Thanks for a great list- I’ve read a few but will add lots to my list. Have you read the Brave Learner- it is a little like Wild and Free, I feel so encouraged after reading it
Thanks for your comment! I haven't specifically read Brave Learner but I've listened to Julie talk many times. I'll have to add that book to my list - thank YOU for the suggestion.
I joined EverAnd a while ago - they have a lot of book on audio. It’s paid, but relatively inexpensive. Listening to books while doing everythign I need to around the house is how I manage to “read” most days
One of the most formative books for me was "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" by Postman and Weingartner. If you haven't read it, I'd suggest it- though it is aimed more for school reform than for homeschooling.
Thanks. I would add two books by James Herndon, "The Way It Spozed to Be" and "How To Survive In Your Native Land," by John Herndon.
Here's a favorable review by Edgar Z. Freedenberg, NY Times, April 11, 1971:
A large number of very good books dealing with public education in America and its mounting difficulties have been published in the past five years. Two of them are comparatively little known, and are superior in their concreteness and insight, and in the depth and significance of what they report. One, Miriam Wasserman's “The School Fix: NYC; USA” (Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, $10), is notable for its effectiveness in linking concrete examples of school practice to general inferences about the social functions of public education. It is Miss Wasserman's thesis that the public schools are not malfunctioning but rather that they are being destructive by designating society's losers quite effectively. This, she argues, is really what they are supposed to do. She demonstrates this with impressive, if depressing, evidence drawn primarily from the New York City schools.
The other book is James Hemdon's original, ironic and tendertough memoir of an Oakland, Calif., junior‐high school of a decade ago, “The Way It Spozed to Be.” Mr. Herndon's observations, though made a continent away, corroborate Miss Wasserman completely; which is instructive, since Herndon writes in a quite different genre. His books, like those of Herbert Kohl, Jonathan Kozol and Robert Coles, are personal accounts of his own experiences with children and his understanding of them; there is no formal apparatus of scholarship, or separation of event and interpretation. Herndon, however, is less sentimental than his fellow critics of public education. He writes about blacks, poor people — even his colleagues — as simply human, not as members of problematic social groups. While this does not usually make them more attractive, it does make their actions more understandable and the entire situation in the schools more vivid and real.
Herndon, of all the authors now writing about education, is most likely to remind his reader that the way he describes the schools is the way they really are — the way the reader himself remembers them if he is less than about 25, the way they must be to treat his children as they do, if he is older. Herndon's approach to the people he writes about effectively erases age and status distinctions. The situations he describes therefore seem both more disturbing and less shocking than the same kind of situation as discussed by Kohl or Kozol — able and perceptive as they are.
In Herndon's books there are losers but not victims; the school is a social microcosm as useless, purposeless and unalterable as the solar system itself, in which many fascinating processes go on quite heedless of the bureaucrats and eager achievers who are trying to reach the moon. Not since Joyce Cary has anyone written about children as convincingly. Since Herndon does not judge the schools, he is not obliged to presume them innocent, and can see much more clearly how they are implicated in their own frequently destructive destinies.
Thanks for a great list- I’ve read a few but will add lots to my list. Have you read the Brave Learner- it is a little like Wild and Free, I feel so encouraged after reading it
Thanks for your comment! I haven't specifically read Brave Learner but I've listened to Julie talk many times. I'll have to add that book to my list - thank YOU for the suggestion.
Excellent list! I have so many books that I want to read. Wish they were all audio 😜
I joined EverAnd a while ago - they have a lot of book on audio. It’s paid, but relatively inexpensive. Listening to books while doing everythign I need to around the house is how I manage to “read” most days
One of the most formative books for me was "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" by Postman and Weingartner. If you haven't read it, I'd suggest it- though it is aimed more for school reform than for homeschooling.
Thank you! It's in my reading cue as of today!
I’ve read/listened to the middle 2 books. Gonna find the other 2 🫰🏼thanks! Xx
Amazing list! I might add The Read-Aloud Family or Rethinking School!
Thanks. I would add two books by James Herndon, "The Way It Spozed to Be" and "How To Survive In Your Native Land," by John Herndon.
Here's a favorable review by Edgar Z. Freedenberg, NY Times, April 11, 1971:
A large number of very good books dealing with public education in America and its mounting difficulties have been published in the past five years. Two of them are comparatively little known, and are superior in their concreteness and insight, and in the depth and significance of what they report. One, Miriam Wasserman's “The School Fix: NYC; USA” (Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, $10), is notable for its effectiveness in linking concrete examples of school practice to general inferences about the social functions of public education. It is Miss Wasserman's thesis that the public schools are not malfunctioning but rather that they are being destructive by designating society's losers quite effectively. This, she argues, is really what they are supposed to do. She demonstrates this with impressive, if depressing, evidence drawn primarily from the New York City schools.
The other book is James Hemdon's original, ironic and tendertough memoir of an Oakland, Calif., junior‐high school of a decade ago, “The Way It Spozed to Be.” Mr. Herndon's observations, though made a continent away, corroborate Miss Wasserman completely; which is instructive, since Herndon writes in a quite different genre. His books, like those of Herbert Kohl, Jonathan Kozol and Robert Coles, are personal accounts of his own experiences with children and his understanding of them; there is no formal apparatus of scholarship, or separation of event and interpretation. Herndon, however, is less sentimental than his fellow critics of public education. He writes about blacks, poor people — even his colleagues — as simply human, not as members of problematic social groups. While this does not usually make them more attractive, it does make their actions more understandable and the entire situation in the schools more vivid and real.
Herndon, of all the authors now writing about education, is most likely to remind his reader that the way he describes the schools is the way they really are — the way the reader himself remembers them if he is less than about 25, the way they must be to treat his children as they do, if he is older. Herndon's approach to the people he writes about effectively erases age and status distinctions. The situations he describes therefore seem both more disturbing and less shocking than the same kind of situation as discussed by Kohl or Kozol — able and perceptive as they are.
In Herndon's books there are losers but not victims; the school is a social microcosm as useless, purposeless and unalterable as the solar system itself, in which many fascinating processes go on quite heedless of the bureaucrats and eager achievers who are trying to reach the moon. Not since Joyce Cary has anyone written about children as convincingly. Since Herndon does not judge the schools, he is not obliged to presume them innocent, and can see much more clearly how they are implicated in their own frequently destructive destinies.
Great recommendations and very motivated to get the books thanks to your enthusiasm and passion for them 🤩