes the book user-friendly and unintimidating. As a librarian, I love Garant’s frequent suggestions for using public libraries. She suggests getting materials there more than once (even providing call number sections one might want to browse to find particular types of books), and she suggests a number of projects homeschoolers might do in conjunction with their local libraries, such as presenting programs and creating displays. Because the book is geared toward a niche market, it might be best-suited for larger collections, although a little extra promotion will surely have it circulating beyond Catholic homeschoolers.

100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum by Cathy Duffy

Here is another must-have for all libraries that seek to serve homeschoolers.

An active homeschooler and writer, Cathy Duffy has put considerable time and energy into helping homeschooling parents navigate the ever-growing world of curriculum options for their children. This book turns out to be much more than a simple listing of her top hundred picks. The first sixty pages start with the basics: introducing readers to the various movements and trends in homeschooling, helping parents formulate their own educational philosophies and goals for their children, and discussing the idea of learning styles. Duffy asserts that one can’t effectively pick a curriculum without thinking these things through, and she offers a variety of questionnaires and worksheets to make the task less intimidating for those lacking a background in education.

Duffy says that she wants to encourage readers to “become goal-oriented rather than ‘curriculum-driven,’” a goal I think she achieves. I love the way she talks about respecting and building on learning styles and the benefits of being flexible in one’s approach to homeschooling. She also offers suggestions for how to handle practical considerations such as the amount a family has to spend, how many children they have, and how much time a parent has to devote to homeschooling. Duffy writes from a Christian perspective but. at the same time, has respect for a variety of homeschooling options and includes many secular curriculum materials. Her bias is most evident her choice of science curriculums, but, then again, she also encourages families to eschew curriculum and try a “real books” approach to science (as she does for history). Many homeschoolers will appreciate Duffy’s commentary and suggestions on curriculums that incorporate Christian content.

From a librarian’s perspective, one of the saddest things about the book is that as many times as she talks about ways to save money and time and to use real books, she never suggests using the public library as a resource. When she talks about using real books to teach science and recommends Janice VanCleave’s books, when she talks about finding additional phonics readers for practice, when she talks about identifying historical fiction titles, I kept thinking, “The library! The library! The library!” It’s hard to imagine a public library that wouldn’t be a great place to find all of these things and more. Maybe we can convince Duffy to mention the library a little more if she decides to update the book in a few years. :)

In the meantime, Cathy Duffy updates and expands on the reviews in her book on her web site at http://www.cathyduffyreviews.com. It’s a great book and site to recommend to patrons, and it’s also worth a look if you’re trying to identify materials to purchase for your library’s collection.

Reading John Holt

 “For it seems to me a fact that, in our struggle to make sense out of life, the things we most need to learn are the things we most want to learn. To put this another way, curiosity is hardly ever idle.”
-John Holt in How Children Learn

I’m doing a lot of reading for my chapter on unschooling right now and am currently buried in big piles of John Holt.

From his writings, Holt seems like he must have been one of those people who was wacky in the best of all possible ways. Reading words he wrote decades ago, I find myself completely engaged. His depictions of how children deal with boredom in school in How Children Fail are so true to my experience, and I know that I learn in many of the ways he describes in How Children Learn. It’s funny because, as a child, I loved going to school and was an extremely successful student, especially as I got older, but I often marvel at how much I wasn’t learning while earning straight A’s. And I also know that the things I loved most about school were things like my friends, drama club, chorus, and working in the bookstore. I was lucky enough to be in a school where I felt like I had a lot of freedom to pursue my interests and where my strengths were recognized and encouraged. I don’t think unschooling is the only answer to kids who are bored and not learning, but it’s a good answer. I wish more people were reading John Holt.

The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith

“It’s hard to watch your children learn to walk, learn to understand and use language, and learn to get into anything and everything within reach, without believing that they are capable of learning about anything they are curious about.”
-The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child’s Classroom by Mary Griffith

If you’re looking for one book to give you a solid and unintimidating introduction to unschooling, look no further. Griffith provides a brief history of homeschooling with a particular emphasis on unschooling. Then she shows how unschooling works in different families, including lots of quotes and anecdotes from real homescholers. Griffith does a nice job spanning the range of unschoolers: from those who believe that adults are generally best seen and not heard to those who mostly unschool but do incorporate some more formal teaching methods here and there. Griffith makes unschooling sound both appealing and completely possible, covering everything from how children learn to how families can make unschooling economically feasible. The resource lists that end each chapter are uniformly excellent, relevant, and interesting. This is a must-read for librarians who want to learn more about homeschooling and a must-have for library collections.

Mary Griffith also blogs, although it looks like she’s been taking a break. We’ll hope she comes back soon…. :)