To learn how to do, we need something real to focus on — not a task assigned by someone else, but something we want to create, something we want to understand. Not an empty exercise...

Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.

What’s the matter?” asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact.”Why—why,” said Elizabeth Ann, “I don’t know what I am at all. If I’m second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?”The...

Everyone thinks it goes smoothly in everyone else’s house, and theirs is the only place that has problems. I’ll let you in on a secret about teaching: there is no place in the world where...

As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly.

To confuse compulsory schooling with equal educational opportunity is like confusing organized religion with spirituality. One does not necessarily lead to the other. Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with...

I was delighted to see him growing more cautious and skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And...

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong,...

This time Elizabeth Ann didn’t answer, because she herself didn’t know what the matter was. But I do, and I’ll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing...

The home is the chief school of human virtues.

When the atmosphere encourages learning, the learning is inevitable.

An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom,...

Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether...

There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda – a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas...

Education is every day and everywhere, the only thing you have to pay is attention.

This book is not about “homeschooling” at all. School is an artificial institution contrived by man. This book is about educating a child in the heart of the family given to that child by his...

So you think the best way to prepare kids for the real world is to bus them to a government institution where they’re forced to spend all day isolated with children of their own age...

What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn’t a school...

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

Trying to get more learning out of the present system is like trying to get the Pony Express to compete with the telegraph by breeding faster ponies.

Notice the difference: A child’s disability is the focus in traditional classroom settings, but his abilities are the focus in the homeschool environment.

When I look at a child, I see a living, breathing person, made in God’s image, for whom God has a plan. As parent educators, we need to embrace a new notion of learning…we need...

It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the need to worry so much about what many people call...

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction...

By educating me at home, my parents were able to give me individualized attention without the usual distractions that kids in regular school experience, like dating and friendship. Not to mention that traditional school can...

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to...

We want our children to become who they are— and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn’t mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make...

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.

Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.

It is no wonder that Satan hates the family and has hurled his venom against it in the form of Communism.

Homeschooling and public schooling are as opposite as two sides of a coin. In a homeschooling environment, the teacher need not be certified, but the child MUST learn. In a public school environment, the teacher...

Thank goodness my education was neglected.

The myth that if you don’t start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of...

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the...

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.

Successful teaching is not head-to-head; it is heart-to-heart.

When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition.

Children are not only extremely good at learning; they are much better at it than we are.

Once upon a time, all children were homeschooled. They were not sent away from home each day to a place just for children but lived, learned, worked, and played in the real world, alongside adults...

It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read.

Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.

Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They’re individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences....

The function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they...

Karena kita tidak abadi, namun tulisan kita bisa abadi

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

learning” is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children’s true interests—turns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm...